The card of the helpless traveler

I sometimes tend to forget I have it, yet I always have it with me: it’s the card of the helpless traveler. It’s like an get out of jail free card, but I can use it in almost any situation. Whenever I seem to lose myself in local criteria that I don’t know, I can always bail out: I just pull my helpless traveler card out. Yet I sometimes tend to forget it, while it was just there the whole time, and I didn’t thought of taking it out. Stupid me.

I was hitch-hiking from Toulouse to Bordeaux when it got to me: ‘this traveler-rhetoric is super powerful!’ I can make almost anyone envious, I can make eyes sparkle with joy, curl lips in an ear-to-ear smile: I simply talk about freedom and traveling so that it turns even myself dizzy. I talk about exploring our communal roots, our heredity and history, and our current cultural reality.

I was standing on an entrance for the ring way in an outskirt of Toulouse. It was cold. A cold wind was blowing into my face. My eyes teared. I knew I wouldn’t get a lift by crying, yet I couldn’t help it. I held up a piece of paper with big letters ‘BORDEAUX’ and tried to look inviting to the passers-by. But the wind blew my face into a sad, drowsy grimace and I couldn’t help but feeling the sadness my face was expressing.

I changed my strategy. I noticed that every car that drove onto that entrance where I was standing, drove in the right direction, although they were mostly making faces as if it wasn’t their direction. They were doing the ‘je suis désolé’-face that only the French can feign so sympathetically. Of course I didn’t suspect one of them to drive all the way to Bordeaux. So I took a new piece of paper and wrote in even bigger letters ‘NORD.’ It didn’t work any better. In the meanwhile I was trying to guess what they were thinking but didn’t come up with anything optimistic.

The wind was merciless. My hands were freezing and I took a little pause to warm my hands. I shoved them in the inside of my boxers, gripping them around the warm flesh of my ass cheeks. I stood there ridiculously, but I didn’t care. I convinced myself not to care that much. ‘I’m not what they think I am,’ I said to myself, ‘I am very special kind of tourist with a very special mission, and that makes me interesting.’ I found some good arguments to boost to my confidence. I smiled self-satisfied and I took a third piece of paper and wrote in giant ugly letters ‘NORTH’ and I assumed the face of an American world traveler, the sort everyone knows, the sort everyone can understand, the sort… well, it’s a ‘sort’ and that says enough!

So there I was standing, as a dumb, superficial tourist with a confident (arrogant) smile on his face. Yep, I was one those for a moment. And it felt easy. People looked and knew what they saw. One of those.

A young guy in a Volkswagen Golf stopped. ‘I’m a Belgian traveling through France,’ I explained (in French), and I asked to ride along al little while. He was a student on his way to another part of Toulouse. He would normally take the first exit, but he drove a bit further. And that bit became more than 20km, ‘avec plaisir.’

He told me that ‘north’ is ‘nord’ in French. I answered him that I knew that, but that I just wrote it to catch people’s attention, that it makes me to belong to a category that people can identify easier. He forgave me this mortal sin and asked me where I was from. ‘Ghent,’ I answered, and I narrated how I traveled from Lyon to Aix-en-Provence, to Avignon, to Montpellier, to Perpignan, and to Toulouse, and that I’m now on my way to Bordeaux. We talked about travelling, global networks as couchsurfing and the prices of hostels in France, etc. etc. He also asked me what my motives and goals were. I talked about my passion for travelling and difference, and my goal to know this continent we live in, from within the language, from within its day-to-day popular culture.

It’s a strong rhetoric: see the world from the perspective of others, and all that, - while in reality it’s no more than a noble goal. There is no knowledge to be found in a diversity of perspectives. Diversity isn’t practical. We want absolute knowledge, absolute and universal knowledge, for everyone, everywhere and at every time! ‘Cause in the end, it’s already a big challenge to follow some sophisticated reasoning from one of our closest friends.

