When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home (4 page)

The answer is, The younger the better. People who think teenagers can be responsible enough to be left alone are in for a shock.

Realistically, a three-year-old does not put eight hundred miles on your car in a week and pour diet cola in the radiator when it boils over. A three-year-old does not summon one hundred of her closest friends to a party before your plane takes off. An infant will not use “emergency funds” to replace the sliding glass door that someone sailed a chair through.

Parents who have never before left their children for any length of time anguish for weeks about the time they will spend away from their kids. They will torture themselves with the thought of those little cherub faces waking up in the middle of the night calling, “Mommy! Daddy!”

They will punish themselves with the memory of those tearful reflections pressed against the window waving bye-bye as they pull out of the driveway.

This feeling will last ten . . . fifteen minutes tops.

Packing

One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip. My husband has obviously never heard of the old axiom for travelers, “Pack half the clothes you planned to take and twice the money.”

His bed is covered with apparel.

If someone should “just happen” to award him the Nobel Peace Prize, he has the clothes for it.

He has the wardrobe to parachute behind enemy lines dressed as a mercenary and clothes to commandeer a torpedo boat through a squall.

If there is a bar mitzvah, ten-kilometer run, costume party, fire in the hotel, bowling tournament, western cookout, or rain for forty days and forty nights, he's ready.

He can attend an underwater wedding or a mountain hike, change a tire or christen a ship.

He has clothes to barter for mules and guides in a Colombian jungle as well as outfits for snorkeling, safaris, high teas, low ceilings; clothes for lounging and clothes to leave behind as tips.

He has an iron that weighs thirteen ounces and folds into the size of a ballpoint pen, a hair dryer, and a global clock that tells you the time where you're not. (He will never have the right voltage to use any of these items.)

He has a personal coffeepot, cassette player, and gym bag full of language cassettes. He carries Tom Clancy's latest eight-hundred-page hardcover novel, a pair of binoculars, a calculator that figures out what the U.S. dollar translates to, lead-laminated pouches to protect his film, a Swiss army knife, and several rolls of toilet tissue. He covers each of his shoes in a little bag as if he is gift-wrapping it.

Off to one side is his food stash. These are little boxes and packets in separate bags that he clings to like diplomatic pouches that he never lets out of his sight. There's a supply of granola, crackers, dried soups, fruits, beef jerky, snacks, and candy bars. I don't know how to tell him London is not a third-world city.

I, on the other hand, have benefited from the advice of Sylvia Suitcase (probably not her real name), a packing expert who appeared one day on Sally Jessy Raphael. Sylvia said if you really planned carefully you could make one hundred and thirty-five combinations out of a twelve-piece wardrobe and be well-dressed for three weeks.

Stacked neatly on my bed is my ensemble: a basic dress, reversible skirt, slacks, blouse, jacket, shorts, T-shirt, vest, two scarves, cap with a bill, and jumpsuit for airline travel, plus underwear and a few toiletries.

When my husband's luggage is stacked by the door it will look like the road company of Les Miserables. Just before I zipped my single overnighter suitcase, he said to me, “By the way, do you have room for my tripod?” For those of you who think pictures grow on postcards, I will explain that a tripod is a three-legged stand that supports a camera so it will remain perfectly still. When fully extended, a tripod will stand waist-high and weigh in at two or three pounds.

Men with tripods will tell you how they were able to capture a hummingbird with crossed eyes or a cloud over the Kremlin that looked like the ghost of Billy Crystal, but they won't tell you their tripod was in their room at the time.

“What do you need a tripod for?” I ask patiently.

“Just in case I want to keep my camera steady while I take a spectacular shot of the Alps or something.”

“You borrowed an Instamatic camera from my father that fits in your shirt pocket. What's to steady?” I ask.

I know better than to argue. I jam the tripod on top of my twelve-piece basic ensemble that can make one hundred and thirty-five combinations and keep me well-dressed for three weeks.

I snap my suitcase shut, lock it, and sit down on the bed to wait.

We are scheduled to leave for Europe in two weeks.

Twenty-One-Day

European Getaway

I said it was our ninth country and our fourteenth continental breakfast. My husband said I was wrong. It was our fifth country and our twelfth continental breakfast.

