I do think that part of the rose-colored glow that lights up the places we visit is due to the fact that we visitors are on vacation. We're living in hotels or even hostels, we're drinking in art and history and food served in restaurants,and we're dealing with people in service professions who mostly want us to enjoy our stay.

If we were working in the usual dull workaday routine, if we were paying high bills and taxes, if we were cooking every day the food that we'd waiting on line for in supermarkets, if we had to put up with the noisy neighbors upstairs or the leaking roof,if we had to park our cars every day or deal with the crowded commutes, if we could only afford to live in the suburbs because the city is too expensive to live in, we might feel differently. That's not to say that we still wouldn't still love the country and its culture and its people, we might just be less "blissful."

Very interesting posts!

When I said I don't see the darker note, I really do see it, but I don't bask in it, for, unless I can do something about it in a large scale, it just eats away at me. It takes alot of effort to bring myself back up to pleasant heights after I have witnessed the depths.

SeaUrchin, I do understand.
We recently returned from a long trip to Southern Africa and one night we stayed at the home of a Fodors Africa board internet friend. I was quite nervous as we didn't know each other well and had emailed only a few times but we had an absolute blast visiting her and it was such a nice change from the accommodations we'd been staying in.
Well, she's an American who has moved permanently to South Africa. She is a doctor, a paedetrician and instead of working in a pristine private hospital as most overseas doctors do, she has opted to work in a community hospital open to all. Well she sees some real horror stories every single day. Some of the stories she told me about her patients nearly broke my heart. She invited us to come with her to see the hospital and meet some of the patients on the morning that we were leaving. I was very interested in doing so but I decided against? Why? Because what she told me about speaks of the very darkest evils of the human psyche and I knew that the rest of my holiday would be troubled by the memories. So, I guess I count amongst those who do try and limit their experiences during travel to the happy type, and am not ashamed of that.

"Because we find places to be beautiful as immediately and as apparently spontaneously as we find snow cold or sugar sweet, it is hard to imagine that there is anything we might do to alter or expand our attractions. It seems that matters have been decided for us by qualities inherent in the places themselves or by hardwiring in our psyches, and that we would therefore be as helpless to modify our sense of the placees we find beautiful as we would our preference for the ice creams we find appetising."....Alain De Botton
The Art of Travel

Thanks for that quote Mimi, that's food for thought. I had seen the book advertised, but haven't yet read it. What do you think of it?

Yes, a good quote to think about.
Kavey, yes I agree with you. Unless we could in some way make a difference it would just serve to haunt us not only on the holiday but long long after.

Mimi, thank you for the quote! So lovely~

Kavey, it's a very interesting book he touches on my things and places he has visited, and some historical facts and quotes.

Mimi, that's a wonderful quote! It always strikes me as so interesting reading the Fodors boards that we all pretty much go to the same favorite places--Italy and France come to mind--and yet our impressions can be wildly different. The quote explains it all.

I love Alain de Botton! his novels are as good as his philosophical musings. very witty young man.

THanks, I'll make a note to get the book next time I do an Amazon shop....

A darker note can be seen as either 'problem to be solved' or 'failure'. This could make a big difference as to how willing one is to see or discuss the 'dark notes.' As a rule, I am frustrated when dark notes are seen as 'failure', and failure in turn as 'death' not 'opportunity to learn.'

Today I read this my Axel Munthe and I think it touches on what we've written.

The greatest writer of short sensational stories is Life.
But is Life always true?
Life is the same as it always was, unruffled by events, indifferent to the joys and sorrows of man, mute and incomprehensible as the Sphinx.

But the stage on which the everlasting tragedy is enacted changes constantly to avoid monotony. The world we lived in yesterday is not the same world as we live in today. Inexorably it moves on through the infinite towards its doom and so do we.

Some of us crawl on our knees, some ride horseack or in motor cars, others fly past the carrier-pigeon in aeroplanes. There is no need for hurry, we are all sure to reach the journey's end.

