The new fangled seats in British Airways Business Class are, of course, utterly wonderful and fantastic. Aren’t they? Well, yes. Club World it’s called and you get champagne, a good meal and you can lie flat. Splendid. I had a window seat and had three separate portals to look out.
As I sat down I nodded and said hello to the woman in the next seat. Her seat faced forward and mine faced backward. I opened a newspaper and read while we waited. So this was all good …..only…..all the time……in my peripheral vision this woman sat staring almost but not quite at me. The thing is that our feet are narrower than our shoulders so the way they make these seats work is to pack you in one forward, one back, one forward, one back. In the end, you are rather close to the person beside you.
After a tiring journey to the airport, after the bureaucracy of security and the ghastliness of the shopping mall I look forward to the moment of take off when I am pressed back in my seat. Like a baby rocked in it’s mother’s arms I usually nod off to be awoken, once we’re in level flight, by an attendant with a cup of coffee or an orange juice.
Club Class
But the take off was late. The announcement told us why, but like all aircraft announcements, it went on for so bloody long I phased out and couldn’t remember what it said. “Blah Blah Blah..on behalf of Captain Blah blah and our cabin crew are blah blah 26,000 feet blah blah…”
So, there we sat. Me and this stranger, both avoiding eye contact. What were the rules on such occasions? Who could raise the dividing barrier without appearing rude? Might the works of Jane Austen cast light on this new frontier of etiquette? I sat and ruminated on her works: “Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies” – true but unhelpful. “..blah blah seatbelt fastened over your blanket blah blah…” On and on the announcement went. Why do air crew like to talk so much? “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal” – Also true after a tiring journey.
Eventually we trundled along the runway, accelerated and, as we took off, I experienced the reverse of my usual experience as the acceleration force tried to drag me from my seat. “Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure” – Without doubt…..I nodded off to sleep.
When I awoke we had been delivered from our dilema of manners. She had raised the dividing barrier while I snoozed – “Rude cow!” I thought to myself but at least now I could relax in splendid isolation. I looked around a bit. I felt a little like I was sitting at the end of a little corridor. Like I’d turned up late and they’d been so full that an attendant had suggested that: look if we bung a few cushions round the back of these seats by the window you can bed down there.
However, the techno-media malarkey has come a long way. These days, a large screen flips out while a controller with a full qwerty keyboard lets one choose from numerous movies, TV programs, music and games. I watched a mediocre rendition of Jack Keroack’s On The Road. Core blimey Mrs! That’s progress for you! Remember those old plastic tubes you stuck in your ears to listen to a selection of duff music or fantastic American comedy? You never heard those guys anywhere else! Gerard Hoffnung’s Bricklayer’s Lament or Bob Newhart’s Tobacco sketch! Fantastic! And the media tell us that stand up comedy started in the 80s. Pah!!
Travel broadens the mind. Travel is good. I love travel. There is nothing like that feeling you get when you arrive in a new city on the other side of the world. Everyone should travel.
But…….is it too easy these days?
I saw this travel shop in North Street, Brighton. The picture is of Ko Phi Phi, an island off the coast of Thailand. Ko Phi Phi has to be very close to paradise yet now we can gawp at it as we trudge through the sludge of an English winter. We can enter the shop, buy a ticket and queue up along with thousands of others to sit alone on the top of the hill and gaze out at this natural wonder.
Elan Adventurer, Ko Phi Phi, 1991
I visited Ko Phi Phi in 1991 when I arrived as part of the Europa 92 round the world yacht rally. I was asleep in my bunk when we arrived and was awoken by what I assumed was a tractor engine. I imagined we’d arrived in some horrendous industrial port but when I popped up my head I saw this fantastic tropical island. The noise was from the enormous engines that the locals attached to their canoes. Later, I was chatting to an English sales rep from a marine engine company. He told me that they sold the engines with silencers but that the Thai’s removed them as they loved the noise.
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The kids would run up and hang off the side of the local canoes.
There was a story where, I think it was Phineas, liked to go hiking on his own and commune with nature. He discovered a wonderful patch of Marijuana and he would sit there crossed legged, smoking a joint and watching the sun set.
