Dam-Torsad

I ache, I burn, I want to scream.

As I am in the Amarr system, I wanted to visit the holy sites and major cathedrals in Amarr Island. But I had no idea how to do this, the island has become one vast metropolis. Dam-Torsad has swallowed all the land, all the way up to the shore on every side. I don’t know how to move around in this city, I can’t figure out how to find the Mausoleum of Greinok or how to get to the Cathedral of Saint Tal-Romon. Mass transit remains a mystery to me, and the free maps they hand out at stations are woefully inadequate.

So, I registered with a tour operator, specializing in the holy sites. They pick you up in the morning, show you places of pilgrimage with a guide, and drop you off in the evening. This modus operandi should have been a first warning signal.

With a cluster of tourists from all over the Empire and beyond, you are squeezed together in a transport and brought from one site to another. The guide walks you over, says some commonplace nonsense rehearsed and rehashed a thousand times before, including the monotonously repeated jokes. Then you get just a little bit of time to walk around on your own before you are pushed towards the souvenir shop where you get ample time. Then you are shipped to the next site.

It hurts. I want to pray, to meditate, to contemplate history and the immensity of these places. I want to let it pierce my heart while I recite scripture and let the history of these places fill my soul to the brim. I want to lay down flat on the floor and touch the stones on which holy men and women stepped. But I can’t. It is too loud, too crowded with stupid obese Gallente taking disrespectful holopictures. There is no rest and no quiet. You get a tiny glimpse of what these places could be, before you are pushed further along the tourist track. And soon you are again dumped in a souvenir store, that offer books with nice pictures of what you could only vaguely perceive.

I came back from this trip exhausted and disappointed. The most revered and holiest places have become an industry, an assembly line for tourist mementos. From opening time till closing time, they are desecrated by the loud, picture taking, fast-food munching tourist stream of atheists and heretics.