spring of the student associations
the mulberries are growing and the student associations are blooming. life is good.
i dropped in at macquarie uni the other day. there are people running around in red, screen printed tshirts for their first student-council-equivalent. and not just a few, there were tshirts everywhere! over the years since i was around, the student council and other organisations got eroded, corrupted and eventually abolished. good people have been working hard for the last several years to create a new, better organisation within the generic association they were bequeathed to replace the whole lot. i’m sure there’s plenty more to do, but on a nice sunny day with people out and talking to eachother, it looks like they’ve gotten somewhere. there’s an energy i haven’t seen there for a long time, perhaps ever. it helps that the wonderful old space that the women’s room never should’ve given up has now become the queerspace, and that people are meeting about a food co-op. people were dancing outside the atrium and i didn’t even feel bad that the old rabbit warren that used to house the student council and the art space has been gutted for the new generic association offices – they’re shiny and glassy and full of people, with a functional reception with a reasonable list of clubs evident at the pigeonholes. the two organisations that the space was taken from were long dead, but indications are that, when their replacements get big enough to be able to use office space, they will have competent enough people to win that fight.
yesterday i was at ultimo tafe and stopped by their student association to catch up. i came away with a similar feeling of hope; there’s been shakeup in the staffing situation, with someone getting a promotion and others shuffling up, and it all seems to be to the better. not only have memberships have gone up to about a third of the population (take a look at that, unis!) but the new board is active, both helping out with the general activities of the association and having ideas. gosh, ideas! all four of them are being put through the frontline management course, which both displays a certain level of commitment and means that there will be four serious student-run projects happening this year. collaboration with departments is going well, including a shiny makeover for the student newspaper that i started, which indicates that it will continue. sports have started up again after a few years of not being able to fill teams, with a soccer competition against eora – one of many collaborations with them which are fruit of the seeds i kept planting back when. all this is in the environment of the tafe pushing a serious commitment to greenskilling, actually surveying people about the footwear courses and trying to work something out, and security keeping up the good work we’ve seen the entire time i’ve been involved. seven of their 21 staff are permanent, and it seems enough to keep up good continuity and make them the best and most understanding service in the area.
i’m no longer enrolled in either of these organisations, but i can delight in seeing results of my previous hard work amongst the bubbling up of good things, even if i’m not there to enjoy them directly. now i’m at yet another educational institution. i’ve gone and nominated for uts’ academic board already, and their student elections are coming up too. i’ll have to investigate…
you can find them in the oddest places
i did a writing workshop in copenhagen and ended up reading out one of my pieces to an audience. i think i probably rushed it as usual, but the people who assured me they’d gesture if i needed to be louder or softer or slower didn’t, so i guess it was ok. it seemed well received, at the start of an odd program of readings, performances and bands. the piece itself was ten minutes, i think, of continuous writing prompted by the title, which was a line chosen out of a previous exercise. then i had a couple of hours to try to edit it and write it out, while rushing around and doing other things like watching a film in a dark room. here it is.
you can find them in the oddest places.
Frogs. Happiness, or moments thereof. Places you’ll remember forever, and always think of when you need a bottle of latex, or go round a certain shaped curve in the road, bending through the trees just so.
Take as I find. The impulse to write. Maybe it won’t stay but maybe it will, maybe it will change and become the structure for something more useful. Because I’m not sure that compulsive writing is useful, even if the ability to write is. Notebooks to my specifications are available in some countries but not others. The books I currently require in order to feed my habit are A4, stapled, lined, margined. It was not always so. To record the threads of interpersonal relationships and try to weave some sense of my place in the social world required blank A5 pages with a satisfying weight, even spiral binding and – it turned out – a resilient, bright yellow plastic cover. Before that, any attempt to spill onto paper or record my movements were densely written on loose leaf A4 photocopy paper, both sides, often wound around the thick block characters of a hitching sign; or, even denser and likely in pencil, in margins of other work, on the backs of envelopes or even bus tickets. My elegant notebooks sat at home unused, scaring the writing out of me any time I would turn than first, blank page. But this, this worked; something connected and felt tip pen met lined paper 213 pages ago. A field full of daisies, Macedonian food by the side of the truck then gorging on forced cherries in the cool room on a hot day, the circular stairs up a four floor op shop, zig zag edges revealed. Scenes from a life that is mine when I’m here, but may not have been once I got home, but that they are recorded here, made real and thus also lodged, legitimately in my brain. That the only street sign I found in Skopje directs one to one street, one bridge and a gynaecological clinic is not a dream, though having to kill people for some important reason is, and I know that it was brought on by someone coming into my room and cleaning and tying up my toilet. Reality really is stranger than fiction; how would I ever make a story of this material? Being grateful for my life that I escaped Italy, the subtle feeling of wearing my first beard, as ephemeral, more intentionally, than my bowtie that is really, probably, gone; will it have the same eventual impact on my psyche? Translating Slovenian poetry without knowing the language, sliding through Austria on so much goodwill that I barely saw the country. Recovering five-year-stolen bags and running down a Czech highway through the pelting rain with them, broken shoes and pants dumpstered in Montenegro.
