Experiences

Tangier $40 Taxi Ride

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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I think it is more difficult to ignore your own cultural filters when in a country similar to yours-for example-Europe as to America. There is a tendency to want to think that everything about a culture and a country is wonderful, which of course isn’t honest. If someone visiting the U.S. told me they thought every-thing was wonderful, I would think they were either dishonest with me or
they were a little stupid.

So with unfamiliar currency in Tangiers we were off our guard. We took a taxi to the train station to check on times/ tickets for the night train to Marrakech. Then took another taxi back into the city to use an ATM to get local currency. The taxi driver took us to a modest cafe near the wharf where we had a huge platter of delicious fried fish and shrimp with french fries. During dinner, however, Bob suddenly looked thunder-struck as he realized he had given the taxi driver $40 instead of $4…a mental miscalculation of the decimal point. We were amazed when the driver came back to pick us up! No problem, no problem he reassured us! We would get our change but would drive us around Tangier first.

That was the second mistake. It was night by this time and the tour was very nice. We saw all the other country’s embassy homes with very bored-looking armed guards standing outside the gates. The taxi driver took us to the highest part of the city with a wonderful view where he said we could get some special mint tea at a very special place. When he turned to go down a very dark and deserted dirt road I began to really panic. This is it, I thought, this is where we get knocked off and they steal our money belts! But in a couple minutes he drove onto an outcropping where there were many parked cars facing the lights of the city and indeed-there was a little shack where he took his dirty glass from under his seat, brushed it off and returned with the most delicious mint tea filled with mint leaves.

But when we returned to the train station the driver said he only had about $6 to reimburse Bob-the rest of the money was for the tour! I told Bob if that was the worst that would happen in the whole year we didn’t have anything to worry about. By the time we got on the train and he had to contend with the hot crowded compartment he forgot all about the taxi driver. This is part of the adventure we told ourselves!

Through Others’ Eyes

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In the hotel in Paris at breakfast one morning. I struck up a conversation with a woman that wasn’t speaking French to the waiter and she had avoided talking to me. I guessed that she might be English or Scandinavian and most Sacandinavians speak English. It turned out she was from Poland but knew English very well. She had avoided talking to me because she thought I was French. When I started talking to her and finally told her I was from the states, she said “no wonder your English accent is so good-I thought you were French!”

She was on her way to a business meeting in Lancaster PA. In her slender 30’s she had short cropped blond hair and was wearing a yellow sweater and tan slacks. She said that on a trip to NY several years ago, she was struck by how “big” many American were and she made clear that she meant fat. She guessed that it was because they didn’t get enough “motion.” It is interesting to see ourselves through other’s eyes. I tried to explain “jet lag” the lag part being the most difficult.

Later, an English woman in the hotel in Bayonne said that when she had visited NY several years ago she was shocked at how people, who were dressed up in suits and other nice clothing, were wearing ugly sneakers and walking so fast down the street. We tried to tell her we didn’t find “sneakers” ugly and that when I worked I wore nice shoes to work and carried my tennis shoes in a bag that I then used when walking to/from the car. But she said there were “nice” comfortable shoes you could wear out on the street and she held up her foot whereupon there was a nice black walking shoe.

Chunnel Tickets in London

Posted on by Laughingnomad

When Bob went to the train station in London to buy a train ticket through the chunnel to France, they did not bother to tell him that if he had a Eurostar ticket for travel through Europe his chunnel ticket would be 60 dollars less per ticket. (Special saver packages are not available to Europeans which may have something to do with it).

When we went back to the Waterloo station to take the chunnel; Bob tried to get a refund and they rudely refused to give it to him. So he felt gouged. On the other hand, he felt fortunate that he had the foresight to step into a travel agency on the way to Waterloo (you can’t buy train tickets in travel agencies in Europe) to ask a few questions. The very helpful agent on duty told him that when he bought the chunnel ticket, to buy a round trip ticket which was less than half the price of a one way ticket-that he wouldn’t be informed at the point of sale about the difference in price. Apparently it’s a way of making back some of the money lost when a tourist does not return to the country.

In the same way, the Eurail tickets for unlimited travel stops around Europe are very expensive and are not available to Europeans. If however; an American buys one in the states before leaving, there is a substantial savings. The same is true of the Eurostar Saver packages that allow, for example, two people who are traveling together to travel at a reduced rate. The only way we have found to deal with this is to temporarily become a Zen Buddhist.

Mother Country English

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last night we were walking to the theater and a guy sitting on the sidewalk against a building waiting for the bus after work called out and asked if we were tourists. I turned and smiled and said yes. He said “Americans?” I shook my head yes. He shouted “I could tell by the way you walk!”

I looked back and discovered that the Brits have a whole vocabulary unfamiliar to us that was apparently lost when we crossed the Atlantic or they snuk it in when we weren’t looking! “Potty” means eccentric, the subway is called the tube, a house is “in” the street not on the street and they go “to hospital” not “to the hospital.” A dish towel is a “tea towel.” Food “to go” is “take away” but then they use “take away” in New York too. (That’s another whole vocabulary.) “Bugger off” means go away. A “robot” is a traffic light and the trunk of a car is a “boot.” Actually neither word, “trunk” nor “boot” makes any sense to me. A diaper is a “nappy,” a clothes pin is a “peg.” “Pants” refers to underpants or panties. The correct term for “pants” in England is “trousers.” New Zealanders use “togs” to mean a swimsuit but the English use it to refer to any clothing. Pegs, (pronounced “pigs”) means clothespins. A “powerpoint” is a plug-in or socket. To us in the U.S. it means a microsoft application. Don’t know about England but if you are in Scotland don’t tell someone to “scoot over.” The “scoots” means you have the “runs.” Don’t call it a “fanny pack” when you’re in the UK, Australia, or NZ. That word does not mean “tuckus” there. Instead Aussies laugh at the American tourists wearing “bum bags.”

