“Yes, I'm particularly moved by this wall mural. It visually demonstrates the constant flux and evolution of the brand, as well as conveying a sense of a voyage, which is obviously the central theme of all the artwork here today. I think the fact that three artists from different backgrounds have collaborated on this mural is the perfect metaphor for the convergence of boundaries and the seamless flow between Eastern and Western cultures”.
Normally, this is the kind of pretenious art-snob wankery that I vehemently decry. You'll be surprised, therefore, to discover that it's being said by me. I'm at my brother's media briefing in a trendy art studio in Shoreditch, being interviewed by a Mongolian camera crew on my impressions of the artwork on display. Outwardly I'm doing my best to remain serious and debonair; inwardly I'm giggling like a schoolgirl at the thought of my ugly mug being broadcast all across Mongolia, from the shanties of Dalandzadgad to the shanties of Ulan Bator.
It all began when I arrived at the press conference in formal dress with a camera, and everyone automatically assumed I was a journalist. Suddenly my opinions were of worth, my thoughts coveted, my observations pertinent and measured. Gophers brought me ice cold beers from the fridge. Artists took me aside and said, “so, can you see what I'm doing here?” and “would you like me to tell you about my influences for this piece of work?”. When the Mongolians showed up and thrust a microphone in my face, I naturally went straight into bullshit mode. So this is what it feels like to be someone important.
My interview winds up just as my big brother Adam summons everybody into the centre of the room while he gives his official media briefing. Tall and authoritative, yet simultaneously witty and disarming, he's a proven master at working a crowd. “What we're basically trying to do is just showcase the brand's vibrant vision of contemporary Asia, and we want to give all of these young, bright artists a chance to work with some of the UK's leading artists”, he says, deftly sprinkling his charming and informal oration with the requisite management speak. He's got the assembled press gang hanging on his every word, and it's clear the artists have developed a rapport with him as well. He's certainly come a long way from the buck-toothed teenage punk who used to invite his mates around and hang me from a tree branch six feet off the ground by my underwear.
Adam and a few of his cronies have to depart for an official business dinner, so I meet up with my cousin Katie at a nearby pub. We quiz each other on the respective European holidays we've just returned from and I'm more than a little envious to discover that Katie had sunshine and twenty-five degree weather as her constant companions during her cruise down the Croatian coast. It remains to be seen whether my pair of jeans and grey sweater will survive the trauma of being worn by me on eight consecutive days; the result of my foolhardy decision not to pack any other warm clothes for our Central European jaunt.
We're in a pub called Filthy McNasty's, and if first impressions are anything to go by, the moniker has been well-earned. It's pretty much your stock-standard London corner pub with flower boxes in the windows, dark wooden panelling and the usual range of crappy foreign lagers on tap; it's the clientele that actually set this pub apart from the average after-work watering hole. A large, rough-looking bearded man sits at a table in the corner, enjoying a pint while his German shepherd lies by his feet, ready to tear out the barman's throat if he threatens to overcharge him. He's wearing a purple t-shirt that says “iPood” in Mac font on the front, below an icon of a man sitting on the toilet, slumped forward as if he's just given birth to a hippo. He's recently been joined by his girlfriend, a wafer-thin tattoo-and-piercing addict with dyed red hair and a glare that could strip the varnish off the walls.
On my way to the bathroom I get stuck behind a tiny bearded Welshman who could've been Gimli's stunt double in the Lord of the Rings series. He's on his way to the bathroom too, so I just follow along awkwardly behind him, no doubt creating the impression to the rest of the patrons that we're going into the bathroom together to perform a depraved act; something that I'm sure these pub toilets are no stranger to. As he opens the bathroom door he turns around to me and says something that his thick accent renders completely unintelligible, then lets forth a nervous chuckle. I just smile and nod, noting that it's entirely possible that I've just unwittingly agreed to touch him in a special place. I lock myself in a roach-infested cubicle until I can be certain he's left the vicinity.