I waved the itinerary under his nose as our bus sped along the autobahn in Germany. We had been snapping at one another since Amsterdam—or was it Austria?— and we didn't know why. I blamed our surliness on the continental breakfasts. There was no doubt in my mind that it caused mood swings and possible genetic side effects. Since day one, the morning meal had not varied once. It consisted of a paper napkin, a knife, a fork and spoon for which we had no use, a cup and saucer, canned fruit juice, a pot of coffee or tea, and a container of marmalade. There was, of course, the proverbial hard roll.

For the first few days of our nine-country, twenty-one-day European Getaway, there were smiles from the group when the continental breakfasts were put before them. Women pinched their waists and said, “This is what I need. I promised myself I wouldn't pig out.” By the end of the first week, no one spoke when the basket of hard rolls was placed on the table. We all knew the truth. The continental breakfast is not designed to make you thin. Even if it is eaten in small pieces, it will expand and distribute itself on your hips and thighs until you are molded into its image. My husband accused the tour company of issuing the same rolls every morning. He said they scooped up the uneaten ones and forwarded them to our next destination. I told him he was being ridiculous, but he was adamant. He carved his initials and the date in a hard roll in Dublin and said he would prove his point when we got to Paris.

We knew the trip was structured when we signed on for it. After all, wasn't that the point? We were neophyte travelers who had never been out of the country before. We would see as much as we possibly could in a limited amount of time. The death march was a trade-off for the benefits of having someone take care of us, tell us what to eat and when, direct us where to go and when to leave, interpret what was being said, tell us when our luggage was missing, and protect us from all those foreigners staring at us from the other side of the bus's tinted glass.

As the bus picked up speed, the exit sign loomed majestically to our left, and everyone on the bus rolled their eyes, knowing what was to come. The German word for exit is Ausfahrt and every time we saw it, you could count on eighty-seven-year-old Mr. Fleck to say the same thing, “My mother doesn't allow me to use words like that.” I wanted to shout that his mother probably swam out to meet troop ships in the Crimean War, but my husband put his hand across my mouth and whispered, “It's the hard rolls talking.”

The thing about tours is that it doesn't take long to size up your fellow passengers and label them. They are as stereotypical as characters out of an English mystery. The reason you get to know them so well is that the same group shows up on every guided tour you will ever take. Their faces and names will change, but the personalities are an integral part of tour travel.

Riding in the front seat (always!) is the tour's Health Fairy. She's a retired English teacher from Boston who keeps a daily log on who is irregular and who “got back on track” during the night. Every morning there is a report on who has bacterial problems and where they got them. She speaks fluent pharmacy and carries a handbag the size of a dispensary. If you have swollen ankles, sore throat, motion sickness, poor circulation, constipation, burning eyes, or PMS, she's there for you.

Seated just behind her is “Where's Mr. Babcock?” He is traveling alone. No one knows his first name. “Where's Mr. Babcock?” is all we ever hear. He has three cameras around his neck, a vest jammed full of film, a gym bag crammed with light meters, and a portable tripod. Every time we pass a tree, “Where's Mr. Babcock?” jumps out of his seat and asks the driver to stop so he can get a shot. When the bus makes a regular stop for “photo opportunities,” count on “Where's Mr. Babcock?” to hold up the entire tour before he reboards. In Garmisch, he shot three rolls of Ektachrome of a dog with one ear up.

Two days ago, when “Where's Mr. Babcock?” defied the guide's instructions to line up to see Hadrian's Wall and later remained behind to photograph a man relieving himself on it, we voted on whether to leave him there. It was real close.

Ben and his wife, Has-Ben Everywhere, are a couple from New Jersey. They have matched French luggage, and they informed everyone on their first day that they do not generally go on tours but arrange to have their own car and driver. They do not socialize a lot with the other group members. The only time they talk is to mention it's too bad we couldn't have “done Europe” when it was elegant. When they were there years ago, Venus de Milo had arms. No matter what you buy, they bought the same thing ten years ago for a fraction of what you paid.

Everyone tries to stay out of the path of Joan and Bud Whiner. Excuse the pun, they're a pair-of-noids to draw to. Every morning we are treated to their litany of complaints. “Well, they gave us the servants' quarters again” is a staple. The food is inedible, the service unacceptable, and the tour company is going to hear from them. In Rome, they felt the church tour was tilted in favor of Catholic churches.

