A Tuesday Post

“In winter Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering.” So begins Neither Here Nor There, my second most favourite travel book in the world. Bill Bryson, fluent in at least one language, backpacks through Europe without a semblance of a plan. In Trouble Again: A Journey Between Orinoco and the Amazon hails from a similar but even more extreme school of travel writing – Redmond O’Hanlon travels uncharted rivers in a dugout canoe on a four-month journey to Venezuelan Amazonia to “party” with the Yanomami tribe, reputedly the most violent people on earth. “O’Hanlon’s approach to travel borders on the lunatic,” wrote a reviewer.

The polar opposite of this style of travel is the Conducted Tour. Since I have done most of my travelling with my parents who share my dislike for organized travel, I speak from limited experience. School excursions were, of necessity, conducted tours. So was a trip from Delhi to Agra with a busload of American law students, where tour guides first really started to get on my nerves. “Look to your left. Cowdung. All cowdung. Lots and lots of cowdung in India.” Tour guides hurry you all the time, reinforce stereotypes, mollycoddle you, force you into souvenir shops which give them kickbacks, and generally do their best to spoil your experience.

There are people who sign up for one-week conducted tours of South-East Asia, who “do” Europe in a fortnight. Nothing would induce me to spend that kind of money (assuming I had that kind of money) on such a trip, but I have to admit that the idea holds a strange fascination for me. Maybe this is because, deep in my guilty heart, I sometimes enjoy kitsch and the whole idea of naked consumerism. At 13,000 feet in the lap of breathtaking Himalayan scenery, I have been known to pine for Coke, and I would get a lawn flamingo for my room if only I knew where I could buy one.

That is why I thoroughly enjoyed If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (though the fact that this is the first movie I watched since March might also have something to do with it). The film is a 1969 comedy which follows a colourful group of American tourists on a whirlwind conducted tour of Europe: “Nine countries in eighteen days. Four hundred and forty-eight dollars and fifty cents. No refunds.”

Which brings me to the topic of this post. Before I watched the film, I had a sort of idea that it features a snatch of dialogue like this:

“Where are we?” “I don’t know. What day is it?” “Tuesday.” “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.”

But it turns out there is no such passage in the movie. I am not sure about the day and the country, so maybe I heard or read it somewhere else. I am even beginning to wonder if I made it up in my head. If so, the phenomenon would be the opposite of cryptomnesia (I am sure they have a word for it). If anyone knows where the dialogue appears, please tell me. Extra credit to anyone who also tells me the opposite of cryptomnesia.