Fascinating! As an aside, this is why the English word “journey” comes from the French word “journée” — not a trip or voyage, but rather a day’s (“jour”) work.
Nitpic: One day → un jour. So journeyman → daytripper. 
It took me so long to find that out. But I found out.
I actually LOL’d at the last two items on that list.
Ahem! 2.5 million? No problem. There are resort towns in Spain, Greece and these days Bulgaria, that specialise in what was once sold as the 18-30 holidays. Though anyone over 24 will be feeling quite ancient given the level of maturity on display. It is more like 17-23 market and the standards of behaviour make the worst of the US Spring breakers look shy and retiring. Lots of kids getting drunk, taking drugs and generally making a spectacle of themselves. They come from all the northern countries for a beach holiday in the sun and the evenings are for bar hopping and strutting their stuff in the enormous nightclubs.
Here is a documentary that exposes the worst excesses of the British party animals in Sunny Beach, Bulgaria. Other nationalities are quite as bad. Be warned, it is all quite gross and uninhibited with lots of sexual shenanigans A lot of brain cells are lost to excessive alcohol consumption and some of the participants clearly did not have many to begin with.
Each summer most of Northern Europe heads south in search of sun, sea and sex. Some resorts like this seem to specialise in the youth market. Others are for family holidays and mature folk. They really don’t care to share the same space as these out of control youngsters.
American can rest easy. Europeans can scour the bottom of the barrel of bad behaviour in a way that can make the world shake their heads in disbelief.
Nitpicking myself: one day → un jour or une journée.
I have truly only run into two grumpy natives in four visits to France. This statement confuses me. I love the people of France and I love that they speak clearly about what they want, like, don’t want. It’s refreshing and honest communication. The Brits and the US ought to try it.
D’accord (agreed). Complaints about the French are overstated (based on my varied interactions over several decades). Complaints about Parisians, specifically, have only slightly more merit (in my experience), but only because it’s a big capital city — they’re no more or less blustery than typical folks in any other big capital city — and the five Parisians I know best are as nice as anyone could be.
Chaque un a son gout!
Mais oui!
Setting: New York, Christmastime, a sidewalk in front of Rockefeller Center. It was without a doubt the most crowded place I have ever been. It was just one huge mass of people pushing down the sidewalk. And yet in the middle of all that there was some naive tourist* standing in the street**, apparently trying to get a picture of the famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. But of course he couldn’t, because all the people on the sidewalk were walking through his shot. So he actually yelled at the crowd “Stop walking through my picture!” as if that would change anything. I heard a voice yell back, in a thick New York accent, “Hey, it’s New York!” I’m honestly not sure what he (the tourist) expected us to do. I don’t think I could have stopped if I wanted to; with such a crowd it may well have resulted in getting trampled.
*And I say that as someone who was there as a tourist myself.
**Not actually in traffic, but like between the curb and traffic. Maybe he was in front of a parked car or something. I don’t remember that detail.
One of my Parisian friends taught me some rude words they use for non-Parisians. They look down on the rest of the country as if they are a bunch of peasants. It is a very centralised country and has been that way since Louis XIV at Versailles proclaimed himself to be the embodiment of the French state. They are worse than New Yorkers in that the latter may grudgingly acknowledge that other parts of the US have some merit.
Parisiennes can turn pretentiousness into an art form. They are generally sniffy about all things Anglo Saxon and the dominance of the English language. On the other hand their intellectual snobbery requires a command of the language even if they do not need it.
For all their faults I like the French on a personal level. They can be charming and witty and know how to flirt. They both admire the English for their cool ‘sang froide’ and deride it as emotionally repressed. I was amused to learn that they refer to Americans as ‘Les enfants’. Now that is condescension! I have some dear friends in Paris that I have shared apartments with in the past and I am overdue for a visit. It is the country and culture the English learn about first in school and how they go about things their own way on the other side of the English Channel. There is much to admire about France and the culture, despite the French being annoying from time to time.
Awww. Restricted in the US by the copyright holder and I’m too lazy to set up a VPN.
I had a reunion with one of my navy buddies in San Francisco at Christmas time. I don’t know if it was as crowded as Rockerfeller Center but Post Street, the north side of Union Square lined with big department stores was damned crowded. We were with our wives and getting worried because it was slow going and we had dinner reservations (with jazz) at Zingari.
My buddy gave me his hand and said, “Follow my lead.” He dropped into a Quasimodo crouch and loped ahead with my sort of holding him back, leering and growling. The crowd parted like the Red Sea in front of Moses and we made reasonably good time. The women were totally embarrassed but followed in our wake,
The intentions aren’t really relevant, though. A person who doesn’t leave her country for whatever reason is more provincial and less cosmopolitan than a person who visits other countries and cultures on a regular basis, for whatever reason.
