Doug MacEachern, The Arizona Republic
VISITING EUROPE THE GIRL SCOUT WAY
It was not a highbrow tour of the old countries.
In Salzburg, Austria, we visited a castle where sprays of water gushed from the antlers of mounted heads of deer in a garden. Not -- how do you say? -- the stuff of resplendent Old World culture.
In Munich and Amsterdam, we sought out Mike's Bike Tours, as perfect an antidote to pretentious refinement as you can find in Europe.
If you wish to balance your parade of cathedrals and art museums with an American slacker's view of the continent, I highly recommend Mike's guided tours. Our leader, a young Hawaiian named Frankie, was amazingly versed regarding the Chinese Tower outdoor beer hall in the English Gardens of Munich. They serve lots and lots of beer there, you know.
And so it was throughout our group's little "sampler" tour of Europe. We did some theater in London. But, well, it was Monty Python's Spamalot. Not exactly A Midsummer Night's Dream in Regent's Park but a genuine laff-riot, nonetheless.
Which is not to say that our 16 days in seven European and British cities acked cultural or educational purpose. We toured the Louvre. Some of us did the "Da Vinci Code" tour of the Louvre (what is "kitsch" in Latin, I wonder?). But it's not like we wasted time in Paris hanging around the cafes of Montparnasse eating bad cheese.
Oh ... wait. We did that, too.
Left to my own devices, I might have sought out a bit more Shakespeare, a few more cathedrals and a lot fewer cities.
But this trip was not of my own device. It was a tour structured,organized and arranged by a troop of Girl Scouts, each of whom paid her own way for this tour de force across the world's most expensive continent.
Most of us know about what good things the Boy Scouts do for boys. Self-reliance. Character-building. Knot-tying. A lot of wonderful things. Few boys leave the Scouts lacking memories of camp-outs, canoe trips and adventurous forced marches through the woods.
For girls, though, Scouting is a different experience. Most girls who get into Scouting tend to drift away right about the age that their male counterparts are reaching their Scouting stride. There are girls who stick with it. There are girls who stay in Scouting through high school, often earning their Gold Award. But the very fact that you have to explain to most people what a Gold Award is -- it's the Girl Scout equivalent of Eagle Scout -- tells you all you need to know about the prevalence of older teens in the Girl Scouts. There just aren't many.
In our group of 16, there were four of them, as well as several parents of Scouts (including me), a few friends and neighbors. But it was the girls for whom the trip was organized, the last remaining members of a "travel troop" of Girl Scouts whose primary focus (besides, of course, doing good deeds) is organizing trips to Europe.
Under the aegis of troop leaders Stevi Shearer and Suzanne Gallas, my daughter's troop has traveled to Europe three times. In three-year sequences, they would conduct all manner of fundraising events and, of
course, sell countless boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Then, they used the proceeds for the big trip.
With all due respect to the boys, the diligence, determination and long-range true grit that it takes to accomplish such a feat puts even the best-ever Boy Scout jamboree into some perspective.
In a perfect world, such an enormous, years-long undertaking would seem amazing. In a world besotted of the values of instant gratification and thick with Paris Hilton role models, it is practically beyond
comprehension.
What kept the girls going was a goal -- a tantalizing, reachable goal that they knew would end with bike trips through Amsterdam and tours of the Louvre if only they stuck with it and worked hard.
And, except for the odd nudge from parents and the indomitable Stevi Shearer, they did it on their own.
As our Euro-slacker tour-guide Frankie might say, "How cool is that?"
No comments:
Post a Comment