I believe that the West has the power to transform, but that doesn’t mean this will be another story about a New York princess with fake fingernails who moves to Utah, embraces a cowboy, climbs into a sweat lodge and writes a novel.
I refer to Western words, which have toughened up and become something better than they were before. Out here, a paper grocery bag becomes a sack – much more substantial. A grocery cart is a buggy – ever so Rodgers-and-Hammerstein production number. And the verb “to visit” ceases to be passive and becomes “Why, we visited for a while!” This kind of visiting, in my book, is also the only way to travel.
Example A:
In Portugal, I visited a bunch of huge, ancient cathedrals – the display of plata y oro, the cold, gilded chapels, a mummified martyr or two (or his desiccated finger in a filigree box). Generally, I noticed how large and forbidding everything was, checked off that page in my guidebook, and ran to the nearest bar to take the chill off my bones. These polite visits soon felt like a forced march through antiquity.
But then my husband and I rode our bikes up to a castle in a rainstorm. The owner, a duke with cash-flow problems, was said to have a few rooms for rent. We had no reservations, were muddy, smelled awful, and acted like ignorant illiterates – at least, in the eyes of a nobleman who speaks mainly Portuguese. So did he kick us out? No. He invited us to dinner.
We feared it would be awkward, what with the language barrier – not to mention the paintings of men (in codpieces) glowering down upon us. Also, the duchess seemed to be at a loss in the kitchen. Maybe a brace of maids had quit? But a couple of glasses of wine loosened things up, and we started visiting, in the Western sense. We got the gossip at that castle, boy howdy. We toured what our host called “the garden of garbages,” which turned out to contain cabbages. When the 3-year-old disappeared, we found her in a medieval barn, sleeping with a pig.
I always would rather get mixed up with a bunch of people in a foreign land (or in the next state over) than go look at artifacts. There’s no foolproof way to do this, but if the idea appeals to you, here are a few ideas:
1. Sit around. In real life you are bitterly busy and resent it, so don’t get antsy because there’s nothing to do but stare into the middle distance. Embrace it. I was doing this on a Vermont porch early one morning when I heard a sound like a tent being dragged across dry grass. A hot-air balloon was landing in a field across the street. The balloon’s captain ordered us to grab a line and guide him to earth. Then he invited us to visit him at the strangest, smallest airport I had ever seen.
2. Don’t refuse beverages. At the airport, Balloon Man greeted us with cheap beer. It was 10 a.m., a time when Lucky Charms make more sense to me. We took the beers anyway and walked into a forest of fantastic ultra-light ballooning devices, including one wicker contraption that had been flown by the Depends Adult Diaper World Championship team. (They came in second-to-last.) Let’s just say the place bore no resemblance to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Let’s also say that no one has to be drunk to be fascinating, in fact, quite the opposite. But when you’re on vacation, a what-the-hey approach to eccentric drunks along the trail can’t hurt.
3. Don’t refuse food, either. We ate a five-course, four-star dinner in a typical Hanoi apartment, which is to say one-
point-five rooms, a hot plate and a faucet. I don’t know how Mrs. Lam did it, but wow. To fit into her room, our family of four had to sit on the bed. What do you suppose we remember, that or the guidebook-recommended “indigenous” restaurant?
4. Volunteer to do things you thought you left home to get away from. I ended up waiting tables when more than a hundred cyclists ended up overloading the same tiny diner. Other riders did dishes. My daughter hands out water and praise at running races. My cousin travels with a sewing kit and is always fixing some bridesmaid’s dress at the 11th hour.
All of these situations put us in the middle of things instead of filing past them, behind a velvet rope. Get rid of that rope. It’s no good for visiting.
Robin Chotzinoff is a freelance writer who lives in Evergreen.
