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Quick note: I should have mentioned in the last email that after Chicago Tim went east and I went west. It was just a matter of personal preference and neither of us are fans of compromise, which in this case would have just seen us hanging around the middle of the country.
I stayed at East Glacier for quite a few days, partly because accommodation was very cheap and partly because it was a refreshing change of pace. However much I liked the place the fact remained that I had a one month rail pass and a large chuck of the country still to be visited. My next destination was not carefully pondered or ruminated upon. I knew nothing about Portland before coming to the US apart from the fact that they had a basketball team in the NBA. Portland is on the northwest coast, near the border of Oregon and Washington, and just below Seattle. I went there because the train went there and it sounded more serene that Seattle.
From East Glacier the trip to Portland is nine hours by car and 16 hours by train. The train takes a very leisurely view towards getting from one place to another but I don’t mind as it’s very comfortable and saves money on accommodation. The train meanders through the low point of the Rockies, passing through some towns so small that they barely exist at all. The staff at the big hotels come out and wave at the train which is not as onerous a duty as it sounds as there is only one per day. I did get the feeling that it was part of the job rather than an overflowing of natural cordiality. The train leaves Montana by night and when you wake in Oregon the next day the forests are just as thick and the hills just as steep. Oregon is home to enormous pine trees. You can’t escape their presence and the city of Portland almost feels like it’s there on sufferance while the forest decides whether to swallow it up or not.
Portland is a strange mix of subcultures. It’s as if they’ve been watching MTV for 20 years and have randomly attached themselves to one group or another. There are punks, skaters, mountain men, anti globalisationists, hacky sackers and junkies galore. It’s the kind of place that was built when no-one gave a shit what it looked like as long as the damn thing worked. Ugly bridges cross an ugly river connecting suburbia with a mediocre downtown. I liked the let it all hang loose feel of the place but it felt like a better place to live than visit. Portland isn’t used to tourists and takes on the aspect of someone guiltily disturbed while doing something unfashionable.
I spent most of my time in Portland walking around the very leafy suburbs with their very nice and very big houses. The ‘burbs had a soothing effect on me, especially as they were teeming with very friendly cats. I love patting cats and went from one to the other dispensing much appreciated head rubs and chin scratches. I felt sorry for one of them; a short haired ginger Persian. I felt sorry for it simply because of it’s horrible squashed in face. I had to struggle not to be sick when looking at it’s ghastly visage but it was such a friendly cat that I gave it a pat anyway. It was so happy that someone hadn’t simply thrown up on it that in trotted along next to me as I went further along the street to another cat waiting for my magical fingers. This normal tabby reacted to my new friend in quite a normal way. It hissed and indicated that to get any closer would be to risk bodily health. I was just getting into my head rubbing routine on the new cat when I looked back and saw squashed face cat giving me a look of abject sorrow and betrayal before running off. I have rarely witnessed a sadder creature and was relieved that cats don’t understand the concept of suicide.
I suppose every city has something unique to offer, and while Portlad’s offerings aren’t extravagant, I can’t think of anywhere else that you can find them. For a start there is the drinking fountain candelabra. Instead of having just one spout to drink from some bright spark has thought, “No, we can do better than that”, and delivered four spouts arching out from the central stem. I never saw more than one person at a time using them but it’s comforting to know that if four very thirsty people arrive at the same drinking fountain at the same time that they can all quench their thirst simultaneously. Another strange invention graced the only supermarket I went into. The modern supermarket generally features a conveyor belt to move the groceries towards the cashier, but in Portland they prefer a large rotating disc which circles your shopping around the chewing gum. I didn’t really see the advantage in this approach and it seemed to knock cartons of milk over quite regularly.
Portland is a quietly boring and depressing place, something that a high proportion of junkies can be a symptom of. Another clue was the sign on the bridge offering suicidal people a number to call for counselling. It seemed like a last ditch effort and was probably there more to avoid traffic congestion. I think the bushy and quiet nature of Portland hides a secret. I kept observing little signs which when taken on their own appear to be nothing out of the ordinary but when connected they paint a grim picture. There was the abnormally high number of missing pet posters, the unusual plants growing in the gardens, the number of men with goatees and shaved heads, the women in dark clothes and the freshly severed goat’s head in the hostel bathroom. I feel sure there is mischief afoot in Portland. You need only look at the local papers which featured the story of two missing teenage girls who had recently been found buried in a backyard. I had almost forgotten I was in America.
Dave out.
Quick note: My hands are very sore and not used to typing anymore. This is a very long email so I hope you appreciate my suffering to bring it to you. I suggest that you make yourself a beverage and a small snack before reading it although you should be warned that there is a brief moment of lewd content.
I felt a natural affinity with the Chicago and Illinois region because of the Blues Brothers movie, which is set there. It was the one film my sister and I were allowed to stay up and watch no matter how late it was on. The entry in the TV guide would be highlighted and the whole family watched it and laughed each time. At an incredibly young age my sister could do the hard bit in ‘Minnie the moocher’ and for days after watching it, when he was offering cups of tea, my dad would say “Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips”, with the associated hand gestures. I went to sleep with the Illinois accent ringing in my ears and coming to the place is like a trip down memory lane.
With that said I was getting a bit sick of big cities. I didn’t come to America to research the history of the skyscraper or to compare the subtle differences between a New York and a Chicago hot dog. I wanted to see the land, the thing that makes the United States an amazing place – the mountains, the deserts, the plains. Well, maybe I had seen enough plains for a while. All I knew was that if I went to another city I was in danger of flipping out.