“I vote we leave after this pint”, I tell Katie. I've had three anyways, and I'm going to need to get some food in me before my evening begins to nosedive. Just as I'm saying this, Adam texts with his new location. “Juno! Corner of Shoreditch High Street and something”. We're about to get up and leave when a haggard Nick Cave lookalike comes over to our table, gets down on his knees and begins frantically searching for something around our feet.
“Oh man, neither of you saw a cigarette on the floor, did you?”, he asks in a worried tone. “I must've dropped it somewhere around here”.
We reply that no we didn't, and so he gets back on his knees and continues scanning the floor for his missing smoke. iPood's dog looks on with keen interest while his master stuffs a bag of potato chips down his gob. We hastily make for the exit and deliberate over what's the best way to get to the corner of Shoreditch High Street and something.
We locate Adam and his cronies in Juno and they take us to a trendy nightclub in Camden, where Adam has convinced management that we should all be let in as VIPs. The club is an old converted theatre with a dance floor in front of the stage and private areas in elevated booths either side of the main floor. We're given a booth and a cooler full of beers; I help myself to one and drink it as I survey the large crowd on the dance floor and the quasi-emo rock band revving them up from the stage. I feel a bit like Abe Lincoln on this balcony, though I suspect there are no John Wilkes Booths in this crowd. Most of the adolescents on the floor are engaged in some curious social ritual that involves crashing into each other at high speeds, occasioning bouts of pushing and collar-grabbing between total strangers that look certain to turn into fist fights, but never quite do. It's most entertaining to watch from directly above – like multiple games of high-octane pinball over which you have no control.
The band are playing their part in the fracas by fuelling the crowd with their well-worn brand of high-energy emo rock. The lead singer - a young Jarvis Cocker wannabe - is careful not to take himself too seriously, fully aware of the shamless unoriginality of his three-chord tunes and angst-ridden diatribes. He's an affable young man who engages the crowd in friendly banter between each song.
“This next song is one I wrote for my girlfriend, just before she dumped me”, he confides in a well-rehearsed monotone. He then launches into a twee, love-struck ballad about the wonders of this young love he has found. Just when the tune appears to be dying a slow and soppy death, the lead guitarist unexpectedly launches into a furious discordant solo that gives way to the singer's screaming, visceral denouncement of his ex-girlfriend and a full summary of what a total and complete bitch she actually was. Even though he most certainly wrote the second part of the song after she dumped him, they're still the most honest lyrics rock music has produced since Scott Stapp famously crooned, “when you are with me, I'm free, I'm careless, I believe”.
I gaze transfixed at the scene below – a furious melange of pseudo-fights and group hook-ups – until the band members drag their sweat-drenched bodies off the stage. I return to the cooler to discover that all the beers have been plundered in the meantime.
“Go and see Kristian”, Adam advises me. “He's in the next room. He's got a bottle of vodka, and he doesn't need it”.
Kristian, who I met earlier at the media briefly, is sitting on the floor against the wall with a bottle of Smirnoff on his lap. Katie and one of Adam's colleagues are leaning on the balcony rail and generally not paying him much mind. He springs uneasily to his feet when he sees me enter.
“Max! Here, I have a shot of vodka for you”.
I look around to see where on earth he might be producing a shot glass from, and when I turn back to look at him he's coming at me with the bottle. Before I can do anything about it, he pushes my head back and pours one shot of vodka down my throat, and about five shots down the front of my shirt. A small commotion ensues as various onlookers attempt to save Kristian from spilling the lot, while I take the opportunity to sneak into the corner and suck on my sweet shirt fabric.
Camden High Street is still abuzz with drunken revellers as I stumble out of the club and breathe in the sooty London air. A reporter in a blue coat standing on the pavement approaches me and thrusts a microphone into my face.
“So Max, what would you say to allegations that you're a dickhead, and that your travel diary is puerile, derivative and unfunny?”
