Colbert to College Graduates: “Don’t Go to Europe to Find Yourself”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 06.07.06 | 6:15 AM ET
Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert offered some “Sound Advice for College Graduates” based, it would appear, on a painful personal travel experience. If the clip ends up on YouTube, we’ll post it. (Update: It’s been posted temporarily on the Comedy Central Web site) Until then, here are Colbert’s words of travel wisdom in their entirety: “Don’t go to Europe to find yourself. Who told you were over there anyway? You’re far more likely to leave yourself there along with some electronic equipment that gets stolen at a youth hostel in Paris on your last night there.”
He went on:
“Of course, you wanted to leave the night before, but, no, your friend Ted wanted to go to that disco—Le Palace—where you had to pay $18 a cocktail. Eighteen dollars! And you’re buying these Danish girls drinks all night because Ted is so certain you’re going to get some action even though the girls keep chatting up these French bastards. Ted is such a fool! So finally you say f*** this noise and you leave. But then you get back to your hostel and your backpack is stolen along with your Walkman and your Siouxsie and the Banshees tapes. So you wait up all night for Ted because you just want to catch the first train the hell out of there. But he doesn’t even breeze in until 9 a.m. and they close the hostel at 8. You’re kicked out on the street. Turns out he hooked up with some girl and they were so drunk they crashed with these Arab guys who live over by that Jim Morrison cemetery. It’s just ridiculous. I didn’t get any action all summer. Bottom line: There’s nothing in Europe you can’t see here. One word: Epcot.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Mireille 06.07.06 | 6:21 PM ET
When I read this kind of comment, not exactly the content, but the expression of it, I am really sad. May be you need another French adventure to reconciliate with this country and with yourself.
France is for an elite of thinkers. You can be robbed anywhere, and generally other foreigners are the robbers in France. But in other countries (...) they try to still your thoughts and your knowledge to make money from you. It is even more disgusting.
Universities in France are for serious students who love to learn and share. You do not buy your diplomas, you deserve them, studying hard. France is a great country if you have an opened mind. good luck to everybody else.
I am so proud to have studied in Paris. What a great university for good students? - I was one of them. A bientôt peut-etre! Mireille
Suebob 06.07.06 | 7:00 PM ET
Mireille - Stephen Colbert is a satirist, a comic. I hope this makes you feel a bit better.
P. Pethoe 07.07.06 | 3:23 AM ET
Why all this misinformation??
Youth hostels in Paris don’t close at 8am, most larger hostels are now open 24 hours.
I stayed in over 100 hostels in Europe, China and the States, and never had anything stolen, although I have left some articles behind. Who wants to steal my second hand camera or a backpack with a broken zipper?
I do regret selling my folding Japanese bicycle at the Geneva Hostel to a Texan. I wish I had it back. It was a nice bike that, when folded could be taken aboard city busses.
fake college diploma 07.12.08 | 4:48 PM ET
Maybe you should go to other countries around Europe or even to France again. If it happened to you once it doesn’t mean that all the people living there are all the same. It’s not fair accusing the whole continent for something that happened to you..