This situation led to me shattering all previous journey endurance records with a 32 hour train journey to Glaciers National Park and a small town called East Glacier. The park is situated in Montana, at the very top of the United States and is combined with the Canadian Wareton Park to showcase 1.5 million acres of the US version of Switzerland. Luckily the train had enough leg room to accommodate even my stretched limbs and as I settled in for the journey the train rumbled through the Chicago suburbs for 10 minutes before breaking down. This wasn’t a good sign. An air hose had blown and it took them two hours to replace it as the old hose had rusted on. Apparently breakdowns are very common which I suspect is the real reason for the comfortable seating.
31 hours of the trip were terminally dull. The train travels through Wisconsin at night, with bushes and trees framed against the night sky, but once the light started creeping back into the landscape we were in North Dakota, otherwise known as the flatlands. By this stage I was sick of looking at fields but at least the crop changed from corn to wheat and there were a few cows and horses to break up the monotony. A little further into North Dakota are the badlands which live up to their name. Stagnant pools and sketchy grass give the place a depressing air until you get to the grass plains of Montana with it’s horse herds.
Montana is quite a long state, measuring from east to west, and mainly consists of grassy plains. I was heading towards my second sunset on the train and had given up trying to enjoy myself when from out on the horizon loomed a set of sharks teeth. The start of the Rockies is an amazing sight, especially as it comes on the heels of such a vast expanse of flatness. From out of nowhere enormous mountains sprang up and lifted my spirits. The train even started to deviate from it’s normal dead straight course and we weaved around the slightly hillier plains in front of a set of mountains stretched across the sky and decorated in twilight pink.
I had arrived at East Glacier which is nestled in the shadows of the mountains. The town holds about 300 people during winter but is mainly a summer destination centred around the station and the massive lodge style hotel. The town doesn’t appear to have changed greatly in a hundred years with old stores simply being restyled rather than rebuilt.
The hostel was located behind a Mexican restaurant which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The Mexican restaurant reminded me of where I worked in Canberra but here they served much nicer food to a smaller audience. It gets remarkably cold in East Glacier at night and in a bare bones hostel there was no easy way to keep warm. For two and a half months I had been sweatily trying to remain cool and now I was lying awake at 4:30 am with my feet stuffed in my backpack and a towel doing it’s best to comfort me. In the end I had to resort to rigorous masturbation in order to try and generate a sustainable body temperature.
I arose early in the morning and wearily took a stroll around town. Dawn was just breaking and casting a feeble light on those looming monsters to the west. The mountains are the result of a couple of continental plates practicing their sumo wrestling skills. While the mountains did look great I had more pressing things on my mind, such as getting warm, eating breakfast and securing warmth for the night. For some strange reason a town where temperatures drop to -80 degrees Fahrenheit in winter and which receives a least 60 feet of snow did not sell any sleeping bags or blankets. I only found an overpriced blanket at the lodge gift shop but I refused to squander my money and redoubled efforts to find a cheap bedding solution. My salvation came with a roadside billboard advertising a camp store and associated merchandise at Two Medicine Campground. A trail map revealed the place to be a ten mile hike away. I quite like walking and while it had become an overcast day it was still early in the morning so I decided to see a bit of the place while fulfilling my task.
The first thing you notice when you start a hike up here are the warnings about bears. ‘Bears have injured and killed many people in this park.’ it proclaims and goes on to list a set of rules for hiking in bear country. I immediately broke the rule against hiking alone and I was pretty sure I would break the rule about making a lot of noise, as to me that defeats the purpose of being out in the countryside. I had my own plan for dealing with bears. If one tried to attack me I would perform the samurai dave ‘two finger on one eye’ gouge and surprise it into submission. The attack had successfully worked on cats, dogs and small children so I was confident I could execute the move on a larger opponent.
With bears now slightly on my mind I wandered up through light forests and little fields blossoming with wildflowers. Pockets of blue, mauve, yellow, red and white kept popping out at me, as I was in a highly alert state on the lookout for bears. Suddenly, about 20 yards to the left, a large black shape darted out from the bushes. I jumped a bit to position myself better for the attack but it turned out to be only a cow with little calf in tow. I had a steak for dinner that night in revenge.
I can’t do justice to the scenery in words. I don’t think pictures can really capture it either. The vastness of scale is enormous and it gets bigger the more you climb. Once I had cleared the tree line the plains I had come from stretched out behind me and still more mountains loomed ahead. It was so quiet that I heard the wind ruffling the feathers of an eagle that passed close overhead. I was starting to think that it was going to be a tougher walk than I had expected. I was constantly surprised when I turned around at how high I had climbed, yet the path kept going higher and higher, twisting back and forth on itself as the steepness grew.
I was walking through a rock-strewn landscape now with only the odd bowed pine tree as testament to more trying conditions. I found out that it had snowed in the hills a couple of weeks earlier and if you had told me at this point in the walk I would not have been surprised. Clouds started rolling in from the peaks and the tempestuous alpine weather looked like it was about to maul another victim. Luckily, I have watched many survival programs on TV and knew that I should stop moving, change into dry clothes and build a shelter. I had forgotten to pack my tomahawk that day so the multi-level shelter with granny flat was out, but the shrivelled pine trees on top of the mountain served me well as a temporary hideout while the storm blew up, rained gently for ten minutes, then left again. I was almost disappointed but took the opportunity for a final assault upon the summit.
