Joker

An Irishman walks into a bar (badda boom…on with it, Dan). And he says, "When I die, here's how I imagine heaven will be: All the cops will be Scots, all the mechanics will be German, all the cooks will be French, all the lovers will be Italian, and it'll all be organized by the Swiss.” The John Bull bartender looks at him and says, “You can go to hell where all the cooks are Scots, all the mechanics are French, all the cops are German, all the lovers are Swiss, and it's all organized by the Italians."
I bring up this old chestnut because we're about to head for Switzerland to confront one of these stereotypes. After two decades of fairly regular travel to Italy, will Swiss orderliness prove to be the perfect antidote for a recent streak of stress-filled weeks, or will it leave us craving Italy's comforting chaos? Travel, of course, is the best way to breakdown stereotypes...or confirm them.
On our first trip to South Africa we were greeted at the door of a restaurant by an extremely tall Zulu security guard, dressed in a long dark trench coat and armed with an AK-47. Name of the restaurant? The Carnivore. Decor? Mounted animal heads, spears and tribal shields. Step into my stereotype.
First trip to Naples, a gang of young thugs tried to steal our luggage; the concierge at our hotel tried to sell us a cab ride to the ferry landing directly across the street; the line for  ferry tickets pretty much resembled a stampede of headless chickens. Step into my stereotype.
As we were about to leave Sicily after two halcyon weeks, we were told at the Palermo airport that our flight home had been cancelled due to a new policy from Lufthansa (our carrier) that if you did not arrive on your scheduled flight, your subsequent flights would be automatically cancelled. We did not arrive on schedule because we missed our connecting flight in Newark because airspace there had been closed to accommodate a presidential visit to view hurricane damage. The Sicilians told us with evident glee that Lufthansa’s policy had been causing chaos for months, and they took great obvious delight in straightening out the Aryan screw-up. Then we flew off to Paris, one of the most civilized cities on earth, where I had my pocket picked.  As Chuck Berry says, "C'est la vie, it goes to show you never can tell...."
Anyway, I'm now more concerned about the stereotypes I'm leaving behind than the ones I'm about to encounter. As I pack my bags, Aaron Hernandez, star tight end of my New England Patriots, is embroiled in a nasty homicide investigation. In hell, all the Americans are crazy for football and carry guns.
In 1986, we went to Hawaii where I indulged my usual travel habit of a news blackout. When I got home, I learned that Boston Celtics number one draft pick Len Bias had died of a drug overdose. In 2011, we made the aforementioned trip to Sicily, only to learn upon returning that the Boston Red Sox had coughed up a commanding 9 game lead and a 99.6% chance of making the playoffs...never to recover. It's quite possible that when I return from this trip Aaron Hernandez will be catching passes...or rather dodging them...from his new cellmate Whitey Bulger. It's enough to make a guy think about staying home.
One alligator…two alligators…three alligators...
There...I thought about it. Auf weirdersehen, everyone.