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Venice was never one of those cities that I really wanted to see. What’s so great about canals? We have them in Canberra but they’re called stormwater drains and are bone dry for most of the year. The canals in Britain usually double as the local tip. As for romantic, it’s hard to top a revolving restaurant for romance and alliteration.
So I came to Venice ready to pour scorn upon it but it got under my skin within hours. It took me a while to figure out why but it dawned on me that after walking through a large part of the city there hadn’t been one car, no traffic lights or pollution. After years of being subservient to cars I was finally in a place where the pedestrian is king.
The canals in Venice don’t really rock my world. They are what you would expect and would be a delightful surprise if you had never heard of them before. I found the nicest thing about them was that once you escaped the tourist throng all you could hear was the gentle lapping of water. It is a very relaxing city and I can see how a quiet stroll along the canals sometime past midnight after a couple of bottles of wine shared with someone special would be lovely.
That said, I don’t think I’ve come across a city worse for getting staggeringly drunk in. If you manage to avoid falling into a canal you have to face the water bus rocking you to and fro the entire way home. It’s one of those places that is much better to visit, mainly because all the tourists would start to piss me off. I wo’ldn’t blame the native inhabitants of the city for hating tourists with a passion. They remind me of pigeons as they trot around in groups shitting on everything. There is a more literal link between the two as tourists seem to enjoy feeding the pigeons and having the filthy beasts clamber all over them. People become surrounded by a seething grey mass. Surely it is only a matter of time before the pigeons become dissatisfied with corn and bread. One of those little beaks will peck off a tiny piece of flesh and the word will spread of this new delicacy. Soon the skies will be full of rabid, flesh-eating pigeons. People won’t think they’re so cute then.
I only intended to stay in Venice for a night but when the hostel say they are locking you out of the rooms, they mean the entire place. So with my bag inside and me outside I had no option but to stay an extra day. I can think of worse places to be stranded. Venice may have smelly water, bad food, too many tourists, Italian guys singing in gondoliers and manky pigeons but it’s Venice and no-one cares because it’s magical.
The only regret I have is that I was here by myself. The happy couple factor is high and walking around by yourself is not they way to go. I will have to come back when the air is still and quiet and the streets are bare, to share it with someone special.
The next city on the menu is the one all roads used to lead to and has seen more orgies than a por’ star’s mansion. I’m expecting a change of pace and a little bit of madness.
Dave out.
I’ve been watching the pigeons in the park and I could become quite a pigeon fancier. I never noticed on the pigeons in London but when the sun catches their neck it reveals glowing green and purple colouring. The pigeons in Verona are big and fat. If you can’t make it as a pigeon here you’re not trying hard enough. Their mating behaviour is interesting as well. The female pigeon will be slowly walking around, pecking for food, when a male pigeon, puffed to double its normal size and with tail feathers spread, will trot up to it warbling as hard as he can. The female pigeon then ignores the male and continues looking for food while the male prances around. I think there are some similarities with the human mating ritual. I’m thinking about developing my own pigeon strut to impress the ladies. After all, there are a hell of a lot of pigeons.
Talking of things military in nature, I recently saw a man in tourist attire take up his umbrella as if it were a gun and test out various sniping positions over a wall. In Sherlock Holmes fashion I surmised that he was an American and his speech soon confirmed this. It made me wonder at his motives. Was he simply a keen sporting shooter? Perhaps a psychopath with too much time on his hands. It could be that he was keeping his skills sharp in case his country suddenly needed him or that he was a secret operative planning an invasion of Italy. I think not bringing a book with me was a big mistake.
I’m over here in Italy, slowly wandering down the street due to malnutrition brought on by a stomach bug, when I come across a newsagent. I thought I would pop my head in to check the cultural differences in the media and to my great surprise there was a magazine devoted to pasta. It made me wonder just how many ways there are to cook it. Is this marketing gone mad or does it fill a vital gap in pasta information? I’m buggered if I know … I think I’ve got sun stroke.
Dave out.
I left you in a train in north Italy as the heavens opened resulting in the windows being forced shut and the train carriage reaching levels of humidity on a par with a rainforest. It’s not a place you want to be stuck in so I’ll move you on. I never wanted to go to Milan but that crooked finger of fate was pointing me there. It took longer to come down the alps than I expected so instead of making it to Vicenza I settled for the city of the damned.
