In _Tramp Royale_, Robert Heinlein recounts a 1953 trip to New Zealand and totally drags it. He said they were all provincial scolds:
Apparently, the pit of misery, the region without hope, the most god-awful place in the whole southern hemisphere circa 1954, was New Zealand. The chapter dealing with this unhappy visit is called “The Drea…
In _Tramp Royale_, Robert Heinlein recounts a 1953 trip to New Zealand and totally drags it. He said they were all provincial scolds:
Apparently, the pit of misery, the region without hope, the most god-awful place in the whole southern hemisphere circa 1954, was New Zealand. The chapter dealing with this unhappy visit is called “The Dreary Utopia,” and its dreariness was of varied kinds. This is the only piece of travel literature I can recall in which the writer truly, deeply hated a Post Office system. The problem was not that Heinlein was a free-market ideologue hostile to New Zealand’s welfare state and tightly-controlled economy. Uruguay had a lot in common with New Zealand politically and economically in those days, but Uruguay also had restaurants that served non-poisonous food, and not everybody there shortchanged visitors all the time. Such were the petty vexations of the country that Heinlein spluttered even at the famous narrow-gauge railways, which in a better mood he would have liked. No doubt part of this antipathy was due simply to the fact the tourist industry was not yet well-developed, but for once the Heinleins forbore to seek private hospitality. They did have a letter of introduction, to a former prime minister no less. Heinlein would not use it, however, because it would have been so difficult to stop himself from telling his host how much he hated his country and everything in it.
I was a big Heinlein fan growing up. Then I grew up. He had some nerve sarcastically referring to a "utopian" NZ. Heinlein's novels reek of his own brand of utopian hedonism. What I'm reading between the lines is Heinlein traveled to NZ and couldn't get laid.
Heinlein's social stuff later on sure took the cake. In Friday (1982) he took the time to shit all over New Zealand, 30 years after his trip there. As for Tramp Royale, I mainly remember that he had a rasher of boiled-looking bacon with pig bristles still in it. That would make me hold a grudge, too.
I read all of the Lazarus Long Jubal Harshaw crap. All of it. Lost it's entertainment value when I began adulting and realized Heinlein was writing mostly adolescent male sex fantasy. And there's nothing more miserable than an international traveler who whines about the bad food. That person is typically a bore to be avoided. It's part of the adventure. In NZ you're getting classic English "cuisine" (for lack of a better term) like it or leave it. My most memorable Thanksgiving was spent on the bathroom floor of a fine Auckland hotel with food poisoning. You learn to stick to the grilled lamb, fish and chips, pizza, and maybe some sweet yummy pavlova (basically a baked merengue cake) and you get by.
In _Tramp Royale_, Robert Heinlein recounts a 1953 trip to New Zealand and totally drags it. He said they were all provincial scolds:
Apparently, the pit of misery, the region without hope, the most god-awful place in the whole southern hemisphere circa 1954, was New Zealand. The chapter dealing with this unhappy visit is called “The Dreary Utopia,” and its dreariness was of varied kinds. This is the only piece of travel literature I can recall in which the writer truly, deeply hated a Post Office system. The problem was not that Heinlein was a free-market ideologue hostile to New Zealand’s welfare state and tightly-controlled economy. Uruguay had a lot in common with New Zealand politically and economically in those days, but Uruguay also had restaurants that served non-poisonous food, and not everybody there shortchanged visitors all the time. Such were the petty vexations of the country that Heinlein spluttered even at the famous narrow-gauge railways, which in a better mood he would have liked. No doubt part of this antipathy was due simply to the fact the tourist industry was not yet well-developed, but for once the Heinleins forbore to seek private hospitality. They did have a letter of introduction, to a former prime minister no less. Heinlein would not use it, however, because it would have been so difficult to stop himself from telling his host how much he hated his country and everything in it.
I was a big Heinlein fan growing up. Then I grew up. He had some nerve sarcastically referring to a "utopian" NZ. Heinlein's novels reek of his own brand of utopian hedonism. What I'm reading between the lines is Heinlein traveled to NZ and couldn't get laid.
Heinlein's social stuff later on sure took the cake. In Friday (1982) he took the time to shit all over New Zealand, 30 years after his trip there. As for Tramp Royale, I mainly remember that he had a rasher of boiled-looking bacon with pig bristles still in it. That would make me hold a grudge, too.
I read all of the Lazarus Long Jubal Harshaw crap. All of it. Lost it's entertainment value when I began adulting and realized Heinlein was writing mostly adolescent male sex fantasy. And there's nothing more miserable than an international traveler who whines about the bad food. That person is typically a bore to be avoided. It's part of the adventure. In NZ you're getting classic English "cuisine" (for lack of a better term) like it or leave it. My most memorable Thanksgiving was spent on the bathroom floor of a fine Auckland hotel with food poisoning. You learn to stick to the grilled lamb, fish and chips, pizza, and maybe some sweet yummy pavlova (basically a baked merengue cake) and you get by.