Travelers and Tourists: An Anthropological Study

Last month, my wife and I were walking along the medieval city walls of Tallinn, Estonia with some new friends, admiring the view over the Old City.  Just as we were relaxing and thinking we'd somehow wandered into a Baltic saga and were wondering when the Vikings would attack, we saw them.  Or rather, THEM.  The tourists.  Not travelers, mind you- they can be found in any cafe, bar, or public space.  In addition to usually being unassuming and polite, travelers tend to be rather good conversationalists and reasonably good tippers (or at least they rarely stiff the waitstaff), all while allowing the locals to go about their lives with a minimum of disruption. Tourists, on the other hand, cause all sorts of bloody chaos and, a la quantum physics personified in an XXXL t-shirt reading, "I'm with Stupid," rarely fail to observe the local environment or population without irreparably changing it. 

I must admit to being somewhat biased on this.  Having been born and on and raised on a barrier island in Florida before the condo commandos and hotelistas decided that peace and tranquility was best enjoyed with a quarter million of your closest friends, I have a somewhat ingrained skepticism towards tourists in large groups.   

When they come individually, there's usually not a problem- just some chuckles or bewilderment at how savvy businessmen, doctors, lawyers- impeccably dressed at the office- somehow come to believe that a crossing a national border and rubbing white paste on their nose transforms a neon floral shirt and too-tight shorts, black socks and sandals into appropriate attire for an afternoon jaunt through Tuscany or a promenade down Barcelona's Las Ramblas.  (While all other observers may cringe, at least local pickpockets are an appreciative audience.)   But not all tourists travel individually or with their significant other and/or demon spawn... er, children.  Oftentimes, especially during Tourist Season- a term that when spoken subtly suggests a semantic merger of "terrorist" and "hurricane season"- they travel in full-on raiding parties.

Imagine the scene: you're a middle-manager or minor government functionary in Madrid.  It's nearing the end of July and your boss has just nipped out early for his month-long August vacation, leaving you to deal with his leftovers.  Feeling a bit harangued, you call up your girlfriend and cancel your six-month anniversary dinner, explaining you have to complete the Castenada account tonight.  You try to smooth things over a bit by suggesting that she meet you for an ice cream at the Retiro Park near your office over your quicker-than-you-had-hoped lunch break.  She arrives, sees that you are truly sorry, and the two of you settle in to enjoy the sunshine over the lago and each other's company.  Just then you hear the sonic blast of a straining hydraulic brake.  Your quiet sanctuary has just been annexed by Disney World. 

They arrive en masse in that tangible evidence of evil: the LUXURY MOTOR COACH.  (For those of you who think the Minivan represents one of the Four Horsemen, the "LMC" is Tiamat itself.)  Inevitably, the LMC pulls up as close as (in)humanly possible to an Object of Great Historical Importance with an enormous calamity of noise and exhaust.  This sends pigeons into bedlam and almost always blocks the view of the OGHI from the people sitting in nearby cafes, minding their own business.  Soon, the doors with a hydraulic "swoosh"- first, the front, which remains a gaping open space for some time with no visible reaction from the sardines, err... passengers inside.  Then the rear door opens, followed immediately by teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings leaping from the door like cracker jacks.  One wonders why the first door wasn't sufficient for another five minutes or so until a escapee from the ICU hobbles down the stairs, on the arms of the driver and two or three other passengers who've been enlisted to help carry this aged and honored veteran of the Napoleonic Wars down to the pavement.  At this point, the tour guide- easily recognizable by her "lollipop" or neon-colored flag- attempts to gather the flock of young people who exploded from the rear of the bus in a frustrated mass, and who are now wandering towards the ice cream stand, the souvenir vendor, or the Nigerian gentlemen promising great deals on Rolex watches, African drums, and other authentic Spanish handicrafts.  When she more or less succeeds, an observer can pick out the nationalities included in this United Nations-in-a-sardine-can. 

First, there are the Brits- nowhere else on earth gives rise to such eccentric and disparate people, all of whom MUST remain together, lest anyone in the tour group be inconvenienced by someone returning to the bus 30 seconds later than the time agreed upon.  While traveling in tour groups as couples or young families, the Brits tend to behave themselves very well.  However, beware the ones who came as singles or stag-parties once they encounter others like them. (Think Gremlins after a midnight bender.)  Greek police chiefs- certainly no innocents themselves- recently held a conference to decide on a national policy to deal with "Brits behaving badly" in response to threats by British tour companies to move their business to other islands if, for instance, Mykonos decided to actually prosecute holiday-makers for public intoxication, assaults, and vandalism.  

Next up, weighed down by electronic devices of all kinds, come the Japanese.  One might have thought that advances in miniaturization and memory storage capacity would have gone some distance towards quashing the stereotype of a camera-laden Japanese tourist.  One would be wrong.  Such advances have simply allowed the touring Mitsubishi executive to carry more cameras.  However, the casual observer must admit that Japanese tourists traveling with predominantly-English speaking tour groups do carry less than the all-Japanese tour groups, who can often be enlisted to help out if there is a camera malfunction on an on-location Hollywood production filming.  Someone will probably have the part needed and, in any case, when properly organized, a tour group from Tokyo has more than enough flash-bulb power to reenact the bombing of Dresden. 

By the time you can observe the Brits, alternately dusting each other off politely and searching for the nearest cerveceria and marvel at amateur documentarians from Kyoto, you'll have long-since heard the Argentine or southern Italian extended family.  Loud, boisterous, and musical, this group speaks to each other almost exclusively in their own language, often continuing their conversation over the English-speaking guide's attempts to organize the whole group.  Unable to hear the guide over Abuelo Gonzalez's recollection of the Argentine victory in the Malvinas, the group is inevitably confused and asks the guide to repeat everything she has just said, thus delaying the whole group's disembarkation from the LMC.  This genre of tourist is particularly common en route to Rome, Santiago de Compostella, and Lourdes, in which case they've justified the expense of an all-inclusive trip through Italy or Spain or France as a pilgrimage.  As they're piously following the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims who gave away their worldly possessions and walked the Way of St. James barefoot through the Pyrenees, the sing-a-longs will be religious in nature- and often repeated, causing a crisis of faith among everyone else in the group. 

Swirling around and through the other groups, of course, will be the Americans.  And fodder for the next post.