Tourist v. Traveler

I had a bit of a hard time relating to Iyers essay.  I would guess that his observations are accurate considering the locations he focused on - Cuba, Southeast Asia - but I do not think his descriptions would accurately characterize the way my interactions as an American in France have gone.  Being an American in Cuba would make you exotic, and would raise a lot of questions.  But being an American in Paris just makes you, admittedly, a cliche, and I think it raises a very different set of questions, the primary one being: how do I get off the bus?

The bus that I am thinking of is the big red one in NYC, where the tourists sit on top and take pictures.  Paris is basically set up as a tourist paradise.  The city has made great efforts to be tourist-friendly and Amero-centric.  The only things they have not made accomodating are the parisian cliches that drive their economy: the family bakeries, the cobble-stone streets, the French-speaking.  From stepping out of Charles De Gaulle onward there is this kind of choreographed dance - it is not that there are not difficult or annoying things, but they are exactly the things you are forewarned to expect, comfortable signs of foreignness like adapters and euros.  The bus is helpful, and maybe even necessary, when you first arrive.  And it is not that the bus is all bad - it is nice to know, should i ever have a free afternoon, I can hop on the metro and be at the Louvre - but this is a city, not a theme park.  Like New York, it faces the problems of all modern cities: homelessness and hunger and garbage, pollution and disease and terrorism, theft and drug use and sex trafficking and population control, the list goes on endlessly.  Iyers notes how one of the joys of travelling is seeing how different plqces solve these problems, especially when their solutions are very different from ours.  But France, because it is aware that for many people it is nothing but an enormous photo opportunity, has gone to great lengths to hide its mechanics from visitors - these mechanics which I have taken to calling the bus.

By the way, I am not using contractions because nothing is more difficult than getting an apostrophe out of a french keyboard.

But this leads me back to something Iyers hints at but ultimately trivializes: do you be a tourist, or a traveller?  The choice may seem simple - no one wants to be called a tourist - but the question becomes what is more authentic? More sincere?  We are taking a language intensive right now, and I am in a higher level after having studied French for many years.  My teacher, a French person, frequently tries to teach us little phrases and and slang which are particular to modern Parisians.  As we spend our time practicing these phrases over and over again, I find myself wondering whether my goal is to sound like, emulate, immitate, or if there is something both dishonest, in trying to fool Parisians into thinking I am French, and silly, in thinking I could possible succeed in doing so.  Would it be better to just be an American, a tourist, just like the millions of tourist they encounter in their daily lives from all of the world?  Obviously it is more polite to address someone in the language they are most confortable if you can, but should I be trying hard to smother my American accent?  To what ends?

And this raises that big question that I imagine all of us have been pondering as we loose luggage or get lost or pick-pocketed or just mqke fools of ourselves trying to have a conversation in a language other than our native: why, exactly, am I here?  Once you arrive, the general "expanding horizons, studying abroad is good for you" answer that satisfied friends and family as they watched you all summer fight with consulates over an endless visa paperwork does not seem quiote sufficient.  And being here is an enormous opportunity, available only for a limited time - so, what to do with it . . . ?