《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 13 (24):我不是天生的行者大綱
Truthfully, I'm not the best traveler in the world.
說實話，我不是世上的最佳旅人。
I know this because I've traveled a lot and I've met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go—in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab . . .
我之所以知道這點，是因爲我經常旅行，也遇過精通旅行的人，真正生而旅行的人。我遇過身強體健的旅人，即使從加爾各答的水溝喝下一大鞋盒的水，也永遠不會生病。有些人很快學會新語言，而我們其他人卻只會染上傳染病。有些人懂得如何制服邊界警衛或利誘執拗的簽證官僚。有些人有恰當的身高和膚色，無論去哪兒都是一種半正常人——他們在土耳其可能是土耳其人，在墨西哥就突然成了墨西哥人，在西班牙也可能被誤認成巴斯克人，在北非有時可能被當做是阿拉伯人……
I don't have these qualities. First off, I don't blend. Tall and blond and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children—who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person—would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China.
我沒有這些特質。首先，我格格不入。高大、金髮、粉紅膚色。我不是變色龍，反倒是紅鶴。除了去杜塞爾多夫（Dusseldorf）之外，我都突兀地刺人眼目。我在中國的時候，婦女經常當街朝我走來，向她們的孩子指着我，彷彿我是從動物園逃出來的動物。而他們的孩子——從沒見過這種粉紅臉、黃頭髮的妖怪——往往一見我就哇哇大哭。對於中國，我很痛恨這件事。
I'm bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending just to show up and see what happens. When you travel this way, what typically "happens" is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused, or dropping way too much money on hotels because you don't know better. My shaky sense of direction and geography means I have explored six continents in my life with only the vaguest idea of where I am at any given time. Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, "You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face."
我不擅長（或者說懶得）在旅行前研究目的地，往往是人到了當地後，再看發生什麼。這種旅行方式經常“發生”的是，你花很多時間站在火車站內不知所措，或者花太多錢住旅館，因爲你沒概念。我這種不可靠的方向感和地理概念意味着，一生雖去過五大洲，卻在任何時刻對於自己身處何處一無所知。除了歪斜的內在羅盤之外，我還缺乏沉着冷靜，這對旅行可能是一大不利。我從沒學會如何把自己的臉調整爲視而不見的面無表情，這在危險的異地旅行時十分有用。你知道——那種超輕鬆、掌握一切的表情，使你看起來像是屬於那個地方，任何地方，所有的地方，即使在雅加達的一場暴亂當中亦然。喔，不。當我不清楚自己在做什麼的時候，我看起來就像不清楚自己在做什麼。興奮或緊張的時候，我便露出興奮或緊張的神色。迷路的時候——這經常發生——我就像迷路。我的臉是每個想法 的透明發送機。大衛曾說“你和撲克臉孔正好相反。 你像是……迷你高爾夫球臉。”
And, oh, the woes that traveling has inflicted on my digestive tract! I don’t really want to open that (forgive the expression) can of worms, but suffice it to say I've experienced every extreme of digestive emergency. In Lebanon I became so explosively ill one night that I could only imagine I’d somehow contracted a Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus. In Hungary, I suffered from an entirely different kind of bowel affliction, which changed forever the way I feel about the term "Soviet Bloc." But I have other bodily weaknesses, too. My back gave out on my first day traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my party to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask you—I beg of you!—who gets sunburned in Stockholm?
還有，哦，旅行對我的消化道造成痛苦！我不想把事情說得太複雜，一言以蔽之，我經歷過每一種極端的消化緊急事件。在黎巴嫩，某天晚上我突如其來地生了病，使我只能猜想自己恐怕感染上了某種中東版本的伊波拉（Ebola）病毒。在匈牙利，我罹患某種截然不同的腸胃疼痛，從此改變我對“蘇聯集團”一詞的感受。然而我還有其他的身體弱點。我在非洲之行的第一天弄壞了背；我是我那團人出了委內瑞拉叢林，唯一一個被蜘蛛咬而感染的成員；還有，請問有誰會在斯德哥爾摩曬傷？