I cannot say Mr. Murchison's name without whispering it. Everyone else does. When the group rendezvoused in New York, he had taken a few belts to “relax.” We never saw him tense. He is “over-served” in every country we visit. Somehow, he can't be categorized as an “ugly American.” You have to be conscious to be that. He simply is seeing Europe through the bottom of a Jack Daniels bottle. If he would remain quiet, we could put a handle in his mouth and check him through as another piece of luggage. But Mr. Murchison likes to sing when he's had a few drinks. In Limerick, Ireland, he stood up in the Cathedral of St. Mary and sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” In Amsterdam, when we toured the red-light district where the prostitutes sit in store windows on chairs, he warbled “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” In Venice, he nearly fell into the canal singing “O Sole Mio.”

He didn't sing in Lucerne. However, he did put his cigarette out in the fondue.

The couple I like are Mary Jo and her mother, til. Like us, it's their first trip out of the country and they're thrilled with everything they see. When Lil saw her “first Irish dog,” she could barely speak. Mary Jo is keeping a diary right down to the menus.

In the back of the bus are the poor Jacksons. They don't have first names either. They're a couple from Oklahoma who are being followed by their luggage across Europe. But not close enough. They have been wearing the same clothes for seventeen days.

I relate to the Jacksons. That stupid jumpsuit that Sylvia Suitcase recommended is so stiff from wearing, it could walk to Rome by itself. Not only that, I discovered you have to have the talents of a stripper to wear it.

On a plane en route from New York to London, I was in the restroom when the captain announced we were experiencing turbulence and should return to our seats. Before I could get it all together, my jumpsuit dropped to thirty-two thousand feet in a pool of water while my body leveled off at thirty-four-thousand feet. When I finally emerged from the bathroom, my husband observed, “You don't look good enough to have been in there that long.”

“Don't start with me,” I said. “I just dropped my belt down the commode.”

“What's the red mark on your forehead?”

“I hit it on the doorknob.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“You wouldn't believe it if I told you.”

There should be a label in jumpsuits that shows a glass of water with an X through it.

Actually, the bus ride in between the touring is rather relaxing. There is a myth that guided tours are a piece of cake—nothing to do but wait for your travel guide to count the luggage, open doors for you, and pass out tickets to your next adventure. That's not true. We have a lot to do.

To begin with, we have to remember our bus number. On a twenty-one-day tour, you could average thirty-five buses, each from a different country and each with a different driver. If you are in Germany, the bus driver will be Asian. If you are in Spain, the driver will be Russian. If you are touring France with a French driver, you are on the wrong bus.

Today, we are on a German bus with an Italian driver. He is the first foreigner we've seen close up since we left home. Mary Jo got his autograph and picture. His English is spoken like a recording. “My name is Luigi,” he says into a microphone that is inches from his teeth. “Remember that and remember your bus number. It is 1084725. Keep your feet out of the aisles, do not smoke, do not leave valuables on the bus, keep the windows closed, have the correct change for the restrooms, do not bring food aboard, and remember, if you miss your bus, you must return to your hotel at your own expense. If you have a good time, you may tip as you leave.”

Remembering your guide is also taxing. You cannot drift for a minute. Although Mr. Duval is our main guide, we pick up local ones to provide information on what we are seeing. The women guides usually carry umbrellas, plastic flowers, or brightly colored scarfs so we can follow them easily. Male guides try to lose us.

Mr. Duval announces every evening that we must have our luggage outside our hotel doors by five a.m. Never at nine or ten, but at a time when we are asleep. Sometimes, as I drag it out into the hall, my husband's hand is still in his valise attached to clean underwear.

This sounds ludicrous, but if it weren't for Mary Jo and her copious notes, no one would know what country we're in.

As the bus slows down, the Whiners peer anxiously out of the window. “I knew it,” says Bud, “another factory. We didn't pay all of this money to come to a bunch of tourist traps.”

I hated to admit it, but Bud had a point. Our sightseeing did seem to be a bit out of balance. We were allowed fifteen minutes to view the Book of Kells in Ireland and an hour and a half to shop in a sweater factory. We spent twenty minutes touring the Tower of London and two hours in an English bone china factory. We saw Anne Frank's house when the bus slowed down but spent half a day in Holland's Delft factory. Add to that the jewelry factory in Austria, the Murano glass factory in Italy, the lace factory in Belgium, and the watch factory in Switzerland, and we were pretty burned out.

