The producers of the show, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, place Karl in some very exotic places around the world, doing very exotic things, seeing some of the world's great wonders. Along the way, viewers are treated to amazing sites, places, food, etc. The true beauty of the show is that one gets to watch Karl, an idiot, do travel. The irony is it shows how Karl is like each of us. We are all idiots, thinking that our own way and our culture's way of doing things is best. Sociologists call it: "ethnocentrism." Gervais and Merchant prefer to term it: "idiot."
Amazingly, there are some breakthroughs. Karl has some wonderful travel moments, in which he realizes that there is more to life than what he knows in his tiny circle, at home. On one such breakthrough, Karl is in Mexico, to see Chichen Itza. At the end of the show, Karl reflects that the people of Mexico really know what they are doing. He notes that they go through their lives, doing what they want to do, not concerned about what other people think. He believes that makes people in Mexico happier than people where he comes from. He was particularly intrigued by people in a small village who work in the field all day long, then come home and "do nothing," as he put it. They just mill around town all day, doing nothing in particular. But he noted they were the happiest people he had ever seen.
That's what travel can do . . . if we allow it to. Travel can expose us to things that do not make sense to us. But upon reflection, we realize there is more than one way to do something, more than one way to do life than what we see with our normal, everyday surroundings.
Travel can do this with things as simple as a pickle on a hot dog (I had never considered until I went to Chicago):
Or as interesting as pay-to-use public toilets in Budapest (something I still have not wrapped my head around but am intrigued by):
But that's the beauty of travel.
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