There are a couple of reasons I didn’t want to go to Milan. The first was that it got a couple of bad word-of-mouth reviews, the second was that I dated a hypochondriac mother-complex woman from Milan for a while before I got to know her well. In one of her flirty moments she told me a story about a friend of hers that had pushed her over. Her Dad then got some guys to beat him up. She joked that if I upset her she would have the same thing done to me. It was somewhat comforting that her father had been run over and killed years earlier but when I remembered she had a picture of me I started to become worried. I imagined that as I walked along a rain swept Milan street a black car would screech to a halt beside me and I would be taking a short drive to my death.
When I got in at the train station Milan struck me as a concrete jungle. I briefly attempted to work out how to get to the youth hostel before settling for a taxi. It’s lucky I did because the hostel was almost in another town. It was housed in semi-industrial, semi-suburban wasteland. The bus stops were full of hookers and the 4th annual pimp conference was being held in the park. The hostel itself reminded me of a high school. It had that linoleum floor and dorm feel, with metal lockers outside that were constantly banging open and shut. It felt like bells were going to start ringing any second.
I’didn’t get a very good ‘ight’s sleep due to the combination of another snorer, the pimp conference outside and the banging lockers. I got out of there pronto and headed to the station with the intention of going to Verona. When I got to the station I felt sweaty and shaky. I was threatening rapid fluid loss from both ends. I had a stomach bug but whether it was from the water, the roadside vendor sausage or the off milk mixed with faeces that they served for breakfast I wasn’t sure. Perhaps the spark of recognition the server gave when I asked for hot chocolate saw him reaching for the instant poison instead. Whatever the source was, I was not in good shape.
I made it onto the train and sank into a half sleep until my stop arrived and I foolishly tried to figure out the map and walk to the youth hostel. I now know that what I thought was the river was in fact a canal leading me to the wrong side of town. As to what happened next, well, it’s really disgusting and embarrassing so I’m going to make it request only. If you want to know what happened between here and my arrival at the hostel then you will have to email me and ask.
The hostel in Verona is unbelievably good. It’s an old villa perched halfway up a hill with a big garden. It’s a very relaxing place and the perfect spot to get over a sore tummy. So I’m staying here for the maximum five days to build my strength up. I’ve had little wanders around here and there. Further up the hill on the ridge is an old Roman wall. It just pops up and blends into the scenery as most of the old Roman relics seem to do. The wall is made up of an inner and outer one and you can walk in between them with a legionnaire strut. To get over it the smelly Barbarian hordes would have had to climb the ridge, get past a 20 foot ditch, climb a 30 foot wall past Roman defenders, avoid being killed in between the inner and outer wall, get over the inner wall and fight the soldiers in the city. You can see why it didn’t happen too often.
Verona is quite a small place which suits me fine. There’s not too much hustle and apart from the crowds gathering for the opera it’s been a relaxing stay. Venice, Florence and Rome await so I think I’ll need my energy.
Ciao,
Dave.
I was staying in Zurich (emphasis on the rich) which is built around an enormous lake. You can see the other side of the lake but it’s so long that it stops being Zurich before the lake finishes. I was glad to be near some water as it was still damn hot. The first morning I was there I headed down to the lake but could find no good places to swim. It appears that Zurich was a property developers wet dream in the eighties and they promptly splodged all over the shoreline. Virtually all of it consists of little marinas and private houses which stretch into the hills on either side. They’ve even built little pool complexes which simply portion off a section of the lake and charge an entry fee to keep rabble out. I eventually took a train until I struck farmland and there I found the farmers paddling in one of the few free beaches. It was lovely water but the stones were a bit hard on the feet.
Zurich is an exceptionally lovely city. I didn’t realise it would be so beautiful but I guess being neutral in wars has the benefit of keeping those old buildings. The water in the river that feeds the lake and a couple of canals is an amazing clear green and the sun twinkling off this and a couple of swans floating by helped to soothe my raging mind. There was also a little park at the top of Zurich which had a cool breeze and comfy deck chairs so I plonked my ass down and took in the atmosphere. It’s the kind of town that exudes money. In fact I don’t think poor people even bother coming here but it was good for a visit. The other major attraction of the city were all the drinking fountains that just keep bubbling out cold mountain water.
On my last day in Switzerland I headed to true mountain country by taking the train up to Interlaken, which is in the middle of Switzerland. The scenery has to be seen to be believed. I couldn’t conjure up the platitudes to do it justice and I’m sure they’ve all turned into clichés anyway. Let’s just say they mountains were sheer and enormous and the lakes had an almost radioactive luridness.
