tourisme

the new york times had an interesting article on tourism today. specifically, on europeans coming to america and pissing people off. as an adopted new yorker (and before that, briefly, a resident of washington DC), i have had my fair share of uncomfortable encounters with tourists: italians failing to tip me, spaniards pushing me to the ground in front of notre dame (no joke), japanese students asking for directions. in paris, it's mostly the americans who make asses of themselves. the other day, i saw some older americans walk by a gelato stand and point out that "the ice cream is all melted!" (they failed to realise that it wasn't ice cream, it was GELATO, which is softer and wetter and certaintly more delicious than ice cream). in DC, we would make fun of tourists who didn't understand the metro systems and who failed to realize that you STAND ON THE RIGHT and WALK ON THE LEFT up the escalators because WASHINGTONIANS ARE RIDICULOUSLY BUSY. in new york, it's mostly high schoolers with their parents who can't believe that times square actually exists - and that there's an applebees AND a red lobster in such close proximity!

of course, i am a bitter, cynical city dweller who sometimes forgets that life is different in the rest of the world. but seriously, people seem to feel bolder when they're in a new big city or a country whose language they don't understand. maybe this is because we know that we might be embarassed anyways, so we're more likely to do embarassing things in the first place. or maybe it's just the thrill of something new. of course i fall victim to this (you should have seen us in barcelona...) en tout cas, i try to be a good tourist, and i can't withhold my frustration with those who aren't.

yet for some bizarre reason i cannot explain, the tourism industry appeals to me. eco-tourism, specifically, because traditional tourism is so destructive and ignorant that i'd probably quit out of guilt. i guess i like the idea of introducing people to new things and showing them sights beyond their cultural borders. it's long-established that americans in particular are uninformed about the rest of the world, which is a sad sad thing i want to change. on the other hand, if i have to spend my life explaining that not every country watches american idol or that many languages besides english are spoken across the globe, i'd probably quit out of frustration and move to iceland.

one of the best quotes from the above article is this:

EVERY summer, people all over the world become acquainted again with a deep truth spoken by the philosopher-tourist Steve Martin.
He was speaking for tourists everywhere, not just to France, when he said: “Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything!”...

To be an ugly tourist is to miss the fundamental truth in Mr. Martin’s statement. “It is to have an overall lack of understanding that there is such a thing as cultural difference,” wrote Prof. Inga Treitler, the secretary for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, in an e-mail message.

this brings me to another phenomenon i first heard about in turkey, from an american who'd taught english in japan for several years. every year, about a dozen japanese tourists have to be emergency evacuated from paris due to "paris syndrome." since japanese culture is much more reserved and polite, particularly in comparison to the oh-so-rude french, some tourists - particularly young women on their first trip abroad - simply can't handle it. they go into shock after too many rebuffings by rude waiters, ticket vendors and normal parisians. the japanese embassy has a twenty-four hour hotline to help their nationals who just want to get the hell out of france. the BBC has a quick article on this here.

(i must also mention that i've found japanese tourists to be the worst in terms of pushing, shoving, and blocking my way through the louvre; they typically come in large groups and can't stop taking pictures of each other looking miserable with great works of art... i think the fact that they often travel with such enormous tour groups insulates them from the fact that there are other people around who are not japanese, many of whom actually live in paris!)

but seriously, isn't the whole point of tourism to see something new and different? who wants to go to the other side of the earth and encounter the same kind of people?

i guess that's why i think i'd be good in the tourism industry. i want to see new things and i want to tell people about them. aristocrats used to send their children on the "grand tour" of the mediterranean; i feel like we all need to take a grand tour of the rest of the world. and do it in a way that helps humanity instead of making us hate each other even more. (as a side note, the french really don't hate americans... they just hate george w. bush.)