What does “culture” mean to you?

In my native French, "cultural activities" refer to museums, galleries, street art & performing arts, broadly speaking, so this is what I understand when someone says they are interested in "culture".
Activities related to the day-to-day, such as food and drink, do not immediately come to mind.
This is mostly a language bias, I guess.

If someone claims to have a friend or spouse that is cultured, what does that mean to you? Well read, familiar with art, music, fahsion and history? That is culture to me too, with maybe the local food tossed in.
What is a city famous for? Cabaret culture in 1920's Berlin with jazz and fashion. Walzes in Vienna with a Sacher Tort afterwards. Snails and champagne in Paris with a visit to the Louvre. Cappacino and fashion in Milan. Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, followed by a tapas tour? etc. etc.

In Frankfurt, I would take them to a Frankfurt style restaurant to have a Frankfurt schnitzel, maybe ride on the Applewine Express where they play Frankfurt applewine music, visit the medieval churches especially the Kaiserdom where the emperors were elected, visit some of the Jewish heritage sites, stroll down the high end designer street, graze through the Klein Markt Halle or one of the local Farmers markets where the residents are all sipping local Riesling and eating plates of local cheeses. End with a piece of Frankfurter Kranz cake.

It is a soft squishy term more akin to marketing than practical, in the vein of "Experience the Culture of..." and similar in squishyness to "Live Like a Local..." Basically it is an attempt to do something that can't really be done, and to say you experienced the culture of "X" will immediately begin a refrain of "Well you did not really experience the true culture"

For example, go to Munich and experience the culture of going to a Beer Garden or Oktoberfest, that is certainly a cultural event, a long history, something even some Germans do, but many would tell you that really does not represent current German culture, and only the historical culture of one region (maybe city) of Germany, others would tell you it is a drunken tourist spectacle that has nothing to do with current German Culture.

Certainly you can go someplace, eat the local food, drink the local drink, take a tour and learn the history, see an exhibition of the local dance in quaint costumes, and get a sense of what is presented as the local culture; but the real culture is much more mundane, but rich. The locals likely do not eat that food often, drink little of that local drink, they probably eat at McDonalds and drink cheap big brewery beer, listen to Pop music, and complain about politicians. Many of them likely do not look like what you think a "German" looks like, but German they are. Experience the culture? Sure, get a job, scrape to get by, put up with tourists, worry about what the politicians are going to do next, basically live life.

Same with "Living like a local", you can't, certainly not in a week, or a month, even if you live in a quaint village for years, you will still be on the outside looking in, and you likely will be doing it from a position of privilege, not worrying about paying the bills or having to work.

But to cut the gloom, there is no shame in going somewhere, eating good food, having good drink, having something different than what you can get at home. Good to learn the local history, support the tourist culture presented, the museums, get a sense of maybe what was. Did you experience the culture? Does it matter? Also be sensitive to the people who live there, they are not workers at a Disney attraction, they are just living life, likely have never been to the local museum (except on a class trip in primary school maybe) or have been to Oktoberfest, they may not even own a set of Lederhosen.

There is a "culture" of a place, but also the pockets within the culture that are more specific. When I'm traveling, I'd like to observe both - the overall culture (the "winners" of the decisions on local and regional level), but also those specific pockets that are maybe contrary to the overall culture.

For example, if someone were to visit a town I lived in, in the past, Colorado Springs. They would see much of the conservative and religious culture of the area (Air Force Academy, Focus on the Family, Glen Eyrie, Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, etc). But they could visit the Old North End/Colorado College, Old Colorado City, Manitou Springs and the vibrant downtown with locally owned stores such as Poor Richard's bookstore and see even within this conservative community, there is a very bright subculture of progressives.

You see the overall culture of the place through the established (museums, main tourist sights), but the subculture through the most vibrant neighborhoods and "unique" and small sights.

You got some good responses about what culture might mean. But wouldn't it more useful to know what your sister means when she says she is interested in "culture"?

Perhaps she's interested in how people live their everyday lives. Or maybe the local cuisine, or the art and architecture (sounds like maybe not art though). Or possibly she'd enjoy coffee, food trucks, live music, craft beer, hiking, and floating in the river. All those things represent culture!

To me, culture embodies all those things: the arts, the food, the lifestyle. And I'd love it if you take me to Seville and Paris and show me the culture. But since you're taking your sister, best that you ask her.

At the basic level, culture is that which is created by people and shared, in order to foster communities and experiences in common. So language, architecture, government, food, religion, art, music, and so on. Of course, "culture shock" is what we say when we move from one culture to another, and find ourselves uncomfortable because we are too far removed from the experiences in common of that particular group...