I took the train down from Zurich to Chur and on to St. Moritz with the intention of coming into Italy. If you ever have the chance I would recommend the train ride from St. Moritz to Tirano. It trundles up and down about 2000 metres passing a 4000 metre mountain which was covered with snow and in the height of summer. I arrived in north Italy to a terrific deluge and suffered a heated train with no open windows to the heaving shitropolis and subject of my next email – Milan.
Dave out.
This is what a middle-aged French gentleman said to me when I accidentally scratched his finger on the way out of the elevator at the youth hostel in Vienna. He was more right than he knew. I do have quite strong nails, I love sleeping and lounging around, a dead mouse can keep me entertained for hours and don’t get me started on licking between my legs.
I was ecstatically happy when I arrived in Vienna because it was the first youth hostel I actually managed to find. This soon soured when I discovered that I don’t like youth hostels very much. I have enough trouble getting to sleep in a pitch black room in absolute silence when I’m tired, let alone in an environment reminiscent of school camp. There are lots of kids running around excited at being away from home for the first time and there is always a snorer. I’ve encountered a couple of world class snorers – one here and one in Zurich, my next destination. It would be hard to pick a winner. The Vienna snorer was amazingly loud and varied but the Zurich snorer would slowly build up to chainsaw levels before erupting in a fit of snorting. I have been taking regular naps to make up for my lack of night time slumber.
I liked Vienna. The first night I was there I went for a wander and got lost in the new city with the endless rows of shops. It reminded me of Sydney, mainly because of the pavement and road markings. The next day I headed down to the old quarter which is a really nice area for wandering around, a speciality of mine. It’s a pedestrian only zone apart from a few horse-drawn carriages that go lumbering by. I love the smell of manure in a city. It’s like a mixture of the past and the countryside. Vienna has the same huge buildings as in Germany but they have little touches of elegance about them. Still, it is a tribute to a fallen empire and such tributes are usually on the grand side.
My only bad experience in Vienna was watching the world cup with a bunch of yanks cheering for Brazil against England. When England lost one of the Americans said “Well at least there’ll be no more annoying English fans”. I desperately wanted to stab him in the neck with my pen but the laws that keep me safe protected him as well. Instead I took my anger to the streets but found no wave of irate English supporters to join in rolling cars over. Instead I took to the park and sobbed into the grass.
Dave out.
It’s a heatwave. I haven’t been this hot since the last time I had sex. It’s so hot that raising an eyebrow cause me to break into a hot sweat. I’m writing this from the main station in Salzburg, Austria. I never intended coming here but it’s an interesting story.
My plan was to go to Prague but I got up a little late in the morning and couldn’t be bothered changing money so I decided to head to Austria instead. My route would take me through Nürnberg and Munich on the way to Salzburg.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that I wouldn’t make it in one day so I decided to stop off in Nürnberg and check the place out. I don’t know if you’ve ever carried a large backpack around in 35 degree heat but it’s as stupid as setting up a treadmill in a sauna. It didn’t take me long to lose my cool as the worst map ever drawn led me to where a youth hostel might once have been but was there no longer. At this point the overheat trigger in my brain melted so I went to sit by the canal and cool down for a while.
In the midst of my cooling, as the sun began to go down and the temperature didn’t, I considered sleeping rough. Walking was not a good option at this point and the longer I waited the more it appealed. A glance at the temperature board revealed 29 degrees and it didn’t get much colder than that.
I headed down to the park which was full of layabouts such as myself. There is a canal running through the centre of town fed by a lake. As with a lot of European cities there is a new town that has sprung up around the original. It seemed like a nice place full of stupid people with too much money.
I prepared for my outdoor vigil by starting a fast. Nothing passed my lips during a 20 hour period apart from water. This was simply a case of waiting and not doing much, something which I had plenty of experience of from working in an office.
The native Nürnburgers are a funny lot. The sun went down at ten pm but that didn’t stop them riding bikes and roller blading around the lake till two am in the morning. The strangest thing about the whole experience was that the lake reminded me a lot of one in my hometown of Canberra, especially the bike track going around it. If I had been on LSD I think I might have started looking for my parents house but instead I just started to look for a place to have a lie down.
