Americans at home and abroad Around Europe with 45 Yanks—and Gigi

Press, 3 October 1985, Page 21

Americans at home and abroad Around Europe with 45 Yanks —and Gigi

By

KEN FRASER

Gigi Swart, a talented linguist and cosmopolite, stood at the front of a Dover-bound bus and gave blunt instructions to the 45 Americans on board. She told the passengers, some reeling from their first European culture shocks - warm English beer and the paucity of ice cubes in London — that the next two weeks in six countries on the Continent

would be far from leisurely. Tour operators had dubbed the particular trip the “Endurance Test.” She was pleased to note that a few of the passengers had undergone military training as punctuality would be a key for success; stragglers might be left behind at transport pick-up points. Participants were asked to leave gross insensitivity towards European culture locked in their coach and hotel rooms once the hovercraft had landed in France. The direction applied also to dining rooms. They were not to expect buckets of ice everywhere nor pitchers of chilled water, as at home, though it would not be improper to ask for some table water. Europeans, Gigi said, regarded ice as being bad for the liver.

Many American visitors, with some justification, feel they are unloved by Parisians, and Gigi tried to assure passengers that with a commonsense approach and pleasantries they would get a good response during their shopping excursions.

A seasoned leader of tours of the Continent and fluent speaker of seven European languages, Gigi was warming up and the ears of every American pricked like sentinels.

On previous trips some passengers had brought with them supplies of American postage stamps and wondered why their mail from Europe never reached United States destinations.

Also, there was the myth of universal acceptance, of American dollars to be dispelled. Gigi would be recommending amounts which should be converted into local currency by exchange bureaux at each border crossing. “You would not expect a New York cabbie to accept Swiss francs, so the same thing applies here,” she emphasised. Another group of Americans waiting at the Dover terminal did not seem to have been well versed. One member had already converted some cash in readiness for the landing in France and was trying to buy English ice creams with French francs.

A couple nearby on what they termed the “Economy Joe tour,” were struggling to fill in the entry card for Calais. Paris was to be the first overnight stop so they figured that was required as the place of embarkation; they ignored my suggestion that the answer was Dover. Meanwhile, Gigi had unleashed concisely and effectively the main pointers for her party and her addendum was “Let’s have fun.” So it proved to be in spite of 6 a.m. wake-up calls and coach travel of up to 800 kilometres a day. Gigi called herself “Mama” and everybody else “Darling” (with a Zsa Zsa Gabor accent). As for herself she was looking for a “90-year-old sugar daddy with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin.” She, however, was not to be crossed and, understandably, did not tolerate conversations on the coach when she was giving historical and cultural background whether it be in the tedium of sparsely populated French countryside or a traffic jam (stau) in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. South-African born of Dutch and Austrian parentage with some childhood years in Argentina, she also had first-hand experience of the American way of life. A former airline stewardess, she had lived in the United States and Australia and, as a staff member of the Dutch embassy, in Ottawa, Canada. Italy was obviously her favourite place; she first lived there as a

language student to enhance appreciation of her great love — opera — and, in recent years, has shared a Rome apartment when not engaged as a contract tour leader. She often conversed in animated Italian with our driver, Augusto, whom she touted as the “best coach driver in Europe,” and she was the cheer leader when he performed some of his superb manoeuvres. Augusto had a rugby sticker on his seat-side rubbish can; he was from Piacenza, which, has had at least one New Zealander playing for its rugby club. Aboard the air-conditioned coach it was the tour company’s policy to prohibit smoking. Auguste cleaned the coach each evening, and Gigi ensured that no food or drinks were taken on by passengers with just one exception — mineral water because it was not sticky. Teetotaller, vegetarian, caffeineabstainer, and non-smoker, Gigi was a devotee of mineral water properties; soon nearly everybody was following her lead and swigging in their seats from big plastic bottles of the stuff. Passengers had begun to feel the strain in Italy. Lunch stops at motorway self-service restaurants meant queuing at least three times, sometimes in lines that spilt outside into a boiling sun and 40 degrees Celsius. First, there was the line to select from the dishes offered; then the line for payment to the cashier and a docket to join a third queue to pick up the order; a fourth queue snaked to the lavatory where a drop of 250 lira (about 25 cents) into the saucer of the female custodians was recommended. “It sure is different,” remarked one black woman from Illinois. Back in France, Gigi’s exhortations had been absorbed and most of our insensitivities were not within earshot of the natives — like that of the college graduate at the back of the bus on the way to Notre Dame Cathedral. She announced that history and geography were not her fortes and asked what Notre Dame was. Somebody (it may have been me) suggested it was a gridiron team (she had not heard of that either). Inside the cathedral one of our group left on his baseball cap and earned a rebuke from our Parisian guide. We managed to negotiate Florence, the birthplace of Renaissance art, and the treasures at the awesome Vatican without too . much trouble mainly because nothing was emerging from open mouths. Then it happened — the thing which Americans have a paranoic fear of in summer — the failure of thp air rnndifinnina cvcfpm nn niir

