CAMPING CAR AND CULTURE ... TOGETHER
of Beppe Tassone

At the times of the grammar school, to underline that a man's essence was to know, to verify, to learn and not only to vegetate ( just there was the difference with the other beings of the animal kingdom ), Dante Alighieri was troubled with his "Done you were not to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge." Since those verses had been written, almost 800 years have passed: they were actual in those times, they are still now, better, in these times when the detail is preferred to the general and the man has the tendency to forget the sociality of the problems, remembering how important is to be able to have a full point or even only to be able to disprove or to make a comparison, is more and more important. The world of the tourism for too long, has lived, instead, of the virtual: holiday villages were born, with the stories of those who have found themselves in Africa, and not only, in the middle of false skirmishes among tribes imitating ancient struggles, , frightening (or at least trying to do so...) people, to make them shiver just, to say with Carducci, "to get four pence for the soup.' Splendid hotels, super comfortable and rich in every opportunity, have risen in bleak outskirts, completely uprooted from the reality surrounding them, entertaining regardless and, at times unaware, people convinced to be in dream places, without realizing, instead, that at few footsteps from a net hidden from rich bushes and from splendid palm trees, there was a world rich in suffering, difficulties and deprivations, but also a patrimony of culture, of traditions, of the folklore difficult to imagine inside the luxury halls of the hotels, where the air conditioning competed with the cable radio and with an animator to make the stay pleasant. For heaven's sake, no intention to criminalize or condemn those who decide to spend their leisure time in a virtual way, life troubles and preoccupations are so many that it is right to spend the canonical fortnight of relax how one thinks better to. Then Dante and those verses learned at school return to the mind "... done you were not to ...", they contribute to make the difference, to create a neat demarcation between the real and the virtual, between knowing and seeing represented, between tasting and aping. The tourism of movement conjugates, under this point, the real essence of the human being, driven to move to know and not only to imagine, wishing to see with his own eyes and not only through a documentary, longing to live the reality and not only to have it told through the mediations and the sweetening of some professionals of the leisure time.
So, in his wandering between a nation and another, between a small village and the other, the tourist identifies himself in the realities, discovers the differences, he appreciates them , and that baggage of knowledge that contributes to make him "an ambassador of peace" is formed.
I remember the months that preceded the Yugoslav civil war, my wandering between Bosnia and Croatia, verifying how the short circuit was in action, or the experiences among the Laplanders or among the Maghrebi people, but also the search for the particular and the differences among the dishes in appearance similar cooked at few kilometres’ distance or the game to learn how, in the same region, even when speaking the same dialect, certain words absolutely equal assume different meanings. It's the culture of the territory that is exalted by those who move and have a preference for knowing and verifying, it is the exaltation, of the differences that contribute to form a true nation and not only, a "geographical expression". What others envy to us is our being different, our being able to identify ourselves in the life of the countries without any mediations, indeed to refuse them. A funeral in Moscow and one in Ankara, a Scottish marriage and a Sicilian one, the way to celebrate in Ireland and in Greece, are so different, even at the antipodes, but they are always unified by the eyes of a woman in love, of a suffering man, of a child who tries to understand... at any latitude. In different ways, the men's essence is always the same, the behaviours change, but not the most intimate and essential part of each of us . Who travels by camping car knows that quite well. Hence the necessity to make a step forward, to try to exalt the importance that the culture of the territory holds in our way to understand and hence interpret the leisure time, the necessity to bind the camping car with the culture more and more. That not in order to distinguish ourselves or to feel better than the others, but because it couldn't be different. The culture of the territory cannot be interpreted in a different way. It constitutes, in fact, a whole with the primary necessities of the one who moves with a recreational vehicle to know, the explorer of the third millennium, with all comforts, but with the same drive of Dante's Ulysses. "Done you were not to live as brutes, ..." That's why the camping car and the culture have to travel together: from that the reasons for a new bet, of a new door that opens on the philosophy of those who travel to have a good time, but also to know, to appreciate, to love their fellow creatures and to realize that just from the differences generates that unifying essence taking the name of humanity.