I fear that we are all losing the art of travel. Robert Louis Stevenson and Freya Stark both travelled with donkeys. They were attentive to every turn of the road on their journeys through France and Arabia respectively. But us? We pack ourselves like sardines into fragile aluminium tubes and speed through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour. Come now! That is not real travel.

The anticipation of arrival undermines the pleasure of the journey as we make haste to get to this or that resort, conference or meeting. But it need not be so. We have slow food and slow cities, so why not slow travel?

This week the ITB takes place in Berlin – a travel trade fair that is mainly dedicated to getting folk to travel further and travel faster. As an antidote to the ITB, hidden europe magazine launches its manifesto for slow travel this week. Just think. The journey becomes a moment to relax, rather than being a stressful interlude between home and destination. Of course slow travel is much more than just that. It is a whole way of looking at the world. Slow travellers savour communities along the way, dawdle and pause as the mood takes them and check out spots recommended by the locals. Slow travel is downbeat, eco-friendly and above all fun. Travel like it used to be, but without the donkeys.

“The art of living,” says Carlo Petrini, the charismatic founder of the Slow Food Movement, “is about learning to give time to each and every thing.” And that, most surely, should include travel. Find out more on the hidden europe website or at www.slowtraveleurope.eu.