Innocent Abroad

Yesterday I finished reading a travel book that left me shaking my head with astonishment and laughter at its witty and spot-on perceptions of the American experience abroad, particularly in the Third World. Here are a few short excerpts:


On the American superiority complex upon arriving in the Third World:

We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreamt-of old towns, wedded to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and perfectly unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly indifferent, too, as to whether it turns around or stands still. They have nothing to do but eat and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a friend to stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid for thinking – they are not paid to fret about the world’s concerns.
…

On picking up local habits that you once found disgusting and that will offend your friends and family when you continue to use them even after returning home:

Very many of the young women are exceedingly pretty…We are gradually and laboriously learning the ill manners of staring them unflinchingly in the face – not because such conduct is agreeable to us, but because it is the custom of the country and they say the girls like it. We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can “show off” and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can’t shake off…The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.
…

On America’s greatest fault:

Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for some time, enjoying other people’s comfort and wishing we could export some of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home…in America we hurry – which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which [here] they call a man’s prime.
…[but] day by day we lose some of our restlessness and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease that is in the tranquil atmosphere about us and in the demeanor of the people. We grow wise apace. We begin to comprehend what life is for.
…

On returning home:

We felt as though we had been away from home an age…Oh, the rare happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and knowing that every word one says in return will be understood as well!
…

On the necessity of leaving:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
…

This book could have been written about my life here in Latin America in the early 21st century, but actually it was written in 1867 by Mark Twain as he traveled around the Mediterranean. The location and time are different, but the cultural contrasts between pre-industrial and industrial nations remain the same. As do the feelings that travel evokes. Little changes in only 150 years.