How to travel responsibly?
There are a lot of books and publications on the topic, but we are tired of definitions and we would like you experience it firsthand!
It’s “It.a.cà”, the Italian festival dedicated to the Responsible Tourism, that will take place in Emilia Romagna from May 25th to June 2nd 2013.
In the Italian dialect from Bologna “It.a.cà” means: “Are you at home?” Suggesting an idea of travel that doesn’t end when you reach the goal, but that it starts from home and home come back. It’s also a tribute to Odysseus, the Greek-traveler hero determined to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the ultimate limit of the known world, who did the long journey back to his island, his home.
If there is one thing that man has always done is travelling: to other places, to find himself, growing in wisdom and discovering secrets of the world.
The modern has turned ‘travelers’ in ‘tourists’. We easily jump from one corner to the other of the earth, without even realizing the distances covered (and the energy consumptions).
«Tourism is the industry whose aim is to carry people who would feel better at home, to places that would feel better without them! » wrote in 1982 the french writer Jean Mistler
On the opposite, the spirit of traveling that we would like to recover, like Odysseus and other great travelers of the past, starts from the assumption that the extraordinary and the exotic are just around the corner.
The It.a.cà festival, this year in its 5th edition, will offer opportunities for meeting and engagement to reflect critically about travel and hospitality, migration and global citizenship, inequalities and sustainability.
For more than a week It.a.cà Festival will offer exhibitions, debates, conferences and contests, tours and bicycle routes, organic and locally grown lunches, shows for promoting a new idea of travel, more friendly with the environment, places, and people who live there.
There are about 150 events and itineraries programmed in Bologna, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara and Rimini, as well as discounts for traveling by train or carpooling, and 30 special offers for ecofriendly hotels, bed & breakfasts and farmhouses from Parma to Rimini.
You will travel by bicycle to discover Ferrara or Ducal residences near Parma, you will cross the narrow streets of the Jewish ghetto of Bologna celebrating with music and art, you will discover hidden corners of the plain and the Apennines, you will time travel or you will run into a children friendly treasure hunt, you will discover amazing landscapes by traveling by horse-drawn carriage, boat or on foot, you will be thrilled listening to concerts, looking at photographic exhibitions and theatrical performances.
It.a.cà waits for you in Bologna, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara and Rimini from 25 May to 2 June 2013
Here the detailed program of the Italian Responsible Tourism Festival 2013 (translated by Google).
Here the special offers during the Festival (translated by Google).
Cover photo by Eleonora Mazzanti, via Festivalitaca.net