The (too) difficult Tourist.

I was going to call this article “The Hapless Traveller” until I realised that although he certainly is that, he’s so much more besides. I mean, how does a man who’s normally, calm, reasoned, intelligent, polite and often charming becoming a loud, demanding (but nevertheless totally incompetent) individual as soon as you add an airport or a foreign country? Talk about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

At the airport

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” he’d yell in a booming voice across airport halls if I’d walk away from him. His tone of voice indicating that what he really meant was:
“…come back here. How dare you go anywhere without me?” Say what?

Moreover, at an airport, he demands that everyone in our party defers to him – and he has specific needs. Like the need for everyone to queue in the line he’s chosen. At one airport, my brother wanted to punch him…well we’ve all been there…especially the time that he dropped me at the wrong terminal at Charles De Gaulle airport – while assuring me it was the correct one. (Incompetent? – I told you so.)

At that time, he’d left me with a toddler and all our bags (six of them) while he returned the car to the airport rental depot. What’s more, in order to ensure his comfort, he’d left me to carry his jumper that he’d taken off when he’d become hot and flustered unloading the car too. He couldn’t be expected to carry that himself, could he?

After drop-off, getting all that luggage plus a toddler onto a shuttle bus to the correct terminal when that bus is parked in the middle of the road because the airport was so busy that it couldn’t park kerbside, took three trips. I had a choice: I could put the toddler on the bus first or leave him until last – neither option was without its risks because this toddler had the habit of never staying put…and then there was the jumper.

We eventually made it: I made the three trips while constantly looking backwards to make sure the toddler was waiting where I’d told him to, ever ready to abandon the bags and run back if he moved even an inch or someone came within six feet of him. The security of the bags, some on the sidewalk, some in the bus, was not something I had the luxury of worrying much about, under the circumstances. (Where were the passports again?)

And, for once, the hyperactive, headstrong, disobedient toddler did exactly what he was told, bless him.

When we arrived at the correct terminal it happened again, but in reverse although, this time it was easier because the bus had found a park kerbside making being run over less likely.

Aeroport Charles De Gaulle

When my version of Mr Hyde finally found us (waiting in line – the correct one – to check in) he was in a right tizz, complaining loudly at how difficult it had been returning the car – well it would have been. I mean, he had to drive the car over to the car park, hand over the keys at the office and then walk across to the terminal – and all of it in French. Thank goodness he wasn’t encumbered by that jumper or it would have been just intolerable!

Since then, I’ve learnt: I take a different plane; no one needs that aggravation.

On Board

And he doesn’t get more reasonable on the plane either.

There was one long-haul flight that was full and so we’d scored a seat that had been upgraded to business class:
“You have the seat first,” I proffered… and he accepted.

The trouble was, he’d failed to take notice of the word “first” and its connotations – which most people would think were that he’d, at some stage, give up the seat in my favour – as in: ‘second’.

No, he never did.

That was the last I saw of him for 14 hours. I stayed in a packed economy class with a baby on my lap – his son.

In foreign climes

As soon as this too difficult tourist arrives in a foreign country, he turns into an Ocker (a crass Australian) and starts calling people “Sport” (pronounced ‘Spote’) notwithstanding that he never uses this expression at home and is an otherwise highly-educated and erudite man.

It gets worse: in Amsterdam he wanted to ‘stiff arm’ all the bicyclists that were threatening to run him over and startling him with their loud warning bells. It never occurred to him to get out of the bike lane. He refused to recognise the legitimacy of such a dedicated lane.
“We don’t have them in Australia, Sport,”( or at least we didn’t then).

Then there were the hot chestnuts in Geneva:
“Fancy selling hot potatoes on the street?,” he’d say to people in Australia who were interested in his travels, shaking his head in disbelief. Potatoes? They don’t do that in Straya, do they, Sport?

The trouble with the French

Then there’s the language, of course there is.

Given that France is the country where we spend the most time, indeed we have a property there, you’d think after the many years we’ve been going there and him having learnt French at school, he’d have a modicum of competency in the language, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong.