This was a wood carving factory. We all filed off the bus to Luigi's warning, “Remember, your bus number is 1084725. Take your time.”

The factories are all the same. There is a small room the size of a coffee table where an artisan sits on a stool with the product in front of him. This craftsman was chipping away on a bust of Elvis. A guide quickly explains the process. Seconds later, we are herded through two double doors to a room the size of Connecticut. Every three feet along the rows of glass counters displaying hand-carved dogs and tableaus of the Crucifixion is a salesperson with an order book who speaks English like a Harvard professor.

Having never traveled extensively before, I was surprised at how many cathedrals we could visit in one day. The first church we toured was truly a spiritual experience. As I shuffled down the aisle and gawked toward the ceiling, I clung hungrily to every word about the church that came from the guide's lips. Then when I could absorb no more, I wrote it all down in a notebook. I was desperate to know how long it took to build it, how many bricks were used, what year it was struck by lightning, when the east wing was added, the time it took to install the organ, how many trees were cut down to make the pews, how many men died cutting the trees, how many gallons of gold leaf were used on the ceiling alone, and how many miles of scaffolding were needed to restore it. I duly recorded what heads of state were buried from there and in what city the bells were cast. I think one day I actually pushed “Where's Mr. Babcock?” into a water font to get closer to the guide.

After forty or fifty cathedrals, I began to glaze over and became quite preoccupied. When souvenir church bulletins were passed out in a basilica somewhere, I wrapped my gum in mine. Later, when the guide asked, “Any questions?” I asked how many cathedrals could you see in one day before you slipped into a coma.

Near the end of the trip, St. Paul's began to look like St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore looked suspiciously like St. Mark's. I began noticing saints with bad skin, chipped noses, and missing fingers. I really began to worry about myself when I nudged my husband, nodded toward a statue of St. Cecelia, and said, “Be honest. Is that Lee Marvin's twin or what!”

Eventually, it got to the point where it would have taken Robert Redford saying Mass to get me off the bus.

As the death march progressed, other things began to bother me. My twelve-piece basic ensemble that could make a hundred thirty-five combinations was beginning to break down. The breast pocket on the jacket ripped and I could only wear it with my arms folded. A scarf faded on my only blouse, forcing me to wear it with the darts facing backwards. The T-shirt shrunk. I bought another cap with a bill and made an interesting bra to wear around the pool.

I had outgrown my slacks in London ... or was it Rome?

We were all getting testy. The moment my husband hit a hotel room, he unpacked like we had just closed on escrow for the building. Every suitcase was emptied into drawers and closets ... if only for a night. Then he began his laundry. The sun could be setting over the Matterhorn. A carnival could fill the streets of Florence. The Tour de France winner could be coming over the finish line outside our hotel window. He did his laundry.

I was also sick of lugging around his stupid tripod. A perfect stranger approached me one day in Harrods, pointed to the permanent indentation on my jumpsuit, and said, “I see you travel with a tripod.”

Probably the biggest downside to group tour travel is that for twenty-one days, sixteen hours a day, you are with other Americans. God forbid you should rub shoulders with an Austrian, German, Frenchman, Swiss, Italian, Irishman, Belgian, Englishman, or Dutchman. You wait in hotel lobbies with groups of other Americans waiting for their tour buses. You visit shrines where all the buses that unload are carrying other Americans. You eat with one another at long tables that cater to Americans and are sequestered in private dining rooms like juries.

Guides tell you American jokes in English. You are dropped off at souvenir shops that sell T-shirts with the Chicago Bulls stamped on them. When you go to a circus or the theater, you are set off in a section reserved for American tourists. In three weeks, the closest we ever got to a foreigner was Lil's Irish dog.

The bus rolled on and the twenty-first day found us gathered on the second terrace of the world-famous Eiffel Tower for the obligatory gala farewell party.

I looked at this group of people whom I had seen more often than my mother and had more intimacy with than my gynecologist. We had shared some extraordinary moments together.

We had dined in a castle at a medieval banquet in Ireland. (Ben Everywhere observed the Samoun Fumme was cold and Wortes-Sallet-Ton-Tressis was tougher than he remembered.)

We had seen the Pope standing in his window waving from St. Peter's Square. (The Whiners said they didn't believe it was really him. They saw someone push a start button in his back.)

