The fragility of the arrangements some people, often with children, have made when travelling to countries of which they know nothing continues to surprise. On the evening news we watch English families in objectively quite scary situations who have simply thrown themselves on the mercies of Italians. The Italians are being efficient and generous, camp beds in the airports, food and drink being handed out, blankets provided, the use of public buildings permitted and patrolled by the civil protection volunteers; but who are these people who have left home without the means to support themselves and their families if their travel arrangements are disturbed for more than a few hours? What sense of irresponsible adventure or entitlement has led them to act as if they are student backpackers without limit of time and without needs beyond bare necessities?
One man declared that he had paid for a week's all-in holiday including fares, and thought it was for someone else to ensure they arrived back in Britain safely. He's in the middle of Rome, shortly to be in the middle of the night, peeved to discover that Rome hotels are booked full all year round and he cannot stay beyond his booking, without money, unable to speak Italian, and with young children displaying the vacant-eyed exhaustion of the literally stressed-out. A small HG, acting as translator, accompanied a friend to Santa Maria Novella station which was under assault for trains to all parts of Italy and to the rest of Europe; including a desperate mob of English people, with small children, unable to grasp that even if they got to Paris (which would not be till next Friday) they live on an island and there is no way across the Channel till even later. Hotel rooms in Florence don't grow on trees in April either, they were going to have to spread out into a fifty-kilometre circle round the city - but most simply didn't have the money to buy their way out of their days'-long bivouac.
Travelling hundreds, thousands of kilometres from home - home that supplies a large part of the standard of living in non-monetary form - is foolish; partly it is the result of not understanding that they are only not-very-poor-indeed in a very small home territory. All these people are still there this morning, in 24 hours' worse shape, and trying the patience and good samaritan qualities of their increasingly unhappy hosts, who would prefer their public spaces and services to be called on for true, not self-inflicted emergencies.
Perhaps it is time to require tourists to demonstrate their immediate access to sufficient funds to finance themselves independently for the length again of their stay abroad; that would cover most return delays, limit the dangers to which indigent travellers are currently exposed, return the civil protection and police services to their proper tasks, and clear the streets, stations, and airports.
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Perhaps the era of cheap mass travel is coming to an end. As yet however, the 'innocnts abroad' have not been sold into slavery on the model of the Children's Crusade.
It's amusing to see that all this disruption may be the result of just another scare story generated by bureaucratic stupidity and control freakery reacting to a flawed computer model, rather like global warming. See http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/2010/04/elephant-studiously-ignored.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+KleinVerzet+%28Klein+Verzet%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/asleep-on-job.html
well, I don't know: everyone has to take a risk sometimes and going on a family holiday financially ill-prepared for the volcano-and-closure-of-the-entire-north-european-air-space scenario is a risk probably not spectacularly foolish
However I have been struck by how loathe are many travellers to strike out for themselves. While some hardy souls have caught trains / buses, or hired coaches to get them to the channel ports, a surprising number have simply sat in not-very-far-away airports waiting for rescue.
Note for travellers - Lydd to Le Touquet was still airborne at the weekend - and very busy!
Completely agree. Of course, I'm from a generation that was told all foreign tapwater was undrinkeable without boiling (even French), that brigands lurked around every foreign corner and all European police officers except the Swiss were corrupt. So not only an emergency credit card these days, but also the emergency pair of gold sovereigns are still carried whenever I leave these shores (hidden in a little bag of Euros). You never know.
Botogol, it's not that I don't think their situation is horrid, it is; but to wilfully take young children into such a risk? And STILL not be able to get the mind round the fact that this is a different culture where you look after yourself and your family. (under the civil code parents are required to provide lodging, food and safety for their children; if anyone is foolish enough to draw themselves to official attention they may find their parental rights temporarily suspended while the children are taken to a place of safety). Young children should not be kept in airports and stations overnight; the parents have gone too far, in every sense.
The era of mass migration is well underway, Raven, don't you think? And the emigres know both the risks and pay the enormous sums involved in people trafficking.
It's the notion of mass 'holidays' (which, objectively, are little different from people trafficking) that is creating quite frightening, unnecessary vulnerabilities. Handing over a few hundred pounds for travel to and from Rome and a week's half board is an act of folly when taking the safety and happiness of children into account. Both the organisers and profiteers from this, and the consumers who sustain them are betting the rest of us will bail them out.
Airline prices will most probably go up now for a while.
It's always best to go on holiday where you have friends.
My sms to London friend, due to leave Florence Saturday afternoon, sent on Friday evening: "come for lunch tomorrow if your flight's cancelled"
reply "I'm hoping it will all be fine but that's very kind of you"
Further sms at 8am Sat morning: "hate to ask, but is there any chance I could stay with you?"
He'll be staying till Thursday, can't get anywhere before then.
Perhaps this will teach people not to be so irritatingly blase about the privilege of foreign travel!
The three factors you identify
-lack of financial resources
-low levels of self reliance/initiative
-both an expectation and sense of entitlement that help will be forthcoming from Govt or others
does not bode well for the UK if (as many expect) the financial crisis gets a lot worse.
If there is an event (e.g. currency crisis) leading to a spike in prices of, or disruption to the supply chain of, food or petrol or utilities then you can expect that-
most people will just sit right where they are and wait and wait and wait and wait for the govt to fix whatever problem has arisen. they will get very impatient very quickly and won't do anything to help themselves.
