When traveling to exotic locations, you will very likely encounter the anti-exotic. It’s the blessing as well as the curse of the modern world. We are everywhere, whether we like it or not. And right now we’re on Lanzarote, the Canary Islands. The sun is out, the weather is nice. The bulk of the tourists seems to come from the British Isles, for good or, if you ask me, bad. There are more people in the shopping malls (containing the same stores as in every other shopping mall) than on the beautifully flower-adorned side streets and old harbour blocks which contain real traces of Canarian life. And the closer you get to the Ersatz apprehension of how things ”should” be, the more entertaining it gets. You get to see hole-in-the-wall restaurants with names like ”Idea Pizza” and store bannisters with impromptu poetry like ”Fish section – T-shirt”. Even fairly normal imperatives become twisted within this context: ”Try our suckling lamb!” Sometimes it’s merely a...