I grudgingly stomped onto the bus that had a big banner on the outside that had pictures of the various sights it travels to displayed on it. I was handed a fairly large pin with a picture of a bagpipe on it that I was told I had to wear in order to prove I was apart of the touring group. I don’t think I could have looked more like the typical tourist, standing next to my mom who was wearing a fanny pack full of snacks and my dad who had his nose in a travelers guide at all times. It was just plain old embarrassing. I made myself comfortable because this was not one of those hour bus tours but instead an all day tour that even had a name devoted to the touring package, Loch Ness and Legends. The tour guide claimed that traveling by bus was truly the “way to experience Scotland in the most efficient yet comfortable way”. However, the trip was far from efficient. After spending an hour in the Loch Ness souvenir shop, we boarded the bus to head towards Glen Coe but never make it there. Our bus broke down on the side of the road next to herds of sheep with red dots on their backs. We sat on the bus for three hours waiting for another bus to come get us before we were told that there were no buses available. We saw one other European family that was on the tour with us climb off the bus, demand their money back, and then hitch hiked their way home and so we did the same and followed their lead.
I went from being “an Ugly American” with an embarrassing tour bus pin to a “Back” tourist within a few minutes. A bus full with Scottish college students heading home from playing in a golf tournament stopped and picked us up. I was amazed because in America most people are too afraid to talk to strangers, let alone allow them to climb into your car. The Scottish college students took us to local places including a small pub that isn’t known by tourists where they claimed made the best haggis. Although I am not a fan of a dish containing a sheep’s heart, lung, and liver, it was great to escape from the commercial and stereotypical world of being a tourist.
According to our reading, “The term ‘tourist’ is increasingly used as a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously inauthentic experiences” (The Ugly American, 94) and I certainly fit that description in the beginning of our travels throughout the hills of Scotland. There is a negative stigma to being a tourist because “they are reproached for being satisfied with superficial experiences of other peoples and other places” (The Tourist, 10) when they should try to immerse themselves in the culture instead. During my experience in Scotland, I was trying hard to distance myself from being a tourist by pretending not to know my dad as he read facts from his travel book and that is because the idea of being a tourist is embarrassing. I find it amusing that so many people travel abroad as tourists yet “tourists dislike tourists” (The Tourist, 10). It is a true statement because as I am traveling I can’t help but laugh at the person who walks around with a massive map.
Although I will always be embarrassed looking at the picture of myself wearing a hat that I bought at a souvenir stand with a huge British flag on it while in London, everyone is a tourist at some point. It is a person’s chance to peek into the lives of another geographic location and culture and escape from their problems and norms at home even if it means waiting in long lines to see “a staged back region, a kind of living museum for which we have no analytical terms” (The Tourist, 99). Tourism will never disappear and I look forward to the next time I can call myself a tourist because at least it means I am traveling somewhere new.
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