The Eiffel Tower 'N' Things - The Absurdity Of Tourism

Beverly Parsons lost her husband and within weeks of the funeral signed up for a Lindblad tour down the Danube, a ten-day excursion curated by a Columbia University docent, five-star meals by a renowned Parisian chef, and a clientele that matched her profile.  They would all be, promised the tour company, likeminded senior citizens like her, all with advanced degrees, a thirst for knowledge, and a desire for familiar, congenial company. 

 

It would be a nice trip and would help her forget Harry, her husband of some fifty years who passed away after a heart attack which took him off in an instant sparing her dreary months of the home care that other less fortunate widows had suffered.  She had loved Harry, or at least had gotten used to him and their life together which had become a rather routine slog - the same chicken dinners and walks in the park for years.  

All in all she had little to complain about - a reasonably faithful husband, two fine children, a grandchild who showed promise, and a hefty bank account.  Not like Harriet Beacham whose brigand of a husband had died without leaving a farthing, all retirement savings squandered in bad debts and worse judgment. 

Unlike many of the women on the Lindblad tours Beverly was not looking for a new husband - one was more than enough, and she looked forward to a life independent of Harry's dogged sedateness.  No, she would do something with her life, see the world, travel to exotic locales, meet interesting people, and find herself.

Now, to be honest, these guided tours could be rather dull and uninspiring.  No matter how much pizazz the docent put into tales of Austrian kings, European history could be mercilessly tiring; and information provided about palaces, museums, and monuments usually went in one ear and out the other.  But the company was always lively, quick on the uptake, and on the tour for the ride with a kind of devil-may-care sophistication that was appealing. 

There was always one passenger who took it all seriously, oohing and aahing about this or that, adding anecdotal evidence to the docent's lectures, bits and pieces of travel apocrypha, personal observations and ironic references - getting his money's worth while the rest of the tour just kibbitzed and schmoozed until lunch or drinks. 

Arnold Pastor was one of these passengers.  Europe was the holy land, a place of special meaning, inspiration, and ambition.  Europe meant culture, sophistication, grace, and elegance - the ideal to which Americans should all aspire; and just being on such hallowed soil would mean the first step to acquiring what he had long desired - sophistication. 

How and why Arnold had developed such a passion was lost somewhere in his past - French II perhaps and pictures of the Cafe des Deux Magots, or the visit by Francois de Miramon-Fargues, son of a viscount, heir to a castle, and even as a teenager already graced with a certain charm and savoir faire that was irresistible; or the trip his parents took when he was a child, a trip down the Rhine, stops in Baden-Baden, Vienna, and Prague - castles, ramparts, forts, and tales of Hapsburg princes. It was  transformative. 

 

The Pastors invited neighbors and friends to see their slide show - there was Pinky on the third deck of the tour boat about to have dinner with the purser and in the back ground was Hedy and Bill from Chillicothe.  The docent, a Herr Meistersinger, knew so much about Prussians, Hessians, and Swabian subalterns, and his accounts, although somewhat tangled in the usual roundabout of European intrigue, that he kept keen what might have been little more than desultory interest.  

Arnold couldn't help but be enticed by his parents' stories and their vast enthusiasm, so before long he began his touring.  First was Paris, Louis XIV, Versailles, and the Louvre - magnificent, unforgettable.  Just one look at the Hall of Mirrors and he was forever after a Francophile, a devotee of anything and everything French.  He never tired of telling his colleagues about French culture that defied description. 

And so it was that Arnold became one of Lindblad's premier travelers, first class cabin, seat at the captain's table, front row seat at the lectures. He was indefatigable, determined to visit every notable and noteworthy site on the European continent, and on his tour through the Loire Valley, he met Beverly Parsons. 

She was diffident at first, quite standoffish at this squirrely little man who asked all the wrong questions of the docent, mixing ancestries and battles, his hand shooting up like an ambitious schoolgirl.  A quirky bother, she concluded, but there was a foolish excitement in his attitude.  Every monument, every battlefield, every encampment, and redoubt lit him up like a circus truck, all sparklers and Roman candles. 

Beverly had been bored to tears, moping around D Deck, sitting on a chaise lounge sipping a cup of tea, while Arnold jumped from porthole to railing, pointing out features, exclaiming loudly, riffling through the pages of his Baedeker's to check a reference, cadging a few minutes from the off-duty docent, niggling him with questions and observations. He was a mountebank, happily.

What on earth was the noisy little bugger all about, Beverly wondered.  Everything on this tedious tour was of marginal interest to be stored away and forgotten.  There was nothing illuminating about the Eiffel Tower, no particular human interest or personal relevance.  Chartres and Notre Dame were impressive displays of Vatican wealth but her own chapel in New Brighton offered her the occasional solace and glimpse of the hereafter she needed. 

 

Travel was a distraction, a diversion, a reel or two of a B movie that took her mind off her loss, but gave her a sense or wasted time and effort.  Of what earthly use was a passing glimpse of some regal excess? Wasn't Gettysburg enough to remind her of the vacuity of war, without having to sail the Dnieper to see Borodino?  War and Peace had certainly done more to humanize war and give it universal meaning than any tour of Napoleon's military odyssey. 

But Arnold quacked on and on at table, a marionette of American enthusiasm, a real tourist, a lover of sights, a collector or historical oddities, keeping a cobbled together memory of his travels, a scattered potpourri of incidental bits and pieces. 

The two left the Queen of the Seas in Baltimore, one delighted, enthused, and impatiently waiting for his first seance, the slide show with accompanying commentary, the oohs and ahhs of his neighbors; the other far more disconsolate and intellectually weary than she had been when she boarded; but taken together they explained why the tour industry is a multi-billion dollar business. 

Tourism?  The greatest invention since P.T Barnum and the circus, an easy-sell revelry, full of hoopla and unexpected sights, a break from the routine, a rousing show, an hour or two of clowns and lion tamers to be filed away for insertion in Uncle Harry's Christmas dinner tales. 

The Catholic Church, thought Beverly.  Now that was worth something - all the pageantry, excitement, and diversion from the ordinary that tourism intended but never delivered.  And so it was that she lit a candle for her husband, said the rosary, and thanked God.