I think the point is, do you want to use the privilege of foreign travel to learn something about the world you live in and its people? If you do, you'll encounter the darker notes along with the light ones. Hopefully you'll come back a little more aware of the diversity of the world, maybe a little less self-satisfied, maybe a little prouder of your own people's achievements, but at any rate able to add just a bit more to your own country's little store of awareness of its neighbours.

I've met too many people who've come back from an overseas jaunt with barely a jot more understanding of those countries. People who've spent two weeks in Bali and come back without a clue about what makes the Balinese different - not even knowing that Bali is an island of Hinduism in an Islamic nation, our closest neighbour. People who've flopped down in a Fijian resort and couldn't tell you one thing about the relations between Fiji's Melanesians and Indians. Then they'll watch an attempted coup in Suva on TV and won't have a clue what it's about. Others will go further afield, trudge through France and Italy like zombies with virtually no idea of those countries' histories and make not a single effort to learn a word of French or Italian.

OK, some cherished illusions may be destroyed. You'll see Italian generosity, joie de vivre (must be an Italian equivalent to that phrase?), friendliness and artistic talent, but you might also have to take note of the Italians' apparent inability to develop a system of government that isn't endemically dishonest, incompetent, corrupt and unfair. If nothing else, that should inspire us to a more vigilant defence of our own countries' strong points. Even if we can't design an Alfa or make decent pasta at home. (Wine's easy, we can do that.)

One of the things that sets the higher primates apart is curiosity. In my experience dumb people just aren't very curious, and as a rule the sort of people I mentioned above aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. It wouldn't matter where they went, they'd come back pretty much as stupid and as ignorant as when they left. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer myself, but I'd hate to come back knowing no more than I left with.

I'm not suggesting that travel should be a joyless academic exercise. We've worked hard to make enough money for that trip (well, most of us have), and we should have a good time. But it seems a waste to come away without a balanced picture of your hosts' country and culture, the light and the dark.

Neil you make a great point. One of the pleasures for me is to know about the country I'm visiting, and I don't just mean knowing about the tourist sites.

I was just talking with a friend about what kind of travel guides we like and I said that the ones that I prefer are those that have long sections on the history, the politics, the people, the key current issues etc before even getting to the tourist attractions bit.

It's always fascinating to learn about the entire picture. But the things that you speak of (such as Italie's political corruption) aren't really "dark notes" for me - they are just part of the picture.

I guess things have to be pretty darn dark for me to want to avoid them on my trips, as per the example I gave above.

Good points, there are degrees of darkness and we should only delve as far as we can endure.

I, too, get a little disgusted at people who don't have imagination or even a little quest for knowledge. Can a tip off be that the mentally active people search out answers to their questions?

So far when I have traveled I seek out local people to talk with about their lives. Not personal lives so much as cultural lives. In Tahiti, I spent the afternoon with a lovely lady who sews and colors pareaus, we ate bananas from her tree and I came away with a much deeper understanding of their life than if I had just rubbed on Coppertone and vegged under the sun. I met two fishermen who showed me how they speared fish and made their own nets, too.

It bothers me to just skim the surface of anything, but if I get too involved in something where I will make no difference it does get to me.

The "dark notes" can be anything in a culture that is negative and self-defeating. As much as I love England, I have never approved of their class-conscious culture. That was highlighted for me when I was in London in 1999, and visited Kensington Palace on the anniversary of Diana's death. I heard several of the locals defending royalty, aristocracy, and not questioning--at all!--the sexism of Diana's role. As you might guess from my screen name, I'm an avid Beatles fan. I've learned about the England they lived in, and it wasn't all singing in the Cavern Club. When you visit Paul's home, now preseved by the National Trust, it's an opportunity to see a council home built after WWII for the working classes. Last year, I had the chance to talk to two Liverpool women, my mother's generation, who told me about enduring the air raids in the war. The Beatles, for me, have been a door to a culture and a time I might only know superficially. I'm grateful they've given me a "home" across the miles.