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Thousands of places to skip before you die
of TheColumnists.com
While making my
usual non-travel plans this summer, I realized that the price
of gas, the price of plane flights and the value of the dollar
overseas (six cents)--not to mention the emotional price of schlepping
anywhere these days--fits in beautifully with my annual vacation
itinerary.
I won’t be going anywhere this summer, because, well, I
never go anywhere during the summer. But I feel far less defensive
about it than usual now that nobody else is going anywhere else
either. It’ll be great to have a little company at home
this year.
I may as well come clean and admit that I dislike traveling anywhere,
especially beyond the United States, even when it was less harrowing.
I find the prospect of a vacation abroad daunting and faintly
tedious--as I did even before travel became a grim ordeal. Much
of is like school on wheels: I dislike being lectured to by guides,
and I have a low threshold for museums (one hour, tops) and churches
(15 minutes, tops; I once did the Guggenheim in 12.8 minutes,
but it’s all downhill, which helps a lot).
A couple of days into most vacations, I start counting the days
until I can leave, eat normal food again and not feel a guilty
need to visit obligatory landmarks--which, more often than not,
are under repair, or closed until 2010. It takes away a lot of
the mystique to arrive at the Louvre and find it buried behind
scaffolding. If I ever got to the Taj Mahal, that would be the
week it was being repainted; or all the tours filled up.
I sense that many people feel constrained to travel and then
to rave about the experience until they convince me--and maybe
themselves--that they had a certifiably fabulous time, if only
to justify the $4,000 tag for a two-week vacation.
Even if they truly did enjoy themselves, I’d rather not
hear about it in too great detail--10 minutes will do nicely,
including photographs. If I’m dying to learn about Hong
Kong or Anchorage, I would go there. Listening and exclaiming
how great it sounds can be exhausting, like listening to people
detail this incredibly fascinating dream they had. So I let my
friends do all the traveling while I water their plants and feed
their cat.
My friend Al says, “Travel is really overrated.” Al
would know, because he travels a lot--at least twice a year to
Europe to visit his daughter and grandchildren. Deep down, this
is a sentiment I have always subscribed to but never had the
nerve to utter--until this summer, when not traveling is almost
trendy.
It took a few decades, and fierce economic pressures, but the
rest of America has at last come around to my way of thinking--as
it usually does if I just wait long enough. Given gas prices
and airline surcharges, it’s suddenly OK this year to stay
home--this is the year of the “stay-cation.”
The truly dedicated tourist will likely now venture into neighborhoods
he’s been dying to visit. I’ve always maintained that
most vacations are about eating, so why not not just stay home
and sample exotic restaurants in town?
I am an equally restless armchair traveler. After a few minutes
of watching Rick Steves burbling cheerfully on TV about the winding
cobblestone streets of Katmandu, I am ready to wave a fond farewell
to Rick and zip over to a new channel.
When friends just back from Cairo or Beijing haul out their 1,500 digital photos, I’ve run out of excited comments by the third picture of the smiling couple on a camel at the Pryamids or atop the Great Wall. I’m mildly interested in travel stories, but most of them confirm my sense that traveling is not for the faint of heart or the innately grumpy.
I’ve lived in San Francisco 40 years
and can barely navigate my way downtown without bursting into
tears. Recently, people have tried to move me off the dime by
hoping to talk me into taking a cruise or a tour, but then that
involves strangers--not my idea of fun either.
The truth of it is, very few countries hold much interest for
me. For all my grumbling, I’ve actually been to Amsterdam,
Tunis and the Caribbean, through no fault of my own (junkets
took me there), but the only place I’ve liked was London,
which doesn’t count. England is really Ye Olde America.
Paris? It was fine. Italy? Sometime.
I’ve been telling people for 20 years that I really must
see Italy one day. But if I don’t make it I’ll survive--except
at dinner parties, where I am forced to sit mute and smile appreciatively
at everybody else’s non-stop travel stories. I almost got
to Italy this year, but my potential traveling companion could
only get away in August; I broke into a sweat just imagining
me in Rome in 105-degree heat in August.
I only utter my standard Italy line out of a pressing need to
have something to contribute at dinners that inevitably descend
into stories about some adorable little inn in Antwerp, or that
time the maid in Oslo said something hilarious, while all the
dinner guests (except you-know-who) dissolves in laughter. Ah,
yes, those crazy Norwegians!
Every dinner party I’m at winds up with can-you-top-this?
travel tales. By now, I’ve heard so many conversations about
trips to remote places that I truly feel no need to go there
myself, even if I was remotely considering it. Vietnam was fashionable
for awhile, followed by Provence and Tuscany, and then Zambia
got terribly chic. These days, people can’t wait to get
to North Korea and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, I’m still trying
to make up my mind about whether to see Italy.
The heart of the matter is that, shameful and provincial as it
is to confess, I am just not that curious about most countries,
whose histories, cuisine and culture may well be fascinating,
just not to me. I have trouble trying to relate to most of the
world; indeed, I can barely comprehend the United States. So
it’s hard to pretend that I can’t wait to soak up the
hidden delights of Bali or Ankara.
As a writer traipsing through imaginary
worlds, I feel no urge to get away, like people with 9-to-5 jobs;
I’m always “away.” If you love your work, the
historian David McCollough says, every day is a vacation.
This is a personal failing, or maybe a condition--global agoraphobia?--but
there it is. Since everyone I know has gone everywhere and reported
back to me in vivid detail, it would seem almost redundant--and
wasteful of the world’s (and my) resources--to actually
trek there myself.
Actually, I’m helping to save the
planet. By not traveling I’m conserving scads of energy
and leaving nary a carbon footprint. So if it’s all the
same to everyone, I’d much rather stay home and read a book.
That’s the ultimate trip.
©2008 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman caricatures are ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted July 14, 2008.
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