Mary Jo and her mother had yodeled on stage at the Swiss Night Out party in Lucerne. We had been to the London Palladium and the Sistine Chapel.

As we sipped the complimentary French wine, my husband started to butter his hard roll. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and dramatically hoisted the roll over his head like Kunta Kinte offering up his newborn son. “I knew it!” he shouted. “It's my roll from Dublin. Here are my initials and the date!”

The Whiners said they weren't surprised.

The Everywheres looked bored and told him to sit down.

“Where's Mr. Babcock?” blinded him with his flash as he captured the moment on film.

Mary Jo and her mother declared it a miracle.

Mr. Murchison offered a toast and a fast chorus of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Parlez Vous.”

The Health Fairy warned, “Don't eat it. It will make you gassy.”

When we arrived home, I set fire to my travel clothes. To me, they had the same symbolism as maternity clothes. Get rid of them and you would never have to go through the experience again.

The tour was a nice smorgasbord of Europe, but we felt constricted by time schedules and bound by an itinerary where people hovered over you as if you were an endangered species during mating season.

After the guided tour experience, we fantasized about renting a car and taking off all by ourselves. In our dreams, we imagined the two of us immersed in a little red sports car like two lovers in a hot tub. We visualized the wind blowing our hair as we discovered quaint little inns on dirt roads. We paused on a mountaintop to drink wine and toast the breathless view.

“We could set our own pace,” I said to my husband. “No stress ... no tour buses ... no guides.”

“You're right,” he said.

“No luggage outside the room by five a.m., no table for twenty at lunch, no more major decisions of 'Do I use my fifteen minutes to tour the Louvre or go to the restroom?'”

In retrospect, it sounded so simple. If you could drive a car, you could drive a rental car in another country, right?

Right.

The Rental Car

We were stopped for a traffic light at the mall one afternoon when one of our kids noted that the car in front of us had his windshield wipers on even though the sun was shining. He was also trying to make a left-hand turn from the center lane.

“Is he crazy or what?” giggled my son.

I grabbed the kid by the collar and put my face close to his. “Listen up, mister! I never want to hear you use that tone again, do you understand me? Look at the plates. That poor unfortunate that you have deemed to call crazy is driving a rental car. Do you know what that means? It means he has a road map that looks like the veins in the back of my knees and he was lucky to find his way out of the airport. He is in a car that he has never seen before and is looking for his route signs that are hidden somewhere behind a tree. There are fifteen pieces of luggage jammed into that compact because they didn't have the station wagon he ordered. The poor devil will never find out how to turn on the lights when it gets dark so he will have to drive until his battery dies. If he's real lucky, he will find the button that releases the key in his ignition. If he doesn't he will have to spend the night in the car. Don't you ever talk that way about a person driving a rental car again!”

My son looked at me and said softly, “It's Italy again, isn't it, Mom?”

Italy

The Italian behind the car rental desk in Naples boredly drew a circle around a large X and said, “You are here.” Then he outlined an artery on the map with a yellow pen and continued, “Just turn right at the first—”

“We're where?” asked my husband, leaning over for a closer look.

“Here,” he repeated, stabbing the map with his pen.

“But 'here' is in the margin,” I interrupted. “How do we get onto the map?”

“It is simple, madam.” He sighed. “Take the Via Don to Foria and follow the Piazza Cavour to Via Roma. Look for the Piazza Medaglia d'Oro off Via Giotto Menzinger and follow the signs. You can't miss it.”

It had all sounded so romantic. We'd pop over to Italy, rent a car, and wind around the Amalfi Drive, taking in Positano and Ravello and perhaps zip over to Capri. We certainly didn't need a guide for that!

Besides, driving in Italy wouldn't be like driving in Ireland. That had been a nightmare. From the moment my husband eased himself into the driver's seat at Shannon, he sensed something was wrong. “Where's my steering wheel?” he asked.

“I've got it,” I said. “It's on my side.”

Carefully, he eased his body over the gearshift and into the seat. He started the motor and inched his way onto the highway where he nearly met another car head on. After two more close calls, we realized everyone was driving his car on the wrong (left) side of the road. I'm here to tell you we have lived life in the fast lane and life in the slow lane, but until you've spent a few weeks in the wrong lane, you have nothing to talk about.