 We really live in (typically) strange times, don't we? A defining phenomena of these times is the great number of immigrants and refugees.
Yet another is the great number of tourists. In both cases the number will continue to grow larger, faster.
The human world is profoundly changing at the same time that we pretend that it is changing only a little, or only technologically. The Orange Men in Northern Ireland hope that they can continue England's colonization there. Yet they cannot see that the situation itself has changed while they were not looking: people from China, from India, from Albania, from Bosnia, all now live in Belfast and Derry.
To be a tourist is to be guided; even if your tour group consists of yourself only. We are frustrated as tourists because we know that (unless we are kidnapped and killed) we will not get very lost, and therefore not get very surprised. But having been on the tour we can also never completely return home.
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