(ahem)
Annoyance is sometimes hard to pinpoint. Was it their twang? Their loudness? Their back-and-forthing over how to access the Internet, whether or not they would be charged for WiFi at the airport? Their tendency to read out mails to each other aloud? “Hey Tom, you got this one from Ravi? He's talking about a ... (mumbo jumbo software term)”. They mail each other. They reproach the other for mailing, but then they read those mails out aloud too. Passengers nearby glare sternly, sniffle disapprovingly but they confidently meet our glares, mistaking them perhaps for fascination, and they laugh at the Bangalore airport's presumptuous Terminal1 board. (There is only one terminal, as they rightly point out)
They were everywhere. Not just those two but versions of them. From Indiana. From Connecticut. From Dallas. They stood at the stairs of the Estates Theatre waiting for Don Giovanni to begin, discussing each other's ages (“I'm more likely to be your mum's age, honey”) and calling out to friends at the back of the queue to join them up front: “Sue, come on over!” (never mind the rest of us, poor sods, who actually got here on time to line up). Inside, saving seats. Across the row the conversation sailed in the silence of that ancient hall. They were comparing hardships now. (Ralph slept on the couch through his childhood, but Sam had it worse because his couch was shared with his brother) Echoing across the bus, where they should get off, what route would be best, what stop would be closest. Till, everywhere, inevitably, they became the star attraction. Floating along in a little bubble of Americana.
(tourists)Commerce has carved out chunks of America for them to savour on their journeys to the grim lands beyond the Iron Curtain. McDonalds' blossom in Wenceslas Square and the Old Town of Prague. On Vaci Ut in magnificent Budapest. Gleaming and shining just like the Prague Castle in the night light, a landmark along the Danube on the Pest side of Budapest. Capitalism's triumphant arches towering over the residue of grime and sordid suffering of the communist years. How easily the paradigm shift seems to have been made, how naturally a Mango sign stands sentinel over the burbling length of Wenceslas Square, site of so many clashes between citizens and the Establishment. It's no wonder they called it the Velvet Revolution. It seems, in retrospect at least, to have been effortless. And celebrating the downfall is the onset of this new age: the Age of the American Tourist in the former Communist nations of Central Europe.
And yet the anthropology of the tourist isn't restricted to Americans' adventures, marked by that faithful trail of McDonalds. Each tourist seemed to cling fiercely to a little, but significant, chunk of her homeland.
There is the artificial buildup of the wonders of “home”. “If this had happened in India,” the Indian tourist thinks, “everyone would have rushed to help us. This is a culture of self preservation, of individuality.” Stung by a bee, faced with some sort of minor medical emergency, the foreign land seems more alien, more hostile. Nobody speaks English, there is no recognition of a Red Cross sign scribbled desperately on a notepad. First Aid? Ointment? The tourist makes buzzing sounds and pokes at herself to describe “bee sting”. The cashier at the Strahov Monastery points calmly to a pharmacy across the road. The pharmacist places two treatments: one spray, one ointment on the counter, unwilling to volunteer information about what could happen next and, flustered, the tourist thinks, “Imagine if this had happened in India, what commotion there would be, how many people would have rushed to help!”
There is a burst of regional languages as each tourist remembers where they came from, in a craving for language, food, clothing, behaviour from the land of origin. Is this why so many tourist hordes seem caricatures of the nationalities they comprise? The Greeks move in packs, the Americans seem loud, the British metaplan the details, the Germans seem hostile, the Italians laugh too loudly. And Prague at the end, dominated by this virulent, displaced nationalism, seems a fairytale city: its centre emptied of citizens but occupied instead by hordes of tourists. Near the Rudolfinum in the Old Town an American tourist tells his mother: “Don't look at eye level, it's awful, just look above the crowds”.
How was it, people ask, and I will say it is a magical city with castles and church spires and many, many tourists – so many that I would have not have tasted local life if I was not commuting from a suburb by public transport everyday – and I realise also that I have just described DisneyWorld, American tourists et al. And so, to cut a long story short when people ask me, so how was Prague, I will say: it was lovely! Just like DisneyWorld!
Coming up a photo series on McDonalds in the former Communist bloc!
