It’s my fault, I know,
It’s my fault, I know, for agreeing to go sight-seeing with a woman of whose character I know so little. But one can’t very well ask, when company is requested on a voyage to the Colosseum, "You aren’t a bimbo, by any chance?"
The first bad sign was that I found her waiting when I go back. That shows - in retrospect, at least, a disturbing lack of initiative, intelligence, and independent spirit.
When we set out, she announced that she was hungry. Since I had had no food since the aforementioned breakfast, I readily agreed that we should find food. I proposed going out to a market, but since I had no idea there one might be, she insisted on going to the place right outside the hostel door. No initiative! Who knows where anything is in a foreign city? Getting there is half the fun.
At this point I had begun to glimpse her character, and should have taken charge. But perhaps it is best that I didn’t. I would not have wanted to have spent the afternoon trekking about Rome with that chatty limpet in tow.
As one who has suffered the same fate in both Spain and Ukraine, I sympathize. It’s not easy, trying to enjoy a cool city with an annoying person. I remember in Toledo, I somehow wound up being followed by Jason McEwen on a day in which I was specifically trying to get lost. He kept asking where we were, and I kept telling him, "I don’t know. That’s the point." Bah. But if you just ignore the person, you can have fun despite them.
June 10th, 2002 at 2:59 pmHeh. Chatty limpet.
June 10th, 2002 at 3:00 pmWhat helped me when I was travelling was to remember that the mix of people in the hostel is constantly changing, and that, therefore, any exposure to unpleasant people was entirely impermanent.
When you know that you will only have to deal with someone for a day or two, even the greatest flaws of character can be taken as amusing and educational quirks.
Also, if they’re too normal, you can try to freak them out.
June 10th, 2002 at 3:03 pm(It helps, of course, to have no concrete plans at all, so that one can get out of bed, head out into the city, and a few hours into things say "Aha! The plan for today is to explore the wonders of being lost in Florence," or, "Aha! The plan for today is to observe, in the manner of an anthropologist, how a group of typical American college students react to a museum in Budapest.")
June 10th, 2002 at 3:07 pm