I pulled out the book and dug these references up.
We see his opinion about the essential sameness of places visited by tourists in a few places in the book;
A confidence trickster bums a meal at a tourist cafe at Place Mohamed Ali, Alexandria:
""
Maxwell Rowley-Bugge, hair coiffed, mustaches curled and external clothing correct to the last wrinkle and thread, sat in one corner, back to the wall, feeling the first shooting pains of panic begin to dance about his abdomen. For beneath the careful shell of hair, skin and fabric lay holed and gray linen and a ne'er-do-well's heart. Old Max was a peregrine and penniless at that.
Give it a quarter of an hour more, he decided. If nothing promising comes along I shall move on to L'Univers.
He had crossed the border into Baedeker land some eight years ago—'90—after an unpleasantness in Yorkshire.
…
How he had come to Alexandria, where he would go on leaving, little of that could matter to any tourist. He was that sort of vagrant who exists, though unwillingly, entirely within the Baedeker world—as much a feature of the topography as the other automata: waiters, porters, cabmen, clerks. Whenever he was about his business—cadging means, drinks, or lodging—a temporary covenant would come into effect between Max and his "touch"; by which Max was defined as a well-off fellow tourist temporarily embarrassed by a malfunction in Cook's machinery.
A common game among tourists. They knew what he was; and those who participated in the game did so for the same reason they haggled at shops or gave baksheesh to beggars; it was in the unwritten laws of Baedeker land. Max was one of the minor inconveniences of an almost perfectly arranged tourist-state. The inconvenience was more than made up for in "color".
""
And later, Pynchon revisits his thesis about tourist-land more directly:
""
V. at the age of thirty-three (Stencil's calculation) had found love at last in her peregrinations through (let us be honest) a world if not created then at least described to its fullest by Karl Baedeker of Leipzik. This is a curious country, populated only by a breed called "tourists." Its landscape is one of inanimate monuments and buildings; near-inanimate barmen, taxi-drivers, bellhops, guides: there to do any bidding, to various degrees of efficiency, on receipt of the recommended baksheesh, pourboire, mancia, tip. More than this it is two-dimensional, as is the Street, as ar the pages and maps of those little red handbooks. As long as the Cook's, Travellers' Clubs and banks are open, the Distribution of Time section followed scrupulously, the plumbing at the hotel in order ("No hotel", writes Karl Baedeker, "can be recommended as first-class that is not satisfactory in its sanitary arrangements, which should include an abundant flush of water and a supply of proper toilette paper"), the tourist may wander anywhere in this coordinate system without fear. War never becomes more serious than a scuffle with a pickpocket, one of "the huge army … who are quick to recognize the stranger and skilful in taking advantage of his ignorance"; depression and prosperity are reflected only in the rate of exchange; politics are of course never discussed with the native population. Tourism thus is supranational, like the Catholic Church, and perhaps the most absolute communion we know on Earth: for be its members American, German, Italian, whatever, the Tour Eiffel, Pyramids, and Campanile all evoke identical responses from them; their Bible is cleraly written and does not admit of private interpretation; they share the same landscapes, suffer the same inconveniences; live by the same pellucid time-scale. They are the Street's own.
""
Later, after inexplicably peering into the mind of a train conductor operating a service that some of our protagonists are riding, Pynchon seems to explain why he's doing this:
""
Merely train's hardware for any casual onlooker, Waldetar in private life was exactly this mist of philosphy, imagination and continual worry over his several relationships—not only with God, but also with Nita, with their children, with his own history. There's no organized effort abot it but there remains a grand joke on all visitors to Baedeker's world: the permanent residents are actually humans in disguise.
""
We see his opinion about the essential sameness of places visited by tourists in a few places in the book;
A confidence trickster bums a meal at a tourist cafe at Place Mohamed Ali, Alexandria:
""
Maxwell Rowley-Bugge, hair coiffed, mustaches curled and external clothing correct to the last wrinkle and thread, sat in one corner, back to the wall, feeling the first shooting pains of panic begin to dance about his abdomen. For beneath the careful shell of hair, skin and fabric lay holed and gray linen and a ne'er-do-well's heart. Old Max was a peregrine and penniless at that.
Give it a quarter of an hour more, he decided. If nothing promising comes along I shall move on to L'Univers.
He had crossed the border into Baedeker land some eight years ago—'90—after an unpleasantness in Yorkshire.
…
How he had come to Alexandria, where he would go on leaving, little of that could matter to any tourist. He was that sort of vagrant who exists, though unwillingly, entirely within the Baedeker world—as much a feature of the topography as the other automata: waiters, porters, cabmen, clerks. Whenever he was about his business—cadging means, drinks, or lodging—a temporary covenant would come into effect between Max and his "touch"; by which Max was defined as a well-off fellow tourist temporarily embarrassed by a malfunction in Cook's machinery.
A common game among tourists. They knew what he was; and those who participated in the game did so for the same reason they haggled at shops or gave baksheesh to beggars; it was in the unwritten laws of Baedeker land. Max was one of the minor inconveniences of an almost perfectly arranged tourist-state. The inconvenience was more than made up for in "color".
""
And later, Pynchon revisits his thesis about tourist-land more directly:
""
V. at the age of thirty-three (Stencil's calculation) had found love at last in her peregrinations through (let us be honest) a world if not created then at least described to its fullest by Karl Baedeker of Leipzik. This is a curious country, populated only by a breed called "tourists." Its landscape is one of inanimate monuments and buildings; near-inanimate barmen, taxi-drivers, bellhops, guides: there to do any bidding, to various degrees of efficiency, on receipt of the recommended baksheesh, pourboire, mancia, tip. More than this it is two-dimensional, as is the Street, as ar the pages and maps of those little red handbooks. As long as the Cook's, Travellers' Clubs and banks are open, the Distribution of Time section followed scrupulously, the plumbing at the hotel in order ("No hotel", writes Karl Baedeker, "can be recommended as first-class that is not satisfactory in its sanitary arrangements, which should include an abundant flush of water and a supply of proper toilette paper"), the tourist may wander anywhere in this coordinate system without fear. War never becomes more serious than a scuffle with a pickpocket, one of "the huge army … who are quick to recognize the stranger and skilful in taking advantage of his ignorance"; depression and prosperity are reflected only in the rate of exchange; politics are of course never discussed with the native population. Tourism thus is supranational, like the Catholic Church, and perhaps the most absolute communion we know on Earth: for be its members American, German, Italian, whatever, the Tour Eiffel, Pyramids, and Campanile all evoke identical responses from them; their Bible is cleraly written and does not admit of private interpretation; they share the same landscapes, suffer the same inconveniences; live by the same pellucid time-scale. They are the Street's own.
""
Later, after inexplicably peering into the mind of a train conductor operating a service that some of our protagonists are riding, Pynchon seems to explain why he's doing this:
"" Merely train's hardware for any casual onlooker, Waldetar in private life was exactly this mist of philosphy, imagination and continual worry over his several relationships—not only with God, but also with Nita, with their children, with his own history. There's no organized effort abot it but there remains a grand joke on all visitors to Baedeker's world: the permanent residents are actually humans in disguise. ""