The irony was almost too perfect to bear. There I was, living what should have been the dream—getting paid to travel through Europe’s most picturesque landscapes, meeting new people every week, visiting medieval towns and sipping coffee in foreign cafés. Yet each morning I’d wake with a dull dread, reaching for the bottle of Mosel wine that had become both comfort and curse. The insomnia had grown so persistent I could chart the moon’s phases through my bedroom window, and my romantic life had devolved into a series of hastily arranged encounters with people who knew nothing of my daytime existence as a cheerful tour guide.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The travel brochures showed smiling guides surrounded by enthusiastic tourists, all of them marveling at historic landmarks and cultural treasures. They never mentioned the hollow feeling that comes from repeating the same script for the forty-eighth time, or the way your soul slowly erodes when you realize you’re not so much a guide as a cog in a well-oiled machine.
Everything was functioning perfectly at Cotsworld Travel—alarmingly so. The coaches ran on schedule, the passengers disembarked and reboarded with military precision, and the entire operation hummed along with the sterile efficiency of a Swiss watch. That was precisely the problem. In eliminating all uncertainty, they had accidentally stripped away the very thing that makes travel meaningful: the possibility of discovery, the occasional pleasant misstep, the fleeting moments of genuine connection that can’t be scheduled or scripted.
During those restless nights in anonymous hotel rooms, I’d trace the pattern of my deterioration: the initial excitement of being paid to explore Europe had gradually given way to a numbing routine, and now I was actively seeking ways to escape the very dream I’d worked so hard to achieve. The worse I felt, the more I drank; the more I drank, the worse I slept; the worse I slept, the less I could handle the repetitive nature of the job. It was a downward spiral disguised as a continental adventure.
The passengers never saw this side of things, of course. To them, I was the knowledgeable guide who could navigate foreign roads with confidence, recommend the best souvenir shops, and share entertaining anecdotes about each castle we passed. They didn’t know that some of those stories were pure fabrication, invented to keep myself entertained during the seventh identical tour of the Black Forest. They couldn’t see that my smile was becoming a professional mask, worn so often I sometimes forgot what my own face felt like at rest.
There’s a particular loneliness that comes from being constantly surrounded by people yet feeling utterly isolated. I’d stand at the front of the coach with a microphone in hand, pointing out landmarks I could now describe in my sleep, watching forty-eight faces light up with the novelty of experiences that had become stale for me months earlier. In those moments, I felt like a ghost haunting my own life, watching someone who looked like me do a job I once loved.
The perfect efficiency of the operation became its own kind of prison. Each week followed the same pattern: meet the new coachload of passengers, shepherd them through the same four excursions, wave goodbye, repeat. The hotel menus even rotated on a weekly schedule, so I could tell you precisely which day we’d be having schnitzel or potato pancakes. This mechanical predictability might have been good for business, but it was slowly draining the color from my world.
I began to understand why some of the older guides had developed what we politely called ‘eccentricities.’ The ones who’d been doing this for years had all found their ways of coping—some with alcohol, some with gambling, some with complicated relationships with multiple drivers across different routes. At the time, I judged them harshly. Now I was becoming one of them, and the transformation frightened me more than I wanted to admit.
What nobody tells you about dream jobs is that they still become jobs eventually. The romance wears off, and you’re left with the mundane reality of any other occupation: paperwork, difficult customers, logistical headaches, and the relentless pressure to perform day after day. The only difference is the backdrop—and when you’re too exhausted or jaded to appreciate stunning mountain vistas or medieval town squares, even that advantage disappears.
There were moments of clarity amid the fog, usually when I least expected them. A sudden break in the weather that transformed a familiar landscape into something new and breathtaking. A passenger who asked an unexpectedly thoughtful question that made me see a place through fresh eyes. The genuine warmth in a local shopkeeper’s smile when I practiced my broken German instead of defaulting to English. These small moments were lifelines, reminders of why I’d wanted this job in the first place.