And then other things that seemed odd to us at first look…yogurt was brought around to sell to patrons at the theater during intermission, (actually not a bad idea). BBC reported on the curling gold medal every time we turned on the TV-very big deal over here…I had never heard of curling.

I watched the Olympics closing ceremony on TV while Bob went to Piccadily Square to get tickets for a play and buy a eurail ticket which is another long story entirely. In the meantime, we were entertained by “Blood Brothers” about twins who had been separated at birth by adoption to poor and and rich families respectively….theme being class differences of course. We are greedy…going to another play tonight; half price on same day. We’ll see what is available.

Oddest thing I’ve seen is Black guy with half his head front to back in a natural and the other half in dreads…a split identity?

I want fish and chips one more time before we leave London for Paris! In pubs we found out the hard way that you have to go up to the bar to order-wouldn’t come wait on you if you sat there all day! Foot long wonderful breaded and deep fried but juicy piece of fish more sitting atop a pile of french fries (chips in England) and sometimes with a cup of peas dumped on top of it all or can just order peas which are called “mash.” Usually served in a stiff piece of paper twisted to make a funnel-like carrier.

Hitching-Hiking Europe In 1965

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The summer of 1965, the summer I turned 21, a friend and former roommate, Barbara Stamper and I arranged to meet in London in June. She, a teacher, found an economical route to New York going by train across Canada while I flew from Oregon. She had broken her ankle a couple weeks before but that was not to stop us.

We took separate planes to London. However, when we compared arrival times one of us was using European time and the other one of us U.S. time. So thinking her arrival time was one hour behind mine hers was actually seven hours behind. After waiting in the terminal…checking passenger manifests again and again, I finally took a taxi into London and found a lovely guesthouse…and a bed! This was in the days before Lonely Planet mind you.

The next morning I called every place I could think of in the hopes that Barbara would also be looking for me….American Express, U.S. Consolate, British Consolate, flight desk at the airport…and stayed put. In the meantime I began thinking about what I would do if we didn’t connect and decided that I was all the way here and that I would just take off on my own. But finally, in the afternoon the hotel clerk came to my room…I had received a call! First lesson in traveling…have a plan B!

Before leaving the U.S. I had ordered, through AAA, a shiny bright new red Triumph Spitfire…$2000…from the British factory in London. So the first thing we did was make our way to pick up the car…then to learn to navigate driving on the left side of the road…nearly killing ourselves and possibly someone else until we got used to it.

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Cheese & Wine…Barbara still in her ankle cast

After getting the car and ourselves across the English channel to the Continent, we took off across Europe.

However, when we stopped for the 500 mile check in Milan Italy, the mechanic didn’t screw the oil cap on tight enough…leaving us stranded on a lonely road late at night in southern France near Leon. We spent the night curled up under the tonneau cover. The next morning we locked up the car, hitched a ride the 60 km into Leon, had a good strong expresso, looked at each other and realized there was nothing we could do about the car here! So back we hitched to the car. I looked in the driver manual and discovered there was a Triumph garage in Grenoble.

Finally a smallish funny-looking French truck stopped and we animatedly agreed that after he ran some errands, the driver would tow the car to Grenoble. He did return…to our surprise…and he did tow our car to Grenoble…after first taking us on a tour through several tiny dirt-road French towns with small dirt-floor houses huddled together in small French valleys. This was less than 20 years after the end of World War II and the Marshall Plan had yet to dribble down to the local level. The villagers, who had never seen Americans before, crowded around us…touching…laughing…asking questions we didn’t understand. Our driver, proudly, had provided the day’s entertainment!

We had been watching all the American and European kids hitch-hiking around Europe so once we deposited the car at the garage, (it would take 18 days, the mechanic informed us) we hiked to a nearby market, collected two orange sacks, stuffed some clothes in them, left the rest of the stuff in the trunk, and stuck our thumbs out.

In the end, betting the car wouldn’t be ready in 18 days, we left the car there until the end of the summer when we drove it to Le Havre to put it on the boat for the U.S.

In the meantime we had incredible hitch-hiking adventures in Europe…meeting wonderful people and some not so wonderful.
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We tried to stick with the long-haul trucks that had to maintain a schedule…Barbara and I often lying together in the sleep compartment above the driver. One funny driver in France had recorded the conversation of a pair of Americans on a previous trip…describing how they had to sleep in a park one night. The driver didn’t understand a word of it but was amused by our facial reactions listening to the tape.

First the running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain where we spent the night in a local home, eating fried green tomatoes for the first time, while thousands of others spent nights sleeping in the fields. There were no night clubs or fancy hotels in Pamplona in those days!

Madrid, Barcelona, through the French Riviera…seeing Michelangelo’s beautiful David in Florence…Red light district in Amsterdam (Why are all these ladies standing around?”) Copenhagen, Belgium…Switzerland, sitting at the foot of the Matterhorn drinking beer while watching other young travelers sunbathing on the ice and snow on the side of the mountain.
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After picking up the car in New York I drove to Omaha Nebraska where Bob, the summer before we were married, had jealously spent a dreary summer studying for his medical boards…and piled out of the car in a near state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

This was to be the biggest life-changing experience of my life (and I think for Barbara)…seeing how other people in the world (at least Europe) lived and it put my own life in the States in a precarious perspective. I am still peeling the layers of that experience today…in July 2006…even after spending five years traveling twice around the world.