Milan Hlavačka
Railway Traveller Eduard Bazika, or Travelling with Wife
Professional journeys and trips planned for leisure time (holidays, retirement) between only two fixed points, i.e. between the final destination and home, became the predominant type of travel for the new bourgeois elites in the late 19th century. The goal of most travels, with the exception of emigration, was to return home. In the second half of the 19th century, the most mobile (European) society becomes also the most stable and most anchored one, because it clings to family ties. Further conclusions regarding the refinement of the motivating factors of middle-class travel and leisure activities can be drawn primarily by analysing ego-documents such as Bazik's memoirs based on several concepts (the counterposition of home versus travel, imperial biography, the new morality of time, the anthropology of tourism, or the exploration of the social and cultural effects of mobility). In the Czech lands, too, we find a new travel mentality of modern European society at the end of the 19th century. It was influenced by the boom of railways and related economic and cultural activities to such an extent that the increased mobility changed the collective morality of the perception of time and space. Not only regular and mass travelling by new means of transport, but also impatience and the associated nervousness became the new common sign of the times, and it was through increased travel activity and the new morality based on a new perception of time that they were introduced into society.
Keywords: professional journeys - leisure time - ego-documents - railway
design by Bedřich Vémola