Soon, too soon I will take my lined, stapled, A4 notebooks home and make a new stationary choice for a new sheet of life.
as if we were free
one of the things i got to do overseas that i haven’t for ages, was performance. in berlin i joined in a drag king performance at the very last minute, apparently there was footage filmed but i haven’t seen it. i also read out a poem. it was translated from slovenian and it took a lot of editing before it was readable, i only got the printout a day before, and i spent all that time walking around berlin, overshooting my destinations as i read bits out loud, gesturing the emphases with a red pen in hand. noone thought to mention that i’d be juggling a microphone too. five minutes before the show i find out that the translation was done by one of my new friends, and she didn’t like my editing, but she ended up agreeing that i had as much right as her to interpret a translation. and besides, it was about to start. here is the version i read, more or less.
As if we were free
Urška Strle
Somewhere in the centre of the small neglected town, which is, at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed East European state, in a newly cobble embellished street in the inner city centre where they just closed two pubs and a bookstore, I have met a man who ordered himself Culture as if he were ordering coffee with milk.
I have to confess, the cobbles are perfectly laid down, all the gaps are carefully clogged with quartz sand, and at the edge it is possible to recognise a slightly rounded pattern. In short, the street of some small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small, cramped, and relaxed South European state, looks like the idyllic image on an old postcard.
Old bakeries arise in all parts of the town like mushrooms after the rain, as if they had decided one day and achingly wrested themselves out from old corner houses where they had modestly waited for decades unnoticed for their grand arrival, and which, on their frontage proudly show the inscription “Old Bakery”, which even more contributes to this idyllic look. I guess I’ve hurried past them for years and years without even noticing. I’ve walked past exactly this old bakery on the corner of this small idyllic street with carefully laid cobbles in the centre of some small neglected town and so on and so forth.
Suddenly an unbearable paranoia came over me, I got the feeling that somewhere out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of crinoline, and suspiciously I glanced towards the boys in white shirts with black bowties who were picking up the garbage. It appeared to me that time is curving itself as to the pattern of the new cobbles and that we will all find ourselves on that everlasting postcard from the end of the 19th century. Hastily I dashed towards the closest boy, that is, to the left edge, I ripped myself through the yellowish cardboard, and with a crash I landed in front of the doors to the pub which had, in the meantime, already disappeared in another reality.
To eat in this slovenly pub, which displayed insignia as a rallying point for all the enthusiasts of the sautéed potato, was akin to some special kind of masochism. Gnocchi Bolognese turned into spaghetti with tomato sauce, omelette with ham and cheese always remained without the latter two. The bills would be circulating around, they would be counted and discounted and finally there would come the conclusion that there are either too many or too few bills, the cash register is too far away and the next group of naïve tourists are just enough confused, hungry and tired and above all helpless in front of the board, on which specials of the day were written in complicated script.
But the slovenly pub that served for some special kind of masochism disappeared in that other reality, which was, to top it all off, mine. And there is no worse misery than when a person loses her own reality and therefore clings desperately to the handhold of some slovenly pub which went bankrupt, together with her lifestyle.
In the reflection of the filthy abandoned windows of my ailing lifestyle, I saw a mayor. All round and contented he was wiping sweat from his working face on the golden chain on which the city keys were jingling. He was shepherding a small squad of captured guest artists, some stoic, homeless ‘erased ones’, and from his pockets electric cables were forcing their way out, cables which NGO workers for the purpose of some obscure literary event negligently left in the middle of the street in the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed Central European state. He ordered Culture as coffee with milk, and then stirred with a teaspoon an empty cup and grumbled about the bad taste.
