Trevor Rainbolt, 24, wearily rises, his eyes cataloguing the features of yet another Airbnb. Outside, Seville is making its morning noises. Rainbolt, who grew up in Arkansas, had decided to embark on a leisurely round-the-world trip, first flying to Germany in November and from there crossing the border into Belgium and the Netherlands then — having frantically googled “warmest city in Europe” — on to Spain. However, something is off. Wherever he goes, Rainbolt can’t shake a recurrent feeling of déjà vu. Everywhere is eerily familiar, as if he’s encountering it for a second time. Of course, in a way, he is: he’s seen Seville before. Indeed, he’s seen almost everywhere before, even though, barring one family cruise holiday as a child, this is his first trip beyond the US.
“It’s like everything you see, you’ve studied for so long but it’s an actual tangible object, not just pixels,” he tells me over a video call, pushing a single strand of fringe out of his eyes. In one sense Rainbolt might know the world better than anybody. He can tell a Guatemalan telephone pole from a Mexican one, and knows that Turkey and Australia share a similar bollard design (white with a single red stripe). He’s an expert on dirt, too, and tells me that the soil in Nigeria and on Darwin Island are matching shades of red.
