Tourist

My family and I recently traveled to San Diego--or San Diahgo, as anchorman Ron Burgundy would have it-- on official business. Before we left, someone asked me, "What do you want to do there [in addition to the official business]?" I said, "I don't want to do anything touristy."

We had gone to Berlin this summer, only for a week, but nonetheless (or perhaps because it was only a week) we did a lot of touristy things, visiting famous sites, going to museums, drinking German wine (the latter just seems like a matter of good sense, not tourism). Also, the older I get, the more quickly I seem to get tourist's fatigue, a weariness born of a desire not to be experiencing things I am supposed to experience. I must admit that the unique Pergamon Museum, with its Pergamon Altar (reconstructed) and its Gate of Ishtar (reconstructed) knocked my socks off. Still....tourist's fatigue.

My wife was okay with not doing touristy things, too, in San Diego. However, we were unable to preserve a clean slate. We ended up going to Balboa Park, to the history museum, to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which, ironically, had been in a city near where we live, not long ago. It is, of course, a fascinating exhibit, even if it's implicitly, and at moments obviously, saturated with contemporary politics. But the few examples of scrolls (pieces thereof) and the copper scroll found in Jordan were, indeed, fascinating, as are the tales of discovery, haggling, recovery, translation, preservation, and so on. I had already read quite a lot about the scrolls, but still it was great to revisit some of the circumstances and to think about those Essenes hiding the scrolls in the little caves. Unfortunately, I couldn't ward off tourist's fatigue. So I set a pretty brisk pace as I went through the exhibit--but was nowhere near as fast as my brother was, in 1981, as he fairly sprinted through the Uffizi. He was sick unto death of Famous Art. I can't remember why he simply didn't go into the museum, but I did enjoy the spectacle of his literally jogging past masterpieces.

In fact, the technique could be expanded into a special form of tourism. We'll call it The Hasty Tourist. It would be a new way of experiencing the famous places around the globe, the equivalent of speed-reading a famous novel. "It's better when it's blurred." That might be the slogan.

According to the OED, the word "tourist" seems to have arrived in printed English toward the end of the 18th century. From the OED (online), here is the second earliest example:

PEGGE Anecd. Eng. Lang. (1814) 313 A Traveller is now-a-days called a Tour-ist.

And the OED also has references to "tourist class" accommodations"--on cruise-ships, for example--accommodations that were second-class, at best.

Anyway, here are two poems concerning tourists and tourism (and "Goodnight, San Diahgo.")

Tourist

Down a long cascade of white
steps in a seaside town, a man hurries.

By contrast people of the town
move slowly. They’re the most

recent generation who are where
they are supposed to be, something he

is not, hence the rush. No one in this
town will recall having noticed him.

* * *

On the Tour

. . . And here is a ruin of the palace
where the emperor claimed to have made
love to three virgins every night. That
was Emperor Zikka, nicknamed
Zikka the Liar. And just

off the coast here is where
a fleet carrying several tons
of important poetry sank.
The poems were heavy
and decorated with allusions,
tradition, and so forth. Salt-water
depth has preserved them.
SCUBA gear may be rented
at the wharf. Here is

a refreshment stand, not radically
different from a public hearth
in the ancient city whose ruins
we have toured today. This
stand represents perhaps
the strongest link between our
civilization and theirs.

Those people, too, were concerned
chiefly with replenishment of liquids
on hot days, getting inexpensive food,
having a few laughs, and finding shade
in which to ponder why they let someone
talk them into leaving their own beds
to join a package tour in quest
of illusory gains in foreign lands.

(First published in Writing on the Edge.)