Free Holidays in Heck by P. J. O’Rourke Page A

concrete school where “
Joyeux Noël
” decorations still hung in the corridor, and interviewed . . . somebody. She seemed to be in charge of something. I said, “
Parlez-vous
English?”
    She said, “
Non
.”
    Actually, I claim that there’s a tremendous journalistic advantage to covering politics when you can’t speak the language. You aren’t misled into reporting what people say; you’re forced to report the inexorable truth of what people do.
    The people of Guadeloupe weren’t doing much. They certainly weren’t voting. I counted ten voters in the
Joyeux Noël
school and none at the next two polling places I visited. The streets of Pointe-à-Pitre were crowded. The stores were open for a change, but the crowds seemed to be standingaround more than shopping. Of course maybe they were standing in line. Guadeloupe provides a very European level of service.
    The next day, back in Europe itself, France rejected the EU Constitution because (CNN International informed me) the French were worried about competition from eastern Europeans for French jobs. According to French unemployment figures, the French don’t have jobs. In Guadeloupe they’re more self-confident about doing nothing. The
département
voted “Oui” in the referendum, albeit with a do-nothing 22 percent turnout.
    At the airport, leaving Guadeloupe, I talked to a mainland Frenchman, Antoine. We were standing in line. A reggae band was on our flight. The band had drums. Detailed consideration of the weight and measurements of the drum set had brought seat selection and baggage checking to a halt. Antoine went to buy a bottle of rum and came back twenty minutes later. “This island!” he said. “The airport is full of people and every duty-free shop is closed.” Our line hadn’t budged. “I have a business friend who lives here,” Antoine said. “He was in a line like this at the post office in Pointe-à-Pitre. No one advanced in the line for more than an hour. At last he went to the front of the line and said to the postal clerk, ‘Nobody is moving here!’ She said, ‘Oh, no?’ and put up a sign that said ‘Out to lunch,’ and left.”
    The French are well advised to worry about competition. But not from the Czechs and Poles. Some citizens of their own country are better at being European than they are.

6
O N F IRST L OOKING INTO THE A IRBUS A380
    Toulouse, June 2005

    S ometimes it seems that the aim of modernity is to flush the romance out of life. The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer’s cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage. Who born since 1960 has any notion of the Near East’s exotic charms? Whence the Rubáiyát? Wither Scheherazade? The Thief of Baghdad is jailed, eating Doritos in his underwear while he awaits hanging. As for romance itself . . . “Had we but world enough, and pills,/For erectile dysfunction’s ills.” And nothing is more modern than air travel.
    As a stimulating adventure, flying nowadays ranks somewhere between appearing in traffic court and going toBlockbuster with the DVD of
Shrek 2
that my toddler inserted in the toaster. Thus the April 27, 2005, maiden flight of the Airbus A380, the world’s largest airliner, did not spark the world’s imagination. Or it did—with mental images of a boarding process like going from Manhattan to the Hamptons on a summer Friday, except by foot with carry-on baggage. This to get a seat more uncomfortable than an aluminum beach chair.
    What a poor, dull response to a miracle of engineering! The A380 is a Lourdes apparition at the departure ramp. Consider just two of its marvels: Its take-off weight is 1,235,000 pounds. And it takes off. The A380 is the heaviest airplane ever flown, 171 tons heavier than the previous record holder, the