The park was lit up like day, as were most comfortable looking spots. I needed a place to hide my shame and avoid any local vagrancy laws. I wandered along the canal through little tunnels until I came to a large square full of light and rats. This didn’t seem like an ideal place for a kip so I backtracked until I found a beaut little spot. Behind me was a 12 foot high concrete embankment, in front of me a small stretch of grass before the bike track and canal. I was hidden from the glare of the light and could wait for the station to open in relative comfort.
It was still warm and humid and I had sweated my way through half my t-shirt supply. One of the last things I threw in my pack before I came was a sheet. I’m not sure why I packed it but it was proving as useful as Arthur Dent’s towel. With the sheet protecting me from the evening dew and my backpack doing a passable impression of a pillow I was far from comfortable. For an hour I was in the kind of sleep a dog is in when on guard. If my ears were capable of it they would have been twitching and swivelling.
I made it through the night and got up because the birds were so happy it filled my heart with an unrestrained joy. As I enjoyed a pre-dawn hobble to stop my joints seizing up I had a look behind me and staring at me from over the embankment and across the road was the PrinzRegent hotel. It was a lovely spot.
When I made it to Salzburg I found that it suffered from the same new/old town syndrome as most of the places I’ve seen in Europe. When you get out at the station the immediate impression is that the place is a shithole, but you know that’s not true because you’ve just come over a gorgeous mountain river with a castle perched above it. I don’t recall being in a city with such contrasting architecture. Ugly office blocks and hotels give way once you cross the river to what you imagine a small Austrian city would look like. You could take postcard shots for weeks.
The great advantage of the river is that it stays ice cold even in the extreme heat. The locals lined the banks of the river downing beers. It’s a bit like sitting in front of an open fridge. It’s a beautiful setting with mountains I h’ven’t seen the likes of since I was seven. I can hear the alps calling me.
Dave out.
As you are all aware I’ve been working in London for the past two and a bit years. I never intended to stay that long but money, clubs, drugs and good friends got under my skin and it took some effort to break orbit. One thing that did make it easier was the last job I had at JKD. The office had a stench of death fed by the director of despair and the project manager of misery. I think it’s fair to say that every right minded person working there wants to leave and I took my opportunity gladly.
When I throw the word German at you, what springs to mind? I think of ruddy cheeks, beer, the Fuhrer and efficiency. To that list will now be added smoking, large groups of people walking, sausages and massive buildings. Germany seems to be unreasonably fond of all these things bar the Fuhrer but there’s more to Berlin than that. There are the remains of a whacking long wall that split the city in two coming from the same guide to post-war reform as the creation of Israel. It seems utterly crazy as you wander around the gratified and scarred remains of a small section of the wall that it was ever actually there. A small reminder has been left so that you can figure out whether you would have made it over. For those attempting it they’ve stationed a couple of German shepherds on the other side for authenticity.
What struck me the most about Berlin was the scale of the place. It feels like a determined effort to come back bigger and better after being brought to their knees. Wandering around the place I started wondering whether there’s a German word for subtle. Gleaming glass skyscrapers compete with warehouse-sized stations and bold, colourful murals leap out at the eye.
There is something magnificent about it despite the coldness such size generates. On my last afternoon in the city the sun came out and buildings that had been quietly staring at me suddenly came to life as light bounced between them. It feels like the kind of place with a lot beneath the surface. Repressed creativity bubbling up in unseen places. I’ll have to go back with a pierced punk-goth guide sometime but for now I’m waiting for the heat to kick in as I search for some old school Europe.
Dave out.
The second part of my two-leg short term holiday replacement for Egypt took place in two different countries over six days and despite the sound, it was more rejuvenating than I was expecting. I really hadn’t planned this getaway, more jumped on the tail of someone else’s. My housemate and good friend, Adam, who will be familiar to some of you from such tales as ‘The Move From Hell’ and ‘The Most Tired I Have Been On Christmas Day, Ever’ had planned to visit his brother, Jon, in Germany.
I think Adam’s idea of a perfect holiday is smoking some nice skunk, getting the munchies, eating, resting and repeating twice before taking some magic mushrooms and visiting a brothel. Not surprisingly Amsterdam is very close to his idea of heaven. Adam is a professional musician of the brass variety and would not look out of place in a rugby scrum. His brother Jon looks nothing like him. He’s much taller and thinner and as such they make a strange combination but you couldn’t find a stronger bond between siblings. The fact that they love each other is obvious. They are always there for each other and have seen each other through hard times with the promise of better ahead. Jon studied astrophysics and was working near Frankfurt for the European Space Agency but sounded like he needed a break. In the past year he had studied frantically to try and pass his degree, which once finished smoothly transformed into a summer job in London which swiftly transferred to a full-time job in Germany, all without a break. If I had been him I would have been bashing my head against the wall in an attempt at relief so I was fully supportive of Adam’s plan to enforce a break upon him whether he liked it or not.
