It's Friday, Travel Somewhere!

Few things can fuel creativity in such a "fast and furious" way like a trip.

The world is big and there are so many points of view out there, that if you leave the comfort of your "known zone" and travel with an open mind, I bet money your creativity will increase accordingly.

What does it mean to travel "with an open mind"? Basically means not being the American stereotype, the one that can't understand "how these people live without air conditioning, or McDonalds, or a car, or..." (you fill in the blank).

Of course I know not ALL Americans are like that, but I have seen my own share of that. And you can say that it is unfair to adjudicate that behavior to Americans solely and you would be right: it is a pretty common human behavior, shared across nationalities. The thing is that because Americans are used to more stuff, they are the ones that show this pattern first and often.

But let's go back to travel. You don't need to go to Japan to get inspired or to be more creative. You can go to a neighborhood in your same city, one you don't know much about and set your mind as if you were traveling: look at those streets with tourist eyes, try to learn about it, discover the place, ask yourself how others live here and what tourists may say about it.

I am taking my own advice and I am traveling today. Not to fuel my creativity, just on vacations. We are headed to Argentina and Uruguay where we are planning to be with friends and family and eat a lot of meat, empanadas and alfajores among many, many other things.

Rest assured that I will be coolhunting too. Buenos Aires is a city ideal for that: crisis and creativity tend to go hand to hand and with such a long history of crisis in Argentina, creativity is in the air (for good and for bad, of course).

Meanwhile for the rest of the day, I leave you with some old ads from Telefonica Argentina that probably will make you smile. They are related to the topic because in some way they also remind us of how big the world is and how "interesting" things can be when you just mix things...

Lowest call rates to Turkey and Sweden

Lowest call rates to Japan and Scotland

Also, I found this interesting list of "Creative Excursions for Team Building" in case you are interested in a trip for a team. I would like to add to that list the MoMA, either the one in NYC or the one in San Francisco.

But that's all for today..., I haven't finished packing and time is running out!