Then, one day as he arrived he saw 3 other lone hikers all approaching from different directions. Each had thought that he alone knew of the secret marijuana patch. They all ran for the marijuana and grabbed a much of it as they could and ran off. And the last line of the story is “…and that was the end of the secret marijuana patch”.
One of the Fat Freddy Cat stories is also apposite. As Fat Freddy says: ‘Tis but an infinite stroke of eternity’s brush this stretch of beach, this stick of Thai and they, m’dear!
I spent this week in Budapest staying at the excellent Intercontinental Hotel with a fantastic picture window overlooking the Danube and The Castle. Hot and sunny during the day and just plane hot at night. There is nothing like travelling around Europe for a few years to make you understand just how crap British weather is. Once the light faded the castle illumination came on. Gorgeous! As was the parliament building a little further along the river.
room with a view
For lunch one day we drove out to Budaörs and visited the Adler a traditional Hungarian restaurant where I ate good goulash. One evening I took a boat ride along the river. The commentary explained the architecture and mentioned that a Hungarian invented the computer. Odd, as I’d been told that it was either Allan Turing or Charles Babbage, both Englishmen. This reminded me of a Dutch friend telling me that a Dutchman had developed ideas on gravity before Newton. When I was a kid I was led to believe that Britain created the whole of the modern world. At school I was told that William Caxton invented the printing press and it was comparatively late in life that I learned about a German named Johannes Gutenberg.
A little later I ate in the excellent Sörforrás restaurant. Comfortable, good service and delicious Hungarian and international food. I think that, really, the whole of European history is one. We speak of globalisation now but centuries ago there existed a Europeanisation of scientific and artistic thought. Presumably the educated people understood this but the illiterate masses were oblivious to it. Not so different from today when the world’s elite flit around the globe paying their taxes wherever convenient but when they need our support they appeal to our nationalistic feelings with terms like “in this land” and “We British”. Remember Tony Blair banging on about being “passionate” about British this and that yet when he left politics he got a job with an American bank. Patriotism, as Samuel Johnson observed, is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Hungarian Parliament Building
In truth, I don’t believe that many great discoveries come about in isolation. Ideas about relativity were simmering away amongst the world physics community before Einstein finally hit the nail on the head. Ideas and memes swirl around in our culture like the currents in a river. They ebb and flow and occasionally some bright spark gets drawn into an eddy and brings it all together. The sum of human knowledge is ratcheted up another notch. Yes, it was Einstein who made the final move but if he’d fallen under a car, someone else would probably have got there soon enough.
It crossed my mind that, like a river, human knowledge has many tributaries and side channels. Perhaps Einstein’s marvellous discovery helped us focus our attention on the material world and we’ve made great progress in this respect. Yet I wonder how it is that a civilisation which can place men on the moon and robot cars on mars can’t figure out an economic system which does not either get bogged down in authoritarianism inefficiency like Socialism or have periodic catastrophes like Capitalism.
The odd thing is that nobody seems interested in developing another system. People who don’t like Capitalism have an irrational faith in Socialism. People who mistrust Socialism think that recessions, depressions and credit crunches are just something that society has to endure along with the concomitant suffering of the poorest. If the brightest and the best could be dragged away from their Bloomberg terminals then maybe they could figure out a sustainable economic model. Ah, but that would mean change and nobody likes that.
The banks of the Daunbe
Perhaps the relevant ideas and memes are swirling around us already; climate change, the Internet, super-complex and reliable consumer products, globalisation, a common language, the creative class, additive manufacturing. Perhaps all the pieces already exist and we just need some Einstein to put it all together?
On this visit I did not board the funicular railway up to the castle but I hung around one evening near the station at the bottom and took photos as evening fell. Vast cruise boats slid by, many from Germany. The Danube rises like an enormous cake in Germany’s Black Forest and flows through Vienna, Bratislava and Belgrade not to mention Orşova, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Calafat, Bechet, Dăbuleni, Corabia, Turnu Măgurele, Zimnicea, Giurgiu, Olteniţa, Călăraşi, Feteşti, Cernavodă, Hârşova, Brăila, Galaţi, Isaccea and, of course, Tulcea.
