Place-dropping and tale-telling

10-13-2002

There's no doubt about it. Telling tales can make travel twice the fun. In fact, remembering a trip once you get back home is one of the three phases of travel. There's the planning of a trip, the trip itself and the embellishments that come afterward: the sharing of the memory of the experience.

Certainly, it can be rewarding to relive a travel experience with those who were there with you. Still, it is surprising how often the actual experiences of a trip differ dramatically from the way they are remembered.

Many people who love to travel are also inveterate "place-droppers," which often is another form of name-dropping. Although it's also common for people to drop the names of places they only intend to go, the bragging rights in question only accrue from places they have actually been.

Whether it's casual details about their most recent vacation or business destination, or memories about someplace distant, "place-dropping" can be more than a little pretentious. However, it's not always motivated by status-seeking intent. Two strangers discovering that they've both been someplace in particular can provide the spark of commonality that lights up a conversation.

While we're on the subject, what does it mean to have been someplace?

Many travelers check off destinations on their life's list, dots on an internal map, entries in a personal passport of life. The more places you've visited, the more accomplished you must be.

The Traveler's Century Club, an 48-year-old organization devoted to competitive traveling, lists 314 different destinations that members can visit. Apart from the 154 or so obvious choices listed by the United Nations, the Traveler's Century Club recognizes plenty of obscure places, such as the Laccadive Islands, Fujairah and Lampedusa, not particularly easy locations to visit; certainly, they're not served by US Airways.

Managing to find the time, means and motivation to get someplace particularly exotic does entitle a traveler to some bragging rights, but it's more what they do once there that counts.

For example, the term "visit" is broadly interpreted by the club's bylaws. Members need only "officially" enter a country or cross the border of a listed geographical entity to add it to their personal list; there's no requirement to get familiar with a place.

Similarly, travelers often claim to have "been there, done that" in regard to a location even if they only flew in, spent one night at a suburban hotel and departed the next morning. Making a connection at an airport is not quite the same as being someplace long enough even to get a feeling for its particular rhythms, let alone getting to know it over the passage of seasons and years.

How often have you heard someone claim to have been to Pittsburgh, even though they got no closer to the Golden Triangle than an exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?

Although the ability to tell a good travel tale is something of a gift for both the teller and the audience, there are tricks and techniques that even beginners can learn. With that in mind, here are a few pointers on spinning a good travel yarn.

As with any story, the timing of the telling is crucial, but that entails more than just snappy delivery. Rather than venturing an obvious brag pulled out of the clear blue sky, the best travel stories always flow seamlessly from the ongoing conversation. This means that unless you have a remarkable transition, it will be hard to work your trip to the South Pacific islands of Kiribati into most conversations. On the other hand, a remarkable event or experience in a familiar location often makes a better travel story than an unremarkable visit to some exotic place.

In any case, always tell your travel tales boldly, especially when they involve an element of one-upmanship with other tale tellers. Deal strictly in superlatives. A particular meal can't just have been a delight to the taste buds, it must have been the best you've ever eaten. That storm can't just have caused a plane to be late, it must be the worst this century, even if, at this point, that's not quite two years.

Here's another axiom of tale-telling: the absolutely worst travel experiences often make for the best stories, and sometimes the most humorous. But the more dire the actual circumstances, the more matter-of-fact your telling should be. That's because good travelers learn to take everything in stride, to handle emergencies with aplomb, to endure delays and disappointments with mature patience. At least in their stories. Ditto for tales of physical prowess.

Also be specific about providing plenty of extraneous details and be sure to people your parable with colorful characters. To add interest, always sprinkle your tales liberally with mentions of food, and don't neglect to add a soupcon of cultural or sporting reference.

Know that although a good picture is always worth a thousand words, well-told tales generally require no props or other forms of proof.

In fact, if you are forced to rely on tangible evidence to support your tale, you've probably already lost your audience. So don't bore them with photographs, slides or video presentations. Reserve those pleasures for family members.

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