UK (London) - Netherlands (Amsterdam) - Germany (St Goar, Munich) - Austria (Innsbruck) - Italy (Venice, Rome, Florence) - Switzerland (Lucerne) - France (Paris) - UK (London) 4th March to 16th March 2002 - a Banana-log
'Shuggamano' is 'towel' in Italian. Although we'd learned the basics of four languages, when faced with the task of getting another towel for my room in Rome (Roma) it hit home just how inadequate my vocabulary was.
--"No." said the curt old man at reception.
The bellhop was more helpful:
--"No capisce."
I tried every other way to communicate with the kindly bellhop: sign language, drawing (how do you draw a towel?), but in the end we settled on both of us going to my room to see exactly what I meant by 'towel'. The bellhop stubbed out his cigarette on the hallway floor before entering the room, much to the surprise of my roommates Takeshi and Takeshi (T1 + T2).
--"AAAH! Shuggamano!" exclaimed the bellhop as I showed him a towel.
We returned to reception and he took out a bathtowel.
--"Shuggamano." he said.
--"Shuggamano..." I repeated, not knowing when I'd need that word
again. "...Grazie."
--"Shuggamano grande." he handed me the bathtowel. "No shuggamano pico." he
found and held up a small face-towel.
--"Shuggamano grande."
--"Si."
--"No Shuggamano pico."
--"No."
--"Grazie."
--"Prego."
The bellhop was well-dressed like all the other Italian men. And, like all the other Italian men, exuded a Fonz-like cool that must have taken years of training. Street-posing appears to be a national past-time for both men and women. No Italian ever fails to look 100%. Italian women dress like movie stars, right up to the designer sunglasses which they wear even on the underground Metros. I even saw a Roman granny in knee-high leather boots.
Yumiko and I found more clothing stores in Florence (Firenze) than food stores. Walking in suburban Florence we hit clothes shop after clothes shop with not a break in between, which was scary because we were famished at the time and weren't about to switch to a cotton diet. The thing that got me about Florence was how many famous people came from there: Michelangelo, Galileo, Marconi, Machiavelli, Rossini, Dante Alighieri...
...Oh yeah, and the view from Piazza Michelangelo was pretty good too.
We were in Florence before heading to Lucerne (Luzern). Going to Switzerland meant changing back to speaking German, and having to deal with the Swiss Franc when all the other countries were using the Euro (the Euro makes things a LOT easier). Of course, it also meant entering a little town nestled in the Alps. Yup, the view from a chilly little town of a chilly little river flowing between white-capped mountains made it all better.
We'd hit Germanic countries before. The most notable of them being Germany. St Goar on the Rhine was the first stop. We followed the Rhine in from the Netherlands and gazed at castles and their corresponding villages every few hills. I was inducted into German disco-musik which featured a bizarre cover of 'I Will Survive' where the solo began as a slow march with 'MACHT SCHNELL!' interjected every eight bars to speed things up.
St Goar had the Rhine. Munich had architecture and beer and funny little bronze lions with shiny noses where people rubbed them for good luck.
As we entered Munich on the second day, we made a detour to what was Dachau concentration camp. Where thousands of people died was now a museum. I felt queasy at one spot in the assembly yard, but if I had one wish for my journey in Europe, it's that I would have felt more at Dachau except for that short queasiness, and a strange numbness when I saw the Dachau Chinese Restaurant just around the corner.
Immediately after Munich came Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. The snow looked thick and fluffy, like the country had been enveloped by sheet cotton candy. In actual fact, the snow had become ice. If I dug deep enough, it was brown ice. Still, more fool me for digging under the surface.
At Innsbruck I discovered e0,54 (AUD$0.98) 500ml beer at the supermarket. T1 bought 500ml bottled water for e0,52. I was stoked. In hotels and pubs, that beer would have cost me e2,60. The moment anyone serves you in Europe, the price goes through the roof. I guess they feel the people serving the stuff deserve more than the people who actually make it.
As our guide Louise predicted, the scene changed dramatically from Austria to Italy. Powerlines became rusty, houses were in disrepair or abandoned.
--"Notice anything different?" asked Geoff, the driver.
--"Yeah. There's like, rubbish everywhere."