I think in small villages and towns where there is a greater sense of community things might be different but in the cities there is the danger that the famed 'spirit of the blitz' might go MIA.
Absolutely, R, all true. And a decent lunch in Florence still costs a gramme of gold, no paper accepted of course. Paper it's twice that.
Sms means a text message but what does sms stand for, Small? M must be messaggio, the ss?
metaphor for so much of modern life that hangs precariously from a narrow thread
(see Sackers passim)
electricity generation, banking, food, water, gasoline, ...
OK I will write that book
one day
sms=short message service
Mass tourism is simply a dreadful form of pollution. Lots of people benefit from tourism, of course, but then lots of people benefit from pollution... Make all polluters pay? Not enough, paying should not entitle one to pollute, or to mass tours. Being stranded in airports is only fair retribution..., a Dantesque "contrappasso" whereby "the punishment fits the crime"...
Case well stated, as ever, although I have sympathy for Botogol's point that the closure of airspace was not a risk which one might reasonably be expected to foresee. If you worried about that kind of contingency then you might never get out of bed BUT a bit of self reliance and initiative is now required to get home again and people shouldn't sit around like lemons helplessly awaiting (ineffectual) rescue by "the authorities". Snort. A single aircraft carrier.
With respect to the requirement for less whining and more self-sufficiency, I am with you entirely.
But in other ways I think you are being a bit hard.
The present situation is literally unprecedented in the era of modern air travel - it's not an occurrence people could reasonably be expected to plan for.
Also, most people think they have insurance, even if lack of attention to the fine print and a race to the bottom on costs means that in fact the insurance is largely useless.
I don't agree that folk shouldn't travel unless they can mitigate these risks, it simply isn't realistic; and the benefits of a little travel to everyone - even and especially the young - are very great. Sometime bad things happen, you just have to Keep Calm and Carry On.
Incidentally, I wonder how long this would have to continue before Broon would invoke his precious Contingencies Act and postpone the election? I bet it's crossed what passes for his mind already, don't you think?
Odin - yes, the point about computer models was not lost on me either. Well said.
Absolutely, C, paying shouldn't bring an entitlement to pollute any more than should not paying anywhere near the cost of travelling, and just off-loading its risks onto others.
The Dantesque scenes at Rome and Santa Maria Novella, the trains unusable for days for people who live and work here, call for an end to mass tourism.
And small children don't benefit from the inside of a week in Florence. Small children can get quite frightened in Florence. It is a city built to play with emotions; adults are taken off to hospital to calm them down - yes they are, and larger numbers don't get into quite so bad a state but become very disoriented. A small HG's journey to school involved elaborate patterns of not-looking, hurrying past particularly dangerous bits,and worry about things that can be seen from small person height, that we failed to register was happening at first (though we should have guessed the Loggia dei Lanzi would be a bad place). We once had a small visitor kneeling amidst the crowds in the duomo immovable and desperate until he had copied onto a piece of paper the patterns on the bottom of a plinth. Goodness knows what children there for a brief visit and specifically dragged round the most elaborated bits must be feeling, battered by consciousnesses so very adult and knowing.
You see children being walked through imperial Rome, parents crying 'Look, look' pointing at ruins, devastation, fallen states and societies, and telling them about lions and Christians. Staring scared at giant gods and sea monsters constantly changed in meaning by abundant water they may not drink or touch although thirsty, hot and thoroughly spaesato - out of their own environment. Cruel, cruel selfish adults pretending this is educational. Well it is, I suppose. It teaches helplessness, insecurity, inner exhaustion of responses other than distress. And then they're required to Keep Calm and Carry On!
Particularly dangerous bits of Florence include:
- Perseo (the medusa will turn you to stone if you look at her, despite her head being severed with a sword and snakes still crawling out of her neck)
- the metal bars on Ponte alla Carraia (you might fall through them into the Arno)
- the man with the rolled-up legs at the base of the statues flanking the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio (not strictly speaking dangerous but certaily creepy)
-Swaid doors scattered all over the city (Swaids are small dwarf-sized hairy monsters that live in the most ancient palazzi, you can tell where they live because their front doors are in the side of the palazzi, very small, painted the same colour as the walls in a futile attempt to camouflage them. I discovered to my horror I have a Swaid door in my front room which the builders recently unearthed)
- crucifixions (any church, but particularly San Miniato al Monte, for some reason)
the list goes on...
Forgot the most dangerous of all (after Perseo, who I still can't look at comfortably): the devil in the Battistero, the one that's eating people on the ceiling.
Well said, HG. As a somewhat footloose globetrotter myself I agree with every word. Some people should not be let out further than the end of their garden path.
I had a similar experience of being stranded in Singapore when, in transit en route to Canada, all US airspace was suddenly closed indefinitely following the 9/11 attack, a development only notified to the couple of hundred passengers as we were checking in for the early morning flight. I spent a couple of pleasant days in Singapore courtesy of my airline (SIA) awaiting developments and then, as there was still no news on how long this situation would continue, I gave up, went to the main SIA office, cancelled and cashed in my ticket to Vancouver and used the funds to buy a ticket to New Zealand instead later the same day. It was quite easy to make accommodation and travel arrangements in Christchurch for the following 10 days.
I did my Canada trip the following year.
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