The Arrogant Emu

Midmorning tuesday, Orvieto, with my suitcase in front of the church

Exploits on the train this morning. My ticket was perfectly indecipherable. Not that it was in Italian -that I could have at least deduced - but it was all abbreviations and numbers! and it was anyone’s guess what stood for what. And my guess turned out to be wrong. I had the right seat number, but I sat down in the first class rather than second. I was congratuling myself on my clevreness and remarking to myself how very elegant and comofratable train travel was. But then along come the ticket man, and with much embarassment on my part, and soem difficulty on his, he managed to convey to me that I should be down in second class. Lugging my luggage along the softly swaying corridor, bumping into passengers, getting caught on doors, I reflected with some bitterness on international travellers. The sort taht you wee in movies and read about in novels, you know. The aristocratic traveller types. You can’t imagine them speaking the language (they visit too many countries and are above it all anyway - maybe they speak French, but that’s all) and you equally can’t imagine them running into difficulties which stem from a limited knowledge of the langauge. Maybe the servants do it all for them.

But is that the sort of traveller I want to be? Do I want to look out the window and see only scenery no matter where I am, do I really want to give up the discontent that comes from trying to understand?

I wonder if everyone feels this was about trvael. For me, it is like a more confusing version of going away to college. I can’t stop being myself for anything, not to slip into the character of a tourist, not to accept it freely as home, as a local. I is indeed the same feeling I have in any new place - Berlin HIgh, St. John’s, an unfamiliar restaurant. I can never be just passing through.