As I crossed the bridge back to the hotel I looked down and saw one of these floating leviathans drifting by with a swimming pool on it’s deck. It has never occurred to me to cruise along a river before. What a great idea. You can stay in one place while visiting the great cities of Europe.
Kürtőskalács
The hotels are near the main entertainment area in Budapest and the night was busy with tourists and locals. I bought Kürtőskalács, or Chimney Cake, from a street seller. Spirals of pastry dipped in nuts and sugar that tasted, to me, like mince pies. One starts to eat this delicious confection and gets the idea that one will eat just one more ring before stopping. But these are not rings, this is a spiral and one munches on and on and on until one has devoured the whole thing.
A driver had been organised to take me from the hotel to the office the next morning. I emerged early and he had not yet arrived and so I stood gazing out over the river and waited. The hotel concierge approached, asked my name and said I should get in one of the taxis that always wait outside the hotel. I explained that I had a car coming but he insisted. I walked to meet him at the car and explained again that this was unnecessary. This time a second concierge joined in telling me that I should get in the car and when I tried to speak a passing young man with a rucksack said to me: “He couldn’t come”. For just the twinkling of an eye I thought I was back in The Village. Either that or some Soviet era spy thriller. It seemed that the whole of Budapest knew who I was and was conspiring to kidnap me.
Last Monday I rose and donned extra layers and a heavy coat in preparation for my commute from downtown Stockholm to our Sundbyberg office while the temperature hovered around -16c. I crunched my way across ice and snow, down the hill along with others equally insulated examples (EIEs) of 21st century mobile autonomous systems (as Eno has defined himself). I crunched to where I perceived the central station to be.
As I drew nearer I realised I was on too high a level and asked directions. Arriving at the station I found only computerised ticket machines and entrance turn-styles. I have never liked computerised ticket machines. They ask too many questions and give too many options. Also, one is left with the impression that they will answer whatever question one asks even if they have no business answering. It is like turning up at the British Airways desk when you are looking for the tube to Holborn and being sold a flight to City Airport.
I wandered around aimlessly and entered another space where I overlooked the vast obligatory shopping mall that, by international law, must now be installed in every fucking public space on Earth. I expect that, by now, the Serengeti National Park in Kenya consists mostly of branches of Louis Fucking Vuitton.
People were marching around and it seemed to me that there were no railway employees to speak to. The whole station, perhaps even the whole of Stockholm and, quite possibly, the whole of Sweden seemed to be running on automatic. I felt like the man at the end of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. I wanted to shout: “Does anyone know where the ticket office is?” or “Where is the Information desk?” or “Where are all the fucking humans?”.
I held my tongue and descended an escalator into the heart of the machine where Swedes marched in robotic precision. I have braved the rush hours in Mumbai, London and Bangkok but never have I encountered such steadfast dedication to commuting. I leaped and dived between these creatures clad in boots and fur. Clutching their white iPhones they ignored me because I posed no threat, but I knew that, should I vocalise my anger and frustration, they would, as one, turn on me and tear me to pieces.
At the lowest level, at the beating heart of the Bjorn Borg mother ship, I found a ticket desk. No queue existed here but several of the creatures loitered and one pointed at a metal obelisk with no writing known to man but a strange symbol which may have depicted the apocalyptic death of the Swedish empire or, alternatively, a ticket being dispensed.
I placed my hand against the object and obtained the number 88. A display positioned above my head indicated 86. Whatever was going to happen, would happen soon. I stood and prepared myself. As an Englishman, I considered my reputation and refused to criticise the fact that several of the files were sitting lopsidedly behind the ticket clerks desk. Like a suburban health clinic where one waits patiently for the results of an X-ray though the preponderance of white plastic and perfect ergonomic machinery lent the area the feeling of a synthesis between Borg and Ikea technology. 87 glowed red. Was this it? Would I meet my end at number 88? Assimilated like so many millions before me? With a shock I realised that I too owned a white iPhone!
The man behind the desk was polite and spoke good English. I suggested that I may have come to the wrong place but he answered: “No. You have come to the right place”. My feeling of foreboding increased. I wondered how, this individual, who appeared almost Scandinavian in his sanity, could maintain any purchase on poetry, mythology or his imagination in an environment so devoid of stimulation.