I might be extremely happy about the new cobbles if I had to cross them in high heels, but, I think, the magic of the moment was ruined in the second when, under the sole of my beaten up sneakers, quartz sand creaked. Maybe my face would have lightened up if I had been on these new even cobbles with nicely clogged gaps and a slightly rounded pattern pushing a pram that would be running smoothly. But I just stood there at the beginning of that small street in the centre of the town in those damn beaten up sneakers, I was pacing around nervously, under my feet, quartz sand was nastily squeaking and I stared at the abandoned windows of the pub. All this with a newly cobble-embellished street of the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time a capital of some cramped but relaxed newly joined European state, and there was not a single space left for me to go.
washing machines
sitting here with the door open, listening to the sound of the washing machine.
i used to get very irritated by that sound. it’s quite loud and intrusive, it’s in my space and i don’t always have control over when it runs.
yet now the sound has associations of not only chores and hassle, but comfort, order, efficiency, white.
in two months of travel such a machine was the rarest of commodities. i got access to one exactly twice. i thoroughly enjoyed running round the continent, sleeping in tents or trucks, washing in hand basins or not at all, eating what i could find and being free. it’s an amazing, vital experience, but it’s not easy. i came to appreciate the comforts i was occasionally offered, and the epitome of comfort was borrowing a fluffy dressing gown while every scrap of fabric i owned was in the wash.
a washing machine is of limited value if you have no soap, no way of drying the finished product, no privacy in which to change, no security to ensure your clothes are safe as they dry or no way of cleaning yourself satisfactorily before you put the newly clean clothes on again. yet my new friend in austria and my old friend in denmark had homes, calm white airy apartments where they kept their entire lives, neatly organised and appropriate. sufficient, functioning. comfortable, available. as a guest in their homes i enjoyed beds in rooms with doors, consecutive dinners and breakfasts, conversation and assistance, internet and phone access and real showers.
over two months i got several other showers, varying degrees of local knowledge, food, beds and doors some good some questionable, but for everything to come together was unbelievable; i can no longer take it for granted.
i’m sure i won’t retain this attitude to machine noise through all the inconsiderate times that it gets run for other people’s clothes, but something has changed. i still maintain that home is where the sewing machine is, but maybe there’s something to be said for a washing machine too.
travelogue the fifth – czech republic
my introduction to the czech republic, this time, was an empty road, fields, cows. luckily it was pleasant weather for walking, because i did quite a bit of it. eventually i got some rides, a taxi picked me up and took me quite a long way, then i got someone who spoke good second-language german and proceeded to hold a running monologue with me the whole way in to the fountain in the middle of cesky budejovice, pointing out where the first railway was, where the horses were washed, the world’s first pencil factory…
salim was expecting me at 5pm, but i had such a good trip that i was there by 9am!
i passed the day dozing by the fountain, trying to figure out public phones and the czech currency, and eventually dragging my heavy bag into an information office and finding some free internet, which i used while taking regular turns round the fountain to see if salim had arrived.
in the end, he got there an hour or two early and we went to the post office, where i got my hands on the two boxes tied with twine, which held the contents of the bag i got stolen five years ago. dresses i have missed, books with bookmarks in them at places i don’t remember, toiletries that i would no longer use. photos of copenhagen, my flamenco performance and the queeruption protest in den haag! my coat, one dress and stephen’s bow tie were missing, as i more or less expected. i think i spent a couple of hours sorting everything from both packs into a box to send home, a pile to chuck and another pile to absorb into my current pack. it was harder than packing the first time!
eventually i was done and salim, his friend and i took a tram to the university dormitories where he had booked me a night. very similar to a dorm i stayed in in budapest, it was one of many bare blocks standing in a field, but inside it had people coming and going with their possessions and a thriving noticeboard which suggested a much healthier student life than anything i’ve ever experienced. the room itself was made for two, split down the middle with beds, desks, cupboard, shelves and a sink. there were showers down the hall, facing each other with no curtains, and toilets even further down, the toilet paper bolted to the wall by the sink with an ostentatious padlock. i can’t imagine it being comfortable for long periods of time, but it seems to be accepted.
