October 8, 2010:
Speeding southward through still rough seas and Gale Force 8
winds as we sail off the coast of Maine, the Grand Princess is crashing through 10 foot waves and sending spray and foam up
in the air, higher than our 9th deck balcony. It is invigorating. The crash of the water and the moan of the wind
and the shudder that happens when we hit a larger than normal wave....the groan of the deck or the stairways as the entire
ship flexes just a bit under the impact....all of those things combine to give you just a fleeting, ghostly taste of
what it must have been like on the smaller ships that made these runs a hundred years ago.
We are nearing the end of our European Odyssey and the final days of a cruise, with
no more ports on our itinerary, provide a chance to reflect on travel in general. So, with nothing else to occupy my
limited attention span.........
When I become Emperor of the Universe...something that I expect to happen any day now....I
will impose the following rules for anyone wishing to travel more than 50 miles from where they were born....maybe a little
less in the case where the travel crosses a state line....particularly the one between Texas and Oklaholma during football
season. Originally there was just one rule.....Don't Annoy Rick. But I realized that some might consider that
single rule a bit self-centered, so I have tried to generalize the rules to apply to those rare situations where I am
not the center of the world.
Rick's Travel Rules:
On Being Quiet:
I
am a quiet person by nature. I find that silence is instructive, particularly when travelling in a strange land.
At cafes and bars and even out on the street, I notice that if you are quiet and just listen you can almost understand
the local language. You won't know the specific details, but you will understand the nature of conversations.
The cadence and volume of a discussion in a foreign language can give you clues to what the conversation is about. Whether
it is young people just falling in love....or maybe having their first fight, families out for dinner, or old men joking and
arguing about politics....if you listen you can hear it. So I wonder why more people who are travelling don't exercise their
right to be silent more often?
Rule
#1: Shut The _ _ _ _ Up (you may insert your own preferred expletive)
Following
Local Customs:
Different places have different customs. For example, in France
if you want to purchase something, they want you to pay in Euros and in England they like to use Pounds. They just
don't take dollars in exchange for merchandise. It's crazy, I know. But if you only want to pay for things in
U.S. dollars, then you should really confine your travel to inside the United States. On a related note: bathrooms
in many locales charge a fee for their use. The fact that you did not have the foresight to pick up a small amount
of the local currency and now need to use the bathroom does not grant you the right to get in for free. Failure
to understand this may result in excessive laundry bills. One of our fellow cruisers on the Grand Princess has
been continuously surprised, when he goes into various ports without any local currency, that the merchants do not accept
dollars. It was amusing the first time it happened, but after the third port where he expressed indignation that nobody
would take his "real money" I am starting to doubt his sanity.
Rule #2: No matter how much we might want it to be, the U.S.
dollar is not a universal currency.
Why do you travel?:
Most people travel to experience
new things and see a different culture than what you have at home. With that in mind, don't become angry when the
cafe you have breakfast in doesn't serve coffee the same way you get it at home...and if your favorite cereal isn't available,
deal with it. Have a piece of bread and some cheese and move on with your day...please....it's only one meal....you
get three of them every day....each one of them doesn't have to be PERFECT. On a related note: If it is absolutely
necessary that you start each day with a cup of American coffee, then please stay in America.
Rule #3: Learn to enjoy the differences
that you encounter while travelling.
Have a plan:
The current CENTCOM commander, a
Marine 4-star general whose name eludes me at the moment, was giving a talk to his troops shortly after they arrived in Baghdad
during the Iraq War. In the talk he was telling his Marines how to behave in the city. The most reported part of the
speech was a brief snippet where he told his troops to "Be polite. Be professional. And have a plan to kill
everyone you see." I think this is a good approach for travellers also.....well, maybe not the whole 'have a plan
to kill everyone' thing, but you should be polite and professional and you do need to be aware of your surroundings and
notice potential threats as early as possible. In most of the places we travel, direct violence is not the main
problem, but in all large cities, anywhere in the world, thieves and pickpockets will target tourists....after all, the chances
are that even if they are caught in the act, you won't be around long enough to testify in court against them. So I try very
hard not to be the only potential victim in an area....and I try to make sure that the other potential victims all look like
easier marks than me. This means that standing in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on crutches, wearing an American
flag hat, a "Bull riders do it in 8 seconds" t-shirt and jeans with a wallet bulging in the back pocket while
you loudly exclaim in English "Maybelle, that is the biggest Goddamn church I have ever seen" is not a good
thing....be polite, be professional and don't make a scene. I take a similar approach when
crossing a busy street in a foreign city....I wait for someone who looks like a local and who looks more frail than me, to
start crossing the road and then I dart out into the street. I prefer to follow young, pregnant women who are pushing
a baby stroller containing twins, but I will jump in behind an elderly couple or a group of nuns if the opportunities present
themselves. That's just the kind of guy I am.
Rule
#4: Try to blend in with the locals as best you can and be aware of your surroundings. Or, has they used to say
in the Army: Maintain situational awareness.
Be prepared:
If you buy beer in Europe to
take to your room, have an opener...they don't do twist-off caps in Prague. Do you want to buy wine by the bottle?
Then carry a corkscrew. If you want to charge your cell phone then bring an electrical adapter. Complaining
to the hotel reception desk will not cause them to change the electrical system for the entire country just so you can
charge your iPhone. Though, in most cases they will let you borrow a corkscrew or an adapter. The bottom line
is that in the Internet Age there are very few mysteries that cannot be unravelled before you leave home....if you will take
the time to inquire. And while you are at it, if you have the time, learning a couple of key phrases in a foreign
language is a good idea. Even though I don't really speak any language other than English, I take great pride in being
able to order beer in 5 languages....learn those important phrases first.
Rule #5: Anticipate your needs and do a little research before leaving home.
Failure
to follow any two of Rick's Rules will result in revocation of the offender's passport. Failure to follow 3 or more
of the rules will result in revocation of the person's birth certificate. Emperor Rick has spoken.
In the spirit
of full disclosure I admit to the following:
I
once blew out the circuit breaker at a hotel in Paris plunging the room into darkness and shutting down the elevator
system for the building when I plugged a hairdryer into the wrong outlet. I can tell you that this is not a
good way to make friends with the hotel manager.
On my first visit to Japan, I successfully disassembled the hotel phone so that I could attach
wires to the circuit and use the local phone system to reach a dial-up connection with my laptop....I was a little less
successful with the reassembly process. And I removed a built-in refrigerator from it's cabinet so that
I could get to an electrical outlet and charge my computer....at the time it didn't seem wrong, but in retrospect
I think it wasn't the 'right proper' thing to do. And this is yet another poor way to make friends with the hotel
manager.
I once drove the
wrong way down a one-way street outside of Munich, Germany......local drivers blowing their horns and careening
off the road....because I failed to brush up on my international roadsign rules and didn't know what the round blue sign
with the red slash across it meant. This is also not a good way to make friends with the local police force, who are
fairly humorless in their approach to enforcing traffic laws.
I have walked the streets of Kyoto, Japan soaking wet....so wet that my Yen notes turned to mush in
my pants pocket and a local taxi driver refused to let me in his cab....in spite of my foresight to buy an umbrella (for
90 cents) from a street vendor the day before.....it seems that Japanese quality does not extend into low-end purchases.....so
as the Forest Gump movie says: Shit Happens! Deal with
it.
And, that, in fact, is
the key element of Rick's Travel Rules: Just Deal With It....after all, you are the Stranger in a Strange Land...adapt
and adjust....it's really not that hard and it can be a lot of fun. There endeth the sermon.