I have no time for such scurrilous gutter journalism, especially at this ungodly hour of the night. “Fargoffyacun”, I growl, lurching forward and aiming a right hook at his jaw. I miss and lose my balance, stumbling forward for a few steps before regaining my dignity, and all the customers in the kebab shop across the street wonder what on earth that guy was doing trying to punch himself.
There's a group of German package tourists having breakfast in the dining room when we finally arrive back at Adam's hotel, having endured a roundabout taxi ride through North London in an increasingly desperate search for an open KFC. There doesn't appear to be anything stopping us from chowing down with the Germans, so that's just what they do. As has now become a depressing reality in hotels all around the world, the orange juice glasses are ridiculously small, encouraging diners to drink less of it. I'm able to circumvent this problem by merely standing at the juice dispenser and filling, drinking, and refilling, occasionally taking time out to let Adam have a go while I stuff some of those little packet cheeses and crackers into my pockets. The Germans don't look particularly impressed, but then they never do, do they?
Adam has a spare single bed in his room which he has mercifully offered up to me for the weekend. It's my first night in a proper bed for a long time and I'm about to make the most of it when Adam re-emerges from the bathroom with two short glasses. “So, how about that whisky?”, he asks rhetorically, already reaching for his unopened bottle of duty free MacAllan.
How about it indeed?
***
London is a city whose mood and appearance can swing upon the whim of the weather. Most days it is dark and grey under overcast, foreboding skies, but that only serves the make sunny days such as this all the more spectacular. The lukewarm autumn sun brings out a stunning vibrancy in the cityscape: rows of brick buildings glow a brilliant red; golden orange leaves flap about in the breeze and every park and public space is a sea of activity as Londoners enjoy the sun on their backs for what may be the only time in weeks. There's a buzz of optimism and anticipation that comes with scarved-up football fans – many of them fathers with young children – taking their kids to a Saturday afternoon game at a nearby ground. It puts me in mind of those blustery afternoons when my father would take me to Eden Park to watch that great Auckland side of the early '90s tear into whichever band of unfortunate provincials stood on their way that week.
When you fall off the horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on. It's a phrase that applies nicely to many facets of life – job hunting, surfing, women – but especially alcohol. That's why Adam and I are heading to Filthy McNasty's for a pie and a pint, thinking that's about as English as it gets on a Saturday afternoon.
“Sorry, kitchen's closed”, says the barman, who in keeping with the bar's unspoken mission statement, looks nasty.
“But it's Saturday afternoon?”
“Yeah, the cook is ill, can't possibly come in today”.
“You need a cook to heat a up a pie?”
“Look, there's no food today, alright? Can I get you a pint?”
We walk back towards the hotel and to a brasserie across the road that has a sunny beer garden on its roof. A sign next to the door says “Sorry! No hot lunches today”. Evidently they're suffering from a power outage, but do boast a fine array of cheese and crackers.
I can see Adam fast losing his patience with English hospitality.“What the fuck is wrong with this country? You can't get a fucking beer after midnight and you can't get a pie before six”. His frustration is understandable; he's come from Singapore, where you can get anything you want at any time of the day or night. And I mean anything.
Heads pounding, throats parched, we settle upon a pub on the next corner. It isn't serving food either, bien sur, but the barman points to the Dominos outlet across the road and invites us to bring in whatever we like. While Adam goes across to retrieve a pizza, the barman pours a couple of pints of filthy English muck that the locals call “Real Ale”. In keeping with tradition it is best consumed microwaved, and preferably in close proximity of a bucket. Okay, so I exaggerate, but the muddy aftertaste and worrying lack of fizz makes Real Ales difficult for the uninitiated drinker to stomach. Not only that, but the purists insist its alcohol content should never waver from 3.5% regardless of where and how it's brewed, effectively meaning that you couldn't even get a scarfie fresher drunk off it. Still, drinking it does mark you down as something of a beer conoisseur, which is an important impression to give when you're eating Domino's pizza in a dirty pub.