they took me around the city in search of a map, and to a local bus station dinner of gulash soup and dumplings, which was rather good though it looked anything but. it’s a pleasant city with an old town ringed by small parks and what used to be a moat, very quiet and calm at night, with live music floating from many doorways. outside the old town it seems a liveable city with decent public transport, interesting bridges and no tourists.
in the morning i dragged my tired feet to the tram and easily found a nice road, but the trip was a little more difficult than the last ones. it rained in short bouts but quite heavily. i got dropped in the middle of a highway in the middle of the rain and my boots gave out as i squelched my way to the shelter of a little overpass. interestingly, i got several rides from cars with three or four people in them already, which is very rare. just as i was preparing to shelter in my tent from another rainstorm, a car of four teenage heavy metal fans picked me up and drove me what seemed to be five hundred metres, before deciding to let me wait it out in the car. it was a fun interlude, if not very helpful as the only boy amongst them took it upon himself to help me hitch, which will scare most people off! meanwhile the girls bounced and sang and played badminton with a golf ball in the rain.
at about 8pm i found myself on yet another narrow road which boasted a nice section of layback but no cars, and decided to stop for the night. it was delightful to set up my tent in a forest while it was still light. the leaf litter was soft and the trees were green and i could select a nice flat section out of sight of any road or path, where i could hear the road through the birdsong but it just served to reassure me i would be able to get out of there in the morning. and indeed i could, i woke up nice and early and even after laying around enjoying breakfast protected from the rain, i was on the road about 8.30 and in a small truck a few minutes later.
unfortunately this ride, which was promisingly long, decided to take me sideways to an autobahn when it really wasn’t necessary, and my journey soured. i was surprised by a czech motorcycle cop turning on his siren right behind me and telling me to get off the road. he was gracious enough to give me advice as to where i could go, but it wasn’t very good advice as there was nothing at all visible out that direction. after heading out the other way where at least there was a little traffic, i saw two more hitchhikers walking outside the railing of the autobahn, and limped after them, barefoot on ground that is not meant for anyone to walk on. up hill, down valley, over bridge holding on to the outside of the railing; i couldn’t see any other direction but where they were leading. eventually i caught up to them, a whole highway section later at the next on ramp. they were two boys hitching from prague to berlin for shopping, and we shared some lunch and information on the railings of the on ramp, just past the roundabout. three people together have little hope of a ride, so eventually they walked off to investigate the road and i sat on the railing singing to the empty world. just as they were heading back in defeat i got a ride, another family of three, with watermelons wandering around the floor just to make things interesting. they had room for the other two but my german wasn’t good enough to convince them to take us all. i hope they found a ride anyway…
my ride only took me to the next truck stop, and after i had asked most of the cars and trucks, none of whom were helpful, i stood at the exit, behind the barrier and hoped cars could see me on the road. however an unmarked german police car came up and decided i was too close to the road, which was my first indication that i had made it to germany. they kindly told me how dangerous it was to be within two metres of the highway barrier, though three seemed ok, and helpfully told me to walk over a kilometre down the rough, narrow side road to the on ramp. of course cars drive faster down there than they should, considering visibility is not nearly as good as on an autobahn with a whole emergency lane down each side, but rules are rules and danger is naturally governed by them.
half way down i got a ride who took me almost as far out the other side of the on ramp; at least this road was deserted so i could walk on the smooth centre line until my friendly unmarked police came and directed me again, to the only place i could possibly have been going, and then swung around yet again to order me to walk on the left.
thankfully a little two door stopped for me quite promptly, though they were quite uncommunicative until they had already taken me into the centre of dresden. at the central train station having already spent about eight hours on the road that day, i decided it wouldn’t be the end of the world if i took a train, so i spent a couple of annoying hours on the floor of my platform, but i made it to my destination, and was in berlin for my birthday.
