Behind the Scenes of Tours: Journeys, Fatigue and Rituals
During the Love Yourself World Tour, BTS traveled to a total of 20 countries on 3 continents; the band members took more than 100 flights in a year. In the tour buses, seats with open compartments were preferred instead of individual bed capsules because the members found it relaxing to hear each other. During the trip, Jin's habit of saying goodbye to a small plush toy before boarding the plane became a routine known to the team. V said that when he felt tired, he would fall asleep without headphones, listening to the sound of the airplane engine, which he considered to be “the sound of entering a dream”.
SUGA shared that he never looks at the outside view on night flights because he finds it unsettling to see his reflection in the dim glass. J-Hope never wears shoes on long flights and uses his specially designed slippers throughout the trip; he always carries several pairs of these slippers with him. RM describes his habit of walking the airport corridors alone and thinking after each landing in different countries as “a ritual of passage to another world”.
Non-Concert Memories and Everyday Observations
After the group's concert in Brazil, Jimin said that one night he watched the streets of Rio from the balcony of his hotel room until dawn and hummed a song inspired by the sounds of street music. One morning in New York, Jungkook waited for the opening time of the café closest to his hotel to get his coffee and stood in line alone; this moment was photographed by a fan without being recognized. The day before the London concert, Jin went for an early morning walk in Hyde Park and asked a local street artist to draw a caricature of him.
After the Paris concert, V walked along the Champs-Élysées, watching his reflection in shop windows and noting “is this a dream or reality”. RM studied a writing on a wall in a museum in Berlin for so long that the security guard said he thought he was an employee. SUGA spent hours at a music equipment store in Los Angeles looking at analog equipment and eventually walked out without buying anything.
Language, Culture and Unusual Situations
While the group was traveling in Japan, J-Hope was ridiculed for days by the members for accidentally calling a taxi driver “Tteokbokki” (a food) instead of his own name. RM said that he ate a sandwich he ordered in France without knowing what was in it, and when he found out later that it was a “brain”, he banned himself from speaking for a few hours. Jungkook described how he ordered coffee in Spanish at a café in Argentina and accidentally said “sorry, I'm coffee” and the waiter offered him cookies with his coffee.
V admired the shelf organization in a bookstore in Germany and thanked the employee; he later confessed that he applied the same layout to his books at home. Jimin tried to chat with a street food vendor in Thailand, wearing a hat and mask to avoid the crowds, but when his voice was recognized, the vendor was so excited that he walked away from the stall.
Transportation Accidents and Minor Mishaps
SUGA once accidentally missed the group bus before a Tokyo concert; hotel staff brought him to the stage with their own private motorcycle security team. When Jungkook realized he was lost on the London Underground, instead of remembering the stops, he asked the passengers to guide him by saying “K-pop”. RM stated that when he walked in the wrong direction to get on the subway in Germany, he thought for 30 minutes in front of a statue and finally wrote “maybe this is a way of arriving”.
J-Hope accidentally took a fan's shopping bag instead of a suitcase when checking into a hotel in America; when he realized the situation, he did not enter the room but left the bag waiting in the lobby. V dropped his passport while boarding a plane in Taiwan, but was saved from missing the flight thanks to the quick action of a fan behind him.
Reflections of Travel in Songs and Art
RM said that he started writing the song “Seoul” on the banks of the Han River, where he was walking alone one morning; on his return from abroad, he felt both in love and stuck in this city. He confessed on a radio program that the melancholic tone of “Winter Flower” was shaped by the loneliness he felt after the Tokyo concerts. SUGA's “Trivia: Seesaw” was written in a hotel room in the middle of a world tour and carries the theme of “repeating different feelings in the same cities”.
Some lines of Jimin's “Promise” were written after a night in Chile; the lyrics include self-directed statements such as “keep the promise you made to yourself”. J-Hope wrote his intro “Blue Side” after returning back to Thailand; when the heat, crowds and loneliness he felt in the city came together, he described his feelings with “blue”. V wrote the song “Scenery” after his trip to France; the emotions created by the photographs he took under the street lamps turned into lyrics.
Emotional Gaps and Observations after the Tour
In an interview, SUGA described the emotional emptiness he experienced after touring as “touching a thousand people in one day and then waking up alone, as if someone had silenced you”. RM prefers not to watch or read anything for a few days after returning from a world tour because he feels that his brain has become sensitive to the “new noise”. Jimin said that when he returned from the tour, he sometimes sat at home without turning on the lights and felt that the stage lights were still shining in his eyes.
Jungkook said that he only ate Korean food for a few days after touring overseas because “I missed it, not my stomach”. J-Hope explained that when he was emotionally down after the tour, he would look back to his childhood photos and find balance.
