02 — Roam Editorial
Where Nobody Goes
Yes Theory's summer reads like a dare against the tourist map: Corvo, a 400-person volcanic island in the Azores — and 24 hours abandoned in Berlin with nothing.
While most travel channels chase the same fifteen destinations, Yes Theory have spent the summer optimising for the opposite: places with no infrastructure for being visited at all. The island is Corvo, the smallest of the Azores — a dormant volcano halfway between Europe and North America, home to about 400 people and Europe's most remote airport. Getting there took multiple attempts; the first flight turned back when cloud swallowed the runway. The payoff: carrying the island's oldest resident, 96-year-old José, back up to the volcano's caldera he hadn't seen in fifteen years. 1.7 million views in two weeks.
People are kindness, quiet, calm. You can live here like you lived a hundred years ago, without rush.
— The mayor of Corvo, to Yes Theory
The lows are the format, not a failure of it. Being dropped in Berlin with zero money for 24 hours is a deliberately engineered bad day: busking compliments for €5, hustling chess games for €10, and — the actual game — convincing a stranger to take you home for the night. Anna had a host by mid-evening via a graffiti-tour guide; Thomas was still hostless in the rain after sunset before a backpacker took him in. Final score: strangers 2, cynicism 0.