Not all those who wander are lost.

Photo by Striderv at Flickr.

I have returned home from my foray into the Wide World, and feeling somewhat that Orlando rather does not belong to it. People come here for Disney and beaches, to escape from all that lovely Culture in the Old World into a plastic bubble of temporary fun-fueled obliviousness. They buy more tacky souvenirs than they need with their favourable exchange rates and drag their kids around on leashes to get sunburned and scream.

Now, I'm not entirely jaded about Disneyworld. There is some sort of fairytale still in it for me. I enjoy the parks, particularly Epcot; drop my sister and I in the Magic Kingdom and suddenly we're squealing princesses. But I've also hiked up and down International Drive in the early evening, when the tourists have gone back to their hotels and all that remains are the ugly closed-up strip malls and dirty baked bus stops. There is no "behind-the-scenes" outside Disney. I know the tourists see it, but somewhow they ignore it, because they fly out 5000 miles away the next morning and it's no longer their problem.

So when someone asks me "how it is to live at Disneyworld" (yes, verbatim), I don't feel fun or lucky... I think about $10 for three beach towels and Midwestern moms in huge jean capris and Mickey seeing an endless line of kids who don't know there's a tired twentysomething in that costume and bright red European men who should be wearing more bathing suit than that and cigarette butts in the sand at Daytona and the heat that makes all of them simmer like sausages and I feel grimy. Grimy like a 1970s car that's had a dog in it for a while.

Welcome home, it's a real Orlando summer.