TRAVEL TRIALS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18762, 29 December 1930, Page 2

TRAVEL TRIALS.

ESCAPING FROM HOME. ENGLISH IS UNIVERSAL. SAXON CONQUEST. Europe is now superbly organised for the tourist. Here at least is one European industry that is not threatened by foreign competition or the American tariff and is not suffering from want of modern methods, writes Harold Callender in the “New York Times.” “Germany wants to see you,” proclaim the posters of the German railways. England wants to see you. too, and so do France, Italy, Switzerland, and the others. Their annual balance of payments would tell a sad story if they did not see you—in large numbers. Consequently you can now get a room with a private bath at almost any way station on the Continent; and even in conservative London numerous hotels have gone in for such ultra-modern luxuries as running water in rooms, while a small advance guard has even got as far as central heating. Europe is doing its best to make the tourist feel at home. But there are tourists who do not want to feel at home, who travel for the express purpose of feeling that they are away from home —a very long way, if possible. They want to sense an exotic atmosphere and to hear and speak a foreign tongue, and they are quite willing to bathe in a two-gallen tin bathtub in order to do so. They do not cross the Atlantic to live in hotels exactly like those in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, or to hear the English language in its continental variations. To Get Away. They would far rather get completely lost in an alien land and trust to their own liguistic resources—suppleplemented perhaps by a pocket dictionary and eloquent gestures—to find their way. They would like to mingle with the people on their own ground, not merely look at them from train windows or de luxe cafes. They would like to take a complete holiday from their native language until they sight the Statue of Liberty upon the western horizon. The wants of these travellers have been almost completely overlooked. For them Europe is very badly organised; or, rather, it is organised against them. In all the large cities, as well as in the smaller places frequented by tourists, one feels that the entire Continent is engaged in a conspiracy to deprive one of all opportunities to read, hear, or speak any language but English. Travel agents, guides, chaffeurs, hotel clerks, waiters, concierges, and variegated flunkeys—hordes of them —close in upon the traveller at every step and devote themselves unremittedly to the task of isolating him completely from that part of the population which is not engaged in the tourist business and consequently does not speak English. “We offer you,” they seem to say, “our best cuisine, our finest wines, our attentive service, we shall show you all our cathedrals, paintings, sculpture, monuments—every inanimate object worth looking at. Wq forbid you only one thing—contact with our fel-low-citizens; you shall not come within speaking volume of any human being excepting ourselves and your fel-low-tourists) or hear or speak a syllable of our language—not if we can prevent it.” Isolated. If they succeed, as they often do, it is quite possible for the traveller to remain for weeks without catching any more local colour than flashes past a rapidly moving motor car; without speaking or understanding a word of the language of the country—and, incidentally, without discovering the prevailing local prices of the things he buys. At about 5 o’clock one morning not long ago an American woman who did not speak French sat in a little restaurant in Montmarte. She was finishing off an evening’s entertainment with a breakast of pancakes and Vermont maple syrup. An hour earlier she had listened to Harlem negroes play American jazz and sing “My Old Kentucky Home,” while her escort paid prohibition prices for indifferent champagne. Though she had been in Paris a month, this apparently was as close to Parisian life as she had got. “I haven’t met any French people.” she remarked, “excepting waiters and taxi-drivers. I wonder what the French are like.”

She will never know unless she puts the English language behind her and ventures on her own into the genuinely French parts of France. As long as one reads and speaks only English one is merely a somewhat remote onlooker at the foreign scene, deprived of all mental contact with the people. Hence the traveller who is not content with inanimate beauty faces the problem of escaping from the English language—and a difficult problem it is, too, in many places.

“Speak English. For in the larger hotels from Berlin to Rome and from the North Sea to Budapest and beyond, they take one look at you and address you in English. Rarely do they err in guessing the nationality of a guest. “Avez-vous de caviar?” asks the English girl in Galsworthy’s play “The Roof,” and the old Paris waiter replies: “Yes, Madame, and it’s very good, too.” “A che ora”—you begin in Italy, and the hotel conc&rge answers: “I’ll get the time-table. Where do you want to go?” “Wollen Sie, bitte, das Gepack you venture in Germany, to be promptly interrupted with: “Yes, sir, it’s coming right up.” You are not allowed even to ask a single question or to make an ordinary request in the language of the country you are visiting. After a while you become annoyed at this misplaced courtesy, especially since you take a certain pride in being able to speak the language. You enter the office of a tourist agency to cash a cheque. You explain your wants, speaking the language of the country. “You may speak English,” says the clerk politely. At that you grow furious. “What’s the matter?” you retort, stubbornly adhering to the local tongue. “Isn’t my German understandable?” The clerk smiles. “It’s excellent,” he concedes, “but, you see, I’m English, so why should we talk a foreign language?” Whereupon you go out in quest of some soothing refreshment—in a modest, indigenous-looking cafe where you hope the English language is barred. You vow that if the waiter addresses you in English you will walk out, perhaps upsetting a couple of tables on the way. He does not, so you have a large glass of beer and read a German newspaper. Soon a genial little chap sits down at your table and tells you all about his family troubles, eventually hinting that you ought to recip-, rocate. He speaks a queer sort of German, the local dialect, and his grammar is far from perfect. But you don’t mind. You are prepared to welcome warmly anybody who speaks German, even a patois. Of course, he has a brother in Milwaukee or Cincinatti nearly everybody in Germany has, it seems.

When you return to the hotel the doorman says: “Good-evening, sir,” and. tips his hat. You curse him under

your breath. But you are relieved to discover that the chambermaid speaks to you in German speaks it quite bodly, just as though that tongue were not taboo and you hold long conversations with her.

At last your flight from the apparently übiquitous English language succeeds. In a little village in the Tyrol you find a haven where, although the inn is excellent and provided with modern bathtubs, nobody seems to know that the English language exists. You are suspicious at first, expecting a guest from London or New York to drop in at any moment. But the suspicions prove unfounded, and you resolve to return to this very spot for all your vacations.