The Continent
Countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece
Visits: One (2006)
Duration: 3 months
Athens
Monastiraki square bubbled with the bustle of Athenians and tourists alike. Fruit sellers, bananas hanging from the awnings of their wooden stands, bellowed the price of their wares in rich resonant voices. The sweetest seedless grapes were piled up in bunches. Heart shaped chocolate donuts wafted their merciless scent through the crowds. Koulouri, sesame bread rings, were sold hot. But in this land of treats, baklava was king.
On every corner, hunks of meat rotated on vertical spits, dripping oily juice. Olive skinned men brandished large steel knives, watching the meat brown before carving a few more slices. Each portion was adeptly stuffed into a pita with a handful of salad. A blend of garlic, yoghurt and cucumber – tzatziki – was then smothered inside the warm bread pocket, it was sprinkled with chilli powder, and another hot gyros was doled out to the next hungry Greek.
Gyros is sold everywhere, in tavernas, tourist restaurants and fast food stands, and is Athens’ tastiest, cheapest, and most convenient meal. Few streets are without a local outlet of some sort, complete with a gyros master carving away, his belly bulging from years in the trade. Continue reading Athens»
Misadventures in Rome
A single coin thrown into the Trevi Fountain, with your right hand, over your left shoulder, is said to ensure a return to Rome. The tradition might have originated in ancient Rome, when an another, older fountainhead existed here, at the meeting of three roads (tre vie) and end of an aqueduct, which served Romans for more than 400 years. The water, if drunk before a journey, was thought to impart good fortune and promise a speedy return.
More modern superstitions suggest that throwing two coins ensures a marriage, three coins a divorce. And the faithful throw about €3000 into the pool below Neptune’s sculpted feet every day. It piles up steadily in the shallow water and is collected at night, funding a supermarket for hard up Romans. Continue reading Misadventures in Rome»
Florence
An earthy rainbow of suede belts hung from rows of open air market stalls, iron railings groaned under the weight of plush leather jackets. Wallets were fanned out on display: classic black, brown ostrich leather, warm beige, all tagged with the outline of a splayed cow’s hide, “Genuine Leather” stamped in gold on each.
Tourists stroked potential purchases, humming and haring to impartial companions. Faces solemnly examined the goods, a few pairs of eyes glinted like kids’ in a sweet shop. The scent of leather wafted pleasantly between the shoppers and I recalled the words of a tour guide from my first visit to the city. “Don’t be fooled by the soft, supple feel of imitation leather, or the leather mark they copy onto fakes,” he warned. “And, whatever you do, when the salesperson assures you that genuine leather has leather’s genuine smell, don’t be fooled by the can of spray on leather that the thing’s been hosed down with either.”
Our journey to the city had been tiresome. Europe’s efficient train system faded into memory as a series of announcements left us running between platforms while the elusive departure point of our onward train was established. We arrived at the next junction to discover that our connection had been delayed by an hour. Iain passed the time napping on a waiting room’s bench. A further hour’s delay was announced. Continue reading Florence»
Venice
I sat in Hotel Caneva’s small reception area, chatting to Stephano, the night time receptionist. Water, displaced by passing boats, lapped up against a rudimentary wooden barricade, erected to keep guests from the slimed over steps leading down to a small canal. Gondoliers, standing stiff above tourists, shouted echoing “Hoys!” as they twisted blind past the building’s dark exterior.
Stephano had worked in London, which he explained his easy, if imperfect, use of English. “I remember,” he told me, “when I arrive, I tell the owner of the hotel that I will be staying two years. He did not believe me,” he laughed, “but I stay two years. Exactly!” Continue reading Venice»
And in Vienna…
We had ninety short days in Continental Europe. The period was dictated by my Schengen visa (which all South Africans require, unless, like Claire, they possess other, more useful passports) and meant skipping through Austria – with only one full day and two nights in Vienna and two days of hiking in the Alps, sleeping in a caravan near Innsbruck – on our way from Germany’s south to Italy’s north.
We feel qualified to write about neither, and would, besides, have only a dull list of sites to impart. But we feel it worth mentioning that, in the course of our pleasant day’s meander through Vienna, we stumbled on hundreds of two metre high, brightly painted fibreglass bears, filling an enigmatic circle in Karlsplatz. All were facing inwards, arms outstretched.
The United Buddy Bears were, like us, visiting Vienna. Each bear had been painted by an artist in one of the UN’s 192 member states and represented something of their origin: a rather dull wildlife and savannah motif covered South Africa’s bear, a pie eyed and lustful bear represented the Netherlands. Come to promote “tolerance and international understanding,” they were sold at auction in aid of UNICEF, the UN’s Children’s Fund. By November, €1 315 000 had been raised.
