Americans Abroad No. 6
©2005 UrbisMedia
[Three more archetypical American tourists, not meant to expose any actual people who have been on my tours . . . really .]
Every tour group has at least one Malcom Aprope . Mal means well, but, for some reason, foreign cultures are just beyond him. He’s not so much the fabled “ugly” American, as the “homely” American. The first Mal I met was sitting in the back of the coach on the way into Paris from Charles de Gaulle airport. Our local manager, a parisienne, had been giving a little welcome and introduction to the city to the sleepy, jet-lagged group. When she asked if there were any questions and Mal woke us up when he called out for all to cringe at: “Are theParisites as rude to Americans as everybody says they are?”
Mal’s ingenuousness is likely to lead him to similar cultural gaffs: asking elderly Germans what they did during the war, forcing shopkeepers to take dollars because he can’t comprehend foreign currency, and, of course, exercising the mistaken assumption that all foreigners can understand his English if he speaks v-e-r-r-y s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y, v-e-r-r-r-y, C-a-l-e-e-e-r-l-e-e-e, and V-E-R-R-R-Y L-O-U-D-L-Y!!! Failing that approach Mal will turn to speaking his English in the local patois: “Me likee dat shirtee, how muchee I pay?”
In consequence, some of the people on the tour begin to put some distance between themselves and Mal. Mal, insensitive as he may be, is not unaware of being shunned, even if he doesn’t have a clue as to why. All he knows is, as he once complained: “I feel like I’m being ‘ostrich-sized’.”
All tour groups have their share of ‘shoppers’, but a ‘collector’ like Alice Hoarder is a particular species of shopper. Her passion is not simply to teeter on the brink of one’s credit limit, but to acquire as many specimens of something that usually seems ridiculous and worthless to the rest of us. Alice has appeared on tours in the guise of persons obsessed with collecting dolls, match boxes, beer coasters, toilet paper samples, hotel towels, phone cards, condoms, foreign newspapers, MacDonald’s place mats, toothpicks, menus, homeopathic pharmaceuticals, cigarette packs, and coke bottles.
The collector is further distinguished from the shopper in that the “collectable” is not always available for purchase. Hence Alice is sometimes placed on the horns of a moral dilemma: although what she is collecting may be of very little monetary value to its current possessor, does its collectable value justify larceny? It’s a good idea not get behind Alice when going through any Customs control.
Benjamin Daire has been “just about everywhere and done just about everything.” Which, of course, makes you wonder what the hell he is doing on this tour. Ben would not want to be mistaken for anyone who might become a little excited at, say, seeing something like the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London or Michelangelo’s ‘David’. He feels that the most import trait of a traveler is to be un-impressed at what impresses others. Wherever you have been and not been, Ben Diare has been there, and of course, “done that,” and he will be quick to tell you he was “there” when it was less spoiled, or more authentic. Anything to ‘one-up’ your travel experience.
Never mind that Ben has been to most of these places on whirlwind package tours and experienced them on two-hour cruise ship excursions; the important thing to Ben is that he’s been to more places than you. If you happen to get stuck in a seat next to Ben you might relieve yourself of his tedium as follows. Mention the wonderful time you had last year at the sausage festival in the Kielbasa Islands off Poland. He’ll no doubt tell you that the sausages tasted better before the festival was ruined by tourism. You can wait till the end of the trip to say you forget quite where the Kielbasa Islands are, and ask him to point them out on your map of Europe.
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©1999, ©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 3.23.2005)