Hmmm, when you see some of the characters that vacation in Spain each year from the UK, ‘cosmopolitan’ is not the word that springs to mind. They don’t go there looking for any culture except their own. The holiday resorts are not Spain, they are simply vacation hotels built to sell cheap holidays in the sun. The customers are simple working class families who once would have gone from industrial cities to the coastal resorts for a vacation. Low cost air travel and huge numbers of concrete hotels created an attractive alternative with almost guaranteed sunny weather. Spain, Portugal got into the mass market vacation business quite early, back in the 70’s along the Atlantic coast.
Greece followed in the 80’s. Then Turkey, Bulgaria and other countries with plenty of sun, sea and sand. In fact the sand can always be imported to create beaches because the beaches around the Mediterranean are quite unimpressive. France and Italy were always a bit more expensive and have lots of cultural attractions so it is a different kind of tourism.
The US is a huge country, so it can meet a lot of its own vacation needs, especially for the mass market. What Florida and the sunshine states can’t provide, Mexico certainly can.
For cultural holidays then that it is a different story. It requires and expensive long haul flight. I guess that is where the snobbery comes in. It is somewhat similar to Australia. The country is divided into those who have been in a big European tour and those who have not. However, it is a bit if a stretch to suggest that this implies any sort of sophistication or a cosmopolitan outlook.
Getting a back pack and buying a rail pass and going from one capital city to another, staying in hostels is a quick way to visit a lot of countries is a short space of time. You can do a couple of countries in a month that way. Instagram is full selfie photos taken by intrepid college kids posing next to monuments in the tourist hotspots on their big adventure. I guess it counts for something in the great peeing contest that is Social Media, but It is just another kind of tourism. It follows well worn paths created by companies in the travel and hospitality business.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it does not confer any great maturity or understanding of the world. You get some bragging rights over lesser mortals who have not travelled so far. But in reality it is no great stretch, just dipping a toe into the water. Business travel is pretty similar, same hotels, offices and airlines. So, indeed, is the lonely business of working away in another country as an ex-pat. The investment in the country is not a deep and personal transaction, it is shallow.
There are travellers who do get fully immersed into the countries and cultures they visit. They stay a while: weeks, months, years maybe. Often well away from the cultural capitals and tourist hubs and get to know a country, culture and language by being immersed in it. That requires a fundamental curiosity about the world and a commitment to embark on a personal journey and step out of your home territory. That, of course, presumes you are blessed with being able to choose to do that and come from a rich, peaceful country that gives you that opportunity.
Somewhere between the shallow and the deep there are travel experiences that are rich and rewarding. A well thought out, independently organised tour and seeking out the best bits to see of a country and culture. Visiting a country several times over the years certainly helps with that. So, too, is sagely advice from locals.
One day I hope to embark on a grand American tour and try to understand what it is all about.
As mentioned, simply traveling to another country doesn’t necessarily expose you to that country’s culture. Going to the beach to party is pretty much the same everywhere.
Not really, when the people at the beach party speak a different language and hail from different culture than you do.
Going to the beach “to party” and going to “a beach party “ are not the same thing. I once visited Tel Aviv for reasons having nothing to do with experiencing a different culture. While I was there, I went to the beach. It was no different than going to the beach in NYC - I interacted with the people I was traveling with and had little or no interaction with other people on the beach , who may or may not have spoken English
I visited Florence and Venice within the first year of living in Switzerland. I mentioned this to one of my Swiss coworkers, who said they had never been to either. They had visited New York City, Miami, Los Angeles and various Asian destinations, but had never been to two very popular tourist destinations, which are quite a bit closer.
I have since met a number of locals who much prefer to visit Thailand, Bali, Costa Rica, etc., which are rather cheap, good weather and good food. Not everybody’s interested in museums and culture.
There are places in Spain where you almost need to speak German. It seems that Germany is quite generous with vacation time, so there are Germans everywhere.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-resort-germans-idUSL1148060320070411
Yeah, I’d venture that depending on where you go, it could even be somewhat regressive in that sense.
I attended a wedding at an all-inclusive resort near Puerto Vallarta about 15 years ago. If you didn’t make an effort to get out and see the surrounding area, you could have very well been in the US for all it mattered. Sure, the beer was all Corona/Modelo, and the staff was all Mexican, but if you created the same resort in say… South Padre Island, that wouldn’t be very different. Everyone spoke English, everything was labeled in English, the food was all American-style food, and so on.
That sort of thing could make people believe that foreign countries are more like the US than they actually are. My wife and I hied ourselves out to Puerto Vallarta proper by asking our cab driver where “real” Puerto Vallarta was (probably not the very smartest thing we could have done), and he dropped us across town near a neat little church, town square, etc… We ate in a local restaurant, shopped in local stores, etc… and saw what a Mexican city is really like.
But our co-wedding guests? They just hung out at the resort and didn’t get any kind of clue what Mexico is actually like. I feel like they were actually worse off for having gone in that sense.