Protreptikos - the Exhortation for Scientific Tourism

Abstract

The presented paper focuses primarily on the tourism activities of teaching staff at universities and other research institutions. This applies in particular to travel during which the principal purpose is, inter alia, various exploratory internships, conferences, trips as a guest professor or a visiting professor under the auspices of the Erasmus and Erasmus Mundus programs. These peregrinations require extra effort, not only with regards to teaching and research duties, but also present opportunities to confront, test and evaluate one's own research results and outlook with new listeners in new locations in different environments. This travel especially applies to the foreign environment, a situation that presents high degrees of professional, scientific and linguistic challenges, resulting in increased contributions and activity to the specific field of science. Regardless of the workload and the difficulties of the discussed travel, such travel can also bring about much personal satisfaction: a) due to a sense of a well done job as a result of meeting expectations of the employer and the host placed on the ‘messenger of science’ and b) due to the pleasure associated with those tourist experiences having autotelic and pragmatic (instrumental) overtones.