The unusual exhibit was more compelling than any museum I’ve entered: adults mingled slowly, smiling at the names of unknown countries, children touched the bears, giggling. Claire and I took photos of those that represented every country we, at that stage, thought we’d visit. You can click on the image above, or here, to see them. Only their stomachs are visible in the thumbnails, clicking through will display the entire bear.
Munich
Munich is the heart of golden Bavaria, where the beer flows in litre sized steins, Sunday lunch is sausage and sauerkraut, and men really do don the traditional high waisted, above the knee lederhosen.
Its old city charm gracefully survives amidst fast paced European living. Her tall pastel buildings stand with poise amongst a sprawl of shopping streets. Pedestrianised and linear, Kaufinger Strasse is easy to navigate, and still has enough shoe stores to keep any shopper satisfied. Its uber-efficient transport network and modest pollution levels helped it to rank as the world’s most liveable city in 2007. And in the midst of this modern metropolis looms the grand old Glockenspiel, as ever, clocking up the city’s years.
I had visited Munich briefly in 2000, and spent most of my time exercising a new found freedom in the most eccentric clothes shops I had ever seen. Unfortunately, the city’s celebrated beer tradition was largely wasted on me. At 18, I would have far preferred sipping Bacardi Breezers to the litres of bitter beer I was presented with.
But now, coming from booming Berlin, I felt a fondness for Munich’s relatively diminutive dimensions. Its history seemed simpler, easier to imagine, while wandering through its paved streets, past palaces, cathedrals and beer halls that managed to evade the destruction of world war. Continue reading Munich»
Berlin
Rain crashed on the tin roof of a small caravan dispensing draught beer. Claire and I huddled beneath it, sipping Becks from refundable plastic cups. Dance music thumped from neat piles of speakers lining both sides of Strasse des 17 Juni, played by DJs now frantically trying to cover their equipment. A ray of sunshine escaped from a crack in the black clouds, reflecting gold streaks off the tarmac. The trickle of people gyrating between the intermingling sounds pulled out umbrellas and danced through the downpour.
Less than a week after the World Cup, 1.2 million people thronged their way through the same street, following trucks bearing excessively large, water cooled sound systems, DJs and semi-clad dancers. They left two metric tons of debris in their wake, passed an estimated 750 000 litres of urine into the adjoining Tiergarten Park – damaging the roots of centuries old trees – and consumed an inestimable quantity of drugs, monitored by 50 “love guards” distributing earplugs, ice spray, glucose tablets and contraceptives. The Love Parade had returned to Berlin, after a two year hiatus. The festivities Claire and I watched were a small taste of this bad craziness.
We had arrived in Berlin earlier that afternoon, and made our way to A&O Zoo, our dismal hostel. After edging our way through a queue at reception, we were pointed towards bare mattresses atop aging bunk beds, reserved months in advance. We stowed our packs and went out walking. Continue reading Berlin»
I Amsterdam
It was approaching 11pm. I walked down Warmoesstraat, the main street through the red light district, assaulted by lights, logos and liberalism. This was my third encounter with the city since visiting twice as an eager eighteen year old. I had imagined that maturity might have tamed this vision of madness that once again confronted me.
My head swivelled from side to side and an imperceptible current towed me down the street, through this alternate reality. My eyeballs tingled with an explosion of colour and creativity: words and images jumped out from every direction; “Freeland Coffeeshop, Route 66, Chickitas Sex Paradys, leather rubber twisted gear.” Continue reading I Amsterdam»
Geneva
Deliciously ice cold tap water, gleaming white supermarkets, perfectly packaged cheeses, watches weighted with glittery bits, and the magnificence of the lake, a glistening great silvery body of sparkles that spreads out within the city: my first fresh breath of Geneva.
Belongings dropped at our rabbit warren style hostel, Iain and I strode out into the city, heading for Lake Geneva. I had never before encountered a lakeside city, and with little expectation, followed the ordinary, linear streets toward the centre. Continue reading Geneva»
Andalusia
The banderillero swaggered across the dry yellow sand, knelt in front of the bullgate, crossed himself – slowly, carefully – and spread out his pink cape. He was perhaps my age, probably younger. From our cheap seat, near the top of the Plaza de Toros, Claire and I could not see or hear the gate open. We saw only a blur of brown muscle, the flash of a cape, their meeting, melting, and then the banderillero rolling to the side, away.
The bull paused, sniffing. It was the second of six: blood had already been spilt in the ring. Its head oscillated, eyes acknowledging the crowd and, perhaps, its circumstances at the centre of a confusing spectacle. Again it charged.
