Well, with the beaches and mountain faces of South Africa long left behind in the vapour trails of my travels, and with the past World Cup having lurched to an altogether foreseeable uninspired climax, we are left with two resonating questions.
First, what have I learned about travel in general? In other words, I need to identify the areas of growth in knowledge and experience that would make future travels more efficient, enjoyable, economical, etc. Second, what are the most lurid and graphic hedonistic excesses of this trip in particular? There is evidence of demand for this sort of thing. Thus far, I've been asked by three different people. Because it offers the possibility of being interesting reading, it will therefore be dealt with later in the interests of increasing the magnitude of any potential suspense.
Travel
The biggest priciples that I've encountered as a person travelling the globe are twofold: If given any options at all in the matter, I would prefer to travel alone and spontaneously.
Going solo creates dynamic situations that require improvisation and accommodation. In addition, from my personal experience, I learn more about things, people, and events on my own than I do from companions. The lyrics from Jethro Tull's "Teacher" jog through my head as I write this, but a critical point is time-management. This is not to say that I derived zero value from travelling with others on this particular escapade, but I felt constrained, rather than liberated in my ability to experience and enjoy. On the whole, I interacted with more people and discovered more interesting facts and angles of interpretation when experiencing things on my own. As an example, my father, my aunt Jenny, my cousin Liesl, and I went to the Victoria and Alfred waterfront. Once. I've now been there once in my life. Huzzah. The time there was predominantly spent trying to get all four (passive-aggressive) people to do a single thing, coordinating how we were going to find each other if/when we split up at all, giving directions to one another, and generally milling about wondering where that other person from the group wandered off to.
One can only take so much of this sort of conversation:
My father: "Where are we going?"
Liesl: "Where would you like to go?"
Me: "Where can we go?"
Jenny: "Is anybody hungry?"
My father: "Where is the food place around here?"
Liesl: "Are you hungry?"
Jenny: "I don't know. What does everyone else want to do?"
Liesl: "There's the aquarium..."
Me: "I'd like to see the aquarium."
My father: "Where's the aquarium?"
Me:
Liesl: "The aquarium is really nice."
Me: "OK. Where's Jenny?"
My father: "I think she went somewhere to eat."
That resulted in our quartet breaking up so that my father and I could go and see the aquarium, and Liesl went off with her mother to look at the shops. The aquarium was very pretty, but my father didn't seem interested in water ecology, oceanography, or marine biology. His most urgent aquatic interests lay in the state of his own watery bowels, which forced him to scuttle to the restrooms frequently. That particular affliction also manifested itself frequently in airports, leading to the oft-murmured "Watch my bags" and my consequent uncomfortable shuffle in place in airports, waiting for his reemergence. Incontinence on two different continents. Sad, really.
Did I learn as much as I could have done at the aquarium? Probably not. My father was anxious to hurry through the exhibits at breakneck speed so that
- he'd always know where the restrooms were located, and
- he wanted to make sure that we were done and didn't lose contact with Jenny and Liesl, who, he was convinced, were going to leave without us in Liesl's car.
Turns out that they were watching a performance at the amphitheatre, and were going to ring us on one of our mobile phones when they were done. An hour later. We also missed out on the cavern golf and the gem/mineral mine. That could have been fun. Oh well.
Next, there's the issue of planning versus improvisation. I don't mind a bit of planning. Maybe even a fair bit of it. Too much, and suddenly, there is too much effort being put into tracking what boarding time is at what gate, and which relative is meeting us at which bus station at what time, and whose mobile number is needed in this specific circumstance, etc., etc. The larger the travelling party, the more often is heard "Do we have time for...?" and the more often the answer to that question, regardless of content, is no.
Company is nice, people are good, friends and relatives are virtuous elements in one's life. Sadly enough, I have had the most fun exploring completely foreign places on my own. There are exceptions, of course, but I reckon that's the rule.
I'll continue by attacking air travel. Flying places in North America is a hardship to be endured, not the sort of exciting or thrilling adventure I always felt it to be as a child. South African Airlines did a fair job of making sure that no-one died of malnutrition or advanced desiccation on flights that lasted longer than 2 hours. Apparently, United Airlines and Air Canada have no such compunctions. They will sell you food (credit cards only) and drink, and maybe rub your lips with a sponge dipped in sour wine when you're reaching some of the nastier stages of death, but other than that, you're herded into enormous queues, crammed into rabbit-hutch-sized seats, and if you're flying economy - on a seat sale - that's accepting standby passengers, you've wasted your time if you spent any of it anticipating a pleasant experience.
One fellow was a reasonable sort. A bit stand-offish and brusque, but he's American and I expect that sort of thing. He was organized, got his carry-on luggage into the overhead bin, was sitting quietly in his seat reading as we waited for boarding to finish. People were still filing in, cramming the ridiculously narrow aisles (all the better to fit you in) with their bags and bodies. Two Asian kids in their late teens or early 20s were trying to push against the flow of people moving in to reach our American, who was minding his own business.
For 15 minutes, they clogged the aisle and made life miserable for other passengers, because they were pestering this poor fellow to switch seats in order that they might sit together. Apparently, it took both of them to stand there, haranguing this innocent fella, and generally making asshats of themselves to achieve their goal. Which they consequently did. After a number of polite suggestions:
- "Why don't you switch for the seat next to the other one you've got?" the man protested.
- "I'd really rather not move..." he pleaded.
- "I was here first, and this is my assigned seat on my boarding pass." he reasoned.
The responding vacuous stares and pidgin English responses from his open-mouthed assailants, coupled with people making disgusted grunting noises and shooting deadly glares in his direction as they tried to sidle past the human roadblock of asiatic hormone confusion, eventually persuaded the man that it just wasn't worth it, so he packed up his stuff and moved to the back of the airplane.
That was one of the milder offences against human dignity and common sense that was regularly experienced through airports and airplanes and shuttles alike.
Must sign off now, but I'll be back with all of the lurid stuff, and probably a choice word or two to describe American customs practices as xenophobic paranoid schizophrenic histrionics gone horribly awry.
Cheers for now,
—mARKUS
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