“They still ask about you when I go out to the office”, Adam says, referring to my former workmates at his beer company. I did an internship there in 2005 and will always have fond memories of it, partly because it's the only place I'll ever work that had a fridge full of beer opposite my cubicle. I was worried that my total lack of skills or knowledge in the field of marketing would put me at a disadvantage but as it happened my boss loved me – he was Indian and I was the only guy in the office who could talk cricket with him.
“Do you reckon they'd take me back?”, I ask out of curiosity.
“I dunno man, the guy they brought in after you was pretty good. He had the right qualifications and had his shit together, big time”.
“Yeah, but could he drink a half-yard of Guinness in twelve seconds?”
The launch party kicks off at around eight, and a steady flow of guests begin arriving shortly thereafter. I've brought my camera to the party, hoping to be mistaken for someone important again, but tonight it looks like I'll just have to be content with drinking the sponsor's delicious product and talking shit with friends. Hibbs and Katie arrive early and head over to acquaint themselves with the bar, and I'm also introduced to Adam's cousin Tommy. I haven't met him before, but he knows a bunch of guys I went to intermediate school. “It's a small country, eh”, I find myself saying for at least the hundredth time since leaving New Zealand.
The party is extremely well coordinated and a massive success. Its appeal is based on the live art: partygoers can actually watch the artists finishing off their paintings, while a live “art battle” takes place between rival street artists in another room. There's beatboxing, two DJs and a Thai rock band who move unblinkingly from cover versions of Coldplay to T Pain. It's hard to tell whether they're taking the piss, but they get away with it by virtue of their musicianship. Adam, who is in charge of generally schmoozing and rarking up the crowd, enlists Hibbs and I to perform a “yam seng”, a slightly more dramatic Chinese way of saying “cheers”. It's a simple ritual that involves holding one's glass to the air, and yelling “yaaaam!” at the top of one's voice for as long as one can before gasping for breath or passing out, concluding with “seng” and drinking heavily from one's vessel. Our yelling draws the attention of much of the crowd on the dance floor, who look puzzled until deducing that we're just drunken Kiwis and turning away again.
I'm having so much fun that at some time around 2, I look around me and discover that just about everyone else has left. It appears that I've consumed an injudicious amount of the sponsor's delicious product, but it's not enough to keep me from joining Adam, Tommy and Hibbs in the van. Our next venue is a jazz club of which I can remember little, except that it is packed well beyond capacity, so much so that most of the beer in my bottle is lost before ever making it to my lips. Which is probably a good thing at this stage.
“Hey there”, says a fair-skinned brunette below me and to my right at the bar. “You're cute”.
“Thanks. You're not too bad”.
“What do you do?”
Christ, she doesn't muck around does she. I wasn't expecting that for an opening gambit. “Ummm, errr, I'm a writer”. That's only a half-lie, I figure.
“Really? Who do you write for?”
“Errr, ya know, mainly freelance stuff”.
“Freelance? What kind of stuff do you write about?”
“Ahhh, uh, travel, mainly travel writing”. This is hard.
“Who have you written for, then?”
This time I've got nothing for her but a long awkward silence. “You don't have a job, do you?”, she says, with a discernable tone of disgust in her voice.
“No, I don't”.
SMACK.
For a moment my whole field of vision goes white and sparkly. My beer evades my grasp and drops to the floor. It takes me a few seconds to realise what's happened, and all the while she just stares at me blankly. The bitch! She's slapped me, with all her might, right across my left cheek.
“That wasn't very nice!”, I protest.
“Mate, I'm so, so sorry, I really am”.
“That was totally uncalled for!”. Don't get me wrong, I've been slapped by girls lots of times before. This time was different though; this time I didn't deserve it. Bloody English girls, with their airs and graces and ulterior motives. I yearn for a good simple Dunedin girl, where the only question you ever get asked is “Speight's or Mac's Gold?”
I crouch down and rummage around on the floor in search of my beer bottle, but it's been swept away by the sea of feet swarming around me. When I stand back upright again a large black man, who I vaguely remember from earlier as being the bouncer, has his hand on my shoulder.