I was pretty bloody tired by this stage. I hadn’t expected the ten mile hike to take me over the top of a mountain, Mt Henry in this case. Mt Henry is 8870 feet high and I was starting from 4796 feet, so that gives you an idea of the sort of climb it was. It seemed to go on forever with each small summit simply revealing a higher one further on. I had to stop and recover every hundred metres as the thin alpine air was taking it’s toll. I’m no slob but nor did I go hiking every weekend in London, so my fitness was being tested. Every time I stopped I gazed around in dazed awe at the scenery – the range ahead of me and the now tiny valley. When you reach the top of Mt Henry you follow a ridge to another mountain before the path starts to follow a route that has been blasted out of the side of the mountain. To the left was the steep side of the mountain and to the right a 2000 foot drop covered in loose shingle. As I traversed the narrow path I began to think that it was quite possibly a world record for the longest and most arduous walk in search of a sleeping bag.
Thankfully the path started heading down from the dizzying heights and I could once again breath normally. The Two Medicine Camp-ground is a lovely spot, near a lake and surrounded by more enormous monsters. When I looked back at what I had come over I simply couldn’t believe it. After five gruelling hours I had reached the camp store. When I went inside my heart sank as the only available warm item was an overpriced blanket. I bought it anyway and was thinking about giving it away as a present but I went through too much to get it. It’s good to have a blanket with a story behind it.
The most exciting wildlife I saw during my rambles were ground squirrels, or as I like to call them, chipmunks. They’re cute little things when they sit upright and eat their pine nuts like corn on the cob. They use the trails as shortcuts but when the hear you coming they shout “bonsai” and leap into the bushes. Glacier National Park is the kind of place you need to come before you die, and judging by the average age of park visitor that’s exactly what’s on their minds. Apparently one man committed suicide by walking off into the wilderness to be slowly overcome by the cold. I was thinking that this wasn’t a bad way to go until it was revealed that a couple of bears thought the body was a new range of frozen snack and gnawed it a little bit.
The place that’s on everyone’s lips who has been to the park is the ‘Going to the Sun’ road. It cuts through the park from east to west and crosses the continental divide. To give you an idea of the type of mountain, one of the first viewing spots looks upon the mountain used as a logo by Paramount Pictures. It still has the snow still on it in late August. The road follows a perilous path, you sometimes feel like you’re more off the mountain than on it, but it is a truly spectacular drive.
Dave out.
Quick note: this email has been sitting in my pad for over two weeks. For a country that was instrumental in the formation of the internet it hasn’t got very good access to it. I shall type till my hands become crippled with RSI.
The trip was going swimmingly at this point. It was a flat and straight road with warm air and good tunes on the stereo. We even met some sensible Americans that offered to cook us a Cajun meal and share their 50 bottle collection of scotch. This is close to my idea of a perfect evening so it made the next chain of events even harder to bear.
We met ‘the Scotch couple’ in a town called Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln is a college town which halves in size when school and the football aren’t on. We were there to deliver the car to nearby Omaha but decided to stay in Lincoln to eat up some time and recover from driving 1400 miles in three days. The day before we had passed through the border separating Missouri and Kansas, the state below Nebraska. This would have been as unremarkable as the borders between all the other mid-western states except for the fact that the instant we crossed the border the roadside fast food restaurants disappeared from the highway and it was pristine cornfields for as far as the eye could see. I would like to say that all the billboards disappeared as well but there were still a few pro-life ones popping up, giving the impression that Kansas was even more conservative than the rest of the places we had just visited – no easy feat.
It was a short drive north into Nebraska which, boringly and unsurprisingly, featured a lot of fields. The town of Lincoln was near deserted as we drove through it but we just wanted to get to the hostel and rest for a couple of days. The hostel was located amidst the sorority lodgings, underneath the chapel. As you know, religious institutions make my skin itch after a prolonged exposure, so it wasn’t looking good. Thankfully we were housed in a massive ramshackle room with a ping pong table, pool table and an old stereo with eclectic LP’s like the Goldfinger soundtrack and The Clash with ‘London Calling’. The pool cues were so sticky that I rubbed the skin off my hand and the ping pong game made my thighs ache for days.
We were feeling a lot more relaxed until Tim contacted the owner of the vehicle we were delivering. Her name was Funke (pronounced fun-kay). She said that she was in Med school all day on the day that we were supposed to be delivering the car but being the nice guys we are, and wanting to avoid spending a whole day in Omaha, we offered to have the car there by 7 am.
Due to a mix-up involving multiple street names we ended up being late and were informed that Funke had left the house. By this stage Tim and I just wanted to take a nap but instead we drove the car to the hospital and enjoyed a breakfast in the cafeteria. After breakfast we got the bad news that a car we had been expecting from Omaha to Phoenix was non-existent. To put this news in context people have been known to commit suicide rather than spend 24 hours in Omaha. It is a truly atrocious city with nothing to recommend it and plenty to make you want to leave. It was a demoralising moment and after the early start, a day that had just begun felt like it should have ended already. Eventually the car was delivered and we washed our hands of the whole ordeal. There was a bus leaving to Chicago in 20 minutes and at that point in time a 10 hour bus journey seemed like heaven.
Our trip from Omaha to Chicago featured Bob the bus driver. Bob had an Illinois twang and he jazzed up the usual bus commentary with his very own comedy routine:
– If you leave anything on the bus make sure it’s something I can take to the pawn shop.
– My name’s easy to remember. It’s spelt the same forwards as it is backwards. B-O-B.
The standard didn’t improve much from there but just as I was writing Bob off as a lost cause he proved his worth. About eight hours into the trip we hit a huge storm. Lightning was touching down on either side of the bus and as I edged away from all metal objects the rain flooded down, cutting visibility to about 10 feet. It was at this point that I noticed that US highways have no reflective road markings and as we passed cars that had pulled over to the side of the road I ceased joking about Bob and prayed to god that he was a career bus driver and not a failed comic. He proved his worth in the end by safely getting us to the big smoke and I for one was glad that he hadn’t given up his day job.
