Traveling: A bag of laughs
A merry heart is like good medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.
During my recent trip to Europe with the "COSMOS" group (head office in London) I met tourists from various countries. I was accompanied by my spouse and my 11-year old grandson. We visited London, Paris, Lucerne (Switzerland) and Rome. We traveled by bus between these places. To liven the atmosphere, the tour guides made jokes which filled the bus with laughter and made the tourists happy.
In England, our tour guide Ms. Victoria told us a story. Bernard Shaw, the famous writer of Pygmalion, sent two tickets to Prime Minister Churchill as an invitation for the opening night of his play. The tickets were accompanied by a short note: "One of the tickets is for your friend... if you have any." Churchill promptly returned the two tickets with the reply: "I would like to see your second performance... if there is one."
The long journey between Paris and Lucerne covered a distance of 700 kilometers and to avoid boredom, our tour guide Ms. Proust invented the following unique tourists' daily prayer.
"Heavenly Father, look down on us, your humble, obedient tourists who are doomed to travel this earth, taking photographs, mailing postcards, buying souvenirs and walking around in drip dry underwear.
"We beseech thee O Lord, to see that our plane is not hijacked, our luggage is not lost, and our overweight baggage goes unnoticed.
"Protect us from surly and unscrupulous taxi drivers, avaricious porters, and unlicensed English speaking guides.
"Give us this day divine guidance in the selection of our hotels, that we may find our reservations honored, our rooms made up and hot water running from the faucets.
"We pray that the telephone works, that the operators speak our tongue and that there is no mail waiting from our children, which would force us to cancel the rest of our trip.
"Lead us, O Lord, to good inexpensive restaurants, where the food is superb, the waiters friendly and the wine included in the price of the meal."
She also included a prayer for husbands: "Dear Lord, keep our wives from shopping sprees and protect them from bargains they don't need and can't afford. Lead them not into temptation, as they know not what they do."
There was also a prayer for the wives: "Almighty Father, keep our husbands from looking at foreign women and comparing them to us. Save them from making fools of themselves in cafes and nightclubs. And above all, please do not forgive them their trespasses for they know exactly what they do."
And a prayer for everyone: "And when our voyage is over and we return to our loved ones, grant us the favor of finding someone who will look at our home movies and listen to our stories, so our lives as tourists would not have been in vain. Amen."
A. DJUANA
Jakarta