It was in high spirits that Adam and I left for Germany. It was a lovely morning and I was feeling better after successfully catching a plane twice since missing one. I have a suspicion that I will never be late for a plane again but am doomed to sitting in airport terminals for hours on end. I must admit to not feeling totally confident that the trip was going to be a good one. For some reason something always goes wrong when Adam and I travel anywhere so I was on my guard. It may have something to do with a lack of planning. I don’t like organising things in detail and Adam likes drifting about in the breeze just as much as I do, so all we had done was to buy tickets to Frankfurt and arrange a lift from the airport. The basic outline of the plan was to hire a car in Germany and drive up to Amsterdam but that could wait until we got there. We were just happy to be on the move and get some relief from the urban jungle and daily grind that our lives were turning into.
Everything was going to plan as we took our seats in the plane. There was a bit of jostling for position as we both hog a bit of shoulder room, but as I exerted some authority on my personal space Adam leant a bit too far into the side of the plane. There was a loud crack and I shouted “I don’t believe it! You’ve broken the plane.” Adam looked appropriately abashed and put on his “I didn’t mean it … please don’t hurt me” face. I thought my shout that the plane was buggered would bring some attention our way but no-one seemed that worried about it. They were too busy shoving their bags into the overhead lockers. Eventually Adam got the attention of the flight attendant who came over and tried to stop laughing but couldn’t help herself. Apparently a slight dent in the inner lining of the plane and little bits of foam sticking out wasn’t a big deal. I offered to fix it if she could find a screwdriver but I guess they don’t like amateur mechanics five minutes before take-off. In the end it turned out to be fine. We probably could have ripped the whole panel off and stayed in the air but we managed to survive the remainder of the flight without causing any more damage.
I’ve been to a few airports and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they can reflect the personality of the country they are in. London airports tend to be busy and frantic while slightly unorganised. Bangkok airport is steamy and full of plants. Barcelona airport is light and relaxed. When you arrive at Frankfurt main the first thing that hits you is the acres of space and the second is the brisk efficiency.
Jon lives around Darmstadt which is a large town near Frankfurt. It has a large, airy feel to it but in a very planned and ordered way. There aren’t any small, dark alleys or buildings spilling out onto the street. Everything is new, in rows and clean. This mainly has to do with the fact that Darmstadt was demolished during the second world war, a victim of English fire bombing. It probably deserved it – large Nazi headquarters were based here in the town hall, strangely enough the only building that remained standing. I should point out that I have done absolutely no research about this so don’t blame me if you’re at a party going on about the Nazi headquarters in Darmstadt and an ex SS officer tries to kill you. You’ve had fair warning.
I picked most of my information up during my last trip to see Jon so I was happy to put my inquisitive mind on hold for the week and abandon myself to the lures of relaxation and switching off. In that spirit our first night in town saw us at the pool hall. Based on the popularity of the place on a Tuesday night it wouldn’’ surprise me if the next Pool champion of the world comes from a small town in Germany that no-one has heard of before. I guess a small town is a small town the world over. I understand the ethos, coming from quite a small city. There isn’t a wide range of leisure activities so you have no option but to follow the flow. The local brew was consumed and a few games racked up before we stumbled back to the house in order to rest before the next day’s preparations.
Jon works in one of the prime jobs for anyone who loves space. He’s located amongst Europe’s scientific elite at the headquarters for the European Space Agency. At 22 most of his colleagues outstrip him in age by decades but have the looks of scared adolescents and social skills to match. In this respect it probably isn’t such a fun place to work but it’s hard to resist an organisation that launches and controls satellites as a way to start a working career. A quick tour of the building revealed banks of computer screens, the obligatory map of the world and different time zones, the worst hair styles I have seen for many a year, and some pretty cool satellite replicas doubling as garden sculptures. It feels like the kind of place that goes about a mile underground and the number of important looking doors with no windows didn’t do the conspiracy theorists any harm. No-one has that many brooms.