I agree with History Traveler, and this is how I tend to view culture. For me it's just to be in a place, on the streets, public transit, markets and shops, and interacting with the people. Museums let me connect with the past, but walking into a grocery store has been one of my favorite ways of connecting with the current culture.

Lane, I totally agree, and I have asked her what culture means to her. She has a hard time articulating it. She gets overwhelmed easily, wants to see everything, yet she wants to travel “slow”. She gets analysis paralysis and is not a planner. Whereas I like to do some research, and have a few options at the ready depending on the mood, so we don’t spend 3 hours every day figuring out what to do.

After 10+ trips to Europe, I’m much more interested in visiting grocery stores than museums! I’m glad I’m not alone.

what does "culture" mean to me?

What keeps the sourdough mother going...

What makes yogurt .... well, yogurt

@travel4fun--It may just be me viewing this through my own neurodivergent experience, but it could be that your sister has the form of ADD that has a hard time filtering out stimuli. It's hard to make decisions, and places like museums where there's a lot of "stuff" are overwhelming pretty quickly. I, however, am a planner--it's my main defense against wasting time AND being overwhelmed. It's taken me a while to figure out how to travel without melting down mid-trip, but some of the things I do now are to spend the first day or two on an international trip walking around and getting the feel for a place, having walking around days interspersed with "seeing things" days (or days that are "half and half"), and limiting museum time to seeing a few specific things then getting out of there.

I think History Traveler is on the right track with asking what your sister likes to do at home. As a quilter and sewer I love fabric, so I not only like to visit fabric stores, but I enjoyed seeing the various fashion and fabric exhibits in the Victoria & Albert Museum. My husband and I have a deep faith life and we attend services on Sunday wherever we go, even if our language grasp is tenuous as it was in Italy, and we enjoy visiting churches outside of services times. You will probably have to plan the trip, then ask your sister if the things you planned are interesting to her or not.

As far as what culture is, I think it's composed of everything in a society--the history, the architecture old and new, grocery shopping--not only where, but when and how often, the language, how they travel within their neighborhood, city and country, what time they eat as well as what and where. We will not be locals, nor totally understand the culture, but we can experience it when we visit someplace new, both internationally and domestically, if we slow down and keep our eyes and minds open.

Enjoying these responses.
History Traveler, thank you for such thoughtful posts!

I’m enjoying everyone’s responses. As I think about it, one of my family’s favorite travel experiences ties to a hobby. My oldest son is a very good bowler, and my husband is a bowling coach. So one quiet evening in Bayeux, they went to the local bowling alley. There was a league there that night, and my son (16 at the time), soon had the attention of the other bowlers. They invited him and my husband over to share their elaborate charcuterie and wine spread. The French know how to do bowling leagues! The owner of the alley offered my son his nephew’s upgraded bowling ball. My son and husband had a wonderful evening being a part of daily life in this little town.

I think this kind of experience is what everyone would hope to experience- to be invited to share an authentic experience with locals. Whether bowling is a cultural activity could be debatable, I guess. But they certainly valued it, and look at it as a favorite memory.

I agree that travel4fun's perspective that an authentic experience with locals is the essence of experiencing the local culture. I will be off to Koln soon to participate in their version of Karnival. Karnival is an important part of Koln's culture just as Mardi Gras is one aspect of the culture of New Orleans.

The definition of culture means different things to different people.

When I was on the Best of Paris tour in 2018, I said the culture of the people of Paris was my WOW moment. To me that meant observing how the people of Paris interacted with each other and with me, and how the expectation was for foreigners and locals to formally greet anyone who entered a restaurant or business.

It also meant how the streets and the buildings were expected to be clean and beautiful. There was such pride in their surroundings.

I guess I interpreted culture as class, grace and pride.

I am enjoying reading the responses you’re receiving! I grew up in a farming region in Iowa where some of the nearby little towns had people who emigrated and finally settled from different European countries. So, that’s what came to mind initially. Looking at them, you might think they were all alike, but there were also some culture uniqueness and pride in their origins.

My most authentic experiences with European culture were when I stayed with some families in their homes or farms in London, Netherlands, & Germany during the 4-H Ambassador People-to-People program. It’s the day-to-day what people do, how they interact, what they believe, their norms, their food, how they treat their older & younger generations, their level of formality & also openness.

For tourist traveling, it seems that “culture” is more about what activities to do that are unique to that country or city. So Paris is going to be hanging around the Eiffel Tower with a picnic and going up it at night, seeing the French art, the French pastries, walking the Parisian lanes. Sevilla will be more like going to the cathedral, having tapas and also paella, admiring the architecture with the gorgeous tiles, eating very late and enjoying the nighttime city atmosphere, flamenco, etc.