Slow and steady beats the rat race

Pat Savu, a research chemist at 3M in Maplewood, says between family obligations and work, her life in the Twin Cities is "frantic." When she travels, she's looking for a different pace.

For the past four years, she and her daughters have gone to Europe on spring break in determined pursuit of slowness -- no checklists of attractions, no timelines, no trying to do all of Europe in 10 days.

This year, she and her oldest daughter rented an apartment in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome for 13 days.

"I didn't want to waste all that time and money running around," Savu said. "This approach helps you see things that you wouldn't find on somebody else's top 10 list."

Savu is a convert to the slow travel movement, which is an offshoot of the general slowness movement, which is a reaction to the accelerated pace of daily life.

By most accounts, slowness took off as a concept in 1989 in Italy with the advent of the slow food movement. What started as a local revolt against fast food has evolved into a philosophy with followers worldwide. The idea that fast isn't best has now crept into other arenas: Slow design, slow sex and slow cities have their own movements.

"Slow travel refers to traveling at a pace that allows the traveler to fully appreciate the place he or she has traveled to," said Geir Berthelsen, a Norwegian activist who started the World Institute of Slowness in 1999. The idea is "to relax more and not return after a vacation feeling like we need another."

Feeling connected

"For 150 years, we've been in an acceleration of our culture," said Carl Honoré, author of "In Praise of Slowness," a 2005 book that has been translated into 30 languages. "Now we've reached a phase of diminishing returns. The slowness movement is about quality over quantity."

Honoré, a Canadian living in London, had his slowness epiphany when he realized he was cutting several dwarves out of "Snow White" while reading at his son's bedtime to save a few minutes. Since then, he's made adjustments so that he can live an unhurried life; one of them involved changing the way he travels. For vacations, his family rents a house in the English countryside for a week or two, allowing them to get intimate with one area and with one another.

"One thing I've noticed is that I really remember my vacations now," he said. "Before, the places just became backdrops; I'd be skimming the surface of places as I rushed around."

The slow movement is broad-based and popular in Europe; in the United States, its biggest impact has been on the coasts. While there aren't organized slow travel clubs in Minnesota, there are slow travelers.

"We like the concept because we walk or bicycle on our vacations," Sharon said. "You feel more a part of the landscape when you're moving slowly enough to see it."

The Johnsons recently returned from a three-week trip to Patagonia, the mountainous region at the tip of South America, where they backpacked in Torres del Paine National Park. Rod said slowness can include how you pack your luggage; they each carried a 20-pound backpack for the duration of the trip, sharing a third 15-pound pack of dried food.

"Going light or ultralight is another way to simplify life," Rod said. "Less time packing, less time looking for things, less weight on your back."

Visiting one site a day

Denise Edelstein of Crystal stumbled onto the idea of slow travel when she was looking for advice on travel to Italy. At slowtrav.com, a California-based site with more than 8,000 registered users, she found adherents of the slowness movement who share advice on rental houses and apartments, public transport and public markets.

Savu, who writes about her travels at the slowtrav.com site, said she's been to Rome several times, but there's always more to discover.

"Trastevere is so different from the rest of Rome; there are trees, a warren of narrow streets and a lot of beautiful little churches," she said. She and her daughter ate in trattorias, shopped in the markets and walked or took public transport to get around, just like the Romans they lived among.

At one church, the janitor let them into the basement, where archaeologists were uncovering the remains of an early Christian church, more than 1,000 years old.

"We never would have gotten that on the bus tour," she said.

Chris Welsch • 612-673-7113