"Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such a small (and mute) foreign element may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from personal life. There too we may find ourself anchoring emotions of love to the way a person butters bread or turning against them because of their taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be. . .

In the more fugitive, trivial association of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change: from finding camels where at home there had been horses; from finding unadorned apartment buildings where at home they had been pillars. But there may be a more profound pleasure: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new, but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland could provide. . .

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home."

- Alain de Botton writing of Amsterdam and Egypt in "On the Exotic" from The Art of Travel, which I highly recommend.