Globalisation

My father travelled regularly to Chicago in the 1960s and I was the only boy in my class, possibly the whole school, to have been to America, as we used to call the US. Freddie Laker, let alone his aviation spoor, had yet to bring us the mixed blessings of low cost flights.  In those days, it was de rigueur to take a small gift when visiting friends or colleagues overseas and nothing would enchant English expats as much as a pot of marmalade. Globalisation has made it almost impossible to find meaningful gifts or souvenirs now that high streets are identical and most merchandise is available through Amazon in any case.  
Staunchly middle class villages and urban enclaves fight stoutly against creeping domination by the chain store. Think Totness in Devon and Stoke Newington in London. Maybe it's ironic that some of their most embattled establishments, coffee shops, wouldn't even exist if it were not for the popularisation of the genre by the success of Starbucks and its ilk. And it's interestingly to contrast the acclaim heaped on these doughty middle class nimbies by the liberal press with the scorn they pour on countries which try to preserve their most cherished cultural bastions. The obvious example is France, which starts with the inherent disadvantage that it is, well, France. The Institut Francais has long railed against encroaching anglicisation of French which they view as cultural imperialism. The ridicule reserved for attempts to control the use of language is partly due to its futility.  In a global world, tilting at that windmill is as doomed to failure as any other laudable campaign from nuclear non-proliferation to getting teenagers to squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Perhaps France has got it wrong though and has been too timid about conservation. Instead of limiting it to the lingo, how about expanding the ambition to banish homogenisation of the high street. No more McDonald's elbowing aside neighbourhood bistros. United in their stand with Totness and Stokey, that would be globalisation we could all support.

© David Thompson 2012

Tourism

As an industry, tourism generates more ironies than most. The most trenchant paradox is that as international travel become more accessible it accelerates cultural convergence and becomes nugatory.
Business travel must shoulder even more of the blame. I know from experience how, arriving in an unknown city late at night in a different time zone with a client meeting a few hours away, one craves the simplicity of familiarity. Multinational hotel chains recognise this and pander to our weakness. At every Marriott, JW smiles down paternally from a huge Ruddigorian portrait while you check in, a talisman promising that the bed will be as soft here as it was in Frankfurt and the towels as fluffy as they were in Melbourne. But the balance between the anodyne and cod-local is carefully calibrated: business travellers relish unique touches, provided they don't interrupt the smooth flow of commerce. Local cuisine alternatives at the breakfast buffet are acceptable, provided the international standards, embodied by Kellogg's, are there too. Recounting the peculiar breakfast tastes of the natives makes good travellers' tales back in the office.  
Leisure travel is a different matter. An acquaintance from my PwC days who travelled regularly on business and whose life was consequently spent in a haze of identikit hotels, booked a holiday with some colleagues in a log cabin, eager to experience the traditional way of life.  There was a mixup and the tour company explained that their primitive accommodation was double booked. Don't worry, they said, we're giving you a free upgrade to a 4 star hotel. Most of their customers would undoubtedly have been delighted but my colleague explained to the baffled company rep why this was not satisfactory. Given no alternative, they accepted the offer, but being a lawyer, he also negotiated a full refund.

© David Thompson 2012

On the way

Oldsters might recall Brian Redhead, doyen of the Today programme in the 1980s until his untimely death. A regular commuter between Manchester and London, he would occasionally murmur a reference to the mysterious Friends of the M6. An unlovely motorway, it needed all the friends it could muster. Among motorway afficionados, a select group admittedly, the M11 probably garners more votes. Its destinations are more alluring and the scenery, once past the suburban penumbra encircling London, more rural. So having elected to drive rather than train it to Stansted, speeding away from the dogdays of the Olympics along an empty motorway induced pleasant pre-holiday spirits. Airports have even fewer admirers than motorways but it's generally agreed that Stansted is the least objectionable of the southeastern gateways and enjoying a latte in the sunshine it seems scarcely worth bothering going anyway else.
To pass the time during my obsessionally early arrival, we played the country game. You get one point for each country you've visited which the other person hasn't. If there are high stakes, it can be refined: five points for a continent and so on. Competent geopolitical bluffing is the key to winning. I managed to argue that Jersey counted as a separate country, but failed with the Isle of Dogs, despite a learned account of the 1970s attempt at UDI. I was outclassed anyway; streaking ahead on the Nordics, it was clear I'd be thrashed once we got to Asia.
Indolence had prevented me from finding out much about Tallinn before departure but I was determined not to believe the stereotype that it was simply the new stag party capital, cheap flights having penetrated ever deeper into Europe passing the mantle from Dublin to Prague and no doubt others. So I was mildly offended when the opening remark of the friendly Estonian seated next to me on the plane was to enquire whether I was going to Tallinn to drink. Denying this, and enquiring what he'd been doing in London elicited a one word answer. "Drinking."

© David Thompson 2012

Preparing for Tallinn

Canny entrepreneurs are continually devising ingenious new ways of encouraging us to travel more. Yet their methods sometimes produce anomalies.  
Read any account of long distance walks and the protagonists will allude to the peculiar physics whereby one gram of luggage in the backpack mysteriously weighs one kilogram after walking a few miles.  So when packing for a walking holiday, one naturally pares luggage down to the minimum.  But on my recent Pennine Way trek, I engaged the services of a baggage carrier, a kind of rural white van man, who turned up every day and hefted a suitcase the size of a steamer trunk into the truck and deposited it at my next stop while I sauntered out with a day pack.  How reassuring it was, when arriving at the next stop and greeted by a quizzical landlady wondering who this dishevelled bloke could be, to see the suitcase standing sentinel in the hall behind her, my guarantee of entry however unappealing a guest I might appear.  And how refreshing it was to change into clean clothes, chosen from a vast array of outdoor gear covering all eventualities from sand storms to blizzards.  No counting the grams for me!
One of the pleasures of a weekend city break is doing what you please: a bit of gentle sightseeing, a morning in bed, dinner at a fancy restaurant.  So naturally, a few different outfits, even for the most curmudgeonly fashion-resistant amongst us, is desirable.  So how come I'm trying to fit all my gear into a suitcase half the size of my Pennine Way day pack?  Yes, it's the curse of the low cost airline which will blithely charge more to transport a weekend's worth of clothes in the hold than they require for a ticket to fly you a thousand miles.


© David Thompson 2012