Our main reason for going to ESA was to enquire about cheap car rental. I am not exaggerating when I say planning for this trip was minimal as you will see later. We were directed to a car rental firm somewhere in Darmstadt and the taxi kindly took us to the car rental heartland. The first place we went to was run by the type of woman you expect to be roasting a pig and preparing sauerkraut by the barrel while running the pub and suckling a baby. She sensed we were not German very quickly and we sensed that she didn’t like us. It’s strange to be on the receiving end of language prejudice. I must remember that if someone doesn’t understand a word, repeating it slower and louder doesn’t really help. We had to leave in the end but luckily the place up the road had a slick, black VW golf. We jumped in and with transport sorted we were halfway there.
A minimum of effort was spent in packing before we jumped in the car, bought a map and set off for the bright lights and aromatic smells of Amsterdam. I have mentioned elsewhere Adam’s incredible ability for getting lost. It’s almost as if he senses the wrong direction to go in and chooses it every time. Luckily the road to Amsterdam follows the freeway all the way there without deviation. Jon got us onto the right road and directed Adam to follow the signs to Koln. I don’t know quite how it happened, and there was rigorous debate at the time in the car, but Adam managed to get us heading south, rather than north. It took about 10 minutes to find somewhere to turn around, but by the time we were heading in the right direction the stereo was pumping, the sun was shining and the car was being pushed to top speed on the autobahn.
The drive from Frankfurt to Amsterdam is unremarkable apart from one point. When you drive through Germany there are gently sloping hills covered with woods and deer. This continues for a few hundred kilometres until you reach the Dutch border. There are no big signs announcing your entry into a new country but they aren’t needed. Holland is characterised by a lack of hills but the extent of it doesn’t really hit you until you drive into the lowlands and all you can see is horizon. It is the dullest, flattest stretch of grassland I have ever seen. As far as the eye can see there are farms and a road stretching into the distance.
But we weren’t going to the Amsterdam for the scenery. We were going because dope and magic mushrooms are legal and it sounded like a very relaxing place to be. The first thing on my mind on arrival was securing a hotel but as we drove around the city it appeared that whoever had built it had ingested quite a few magic mushrooms beforehand. Amsterdam is the most confusing city to navigate that I have been in so far. There are no landmarks, the city is totally flat with two storey buildings everywhere, there is a canal on almost every street, the roundabouts split off in five different directions which connect with roundabouts going in another five directions, tiny one way streets, trams, bicycles, no map, no plan – we parked the car and walked for a bit. At this point Adam got a strange look in his eyes. He was in his Holy Land, Nirvana and Mecca all rolled into one. I don’t exaggerate his fondness for smoking and he had gone a couple of days without a spliff which is near his breaking point. He started wandering off down the street and while Jon and I were keeping an eye out for hotels Adam was peering into cafes in his search for dope.
He started to take on the aspect of a dog straining on his lead as Jon and I tried to point out that it made more sense to find a hotel before we smoked, as marijuana tends to relax you to the point of inaction, but it was no use, he was a man on a mission. We eventually came across a converted basement. It was like being in a hobbit’s hut. The wooden ceiling was so low that I couldn’t stand up straight but I stumbled over to a lavishly cushioned bench near the wall. Adam was at the counter perusing the menu. The menu consisted of little plastic bags filled with samples of skunk and hash which you can choose from. To be honest, I was feeling a little bit tired and grumpy. Dope is nowhere near my drug of choice and I’m not a heavy smoker. I was anticipating a couple of drags knocking me out and I wasn’t far wrong. In the dope head vernacular I was blitzed and monged but mainly tired. The feelings were shared and we stayed there long enough to regain motor control and the motivation to find some hotel rooms. As we headed out into the Amsterdam night all was quiet. It was clear and peaceful and I couldn’t feel my feet. I floated along behind Adam and Jon as we headed back to the car. It was nine at night, we were stoned, we had half a tank of gas and no sunglasses but it didn’t seem to matter that much. I’ll give skunk that much – it’s hard to stress out on the stuff. When we got back to the car I felt like going to sleep and I could tell Jon felt the same but to his credit and my undying gratitude he stepped up and drove that car like a beast in a strange city in our quest for accommodation.
