This, then, was my mission: to chart a different course, one firmly on the standard tourist path, but undertaken without the familiarity and knowledge of the modern information-overloaded traveler. To see if it could be done, to see what would happen, to connect the dots between the previous generation of travel and my own, and to find out if there were any stories left to tell or joy to find on that all-too-beaten path.
*This is often misquoted as “The tourist is always the other chap.” If Waugh were alive to make the edit, he might change it himself, the fake version being a snappier and more memorable summation of the point he had been making throughout “The Tourist’s Manual,” the 1934 Vogue essay from which the quote is taken.
Florence
Authentically Overwhelmed
[Florence’s museums] contain priceless collections
of the world’s greatest art, and they require slow,
unhurried, reflective visits for maximum enjoyment.
—Europe on Five Dollars a Day
In the days before I departed for Europe, Italy was all over the news, with common themes of discord, tumult, corruption, confrontation. Rome was drowning in traffic and street crime; Naples was drowning in garbage and organized crime; Venice was just plain drowning. This was the reality of modern life. The Italy of tourist daydreams was now located somewhere between Atlantis and Oz, a lost land of wistful fantasy.
In Frommer’s day, apparently, the fantasy had been a reality. “A vast number of Americans saw ‘La Dolce Vita’ and have ached to get here ever since. They won’t be disappointed,” he says of Rome, and his chapters on Venice and Florence carry the same sentiment: Hollywood was right. Sun-dappled rolling hills! Renaissance statues in every piazza! Simple-but-wise peasants offering you wine and pasta!
But I knew better. Those rolling hills would now be porcupined with cell phone towers, the piazzas crammed with cargo-shorted tourists pushing past buskers screeching dated pop songs, the statues usurped by fiberglass replicas (with missing limbs magically reattached), the charming peasants replaced by pickpockets and aggressive souvenir hawkers, the pasta tasting suspiciously like it had been prepared by Signor SpaghettiO.
So what the heck was going on, I wondered, as I peered out the window of the bus from the Pisa airport to Florence and saw a place that was just… just… so freaking Italian. The people, the landscape, the architecture: everything matched the stereotypical representations put forth by Hollywood, tourist brochures, wine bottle labels, and other purveyors of fantasies and half-truths. It was, as Frommer suggested, a “fantastic dream.”
Those cute little houses in the Tuscan Villa style were actual, well, you know, Tuscan villas, in all their authentic, charmingly rustic, picturesquely crumbling glory. Outside each one, a wood-burning oven puffed quaint little plumes of smoke. Queues of handsomely gnarled olive trees marched insouciantly to the horizon. Old women with walking sticks hobbled regally by the side of the road. The famously manic Italian style of driving was on full display, with scooter drivers zigzagging through traffic like so many Prada-clad mosquitoes. Even the sky seemed art directed: a dome of piercing cerulean perfectly complementing the deep green of the rolling hills and scattered with a handful of pert cotton-ball clouds. It was postcard-perfect, as though contrived by the local tourism board—“Giovanni, here they come! Go drive past them on your Vespa! Carmela, hide the satellite dish and put your delightfully scruffy goats out in the field! Quickly! Prego. Ciao.”
Frommer starts the Florence chapter by claiming that “this is a city for reflection.” To which I say: nuh-uh. At least not at first. It turns out that my initial reaction to such stunning sights is not rumination but blissed-out gaping. To wit: here and there, I spotted the expected trappings of twenty-first-century life—anti-immigrant graffiti, dreary industrial sites, goat herders talking on cell phones, ads for American corporations—but my brain had already become so thoroughly rewired, so taken with the soma of stereotypes fulfilled, that every time the trenchant, sarcastic internal monologue began, the giddy, altered-state tourist immediately drowned it out: Holy crap, look at that adorable little old man in that absurdly lush vineyard—where’s my camera?!