He gave me two paths to travel. The quickest and simplest or the longest and most arduous. With the feeling that I was metamorphosing into Grendel, I chose the most arduous and entered the cold deep corridors packed with steaming Borg, silently striding, each avoiding the others with absolute precision as they held their dreams and emotions imprisoned in white iPhones.
Eventually, of course, I caught the train and emerged at Sundbyberg which was the wrong thing to do, I should have taken the Metro as the gentleman had suggested.
The problem with many modern northern European cities is that there is no sense of place. The station in Sundbyberg for example consists, at ground level at least, of two flights of steps leading down. Obviously this could be a station but equally it could be the entrance to a car park or public toilet.
I had arranged to meet a colleague but he was unaware of the precise location of the station and also unaware that it had two entrances. Around the stairs leading down are coffee shops and the only indication of a mass transportation system, capable of linking one to the rest of the world lies just metres from where one stands, is a modest LED display indicating two place names. These may indicate a station. They may indicate a bus terminus and since, in this perfectly organised society, there IS a bus terminus here, one might then consider the purpose of the signs explained.
In fact my colleague was waiting 5 minutes down the track where he had decided the station must be located and to be honest there was as much evidence there as there was where I had stood.
In the end we talked by phone and the only way we were able to communicate exactly which set of stairs I stood outside was with reference to the sun. The staircase in the sun or the staircase in the shade. This is my point. The nearest unique landmark was 93 million miles away, or so it seemed to me….I was a little frustrated.
The Victorians knew how to build stations. London St Pancras and Mumbai Central, they were stations. They didn’t just have vast gothic buildings which would be exceedingly difficult to miss they also had the words FUCKING STATION written in ten foot letters across the top or, if they didn’t, you could well imagine that they might.
All this integration makes for a very efficient city machine provided you have been programmed for it. If, on the other hand, you are a simple foreign traveller there is no way for you to meet anyone without giving them a street reference. I suspect that Johnny Swede relies heavily on grid references.
I climbed into the small Japanese car and calmed down as my bum was warmed to perfection by the heated seats.
Rolfs Kök
Actually Stockholm was refreshing. Apart from the freezing tunnels of the central station the people were friendly and polite. The trains were spacious and tasteful and the food good. I stayed at the excellent Tegnerlunden Hotel which, while small, was personal, comfortable and conveniently located downtown near the fantastic Rolfs Kök restaurant. On Wednesday night I ate at Rolfs. Packed with Swedes and wood and more Swedes and lots and lots of red wine and blond hair. Thick coats hung on walls amidst the steady rumble of conversation. Steel and brass and spotlights and busy white apron staff efficiency. Sitting at the bar amidst masses of bottles and glasses over my head, I sampled the bread & salt then devoured a perfectly cooked steak with a couple of beers.
Spent most of the flight watching the American version of The Office which is pretty good. Once you get over the fact that it is not merely a copy of the British program. About 4am BST I started watching Family guy and drifted off to sleep.
Stepping off the aircraft in Hong Kong in the brief transition between aircraft and walkway a feint but palpable waft of warm humid air hit me. With the smell of mildew in my nostrils and bright sunshine outside it felt very good to be back in the tropics. I and headed straight for the vast plate glass window and looked out onto the big glaring sky. A flat blue sea stretched away from the runway and islands lay scattered around. I was not in Heathrow anymore.
After a quick visit to the washroom to change my shirt and brush my teeth I wandered around the shops. Cleaner, more spacious and more orderly than The UK but to be fair Chek Lap Kok is a new airport. Even so it compares favourably with Heathrow Terminal 5. They let a lot of light in and don’t insist that every square inch of space be used for advertising.
Tablet computers seem to be big news here and Apple do not appear to have the prominence that they do in Europe or the America. I noticed tablet computers by the French company Archos which is interesting as, though these are pretty good products, they do not have much prominence in the UK. The book shop was stuffed with books on the new China in both Chinese and English. With China industrialising now seems to be a good time to write books about the rise of China and the decline of The West. A bit fo a bandwagon if you ask me. One book, in Chinese, had a picture of President Hu surrounded by images of 5 women. What could this be? I Emailed a Chinese friend who translated the title as: “Hu Jintao’s Five Golden Flowers Female Best Friends”. From the title alone, my friend suggested that this could be “one of those romance novels about President Hu”. Ah yes, one of those. I see (he said, but he didn’t really). Perhaps democracy is not such a bad thing if it spares us creepy romance novels about politicians.