--"Welcome to shItaly."
Still, it didn't diminish the magic of Venice (Venezia). The gondola ride was like gliding under the streets of a floating city. I consider Venice to be the most romantic city I visited on my trip. Maps are utterly useless in Venice. No cars will fit in the streets so there are plenty of opportunities to stroll around quiet alleys, completely lost. Every hope of actually getting anywhere is soon quashed. This, I think, approximates the best sensations of love - in a positive way. All around I saw couples holding hands, finding togetherness in confusion. I tried holding my own hand and began to love myself more. Before my infatuation became obsession, I returned to Piazza San Marco to be attacked by pigeons, and to buy a lace handkerchief before boarding the motorboat and singing 'Dancing Queen' with my drunk mates all the way back to the mainland.
'Dancing Queen' reminds me of the Cabaret that I didn't go to in Paris. Sorry, but the 'Simon' cabaret in Phuket, Thailand spoiled all cabarets for me. That may have been in 1990, but I still eye all live adult entertainment suspiciously.
Instead of going to the cabaret, I ate escargot with T2 in a restaurant near the Champs-Elysees to get the bad taste of Paris out of my mouth. The escargot turned out to be a very bad move. The slimy little beasties broke the snail speed record coming out of my system. Paris 1, Derek 0.
To give it credit, Paris tried. Everything went right. The people were terrific, they could understand my poor French, and the weather was wonderful. I met David 'Baywatch' Hasslehoff at the top of the Eiffel Tower (apparently he had a hit single in Germany - I hope it wasn't 'I Will Survive'), and narrowly escaped rain as I cruised the Seine on a boat.
But something still put me off Paris. Perhaps it was the aggressive drivers, the abundance of cars, or how it was bigger than it looked on the map (whereas other cities are smaller).
Some cities are stretches of mediocrity or squalor between extravagant wonders. London and Rome are examples. In others, like Venice, the city itself is the wonder. Just walking around is such a joy that you don't care if you don't see 'something'. I'd so hoped that Paris would be the latter.
Or perhaps I'd never anticipated a metropolis this size outside the English-speaking world. In Paris, I was like an illegal immigrant in London: deaf-mute and illiterate in a city half-full of deaf-mutes and illiterates; destined to fall on the wrong side of the language barrier.
But I'd been in non-english cities before. I'd been to Amsterdam, and on this trip, I returned to Amsterdam. It was the first town we hit, before Paris, Rome, even St Goar. Nothing had changed in Amsterdam since I'd been there last. There was a bit more litter, and I was approached three times to buy 'MarawanaHashEcstasee'. I braved these vendors and strolled alone to the heart of the red-light district - the Nieuwmarkt - where I'd stayed the last time.
I looked leisurely through the windows at the girls touting their wares - themselves. There was no reason to feel guilty for looking this time. There was never any reason to feel guilty. I remembered my Dutch friend's words when I asked him why they displayed themselves in the shop windows windows, stripped to their lingerie.
--"What are dey subbosed to do? Shtand oude in the cowld?"
Louise, our Kiwi guide, had given us an approximate price:
--"About fufty euros for fufteen minutes... but don't quote me."
... Less than the price of the dinners, movies, and flowers it would take just to get to bat - not even guaranteeing a safe on first base... But I had other things to see and do. ("I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.")
Everything in Amsterdam screamed to me of tacky sex. The extremely handsome citizens strut around like pornstars. Neon signs overemphasise the letter 'X'. Everyday words like 'Benzinenpompen' and 'Winkelwagen' assailed me, helping create the image of a sex/drugs/rock'n'roll utopia designed by '80s MTV producers. (Maybe one day ...) Comparitively, the language in Paris was high-falutin and posh. To this day I cannot pronounce 'Champs-Elysees'. And 'Boulevard de General Charles de Gaulle' sounds like an exercise in pomposity. Besides, by that time I'd gotten used to the more rhythmic Italian.
In Italy, Rome initially impressed me only slightly more than Paris. My great breakthrough was ascending out of the Roman metro to have the Coloseum take up my entire field of view. From that point I was hooked.