Adam quietly asked if I would be pissed off if we had to sleep in the car. I replied that I would probably be a bit grumpy in the morning and I could tell by his thoughtful silence that he knew that was a situation it was best to avoid. We found our first hotel but it proved beyond our budget. We drove a little way out of town, gazed mournfully at the Ritz, then headed back into town. On our way to the coffee shop we had met a man who pointed out a non-smoking hotel with vacancies. It was a last resort but we just wanted to sleep at this stage. We turned up at reception, no doubt looking a little red-eyed and confused, a look I’m sure we shared with many an inexperienced Amsterdam traveller. Our saviour informed us that he only had one room left with three single beds at a good price. The three of us stared in shock at each other briefly before mumbling “Yeah … yeah … that sounds great.” The gods of not planning were on our side for once and we had stumbled into a great little room. I don’t remember much of the rest of the night but it was a very good sleep.
My plan for the following day was magic mushrooms. I really like psychotropic drugs. They agree with me, stimulate my thinking and allow me to transcend the everyday. It was a beautiful day and I was all for getting some mushrooms and relaxing in the park. Adam agreed with my plan and Jon was forced to come along even though tripping really isn’t his cup of tea. I understand where he’s coming from. There is a point towards the tail end of a trip when it can feel like your brain is going to collapse under the weight of itself and it can take some effort to maintain sanity. I don’t find this too hard but I can understand the reluctance of Jon to want to go through it, especially with the mentally taxing year he had been experiencing. Magic mushrooms are an over the counter drug in Amsterdam, supplied by new age type shops rather than the pharmacy. Mushrooms usually come dried and taste like crap. We settled down for a quick breakfast and tried to convince Adam to hold off on the mushrooms until we were actually in the park but he sprinkled a pack on his pancakes and chowed down. I’m sure you can see a character trait developing here. After breakfast I thought, what the hell, and joined him with a mushroom flavoured mars bar. It really was an amazingly nice day to be wandering around in a pleasant daze.
We had a map supplied by the hotel but it only vaguely helped. We could tell from it that Amsterdam was based around the port and spread out in ever expanding semi-circles of streets and canals. We could see where we were on the map and we could see where we wanted to go but getting there proved deceptively hard. We took a pit stop at an café and reoriented ourselves with the help of the waiter. New directions firmly in place we proceeded to walk in a circle back to the café. We set off again in a new direction and largely thanks to my strangely good sense of direction we managed to hit first the smaller park before finally making it to the promised land of greenery, ducks and ponds. It was a pleasant little park, but like the rest of the city, nothing spectacular. Amsterdam is the kind of place that, when you think about it, doesn’t have any famous landmarks. Paris has the Eiffel tower, Sydney has the Opera House and London has the Houses of Parliament, but to this day I don’t know what the Amsterdam equivalent is. Once we were in the park Jon started to make a stick hut from the little bits of wood scattered in the grass. It started out as idle hands but as it grew it turned into our own little landmark in a city bereft of them.
This is the strange thing about Amsterdam. The streets all look alike, the canals are dirty and nothing really impresses you about it, yet you still come away from the place feeling like you’ve been somewhere interesting. It’s more about the atmosphere, especially after coming from somewhere as tense as London. Some might argue that the place feels relaxed because skunk is legal but I get the feeling that the place has always been pretty relaxed – it’s just the way people are. When the evening commute came it wasn’t bumper to bumper cars or people cramming on buses, but lots and lots of bikes with people talking as they rode along. I think it’s a pity in a way that Amsterdam has the reputation of being the drug capital of Europe. As we left the Easter weekend was starting and I can imagine the scenes that followed as a wave of tourists descended on the city in search of exactly what I had been there for. I’m heading back this summer to check out the paintings I didn’t see this time, but it’s my last stop on the European mainland, so I think there will be a bit of partying as well.
Dave out.
In my ignorance and world innocence I thought London was a cloudy and wet place, but there is a new leader and champion of places that I have been with miserable weather. It didn’t come as a shock, and it didn’t stop my enjoying Edinburgh, but it’s worth noting if you ever decide to go yourself that it feels like it could drizzle for months on end. I suspect that the sunshine on my arrival was the first to be seen in Edinburgh for quite some time and as such I feel privileged to have basked in it briefly.
If anything, the low clouds and light rain add to the atmosphere. The castle perches high above the centre of town, an imposing reminder of a war-soaked past. It pops out at the most unusual times. As you walk along a street in the new town you glance to the left as you cross the road and – bloody hell! There it is. It seems to play some kind of optical trick on the mind, being almost too big and grand to fit into a modern city. It shimmers in the distance. It sits on top of craggy black cliffs with sheer drops an all but one side. Its presence lifts Edinburgh out of the ordinary at once.
