Travel loves: exotic and with an expiration date
Ardid of amorous uses. Information is power. The trick is to ask how are the relations between the sexes in her country, what would a guy like you have to do to pick up a girl like her. Just the conversation alone gives him a clue as to what you're thinking. If you use his answer that very night, he'll know why you're doing it. It might seem like a lovely detail to you, or it might give you a definitive clue as to when to start running. In all cases you win, even if it's time.
Trick of night walk on the beach. If she accepts the offer of a night walk on the beach thinking that you are going to walk on the beach, marry her.
Lost temple ruse. Ask him if he wants to go with you to see an amazing monument that does not appear in any guide and that, practically, you have discovered. Then, search Google Maps for some nearby ruins, one of those that no one is going to see, probably because there is nothing to see.
Trickster of the troubled river. Offer to be a Sherpa or an interpreter and pretend you know the language and make up phrases that sound like the natives say. You have one hour to woo her before she notices her.
Photo input. It is so basic that it is a bit creepy. It consists of the classic “can you take a picture of me making a fool of myself in front of the Tower of Pisa?”. As soon as you find the button you only have a few seconds to impress. Bonus: shows the navel. With some chocolate bar abs, of course. If it's a beer belly you have, he'll appreciate your sense of humor and lack of hang-ups. That's what we want to believe.
soccer approach. Talking about football is the universal passport to initiate a rapprochement. Also, that it works much better for us since we won I don't know what cup. Those of us who do not distinguish a penalty from the Ogino method can try poetry. It is about reciting in your language some verses that you are going to know. If it is English, Blake's “tiger, tiger”; if it is Portuguese, Pessoa's “o poeta é um fingidor”; if the start of the Divine Comedy is Italian (“nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/ mi ritrovai per una selva negra”), which is very dramatic; and if she's French, it doesn't matter, because she's going to prefer to hear the sound of her own voice. In any case, two verses are enough, four is professional and with eight you fall asleep.
Tai chi roll. We said yesterday that we have well-founded suspicions that those who use tai chi to flirt are very likely to invent the postures. That is within your reach. Those of the postures are first cousins of those who drag a guitar and only know –suspiciously- tearful songs: before they were by Aute and now by Pablo Alborán. The key to this trick is to do it in the right environment, that is, perroflautico. There are destinations that are very much like that, such as San Cristóbal de las Casas or the Camino de Santiago itself.
Subterfuge of maternal instinct. You will not be able to avoid waking it up if you travel alone and exacerbate it if you show hunger, cold or a sad face.
Deconstruction Stratagem. A good trip always has languid downtime: maddening flight delays, smoky bus breakdowns, and hour-long waits at the restaurant the guidebook recommends. It is the occasion to tell you about your life, even what you have never told your friends, because your friends have never been such a good captive audience. The moment to attack is right after the “ho, aunt, it seems as if I have known you all my life”.
Exotic trickery. Even the things you've always hated about yourself seem admirable to them because you're a foreigner. The geeky extravagances that got you stoned at school here are considered sophisticated customs. Do the exotic.
“We have a party” trap. You have to be very cold-blooded for this one. It consists of inviting her to a party in your rental apartment or in your hotel room. Only when he arrives there is no party. It never works. Once I told a girl that she did want to come and have a drink, that she had paid for the mini bar. The next morning I met her at breakfast and she told me very indignantly that she had asked and that there was no minibar in any of the hotel rooms.
Trick of the to me that they enter me. The train slips on a cold night on the banks of the Danube. Inside the car, an Asian girl and a young Spanish man, a bit lazy about these things, begin to take the conversation to the field of flirtation. He is not sure about the happy ending, Asian women are very much his, and he tells her that what he wants is for them to enter him. That there is nothing I admire more than a girl who holds the reins. And then he sits down to wait. That's more or less how Julio Baquero tells it in The Journey of a Nihilist (Menoscuarto, 2009).