Upstairs I looked around the food halls which were similar to those you find all over the far east. Shops selling food and shared seating areas. I had no currency. Should I change money to get a soda? – There I slipped into American again. 10 hours out of the UK, the whiff of the tropics and this Englishman has started to come alive again.
Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport, 4pm, Friday, 24th June 2011
At Heathrow airport, after passing through security, I am disgorged directly into an alcohol and perfume shop. Naturally. What else? As I continue through this shopping mall I am faced with a fork in the path. Turn left and hit expensive perfume and then on to the relatively up market Sushi bar or turn right and be confronted with chocolates and WH Smiths. Even at the airport England is a class ridden society. The areas closer to the departure gates are the Mayfair of Heathrow for the upper class. Champagne and salmon. Shirts by Pink and bags by Mulberry; there is even a fucking Harrods! Farthest from the gates are the shops selling last minute “I’ve been to London” memorabilia. But British airports are a great leveller for whatever one’s class, religion or ethnicity we are all temporary captives of the airport marketing machine.
The idiotic Bridge Bar is one of a very few places to get a real meal but is always packed and has no waiter service yet one must have a table to order a meal. If you are lucky enough find a vacant table you must go to the bar to order and inevitably join a queue. Inevitably, again, by the time you have ordered you have lost your table.
The ludicrously named Cafe Italia uses a little seating area with an almost Soviet canteen feel to it. I am tempted to say that at least this place has waiters but to call the voiceless delivery men waiters is going too far. I sit by the trolley laden with dirty dishes and eat an expensive but tasty Lasagne.
The air conditioning is not able to cope with the number of people and the environment has become muggy, humid and filled with the wreak of discarded food. The shop assistants resort to fans but the public are left to fester.
“This a security announcement. All persons are reminded that…” – Other than public announcements when else do we refer to people as persons? I think that the British lack self confidence and this manifests itself in pomposity in public announcements. Along with moronic violence at football matches of course.
The romance has been surgically extracted from the modern British airport. Gone is the aviation themed decor, there is no view of the runway, there are not even pictures of aeroplanes. In fact once inside there is no indication that we are in an airport at all. We may as well be sitting in the shopping mall of any mid size British town. Gone are the days of the large boards where people could sit in peace and wait for their gate to appear. Now we are forced to trudge around to find a little display board. This enforced perambulation is probably a ploy by British Airport Authority (BAA) to push us past the shops and encourage us to buy yet more crap. In the old days there would have been a large clock visible by everyone but no longer. I suspect that the absence of a clock is to accentuate our feeling of detachment. We are suspended in time and space. Our here and now is controlled by BAA and our raison d’etre is shopping.
No natural light enters and after an hour or so we lose track of the time. Is it early morning, mid afternoon or the middle of the night? We have no way of knowing. We have jet lag before we have left the ground. Like termites we scurry around in our mound unaware that just few feet away lies another world. The world of the support staff where people go about their normal lives. Drivers, technicians, cooks. Thousands of people working away to support this artificial environment of transitory morons.
I sit gormlessly staring at a departure board. Adverts are beamed into my subconscious. Smartphone – Italy – Must use Smartphone in Italy.
Eventually the gate opens and we are told that first class and business class may board through gate B . Frequent Flyer Gold and Platinum may board through gate A. Disabled and various other concessionaires may board at any time. And me? What about me? I must board last Good, for as ghastly as the airport is at least I have some leg room.
The people of Berlin are protesting about the large number of tourists who visit their city and I have every sympathy.
Mass tourism is a scourge on society. The enormous buses clog our streets obscuring the very views that the tourists have come to see and eventually the local culture is displaced by an international tourist culture of burgers, beer and bullshit. Local charm is replaced by shops selling plastic beefeaters and pictures of how things used to be before mass tourism.
We all love to travel and from the tourists point of view mass tourism is a boon enabling us to see the world. Without mass tourism many of us would have no experience of anything outside our immediate vicinity.