Chicago has a gleaming skyline which competes admirably with New York but doesn’t quite have the legs. It’s perched on Lake Wisconsin which is the biggest lake I have ever seen. It’s like an inland sea with the waters stretching to the horizon. Chicago feels like the kind of place New York was before they discovered community spirit. There are a lot of beggars, and people on the train look like they’re a twitch away from going postal.
Dave out.
I left you on the rolling plains of middle America, driving quite fast. As the lights dim and the opening credits end you can see the two protagonists in a car listening to conservative idiots on the radio and staring at the straight road ahead, now oblivious to the never-ending fields. I started to feel a bit sorry for the early explorers of this region as for hundreds of miles they would have gone over a little hill with high expectations of some exciting discovery only to see the plains stretching on even further. I expect attacks from Indians would have been a welcome relief, although despite their stereotyped aggressive nature the native Americans were more likely to help the people who would eventually return in far greater number to destroy them.
In modern America there are fast food chains and billboards littered along the highway to break up the monotony. We passed the odd city or two with the skyscrapers rising out of the surrounding pastures and looking slightly out of place. Most nights were spent in cheap roadside motels, which have their own charm, but for one night we were drawn into St Louis, Missouri, gateway to the west.
St Louis is located where the Missouri meets the Mississippi. This conjures up a romantic image of paddle steamers, the blues and sippin’ gut ache whisky by the banks of the river. The reality is a stark contrast as St Louis has long since shed it’s small town image and has become a sprawl of highways and derelict buildings overlooking over-developed and polluted rivers. The city’s big tourist attraction is a giant arch, symbolic of its role as gateway to the west. It’s not a bad analogy to apply to the place as it felt like an unsettled transit point.
Funnily enough that’s exactly what Tim and I were using it for. We hunted out the youth hostel which was located in a charming part of town just next to the expressway. We were almost going to drive off as the hostel sign was attached to an abandoned building but they had just moved down the street. Looking back at that point we wished we had sought an alternative.
The hostel was run by a religious weirdo with a child molester’s gut and mottled skin. He also sported one of those Amish ‘beard only’ facial stylings which is a sign of a strange one. The only other bloke we’ve met like this was a human guinea pig for commercial drug companies in three states. A slightly strange hostel manager would have been no problem but spending the night in a semi-derelict dorm wasn’t an attractive proposition. Added to the mix was a crazy Canadian who loved to talk and a Prozac popping waitress who thought the best way to get a tip was to tell us a bad joke every five minutes and slap us on the shoulder.
We retreated to the hostel as night was falling and Tim administered some medication to help us achieve the sweet release of sleep. Unfortunately for us a pair of our fellow hostellers began a protracted conversation on the hardships of looking for a house in the area. After a brief respite from this the crazy Canadian came back to regale everyone with his night at the baseball and future travel plans. When all was finally quiet a string of electric lights flashed at me through the window and adjusted my brain waves to a sleeping pattern. The strangest thing about the youth hostel were the toilets. They were basically in the same room as the beds but instead of having a normal door they sported saloon style swinging doors. I’m not sure if this was to facilitate a quick entrance and exit but it did leave you feeling slightly exposed.
We left the city in the morning vowing never to return and hungering for some small town action. We were also hungering for some small town pie and following a newspaper tip we arrived in a town called Washington to sample the famous Cowan’s Pie. It was fantastic food. I ate a simple omelette and fresh hash browns followed by some homemade blueberry pie as ‘Stand by your man’ played on the jukebox. It made up for the previous night and we spent the morning lolling by the banks of the river being deafened whenever a freight train announced it’s presence and blasted through.
The rest of the day was spent meandering through back roads, soaking up the isolation. Missouri is a poor state yet even the homes with five abandoned pickups out the front had a huge satellite dish. Tim was getting into the hillbilly spirit by wandering around with no shoes on until he met his match at a gas station. The attendant refused him service if he remained barefoot and kicked him out of the store. I think she was right in her actions as once you let the standards start slipping who knows where it’s going to lead. No shoes could lead to pissing in the milk. We were right in the heart of conservative bible belt America and the huge wooden crosses in the fields were a reminder of days when they were used to scare away more than black birds. There’s a noticeable decline in the number of black people once you leave the east coast cities. It would be easy to assume that this is because of prejudice but I suspect it’s because black people have more sense than to live in a boring shithole.
One of the strange things about America is that in the middle of nowhere you come across these enormous Wal-Mart stores. Among the items sold here are a fine range of high power hunting rifles, knives and bows with razor tipped arrows. In a small town a little further along a pawn shop featured an assortment of handguns and assault rifles. To purchase these weapons you need to have lived in the United States for six months and be over 21 years of age. There was one youngster with his face pressed against the handgun cabinet who seemed all too keen to celebrate the happy conjunction of legal shooting and drinking age. We left the store feeling a lot less safe and tried not to get into any road rage incidents.
Next to the giant Wal-Mart’s you sometimes get giant supermarkets selling giant sized portions of everything. Tim had the following conversation with the checkout chick:
Jess: Do you mind if I ask you a question?
Tim: No. Go ahead.
Jess: Are you Australian?
Tim: Yes we are.
Jess: Do you mind if I ask you another question?
Tim: No.
Jess: What on earth are you doing out here?
It was a good question and seemed to sum up the attitude of a lot of people we met. Our usual response was “Just passing through”.
Dave out.
