Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Coral Gables Times
Thursday, November 15, 1962, page 42 (of 64)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
See Two of the World's Scenic Wonders in... NORWAY
See Norway for fabulous fjords and the luminous glow of the Midnight Sun. To complete the scenic splendor, there are thundering waterfalls, majestic mountains, glittering lakes, tiny villages, seafaring towns and Oslo, the Viking capital. Whatever the season, just say Norway for a spectacular holiday — fjord cruises at Blossom Time in early summer . . . Midnight Sun flights in Nature's Wonderland . . . attend the cultural highlights of the Bergen Festival of music and folklore in the spring . . . see the Design Cavalcade of modern arts and crafts in the fall. See your Travel Agent. Write: Norwegian National Travel Office 290 Madison Avenue, New York 17, N. Y. Please send me details on a holiday in Norway. I am interested in Spring Summer Fall Winter NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE
Travelmanship Continued from page 11
Mugg up—bone up—that is the one big secret of one-up traveling. Do not, for instance, in Granada peer at a guidebook and say, "The battlements were torn down by Osbert the Humpbacked in 1282." But say, dreamily, "Can't you see them? These impoverished satraps struggling with a strange tongue and a stranger race, trying to establish themselves against these black-eyed peasants who loathed them, and I expect knew how to show it?" The question of foreign languages and whether to speak them is a gigantic one. But no doubt I should attempt to summarize it in a few words. Do not, if in France, for instance, suddenly say "Esker," like Mr. Podsnap, and then stop dead. Gesture is far better than phrase-book phrases. But remember that only tremendously eminent people or personages who travel with a secretary should make no attempt whatever to speak the language of the country. This is bad manners. Show that you know what's what here by saying early on, "They were so delighted in Helsinki when I said a few words to them in Finnish." If attempting French to a waiter, speak it in a low, quiet voice, quickly, even if you are speaking nonsense. LEARN AT LEAST one truly idiomatic phrase, and you will find it can be repeated in 50 different tones of voice. I have toured the whole of Scandinavia on the words vil han klare pynten. Originally used of a fishing boat in a squall—"Will she round the point?" it means—as a metaphor it is open to endless interpretations. Some rules for holiday one-upness are easy to formulate. One-upness in where to stay follows a hard and fast rule. Avoid your compatriots. Cut them dead if you know them. Bend deep over your book. Therefore, never stay at an "American-type" hotel. Stay at something smaller, more native. Better still, at a friend's villa. Failing that, say that you prefer to stay at hotel (name the small one) because you feel freer to visit your many friends and won't make L. and F. jealous because you have chosen to stay with Y. When to go. The important thing here is to be either one thing or the other. If you wish to be correctly seasonal, turn up on the very day the casino opens, if this is correct timing. And do it every year, being found sitting in your old blue shorts at the same table in the same bar. However prim your home life may be, it is possible in this way to suggest the atmosphere of the rotter, the man without ambition, hypnotized by habit. The drifter. Alternatively, the deliberate off-season gambit has much to be said for it. The Lido in March, half-blotted out by fog. Le Touquet battened down against the nor'wester. The Travelman is careful of his spare time, and one thing he—or she—does not do is to spend the whole time trying to get sunburned, poised between metal reflectors. The sun tan can possibly best be done privately, in a hospital, by ray. The ... in the actual sun, make a point of shielding your face. Perhaps the most one-up traveler is the man doing something. Geology. Photography. The Pinstripe Kestrel on its nest. Writing on 17-century architecture. Once you are known as a calmly expert traveler, a traveler with a purpose, perhaps with a touch of Maugham or Secret Service he Just Back will lose his superiority. When you get back and your friend asks: "Are you glad to be home?" you can adapt a thought of Bernard Shaw's though you needn't acknowledge your source. "I'm always homesick," you say. "Homesick for the clear bright air of Mykonos, for the little flowers at the base of the Jungfrau, for the mud flats round Wapping Old Stairs. . . ." Quite soon, your friend will be sorry he spoke.