When the bus rolled into Florence’s historic city center, the authenticity high turned into an enrapturing overdose at the up-close sight of the winding cobblestoned passageways encroached by ineffably Old World architecture: arched doorways, elaborate cornices and corbels, massive shutters, and, on every wall, the perfect golden-hued, slightly cracking faux finish—er, wait, no, not faux. It brought to mind every example of fake Tuscan architecture I’d seen before at the Olive Garden and other Italian restaurants, in interior design magazines, in countless places.
Except it was better. Vastly superior to even the most carefully crafted fake.
Writing about themed environments such as Disneyland, the Italian writer Umberto Eco observes that “the pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human spirit; but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that the imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it.” Yet I can’t help but wonder if Florence provided a corollary argument, that once an imitation has seemingly established the apex of perfection, any reality that exceeds it can’t help but appear fake itself. This was authentic-plus-one.
Florence somehow conformed even to expectations and archetypes I had not previously formulated in my mind but which became manifest as soon as I saw them in front of me: the history-of-a-culture tableau of runway-worthy outfits drying on ornate wrought-iron balcony railings; the specific carefree manner of the high-heeled, black-clad woman pedaling a rickety bicycle while talking on a tiny, sleek cell phone and smoking and gesturing wildly.
Booking my room in Florence had been one of the first signs that using a nearly fifty-year-old guidebook was perhaps an innately bad idea. For starters, well, most of the hotels didn’t exist anymore. (A brief confession/digression: I initially planned to arrive in each city with no reservation, in the tradition of the old-fashioned traveler, but decided against it after realizing this very problem. In all likelihood, many of Frommer’s picks would be closed, and I would spend many hours fruitlessly searching for a place to stay before finally finding a space in a cozy Old World Dumpster. So I opted to cheat a bit and consult the Internet to figure out which of Frommer’s preferred hotels were still open, though I steered clear of reviews, looking only to confirm availability and price.)
Of the Albergo Helvetia, Frommer says, “[it] is the kind of place that would appeal to a Blanche-like character from Streetcar Named Desire—fading, shabby gentility, but clean and proud.” The description is Frommer at his best, precise yet lyrical, and I had hoped that I could stay there. Nope. Closed. Several others were still in business but had gone upscale and were now far beyond the range of a budget traveler.
Finally I had some luck, if you can consider it good fortune to find a room in a hotel that didn’t exactly get glowing marks even forty-five years earlier. “If you’re game for a Fourth Class hotel,” Frommer writes, “with doubles for 1500 lire and singles for 800 lire ($1.30 [about $9 in 2011 dollars]), even in the summer months, then try Via Panzani 5, where Varsavia stands waiting. Basic, but clean and decent.”
“Buon giorno,” I said to the graying, sixtyish man behind the counter as I entered the lobby. “Vorrei una camera.”
The clerk, tall for an Italian but with a stooped, anxious posture, examined me with an expression that was both grimace and grin, a look that said, “I’m going to be as friendly as possible to you, but I’m already dreading this conversation because I know it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable for both of us, and you clearly don’t speak any Italian.” Which, alas, was true. The initial bliss and Old World overload began to fade—with nausea-inducing rapidity—as I realized that I was really, completely, totally out of my element.
Between my Italian and the clerk’s English, we had a shared
vocabulary of about ten words, and it took much stammering, gesturing, and blushing on both of our parts for me to establish that I had a reservation. We both breathed a sigh of relief when he found a printout with my name on it. He handed me a key and used hand gestures to pantomime walking up stairs.
“Due,” he said. Two flights up.
“Grazie,” I replied, grateful to have occasion to use one of the words I knew. “Mille grazie.”
Before stepping back into the theme park outside, I rested for a few minutes in my room. It was not much bigger than my bed but did at least come outfitted with an aggressively ornate wardrobe (which I was convinced was going to topple over and crush me during the night), a bidet, and a sink whose basin, I discovered, had a special feature: it was perfectly angled to splash copious amounts of water onto my crotch every time I tried to wash my hands, as I did now. The room’s small window looked straight into a wall, just a few feet away, allowing in only the paltriest swath of reflected daylight—even now, in early afternoon, I had to turn on the overhead light as I opened my bag to dig out a dry pair of pants and my folder full of letters.