Tolerance, diversity and polyvalence sounds very attractive, and it makes sense also, but it’s not realistic. We can’t assume an unanimity, we can’t speak in authority in many languages at once. We talk to people, and we adapt our voice to whom we are talking to. Diversity is weak, and it will always be. It’s almost paradoxical that a diversity gets that much attention by that travelers rhetoric. Blending in makes me weak. I'm stronger as a 'helpless tourist'. It's just a way of demarcation, a way of identifying and categorizing myself vis-à-vis the other.

Couchsurfing.com is thought to be a means to exchange couches. It is explained as if we surf couches the same way we surf from website to website. But if there is something that creates enough swell to form a surfable wave, then it’s this rhetoric of traveling, and subsequent it’s rhetoric of diversity, of learning from others by looking at the world from by their side, and share their vantage point for a moment. This is what I do. And I guess I’m the only one that would explain it the way I just did.

(I’m not writing a lot of English blogs because I simply don’t get a lot of stimulation from the French I meet. I thought most young French people saw English as an international language too.)

A giant round thing with lost of friendly people walking on it: what do you call it?

It's three weeks now. Without much blogging, to be sure. Too many things to do, too many diversions. But now I'm here, finally, with enough stuff to keep you busy for the next ten minutes.

After a short stay in Lyon with an interesting and attentive host, Eric, I moved on to Aix-en-Provence, where I stayed for the next ten days. It gave me a bit of time to get acquainted with the language and culture (the couchsurfer-culture as well as the French culture in fact).

The first week was a bit disappointing. The weather hadn't been  that bad in a while. It was constantly raining and it was cold. And although I didn't really complain that much, I had to listen to others complaining, and that was equally bad. "Il pleut" means besides "it rains" also "he cries," and I had more trouble with the latter to be honest. Towards the end of my stay I had some good times nevertheless, with some female hosts and their friends. Didn't have any sex though. But I met a lot of people who could have easily been close friends - if my life had run just a little different.

Friendship is important. It seems almost too trivial to articulate it. - Almost, but not quite. I also noticed that a lot of French people turn their head right first, when they kiss you to greet. One right, one left, that's how it goes. Sometimes another one follows, but that depends on the region you're in. Intercultural differences are interesting, but hey, let's not make it too formal. What is kissing for, anyway? Yes, let's go back to that friendliness thing.

At first I hesitated quite a bit to do the things I usually do. I didn't saw it as appropriate: I wanted to be polite. In Avignon I had some great conversations about this topic. I stayed with Yannig, in his beautiful apartment next to the place where some dissident Pope lived. (A boring story in fact: but the main thing is that they built half a bridge; and now you can walk to the middle of the river for 4,50 euro.)  But Yannig and I talked about people who are so polite that it makes others feel uncomfortable. I agreed with him that it's better to act familiar, to act as friends, instead of adopting some guise of politeness, that imitation of good company that unmovingly follows prescriptions of appropriate conduct. Let's just assume we are friends, assume respect, assume trust, and act familiar.

What I learned from my stay in Aix-en-Provence is well summarised in this. In particular when it comes to money, generosity is often thought very formal, as if the exchange has to involve concrete valuta in both directions. - "I am generous because it benefits me on long term." But exchange loses it's property of social interaction, of being an interaction of opinions and beliefs, an interaction of values and interests. And it stops being valuable, it stops being enriching, - unless in that one, narrow sense. "I host you if and only if someone else will host me later."

When staying with Yannig in the city of the famous unfinished bridge, I met two Canadian couples, other couchsurfers. I had some great conversations. I was delighted to move my tong in a way in which my thoughts were habituated to move. Yet after our encounter I did notice a kind of residual discomfort, an intellectual discomfort in fact. I wondered what travellers like us, more specifically, what world travellers valued the most: the contact with the local inhabitants or the contact with their fellow travellers? Because, in the end, a traveller can identify himself/herself far better with another traveller than with someone who just came back from working four hours in a kitchen, or with someone who is in his last year of high school, who hadn't had the chance to travel all that much. Is all that talk about 'experiencing the world thought the eyes of others' just an empty rhetoric? In the end, travellers experience travelling - locals experience their local culture: we might need to keep these two apart.

