Friday, October 27, 2006

Travellers’ Tales (the only thing more boring than listening to people’s dreams?)

At a recent wedding reception it was my misfortune to be cornered for a while by a fellow who insisted on telling me of his life and opinions in exhaustive, and exhausting, detail. By the end of the ‘conversation’ I knew pretty much everything about him, but I doubt he even knew my name. He certainly didn’t ask me any questions.

Now, we all know that there is nothing worse than being collared by someone who can’t tell the difference between a dialogue and a monologue. It is a particular failing of still-single men in their early 40s, I’ve noticed, to launch unbidden, at the first drink, into a long autobiography – or rather, self-mythology – of exaggerated adventure and career success; and my theory is that it stems from a deep insecurity about a rapidly disappearing youth and an unconscious need to justify their wifeless, childless existence.

All of which is bad enough, but this fellow was that most objectionable breed: a ‘traveller’ – emphatically not a ‘tourist’, note, but a ‘traveller’. He eschewed nationality, proclaiming himself a ‘world citizen’ and a ‘first generation backpacker.’

Which whingeing about a stranger I’m unlikely ever to meet again now brings me to my point. I have always been dubious about the claims of those who loudly and pompously disown the staid, cosseted associations of the label ‘tourist’ in favour of the much more glamorous ‘traveller’. This is not because I deny the adventurousness of ‘first generation backpackers’ (though the actual danger the Thailand-tramping trustafarians place themselves in is, I suspect, fairly limited), but because of the self-satisfied insistence they place on having experienced THE REAL™ [INSERT COUNTRY]. As in “You can’t get to experience the REAL Lanzarote/Greece/Goa/Thailand as a tourist, man.”

So what is “the Real™ Seville” or “the Real™ Crete” as defined by the ‘traveller’? Geographically, it generally seems to be whatever area the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide books tell them to go to. Occupationally, it is an insistence on drinking coffee only in those hostelries patronised exclusively by very old men. Accommodation-wise, it is youth hostels. Transport-wise, it is hitch-hiking.

And here the cracks begin to appear in the whole ‘backpacker’ philosophy. Real™ locals don’t live by the Lonely Planet guide. Occupationally, most Real™ locals in backpacking destinations spend their days servicing the very tourist industry the travellers seek to avoid. They don’t live in YMCAs and they don’t hitch-hike either – they drive their own cars.

I love visiting European cities. I don’t go as part of a package tour, I find my own way around and I try to speak the lingo. I do not however, believe that this somehow puts me in an elite class some several rungs of the sophistication ladder above a mere ‘tourist’. Nor do I pretend that not having a rep to show me around enables me to therefore experience the Real™ Thing. Real Berliners and Barcelonians do not stay in hotels, do not go out for expensive dinners every night and do not wander open-mouthed around the famous sights all day. Nor do they take photographs of everything that doesn’t move, nor spend hours slowly revolving stands of postcards in search of the perfect one for Uncle Fred.

They do what everyone in this world does, who can afford it: they work in the day, watch the telly in the evening, and drink alcohol at the weekend – a Reality I don’t need to ‘travel’ far to experience. They also go away for their holidays. And if they can’t afford it, no amount of donning ethnic clothes, growing dreadlocks and failing to shave will replicate their existence. Tourism is about wonder and travel is about adventure: it is the very opposite of reality, which is the whole point.

(And despite lecturing me for a good 20 minutes about the difficulties of publishing in the UK (he’d written an autobiography and had it vanity-published) he never asked me what I did for a living.)

7 comments:

  1. I try to speak the lingo.

    Actually, they all speak English, even if they don't know it. The trick is to speak slowly and loudly, and more slowly and louder the longer it takes them to realize that they understand you.

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  2. Yes, that's what I meant by 'the lingo'.

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  3. I assumed that you made your living off the massive ad revenues for this weblog.

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  4. So you caught the guy monologing.

    I wonder if this is his idea of "real" traveling:

    -- By Francis Dunner
    -- Sung to the tune of "Too Much Saturn and not enough Moon"

    I always believed that if I ran off to India
    Wore sandals and shaved my head
    And used Body shop conditioner, and incense like crazy
    I could call myself a spirit head
    But I only went to India to look on top
    I wore sandals cause I’d smoked all my money
    And I shaved off all my hair cause I had the fleas
    I’d been sleeping all over
    And the Body shop conditioner was a present from a friend
    And the incense used to hide the smell
    Of the drug den that I lay in

    And so I ask myself what my motives are
    For this lying need to look so free
    And if I tell myself real honestly
    What more can I admit to, open up a door
    He said I’m gonna find out what I’m here for
    He said I’d find out soon
    I got too much Saturn and not enough Moon

    I always believed that if I never missed a Yoga class
    Read my horoscope in the dailies
    And recycle bottles, and know a Red Indian
    I could call myself a spirit man
    But I was only doing Yoga cause I fancied the teacher
    And stars cause it looked good on paper
    And I only went to church cause my granny gave me money
    When confession was over
    And I only knew the Indian cause his brother’s a dealer
    And bottles had a price on their return
    So I could go and play, Oh my my

    And so I ask myself what my motives are
    For this lying need to look so free
    And if I tell myself real honestly
    What more can I admit to, open up a door
    He said I’m gonna find out what I’m here for
    He said I’d find out soon
    I got too much Saturn and not enough Moon

    So now that you know why I don’t love you
    And now that you see that I’m so scared
    Am I a good man ?
    Am I a deep deep man ?

    What more can I admit to, open up a door
    He said I’m gonna find out what I’m here for
    He said I’d find out soon
    I got too much Saturn
    How can I admit it, open up a door
    He said I’m gonna find out what I’m here for
    He said I’d find out soon
    I got too much Saturn and not enough Moon

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  5. Anonymous9:46 pm

    Did your friend listen to "World music?"

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  6. World music is the aural answer to waterboarding.

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  7. Worse than that - he makes it. He even gave me his card in an attempt to flog me his autobiography.

    On his website you can read the first chapter and also download his homemade 'Spanglish' raps.

    For the sake of humanity, I will refrain from publishing the link

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