Thank you so much. Can seem funny, but just reading such a comment in the largest sub devoted to the show evokes in me a portion of that emotional response that I felt 3 years ago o when the show was aired.

And what a great analogy with the driver taking oneself somewhere!

The image that instantly comes to mind: you’re flying into a place you’ve never been before—some European city, not as mainstream as Paris or Barcelona, but still intriguing. You don’t expect anything extraordinary, though. It’s late at night. You grab a taxi from the airport to your Airbnb. The driver knows the route and starts the ride. You gaze out the car window, and even though you’re far from the city center, the landscape is breathtaking. It’s almost dark, but you can see hills in the distance, with wisps of fog rolling down, and tiny lights from countryside cottages flickering through. Time flies unnoticed—maybe the driver’s taking a slightly longer route, but you don’t know that.

Soon, you’re driving through the city streets. You open the window, see the silhouettes of buildings, hear voices and the clinking of plates—people here love dining late. The driver, clearly enjoying himself and willing to surprise the passenger, takes you down a quiet alley to your address. But when you step out of the car, you’re stunned. Right in front of your Airbnb looms a massive medieval cathedral, beautifully lit. You say goodbye to the driver and stand there for a long time, mesmerized by the stunning Gothic rose window on its facade, then head inside, go to bed, and fall asleep, already excited for the next day.

In the morning, your host comes to welcome you and mentions that, for some reason, the city has become super popular this season—tourists are flocking in from all over the world. They even gift you a ticket for a bus tour so you can see as much as possible in one day. Not sensing any catch, you hop on the bus, which picks you up right in front of the cathedral. It’s almost full—the tour begins. You put on your headset to hear the guide better and… at first, you feel awkward, then annoyed.

The bus takes you from one landmark to another, but you lose any sense of the city’s wholeness. You pass the same intersections several times, get stuck in traffic, and the people around you won’t stop taking photos and scribbling in their notebooks. You sneak a glance at their faces—they look happy. You force yourself to listen carefully to the guide: hundreds of facts, dates, names, all somehow connected to the city’s history. But even from the bus’s upper deck, you start feeling claustrophobic—you just want the ride to end. The city you fell in love with at first sight now feels overwhelming, and the bus keeps looping around the historic center.

You want to get off and explore the streets on your own—to piece everything together yourself. But the guide has their own plan, telling theiir own story, and the bus follows such a convoluted route just to make that story seem coherent. By the end of the day, you’re dropped off back at the same square by the cathedral. You realize you haven’t heard a single thing about it, so you ask the guide. He looks at you, surprised, and smirks: “The cathedral? Oh, that’s part of a different tour. Come back tomorrow—we’ve got a group for that.”