New York left a good impression despite its many flaws. The pollution, garbage and associated smells don’t detract from the energy of the place and the genuine love the natives have for it. From the outside it feels very parochial but wrapped within its very warm confines it feels like being part of a community. On my last night I went up 86 floors of the Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York, to see the city wreathed in a light smog. As the natural light faded New York’s own lights took over to illuminate one hell of a skyline.
Leaving New York was proving difficult, not so much because we didn’t want to go, but choosing the next destination and a means of getting there was proving difficult and contentious. Tim was trying to organise an auto drive-away car, a system where you drive someone else’s car across the country for them. For some reason no-one was leaving New York but we got a lead in Washington D.C. so that’s where we headed. In a strange twist of fate the day we left New York was the day that the heat wave broke. Walking around the city that week was like being lightly steamed for an entree so neither of us were sorry to escape it.
Washington is obviously famous for the White House, Capitol Hill and the Smithsonian but what is less well known is that the city has the highest murder count in the country and ‘don’t drive your car through there at night’ slums. The place has an artificial capital feel and turns into half a city when government isn’t sitting. It felt like a soulless city – the kind of place people come to for a job but can’t wait to leave. The best thing about the place was that we picked up a car going to Nebraska in the morning. We had to look on the map to see where that was. It involved a drive through Maryland, a dip into West Virginia, slightly into Pennsylvania, pop across West Virginia again and across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, arriving pretty close to the heart of the country.
Tim and I were picking up a white Camry from Henry. Henry seemed like a nice old man but was obviously worried about letting a couple of jokers take his car on a massive road trip to be delivered to his daughter. He didn’t have much choice in the end but I think the car was added to his nightly prayers. The road west from Washington hovers between Amish country to the north and bourbon swilling hillbillies to the south. Tim was in professional driver mode so it was straight through to American farmland.
Americans love meat. Whether it comes in the form of hotdogs, burgers, steaks or some bacon for breakfast. No meal is complete without some meat – and I’m quoting a billboard there. I like meat as much as the next red-blooded male but there’s only so much my ass can take. I began searching for some roughage but whenever I ate a salad I received puzzled looks. Most Americans just hit the laxatives as evidenced by the 24-hour pharmacy. Half an aisle is taken up with laxatives, heartburn and indigestion remedies. I can’t compete with such a hard-core meat addiction so I’ve been munching on bagels and white bread softer than a baby’s bottom.
The plains of Ohio and Indiana aren’t as plain as you might think. There are hundreds of miles of corn fields but there are patches of trees and enough little hills to stop it being the flatlands. We took Interstate 70 for most of the way which leads unwaveringly west through the fields. It’s quite an impressive display of agricultural might but we got the feeling that middle America isn’t a big tourist attraction. We usually had to repeat the first thing we said to people as they seemed so shocked that we didn’t speak with an American accent that they forgot to listen. My accent was described as cute by one hotel manager who came out with the classic line, “I didn’t think you were from around here”. I have to say that once people got over their initial shock they were very friendly. It seems Americans have a travel complex which turns them into annoying morons as soon as they leave the safety of their home town.
You’ll have to excuse me if I get large parts of the drive through America muddled up as most of it looks the same and my memory has been fused by the hot sun and hypnotising road. Apologies also for the haphazard timing of these emails. It’s been devilishly hard to get any internet time and I refuse to be ripped off. I’m typing this one in Chicago’s public library and might come back tomorrow to finish it off and relate the story of how I came to be here. Till then,
Dave out.
I have a small confession to make. I never did travel around Europe. I was squatting in a basement in Peckham, underneath a Reggae shop. I survived by luring pigeons towards me with an old packet of chips and eating them raw. My only excursions were to the internet cafe where I made up emails based on facts gleaned from a pile of old reader’s digests. I didn’t want to lie to you but you’re not allowed to sit at the grown up’s table in my house unless you’ve been around Europe at least once and I’m sick of eating Christmas dinner off the floor with the cats.
Now the real travelling begins. I’m in New York, New York, the town so nice they named it after an apple. When I mentioned my plans to come to New York in August a couple of pragmatists put on a whiny voice and said “ooohhh … it’s going to be hot.” The annoying bastards were right, as well. It’s constant sweat weather, the kind of heat that forces you to walk just to get a breeze going. I like being wet all the time so it’s not a problem for me. The only annoying aspect is waking up in a wading pool of sweat every morning but I usually just grab my rubber ducky and spend an idyllic 30 minutes waking up.
The first impressions you get of New York are big and square. The buildings, cemeteries, parks, teeth, road system, cars – they all conform to the simple principles of bigger is better and contours are bad. America has taken the ‘glory to the empire’ approach of many older civilizations and topped the lot of them in the grandeur stakes. Surprisingly, it’s a really good city to wander around in. I’m talking mainly about Manhattan here as only a fool honky would wander around the outer boroughs.
Contrary to expectations the natives are being very polite. They are loud and slightly arrogant but not rude and a lot happier than I expected. I read an article in the local paper by a man having trouble controlling his anger, especially when people dropped weights at the gym and honked when the light had only just gone green. He said that he had to tell himself that they weren’t deliberately trying to make him angry but were just being inconsiderate. I think this illustrates a couple of personality traits of Americans. They think that everything that happens revolves around them and don’t give a toss about anyone else. They do seem a lot calmer on home soil but it might just be a thin veneer of politeness just waiting to corrode.
There’s not much point going on about the sights of the city as everyone knows what they are and the fact that I’ve had a look at them doesn’t really change that. Most of my time has been spent looking up in awe, or wandering around a mammoth store, home to a global brand. The most famous landmark at the moment is an absence, as people crowd around a massive hole in the ground and sing sappy songs about peace and freedom. It looks like another construction zone now but when you look at the way the surrounding roads have been chewed up it’s a reminder of the scale of disaster that took place.