It was time to start trying to unscramble my own history, my own sense of authentic self.
My mother had never left the United States until she stepped on that Icelandair flight—the cheapest transatlantic route of the day—heading to Europe, by way of Reykjavík. Patricia Chaffin, twenty-one years old. She wore glasses with a stylishly chunky, dark frame; an A-line skirt and matching sweater (she packed one ensemble in blue, one in green); acrylic stockings held up with a garter belt; and a pair of flats on her feet. “Very East Coast women’s college,” she says, looking back. “Extremely preppy.” Her black hair was trimmed into a pert bob. Classic 1960s.
She was traveling with her best friend, Ann Dynes, whom she had known since high school. They spent one night in Reykjavík and were awakened the next morning by a knock on the door. A delivery: a dozen roses from my father. An astonishing trick in Iceland, from such a distance—“Boy am I ever engaged to a romanticist!” she wrote a few days later. After a brief stay in Scotland and London (where their boardinghouse consisted of “a room with a dozen mattresses on the floor”), they took a boat in rough seas to Amsterdam.
The Continent. A world of unknown languages and cultures. And two young, free-spirited women eager to soak it all up. They had arrived.
Unlike me, my mother is gregarious. Today, certainly, but especially back then, if her letters are any indication. At the moment, I was content to experience that sociability vicariously, as I paged through her accounts of the various other travelers she and Ann had befriended, plus—what was this?—some very charming-sounding men with whom she’d gone sightseeing without Ann. My eyebrows arched, my interest exquisitely piqued. I wasn’t the only one with this reaction, it turned out—I opened a letter my father sent to my mother in Florence, dated October 19, 1967, and found this:
Did you know that it is easy for me to become jealous of these guys with whom you’ve apparently been doing all these really neat things? Oh, yes, most definitely. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’d rather hear about it than not, but still, when “we (Guy and I) went to…” it is sort of bothering. Just for the record.…Anyway, fiancée, continue having a good time, but do come home.
Whoa! Scandal! Did my mother have any old flames in Florence? Just how fancy-free had she been?
As I kept reading, it became clear that my romanticist father had nothing to worry about, if only because the Italian men did themselves no favors—Mom’s feelings were primarily limited to contempt and amused pity for their overly aggressive advances of the type that today we’d call straight-up sexual harassment.
“We’re too busy to flirt and we wouldn’t anyway, and you’re awful to suggest it,” she wrote on November 4. “We avoid the d.o.m. [dirty old men] but the prob. is when the young ones decide that they are going to communicate.”
A few days later, she offered an example:
Dear Bob,
Do you know why Italian men are so awful? Because they start very young. Tonight we had a hysterically funny experience. We walked to the train station to find out what time our train leaves tomorrow. On the way back we were “blessed” with the escort of 4 young men—whose ages we estimate to have averaged 15 (at the very oldest)… Bob, these kids ended up walking us home from the station—which is about a mile—all the way Ann and I spoke French to each other and these little boys were trying to address us in various languages—French, Italian, English, and German. Poor kids—we really frustrated their attempts to communicate. Ever been told “I love you” in 3 diff. languages by a 14-year-old? I hope you appreciate the humor of the situation, for Ann and I are still laughing.
In another letter from Florence, she said, “In Italy it has really hit me that you aren’t here. It is such a romantic country and I want you to be here so much.”
In other words, no scandal. Reassuring—one less thing to worry about, I supposed, although the moment that particular fear evaporated, a hundred others flooded my mind, most of them having to do with the realization that, holy crap, here I was, abroad, ill prepared. The world was my oyster, but then, I don’t trust oysters—all they’ve ever given me is food poisoning.