But they were becoming increasingly rare, drowned out by the monotonous rhythm of the tour schedule and the growing volume of my own discontent. I was too young to feel this cynical, too fortunate to be this unhappy, and too trapped by my own choices to see a way out. The dream job had become a gilded cage, and I was drinking myself into oblivion while pretending to enjoy the view.
The dream job was supposed to be my escape—a chance to see Europe while getting paid for it. Instead, I found myself drinking too much, struggling to sleep, and diving into one bad romance after another. The irony wasn’t lost on me: here I was, living what many would consider a fantasy, yet feeling like I was losing my mind. The problem wasn’t that anything had gone wrong with the job; it was that everything was going exactly according to plan. The machinery of mass tourism operated with such precision that it left no room for spontaneity, no space for the unexpected—the very things that make travel meaningful.
The Black Forest Cycle
I had stumbled into this life almost by accident. Cotsworld Travel, a British tour company specializing in budget coach holidays, hired me as a guide during the early 1990s. This was before the internet democratized travel planning, before budget airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair made crossing continents as routine as catching a bus. For many of our passengers, a five-day European holiday for £99 felt like a steal—until they realized the isolation of the villages where we stayed left them little choice but to spend more on “optional” excursions. My role was to keep them entertained, to feed them just enough information to feel like they were experiencing something authentic, even when much of it was crafted for tourist consumption.
My first posting was in a small village in Germany’s Black Forest. Each week unfolded with metronomic regularity: I would wait by the roadside for a new coach to arrive, then lead the same four excursions in an endless loop. Day one: a tour of the Black Forest, with stops at shops selling “traditional” cuckoo clocks—most of which, I knew, were manufactured in China. Day two: a cross-border trip to Strasbourg and Alsace in France. Day three: another border crossing, this time to Lake Constance in Switzerland. Day four: a visit to the city of Freiburg. By the third week, I could recite the commentary in my sleep.
The places we visited catered to tourists in ways that stripped them of any genuine local character. Menus were printed in English; souvenir shops accepted British currency and lured customers with free shots of cheap liqueur. I felt a quiet obligation to point passengers toward side streets where something real might still be found, but most were content to cluster where the other tour buses parked—like the sprawling restaurant on Lake Titisee that advertised “Quick lunch and shopping.” I ate there often with the drivers; the meals were free for us, another perk in a system designed to keep everything running smoothly.
There was a certain ease to this repetition. I knew the roads intimately, could guide new drivers through shortcuts and tricky parking spots, and even helped them earn a little extra through backhanders from friendly shop owners. In theory, I should have been thriving. Initially, I was—I rushed around with my camera, photographing the medieval bridge in Lucerne and the half-timbered houses in Strasbourg’s Petite France. I became a regular at a quiet café, where the waitress had time to chat because no one else ever showed up.
But slowly, the sameness began to wear me down. The predictability of it all—the same routes, the same jokes, the same hotel meals served on a weekly rota (Frikadelle rissoles, schnitzel, potato pancakes)—felt less like adventure and more like a trap. I was caught in a real-life version of Groundhog Day, each week mirroring the last with eerie precision. I remember dreaming about something as mundane as grocery shopping in an English supermarket, a sign of how desperately I craved normality.
The groups blurred together. I would wave off one coachload of 48 passengers, only to greet another mere hours later. The rhythm was industrial, a conveyor belt of humanity moving through landscapes that had been polished and packaged for their consumption. What had once felt like privilege now felt like confinement. The very efficiency that made the job easy—the clockwork precision of it all—was what made it so draining. There was no room for surprise, no allowance for discovery. I was a cog in a machine that valued smooth operation over genuine experience, and it was slowly grinding me down.
The Mosel Valley: When Fiction Became the Guide
Leaving the Black Forest’s regimented cycles brought a geographical shift but little psychological relief. The Mosel Valley presented a different kind of trap—one draped in vineyard terraces and river mists, where the temptation to numb the growing disillusionment flowed as freely as the local Riesling.