But mass tourism destroys the thing it loves. A herd of tourists cannot visit a city without damaging it like some socio-economic version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
When a person reads of the Left Bank in Paris he learns of Picasso, Matisse and Hemingway. He thinks that he too must experience this seminal environment and he buys his ticket. But the locals have seen him coming. They know that the age of art has passed and the age of commerce is upon us. So they open themed cafés, bars and restaurants with names like Bar Les Artistes or Le Lucernaire.
When our gallant traveller arrives he finds that he is not rubbing shoulders with writers or poets but engaged in a drinking competitions with a IT Administrator from Milton Keynes. Our intellectual explorer is now in the minority. The majority of the clientele are not interested in culture but feel they should “take a look while we’re here”. They have been sold culture in the same way that they are sold breakfast cereal and aftershave.
Our cities become caricatures of themselves, Ko Samui becomes Blackpool and an Indian tourists sits and enjoys the ambiance of Paris while eating a Big Mac.
The tourist industry markets travel as a liberating experience but mass tourism is not so much a manifestation of freedom as of greed, globalisation and hyper-commercialisation.
The population of Greater London is estimated at approximately 7.7 Million people. Wikipedia considers that London receives 15 million tourists each year and it is a safe bet that the vast majority of these concentrate their activity in central London. At the moment, the tourist industry sees no limits on how many people it can push down the subway at Oxford Circus. This has been detrimental to the quality of life of Londoners and no doubt Berliners suffer similarly and so are right to object.
Industry and commerce have long involved the appropriation of commonly held land for exploitation by self appointed “owners”. Communism recognises this when it declares that “property is theft”. We generally consider this property to be land used for homes, farms or factories and we assume that this confiscation means exclusion of the public but we neglect the public space in between private property. We neglect the commons.
This common space is owned, used and valued by all of us yet government and commerce now seem hell bent on exploiting it to herd around disinterested tourists in such wretched conditions that their goal, once they emerge from their air-conditioned packaging, is to take a piss, grab a burger and get back on the bus.
The Tragedy Of The Commons may sound like a Thomas Hardy novel but is, in fact, a concept used by economists. To quote Wikipedia: “The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.”
The scenario usually given is where common land is used by multiple individuals to graze their cattle. It is in the interest of each individual to graze as many cows as possible yet this will eventually ruin the grazing land to the detriment of all.
One solution often proposed is that the commons should be privatised and access restricted to those with the ability to pay. The owner would then work in his own self interest to ensure that the asset was maintained in good condition. This could mean that the owner would limit access but this is, by no means, certain.
Intuitively I am against the continued expansion of the private sphere and I find modern shopping malls a poor replacement for a thriving high street.
Another way of addressing TTOTC is intervention by local government. Legislation could be implemented to limit use and protect the asset. In the case of mass tourism this might mean metropolitan rules restricting the number of Bulk Tourist Deliveries (BTDs) in a given period.
However, local government derives a lot of revenue from allowing companies to graze their tourists in city streets and officials often see their role as maximising revenue. According to Wikipedia “The Government Office for London states that tourism revenues constitute 10 per cent of London’s gross value added and contributes to the employment of up to 13 per cent of London’s workforce. According to the London Development Agency, visitors to London spend around £15bn each year.”
Obviously cities will not wish to give up this revenue but at the moment we are sacrificing our environment for short term profit. Reversing this trend and protecting our cities will make them better places to live and ensure that they continue to attract tourists well into the future.
Many years ago, over too many pints, I recall discussing the idea of creating a tour operator which would specialise in giving tourists an authentic night out in London. We would offer a standard service tailored to the Japanese businessman and start with a few pints in a local boozer followed by a trip on a big red double decker bus down to Fitzrovia. More pints would be consumed and a Japanese man would be cajoled into thinking that his beer was off and pushed into taking it back to the bar. The barman would be bribed to take a sip, pause, frown and then apologise profusely before telling the Japanese businessman that he had a “very discerning pallet sir”. More beer would be consumed and the Japanese businessman encouraged to approach a specific young woman who would be bribed to slap him soundly around the face.
The frivolities would continue in an Indian Restaurant where large portions of Vindaloo would be consumed and the waiter paid to talk some bollocks about how this was the hottest curry ever consumed. Eventually the tourists would be emptied into taxis and left to find their own way home when hopefully a minority would vomit in the back of the cab and end the night sleeping in a railway station.