In Avignon I didn't found a clearcut answer, that's sure. It's a tourist city, it is beautiful yes, but it seems to lack real public places: real, public, places, beyond their superficial simulation of antiquity. Montpellier is completely different. It's modern, hip, tendy, young, it's different. I'm in a place where I seem to be able to stay as long as I want. They say that I'm friendly. - I try to be so, too. I made my six hosts a spaghetti alla bolognaise today for example. And they loved it: they didn't just said so to be polite.

Politeness can be seen as a form of economy, it seems. An economic mind shall agree that someone that cleans the house, fills the refrigerator, cooks, and washes the dishes, is good company. Those things can be considered to be criteria for politeness. It gives the economic mind reasons to say that he is in good company. After all, having reasons makes one strong in social discourse. But it doesn't make you any friends though... It lacks the sincerety, it lacks that seductive capacity that makes you want to go beyond criteria, beyond norms and models.

So let's forget the norms for appropriate conduct, let's act like home, and let's have fun with these people who are here now today. It might turn out that we've become friends.

A set of first words...

Whom is this written for? As I am leaving a trail of friends behind who speak English, and as I am quite familiar with the English language myself, I want to keep this blog updated to whatever I’m doing, wherever and with whoever that is. Now, I am making a trip trough France for the next three months. Afterwards I want to spend three months in Vienna and Germany.

The reason for making the trip I am making, is quite simple: I’m recently graduated as philosopher and I want to spend some time considering all the choices I can make towards my personal future. A lot of questions come to mind: How can I make a difference? How can I make positive change possible? How can I deepen and elaborate on the philosophical thoughts I acquired during my four years of study? And how can I bring theory and practice together in one single life? Or, how can I render those great theories productive?

Yet this sabbatical isn’t all about my future personal and professional life. I’m not counting on a clear cut answer by the end of my traveling. The goal of my trip is a bit more complicated. As a Dutch-speaking Belgian, I find my everyday life pretty much oriented to an American kind of consumer culture. I speak English fairly well, and it seems that English is taking over the world as a cosmopolitan language, from the financial sector, over commerce and publicity, to entertainment and leisure. People identify themselves more than ever with English-speaking role models.

The main picture of my goal becomes evident: what about the non-Anglo-Saxon countries? Take Europe: what with France and Germany? Will they adapt and learn English, or will they keep on stuttering in their own versions of Pinguish? Let’s not make any hasted assumptions. Colonialism as well as American paternalism isn’t longer tolerated. This post-modern world is in various respects a shattering of the American Dream. And that’s why I’ve come to France. I want to learn French and see this bright new post-modern world appearing from first row. I want to live French, I want to chat French, I want to drink French, I want to buy a Coke French, I want to dream French. That is my goal. For now. Afterwards I want to repeat all this in Austria and Germany. I want to get into the heart of Europe – and with that I mean the beating heart, that Europe where the standards for modernity are challenged each day again. No European dream: I want to know that vibrant Europe that lives, that keeps on living, even when our Anglo-Saxon fellows awake from their unsatisfying dream.

These discussions evolve. Today I’m sitting in the South of France. I’m one week away from home and I’m getting used to this life on the road. Next to me is Cédric sitting, working on a report for school. We’re both surrounded by a lot of mess, but we don’t mind, it’s not ours. The mess is Matthieu’s. It’s his brothel, but, sadly enough, without whores (‘bordel’ is French for mess and brothel). Aix-en-Provence is a lovely city – when the sun shines. But now everything is wet and cold. The city is covered in dark grey clouds. And after rain comes more rain. It’s like the whole city is crying. And Cédric says that it makes him shit (He says: “ça me fait chié,” to be exact).