In a similar way the mountains impose themselves on you. You don’t have to go looking for them, they regally appear, crowned with clouds. I rambled up them one morning and with each step my mood lifted. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be really outside and breath fresh air. You can’t help but be impressed by the sheer steepness. I’ve been up the highest mountain in Australia but it’s just a molehill compared to these. I eventually managed to climb to the highest point. My legs were burning and sweat was dripping off my eyebrows. As I took in my achievement, basking at being among the clouds with the city barely visible beneath me, I glanced over to my left. An old woman trotted over the next mountain along accompanied by her four scotch terriers. It put my mountain climbing into perspective.
The one great pity about Edinburgh is that its shoreline has been taken over by industrial shipping as far as the eye can see. I would have liked to go exploring, but like the pyramids, this will have to wait until I’m older and wiser. For now Germany awaits and then it’s back to … no, I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s the homeward stretch, the two month sprint before the end of another job.
Dave out.
It’s funny how life turns out, sometimes. You plan and plan then all of a sudden a twist shakes you off your tracks and you end up somewhere totally unexpected. This is how I feel writing this letter in a hotel room in Edinburgh. I had already mentally composed half a letter from Cairo, but that will have to wait for another day.
For those of you who weren’t informed by my drunken email, I missed my flight to Egypt. As the brusque gentleman at the Lufthansa counter succinctly put it – “These tickets – London to Frankfurt; Frankfurt to Cairo; are now useless.” There were no other flights I could be put on and as my heart sank he gave it a little kick. “That’s what you get for buying a cheap ticket.” I responded maturely with “For fuck’s sake! I was five fucking minutes late,” before I stormed off.
I was mightily angry that morning, possibly angrier than anyone has seen me, apart from my sister when she kept stuffing dead leaves down the back of my shirt and I punched her in the stomach. I could relate to how angry the Incredible Hulk had to be for muscles to pop out of his clothes. To make it worse, I couldn’t direct my anger towards anything. My lateness had been a combination of getting up a little late, waiting for the bus, sitting in the bus while it groaned towards a tube stop, getting slightly lost at Elephant and Castle, and waiting for the underground. It all added up to five minutes past the gates closing, literally.
I felt terrible on the way back from the airport. I couldn’t believe it, shit like this happens to other people. Tears sprang to my eyes and my shoulders were so tense it felt like I had been hanging from clothes pegs all night. When I got home I threw my bags on the floor and stomped around, swearing. I wanted to break things but in the end I quelled the voices with strong alcohol. I wasn’t too fussed about losing money on the ticket. It was all the frustrations from working in London bubbling to the surface. I know a few of you on this mailing list have experienced how working in London can transform you into a snarling beast chained to the treadmill of commercialism. I had been so close to escaping but the tendrils had closed around again and I was back in my flat, drunk.
As you can surmise, I was feeling a bit down at this point, but it takes more than a minor setback to keep a Bacon down. Perseverance beyond the sane is a family trait and I was damned if I was going to hang around London moping about my lost holiday, so I jumped on the Net and booked a flight to Edinburgh. I was happy to be going anywhere that wasn’t London, and if you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between Edinburgh and Egypt. They both start with E, people have lived there for a long time and there are lots of old buildings. To be honest, now that I’m here, I feel good about it. I think it might be a better break for me – more of a rest than an adventure. And let’s face it, the pyramids aren’t exactly going anywhere, it’s just increased my determination to see them.
The day I flew to Edinburgh it was raining heavily and I didn’t hold high hopes for the weather in Scotland being any better. I got to the airport about two hours early, even after the first bus I caught was felled by a faulty door. The one good thing about flying is that it’s always sunny at 30,000 feet. From my window seat I basked in the sun and watched the sea of clouds slip by. Coming into Scotland the clouds started to clear and I could see small mountains jut out, criss-crossed by streams. As we descended through some straggly clouds it cast my mind back to the book I had brought with ‘e ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. Robert Louis Stevenson was from Edinburgh, and although the story was written in Bournemouth and set in London I like to think that he was imagining Edinburgh’s narrow cobbled streets wreathed in fog. It was a slight disappointment that blue skies and a warm sun greeted me at the airport but these feelings subsided as I relaxed into the bus journey into the centre of town. I’m just resting now as I wait for the midnight hour when I will quit my room in a bid to exorcise my inner demons in the quiet, dark lanes.
Dave out.
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