The company was to be called Here We Go Tours and we considered that visiting Australians would make the best tour guides.
The 20th century was the age of standardisation, the production line and economies of scale. The 21st century looks set to change all that. From Internet shopping to 3D printing, globalisation and technology are enabling consumers to customise their purchases to suit their tastes. House swaps and couch surfing are two examples of how independent travellers are using The Internet to bypass the mass tourism industry.
Why not go further, why not reject the standardised tours set by self appointed experts and design your own itinerary? In the past this may have been difficult but in the 21st century the tools are readily available. The Internet allows us to research an area, Google Street View lets us wander the streets before we get there and our GPS equipped smartphones allow us to navigate once we get there.
Why not create an itinerary and share it with your friends on Facebook?
The concept of tourists destroying what they visit is not new and was deftly described in a 1975 Science Fiction story by Garry Kilworth named “Let’s Go to Golgotha”. To quote Wikipedia: “In the future period where the story takes place, time travel has been invented and made commercially available. Among other historical events, tourists can book a time-travelling “Crucifixion Tour.” Before setting out, the tourists are strictly warned that they must not do anything to disrupt history. Specifically, when the crowd is asked whether Jesus or Barabbas should be spared, they must all join the call “Give us Barabbas!”. (A priest absolves them from any guilt for so doing). However, when the moment comes, the protagonist suddenly realizes that the crowd condemning Jesus to the cross is composed entirely of tourists from the future, and that no actual Jewish Jerusalemites of 33 AD are present at all.”
On Sunday I flew to Finland. Helsinki? No I went of my own accord. It was never a good joke in it’s original form and obviously my rendition is no better.
At long last Terminal Three at Heathrow seems to have been tarted up and there was room to swing a cat. Sadly, there were no swinging cats there, just we motley collection of tourists and jaded business travellers.
I am being too cynical. In fact Heathrow is better since the renovation though I still protest every public space in England being transformed into an over priced shopping mall. The “luxury brands” swarm like bloated maggots around departure lounges though why any marketing wallah should think that having the name of Harrods suspended over a shop selling tatt to the masses would do their brand image any good I don’t know.
I’ve heard stories of luxury brands, such as Louis Bloody Vuitton, destroying their merchandise rather than let unsold items appear on the market at knock down prices and I had imagined that this was driven by a determination to artificially maintain exclusivity. But these days the luxury brands appear to be targeting both the toffs and the chavs and I suspect that in a few years time they will have completely destroyed their brand name. In fact I heard that Burberry have hit this exact problem and are now trying to claw there way back to exclusivity. If they’re not careful it will be Robinson’s Barley Water all over again.
I used to drink RB and had bought it fairly regularly over the years. However, a while back I noticed that they had not only changed the bottle to some misshapen plastic abomination but had also brought in a lot of other concoctions which they are flogging under their brand name. I mistakenly picked up a bottle of some rubbish which proved to be undrinkable. I continued to by the stuff for a while but the plastic bottle somehow makes the stuff irksome and it spends it’s days at the back of the shelf with all the supposed goodness gradually settling out until I notice just how foul looking it has become and throw it out.
I stayed at the Sokoto Presidentti in Helsinki which was satisfactory. The bathrooms have an almost medial appearance with their over engineered shower apparatus but the Spanish restaurant delivers a very good pepper steak and crème brulee.
The Helsinki Natural History Museum
In the evening I stood outside the hotel, my view of the Natural History Museum obscured by an unending procession of tour buses disgorging Japanese tourists. I’d read somewhere that Berliners are up in arms at the number of tourists who clutter up their beautiful city and I sympathise.
Despite the concentration of tour buses at the hotel, Helsinki seems not to suffer the scourge of mass tourism. Wandering the streets in the evening I found them almost deserted. Even at Helsinki Cathedral there were just a few local people sitting on the steps enjoying the evening.
Hypocritically I travel quite frequently and my impression of the UK is that it appears fundamentally different from continental Europe. Northern Europe has a certain uniformity engendered by common street signs for “Centrum”, yellow trams and tall warehouses. Possibly multiple forcible attempts at unifications by megalomaniac dictators resulting in massive loss of life also have something to do with it – Northern Europe has a more communal feel to it.
