Saturday, July 16, 2011

Leaving Monaco

Decided to leave Monaco for someplace different. Monaco is certainly pretty, and at 37€/night for Guizmo, it's not super expensive to stay here, but the place has a certain odd quality to it that, after a few days, makes you long for normal people putting in normal workdays doing normal work stuff.

The Monagasque seem to live to their mid-90's at the moment; they have the highest life expectency on earth. I don't know how to interact with someone whose life expectancy is at least 50%, or maybe even double, mine. I feel like saying "you seem to belong to a different species" or "enjoy the planet after I'm gone" or "I'll try to leave the place all nice and clean for you." I now understand how the replicants in Blade Runner, with a genetically programmed lifetime, must have felt.

They also have the highest per-capita GDP. Yet it's a strange place. You're more likely to find truffle oil on the menu of a restaurant than soap in the same restaurant's bathroom. Prince Albert II, whose rotund visage graces every corner, must be too busy having illegitimate children and displaying his wedding accouterments to worry about founding a sanitation department. Albert II the Rotund: if you ever read this, and judging by your life expectancy, you might have all the time in the world to surf the web in your old age, your fair country needs health inspectors! Also, as an aside, Charlene is too good for you.

But the real problem with Monaco is that, besides the few native Monagasque, everyone else here is transient and is unlikely to come back. So that basic fact undermines all human interactions. The merchants are mostly transplants who are here to make a quick buck and to move back to their more affordably priced hometowns in France and Italy. And what makes someone not try to rip you off is just basic human decency coupled with the fear of reprisal, in the form of missing out on future transactions and a bad reputation. The former does not go far enough, and when you know that you'll likely never see any given tourist again and that there'll be plenty of others just like him coming to Monaco thanks to the 007 movies, it'd be silly to be overly nice. This makes people at best brusque.

So I decided to go a little further east to Menton.

1 comment:

PaintingEachDay said...

incredible dialogue. I apologize if I'm commenting too much, but your thoughts are exactly what MY thoughts are ... IF only I possessed your beautifully engineered brain and writing finesse !!

Yes, she's too good for him AND I do believe it's true that she had a one say ticket to South Africa ... to sacrifice love for ... well, riches and glory and paradise ... not enough for me ...