The boredom and the fear

Discovering a new country became much more difficult because of consume and medias.

We need to think fast and multitask and therefore we need short cuts to save time. For example, you watch some James Bond movie and he is suddenly in Paris. Most of the case you’ll see a panorama of Paris with the Eiffel Tower. You still don’t know why he is in Paris but in one second you have the information about what must have take at least five hours (I do not understand the James Bond movies, I love them for the style and the attitude but I never get the intrigue and why there is so much travelling in them. It must be too British for me!). If you watch a “Sex And The City” movie, you will see from the bridge “Alexandre III” the beautiful dome of the “Invalides” and hear few notes of a Edith Piaf song. It will take few seconds more because Carrie loves Paris and she is not in a spying operation but the result is the same, Parisian culture is reduced to some clichés which define tourism (creating a lot of currency venues) . I didn’t take Paris as example only because I grew up there but also, as a matter of a fact, because it is still the biggest touristic city in the world. So every day, people ask me why I left Paris “Such a beautiful city!” – “Ah, you like Paris?” – “Oh, I never been there, but would love to go!” For me it just means: another victim of clichés. In 2010, I guess you can spend one week in Paris just seeing things you already saw in movies and in the same time spending two months of salary. At the end of course I prefer the clichés about Paris than the one about Calcutta but the only explanation I can give to their persistent existence is the fear. I mean if you would know the real Paris, you should be afraid but I am talking about the fear of the difference and how comforting it is to stay in an area where you know everything, even if it is not the truth.

I was born curious and social so I can surmount the fear but I appreciate my frame of references (where I can define myself in front of others and where I feel comfortable)! I try to readjust my frame after every new experience of differences, and if I cannot profit of them in my surrounding, I normally, can better understand and respect. Unfortunately, most of the tourists are afraid of confronting something difficult to understand, even if it could be a much more fulfilling cultural experience. There I must admit (my German friends will hate me) Germans are the worse. They are the worse because they travel the most (I am not that well informed about the Japanese way but it might be comparable). They have this stupid show on TV where they follow teenagers who left Germany for one year of education. Normally, after six weeks they always have “Heimweh”, they miss their “Salzkartoffeln” and “Rostbraten”. This is the moment I am waiting for and I really enjoy, how the little fifteen years old Tanja from the “Ruhrgebiet” will manifest her own “Heimweh Gefühl”? Be realistic, Germans invented the idea of being “Home sick” and “Heimat” is a word with a very controversial history!

I was always so happy to be able to leave Paris that I never missed it; even after seventeen years I still do not miss it. Of course there are few little things that I really enjoy in Paris and that I can’t have in Berlin but what would be the point of feeling unhappy missing them somewhere they don’t belong. I try to recognize and enjoy this Parisian “Je ne sais quoi” while I’m there. Those things are very far from the clichés. I love walking the “Rue Montorgueil” at 7.30 p.m, before the closing of the bakery, and queue for fifteen minutes for half a baguette. The bakery next door is totally empty and cheaper but the waiting is not important because the bread is so delicious! This is for me a very Parisian moment which can’t be sold in a travel agency and tells as much as the Eiffel Tower on the culture. Talking about the Eiffel Tower, nobody knows that it was the tallest building in the world when it was built, exactly like the World Trade Center in its times. Culturally, nations building the tallest buildings are arrogant and try to show their supremacy to the others, and so was France. Then why those tons of iron design by Gustave Eiffel should be romantic today? Because romantic is not threatening and does sell good!

So, back to the Germans, they are obsessed with leaving their country* and once they finally found the missing sun, they start to miss little details from their daily life without being able to enjoy the little details from the life of those they visit. Why do they travel that much then? Because the boredom! All of us, western privileged capitalistic products, we don’t need to fight to survive, we are living well but we are bored, so we need entertainment and for this we are ready to give all our savings. We love the “Panem et circensem” but we don’t want to be in the arena with the lions, we want to sit comfortably in our sofas, eating chips and to have the best view on the show. Those ones are not Aborigines anymore, they are in an acting school and they make a little money during the holiday break! As I was visiting India, I needed six month, I was a “Traveler” but we, ”Travelers”, we would contempt the ”Tourists” who would pretend seeing India in two weeks. The problem is that a trip to Rajasthan for retired people from Miami or a visit of the Backwaters of Cochin for some French bourgeois from Paris is much more valuable that some European pot head who did just flunk his studies and want to stay the cheapest and the longest high on the beach! The consume society profit of bringing us passive in front of the big screen. We are directly there, it is in 3D, and we could touch it if we wanted but we built an invisible fence; we can see them but they can’t approach us, we are not in danger!

-“Does anyone want some ice cream?”

* Actually, there is a text in Latin from a monk from the fifteen century telling that they invented the modern concept of tourism. Already at that time the ancestors of our friends were going to Venice, maybe not for their honeymoon, but just to visit. The artistic Venetians were hiding themselves thinking they would be eaten or burned (or both), seeing those Teutonic monsters coming; but instead of that they wanted to buy little souvenirs to bring back home. Once the masters of the “Renascimento” sold all their repairing tools and kitchen utensils, they start to produce very cheap ones without any possible use just for the “Export”. I guess those souvenirs were “Kaputt” very fast once home and back then it would be decided to make good quality “Made in Germany”!