“I think it's time to go home, son”.
Yes, I think it is.
Next thing I know I'm waking up on top of Adam's spare hotel bed, fully clothed, my cellphone still clutched tightly in my right hand. The alarm clock says 7.08am. Adam and Tommy are seated on two chairs facing each other, drinking whisky. I shuffle past them to the bathroom, take a five-minute-long piss, shuffle back past them and get into the bed.
“How 'bout that whisky?”, Adam asks optimistically.
“Fuck off”.
***
When you fall off the horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on. I heeded that advice yesterday and unfortunately I'm heeding it again today. I'm at a bistro on Shoreditch High Street with Adam, Tommy and his girlfriend, and the second bottle of champagne has just been popped. My liver is screaming for mercy – if this were a cartoon it would've already bored its way out of my body, suitcase in hand, and run off down the street – but still Adam gleefully refills my glass.
“What time is your flight back to Singapore?”, I ask.
“About six”, he responds casually.
“Hadn't you better take it easy then?”
“Nah”.
“The way I see it, we're only hear for a given amount of time”, Tommy chimes in. “It's not like we're ever gonna save much money living in London. You may as well just spend it all and have a good time”.
I can see why so many Kiwis arrive on English shores and plunge headlong into a world of hedonism and excess, from which some of them never recover. It's such a novel idea to come from our little corner of the world and be able to spend an entire weekend pubbing, clubbing, partying and then finish it with a champagne brunch in a swanky restaurant. A Sunday session back home is by no means unheard of, but it usually just involves a dozen Tasman Bitters and maybe a funnel, if someone's got one lying around.
But the out-of-control partying is just one facet of London life, I think to myself after farewelling Adam with a final couple of whisky shots and making my way into the warped, bizarre world of the London Underground. It's a big scary city and one that can easily drag you down if you can't tread water fast enough. Life moves at a scarcely believable pace that takes some adjusting to. I've been here for two months on and off and still feel like an outsider looking in; unable to relate to these automatons whizzing past me. Talk on the street is of jobs and livelihoods being lost to the financial meltdown, but it feels like it's all happening in different world to mine. They're losing jobs, and I can't find one. There's only so much partying I can do before my hard-earned library money runs out and I'm faced with the prospect of having to be one of those Kiwis who busks on a filthy street corner just to be able to pay his way home. Then I'd really be in trouble, because I'd have to nick a guitar first.
I'm starting to think the bouncer in the pub last night was right. Maybe it is time to go home.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Prague
Beware of strangers bearing gifts, I keep telling myself. Especially gifts that come in shot glasses and emit an odour that evokes memories of your 5th form afterball.
“It is traditional Czech aperatif! You will like this”, says the waiter reassuringly. He's been standing patiently over me with a platter of full shot glasses for the best part of a minute, like a puppy imploring its master to marvel at the dead rat it's just dragged in from the garden. I have no idea what's in this drink or what it's going to do to me. Never have I seen a spirit so jaundiced, murky and foreboding in colour. The waiter, Georgina, Caroline and the kindly old German couple sitting next to us at the table are all eyeing me in anticipation. The peer pressure is too much. I take a shot glass off the platter and raise it to my lips. The ethanol smell is overpowering; the memories of that horrible night eight years ago rushing back to me, just as the vomit rushed back up my digestive tract and down the front of my suit on that fateful spring evening.
I'm about to take a exploratory sip when the kindly old German man catches my eye. “In one go. You must drink in one go”, he instructs me. I frown apprehensively and he and his wife laugh, possibly already under the influence of whatever it is I'm about to consume. All eyes are still on me as I tilt my head back and send the mystery liquid down the hatch. It has a smooth, aniseed flavour and leaves a gentle burning sensation in the throat, similar to Icebreaker – the RTD of choice at Dunedin keg parties – but without the unpleasant feeling of your liver steadily accumulating toxins with each sip. It's not bad.
