Stranger in a Strange Land

This website lets you experience a car driving through cities while listening to local radio stations.

For many, that’s roughly the same experience that you get when visiting a new place or city for the first time. You might take a cab from the airport to your room, and he’s playing the local radio.

I love the concept for this website. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t watched videos of people driving at night before just to get that feeling without needing to travel.

As the creator of Dream Catalogue once wrote:

“I spent a lot of 2013 listening to spacey drum & bass mixes while watching Hong Kong and Tokyo night driving videos on YouTube and drinking beer, just because the combination of it all created such a weird feeling I have never experienced before.”
– Dream Catalogue

I love these driving videos. Pairing them with local radio stations gives me the exact feeling that I get whenever I first arrive in a new city.

I first felt that feeling when I moved to my University city. I remember sitting on the bus on my first night in this new place, watching all of the lights stream past the fogged up window. I had never lived in a city before, so everything was new and exciting. I’d have four years to get to know this place, and I knew then that it would leave a mark on my identity for years to come.

“Night Rain” by Vladimir Agafonkin is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I felt the same feeling many times since whilst travelling.

You’re gawking out of the window of the taxi, bus, or train as the town, city, or landscape goes whizzing past. Just drinking it allll in.

In those moments you feel that there is a whole world of opportunity awaiting you. You don’t know what you’ll find here. You get lost going over the possibilities that await. Will you find friendship? Opportunities? Love? Enlightenment? Anything could happen.

But in that moment, those are all just possibilities. So you sit. And you watch. And you think.

And then you snap back to reality when you reach your destination. You step outside, your senses are briefly assaulted by the heat and moisture - or lack of it - and perhaps strange sights, sounds, or smell of things you’ve never encountered before.

You blink, breathe in, and take your first steps in this new place that you will be calling home.