I saw other fantastic things in Rome, but they didn't compare to the city that Rome nestles - that country within a city: Vatican City. I paid my e10 landing fee and got frisked by Swiss guards at the entrance to Musei Vaticani. I planned on zipping to the Sistine chapel and zipping out, but the concentrated power that fills the hallways like blood fills an artery slowed me down and forced me to revere everything that met my eye.
Other museums, other european cities, sometimes appear like empty vessels; all their might and glory long ago transferred into other hands. Not so Vatican City. Tales of the death of the church have been greatly exaggerated. The Vatican is a living, pulsing testament to the church's continuing power. Every footfall and every sight threatened to overwhelm me and drown me in awe. The energy was tangible, its ends incomprehensible, its means inscrutable. I could not tell whether it was holy.
I felt sorry immediately after I saw the roof of the Sistine. Practically every ceiling of every other Catholic church in europe is painted. Yet, none compare to Michelangelo's work. Every brush stroke is sure and 'right', like it was meant to be there. Apparently Michelangelo was a bit of a tosser but he'd certainly been inspired every second he painted the Sistine. There is something about religion that gives us permission to release the divine within us; just as there is something about degradation that gives us an excuse to let our inner demons take control.
Every painted ceiling I'd seen or had yet to see was henceforth spoilt. I found myself thinking 'noisy' thoughts - about money, aches, people - as I gazed upwards. I would never see the beauty of the inspiration that lay behind the painting - I could not even comprehend the painting in its entirety. I cursed my senses for turning everything petty. Everything I experienced was reduced to the ordinary level of human cognition. The purity of the light reflecting off the perfect gold gilding on windows, from the moment it hit my eyes was instantly mingled with memories of days with magic markers in primary school and James Bond movies.
Even worse, I was an ordinary mortal doing fleshy things in a special, spiritual place. I'd exhaled carbon dioxide in the Chapels, I'd picked my nose near the sculpture of Mary holding Jesus. I didn't belong there.
I left the Sistine for St Peter's Basilica.
Once again I was awestruck at St Peter's magnificence. I had to line up to get in (entry was free), but thank goodness the line moved fast and I was only stuck behind the American Tourists for a short while. It was impossible not to eavesdrop on their Sesame Street-like conversation. I could have heard them from London.
--"Hey, isn't that the twelve apahstles ahn the tahp of that building?!"
--"Gee! Ah don't know! Let me cay-ount them! Wuhn! Two! Th-ree! Fower!
Fahve! Siyux! Seyven! ... Tweyelve! ... Thirteen?!"
--"Maybe wuhn's Jesus!"
--"Maybe yer raght! Do yer think he's the big wuhn in the middle?!"
--"Or he could be the wuhn with the so-word!"
--"Maybe he's the wuhn with the ea-gle! ..."
Rome's breakthrough was the Coloseum. Its king-hit was the Vatican. I needed a similar breakthrough in Paris to make me want to return. I found it when I reached the end of the Champs-Elysees: Place de la Concorde et le Jardins de Tuileries.
In the gardens, there were no cars, just deckchairs, ponds, grass, trees, and a striking view of the Louvre. I chilled out here before going back up the Champs-Elysees for escargots with T2. Any city, I thought, that would do this for its people, deserved a second look.
Paris would get another chance when I returned after London and Lisbon. I put my disenchantment down to the fact that Paris was the last stop in this little cyclonic tour. I had probably seen too much too soon and it hadn't sunk in yet. I was still finding it hard to believe I'd actually been to South Africa.
By this time, all the experiences were merging together and I was noticing all the mundane similarities that globalisation brings - the posters offering the same products in different languages, the street vendors and their annoying identical toys, and the Hard Rock Cafes - instead of the exciting differences.
The languages were starting to get jumbled up too. I'd mumble a 'Grazie' where a 'Merci' should have been. I mixed up 'Bonjour' with 'Guten Morgen'. Even back in London I responded to a few kind acts with 'Danke Wel'.
Ah London! Where I found the people to be more arrogant than Parisians, more aggressive than Romans, and less flexible than Germans. I realised that I was bound to them by little more than language. And yet it was good to be back in a place where a 'towel' was a 'towel' and no one even considers that it could be 'shuggamano'.