While the Rhine garners tourist brochures’ attention, the Mosel region offered a more intimate, though equally repetitive, experience of Europe’s wine culture. My new routine involved leading groups through identical village itineraries: stopping at predetermined tasting stalls, reciting the same vineyard statistics, shepherding passengers toward sponsored shops. The scenery changed from forested hills to steep river valleys, but the underlying mechanics remained unchanged—another set of circular excursions, another series of manufactured experiences.
The alcohol availability became both occupational hazard and emotional crutch. In autumn particularly, when every village seemed to host a wine festival, maintaining sobriety felt almost rebellious. Coach drivers—often the only companions who understood the strange isolation of this nomadic life—would suggest quick escapes between tours. These brief respites from passenger duties frequently involved sampling too much of the local produce, the easy camaraderie fueled by shared exhaustion and cheap wine.
Perhaps it was the monotony or perhaps the constant low-grade inebriation, but reality began to feel increasingly malleable. I started embellishing the commentary, inventing stories about the castles perched above the river. The blue netting protecting grapes from birds became part of an elaborate fiction about Blue Nun wine production—a joke among drivers that many passengers accepted without question. Their willingness to believe such obvious fabrications mirrored my own growing detachment from authenticity.
Language barriers provided another layer of absurdity. Grown adults would seriously suggest that motorway exit signs reading ‘Ausfahrt’ were directing us toward Auschwitz—despite the concentration camp being in Poland and these signs appearing throughout the German highway system. Their confusion spoke to something deeper than geographical ignorance: a desire for dramatic narratives that transcended the bland reality of European motorway travel.
There was something quietly tragic in watching tourists experience places through these manufactured stories. They’d photograph vineyards based on fictional legends, buy wines because of invented histories, and return home with experiences shaped more by my whimsical storytelling than any genuine cultural encounter. Yet who was I to judge? I had become a purveyor of these fictions, increasingly reliant on them to make the repetition bearable.
The fictional narratives served as psychological resistance against the grinding sameness. If every village began to look identical, at least I could invent different stories for each. If every wine tasting followed the same pattern, I could vary the descriptions of tannins and terroir. These small creative rebellions became necessary for maintaining some semblance of engagement with work that demanded enthusiasm while systematically extinguishing it.
Looking back, the Mosel period represents tourism’s fundamental paradox: the quest for authentic experience often leads us to embrace the most artificial representations. We’d drive past genuine family-run wineries to visit commercial tasting rooms designed for coach parties. We’d ignore small restaurants serving local specialties in favor of establishments with English menus and credit card facilities. The very structure of mass tourism seemed to inevitably steer everyone toward the least authentic options.
My descent into fictional storytelling wasn’t merely personal weakness—it was almost a logical response to working within a system that had already replaced authenticity with convenience. When surrounded by manufactured experiences, perhaps manufacturing additional layers of fiction becomes a form of psychological survival. The real tragedy wasn’t that I invented stories, but that the tourists preferred them to reality.
Years later, returning to the Mosel Valley as an independent traveler, I noticed the blue netting still covers vineyards, though fewer tour buses park along the riverbanks. The tasting stalls remain, though now they accept digital payments alongside cash. Some things change; some remain painfully familiar. But the memory of those invented stories still brings a twinge of professional shame mixed with understanding for the person who needed to create them.
The Danube Border: Crossing the Iron Curtain’s Ghost
After the repetitive cycles of the Black Forest and the wine-drenched valleys of the Mosel, my next posting felt different from the start. Based in a tiny village near Passau on the German side of the Danube, the air carried a charge that went beyond the usual tourist routine. This was 1990, mere months after the Velvet Revolution had torn through Czechoslovakia, and the border that had once represented an impenetrable divide now stood slightly ajar, curious and uncertain.
I developed an ad hoc excursion that became the highlight of the week—a walk across the border into what was still officially Czechoslovakia, though everyone knew the country was unraveling. The coach would park at Bayerisch Eisenstein on the German side, and I’d lead the group of British holidaymakers toward the checkpoint. Their excitement was palpable, a mix of nervousness and thrill at stepping into a country that had been, until very recently, shrouded behind the Iron Curtain.
