Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
welcomes visitors with a bowl of free condoms at the info desk. Accountants in Munich
fold their suits neatly on the grass as every inch of their body soaks up the sun while tak-
ing a lunch break in the park, while American tourists are the ones riding their bikes into
trees. During a construction industry convention in Barcelona, locals laughed that they ac-
tually had to bus in extra prostitutes from France.
I'm not comfortable with all of this. I find the crude sexual postcards on racks all over
the Continent gross, the Benny Hill-style T&A that inundates TV throughout Mediter-
ranean Europe boorish, and the topless models strewn across page three of so many British
newspapers insulting to women. And I'll never forget the time I had to physically remove
the TV from my children's hotel room in Austria after seeing a couple slamming away on
channel 7 (and the hotelier looked at me like I was crazy).
Compared to Europe, America is almost laughably shy about nudity. An early edition
of my art-for-travelers guidebook featured a camera-toting
David
—full frontal nudity,
Michelangelo-style—on the cover. My publisher's sales reps complained that in more
conservative parts of the US, bookstores were uncomfortable stocking it. A fig leaf would
help sales.
When it comes to great art, I don't like fig leafs. But I proposed, just for fun, that
we put a peelable fig leaf on the cover so readers could choose whether they wanted their
topic with or without nudity. My publisher said that would be too expensive. I offered to
pay half the cost (10 cents a book times 10,000). He went for it, and I had the fun experien-
ce of writing “for fig leafs” on a $500 check. Perhaps that needless expense just bolstered
my wish that Americans were more European in their comfort level with nakedness.