travelogue the fourth – austria
when i finally achieved the austrian border there were a bunch of lone young travellers milling around trying to figure out how to find the last quarter of the journey, in to innsbruck. it seems i have the best german of the five of us so i rounded them up to follow someone who knew what to do, thus i ended up on a train to innsbruck and with someone to follow home to a hostel. it was all so delightfully easy, we paid the bilingual, understanding inspectors for our not-too-steep tickets on the nice shiny train and it let us off in the centre of the city with no fuss. john was making a mess of finding a tram to the hostel and i let him, entirely unconcerned as he had an address, of sorts, and it looked like it would take five minutes to walk if he gave up and let me do it. i restricted myself to translating bus drivers for him, ridiculously delighted to be able to do so.
it started raining quite seriously as soon as we got in, but the hostel was full of australians who had just finished school, and other friendly types so we were all kept amused. when the weather cleared a little i dragged john away as he was the only one expressing interest in leaving the room at all. we wandered around, across the noisy river and into the old town. i have never met someone so eager to ask directions, we were lost to the extent that we should’ve walked to the nearest street sign and looked at the map, but instead got asked sharply ‘how can you possibly get lost in innsbruck?’
we saw the golden roof that is in every german textbook ever written, it’s an awning as i thought. the buildings are pretty and well maintained, many with graphics and illustrations stuck on an empty face somewhere, unrelated to the architectural details. it was wet and noone was about except other australian tourists looking for cheap food.
we finally found good kebabs on the edge of the new town, and ate them listening to some distorted concert nearby. all the supermarkets were closed, so we headed back while the weather held, seeing what we could on the way. piles of hard rubbish in the middle of the pristine city, antifa stencils, drinking fountains, people playing bowls with rectangular wooden blocks. i think.
in the morning i set off to the bus station with some recommendations from the friendly hostel owner. i checked the trains, but the price from the italian border was an anomaly and everything else in austria is expensive. i waited for a bus to the shopping centre near my road, it came and went before i could get myself and my bag on, then i realised it really wasn’t the best choice anyway and journeyed through the city to a different bus stop. the shopping centre was big enough to get lost in but i did manage to buy two buttons to replace the velcro i removed from my sleeping bag at least four years ago! eventually i found my road and from there things went so fast that before i knew it i had passed both salzburg and linz, with everyone having taken me out of their way. even my last truck, where i was squished between a fridge and another driver for part of the way, took me all the way up the highway past linz because he didn’t like the intersection where he would’ve let me off, had he continued straight to vienna. my last ride was even more hospitable, offering me a spare room, dinner, internet, phone and – gasp – a washing machine and dryer in freistadt, a beautiful little walled city where everyone living there has shares in the local beer ‘commune’. they get dividends in beer, but the community feeling seems to extend beyond that.
i walked out to the road in the morning, and the first car i stuck my thumb out for, took me all the way to the czech border. i couldn’t complain, as the czech republic was my next destination, but some day i need to get back to austria and see all the bits that i missed.
travelogue the third – italy
i’m sure it would be nice to hear about the good bits of my trip, the ones that came after the last traveloguebut instead, let me tell you about italy.
last time i was in italy i stood on burning hot roads and got yelled at, spat at and gestured at, at regular intervals of about three seconds. i got lost and got given bad directions, i got so fed up that i stowed away on a train, then went out of my way to swítzerland because it was a slightly closer border than the one i should’ve crossed.
this trip, i certainly had no intention of setting foot in italy. yet there i was in beautiful, helpful slovenia, on my way to ljubljiana with recommendations of places to stay, things to do and ways to get out at the end, when my truck did not let me off at my highway as he had agreed to. he took me to trieste.
i sadly abandonded my plans for ljubljana and decided that the fastest way north to austria was as good as i’d get.
of course, at the truck stop in trieste it is very difficult to find a truck going a different direction, and leaving the truck stop for the highway is a bad idea in italy, with two kinds of not very forgiving police. and it’s no fun to move at all in the heat of the day. so i let him take me to mestre, where there was a stop where there would be trucks going in different directions.
of course this was not true either. the stop was 2km past my highway, everyone was still travelling west and there were cops everywhere, i think i was told it was a bomb scare. so i got in a different truck to the next likely highway, at verona.
after an extended period of dispairing ever finding my way out of this impossible country, a car took me from truck stop to highway tollbooth. this, however, was not much of an improvement. my driver pointed to a crossroad and said i needed to go there, though the highway i was on should’ve been the right direction. eventually i hopped the small, crushed fence and walked 50m to a shopping centre, there to finally find a couple of people who speak english, staffing a booth selling credit cards or phones or something. they were very helpful, printing out a map and telling me to walk up up up here and down down down here, to find myself at the right road. on pain of prison i was not to jump the fence, that would be very dangerous.
