Return of the Real

There is something I find incredibly vile about being a tourist. This revulsion must come from my adolescent years as a pissant NY native spent sneering at the herds of tourists rubbernecking down congested streets. Looking back the condescension was a bit silly, especially when you consider that at some point, in order to experience a full and multi-faceted life, you’ll have to step out from the four corners of your neighborhood and see the rest of the world. This means travel, and this means you will inevitably come to be identified by someone else as nothing more than a wide eyed, street-clogging tourist. The Horror!

There are, of course, worse things to worry about, like the real reason for finding your role in travel and tourism so distasteful. All you are ever exposed to as a tourist is what has been neatly packaged for you. So that you may experience only the more congenial side of a city and return home with fairy stories of crimeless tracts of land, brimming with hospitality from the locals, the municipality sweeps the undesirables and crowds them into smaller sections of the city. This is not to mention the price gauging that tourists are subjected to. The logic being that even the frugal will allow themselves to slip into a vacation frame of mind, i.e. be a little more willing to spend money on trifles. Compound this with the obvious that the duration of your stay will not permit you to shop around and you have what is accurately referred to as a tourist trap.

Now while I have little desire to be beaten, robbed and left to die in the gutter of some shanty town, I do desire to see something of my host city that approximates its genuine condition. But herein lays the crux. In response to being incessantly assaulted by the ubiquity of our monoculture – fast food and other chain-stores situated close to my hostel – I would periodically take walks with the intention of getting lost. Taxi cabs were everywhere and relatively inexpensive. If I should find myself too tired or too lost it wouldn’t be any trouble to hop in a cab and chalk up the experience to being a nice promenade.

On one of these walks I was accompanied by a woman I had met at the hostel. She was an ex-pat American living in London who was visiting Barcelona on holiday. We headed for the beach by way of the many side-streets that deviated from the main strip. We found ourselves walking down a sharp incline and nearing residential neighborhoods. The poorly maintained sidewalks, narrow streets, the fart smell of stagnant water, and laundry hanging like drapes from window to window, connecting building to building are always certain confirmation of this. We were slowly encroaching onto native soil. My companion picked up on this, but not its significance. She commented on how we were walking toward where “real people live.” There was a hint of romanticism in her tone that found this novel. I’d picked up that she was of this disposition from our previous conversations. Street corners were punctuated by groups of men and kids who showed little distinction from one another in terms of what we consider is the maturity the former should possess over the latter. As we approached a group hanging out in front of a ground floor apartment turned all purpose convenience store, I commented “yeah, real people live here alright, and that means they don’t like people like us coming around.” She realized what I meant as we received what were ultimately benign looks from the older men and contentious leers from the younger.

They didn’t get many visitors around here. The streets were as much a part of their homes as their living rooms. There was no need for scrupulous manners or charades. Presenting the exemplary behavior of a model citizen would bring no praise; therefore, it occupied none of their conscience. Thankfully, the negation of one path doesn’t automatically mean the election of the opposite, just a shorter distance between the two. There wasn’t sufficient night fall, need to worry that a malicious impulse would be bolstered by the cover of night, and besides this wasn’t a very long stretch we were walking. I could see the wall and stairs we had to go up to reach the beach. This was also, as is always the case a central gathering point for the local kids. So, after walking through one more gauntlet of urban blight, we were struck by the sun smack in the eye as it began going down.

I gave one last indignant look back as if to say don’t hedge me out; I’m not one of them I’m one of you. Silly? Perhaps.

The little trip down indigence road was really nothing by comparison. When you’ve walked down streets in third world countries where the dollar is actually worth something you develop the ability to gauge the desperation in a person’s face. The Euro is more valuable than our currency, so I was convinced that the sight of an American wasn’t going to send the barrio into frenzy, because it would in other countries. But the thing is sometimes you really never know. Sometimes just picking up on that somebody is out of their element is enough to encourage a decent level of antagonism from the natives. This is the gamble of wanting to experience the real. Sometimes it’s not a question of the real being too real, just that it isn’t your reality. And nothing will change that.

Some erudite sophist once said something to the effect that it’s only when you see the worst of a people that you really get to know them.  The truth is that depravity knows no nationality, and you can always count on the dim-witted to lead the witless. I remain firm to my principles. I wear boots and durable clothing for a reason: They can handle a good scraping, and I’ll be damned if I pay tourist prices when I can find the goods cheaper just a few blocks up the road! And I’ll be damned if the only sites I see of a city is what I could’ve seen on a postcard. Safe home, dear friends. 

Chino
-MKN-