floor (the sixth) at our Rome hotel. Angry protests were to no avail. Having slept with by balcony doors open, I made light of it the next morning at breakfast among grumpy American guests. “Us Americans are used to the best,” retorted an elderly lady from my coach who may have lain in a pool of sweat. Considering the relative cheapness of the tour for those buying it with American money I was taken aback. But whether American hamburgers are better than European gourmet delights is open to question. On rounding a corner near Cologne Cathedral, there it stood at last after 10 days for our group on the Continent — a McDonalds. Passengers sent up a resounding cheer and everybody trooped off for Big Macs and quarter-pounders. Later, in the Republic of Ireland, I met a retired United States Air Force officer doing genealogical research. He offered sympathy, saying that he had vowed years ago never to tour abroad with fellow countrymen; later still, in the United States itself, I was told several times not to judge Americans by those who travelled overseas. The Continental tour had ended in the Netherlands with my ears ringing from the plaintive claims of an otherwise charming young lady that she had seen a coyote in a Dutch field. Many of the American passengers had been genuinely nice people and I met hundreds more like that during four weeks of overwhelming hospitality in the homes of distant relatives in Missouri and California. What I had difficulty in swallowing was a widely held view that Americans are not well-travelled. At least this northern summer they have been on a travel binge encouraged by the value of the American dollar, and the strength of the English sterling has not deterred London visits. Twenty thousand American lawyers added to the crush by attending the annual conference of the American Bar Association in London. But in some ways Americans are almost as disunited as the Italians. “The only thing that unites us is defence,” a Vietnam War serviceman told me in Missouri. Certainly there are parochial gulfs. Many Mid-Westerners dislike things connected with California and the eastern cities, while many Californians regard Mid-West-erners simply as red-necks in pickups, drinking beer and raising Cain. A favourite place of mine was Kansas City, but when I mentioned the name in California many seemed to imagine it as a cowboy, hirlr tnwn* in fant it ic a mndnrn

sprawling, and attractive city of two million people with many fine institutions including four medical schools. Unlike Californians, small-town Missourians in the western part of the state are not afraid to leave unlocked their houses and cars though the liquor store-keeper may have a loaded handgun within easy reach. “Insurance,” as one called it. Those Missourian cars are good, solid American ones — Buicks, Dodges, Cadillacs, Pontiacs — none of your eggshell Japanese variety; there are no foreign dealerships anyway. The “Buy American” catch-cry is being heard elsewhere, too, as Japanese cars get dearer. New Zealanders may be little known in the Mid-West, apart from the übiquitous kiwifruit and a few

softballers from Aotearoa making names for themselves, yet there is sufficient association to pick up free drinks at regular intervals. Always somebody in a small town from the Second World War, the Korean or Vietnam campaigns, remembers New Zealanders and holds them in high esteem. Less is known about the rift between the two countries on the nuclear ships issue.

Whatever differences may exist between New Zealand and the United States, farmers in the MidWest espouse much of the gloom as ours. In spite of a boom growth season in Missouri from plentiful rains, with the corn as high as an elephant’s eye and the soya beans not far behind, it will just mean another market glut. The industry is in bad shape with farmers unable to meet loan repayments and firms selling up farms of depreciating land value; the over-valued American dollar has been a millstone in efforts to sell produce overseas. Meanwhile, out in California the lines at the soup kitchens are being described by social workers as the longest since the Depression. Coupled is an alarming illiteracy rate, some college graduates are now being found to have heads filled with useless information because of the inability to read and write.

Allocation and alternative education systems are factors, while liberals lay much of the blame on cuts by the Reagan Administration, and the conservatives blame the unions.

Volunteer workers prop up. the police and welfare services which have suffered cuts. At the communications centre for emergency services in burgeoning Sacramento (twice the population of Christchurch), part-time female volunteers man the telephones in shifts. “We could not function without them,” said the police captain-in-charge. After a day walking round inner Sacramento, viewing museums, fine old Victorian homes and the beautiful administration buildings of the state capital, I was approached by a ragged figure near a small park. “Excuse me, sir, you couldn’t by any chance spare me a dime or a nickel?” he asked. Suspicious, and later conscience-stricken, I declined. “Sorry to have troubled you,” the young man said. “Thanks anyway.”

Seated then on a bench in the park I was watching a nearby squirrel, a group of drug-crazed people falling about, and a man stuffing a huge plastic sack with discarded beer and pop cans. He drew level with me and made conversation. He pointed to a house for alcoholics, which had been his home for a period until three years ago. Since then he had slept in the streets and occupied himself each day by gathering cans to sell to a recycling depot so he could eat. He mumbled apologies needlessly for wasting my time. Soon afterwards I found my computerised, talking Chrysler transport. When the ignition was turned on the car issued a measured verbal warning that the windscreen-washing fluid was getting low.