He goes to water every time anyone says anything at all to him in French – and looks at me with those pleading eyes that say:
“Can you handle this?”

Well, the answer is, yes I can, but boy do I get sick of always doing the talking (and listening) for him.

“Can you ask the waiter for butter?” is a perennial request (the French rarely provide butter for bread).
There seems to be no request or chore he can do without my help. But sometimes I just baulk.

We were in Auxerre in Burgundy, I was tired, I needed a drink and he needed a post office.  Serendipity: there was a café next to a post office – we could both fulfil our needs. You’re ahead of me, aren’t you?

Yes, he needed someone to go to the Post Office with him to ask for stamps. No, not this time, Sport. Instead, I told him that the word for stamp was timbre and to get them himself.
“How do you spell that” he asked?
I told him and off he went only to come back some time later without the stamps.
“They don’t sell them there,” he said.

Do you know of a post office that doesn’t sell stamps?

No, the truth was that the woman serving couldn’t understand him and had waved him away the way the French so often will. You see, armed with the word – after I’d spelled it for him, he pronounced it the way an English speaker would which renders it incomprehensible to the French.  

The refusal to accept that you cannot pronounce words in an Australian way in France and expect to be understood has brought this hapless traveller undone on more than one occasion and I smile at one particular time that this dinky-di Aussie asked for a beer (only asking for himself on this occasion because the word is almost the same in French as in English).

Yes, he knew the word was bière (ie – a two syllable word) yet couldn’t bring himself to pronounce it such. Just as a shower, to him was a ‘shar,’ Une bière was a beer.

On most occasions, he’d be asked to repeat what he’d said as the waiter wasn’t able to understand and on most occasions, I would come to his rescue but this time there was no need, the waiter knew exactly what he wanted. And that’s what he brought him – un Byrrh.

You asked for it, Sport, you drink it!

Are we there yet?

But that’s not all (no, this is NOT a steak knife giveaway), this man has some interesting ways of coping even when he’s in his element (ie – not in France), such as remembering what someone looks like by what they were wearing. I’ll leave you to spot the problem there.

In a similar vein, he was travelling from the centre of Paris to Charles De Gaulle Airport by train. Charles de Gaulle railway station is clearly signed, as are all stations in France. Armed with detailed instructions, all was going well. The train was scheduled to arrive at the station at 3.06pm – so at 3.06pm, he got off the train – prematurely.

Just as well it was a train and not a plane, hey?

We were passing the same station at which he’d alighted on another day.
“I’ve spent a bit of time at that station,” he informed me.
“Nice was it?” I asked. I didn’t want to know.

Lost – somewhere on the river

On the occasion of setting up the house in Arles, I had arrived in Arles a week before him and had rented an Airbnb to give us time to get the new house ready.

He had gotten to Paris (phew!) and was due to arrive in Arles the next day. I’d reserved a bike/taxi to pick him up from the station in Arles, but he never turned up and when I called his mobile, it went straight to voicemail.

I didn’t know what his problem was but mine was that he didn’t have the address of either our new house or the Airbnb, he seemed to have no means of communication with me and his French was neither good enough to explain his predicament to anybody nor to use a payphone.

As luck would have it, many hours after he had been due to arrive, I took a walk along the river to the train station, just in case he was there. Well, he wasn’t but I did find him – there he was, outside the public toilets in Place de Lamartine (not far from where Van Gogh’s abode the ‘Yellow House’ stood, incidentally) looking forlorn.

This was where the bus driver had kicked him off the bus (with the wave of a very Gallic hand) because he couldn’t understand what he was asking. Prior to that he’d missed his train to Arles (don’t ask) and had forgotten to charge his phone the night before. Who misses trains and forgets such things?

Anyway, he informed me that he wasn’t completely clueless and that he had a plan: Knowing our new house was on the banks of the Rhone, he intended walking up and down the banks of the river, hoping, at some point in time that he’d see me (providing I was dressed in something he’d recognise.)

If you’ve now got Petula Clark singing Don’t Sleep in the Subway, Darling playing in your head – me too.