The final chapter, with reflections on the trip.
It was my last day in Europe, and I was leaving Germany for the first time to visit Strasbourg, located right across the French border. I hoped that my long-abandoned study of French would re-surface enough to be of some use; fortunately, it did, because our GPS went blank the moment we entered the country and I had to make sense of the roadsigns.
Strasbourg is an interesting city. It’s in Alsace, one of those regions that’s been passed back and forth between France and Germany for ages; as a result, the city maintains the culture and language of both nations. Strasbourg also boasts a robust intellectual tradition. Goethe and von Metternich studied there, and the city claims to be one of the historical centers of Renaissance humanism.
For the first and last time in this trip, we decided to forgo our own sightseeing and simply use the ubiquitous touring vehicles. We started with a tram ride (with a half-off student price; Europe really knows how to treat its students) and moved on to a boat ride through the Ill river, which runs through the center of the city. We saw the usual sites: the cathedral, the old tanning houses, the European Parliament. My favorite area was a district called “Petite-France.” It was named so not because of any particularly French architecture or culture contained therein, but because it used to be a haven for prostitutes, which attracted many French soldiers, and a syphilis hospital, where many would end up.
The only homeless people I saw in Europe were encountered during the boat ride: I saw two or three people swaddled in blankets under the bridges. They reinforced that for all of my starry-eyed praise, Europe is no Shangri-la. It faces the same economic and social problems we do, and those problems will likely never disappear. I stealthily took a snapshot of a sleeping homeless man, feeling bad for dehumanizing him in such a way but also wanting to capture the experience.
Evening was setting on by the time we re-docked, so we found a reasonably priced restaurant for dinner (unsurprisingly, there’s a direct correlation between the price of food at a restaurant and its proximity to major tourist attractions). I ate the best meal I’d had in Europe: a steaming mixure of chicken and veal on egg noodles in a creamy sauce that flowed from a pastry volcano. As I crammed down this delicious concoction, I thought back to the my experience in previous two weeks. Had I learned anything about the world, or myself? Had I grown at all as an individual? Did I experience anything deep and profound, or was I just lapping up the common experiences of a tourist?
My mind returned to the beginning of this trip, a waiting area at the Ft. Myers airport. At that time, I had been thinking about the almost mystical aura I had established around Europe, the incredible envy I had harbored for those who had been, and my assumption that a week or two across the Atlantic would be an Earth-shattering experience. I sipped on a bottle of Coke Light and decided that, if nothing else, I learned how unwarranted was my immense gap between the US and Europe. There were many differences, of course, but none of those differences were inherent in the nature of either location. Everything that struck me as an amazing facet of European society could easily be replicated back home.
Hmm.
I decided to keep the bottle of Coke Light as a memento.
On the way out of town, my aunt mistakenly made a left turn onto a set of trolley tracks, holding up traffic as she backed up and returned to the road. When we got to the light, it flashed directly to red and a van pulled up next to us; the doors opened and three French National Police officers got out to surround our car. My aunt began emotionally inquiring about what she had done wrong; the officer simply asked her if she parlez-vous’ed Francais. After it became apparent that she didn’t, he said, “papier.” Sensing my aunt’s confusion, I grabbed her purse and produced her ID; the officer glanced at it, nodded, and returned to the van with his comrades. The whole process seemed rather surreal; the officers’ approach was like that of a Somali death squad, but they were less of a hassle than any American cop would ever be.
The next morning, I was at the Frankfurt airport once again. While in line to check in, I heard two Americans who looked like soldiers complain about having to find a guard to help them find their way. One of them decried that “none of them will speak English, they’re all fucking foreigners.” A fat old German woman looked at them and shook her head. I can’t fathom how one can travel the world and still be so damn ignorant.
I passed through security and sat in the waiting area. I started The Tempest and thought about how much I’d miss the ceaseless modernity and efficiency of the world I was leaving behind. I might be leaving for now, I thought, but I would definitely be back.
Europe ain’t no Shangri-la, but it’s a hell of a lot better than North Port.