I don’t know where the next destination is. I have a travelling partner this time, my good friend Tim, but he’s just as bad at planning as I am. It’s throw-the-dart at the map time.
Dave out.
All through this trip I haven’t booked anything. It was not so much a plan as a philosophy, and while it was stupid, childish and landed me in the shit quite a lot, I also enjoyed the fact that it put me in unusual situations. I broke my code by booking two nights in Paris but left the first night free. I had decided to shun sleep for the night and see the city without the crowds. I arrived in central Paris at 11 pm. As I left the station I saw a man practicing his machete moves, with a machete. This wasn’t an encouraging sign so I left for friendlier turf.
My first task was to stash my bag somewhere. I found a great spot near the bridge opposite the Louvre and behind some rubble. Burden-free I was left to wander along the bank spotting the similarities between Paris and London. The two cities feel remarkably similar to me and even have similar landmarks: the Louvre and the National Gallery; Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey; the Eiffel Tower and the Millennium Wheel. When I arrived at the Eiffel Tower at midnight it was still full of people looking up or sitting on the grass and getting drunk. Parisiennes love staying out late and it’s a great city to wander around in. 24 hour internet and cafes reminded me that cities can be useful places to be.
At about 2 am I headed back to where my bag was and looked out over the river. Below the concrete barrier overlooking the path on the bank was a metre wide ledge. I took advantage of it to have a nap 20 feet off the ground. It was a nice spot but scared the shit out of me when I woke up. From my perch I watched countless single men wandering along the bank and I started to wonder whether gay paree had a double meaning. At that point I might have considered selling me ass for a bed so it was lucky I didn’t get any offers. A man poked his head over the wall but when he saw me he just gave a little ‘Ahh’ of surprise and left. He was probably familiar with the hotel situation in Paris.
Time passed pretty quickly that night. Most of it was spent trying to sort out transport to Amsterdam and with that complete I took a dawn stroll down to Notre Dame. It looked great in the soft light and now I just needed to find the hostel which would let me go to bed at 2 pm.
Before that I completed the small chore of washing my clothes. The laundry was warm after the slightly chilly night air and as I sat in the chair holding my head the reflections in the washing machine started to wave at me. I was too tired to wave back so I just sat there and looked at them.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the Paris metro map. You should try it after being awake for 21 hours. My pack felt a lot heavier than normal, my shoulders ached, my legs ached, my head was sore. I sat on the trains feeling grey with grey bags under my eyes. I got to the hostel to confirm that it actually existed then went to the park to snooze for four hours.
My slumber was interrupted by a small girl trying to sell me a free magazine. She talked to me in French and I talked to her in English. She wasn’t put off by the fact that we couldn’t understand each other but eventually wandered off. She returned later with her sisters to marvel at the foreign freak. I brushed off my high school French with a “je ne parle pas français” which was met with murmurs of surprise which increased when I said “anglais”. They whispered anglais amongst themselves as they wandered off.
After sleeping in the hostel for a while I awoke in the gloaming and briefly wandered around the outer suburb I was housed in before dining on a kebab. It was like being back in London.
Today has been spent fulfilling my tourist duties. Notre Dame has spectacular stained glass and the Louvre has the Mona Lisa. Please excuse me if I’m being some kind of philistine but I don’t understand why that painting is so popular. A whimsical smile seems to turn a lot of people on. I preferred the Islamic art and I would take a mogul dagger or engraved Iranian bowl over most of the paintings there.
Paris itself is a great city, which pleasantly surprised me. It’s probably shit to live in but for a few days it dazzles the senses. It probably beats London it the ‘cool cities’ competition and is miles ahead in the ‘heads so far up their own asses that they can’t see daylight’ competition.
Europe is drawing to a close now and all that remains is a hallucinogenic weekend in the Dam staring at sunflowers and a week to say goodbye to Old Blighty.
Dave out.
The Dam lived up to expectations but my expectations are probably different to some. You can have a few different experiences in the city. Drink 50 pints before throwing up all over yourself and your hooker, enter the cafe on Friday and emerge on Sunday night amid clouds of smoke, or take some magic mushrooms and walk around like a zombie with a smile. I chose the latter option and went to visit the Van Gogh Museum. The museum was to tripping what a club is to pilling. I started out looking at some Cuyp, a largely uninspiring Dutch painter famous for ‘capturing ligh”. He never left the city he was born in so the result is a lot of paintings of the harbour and cows. Van Gogh, in comparison, pops out from the canvas in a weird set of daubs which at one stage began to shift around. The colours stood out even brighter and I spent two hours wandering around and smiling.
Amsterdam was the last leg of my tour of the continent. Europe was as expected – lots of beautiful old things and lots of people, but it was a great experience and I saw a lot of amazing things.
The next leg of my trip takes me to the United States of Arrogance. Apparently they invented freedom and are furiously trying to market it to the rest of the world. It’s impossible not to have an opinion about America. They are a financial, political and cultural gargantuan. I hope to answer some questions about them. Are they really that stupid? Do half the country look like sumo wrestlers? If you replaced George Bush with a chimp would anyone notice? If you joke about September the 11th will anyone laugh? Are the children born fat? Do they understand satire yet? I hope so. These and many more questions will be answered by a panel of experts before being given the all clear for your perusal.
I leave this grey land with a light heart and a curious mind. I might be back, I might not, but all the best to those I won’t see for a while.
Dave out.