The border officers were baffled at first. Why would anyone want to walk into Czechoslovakia for just 15 minutes and then turn back? But soon, their confusion gave way to amusement, then to a kind of pride. They began recognizing our weekly pilgrimage, smiling as they stamped our passports. My own passport pages became a mosaic of Czech entry and exit stamps—a tangible diary of this peculiar ritual.
For the passengers, it was more than a stamp; it was a story to take home. Many had grown up during the Cold War, when Czechoslovakia was a symbol of Soviet oppression, and now they were walking into it as casually as crossing a street. There was a sense of witnessing history in real time, though what they witnessed was often filtered through their own preconceptions.
The first thing we saw on the Czech side, in the village of Alžbětín, was a cluster of derelict buildings. To my eyes, they looked abandoned, crumbling from neglect—the kind of decay you might find in any rural area suffering from economic hardship. But to the British tourists, they were evidence of something more sinister. “I never realized Czechoslovakia was like this!” one woman gasped, her voice trembling with a mix of horror and fascination. Her husband patted her arm reassuringly. “Well, dear, that’s Communism for you.”
It was a moment of profound cognitive dissonance. The locals, standing across the road, watched us with a mixture of bemusement and disbelief. They knew these buildings were not bombed-out remnants of war or political oppression—just houses that had fallen into disrepair. The village itself was tiny, only 19 houses in total, and the ruins were the only structures visible from the border. Yet, in the minds of the tourists, they were walking through a landscape of ideological failure.
Within weeks, the entrepreneurs of Alžbětín recognized an opportunity. They set up makeshift tables by the roadside, selling rudimentary souvenirs—hand-carved wooden figures, embroidered cloths, and old coins. They refused British or German currency, directing tourists to a nearby money changer who offered terrible rates. The holidaymakers would exchange far too much money, then struggle to spend it all, eventually buying things they didn’t want just to use up the colorful Czech banknotes. It was capitalism in its rawest, most opportunistic form, emerging from the ashes of a collapsed system.
There was something deeply human about this exchange—the desire to profit, to connect, to transform curiosity into commerce. The tourists returned to the coach clutching their souvenirs, their pockets lighter but their sense of adventure fulfilled. They had not just visited a country; they had touched a piece of history, or at least their version of it.
Looking back, that brief walk across the border was one of the most meaningful parts of the job. It was not another repetitive excursion through picturesque landscapes or crowded souvenir shops. It was a glimpse into a world in transition, a moment where politics and personal experience collided. The tourists may have misunderstood what they saw, but they felt its significance, and that feeling—raw, imperfect, and deeply human—was what travel ought to be about.
Years later, I returned to Alžbětín via Google Street View. The makeshift tables are gone, replaced by proper shops catering to cross-border trade. The derelict buildings have likely been cleared away or renovated. Progress, as it always does, has smoothed out the rough edges of history. But I can still remember the look on those border officers’ faces—first confused, then welcoming—and the sound of tourists gasping at ruins that were just ruins, nothing more and nothing less. It was a reminder that travel, at its best, is not about seeing things as they are, but about seeing ourselves reflected in the unfamiliar, even when we get it wrong.
The Changing Face of Tourism
Returning to these places decades later feels like stepping into a familiar dream that’s been subtly rearranged. The tour buses that once dominated European roads have largely vanished, their disappearance telling a larger story about how we travel and why. During the peak years of coach tourism, the annual number of buses boarding cross-channel ferries at Dover alone reached well into six figures. Today, you can stand at those same ferry terminals and count the coaches on one hand.
The decline began gradually, almost imperceptibly at first. By 2007, when I first returned to the Mosel Valley, the change was already evident. Where dozens of British coaches once parked along the riverbanks, I could only spot a handful, and few bore UK registration plates. Returning again in 2022, the absence felt almost complete—the occasional coach I did see was more likely to be German or Dutch, filled with pensioners on wine-tasting excursions rather than British holidaymakers on budget adventures.
