Editor's note: Countess Louise J. Esterházy of Hungary Count Esterhazy was a respected and feared chronicler of the rise and fall of fashion, society, culture and more. The Esterhazy family seems to have been born with strong opinions, and WWD Weekend was contacted by the Countess's missing nephew, Baron Louis J. Esterhazy, who wrote to us from Europe expressing his distaste for modern fashion and cultural developments. The Baron's pen is as sharp as his late aunt's, and here is his latest column: Summer vacation isn't always fun.
As you think about travel plans at the start of summer, you might be tempted to think, “Ugh! What does that even mean?”
After seeing the world's greatest and most monumental sites, poring over its incredible museums and collections (including, naturally, a plethora of private museums befitting its public institutions), drinking in its most famous restaurants and bars, sleeping through Salzburg's Easter Festival, getting caught up in the running of the bulls in Pamplona (and nearly being trampled by a bull elephant on a safari in Tanzania), and jostling through everything from the Cherry Blossom Festival in Hirosaki to the Carnivals in Rio and Venice, I sometimes say to myself, “Enough is enough!”
And adding a healthy dose of sarcasm to my onset of laziness and ennui, I can't help but wonder if, apart from the occasional knee-jerk reaction in national dress, we're all becoming the same after all. Over the past generation, advances in technology, global media, the speed of communication, ease of travel, and a general awakening across the developed world have led us to do, say, and experience more or less the same things. Thirty-somethings who attend Burning Man or Mardi Gras are likely worrying and saying more or less the same things as their counterparts at Oktoberfest, Coachella, or Glastonbury.
So why not stay home and read a good book?
You will discover that there are many strange and particularly unique national traits and customs that are considered perfectly acceptable and normal in one country, but may be considered not just strange, but even downright insanity and crime in another.
Jeff J. Mitchell/Courtesy of Getty
For example, in Sweden and most of Scandinavia, it's considered perfectly acceptable to park your stroller (with a sleeping toddler) on a busy sidewalk outside a store and then stroll around the store to finish your shopping. This happens all year round, by the way, even in the middle of winter when the sky is pitch black at 2:30 p.m. and it's cold enough to make polar bears shiver. If you tried to do the same thing outside Bloomingdale's on 59th Street in Manhattan on a January afternoon, your baby would likely be handed over to “protective services” and you would be in the back of New York's best police car (that is, the NYPD) before you'd even finished paying for your purchases.
Similarly, when hunting in winter in England, drinking alcohol from start to finish, right up to laying down your weapon, is not only normal but considered essential. Often the hunt begins with a glass of an invigorating drink, such as sloe gin, before taking aim at the first passing bird. Then, at 11am, you stop for a snack, which becomes an excuse for more alcohol, from bullshot to champagne to, inevitably, sloe gin. Lunch is lubricated with a flagon of “claret,” what the English call Bordeaux. Cheese is accompanied by a glass (or two) of port wine. All this is passed around at any time of the day by fellow “guns” (or hunters), merrily passing around a hip flask filled with something like cognac, accompanied by the words: “Come on, take a shot, you'll have a good aim!”. All this adds up to the fact that men who carry firearms (the men who drink the most) are many times over the drink-driving limit. And, it should be emphasized, they teeth Everyone is holding a loaded gun. My German friends think the British are completely crazy.
But name another society besides the Germanic peoples where men find it fashionable to wear old deerskin shorts supported by a girdle-cum-brace, exposing the most unattractive part of a man's anatomy: his gnarled knees. Lederhosen is considered very fashionable, especially in southern Germany, where some people choose to wear it for fairly formal occasions. Do I need to point out that I have never seen an article extolling the sartorial merits of the outfit? To the best of my limited knowledge, no designer in the history of fashion has ever sent a model down the catwalk in lederhosen, and thankfully, lederhosen does not support Germany's healthy export surplus. General Quartermaster (i.e. my German wife) has been pressuring me to wear lederhosen for ages, but so far I've easily resisted. So while it may not be a literal crime in the same sense as an abandoned baby or a drunk with a shotgun, lederhosen is definitely a fashion crime in my book.
Some well-known national traits and traditions may seem strange and indefensible to others, quickly becoming hot topics of nationalist debate. In some cases, long-standing customs are respected as fundamental rights of citizens in some countries. Think of bullfighting in Spain or the right to bear arms in the United States. For a Hindi-speaking Indian, the idea of slowly killing a bull for mass entertainment is literally incomprehensible. In India, the bull is sacred, a sacred symbol of strength, fertility and prosperity, and the gatekeeper to the abode of Lord Shiva. In Spain, bull killing is a recreational sport.
It is astonishing that in the United States today there are over 120 guns per 100 people, and in many states it is perfectly legal to “openly carry” a handgun, while in Japan the gun ownership rate is 0.3 guns per 100 people. As we all know, the Second Amendment to the Constitution gives the right to “keep and bear arms.” This is despite the fact that nearly 40,000 Americans die each year from gun-related deaths. In Japan, that number literally counts on the fingers of one hand.
On the other hand, it is considered perfectly fine for adult Japanese men to read hentai (pornographic comic books, commonly known as “manga”) in public – if you were to take out this material on the London Underground you would likely be quickly arrested under obscenity laws.
In most countries I know, lighting up a cigarette at a gas station would be considered pure insanity. Not in Portugal. Here it's completely normal. You park your car, fill up your tank, buy a punchy espresso while you're paying for it, and then, coffee in hand, stand on 50,000 gallons of gas and light up a cigarette. Are you crazy or do you want to kill everyone in your neighborhood?
Finally, about food. We all know that Koreans eat dog meat, Chinese eat frog sperm, and French people eat horse meat, frog legs, and snails. But why not try “Sauce de Craporte” the next time you travel to Paris? Petit LarousseThe French cooking bible, Les Cookins Français, says the sauce is made from woodlouses, tiny terrestrial crustaceans that hedgehogs are said to avoid and birds to spit out. The creatures secrete ammonia from their shells and are said to taste “like licking a urinal.” But it's the French who get them on the menu.
As you start planning and packing for your summer vacation, keep the above in mind and just shrug. “Celebrate the difference!”