Connections to Cities and Meaningful Moments
New York City has a special place for BTS members; after their performance in Times Square, Jimin could not hold back his tears saying “this was our dream”. After visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris, RM increased his interest in art books and made references to French painters in some of his songs. The band members remember their morning jogs around Hyde Park in London as “the quietest but closest moments”.
During the concert in Brazil, Jungkook chose to lower his microphone for a few seconds and just stare at the loud choreographed chants of the audience. After a concert in Chicago, V said he cried silently in his hotel room after seeing fans holding a banner reading “You make me love this world again”.
Jet Lag, Sleep and Non-Sleep
To cope with jet lag, J-Hope changes his watch before boarding the plane according to the time of the country he is traveling to and acclimatizes his body clock in advance. RM says that although his biological clock is off in some continents, on the contrary, he “becomes clearer in wakefulness”, which he describes as “the clarity that comes with tired consciousness”. When Jin can't sleep in hotels after arriving late at night, he likes to sneak down to the hotel kitchen and chat with the staff; he once offered ice cream to an employee who shared the memory on social media.
Jungkook tries to spend his first post-flight sleep in a completely dark room; he has expressed many times that he prefers to sleep without an eye mask and music. V has said that when he cannot sleep despite the time difference, he distracts himself by watching the walls and visualizing pictures in his head; these moments sometimes inspire photo series.
Secret Travels and Quiet Explorations
At one point in Australia, Jungkook went out of the hotel by himself and went to a bookstore; he wore a hoodie to avoid being recognized and spent hours in the library browsing books. On a trip to Norway, RM visited a museum in a small village even though there was no program; this visit was one of the first seeds of the themes of loneliness that inspired the “mono.” album. One night in Singapore, Jimin delayed returning to his hotel to watch the raindrops under the street lamps; this moment became a metaphor for some of the lines he later wrote.
SUGA stopped by a record store in Sweden and said that in order not to be recognized, he randomly bought albums from the back shelf and put them “in his heart, not in his bag”. Jin told the team years later about a memory during a secret visit to Istanbul, when he was shopping for souvenirs at the Grand Bazaar in the Grand Bazaar and made a vendor burst out laughing.
Off-Camera Culture Shocks and Memories of Silence
When the group went to Thailand for the first time, the food was so spicy that J-Hope confessed that he got up from the table and ate his own snacks in his room. Jimin said that the first time he saw a naked person in a public park in Germany, he was both surprised and had a hard time not laughing. In Mexico, V was attracted by the sound of a street musician's voice, and after a few steps he turned back and continued to eavesdrop; the scene was never caught on camera, but V wrote it down in his notebook as “wet guitar”.
At a dinner in Italy, RM ate the entire meal with his right hand while writing a poem on a piece of paper with the other; when the waiter asked him “are you evaluating the menu?”, he just smiled. SUGA said that during a heavy snowfall in Canada, he watched out of his hotel window for hours, and for the first time in his life, “it felt like time had stopped.”
Unexpected Encounters with Fans
It is told that while Jin was ordering at a doner shop in Los Angeles, the customer behind him asked “Are you Jin?” to which he replied “No, I'm just hungry”, causing laughter. Jungkook fell and scratched his knee while renting a bicycle and riding along the coastline in England, and an old woman who saw him said “you look like a pop star” and handed him a band-aid. While RM was examining an old philosophy book in a bookstore in Japan, a student who recognized him approached and asked, “What book would you recommend to me?” RM suggested a sentence instead of a book: “Write down your own thoughts.”
When SUGA was recognized while watching a street performance in New York, he walked away from the crowd, saying “I'm just listening to music, I'm between stages”. When J-Hope recognized a little boy at an art gallery in Paris and asked for a hug, he leaned down to hug him, and the boy's family said that they wrote about this moment in their private notebooks, not on social media.
Special Moments and Unrecorded Emotions
The night before their New York concert in 2018, BTS collectively watched the sky on the roof of their hotel; they never broadcast this moment, but the members often remind each other of it. RM said that when he returned to Korea after his tour, he cried for the first time while driving across a bridge and didn't know why he was crying; this coincides with the moment when he developed his definition of “full but hungry soul”. Before going on stage at a concert in Brazil, Jimin quietly went backstage and did not speak to anyone; after the concert, he only said “I felt so much there, there were no words”.
V didn't share the photos of trees he took on his way back to his hotel after a music festival in Singapore with anyone because “those trees were silent like no one else”. Jungkook, while silently writing his own notes after a concert, copied the inscription on the dessert brought by a waiter into his notebook: “Some flavors are not made to be explained.”