The youngster played with the fresh bull. He treated it with mock disdain while approaching and then, when it leapt, with an urgent respect. Each strut was deliberate, proof that he had the skill, and the balls, to be a matador. Continue reading Andalusia»
Portugal
Claire and I stopped, panting, at the metal rods that closed a narrow road to traffic. We had been given detailed directions and followed them closely but were lost, struggling to find the home of Ivone and Vitor Mascarenhas or the remains of a small fishing village that apparently surrounded it.
My mother’s friend Eugenia had bought a house in Portugal, near the beach, not long before our trip started. I contacted her, hoping (as budget travellers do) that she could accommodate us for a few days. She said she could, at her home in Lagos, and suggested that her parents, who live in Cascais, just outside Lisbon, might be as willing. Ivone and Vitor Mascarenhas are her parents.
I felt somewhat ridiculous, wandering through the traffic in Cascais without a map, searching for the home of a couple in their early eighties, who I had never met and was not entirely sure could speak English.
After retracing my steps, I found the house only a short walk from where I had left Claire and the bags, and rang the bell. I introduced myself – Ivone refused to shake my hand, insisting that I bend down and kiss both cheeks – and darted off, rapidly explaining that I had to fetch my girlfriend. Continue reading Portugal»
Fiesta Galicia
It was just before midnight and darkness masked the contours of the city. Street lights were sparsely spread and provided no more than a dim glow. I approached a taxi driver outside Pontevedra’s station exit, asking how much he’d charge to the Hotel Peregrino. He looked at me, disbelieving, and pointed diagonally away from the station. “Es alli”, he said, his voice hesitant, perhaps regretting his honesty. I thanked him, and we walked the two minutes down the road to what was our third ‘station hotel’, complete with locals drinking outside the bar, plastic chairs, and the familiar contrast of grot and appeal.
A bearded man of around fifty spotted us, glanced at our backpacks, and enquired as to whether we had a reservation. His English was nonexistent, but after a week in Spain I relished the satisfaction of basic communication, and hotel dialogues were my most practised exercise in Spanish. Continue reading Fiesta Galicia»
Madrid
Claire and I arrived in Madrid late at night. We waited for a train to our hostel, watched by police with sniffer dogs, listening to the murmur of news and advertising emitted from wide screen televisions placed between the tracks.
We stayed at Pop Hostel, in a small, two bunk bed dorm. The room was quiet but sometimes too intimate and often awkward. The hostel was full of Brazilians, so full that Portuguese had replaced English as the language of first recourse. I was often addressed in Portuguese by strangers, then laughed at when I stammered back in confusion.
The building’s bottom floor was occupied by a small shop, selling basic foodstuffs. It was one of what would be referred to by every local I met as a “Chinese shop”. Open from early until late, it was busiest during the siesta hours when Spanish run supermarkets would close. These shops could be found everywhere. The attendants sat behind small, dark counters, closed in by the cluttered shelves, watching Chinese movies on nearby televisions. An agreement apparently exists between China’s government and Spain’s, which allows people to come over as self employed shop keepers, and sell, among other things, the cheap wares mass produced in China. Continue reading Madrid»
Barcelona
Claire and I left France from Avignon in the early morning, when the city’s streets were for a moment quiet after another long festival night. The prospect of was travel easier and more exhilarating in the early morning, when the sun rising over a quickly moving landscape promised both a new place and a new day.
Two regional trains would carry us slowly into Spain, and then through it, to Barcelona. We boarded the first. It was made up of old fashioned carriages, the seats all confined to small compartments, which we reached through the narrow space that had been left to a corridor. In the compartment two short brown couches, sitting three to a side, faced each other, so that people sat with legs and arms intermingling. The carriage quietly conjured up black and white images of lovers solemnly parting on a platform edge, or of coated men, smoke and subterfuge, from an age when rail travel was glamorous. Continue reading Barcelona»
Provence
I sat in a poolside chair on terracotta tiles, the silver handles of the pool’s steps glinting into the pale blue water. Beyond the roof of the house, the tops of cedar trees were sparsely spread between thick flowering bushes, abuzz with stripy bumble bees. I heard only the noise of the cigalles in the garden, the strange chirping creatures that resemble a small piece of bark, and chirp strictly when the temperature reaches 25°C. I felt relaxed and content, inspired by my surroundings. The simplicity of the comfortable life I languished in for a week made me long for a piece of it myself. Although my desire to continue moving was still present, after the flurry of Paris, I felt incredibly relieved to be able to exhale.
