The Vallejo Street Steps in San Francisco (flickr/Creative Commons)

Travel hazards abound, from Montezuma's revenge to middle seat madness on a long coach flight. But did you know that there are at least three recognized travel-related maladies associated with well-known cities?

All can be grouped under the heading of Voyager Syndrome, the wonderfully poetic term for (mostly psychological) illnesses related to travel.

Paris Syndrome occurs when the reality of the modern French capital clashes with a visitor's idealized expectations (Japanese female tourists in their 30s are at the highest risk). Jerusalem Syndrome is characterized by a sudden flaring up of extreme religious feeling, and can affect Jews, Christians, and Muslims, or even travelers who consider themselves irreligious. Florence Syndrome (also known as Hyperkulturemia, or Stendahl Syndrome, for the author who first described it) can strike travelers exposed to beautiful art, especially a lot of it in one place, like at Florence's Uffizi Gallery; symptoms include dizziness, faintness, palpitations, and hallucinations.

As I contemplated these various syndromes, I wondered: what would a "San Francisco Syndrome" look like?

A friend who lives in North Beach recently told me she ran into a tourist on the Vallejo Street steps, an out-of-the way and nearly vertical conduit between the hills of North Beach and the flatlands of the Embarcadero. A stone's throw from the iconic Transamerica Pyramid, the stairs offer killer views amid riotously blooming roses, jasmine and brugmansia trees. The tourist had escaped her wharfside McHotel and was out for an early morning run on one of those brilliantly rain-washed San Francisco days. She was literally in tears, my friend told me, as she repeated, "It's so beautiful here."

So that's one idea for the San Francisco Syndrome: moved to tears when a highly touted destination actually lives up to the hype.

I can think of other definitions of a possible San Francisco Syndrome, more along the idealized-expectations-clash-with-reality lines, like packing for sunny California and being confronted with rain and wind and a cold all the harder to handle because San Franciscans insist their city is temperate. 

Or the LGBT version: finding that this famously gay city is still overwhelmingly strait, that 'gay' doesn't necessarily include gay women (see Jessica Battilana's piece in 7 x 7), and that there are no friendly neighborhood clinics offering free sex-change operations.

Or the earthquake reality check: visitors who'd discounted earthquakes as not like real weather disasters (tornados, hurricanes, typhoons) getting a jolt or two and deciding to spend the rest of their vacation under a well-reinforced doorjamb. By the way, I love Timothy Eagon's take on living in a city beset by quakes (he's talking Seattle, another Ring of Fire hot spot): that we who live on unstable ground perform a "willful act of daily denial" but that "the most nervy ground is also the most sublime" and that "such is the contract for living in a lovely place, still taking shape, still forming."

What's your version of the San Francisco Syndrome? And what might be the "cure"? AA Gill wrote in the London Times of the Paris Syndrome: "The cure is called Rome, though there are side effects: it's very addictive."

For more information, see the Voyager Syndromes post at Cogitz.