Foreign Customs
The Source
The stall in the restroom had no handle. I could see the slot where the handle was supposed to go, but there was no handle and there was no way to open the door without it. So what do you do in a Dutch museum with four cups of Dutch coffee in your digestive track? You get a security guard. But more about that later. One of the joys of getting away from home is that you’re getting away from home. Nothing is more ridiculous than watching an American tourist seeking out a hotel, a room, a restaurant, or a park that’s as much to “what I’ve got at home” as possible. Such loonies spend thousands of bucks to simply change scenery without experiencing anything else. They could have done the same with a new set of drapes. In fact, it’s the very inconveniences of traveling that make for the best stories. Take for example the French Dash. French hotels built before the 1990’s had a unique system for saving the cost of electricity. They put timers on the hallway lights. You climb the stairs, click on the light in the hallway to your hotel room, then you have approximately 12 ½ seconds to dash down the hallway, key in hand, find the right door and turn on the light in your own room. Too slow? Click! Drop your key? Click! Can’t read numbers in French? Click! Click! Click! And of course the French will put a table in the hallway conveniently at an inconvenient level for males. I once roomed with one of my students who left the room to take his shower wearing only his towel. He’d left our room key on the dresser and I was asleep. The kid showered, flicked on the timed switch and made a mad dash down the hallway to get to our room, only to find that he had no key and his teacher was sound asleep. Click! No lights. He ran back to end of the hallway, threw the switch and again ran back to bang on our door. Click! Then a miracle happened. The lights came on. Two elderly ladies from Indiana were returning from their night at the theatre and turned on the hallway light to find a young man who by now had dropped his towel in his angst. More angst. The kid told me later, “When you don’t want the @#$&( light to go out it does, but that time it stayed on forever!”) Even our linguistic buddies the Brits have enough eccentricities to make a London vacation exciting. Their rules aren’t written anywhere, but you bloody-well follow them anyway. Like…. Never.. and I mean never buck the line. Que