One evening I visited the Sokos Helsinki restaurant overlooking the railway station for a delicious steak sandwich. From the balcony it is possible to look out over Helsinki station and the trams, one of which appeared to be a travelling bar – What an excellent idea!
Many people in Helsinki ride bicycles but seem not as obsessed with having the right gear as the cyclists in England. The young men seem to be heavy metal enthusiasts and wear jeans, studs and beards. One motorcyclist sported two enormous cow horns on his crash helmet. All a bit Viking which is odd as I am told that their language is unrelated to Scandinavian languages and instead shares it’s history with Hungarian.
About 11pm, when it was still broad daylight, I discovered a video and sweet shop. Numerous videos and numerous types of sweet all in tall jars including the a suspicious brand named Tyrkish Peba. Which I love but which, I suspect, was originally invented as some kind of chemical warfare agent as it is composed partly of Ammonium chloride.
Returning to the hotel I found it overrun by youths who continued to race around the corridors until the early hours creating a sort of carpeted, indoor version of the Bronx.
On the flight home I got talking to a girl who was publishing a book to be named “No Fear” on the changing face of business leadership brought about by globalisation and technology. An interesting discussion though difficult, given the incessant announcement over the tannoy. In an effort to cover themselves and sell us more stuff, corporations bombard us with advertisements and inane safety warnings. We get this on aircraft, on the London Underground and in those imbecilic, and legally questionable, online “agreements”. Corporations will claim that they need to communicate with their customers but this is a very one sided form of communication. I don’t care about the ground speed, the height or their selection of duty free items. I especially don’t care to hear it in multiple languages one after the other at full volume from a loudspeaker positioned 12 inches from my left ear. I sometimes feel like taking a megaphone onto an aircraft and retaliating. I recall a friend who tried this in the back of a taxi once and got thrown out at Trafalgar Square….but that’s another story.
Art Photography
Tis but an infinite stroke of eternity’s brush, this stretch of beach, this stick of Thai and thy, m’dear
Tags: #crowdedworld, crowded world, Fat Freddy's Cat, Freak Brothers, globalisation, Ko Phi Phi, Paradise, Phineas Phreak, Thailand, Travel
Sta Travel
Travel broadens the mind. Travel is good. I love travel. There is nothing like that feeling you get when you arrive in a new city on the other side of the world. Everyone should travel.
But…….is it too easy these days?
I saw this travel shop in North Street, Brighton. The picture is of Ko Phi Phi, an island off the coast of Thailand. Ko Phi Phi has to be very close to paradise yet now we can gawp at it as we trudge through the sludge of an English winter. We can enter the shop, buy a ticket and queue up along with thousands of others to sit alone on the top of the hill and gaze out at this natural wonder.
Elan Adventurer, Ko Phi Phi, 1991
I visited Ko Phi Phi in 1991 when I arrived as part of the Europa 92 round the world yacht rally. I was asleep in my bunk when we arrived and was awoken by what I assumed was a tractor engine. I imagined we’d arrived in some horrendous industrial port but when I popped up my head I saw this fantastic tropical island. The noise was from the enormous engines that the locals attached to their canoes. Later, I was chatting to an English sales rep from a marine engine company. He told me that they sold the engines with silencers but that the Thai’s removed them as they loved the noise.
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The kids would run up and hang off the side of the local canoes.
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Does anyone remember the The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?
There was a story where, I think it was Phineas, liked to go hiking on his own and commune with nature. He discovered a wonderful patch of Marijuana and he would sit there crossed legged, smoking a joint and watching the sun set.
Then, one day as he arrived he saw 3 other lone hikers all approaching from different directions. Each had thought that he alone knew of the secret marijuana patch. They all ran for the marijuana and grabbed a much of it as they could and ran off. And the last line of the story is “…and that was the end of the secret marijuana patch”.
One of the Fat Freddy Cat stories is also apposite. As Fat Freddy says: ‘Tis but an infinite stroke of eternity’s brush this stretch of beach, this stick of Thai and they, m’dear!
One Fine Day At The Beach
St Malo Beach
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