Tourist or Traveler?

After my workshop ended in Italy last month, I met my daughter and granddaughter in Rome for two weeks of further travel. I had a few ideas of things they might want to do as I'd been in Rome many times; I had guidebooks for our other destinations and figured we'd plan as we went along.

Rome, near the Vatican

My first plan was for lunch after their arrival and then a nice nap, a usually desperate need for most people who fly across six time zones. But my daughter, already in full tourist mode in the cab from Fiumicino, had other ideas. We spent the afternoon at the Coliseum, Piazza Venezia, and the Trevi Fountain. That was just the beginning. Every night she studied the Rome guidebook we found in our convent and plotted our days--mornings, afternoons and "brisk walks after dinner." With only five days allotted for Rome, we managed two day trips!

Begging off didn't work; I agreed this was a trip of a lifetime--the three of us together. Claiming to be "a cafe and cab sort of girl" didn't work either. She figured out the subway and bus system in Rome, Barcelona and Paris in no time. We rode double-decker tourist buses (I refused bike tours and even she rejected the thought of moving by Segway). We fell into our narrow convent beds nightly, completely exhausted. Admittedly, we saw much more than I ever would have in my meandering, wandering, yet-another-coffee style. And the trip was really for them, so I enjoyed it through their eyes (that, and we laughed a lot).

But the most revealing thing to me happened the day I opted out while the two of them decided to climb to the top of yet another monument. As I sat alone in a cafe after ordering, I had the oddest, nearly physical sensation--thoughts immediately rushed into my head. That's when I realized I hadn't had a single thought for eight days, hadn't processed anything I'd seen, hadn't reflected on one idea. And I hadn't documented anything in my notebook, not once.

We were surely tourists packing it all in. But to my mind we weren't yet travelling.

In a recent New Yorker "Personal History" article titled "Reporter at Odds," Jane Kramer writes about the unusual experience of being a tourist--a journalist overseas without a notebook. She had found she needed to use frequent flyer miles or lose them, so she planned an extensive trip to Southeast Asia with the intent to see sights and not take notes. After decades as a European correspondent for the magazine, she wondered: "What would I do for three weeks in Southeast Asia if I wasn't working? If you are a responsible tourist, the answer is that you fly everywhere, and see everything."


At one point in Vietnam, she notices a girl "no more than four or five, speeding alone in a tiny long-tailed boat. She was leaning over the side, scooping water into her mouth with her hands. I worried about what was in that water and where her parents were. I wanted to ask them where their parents came from. Were they dissident tribal people--Montagnards who had fought alongside the Americans against the Vietcong and, after the Americans lost, fled? Did they dream of home? There was no time for questions. We flew to Hanoi, as planned."
All along she had questions about people and places that remained unasked. "Mostly," she wrote, "I missed my notebooks. Everything was a blur without them..."


Yes, a blur. It's a challenge to discern the dance in multiple motor scooters on a busy street while you're in movement yourself. Writing things down makes them real, immediate. It grounds experience. And it requires being physically grounded in the same spot for a significant number of days or weeks. 


A few weeks ago the New York Times published "Reclaiming Travel," by Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison whose essay distinguishes the difference between tourists and travelers. They claim that travel reflects "our curiosity toward what isn't us, [our desire] to explore outside the confines of our own environment." And they ask, "What distinguishes meaningful, fruitful travel from mere tourism? What turns travel into a quest rather than... escapism?"


Sightseeing is too often list-checking. One has to keep a list to even remember, to distinguish one city's tallest monument or ancient cathedral from another. Tourists can learn lots about another place--from wall text, tour guides, guidebooks, the handy ear buds on the Hop On-Hop Off bus. And the guidebooks make it so easy--from how to order coffee in Rome to how to recognize the "gold" ring scam (that I encountered along the Seine). Nothing is left to chance.


It's one way to tour, to see the world. Stavans and Ellison point out how "safe, controlled and predetermined" tourism is. I hear about people who love cruises because they are so well taken care of; likewise, a resort stay--no risks, no luggage handling, no possibility for wasted time. 


But I love to waste time, to gather wool, to watch people when I travel. At times I've been unsure, unsafe and often lost. But I know that wandering and wondering is my best mode. Sometimes it's boring; sometimes it's isolating. But it provides room to be present.


I agree with Stavans and Ellison who suggest looking for "communion" in the wider world: "The kind of travel to which we aspire should tolerate uncertainty and discomfort...we need to permit ourselves to be clumsy, inexpert and even a bit lonely" to "quest for communion and, ultimately, self-knowledge."

Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux (with whom I've had a long, conflicted relationship as a reader) said it well: "Tourists don't know where they've been; travelers don't know where they're going."


Ah, that's it then, the goal to know oneself better and to do it without a set plan, to lead with curiosity. 


As writers, how do we figure out what we think unless we get far enough away from our usual comfort to see who we are?

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