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RE: What is traveling and what is its purpose?
First, I apologize if I've misinterpreted your message here. You may be selling vacation travel to other countries a little short. I can only speak for my own travels over many years, but each trip to a different region (even within the U.S.) has given me a renewed appreciation for life. Many of these trips have also dispelled my previously held beliefs about a particular country or culture. I find value in those experiences. You shouldn't think less of those who don't take up a new life in a different culture. Life has many paths and every path isn't appropriate for every person.
I don't think you did, and I tried to accommodate for this response as well. There are two sides to this spectrum. On one side, you feel you appreciate life more and find value in that. That is maybe a bit of a flimsy matter, as the motivation behind your appreciation might be unclear. It's easy to appreciate your life by depreciating the lives of others. In other ways, I think this form of travel has more entertainment and interest value than cultural value, but value nonetheless. Just look around you on the internet of show-and-tell travel or in your own country during tourist season: What is left over after 10 years other than maybe a neat story and some pictures? Especially if it was a pleasant vacation, the memories fade within a year and before you know it you are readjusted to your comfortable life again. The value of this kind of travel is, like I say, entertainment and interest, not cultural awareness.
On the other side of the spectrum, I meet countless travelers in a culture as relatively simple (if they are Western) as Germany's who come here thinking they are expanding their minds but in reality fail to make the first efforts at interacting with locals. To them, travel is like some sort of collectable object to put on display like a trophy back home. This pattern is particularly strong among English speakers who expect and unknowingly force people to speak English with them. These people confuse the enthusiasm and friendliness of accommodating locals with genuine emotions. I have met more people than I can count who have come here for even a year without learning a single word of the language. This is one of the reasons it's difficult to emphasize the difference in experience when one spends long terms in other countries, with increasing difficulty as the term length and interaction depth increases. My reason in writing this was to articulate the vastness of the space between the two worlds. I can see how it be interpreted as me looking down at those who don't travel like this, but that's not the intention. I am packaging my information with the same reality that has repeatedly broken my heart as a foreigner, and trying to establish a necessary respect for other cultures for which we can skip the treatment as if we were external to them. I don't expect others to leave their homes for more difficult lives, but I do hope they are able see themselves less as the other and more as people. If you have other points where I could be more clear, I am confident you will find my intentions are good even if your instictive reaction is uncomfortable. :)