It’s been a long time since my last email so rather than send a mammothly huge email I’m just sending a gargantuan one. I’m going to have to summarise these cities, partly for brevity, partly because they’re not so fresh in my mind and partly because this French keyboard is going ooh la la on me a bit too much for easy typing. I’m aiming to make brevity my war cry but knowing me I’ll ramble on as much as always. So here we go – all the way back to Italy.
FLORENCE
I was diverted here by a quest for leather gloves for my sister but the fact that most of the worl”s Renaissance art resides in Florence is as much of a reason to go as any. My tourist detector was redlining after Rome and Venice so it was not a pleasant surprise to find that half of America had decided to cram into Florenc”s narrow streets. The word on everyone’s lips was David. Have you seen David? Where’s David? They weren’t talking about your humble author but the famous statue. I didn’t go to see it as I can just strip naked and look in the mirror for some living art. I saw the statue on some postcards and I’m a dead ringer for David, apart from the body hair, which I suspect was too hard for even Michelangelo to sculpt.
Florence might have been an enchanting and amazingly creative little town once but it has whored itself for the tourist dollar. Hordes of shops gather around a shrivelled and slimy river. Every hill is crowded with private villas that take up any possible view. This leaves people to sunbake on concrete by the side of a river that smells like shit. There is some amazing art at the Uffizi Gallery but how many paintings of Madonna and child do you need to see in one lifetime. I left with a bad taste in my mouth.
TURIN
This was my bid to get as close as possible to Spain without staying in France. Turin is in the north west corner of Italy surrounded by mountains and apart from the fact that a shroud came from here I didn’t know a lot about the place. I still don’t know that much about the place other than it was great to be somewhere where people gave me strange looks for carrying a big bag through town. The natives were a strange ethnic mix with a lot of Phillipinos and Eastern Europeans. I spent a great Sunday afternoon wandering in the park by the river with the families and enjoying not doing anything. I stayed for one night.
LYON
I entered France with trepidation. The French can sense when you don’t like them and return it with icy cold disdain. So it was in my first brush with a frog. The conductor on the train looked like a plump Napoleon with thinner hair and beady, piggy eyes. I desperately, irrationally, wanted to get to Spain by that day. In a typical froggy bid to be different the train system at Lyon confused me. I stayed for two hours.
MONTPELLIER
I arrived at Montpellier after sneaking on a high speed train and avoiding detection. I had been travelling for eight hours. The noticeboard at the station said the train to Barcelona left in 15 minutes. I stayed in Montpellier for 15 minutes.
BARCELONA
The subject of this email should really read THE TRAINS IN SPAIN ARE FOOKIN’ SHIT. They take double the time they should to get anywhere, mainly because they go at half the speed and stop in the middle of nowhere for extended periods. I arrived in Barcelona after travelling for 13 hours but got out of the station somewhere familiar, as I had been to the city before. I stayed for one night.
ZARAGOZA
This is on the way from Barcelona to Bilbao. I didn’t intend to go there. I didn’t know it existed. When I got on the train the conductor flinched when I showed him my rail pass and started talking to me in Spanish. I just nodded and looked tired, as I knew what he was saying. I can let you on but if someone else has reserved that seat then you have to get off. That’s how I ended up in this northern Spanish city. The highlight was a beer vending machine with a sticker warning people under 18 not to use it. I don’t think that’s going to stop a 16 year old with a pocket full of change and looking for a buzz. I certainly felt better afterwards. I stayed for one night.
VALENCIA
I had to go somewhere after Zaragoza and the only train I could catch for free was going here. I had heard good rumours about the place and they had oranges so off I went. Valencia smelt like shit and was crowded. The only remarkable feature was a river, not made up of water, but parkland and dirt football pitches. I didn’t get it. I stayed in a cave for one night.
MADRID
Madrid was my saviour. The streets smell nice, are leafy and cool, and even though the hostel was full I found a nice pension. I played charades with the woman that owned it for a while but she won so I gave her some money. Madrid was also home to the Prado Gallery which features some Goya just as he starts to switch from doing portraits to featuring leering madmen and ugly children. It was a welcome change and I enjoyed staying for two days.
Spain was a massive disappointment to me, mainly because I couldn’t get anywhere that I wanted to go. The terrain in between the large cities conjures up images of a wave of banditos rising up out of the distance and storming the train. Unfortunately nothing that exciting happens in modern-day train travel and I was left to ruminate on the dryness and inhospitability of the terrain. I was beginning to wonder how the Spanish ever managed to get an empire together as I was greeted by countless abandoned stations in the wasteland.
It’s only as you get on the trains around Valencia and Madrid that you begin to see the Spanish crop – a lot of wheat. I’m talking about hundreds of kilometres of fields. It’s also a stark reminder of why Spanish wine isn’t the best. They have their vineyards competing with rocks in the desert for sun. Most of my time in Spain was spent sitting on a train looking at this kind of thing until I went back to Barcelona.
This time I didn’t bother with the sights. I splashed out and hired a villa in the hills just outside the city where I staged a three-day long orgy with some porn starlets I had arranged to meet there. My favourite part was when Rebecca stimulated my anus with a lark’s tongue. After the orgy I was quite tired and got lost several times looking for a laundry, once walking in a complete circle.
My bid to get out of Barcelona did not go well. The trains were booked out with a six-and-a-half hour wait to buy tickets. I decided to do the yuppie backpacker special and take to the skies, sneering at the train travellers below.