We had arrived in Cabrieres d’Avignon the evening before and were kindly being put up for the week by friends of Iain’s mother, Rosie and Carlo. Rosie, who has lived mostly in London, between various travel adventures (such as an overland trip through Africa), relocated to France three years ago with Carlo, who considers himself South African despite Belgian origins. They have since become the ever-welcoming hosts, often offering the tranquillity of their home to their friends. A friend of Rosie’s, Mel, was staying there for the same week as us. Their house, named Voix des Cedres (Voice of the Cedars), was a sanctuary in which we could relax. Weary from having moved around every few days since the trip began, we now had no agenda, no expectations, and no obligations. It was bliss. Continue reading Provence»
Montmartre de Paris
Paris is the world’s most photographed, most written about, most visited city. More than 30 million people arrive on the banks of the Seine each year, only 45% of them French. “Paris,” according to my literary guide to the city, “comes to us second-hand. Our imagination has been there first, worked upon by the imagination of others. It is through the filter of their memories, desires, dreams, descriptions, lies, gossip that we experience the city. What we respond to is an imagined place.”
Claire and I did the things so obvious that guidebooks needn’t bother to mention them. We dangled our feet in the fountains outside the Louvre, before entering through glass pyramids to see people seeing the Mona Lisa. We sat in the Parc du Champ de Mars, below the Eiffel Tower, and sketched swaying oak trees against the building’s complicated network of steel. We got rude service at a Parisian café when I was moved, still in my chair, from the edge of the pavement.
We went to the Musee D’Orsay and I watched Claire dance between her favourite paintings before a picnic on the banks of the Seine. At Notre Dame we joined the thick, fast moving queue, and once inside were pushed forward, past altars and scattered stalls, selling paraphernalia. At Père Lachaise we joined a hunt through foreign names for the graves of the famous. We laughed at a packet of rolling paper and a lighter placed considerately below Jim Morrison’s modest headstone and read Oscar Wilde’s name below his mock Egyptian tomb, through the lipstick marks of thousands.
In my fondest Paris imaginings, I sat sipping cold beer at a Montmartre café, absorbing an atmosphere relished by generations of artists. Renoir, Degas, Hemingway, Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso, all spent time here, and remembered the many cobbled streets that wind slowly uphill to the Basilique du Sacré Coeur in their work. Continue reading Montmartre de Paris»
St Malo
Our bags dampening our backs, still close to St Malo’s station, Iain and I spotted three bright awnings, a red, a green and a blue, all advertising “Hotel”. We split up to find the cheaper of the closest two, and agreed to meet back at the third.
The blue and the red establishments out of our price range, we entered the last of the three, Hotel l’Europe. “Bonjour. Combien ça coute pour… une chambre pour… deux personnes?” I attempted, eyebrows raised meekly. “€30 pour une chambre sans douche” he smiled, inspecting us from under his eyelids. I agreed, as he ticked the room off as occupied in his diary, repeating the type of room, “Sans douche”. Iain looked at me as if to ask, “What does sans douche mean?” to which I chirpily replied that that the room simply would not have an ensuite shower.
We tackled the five storey climb to our douche-less room, perspiring heavily by the time we reached the top. We were met by an unpleasantly familiar smell, seemingly embedded in the coarse carpeted walls. Iain sat down to finish off an article while I braved the supermarche, to buy us some lunch.
The simple act of going to the supermarket in a foreign country cannot possibly leave one bored. The absolute mystery of the signs, the foreign brands on often foreign looking foods, and the speech that hums around you, faster and faster, can leave one quite giddy. New stimuli are everywhere. Even the ordinary becomes intriguing. Continue reading St Malo»
Crossing the Channel
Our last night in Ireland was spent in Cork, drinking Murphy’s, the local stout, while drifting between the pubs near our hostel. We caught a bus to Rosslare the following morning to meet the first ferry to France, Cherbourg to be precise, and watched the rain drip down outside the window as we passed through the river ports on Ireland’s south east coast.
Boarding the Irish Ferry, amongst a trickle of other foot passengers, we sat down at the nearest available table, one of a long line stretching through a corridor, its carpet a dirty red. Fruit machines had been placed in the small space between every set of bolted down furniture.
The captain’s voice eventually crackled down the public address system, warning of typically rough seas, the engines quietly started, and we left the British Isles. The sea was initially soft and we went quickly beyond the sight of land. Standing on deck, watching Ireland fade, I turned to see the ship’s jail, an occupant bashing on the door. I had never been this far out to sea, where land is forgotten and the ship becomes a world unto itself.
The calm seas eventually became rough, not long after sunset. The ship was pitching heavily, an angry spray occasionally splashing against our window. The glass front of a duty free shop ran alongside the corridor. Its bottles jangled with each dull thud of the prow, and occasionally broke. I watched people walking down the corridor bump into tables as we rose, and the opposite wall as we sank. Most were leaving the cabaret bar at its far end. Continue reading Crossing the Channel»
