After 30 years in this business, I thought I knew a lot about
travel. On a recent trip to Sicily, I learned lot about
travelers, especially young adults. And I learned it from the
travelers themselves. The destination, although spectacular in
every way, was secondary to the group with whom I traveled for
nine days through Sicily's countryside, villages and ruins.
My "teachers" were 20-year-old college students-- 30 of
them on a spring break research project as part of a photography/travel
writing course at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I'd
been invited along as a "distinguished guest", there to
impart pearls of wisdom gleamed from my years in the biz.
Guess what? These kids taught me far more about the excitement of
travel, energy levels, enthusiasm, opinions, powers of
observation, risk taking, sleep deprivation, beer drinking and
how to alleviate motorcoach monotony than I passed on to them
about note taking and interview techniques.
The genesis of the trip was my daughter, Jenn, a freshman at
nearby Hampshire College, also in Amherst, who took the course at
neighboring UMass. An off-hand comment to her professor that
"my mom is a travel writer" mushroomed into an e-mail
correspondence between the professor and me, and the invitation
to join the group.
I was following in intimidating footsteps. Last year's
distinguished guest was Betsy Wade, who writes for the New York
Times travel section.
The students spent the first part of the spring semester studying
camera techniques and the art of travel writing. Their assignment
on the Sicily trip was to translate what they had learned in the
classroom into photos and journals worthy of inclusion in the
likes of National Geographic. My assignment, which was open to
interpretation from the outset, was to accompany this high-energy
troupe, armed with my notebook and camera, and do show-and-tell
along the way. My role evolved as we traveled.
A lot of the kids had never traveled outside the U.S. The trip
booked by Durgan Travel Service in Stoneham, Mass., covered air,
hotel, daily breakfasts, a tour guide and sightseeing fees. It
did not include the cost of beer, ice cream, Italian shoes and T-shirts.
"What happened to all my lira?" was a wail heard
frequently.
We encountered obstacles along the way that might have sent even
seasoned travelers into near panic -- but not these kids. For
example, a couple of misplaced passports, broken cameras, lost
tripods, insufficient funds, ATMs that ate their credit cards, an
expired green card and a train robbery of two of the students
failed to dampen their spirits.
A coed came down with a vicious viral infection that necessitated
two in-room visits from the attractive male Sicilian doctor on
call at our hotel. This triggered a flood of imagined maladies
when the other girls set eyes on Dr. Right.
A specific problem, for which my counsel was sought, had to do
with the confusion among some of the girls that arose regarding
time zone changes. ("When do I take my [birth control pill?")
Other issues dealt with the discovery of chocolate condoms in a
souvenir store ("Can I bring them back into the U.S.?")
and how to handle the Sicilian males who whistled, hissed and
whispered in their presence.
But then there were the cultural questions that peppered all
conversations from both the guys and the girls. Questions like:
"How come we can't take pictures of the old women?"
"How did Mount Etna get its name?" "Why is gas so
expensive?" "How did the Greeks build all this without
tools?" "How come there are so many artichokes here?"
"Why can't we rent a motorcycle?"This was an
unconventional tour with unplanned stops. The kids cheered the
frequent "bus-offs" (encounters with large motorcoaches
approaching each other from opposite directions on narrow roads
with heart-stopping S-turns). They decided unanimously that the
sound of bus horns rounding curves is the sound of Sicily.
Rick Newton, the UMass journalism teacher who led the group, came
up with a one-time-use-only "Stop the Bus" pass for
each student. (The adults did not get a pass, which led to
begging, bartering, bribing, and groveling by the grown-ups in
the group.)
The coveted pass was used only at an opportune moment, not on the
itinerary. A voice from the back of the bus would call out,
"I want to use my pass." Unless we were on a major
highway, Valentino, the driver, had to play by the rules and pull
over. The kids tumbled out of the bus to jump wooden fences and
follow sheep or scale stone bridges for camera angles or sprawl
at a sidewalk cafe for espressos and timeouts.