Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Fowler asks....once again

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In any given trip I feel a little bit of both tourist and traveler. In Edinburgh Castle I felt like a tourist being herded through a tunnel, building up to the grand finale of viewing the crown jewels of Scotland. It was stuffy and claustrophobic and well packaged, but I was tired and I didn't like being crushed in there with a lot of people. On the other hand, I visited Inverary Castle and had a most amazing one on one tour with an elderly gentlemen who lived and breathed the history of Clan Campbell. The most recent Duke of Argyll had died within the last 2 weeks and the place was strewn with flowers. I had no idea what I was walking into, but I recieved a personal reflection of history from this most devoted museum/family archivist that could never be duplicated on tape made for the crowds. It was as if I was walking with a family member who had love of the family and perspective. It's the times of discovering the unexpected when I feel myself to be "travelling" in time out of mind. I feel myself to be a tourist, when I extract only the bare essentials of the place, the information that one is expected to aquire, or the checklist item of 'seen that, been there.' I'm a toursit when I am least engaged. Fatigue will necessitate times when you can barely take in any more information about a place. The trip is eventually distilled in the experience of "journey." Where I have been, who I have met and what I have seen, the conflicts or upsets along the way and how I've resolved them, adds to a sense of being alive in present time. There is never an either or, but always the everything... and so good Wes, the distinction between traveler and tourist is merely a question of the time of day the question is posed. Dr. Betty

Elvira---your reference to what's the word for exit reminded me of my first "strange" experience---couldn't figure out how to get out of Heathrow Airport terminal! There were no exit signs anywhere...wasn't I in an English speaking country? Then I saw it---"Way Out"---and I laughed all the way out.

When I think back on the trips I have taken, be it Europe or Northern Wisconsin, my fondest recollections are not of the things that I have seen, but rather the people I have met.

Wes, you pose a good question. I like to feel that I fall into the group who prepares by learning about the country before I go. But, I must admit that there is a certain amount of expediency to ge gained by reading Rick Steves. His tour of the Louvre is excellent because you can go to the big attractions and still you have the freedom to see everything else in between!! I got lost in the Roman sculptures for a long time before I finally located a throng of Japs blocking the hallway. It had to be Venus!! In my travels, I greeted one situation by laughing, and just about got thrown off of the streetcar. In Munich, a sign on the streetcar said "Hinten einsteigen." Get on at the rear. Or you could read it get on butt first. Well after I got on, this character came on rear end first. The ticket seller was this huge female German, about 6 feet and 250 pounds. I gathered that her sense of humor was about -8 on the funny scale because she just about clobbered the guy. (He dodged adroitly.) I started laughing because the same thought had crossed my mind but I lacked the effrontery to pull it off. Well, she got angry at me for laughing and ordered me off of the street car. I refused to go and the car started up while she was still having a fit of temper with unpaid riders standing there. I just moved to the front because to get away from her. Last year, in Switzerland, I just about lost my cool, totally. I went into the train station in Lauterbrunnen to buy tickets from Interlaken Ost to Vienna Westbahnhof. The clerk absolutely refused to sell me the tickets. I had my ticket plan on paper, complete with train numbers and departure times, so there could have been no way he did not know exactly what I wanted. But he said he had to sell tickets to Wengen -- but there was no one, I mean no one in line behind me!! I was so angry that I essentially had two choices. Pitch a fit at him or leave the building. I left. Cooled off. Waited until he left for lunch, and approached another agent, who happily sold me the tickets. I wonder now if I approached the guy shortly before he was scheduled for his lunch break, because it was not more than 15 minutes after my run in that his position behind the ticket counter was empty. My acquantance, who works for the BOB in a coat and tie position (not sure what it is) got an earfull from me when I chanced to meet him outside the station after buying my ticket. Whether or not anything ever came of it I never knew. I had my tickets and left the next day.

Nice post, Wes. Thanks. Someone once wrote that all travel is running from and running to. (Though I do not agree with that.) Gerry K

Gerry: I do not agree either! Why run? Best thing is to lay back in a café, having a nice glass of wine and watch the people run from point A to point B, especially in a nice sidewalk café in Paris. Better than a movie.

(I hope I never run into Bob Brown on my TRAVELS)

I know people who travel around the world and have almost never met or talked to a local person! But they do have all kinds of stories about their tour groups! Now that is a tourist mentality.

A traveller spends at least 6 months of each year travelling. Everyone else, including myself, is a tourist.

As to distinctions between travellers and tourists, the question makes me a little uneasy. I think Lauren summed up best just why this is so. That said, what makes a traveller (forget the tourist part.) Oddly enough, I think of my mother as a traveller even though, now 80 and infirm, her trips are rare and confined to her local region. She 'travels' in her head, through the amazing books she reads (including a biography of a poet from India) and through her ability to cultivate friendships with many of the foreign students in town.

Nan you puzzle me? Why am I not one you would want to run into? I have two questions for you: 1. If you were on a streetcar in Munich and some guy got on rear end first, would you not have laughed? Or would you be one who did not see the sign that said Hinten einsteigen and had no idea what was going on? That was quite a few years ago, and I still think it was funny. I might not have had the ticket seller gotten hold of me!! 2. How would you have handled the situation in Lauterbrunnen? You walk up to a ticket agent in a train station, travel plan in hand, and ask for two tickets from Interlaken to Vienna. The agent says "No." What do you do then? His job is to sell tickets. Right? I was standing there asking for tickets with much more preparation than the average tourist. (Perhaps that is the difference Wes is seeking. I knew the exact schedule I needed, complete with train numbers and departure/arrival times. A tourist would be unprepared.) When I did find an agent who would help me, he was quite cheerful and very helpful. The first guy might have done me a favor because he probably did not know the routes as well as the fellow who handled my request. He even was astute enough to make sure he got me window seat reservations on the Maria Theresia from Zürich to Salzburg so we could have a good view of the passing scene. But can you offer me one good reason why a ticket agent in a train station would not sell a customer a ticket to ride on the train? I was not drunk and disorderly nor am I a threatening figure. And what would you have done?

Gee, Bob - it couldn't have been your reference to "a throng of Japs", could it?

What would you call a collection of about 100 people from Japan who were totally blocking the hall around Venus de Milo? A throng of x is a throng of x is it not? I could have said mob, gang, bunch, collection, pack, herd, etc. The could have been Germans, Americans, Canadians, Austrians, Swedes, etc. It is just that in this particular case they were Japanese. Is a throng of Japanese better? I was not under the impression that the word throng was dirty.

You just don't get it, do you?

Bob,I am very surprised at you! If the people were from Italy would you have called them a throng of Wops?

Tourist is a subset of traveler. Good, good question, Wes, in that it has generated interesting reading and makes people think! Bad, bad question, Wes, in that it causes some people to spew bile. Hmmmmmmmm... more later ....

Holly and Roger got the point.

Let me help. Bob, "Jap" is an ugly racial slur that is never to be used in polite company. "Throng" is an ordinary noun. It is perfectly fine in any company. The race of the throng does not appear relevant to your story, so I don't know why you felt the need to mention the race of the throng members. Unless you don't like Japanese people. That's why some of us bristled at your post.

Well, if it takes that little to get people to bristle, they must be extremely shook up most of the time. I admit to being unaware that the term was a no no. But in this age of political correctness I am not surprised. And as to whether or not the nationality was relevant, it is and was a fact. Pursue that logic to its ultimate absurdity and I should not say that a herd of cows was blocking the road. I should simply say herd. But no need turning this into a polemic. That can go on for days without resolving the issue.

Bob, maybe you meant to say Japanese tourists wearing thongs were blocking your way?