Cotsworld Travel, that once-thriving company that gave me my start, closed down decades ago. Its successor, Travelscope, also eventually went bankrupt, though similar companies have managed to adapt and survive in niche markets. The business model that seemed so robust in the early 1990s simply couldn’t withstand the seismic shifts in how people choose to experience travel today.
The Digital Revolution in Travel
The internet didn’t just change how we book trips—it transformed our entire relationship with travel. Where once the tour coach represented safety and convenience for travelers hesitant to navigate foreign countries alone, now a smartphone provides that security. The mystery of foreign lands has been replaced by Google Street View, restaurant reviews, and instant translation apps. Why spend days on a bus when you can compare flights on Skyscanner and be at your destination in hours for less money?
Budget airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet didn’t just offer an alternative—they created a completely different mentality around travel. The same holidaymakers who once saved all year for a £99 coach trip to Germany can now take multiple city breaks across Europe for similar money. The calculus changed from “what can I afford” to “where shall I go next weekend.”
Cities Push Back Against Tourism
European cities that once welcomed coach tours with open arms now view them with increasing hostility. The very infrastructure that made coach travel possible—wide roads, central parking areas, easy access to landmarks—has become its downfall. City after city has implemented restrictions to reduce congestion and pollution, making it nearly impossible to drop passengers in city centers.
Strasbourg, where I once guided groups through picturesque canals, now restricts coach access to the city center. Similar policies exist in Prague, Barcelona, Venice, and countless other destinations. The coaches that do still operate often must park in distant lots, with passengers transferred via public transport—adding time and complexity to tours that once promised convenience above all else.
Brexit created additional complications that few in the industry anticipated. The restrictions on how long British drivers and guides can work in the Schengen area have made European tours logistically challenging and economically marginal for many operators. The paperwork and bureaucracy that once seemed manageable now often outweigh the benefits.
Grindelwald: From Chairlift to Cable Car
Returning to Grindelwald felt like visiting a different world altogether. The modest chairlift that once carried us up the mountain has been replaced by a massive cable car system capable of moving thousands of visitors daily. Where we once had relative solitude facing the north face of the Eiger, now there’s a vertiginous walkway filled with tourists taking selfies against the dramatic backdrop.
The development is impressive in its engineering and efficiency, but something essential has been lost in the transformation. That sense of quiet awe at standing before one of mountaineering’s most legendary challenges has been replaced by the hustle and bustle of mass tourism. The mountains haven’t changed, but how we experience them certainly has.
Strasbourg’s Transformation
Searching for my old café in Strasbourg’s Petite France district became an hour-long struggle through crowds that would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. The quiet cobblestone streets where I once wandered alone now teem with visitors from around the world. The waitress who once had time to chat because she had no other customers now works in a establishment with a queue waiting at the door.
The change isn’t necessarily negative—economic prosperity has come to these places, after all—but the intimacy of discovery has been replaced by the efficiency of consumption. Where tourists once might have stumbled upon a charming café accidentally, now they follow digital maps to highly-rated establishments, creating bottlenecks where none existed before.
The Paradox of Modern Tourism
Here lies the central contradiction of contemporary travel: there are more tourists than ever before, yet the traditional tour coach has become an endangered species. Visitors still flock to see the Black Forest, cruise the Mosel, and admire Strasbourg’s cathedral—they just arrive differently now.
The decline of coach tourism represents both progress and loss. The freedom to travel independently has never been greater, and the democratization of travel has allowed millions to experience places they might never have seen otherwise. Yet something has been lost in the transition—the shared experience of the journey itself, the camaraderie that developed among passengers spending days together on the road, the gradual unfolding of landscape that flying over cannot replicate.
The tour coach represented a particular moment in the history of travel—after mass tourism had become possible but before it became personalized. It served as a bridge between the era of exclusive grand tours for the wealthy and the current age of ubiquitous travel for the masses. Its gradual disappearance marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of whatever comes next in our endless desire to see the world.