As I stepped back outside, the letters lingered on my mind and I felt a rush of loneliness to compound the all-purpose anxiety. Mom was right: in spite of the hordes of tourists and the din of traffic, Florence was romantic beyond belief. The Italians themselves fit the oh-so-authentic tableau: with their tight black clothes, show-stopping shoes, sculpted hair, slightly pinched smiles, and overall air of effortless sophistication, they all, male and female, looked like runway models. I desperately wanted to talk to one of the countless captivatingly lovely signorine striding through the piazza—gracefully, confidently, somehow never catching their achingly chic high heels on the cobblestones. But the odds of any of them taking the slightest interest in me were approximately nil, even if I had known any Italian pickup lines. (There were none in Frommer’s phrasebook section. I checked. Twice.) I knew how the scene would play out:
ME: Buon gio—
CAPTIVATINGLY LOVELY SIGNORINA: (She cuts me off with a condescending stare, which is all too apparent even though she is wearing enormous Prada sunglasses; in fact, they seem to magnify her disdain.)
Despite my relatively plain, ostensibly nontouristy attire, I was pretty clearly an awkward, anxious American totally out of his element. There’s just nothing sexy about being a tourist.
Let’s put it this way: I’d heard that Italy’s birth rate had dropped significantly in the last generation, and a New York Times Magazine article shortly after my trip confirmed this, noting that the mayor of one town where the decline had been notably precipitous had offered parents ten thousand euros for each new baby. It’s a Europe-wide problem—in the early 1960s, according to that same article, 12.5 percent of the world’s population lived in Europe; by 2008, the figure was about 7 percent—but perhaps most reflective of the national psyche in Italy. Paired with a simultaneous rise in immigration, it has stirred much collective soul-searching on questions of cultural identity: What does it mean to be Italian now? Are the traditions fading, the history being forgotten? Is the culture dying?
As I strolled through Florence, surrounded by beautiful buildings and beautiful people, the set and the actors perfectly crafted, I couldn’t help but wonder: How the heck is that possible? How do people who live in a place like this and look—and dress—like fashion models not spend, like, all day procreating? And also: Do they need volunteers to help get the birth rate back up? Because, not to sound like a “d.o.m.” or anything, but I am willing to assist in remedying this problem. Where do I sign up? Call me heroic if you must; I just want to do my part to help.
Wandering toward the center of town, I checked Europe on Five Dollars a Day for some dinner options. Near the Uffizi Gallery, Frommer had several recommendations, of which he wrote, “For the value received, these
can scarcely be equalled throughout the rest of Europe.” Only one, Da Buzzino, was still open for business, but one was all I needed. With a posted menu in both Italian and English, it seemed like precisely the sort of place I was looking for: tolerant of tourists, but not explicitly targeted to them. My optimism grew when a man appeared in the doorway and asked me, with a raised eyebrow, if I wanted to eat. He had an earnest face and looked old enough to have been around during Frommer’s visits. I wondered, as I entered the restaurant, if this was going to be almost too easy.
As he handed me a menu, I dug in my bag for the book, hoping it would provoke a quick laugh and a long conversation, maybe an excited yell to the chef to come see this charming American with the old guidebook by their long-lost pal, Signor Frommer, and a plea for me to sign a menu (“Mille grazie!” I’d write), which he would post with all the letters and accolades on the wall.
My host, Joseph, turned away before I could show him the book. He wandered off to check in on the only other customers, a British couple in the opposite corner of the room, below a TV screen broadcasting a news program. I scanned the handwritten menu. And scanned. And read slowly, carefully trying to figure it out. It was all in Italian, unlike the menu posted by the door, and had no food terms I recognized immediately—no fettuccine, no prosciutto, no pizza.
Joseph walked back toward the kitchen, and I feebly raised my hand to catch his eye.
“Um, mi scusi?” I squeaked.
“Sì?” He tilted his head expectantly.
“Um…” Crap, I really didn’t want to say it. “English?”
He sighed, pulled the sheaf of laminated pages from my grasp, and flipped it to the back cover, where the heading read, “Tourist Menu.”
Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide Page 3
