What the heck is Slow Trips?

First, the dry facts: Slow Trips is a LEADER Transnational Cooperation (TNC) project on socio-cultural tourism and slow travel experiences.

Sounds fancy and complicated and maybe even a little boring, right? But what does it mean? It means that, across Europe, various regions have come together to create something we call European Slow Travel Experiences. The travel offers you’ll find here are all niche products in the field of creative tourism, ranging from the amusing to the downright kooky.

We want to leave dusty old tourism behind and give you sustainable cultural tourism off the beaten track instead. You, the traveller, will have the opportunity to realise your creative potential through active participation in your trip. You’ll get a peek at (and take part in) the actual realities of the people who live and work in the region, discovering and experiencing everyday local cultures.

Put away the camera and throw out the guide book

Slow Trips means not taking photos of everything all the time. It means ditching the travel guide and actively bypassing the sights extolled in your guide book. You’ll also avoid large and well-known hotels, trading them in for unusual accommodations, sleeping in wagons, castles or even the treetops.

Instead of breathlessly dashing from one tourist attraction to the next, you’ll have time to discover and enjoy the culinary delights of the region. And if you remain open to new experiences, you might just be rewarded with a few positive surprises that weren’t even listed in the booking.

Our Slow Trips Experiences in various European destinations are all unique, but they all have a few things in common:

Slow Trips Core Values 

• They’re hidden treasures: You’ll get to know secret places and tucked-away backyards that aren’t accessible to conventional tourists.
• They’ll put you in touch with the locals: You’ll be able to experience everyday culture and swap ideas with the people who live it.
• Authenticity is key: We’ll spare you the idyllic and pastoral imagery of our rural and urban regions. Instead, we want to open up a discourse about a new concept of beauty in tourism, an approach that values disruption and reality over artificiality. 

• Joint activities allow for mutual learning: You’ll learn more about a region you’re visiting, but, similarly, the locals also learn through your involvement.
• Economic, social and ecological sustainability: Each trip is designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Please respect the culture of your destination.
• Storytelling: You can immerse yourself in the stories told by the locals, whether they’re stories from everyday life or tales of old myths and legends.