COME TOGETHER

 

 
London is filled with an astonishing number of tourists, mainly European.  Massive groups of Euro kids, mostly tweens and teens, jabber away in Italian, German, French.  Yesterday we were standing at a corner, waiting to cross the street, and a huge group of EuroTeens and their chaperones stood across the street from us.  A big guy led the group, a strapping six-footer with a beer gut and an aggressive look as if getting across the street were a challenge at which he was determined to excel.  The pedestrian Olympics.  How fast can you shepherd 30 restive, unfocused teens across a downtown crosswalk with red double-decker buses bearing down at you at sound-barrier breaking speeds while taxis dart by like spawn-driven salmon headed upstream?  Not something you’d want to attempt without months of careful training beforehand.   

This guy was clearly up to the challenge.  He clutched a map in one hand and with his other he made constant beckoning motions to the milling teens behind him.  He wore a brand new white windbreaker that was stretched across his considerable belly, and shiny new tennis shoes glistened on his feet.  He was poised on the very edge of the sidewalk, itching for the sound of the starter’s gun – in this case, the automated beep beep beep of the walk signal.   We stared at him.  I mumbled to Max out of the corner of my mouth, “what do you think?  American?  Or possibly German?”  Max, always eager for a chance to slam my genetic heritage, said “German, definitely German.”  We waited.  The buses and taxis whizzed by.  Then the beep beep beep of the walk signal blasted.  The German/American – Germerican?  AmGer? – got a fast start, rolling off the balls of his feet, those new tennis shoes giving good traction off the starting blocks.  He exploded into the crosswalk, gaining an impressive yard with his initial thrust, and then pivoted and shouted over his shoulder at the kids, “Peppe La Pew, Croissant, Bastille Day!!!”  Mon dieu, he was no Germerican, he was French!  Those kids blasted en masse across the crosswalk led by this French Carl Lewis of pedestrian Olympics.   

I couldn’t bring myself to move, so impressed was I by the spectacle.  And heartened, too, at the fact that a big, overweight, unnecessarily loud and obviously abrasive man sporting too-white tennis shoes and a beer gut wasn’t, for once, an American.  Or a German!  So much for cultural stereotypes.  There are lots of obnoxious people on the planet, not just us ‘muricans.  Brings a tear to my eye. 

 Looking at the crowds of tourists in London, I started wondering if it has morphed from a gritty, beautiful, historic but working city into a “Destination Metropolis.”  DestiMetro for short.  They are a breed of cities.  Like Florence – it’s hard to think of Florence as a real urban center.  It seems to exist more for tourists to tick it off their must-see list.  And Venice – same thing.  I’m sure there are plenty of Venetians who get up each morning and yawn and drink their cappacino and stagger off to work but it’s work doing what?  Cooking for tourists, selling clothes for tourists, leading tourists on tours of tourist sites?  It would be terrible if London evolved, or perhaps devolved, into a DestiMetro. 

 
The thought depressed me as I sat on the tube (myself a tourist, of course, but that doesn’t count) and glumly listened to the “It’s A Small World” babel of languages around me.  Then it struck me: it’s spring break for British school children, and in fact for schoolchildren around Europe.  The families around me were tied together by the immutable bonds of a common currency – the Euro – and a shared spring vacation.   No wonder London is crawling with Eurokids and their frazzled parents.   

 But then I wondered if London’s popularity as a spring break destination was proof itself that London had entered the DestiMetro category? Has London become the new city of the future, a giant melting pot of an urban center beckoning the tennis shoe-clad hordes to its paved shores?  Beside me on the tube were Germans speaking entirely too loud in what is really, no offense to my Deutsche kinsmen, an abrasive language.  French couples pouted their way through an exchange, Italians gestured their way through theirs.  Should I relish this cultural diversity, this coming together of so many peoples in enjoyment of a shared place?  Is it, in fact, what will save us in the future?  That we’ve all been to London?  Will a breakthrough come in the middle of tense negotiations over nuclear inspections or the treatment of ethnic minorities when someone mentions that www.lastminute.com can get you fantastic theater seats in London and everyone nods and smiles, and suddenly we all see each other as fellow humans again, we are reminded anew that those people sitting across the table are people just like us trying to score good seats to Wicked or Billy Elliot?   

 Will the fact that we’ve all been to the same place save the planet?