When I was backpacking around Mexico and Central America, trading starry-eyed plans for upcoming trips, there was something unfashionable about dropping the word “Europe” in casual conversation. Forks hit the ground; people threw their hands up, taking offense. I almost came to blows with one scruffy stoner, whose eyes snapped out of their narcotic stupor at the words “Eurail pass,” as if I’d just voted Republican. Honduras, Myanmar, the African bush: if you wanted to earn your travel stripes, you had to start racking up visas for countries that were all but convulsing from social unrest. Stable governments were - like flush toilets and periodontics - relics of some outdated, bourgeois, neo-colonial system. Never mind the Alhambra, the Acropolis, the treasures of the Uffizi: Europe was where stale pensioners - their bank accounts fattened by
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