Fictional Destinations

     With the exception of a single trip, as a child in Iowa and Illinois, my family did not travel further than to a nearby lake or campground. In spite of my father and mother’s middle class professions, I never slept in a motel until I was a teenager. Too expensive. Yet it happened that I had uncles in Los Angeles with whom we could stay and my frugal parents saw their way to taking us to Southern California on the Sante Fe’s El Capitan in the days when the great trains had names and linen and heavy silverware in the dining car. It was the last year that my older brother could still pay the child’s fare. I recall not only the thrills of visiting the Farmer’s Market, La Brea tar pits, Knott’s Berry Farm, and seeing a game of the minor league team, the Hollywood Stars, but also swimming on the Will Rogers Beach. The name of this park I found as exciting as the surf due to the fact that, knowing nothing of Will Rogers, I convinced myself that it was, in fact, named after Roy Rogers, a pop culture figure I did appreciate.
     I recall, too, driving in a neighborhood of Beverley Hills homes so large many were not visible from the car and being told that we were passing Pickfair, which was explained as the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, names which meant nothing to a child of the fifties. The adults found such sights fascinating. In those days many shops, even street vendors, sold maps to locate the homes of the stars, and making a circuit of such places was a regular activity of organized tours as well as people on private cars. Yet what could be seen? Some mansions, certainly, but those of the stars were surely no less opulent than those of financial tycoons, yet tourists ignored the merely wealthy while they were drawn irresistibly to actors’ homes.
     For me the high point of the trip was doubtless visiting Disneyland which had just opened the year before, the same year that the Mickey Mouse Club began on ABC television. I had been to amusement parks such as Riverview in Chicago, to county fairs and carnivals, but this place was sanctioned by Walt Disney himself, and the difference was palpable. The expected pleasures of the rides and the Cokes were immeasurably enhanced by the associations. One hears of adults today with no children who remain susceptible still to the lure of Mickey Mouse when making travel plans. Disneyland had behind it the Klieg lights of Hollywood, but the later Walt Disney World rose in the swamps near Orlando with only the warm climate as a recommendation.
     Taste, of course, varies. When I visited Casablanca, a city which I found the least charming place in Morocco, I encountered Americans whose chief destination there was a theme restaurant called Rick’s Cafe, a place with virtually no connection to the country. Though housed in a grand pre-WWII mansion, its “developer,” as they say, was an American of my own age to whom the movie’s appeal was largely nostalgic. Her American designer saw to it that every detail was reminiscent of the film, landing the diner for the space of a meal in a mockup of old Hollywood rather than the fascinating, elegant, and gritty land just outside the door. The unthreatening menu includes steaks, John Dory crusted with black pepper, white wine and thyme, and “Rick’s brownies,” though I suspect Bogart’s Rick was not a big brownie eater. Doubtless for some travelers this restaurant is the high point of their journey.
     In an odd conjunction of pop culture and high culture, the Philadelphia Museum of Art surely attracts more visitors by the nearby Rocky Balboa statue than its own sculptures and paintings. The city tourism office declares unreservedly, “Visiting the statue, running up the steps and taking a picture at the top is a must on any first visit to Philly.” (Odder yet is the Rocky statue in Žitište, Romania, but that is primarily a hometown attraction outside the scope of the present inquiry in spite of its selection by Lonely Planet as one of the "top 10 most bizarre monuments on Earth.”)
     Those of somewhat more bookish tastes might prefer to view the well-maintained Sherlock Holmes Museum at the address of the detective’s flat at 221B Baker Street in London. As a matter of fact, at the time that Doyle was writing his stories, numbers on Baker Street barely reached 100. Though later renumbering did make the address possible, 221 was occupied by a bank which long fielded mail meant for the fictional character. A few doors away the Holmes museum began to grow at 239 Baker and in time was granted permission from the Royal Mail to use the 221B number. A place that never existed at a false address! If a trip to London is inconvenient, the tourist may nonetheless view other versions of the Baker Street flat apartment at Lucens, Switzerland where the author’s son used to spend time, or, of all places, in the University of Minnesota’s library.
     The city of Verona recommends visitors find their way first to “Juliet’s house,” complete with a balcony for calling out “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” The association of the medieval building with Shakespeare is, as it happens, a twentieth-century phenomenon, and the balcony, fashioned from a 17th century sarcophagus, was added to evoke the play’s most well-known line only when people complained about its absence.
     I am presently in Romania, and a few days ago I survived the unpleasant crush at Bran Castle, marketed as Dracula Castle on the basis of the conflation of Bram Stoker’s vampire with Vlad III, Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Vlad Dracula, son of Vlad Dracul, which is to say Vlad the Dragon who was a member of an order of the dragon. The fact is that, violent though he may have been, this historical Wallachian prince, was never accused of anything like drinking blood — impaling thousands seems more gruesome yet — and he in fact never lived in Bran Castle, though he may have visited there a time or two. Yet the fantasy of an Irish author who had himself never set foot in Romania has made this place the most popular tourist attraction in the entire country.
     Such interest may become a burden to local residents. Prince Edward Island may be glad for Anne of Green Gables, but Dubrovnik chose to limit visitors because of the influx of Game of Thrones fans, as did the Swiss town of Hallstatt, taken by visitors as the source of the setting of the Frozen movies (though the producers named a place in Norway).
     If my attitude sounds sniffy and snobbish, it is also honest. Through a quantum of hard traveling over the years, I flatter myself that I have earned the right to feel distaste for large guided groups identifiable by hats or ids worn about the neck. May we all have a good time, though! I suppose there is in the end little distinction between the pleasure of people in Pisa making a photo of someone pretending to push over (or support) the celebrated tower, and that of the overeducated observer, enjoying his harrumph from the side. If I know more art history, that does not indicate that I live a better life. My nose does not indicate nobility, yet both nose and art history are elements of my identity.
     In a sense, every traveler arrives at fictional destinations. I am quite sure that, despite the head-clearing cool thin air, I saw a Machu Picchu fictional to some extent, fabricated from all that I read in Hiram Bingham and heard from friends. Who could gaze at Apollo’s temple on Delphi with fresh eyes? Some actual sights have nonetheless purely symbolic value. The Eiffel Tower lacks practical use, but has become ever so rich in associations in spite of its denunciation at birth by France’s leading artists. What one sees in the Taj Mahal or a Normandy graveyard or tastes in Tokay (ordered in Tokaj) or hears in fado in Coimbra may seem primarily a matter of perception, but, while the traveler’s reactions may feel candid and spontaneous, they are largely the product of earlier learned impressions. The world is a great fiction and the borderline between history and legend beclouded with mists.
     The fact is that we are all chasing the phantoms of the mind. The tourist does this intentionally and in play. Mental manipulation of symbolic values is the surpassing skill of our species and a principal way in which we define ourselves. If I smile at someone who will travel across the country to attend a Star Wars convention, never leaving the airport hotel, that enthusiast might be amused at my seeking out the site of the Buddha’s first sermon. Both trips may prove rewarding. During travel more vividly than at other times, each feels the power of being the director of a unique narrative, able to ignore practical considerations and act on purely aesthetic grounds, each decision a matter of taste alone. The variety of trips is quite glorious really, reflecting the diversity of sensibilities.