Tourists

The Conning Tower ^ | Dec. 3, 2002 | Trentino

[Davis]

There are eight Barnes & Noble stores in Manhattan. The one I frequent is not on the usual tourist route, but stragglers from all over the world do end up at the Café Espresso of the Broadway and 82nd Street store. I often meet them there.

It's easy to open up a conversation with tourists from afar. They're usually eager to meet someone who is not obliged by his trade--taxi driver, waiter, hotel clerk--to talk to them. Besides, being inside a bookstore seems to reassure visitors that they're safe, that people they meet there are not Mafia hit men, ax murderers, or saber-toothed psychopaths with a taste for tourist blood.

Most of my conversations with tourists at B&N are pleasantly civil and interesting. I always ask visitors how the actual experience of being in the Untied States, in New York, compares with what they expected to see. Usually, they tell me that they expected New York to be more frenetic and disorderly than they discover it really is. They often express surprise...more

[hrhdave]

>>The whole idea of using military force struck her
and her [Dutch] countrymen, she said, as barbaric, an absurd relic of US cowboy culture and our cowboy president.<<

Yes, we're the cowboys who saved their ass TWICE.

I'm not asking for gratitude--that's beyond them. All I want is a little common sense.