Tales from Nesblandia...: Tourism

Showing posts with label Tourism. Show all posts

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Tiny tiny Nesblandian village

Biggest mistake I ever made – take my daughter to Europe, to Nesblandia in fact. Now she would like to go back tomorrow. No, tomorrow is too late – yesterday would be better. Even more, she would like to live back there for good.
Whereas before, life outside Nesblandia was fine. Now she sees it as rather boring. Very boring rather.
I get the blame: why did I have to leave Nesblandia and not stay there somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was Nesblandia.

She keeps bringing up the friends we made, (just like that, out of the blue, she says, in an instant, right there in the street/train/museum! And they gave us their e-mail address, phone number – how about that!) the Places, the Beauty, the History, the Climate, the Landscape, the Architecture, the Museums, the Chocolates, the Cakes, the Cities, the Art in Public Spaces, the Restaurants, the Parks, the Elegant Clothes, the Slender People (as in opposition of every third person being overweight ) the Enormous Libraries, the Book Stores Crammed with People Like a Woolwoorths in a Major Sale Day, etc.

The strawberries we picked on a field there were the best she ever tasted; they had a flavour she never knew they had before.
The croissant was something so different, that it seemed that what she had before were related to the French one just through the shape and nothing else.
The cherries were soo sweet! And then the sour cherries she never knew that could be eaten fresh as well.
The highways were so beautiful with their soundproof high fences and the animals so well protected in not getting hurt as they crossed.
The old castles were so unreal how they appeared on the top of those fortified hills, like a fairy tale come true.
Those villages were so spotless clean, so cute, so like little towns from a fairy tale.
The farms were all like model farms.
The shops, all open till late!
The streets still full of people at 9 p.m.!
The houses, wow, all solid, spacious, massive, with high ceilings; nothing built from cardboard or plastic planks, shabby or improvised like a garden shed; the windows you could open for fresh air, properly, and then you could even stick your head out, without fear of being decapitated; the old buildings with their charm, full of shadows of the past, standing for 2-300 years and still inhabitable.
And those groups of young friends traveling in packs – she loved that the most. The teenager with backpacks traveling together. How they met on the road and stuck together and became friends – a Dutch and 2 Germans and a Polish boy with his Hungarian girlfriend; that group of 5 Austrian girls doing the Provence tour; and so on.

And the boys – wow! – the boys on the street, all so gooood loooking, my God! Like models from some stupid glossy magazine.
And even the hetero guys smelled nice there. Without having to be gay!

I think I created a monster.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

What revenue does this bring and to whom?

There are things that puzzle me sometimes, things that beat logic. Simple things like for example concessions for students.
In Nesblandia by the way, when students have concessions they have them equally – all of them in the same way. For transport or for other things, the concessions encompass all students, Nesblandians or not.
Where I live now though, things are stranger than fiction.
We travelled through France this year – a part of Nesblandia that is very much visited by millions of people every year. It wasn’t only France on our itinerary, but other countries of the EU as well.
Here and there we had to catch a train, a bus, we went to museums, places of interest, botanical gardens etc.
My daughter was a student from outside Nesblandia (recte France) and in spite of that, she benefited of those concessions, no questions asked apart from her Student ID card. She presented it and everything was fine. Even if she did not present it, was OK. They asked for her passport as a proof that she was under 25 and it was fine – she got her concession ticket everywhere. We were quite pleased.

Here, at home, we went to another city. The city was in another state but still in the same federation, in the same country where everybody abides by exactly the same laws, eats the same food, speaks the same language and sings the same National Anthem. We have only one Constitution too.

We asked for a concession ticket for a tram, too lazy or too tired to walk from the hotel to a museum not far away. We bought two - one for my mother who has a pensioner concession card and the other one for my daughter who is a student of course. They both got their concession tickets, and we jumped in the first tram.
On the road, a controller boarded and started checking the tickets. We presented ours. My mother had to present her senior citizen card. She was fine. Then my daughter had to present her student ID and she did. She was not fine. She was to be fined instead.
We were in trouble.
The man told us that if she was not a student in that state, she had to buy a full fare ticket, like any adult. We were a bit scared; we had no idea we were in the wrong. At the outlet where we bought the tickets, nobody told us about that slight difference and we did not ask, since we were at home, in our own country, not abroad. We behaved like in our own city when we have to use public transport.
The person who sold us the tickets did not know that we were from another state – it did not show on our language or clothes or anything, so they assumed we were locals.

Now, there was a fine in place for such things, and the controller told us. We were quite shocked and upset – first because we were not aware, and second because there was no difference apparently in between a foreigner from outside the country and us. In spite of being taxpayers with some advantages in our own country, we were treated the same way like strangers. That wasn’t fair for some Nesblandian tourists either. I mean, when we travelled through their countries, they gave us a concession for my daughter and my mother, and our own country did not make any concessions to those Nesblandian daughters at all, not to mention their own daughters.
That was a shame.
The strange thing was that my mother had no problems – her concession, as a senior citizen was as valid in that state as it was in our residential state.
I could not grasp that kind of logic.
The senior citizens are in their own right to have a public transport or even a museum/cultural event concession in every state of the federation, but the young people under 25 are not entitled to that at all. Even if they present a card that proves they are secondary or tertiary students, and therefore many times, without an income or with a very tiny one.
No wonder the young generation learns and travels less here than they do in Nesblandia. No wonder they learn less in those circumstances and no wonder so many parents leave their children at home when they go somewhere for a brief holiday – it costs them too much to take the offspring with them and broaden their horizon.

In long term – who gains what from such a stupid policy?

Anyway, as a triviality, the controller was a Nesblandian himself, ( lucky us!) and therefore he was not only sympathetic and understanding, but he also whispered in our ear that he thought the policy was unfair and stupid. So he did not fine us in the end. He realized that we were not cheating the system, we simply did not know.
Besides, like us, he understood the system was wrong and unfair to the young generation and I believe it pleased him to be able to challenge it a bit in that way.