The Lovely American

Five years ago, even a child could tell: the American tourist was the middle-aged fellow in the sponge-soled shoes, the one who had not come to Europe to share his bathroom with a whole hotel and was not about to leave until he got a snap of the Mona Lisa, and not behind glass either. These days, however, the camera-carrying, sports-shirt-wearing crowd is more likely to hail from Munich or Marseille.

The American? He's still around, but his haunts have changed, and so have his looks: he is younger now--often no more than 20--and far less affluent. He crosses the ocean on a charter flight, not a luxury liner, carries no steamer trunk but a single (generally battered) suitcase, and sometimes gets along on a knapsack. He travels in a Volkswagen (also generally battered) or a secondhand scooter, or he hitchhikes. He will stay in hostels or third-class hotels but prefers to bed down in a sleeping bag, never cares what his food is cooked in so long as it is native to the country he is in. The oldtime tourist still holes up at the Ritz and orders three-star meals, but he is vastly outranked by the kids who storm the Continent in increasing numbers every year and leave the U.S. image agreeably altered.

Loitering for Nuggets. While countries conditioned to a tourist economy admit that the new wave does not wash up much money on the shore, local officials profess not to care. Said the manager of an Athens hotel: "They never dispute the bills, as the Germans and French do, and they're less haughty than the English." Adds a grateful longtime resident of Rome: "They don't gripe like the oldsters do. They are prepared to be adaptable and anxious not to miss a thing." Remarkably enough, they rarely do.

Mornings, they might take off an hour and find a quiet beach, but they are back in the thick of it before the cathedrals close and bistros beckon them on to a glass of Campari, retsina, or vin ordinaire. At some point, of course, they find time to troop into the local American Express, where on a good day, a persevering type can manage to meet a friend, down a Coke, pick up his mail and a girl as well.

Passing the Hat. Nonetheless, not all critics think the change is for the good. "Which is preferable," asks a German travel agent, "the grotesque, quasi-colonialist old-style tourists, or the traveling beatniks, who bum their way from city to city, sing folk songs and pass the hat in real and phony artists' dives, and accept any job that will subsidize their tours?" Any Parisian who caught the act along the Rue Scribe this summer would be hard put to make the choice. Daily, the area around American Express headquarters swarmed with disheveled U.S. youths who were so desperate for a hitchhike that they stuck up placards along the walls, and were so broke that they monopolized the sidewalks, hawking everything from motor scooters to souvenir T shirts or even their guitars. The French press, forgetting it was the Filthy Rich Americans that they had always despised, professed horror at what they dubbed "the American Flea Market."

Still and all, the new tourist is generally acknowledged to be less blight than blessing. He is friendly and energetic, full of spirit and a genuine desire to learn customs and language, not just cuisine. Most of all, he is determined to get away from the flashy focus of life at the center and find the crevices and corners that tell what a country is all about. Some, of course, go too far, end up reverse snobs who can easily afford to stay at a spanking-clean, well-located "name" hotel, but would rather die than pass up the "typical English" atmosphere offered, for not a single shilling less, by a quaint old inn that is not only musty and dusty but also assures its guests that the bathroom will be a good long hike away down the hall.

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