In essence, this quote is true.
Applied to reality though, in our day and age your results may vary. It is completely possible to travel and learn nothing that would open people’s minds especially when the traveling keeps itself within tourist zones and resorts designed to just give you a change of landscape and an illusion of cultural flavor.
You need to purposefully step away from that sort of thing and actually engage with the culture to get the benefits of the quote.
Meanwhile all tourist-facing workers in every non-Anglo country have heard “I’M AMERICAN! SPEAK ENGLISH TO ME!!!” at least once.
I saw a tiktok of a Brit talking about this with the upcoming ban in the US, and he made an interesting point. The Americans who can afford to travel and take time off work, are more often the ones who have lived privileged lives, and as a result act more entitled than the average American. He commented how interacting with regular Americans on tiktok changed his perception of what they are like, because only interacting with the tourists makes it seem like there’s a higher percentage of entitled a-holes.
Here in Brazil, cariocas – people from the city of Rio de Janeiro – have a bad reputation, but I actually had pleasant encounters with people when I stayed in the city for more than a month. I do not know if this is analogous to international tourism, but wanted to share this anecdote.
May not work in all cases, seems like everyone that goes to egypt to see the pyramids comes back hating egyptians.
I’ve seen discussions where the topic was something like “Where did you travel to that you would never go back to again”, and the responses there heavily implied that travel can inspire racism.
I think Twain here is referring to travel less as tourism, ie short vacations, but more about spending time living in different countries and getting to know people and their culture, making friends, etc.