The Unchanging Quest
Looking back across three decades, the most striking realization isn’t how much has changed, but how little the fundamental tensions of tourism have resolved. The coach tours may have dwindled, the internet may have democratized travel planning, and borders may have transformed, but the essential dance between authenticity and convenience continues unabated.
Mass tourism’s central paradox remains: people seek genuine experiences while simultaneously craving the familiar comforts of home. That tension defined my coaching days in the 1990s just as it defines today’s Instagram-driven travel culture. Then, it manifested in British tourists clustering around English-language menus and souvenir shops that accepted pounds; now, it appears in travelers photographing “authentic” meals for social media before retreating to international hotel chains.
The commercialization of culture isn’t some recent corruption—it’s the inevitable response to human desire. Those Black Forest cuckoo clocks mostly made in China? They satisfied a genuine longing for connection, however manufactured. The shot of cheap liqueur offered in Mosel Valley souvenir shops? It provided a moment of warmth and welcome, however calculated. We criticize the commodification of experience while secretly appreciating its accessibility.
What has shifted, perhaps, is our awareness of this tension. In the pre-internet era, tourists accepted the packaged experience with less skepticism. Today’s travelers arrive armed with research, reviews, and heightened expectations—yet often end up following similar paths to similar photo opportunities. The crowds in Strasbourg’s Petite France may be taking selfies rather than buying postcards, but they’re still congregating in the same spots where the tour buses once parked.
Returning to these places after thirty years, I expected to find everything transformed. Instead, I discovered that tourism evolves rather than revolutionizes. The chairlift at Grindelwald became a cable car, but visitors still seek that same breathtaking view of the Eiger. The roadside tables in Alžbětín evolved into proper shops, but the cross-border curiosity that drove us to walk into Czechoslovakia still draws visitors today.
The real change lies in our mode of movement, not our motivation. Where coaches once carried Britons on weeks-long European tours, now budget airlines transport them for weekends. The internet didn’t eliminate the guided tour—it just fragmented it into YouTube videos, travel blogs, and GPS-activated audio guides. We still want someone to show us what’s worth seeing; we’ve just individualized the delivery system.
This evolution contains both loss and gain. The decline of coach tourism means fewer massive vehicles clogging medieval town centers, but also the loss of a certain collective experience. There was something profoundly democratic about those £99 holidays—they made European travel accessible to people who might never have ventured abroad otherwise. Today’s low-cost airlines theoretically offer similar accessibility, but they’ve also enabled a more scattered, individualistic approach that lacks the shared journey of a coach tour.
My personal journey through this landscape left me with more questions than answers. Does making travel more efficient make it more meaningful? Does having unlimited information at our fingertips make our experiences richer or simply more predetermined? The tourists I guided in the 1990s often discovered things through happy accident—the wrong turn that led to a charming courtyard, the language misunderstanding that became a dinner party story. Algorithm-driven travel today minimizes such accidents, promising perfect efficiency at the potential cost of serendipity.
Standing in line at that Strasbourg café where I was once the only customer, I felt the weight of these changes. The waitress who once chatted with me now moved efficiently through the queue, barely making eye contact. The patrons consulted phones instead of paper maps. Yet their expressions held the same wonder I remembered from my coaching days—the same delight in discovering something beautiful in an unfamiliar place.
Perhaps that’s the constant beneath tourism’s changing surface: the human desire to step outside ordinary life, if only briefly. Whether by coach, plane, or smartphone, we’re all seeking that moment of expansion—the glimpse of different possibilities that travel provides. The packaging changes, but the essential offering remains: the chance to see the world, and ourselves, from a slightly different angle.
The dream job that nearly broke me taught me this final lesson: tourism isn’t about places, but about the space between expectation and reality. However we travel, whatever we seek, we’re ultimately navigating that delicate gap—between what we hope to find and what actually exists, between the stories we’re told and the truths we discover. That gap never closes completely, and perhaps that’s why we keep traveling.