advice safely tucked away and having restocked in the supermarket, half a bottle of cold juice went some way to reviving me. so i shouldered my bags again, and set out. up, up, up a km or two, past three roundabouts and a whole lot of shopping centre, i found the highway and turned back in on myself. down, down, down on the unpaved side of the highway, i dutifully did not stick my thumb out until i reached the end of the motorway, though the signs confirmed i was walking away from my destination.
of course, after at least 3km, can you guess? i found a tollbooth and a crushed fence to a shopping centre. i’m sure 50m of grass and a metre high wire fence is so dangerous that walking kilometres on the road is better.
the sun was going down by the time someone stopped. he was going in to verona and offered to take me to the train station, and by that time i was prepared to ditch the hitchhiking in favour of just getting out to hitch another day.
of course i wasn’t so thrilled when i found i had been taken from somewhere with a nice campable field, and dumped at a local train station, with only local trains, and no people. aimlessly leaving the station i got talking to two nigerian guys, who discussed racism in italy, religion, and how women are made to be protected. i argued well but still accepted their offer of hospitality. i found myself in a little apartment that must once have been beautiful, before everything was broken. my tour of the bathroom included the shower, which was a big bucket to fill with water and a dish to pour it with, and the light. ‘it goes off sometimes, but don’t worry, it goes back on.’
despite all, they were very hospitable. i got to eat the african food they made for themselves, semolina to roll in balls with your right hand and shape into a slight bowl, to pick up the spicy fish and chicken stew. i have much to learn in the etiquette of eating with my fingers, but nothing was said about my stew splatters everywhere or my very imperfect semolina shapes. it was delicious.
by the time it was apparrent i had half a bed, not a couch to sleep on, i was not surprised. after a bit of arguing he accepted the no touch rule, and i got a decent night’s sleep with no covers and an open window. in the morning he was not quite as cheery as he would’ve been if i had accepted being his girlfriend and agreed to come and visit italy again, but he took me to the bus to the big train station and gave me advice. ‘if you get there, ask a black man for the information office.’
the bus gave me a nice tour of the city, despite not knowing how to pay. it went on for ever and they have a lot of old buildings that look like they’ve been standing there placidly for ever, but just might melt if it rains. people live around them like they’re solid and dependable though, so maybe i’ll trust them on it.
of course i found that my latest friends had picked up the knack for italian directions that they themselves had complained about. the train station was supposed to be the end of the line, so i didn’t get off at the bus station. i continued on and on and on through suburbs, to another bus station. hang on, surely that’s the same church with suspicious carvings… i got off and walked back, and just when i was going to ask a black man i found an information office. he was genuinely surprised that i wanted a train, since he dealt with buses, but he waved me to the other building where i found actual, almost-accurate train information, and even acceptable directions to the ticket office. i bought my ticket to the border, which is as far as they would sell, and even managed to figure out which platform i needed, and find it!
i waited an hour or two on the platform, with four tvs cycling the same five ads at me, sound fading in and out. i got it confirmed that i was on the right platform and that the next train would be mine. i thought i was away once i got on the train, there was space and it was indeed non-smoking, but there was one final little mishap just to remind me where i still was. i proudly showed the ticket inspector the ticket i had managed to both buy and follow, but with the aid of a book of pictures he showed me that i was supposed to validate it. apparrently somewhere, on train or platform, i had missed some yellow machines where i was to stick my newly-bought international train ticket. still, he scrawled all over it, stamped it twice and left me to breathe again.
i did achieve the border, met up with another australian with a hostel address and a local who knew that the austrian trains can be paid for on board, and things ran smoothly again. i stayed a night in innsbruck and set off to enjoy the austrian roads. forget macedonia and bosnia, i can be proud i made it out of italy alive!