I honestly thought my flight left at 2:55 pm. I mean – absolutely positive. I arrived at the ticket counter at told the lady this. She looked worried as she told me there were no flights then, soon telling me I was on the 1:40 flight. I assured her she was wrong but as she sorted it out for me a thought drifted in that perhaps she was right. I had done it again – missed another flight. Luckily for me the ladies at Air Europa are a lot more understanding than those Lufthansa swine and she put me on a later flight with a bunch of French teenagers as punishment. I was heading to their hometown of Paris. Spain looks amazing from the air. Gone are the endless patches of nothing, replaced with a patchwork of light brown fields broken up with mountains. It’s the only way to get around the place and I’ll be abandoning the train on future visits. Now that that’s out of the way I’ll let you recover before I regale with tales of gay Paree.
Dave out.
WARNING! The following email is sacrilegious. If you are likely to be offended by any such material I strongly recommend that you stop reading now. As you have continued to read on I feel free to heap sarcasm, scorn, and weirdness upon the catholic church.
You can’t deny that Rome has played a massive part in western, and indeed world, history. Being the seat of the Roman empire and pretty close to the heart of the Renaissance, two of the world’s most interesting times, it’s hard not to find things to look at.
My first port of call was the another great institution of Rome – the Vatican City. I say great as there is no denying its size and influence. It whacks you on the head when you enter the plaza and strain your neck looking upwards.
A strange thing happened to me as I wandered around. I felt an energy running though my limbs. That’s right, brothers and sisters, I could see the light, filtered through my fake prada sunglasses. It burnt my arm as a sign of renewal and my soul was reborn.
There were many such events taking place around the square. Old people leapt out of wheelchairs and frolicked in the fountain like children. Able-bodied people sprouted wings and with a look of glee flew into the air to copulate. Soon a light rain of bodily fluids fell and dampened the square.
I’m glad entry into the Vatican is free as I would have a problem contributing to the wealth of an organisation that houses child molesters. The Pope is obviously not universally loved as there is a security check before you go in. There is an obvious flaw in security as nuns get waved through. If any of you want to kill the pope I suggest you hire a nun’s costume and practice looking like an old Italian woman.
Nuns get a sweet deal in Rome. No security checks, free entry into the treasure room and people giving them presents, all for just a lifetime of devotion and service. I find nuns quite attractive and I imagine they’re devils in bed with all that pent up sexual energy. You don’t see many sexy younger nuns around. I think they keep them all locked away until they’re so old that sex simply isn’t an option.
Once you get inside St. Peter’s it’s hard to stop your jaw dropping as you look up. It’s an enormous space that succeeds in producing awe in the viewer. My reverence was directed to the artisans involved rather than god. You are struck by the same opulence and orgasm of colour in every church in Rome. You end up being dazzled by the light outside and the colour inside, but you can see why the churches are so popular. It’s the only place you can escape the whine of the scooter motors.
You’ll have to excuse my ignorance of all things religious, especially the names of objects and places. I wasn’t even sure the Sistine Chapel was in Rome till I peeked in a guidebook. After being suitably awed by the dome of St. Peter’s I went in search of the chapel. I tried to follow a group of people through a set of gates but a man dressed in a striped purple and red outfit with a foppish hat stopped me.
Foppish man – What do you want to see?
Me – Whatever those people are going to see.
Foppish man – They are here on private business.
I think he was just there to sniff out the non-believers.
Following the crowd I successfully made it to the Sistine Chapel and promptly joined the tourist feeding frenzy. It was standing room only as the sweating crowds hustled past tapestries and ornately painted ceilings. It was all too much for me. Perhaps if I was at all religious I would have found it a rewarding experience. Despite messages in four different languages requesting silence there was an appreciative hum in the chapel. A plump Italian guard was furiously trying to quieten people without making a noise himself. It was only when a recorded announcement was played requesting silence that people were quiet, for about 5 seconds. I found the paintings a bit garish and busy for my tastes but I could appreciate the skill and effort that went into them. I preferred some of the small pictures further into the building a painting of the dead Christ looking lost and feminine and one depicting Jesus hanging on the cross while angels collected his blood in bowls. I can only take so much religion before the birthmark on my scalp starts itching so I quickly left and pushed an old woman over.
It’s funny that Rome should be the seat of power for the catholic church as it also spawned the people who nailed their saviour to a big wooden cross. Evidence of the Romans is everywhere but the most striking remains are across the river and along a bit. I speak of the Colosseum. So let’s step even further back in history in a city that has more than its fair share.
In terms of impressive stadiums that give you a tingle the Colosseum has been knocked off number one spot by places like the MCG and Wembley, but the colosseum still has the power to give you a jolt as images of the past race screaming through your head. It happens the most when you walk along a platform through the middle of the arena. The floor is long gone, exposing the rooms below, but it is an easy place to picture full of bloodthirsty Romans demanding you kill or be killed.
I was hoping they would have real armour and weapons laid out. That way I could have started hacking my way through the crowd of tourists and satisfying the sand’s thirst for blood.
The hostel in Rome was located next to a quite busy four lane road. ‘Quite busy’ in Rome means constant traffic. The rooms were so hot that the windows had to be left open or you risked dehydration by the morning. I ended up sleeping with ear plugs in which muted the roar to a constant drone. The only bonuses were that the traffic noise drowned out the snoring and the carbon monoxide wafting in through the window helped me get to sleep.
The catholic church has become expert at getting money out of people. Even though I consciously didn’t want to give them any they got me with the entrance to the Sistine Chapel and the post office. The post office comes with authentic Vatican stamps and god has even set aside an angel to deliver the Vatican mail. If you wake up one morning with a postcard on your pillow and a warm inner glow you’ll know why. The Vatican also has a strip club round the back called ‘Heavenly Temptations’. The Pope likes to go there to let his hair down and occasionally stick his dick in some warm custard.
Dave out.
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