Basketball at Midnight

FIRST, if you tried to IM me in the last four or five days, it probably wasn’t me, but some lewd Turkish guy(s). One told Andrea he was a tour guide. A terminal I used in Istanbul had AIM and it saved my password; I haven’t been on a terminal with AIM since then to change my password (and AIMExpress doesn’t allow you to change passwords), and so someone kept logging in as me.

Andrea had a fun conversation with him in which she pretended to be my sister Jen. I have copied it at the bottom for your amusement….

Anyway, moving on to Bulgaria…. Sophia, the capital, is a fairly pretty place with the normal trappings of an planned tiny capital city (somewhat reminiscent of Madison, Wisconsin). It is strange to be in a place with lots of white people again, but I’m slowly getting used to it.

Because of the whole AIM incident, however, this post will be mostly about tourists and what local people think about tourists. I tend not to consider myself a tourist…. As one other backpacker said, “I’m not a tourist, I’m a traveller.” We could consider a tourist one of these people that takes a short little vacation in a country and spends most of that time visiting tourist attractions or sitting around a beach. A traveller, I would say, is a person who is travelling for a prolonged but relatively definite period of time, interested in aspects more closely related to the lives of the people in the target countries, and sensitive to inappropriate customs of the people. I’ll throw in another broad category of “wanderer” (which is the coolest one) who has no definite timetable and tends to drift wherever and whenever they feel pulled.

That whole sensitivity to culture is the big indicator of the tourist. These are the folks who travel mostly with other tourists, don’t take the time to actually interact with locals that aren’t serving them in some way, and oblivious to local customs and actions that would be inappropriate. These are also the most blatant (if not common) types of foreigners, and the ones from which we obtain our stereotypes.

To look into the stereotypes, let’s take a look at some common types of tourists:

Families and retired couples who come for a few weeks on package tours in which they’re ushered through the countries by bus, boat, or plane and rarely leave each other’s company. In Egypt, there are over 100 Nile Riverboats in which such tourists leave the boat only to see some sights (and snap pictures). They are easily identifiable in the local markets by their shorts and hawaiian t-shirts that they were wearing by the pool on the boat all day. This dress, in Egypt, is absolutely unacceptable. In addition, these tourists have no concept of the real price for things, and help to propogate the idea that white people will pay anything for souvenirs.

In Dahab, I was haggling over a little Anubus statue, and my current price was 25 Egyptian pounds (about US$3). The Egyptian said “I know people like you, an this is the price I give you. No better price in whole Egypt.” A Swiss tourists came in and he asked me to hold a minute. She took a pair of statues (same material, a little bigger than mine) and asked how much.

He said “30 each, 60.”
She replied, “Dollars or Euros?”
“U.S., only.”
“Too expensive, maybe 30 for both?”
“Special price for two: 50.”

After a few more minutes, she bought them for US$37. I kept silent (laughing), and when he came back to me, he said, “See… For her, $37. 25 Pounds for you, no problem.”

The other tourists, younger folks usually taking time off before, during, or after college (different countries have different trends), end up getting drunk most of the time and talking about hooking up with both other tourists and locals enough that this becomes the fundamental stereotype of younger travellers. After watching the loud and abnoxious Aussie tourists (and others) here for Anzac Day (a military slaughter in Turkey during WWI that now ends up being a huge drunken festival every year) spending most of the day and all of the night drunk and raving, it’s not hard for me to wonder why. In Olympos (a big waypoint on the Anzac tourist circuit), I felt completely out of harmony with most of the tourists, and spent most of the evenings talking with a Tyler, the Vancouver-ish Canadian, Amanda, and Manuela (Italian).

Another fine story from Istanbul. Matt, a Canadian, and I were walking through the nightclub area trying to find someplace to have a beer and dance. After being rejected from a number of clubs, a Turkish guy came up to us asking if he could help.

We said we wanted to find a cool place to dance.
He asked, “You want to find someone to fuck?”
We responded, “No, we want to find a cool dance club to dance.”
“You want to dance and then fuck? I show you prostitutes.”
“No… Dance, have a beer.”
“There are transvestites on street few blocks that way” (misunderstanding the ‘No’).

For those of you that had the pleasant IM experience with the Turkish guy trying to be me…. you probably have more of an idea as to how much they think this.

Then, since I went off on the Aussie Anzac day tourists, most people (both locals and other tourists) think Americans to be loud, arrogant, and ignorant of all people except for themselves.  I haven’t found it untrue, and that may be much of the reason why I’ve travelled mostly with Canadians…. in fact, I’ve travelled with more people from Vancouver alone than from all of the US.

Just a second ago (imagine the coincidence), a Bulgarian asked me if I was German… And refused to believe I was American for a minute. After inquring, he said, “You don’t look stupid, and all Americans look stupid. You would be better in Bulgaria to say you were German; say you name is Krauss. We respect Germans. We have no respect for Americans.”

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Here’s Andrea’s final conversation with the Turkish jerk:

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Start of thesamana buffer: Mon Apr 19 14:03:14 2004
thesamana: who are you?
[andrea]: your sister
[andrea]: duh
thesamana: my sister
thesamana: i do not have one
[andrea]: Yes you do
[andrea]: nice try
[andrea]: I’m telling mom
thesamana: no i do not
thesamana: if even i do i do not know it
[andrea]: fine be that way.. see if i wire you the $1000 you wanted
[andrea]: you can just rot over there
thesamana: ok
thesamana: ok
thesamana: then send that money to me
[andrea]: no.. you apparently don’t have a sister
[andrea]: I’m not sending you any more money
thesamana: well if you sen it to me i might reconsider about it again huh?
[andrea]: No. I told you last time. if you screw around again, i’m not bailing you out
[andrea]: you can find another way to get the $1000.
thesamana: come on i can not do it in another way at the moment
thesamana: u know that
[andrea]: yes you can.
[andrea]: sell yourself on the street
[andrea]: you did it before
[andrea]: you can do it again
thesamana: what?
thesamana: what u talking about?
[andrea]: what you did last time before i found out you needed money
[andrea]: you know… in thailand
thesamana: well this time i can sell myeelf to you
thesamana: come on stop joking
[andrea]: hey.. our therapist said to never mention that again
[andrea]: that’s really mean
thesamana: u goanna send me the money or not?
[andrea]: no, i’m not
thesamana: ok
thesamana: fine
[andrea]: just because i’m adopted is no reason to say that i’m not your sister
thesamana: u know i was joking
[andrea]: you know you’re not allowed to joke about that
thesamana: i said if u send me that money i ll think about it again
[andrea]: wait until mom finds out
[andrea]: you’re in deep trouble
thesamana: what
thesamana: ?
[andrea]: you know how much it upsets mom when you make comments like that
*** thesamana signed off at Mon Apr 19 13:56:01 2004.
End of thesamana buffer: Mon Apr 19 14:03:14 2004