Tucked away on a dark, quiet central Prague street, we've found a beerhouse with an ambience as lively as you're likely to see this side of Munich. Everywhere I look, something humorous and utterly foreign is taking place. The two man polka band – a jolly fat man with a tuba and a small, wiry, moustachioed man on accordion – are performing local favourites to the delight of the drunken students at a big long table that spans the length of the room. They're singing heartily and swinging their beer glasses from side to side in the traditional European fashion, yelling more and more requests at the exasperated, sweat-drenched tuba player, who duly obliges because well, that's his job. Two men carrying massive trays of beer are gliding about the room, distributing pints for thirsty diners. One of them arrives now with a chaser for my aperatif, plonking a beer down in front of me and marking another notch on my bill. Then he's off again, somehow making the thankless task of pushing through crowds of drunken Czechs while balancing twenty pints of beer on a tray on his right hand seem like a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. He's obviously been getting tips from those African women who walk for six hours at a time with water pots on their heads.
Our meals arrive – the same flattened-meat-and-potatoes scenario I've been describing throughout my recent travels – and are washed down by more of the malty, house-brewed ales. The polka troupe are going from table to table now, giving private performances. They're playing for a party of four at the table in the corner, all of whom sport flowing and voluptuous mullets. A mother and father are sitting on one side of the table, facing a stocky young man with a porn star moustache and a blonde girl who must be his sister, or his girlfriend, or both. They all go to the same hairdresser, possibly via some secret time machine that transports them to the 1980s. At the long table to the left sits a woman who is probably the drunkest person in the world right now. Her husband is sober and has a bemused but resigned look on his face, as if he spends most of his weekend evenings apologising to strangers for the behaviour of his spouse. She's just spilled beer all over the old lady next to her, and now she falls backwards off the bench onto the floor and can't get up. The waiter with the twenty pints deftly hopscotches her with all the grace and poise of a gazelle. You can't buy entertainment like this. I finish my pint and am immediately aware of a warm, tipsy stupor coming over me. Then I look at the menu and discover that the alcohol content of the beer is 13%.
Back outside in the harsh reality of a freezing Prague night, Georgina and Caroline announce their predictable decision to the return the hostel. I don't want to waste my pleasant buzz from the two pints of beer – that amounted to a bottle and a half of wine – and I resolve to wander the wind-swept streets until I find another suitable drinking house. The downtown area is spookily abandoned and devoid of activity, as if everyone else has gone to some raging cocaine party on the other side of town and didn't think to invite me. Eventually I come across a seedy-looking bar with some pokies in the back and a sign out the front that says:
“Tonight: HAPPY HOUR 5-11. LIVE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL: LIVERPOOL V MARSEILLE”.
I love a happy hour that goes all night. Besides, my beloved Liverpool is playing live on TV. My grandmother spent a bit of time there, you see, plus it's the hometown of the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time (I am of course referring to Gerry & The Pacemakers). The barman pours me a pint of Budvar and I take a seat in a booth with a good view of the TV. It's not showing the Liverpool game though; it's the bloody Kings Road Mincers, Chelsea, against some rubbish European minnows.
“Could we change the channel, please?”, I ask the barman, who's sitting on the customers' side of the bar, smoking a cigarette.
“Sorry?”
“Liverpool game? Can we watch Liverpool game?”
“Ah, sorry, no, we watch Chelsea”. He takes another drag of his cigarette and gestures in the direction of three rough-looking Czech guys in the booth next to me, one of whom is wearing a Chelsea shirt. Looks like I'm outnumbered here.
Back in my booth, alone and vulnerable, I notice the Czech guys frequently glancing over at me and then talking amongst themselves in ominous tones. Oh God, what are they saying? My rudimentary Czech phrase book is no use to me here. They never tell you the crucial words, like “piano wire” or “kidneys”. Why is that exactly? My kidneys are the only valuable items I ever carry on my person. Not that they're worth much these days, either. Still, they don't know that, and I don't want to be one of those people who comes back from the bathroom to find that their beer tastes a bit funny, only to wake up eighteen hours later alone in a bath with a row of stitches down the left side of my torso.