travelogue the second – london
getting in to england was pretty smooth, but that last leg in to london was more difficult. naturally, there was a tube strike that day. i was directed through a maze of tunnels to the bus station, then a maze of options where i had to buy my ticket with a touch screen. i had to select the time i wanted, but it let me complete the process for buses that were full, then sent me back to the start to try again. four times. this was on the machine that worked! ticket in hand i found my way to the buses, a small concrete stand of diagonal parking with no signage, which reminded me uncannily of a little town in south-west spain where we got stuck taking buses on my last trip. not what i expected at heathrow airport! still, the bus arrived and deposited me somewhere in the vicinity of where i needed to be. about 45 hours after i left home, i found lisa at her work in buckingham gate. who´dve thought buckingham gate is the street that points right to the gate of buckingham palace? certainly not anyone i asked for directions.
with my pack safely at lisaś, i headed into the nearest park with no shoes and a big grin on my face. i think i talked to more people in an hour or two, than i had in the previous few months in sydney. i saw the queen drive by, heralded by a million photo takers and a very big brass band. it wasn´t the changing of the guard, they marched round a big block and in to a bunch of old buildings, where they continued to play for a guest list of more uniforms and suits. however none of them matched the two men, presumably off for a picnic in cream linen suits, matching straw hats and a wicker basket.
the next day i took full advantage of the daily cap on my nice new oyster card, and took a tour of london by tube. eight different tube stations kept me walking all day from one end of town to the other, vaguely recognising some places and not others, alighting at some stations to find i´d walked right past them an hour or two before! i really overdid it down berwick street, bethnal green road and brick lane. street markets, costumes, bangladeshi food, fabrics, hats and interesting looking people. everything but tents. and of all the questions one can take away from a city, just what was that film playing in a little junk shop in the top of brick lane, with someone tap dancing in a bowling alley? sound familiar to anyone? anyone at all?
the rest of my time in london progressed at a more reasonable rate, staying at lisaś totally unfurnished new place and wandering round camden markets with her, until at 3am monday, when it was time to start the bus-train-plane trip to bulgaria and the real start of my travels.
travelogue the first – tokyo airport
I´m currently in Zagreb with free internet, 15 minutes at a time, so iĺl try to get some of these out, despite the interesting keyboard. I only have 40 pages of notes so far…
My flights were wonderful, thanks to JAL and swine flu – green tea and hot facewashers and, most importantly, a whole row to lie down in. Even in such favourable conditions, I didn’t get much sleep on the plane, but that was ok too, as JAL put me up for free in an airport hotel since the flights don’t match up.
Thus I got my first little taste of Japan; at the end of the trip I’ll have time to explore Tokyo, but so far it’s an airport, a room, a couple of shops and a short stretch of road.
The road was nothing exciting. stuffy and faintly bad smelling, the patches of lush greenery hid mainly parking lots. We were quickly and efficiently taken through to the hotel, and when I went for a walk later, I had to turn back after five minutes when said greenery came right down to the road. I had seen tennis courts, an indeterminate religious building with manicured gardens and a seven eleven.
Exploring my hotel room was more fun. The view of carparks turned into city lights as darkness fell, there was a kimono and slippers and tea. I’ve developed quite a taste for Japanese green tea, very different from Chinese green tea. The bath made me very happy, but the highlight really had to be the toilet. It had a set of buttons to the side, offering two kinds of bidet function. It turns out this is a basic version, compared to the ones I later saw at the airport, which also sported seat warming, “powerful deodoriser” and canned flushing noise with volume control! That bathroom also had one squat toilet, sans extras, and a careful map outside the door to explain all offerings.The airport shops kept me amused for a while, the highlights were fake meals – make your kitchen look like a japanese restaurant! and hello kitty phone ornaments – kitty on a tram, actually lying on the roof with her head the size of the front of the tram, kitty in sushi. with wheels. naturally.
Next up, london – sofia – skopje – zagreb.
vintage travels – twelve countries
this is a fragment i never finished. one day…
When I finally left Denmark, I hitchhiked for three weeks down to Madrid. Here are some photos which I didn’t take, as I didn’t have a camera. They are photos I wanted to take, so thanks to everyone who did take them, and published them on the net for me to borrow until I can find my own.
I had to move out of my room in Copenhagen on the 17th of the month. Any month, I had to pay up till the first, but move out two weeks before. Consequently I found myself, three days after limping back from Amsterdam, dragging all my worldly possessions to Marie’s flat with no plans, or real ideas of what to do next. Thanks to Kim, her partner, the next morning I found myself standing on the side of a good road, with a sign which read ‘Germany’, and most of my stuff safely at the post office on its way back to Sydney. Both these good people, being european it seems, had done this before.
