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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Guidebooks ridiculously chart out a trip's every moment. And on some dark evenings, that's not so bad.
Apr 12, 2000 | Some years ago, when my husband J. and I were traveling in Europe, both barely 30, fairly ignorant and fairly brave, I hated the guidebooks that held us in thrall. They made a few days touring a foreign city read like weeks in the desert fleeing bandits. Was it really necessary to carry handy wash 'n wipes, premedicated this 'n thats, multi-use geegaws, mild detergent and clothes pins? All in secret pockets? Was it absolutely necessary to wear shirts that breathed? Must one stay hydrated, always? Sleep on schedule, like hostages or babies?
It was not clear to me that these books enhanced travel. Didn't they, in fact, usurp it? I hated to see my experience -- that wayside shrine I'd discovered, those sun-washed steps -- appear in quotation marks. I hated to have reality rated. And no matter how much boldface print they used, guidebooks actually encouraged inattention, it seemed to me, with their neat categorizations of the world, their obsessions with mundane safety and comfort, their normalizing of the strange. Under "Dangers and Annoyances," I thought, they should list complacency.
My antipathy lessened, though, one night in Italy, in the seaport city of Taranto. J. and I had overshot our day's destination, the small resort of Metaponto. Only some trains stopped at Metaponto, a useful fact the guidebook -- which tended to dwell at length on the intricacies and logistics of bathrooms -- failed to mention. Our train was not one of these. So we arrived instead at Taranto, described as industrial, poor and crime-ridden, very late at night.
The depot was deserted except for two backpacking American college boys who would barely speak to us. They huddled over their guidebook, we huddled over ours. Battered taxis softly panted in a crooked queue, their various signs looking improvised. There were no meters. The guidebook said don't get in unless there is a meter. But the drivers did not seem interested in going anywhere, anyway. They smoked and looked silently on as we set out walking.
J. had found a hotel in the book, "a few blocks from the train station." I tried to look purposeful. We both tried not to seem to lug our luggage, our increasingly heavy, expandable shoulder bags. I had decided that shoulder bags were less touristy than backpacks, or anything on wheels. And the Air Canada tags were to ward off terrorists, since it was l986 and the United States recently had bombed Libya. They had worked, so far.
Nasty encounters of a more personal nature comprised our fears as we walked away from the station and down an increasingly dark street. J. stopped abruptly when no hotel materialized, saying we should go back, that it was silly to be out meandering at 1 a.m. But just as we turned around, an unmarked car crept alongside us, the driver posing one-word questions in English. Hotel? Taxi? Hotel?
We got in, with some trepidation, and J. jumped into a volley of questions and answers in Italian that seemed barely connected. He was in charge of this part of the trip (my responsibility had been France), and, while he had good command of basic guidebook grammar and vocabulary, his delivery, I could see, was often all wrong.
"Domani," he might mutter to a desk clerk. No response.
"Domani!" I would echo, as if overjoyed or surprised or angry or desperate. Sometimes I'd elevate my hand, palm inward, fingers flat, as if I were a martyred saint indicating heaven. Guidebooks were fine for lists, but they forgot drama.
"Ah! Domani, sl, sl," would come the unperturbed reply.
In the wee, dark hours in the back seat of that car, I had no energy or inclination for theater; J. had to fumble for the words alone. I realized, though, that he was trying to get the driver to take us all the way back to Metaponto.
"Non!" I interjected, picturing our bodies dumped out under the olive trees. So we ended up going, after all, to the driver's friend's "very good hotel," an option J. had resisted.
It was a warehouse down on the waterfront. Absolutely dark within, no identifying signs, no streetlights illuminating it from without. We got out of the car and looked at each other, our eyes wide. J. paid the driver a seemingly arbitrary sum. (No meter.) The car crawled away.
