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.)

travelling + international events

bonjour cheries! i haven't written in a while due to school, travel, and sitting in too many cafés. here's what's been going on lately:

- french university vacation was april 8-22, possibly the best two weeks of my short life. i went to istanbul, turkey, and barcelona, spain. amazing! there is so much to recount that i don't feel i can really do justice to these trips; instead i'll share some nice photographs and encourage you to visit for yourselves.

ISTANBUL



inside the aya sofia, built as a christian basilica in 530 AD, then transformed into a mosque, now simply an amazing museum.



whirling dervishes!



emily, julia, and myself: we are standing in europe, but across the bosphorus behind us is asia.

BARCEOLNA



the sagrada familia, antonin gaudí's unfinished masterpiece.



me high in the towers of the sagrada familia. my beautiful scarf is from turkey (although apparently the design is uzbek).



standing in the cold, cold mediterranean sea!

- the first round of the french presidential election was on sunday. (in france, the election has two rounds, possibly because there are so many candidates. the second round is in a few weeks.) nicolas sarkozy (of the current governing party, the UMP; center-right) and ségolène royal (of the socialist party, which i guess is sort of center-left in france) will advance to the next round. i'm sort of disappointed; i don't really think royal can win and i would have preferred françois bayrou to advance, but hey, it's not my country. sarkozy is liberal by american standards, but some of his rhetoric is slightly disturbing (in terms of immigration and "cracking down" on crime especially, i feel he's especially harsh) - and he's friendly with bush. sarkozy wants to liberalize the french economy (which is good! thirty-five hour work weeks are not the way to increase productivity); royal's program is sort of ambiguous. since politics is sort of deathly boring to me, i will direct you to wikipedia for a better explanation of the election than i can provide: French Presidential Election 2007

- across the pond, my home state of new hampshire has taken a step towards extending equal rights to homosexuals by approving civil unions in the senate. from the new york times:

"To me this legislation is a credit to our state. We're making this move not because some court some place is telling us that we must," said Democratic Sen. Joe Foster of Nashua. "We do so today because it is the right thing to do."

- in washington, both the house and the senate have approved a bill that sets a deadline for troop withdrawls from iraq. bush is set to veto it, of course; still, the bill shows that congress has regained some sense and is trying to fix what we've screwed up beyond belief. also from the times:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the measure is “the only way to make Iraqis take responsibility” for their own destiny. Mr. Kennedy said the president has been wrong all along on Iraq. “Now, he is wrong to threaten to veto this bill,” the senator said. “We cannot repeat the mistake of Vietnam.”
Another Democratic supporter, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the conflict is “a war that never should have started, and on this president’s watch may never end” without a timetable for American withdrawal.

- and in my adopted home of new york, new york, our mayor bloomberg is working to green up the city by charging vehicules for driving below 86th street. i really believe nyc is a walking city and a subway city. and as the greatest city in the world, it is wonderful that new york is among the first places in the US to actually deal with its transportation problems. i love love love new york, but i don't love that it has the worst air quality in the country. the only part of the plan that makes me worry (and this is something the city will address) is the effect on people in the outer boroughs who have to drive into manhattan. perhaps the tax will be lower for registered new york workers? even better, the subway system and the eco-friendly bus fleet will be expanded to give those people better, easier, cheaper commutes? (there is progress on the second avenue subway, but that's in manhattan. another interesting article: this guy is working on his own easier-to-read version of the subway map; i had to have the system explained to me multiple times before i finally got in. now i mostly have it memorized.)

i'm sorry for the length of this post! but sometimes recounting my travels becomes a bit tiresome... plus, assuming anyone actually reads this anymore, hopefully some of you will check out those stories and think about what's going on.

à bientot!

la grosse pomme vs. the city of love

as much as i love love love paris, i'm really suffering new york withdrawl. here are some of the many things i miss:

- 24-hour subway
- 24-hour supermarkets
- 24-hour EVERYTHING
- falafel carts everywhere
- hearing spanish, mandarin, arabic, hebrew, french, english, and a dozen other languages i don't recognize within fifteen minutes of each other - and not even taking note of it
- MEXICAN FOOD. and mexican people. and mexican beer.
- columbus circle/battery park/the village/fifth avenue/fourteenth street/soho
- the flatiron building
- central park. parisian parks are beautiful but they're rather sterile... (an example of french design in new york is bryant park behind NYPL, which i actually love.) i can't wait for spring!!
- efficiency/doing things in a rational manner/generally making sense

but then, there are so many things you can't find in new york, like...

- true café culture
- comté, the most amazing cheese ever
- so many varieties of wine, and people who appreciate them
- pain à tradition. the french have laws regarding how to make "traditional french bread." that is how important bread is in this country.
- a sense of history that extends backs centuries (as opposed to weeks)
- beautiful churches, beautiful buildings, beautiful everything!
- being multilingual is sort of expected
- universal health care (haven't taken advantage of this yet though)
- vespas
- EVERYONE HERE IS SO BEAUTIFUL.



my newest career aspiration is to go into (eco-)tourism, because i love to travel and to help people. i used to want to work in a museum, but in tourism i could basically do the same thing in terms of "guest services" except ALL AROUND THE WORLD. maybe then, i can jet-set between paris and new york and not have to pick one to live in for the rest of my life.