In under two minutes of standing in the light rain, my first ride showed up, and indeed, drove me to Germany.
My last ride of the day wanted to take me back to Belgium to meet his wife. He proudly showed me a photo of his two little kids. He shared his dinner with me, all he needed being stowed under the bed behind the seats. He offered me somewhere to stay the night: his bed.
We were going right past Münster, so I decided to visit Marie-Claire. I rang home for her number and got my parents up at 4am. at about 7am they rany Marie-Claire’s parents and sent me the number. I rang, to find she was out and he was just leaving – “couldn’t you just stay in a youth hostel for a night?” Sure. At the highway at Münster.
My driver wanted to stop before Münster, and take me there in the morning. Somehow I got him to travel a little further, but I still had nowhere to sleep, at midnight, at Münster truck stop. I was wondering how safe his top bunk would be, but it was growing obvious that the answer was not at all. Bonn University Marie-Claire and Gervin drove me in to Bonn where they were going to a funeral, and dropped me solicitously at the train station in the middle of town. I had to walk all the way out to the highway, past this here gorgeous university, carrying my new blow up double mattress, sleeping bag and half a tent in a big fake leather suitcase so old that didn’t even have wheels. As well as my big heavy backpack. Dresden old town ruins From there I hitchhiked a big wobbly course across Germany, reaching Dresden that night. With bags in tow. In the morning I hired a bike and set off to see more of Dresden than I had seen of many other places. Someone else had the same idea as me of photographing this interesting jumble of the old town, complete with turret showing through window. Hopefully when my bags come back I’ll have my own identical photo. Prague and this is Prague, the charming city where I got everything I owned stolen. money, passport, clothes, food, books, diary, notes, everything but the clothes on my back, my atlas a pen and two sheets of paper. Luckily it wasn’t too warm a day, and I was still wearing a knitted jacket, though my coat was gone. A couple of people were very helpful, particularly one who helped me find the consulate, let me use his phone and loaned me money to cover two more nights in the youth hostel I had just checked out of. Said hostel leaked rain from a hole in the wall above the head of my bed, but I was able to hoard breakfasts that kept me from starvation for the next couple of precarious days of travel.
Budapest. I took off on a whim from Vienna, worried about getting to Madrid on time but still going the very opposite direction with a sign saying “BRAT. BUDA.” I’m glad I did, even though I only got to spend one night, and spent half the time visiting every bank in the city, unsuccessfully trying to access my money. It’s a beautiful city, with an air of faded glory. The buildings may be crumbling round the edges, but they’re solid and dignified, substantial.
udine…
mestre, milano…
When I couldn’t stand Italy any longer, I changed course and went north to Switzerland, which was minorly closer to Milano than France, though it was a detour. I wasn’t really expecting better, but suddenly everyone was pleasant and helpful, and I got to see views like this!
This time I had a destination in mind. My maps told me I had to get to Hospental, where there was both a youth hostel and the crossroads I needed, to be able to travel back west. Unfortunately noone has ever heard of Hospental, it’s a tiny mountain village above St Gotthard’s Pass, apparently the longest single tunnel in the world, at 17km.
My last ride dropped me at the entrance to the tunnel, the foot of the mountain. Noone came past. I started walking. By now I had two small backpacks, one on the back and one on the front. I had shoes. I also had 3kg of yummy but squishy Italian stone fruit in my bag, that I was thinking I might have to live off for a while, if I didn’t get stuck in snow and freeze to death without even my trusty coat. I was hearing bells. It looked a long road winding back on itself, up the mountain. At one point there was another road not far above my head on the steep slope, so I cut the corner by climbing over the fence and up the hill. There were footholds pitting the entire surface but it was still quite scary. Later I discovered that there seem to be two roads up that mountain, and I changed from one to the other. Anyhow, I kept walking. The sound of bells grew more distinct. I walked around the corner and a valley opened up below me, full of little yellow flowers, and cows. Millions of cows. Wearing cowbells!
Way over the other side there was a little farmhouse, but I was too tired to walk around to it and try to explain myself, so with the infallible logic of exhaustion I kept walking up the mountain.