I'm saved from this fate by two English football hooligans poking their head through the front door and asking where they could watch the Liverpool game.
“The Dubliner”, announces the barman without taking his eyes off the TV. Couldn't he have just told me that? “Go down street, first left, first right”.
I follow along behind the football hooligans, keeping a safe distance from them, and find myself descending below street level into a cavernous room with a bar on one side and tables of rowdy young Irishmen on stag weekends at the other. The bar is manned by a seedy Czech with a pony tail that makes him look like an out of work porn star, and a younger, hunched-over Irishman. He comes over to pour me a pint, and I notice that his eyebrows have grown perilously, almost fatally close together. It looks like a close run thing but one day, just as they looked like joining together and consigning him to a childhood of broken dreams and ridicule, they stopped, milimetres apart and in the nick of time, just like that giant crushing machine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He's sharp and assertive, but the wistful look in his eye tells the story of a young man who'd rather be managing a hedge fund than pouring pints for inebriated foreigners in an Irish Bar in Prague.
“Busy night?”, I ask him.
“Ahhh, it's fairly steady, like”, he replies. “So you're from New Zealand then?”. He's the first guy to have got it right.
“You bet. You ever been down there?”
We're about to have a potentially interesting conversation when a pushy American couple around the side of the bar call him over and ask for drinks. He dutifully obliges, then is forced to stand and listen as the Americans – clearly oil barons, judging by their tacky clothes and thick southern drawl – regale the bar staff with outrageously embellished horror stories of their travails through Europe and Asia.
“I just couldn't believe it”, I can hear the wife saying. “When they had us at gunpoint and were ordering us out of the bus I really thought they were gonna kill us”. She moves seamlessly from the tale of this apparent hijacking to a near miss with a sword-wielding mugger in Istanbul, followed by an unfortunate run-in with gypsies in Romania. And so it goes on, the gathered crowd listening wide-eyed except for the cynical Irishman, who occasionally looks over to me and rolls his eyes as if to say, “can you believe these people?”.
They're still blabbering on about their various near-death experiences as the game finishes and I make my way back out onto the now even colder, more deserted, Prague streets. The Americans' anecdotes have made me wary of Czech gangsters lurking in alleyways, poised to strike out at my precious kidneys, but regrettably the two-minute walk back to the hostel passes without incident.
***
Everybody loves a good riot, and the hardy folk of North Dunedin are no exception. From its humble origins as a bogan pilgrimmage down the 360km of State Highway 1 from Christchurch to Dunedin, the annual Undie 500 race has become the pretext for a weekend of rioting, looting and debauchery so wanton and depraved that I'm both disgusted and secretly amused just thinking about it. Every time August rolls around, the tough-talking starts. No one wants to see a riot, say the students, the media and the police in a delicately-contrived joint statement intended to douse fears of an imminent societal regress into anarchy, but secretly they all do. The media because they know the public loves a good student beat-up story; the police because it gives them something to do; and the students because, well, who doesn't enjoy honouring our pagan heritage by getting naked and setting fire to things once in a while?
I believe we would do well to spare a thought for the 15,000 students who descended on downtown Prague on the afternoon of November 17, 1989. On that day, while Dunedin's best and brightest rioters-to-be were flapping about in paddling pools and riding on trainer wheels, Prague's students conducted a peaceful protest march down Národní Street to mark International Student Day. Growing ever more frustrated at the iron-fisted rule of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, they'd seen the wall come down a week before in Berlin, and now seized upon the chance to make history for themselves. As it happened, they were brutally beaten, bullied and shot at by state police, sparking nationwide strikes and protests against the increasingly unpopular government.
On November 28, with communism collapsing across Central Europe, the Communist Party relinquished power and the single-party state was dismantled. Six months later, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. The students had won a stirring victory against their erstwhile tormentors; their deeds coming to be immortalised by the phrase “Velvet Revolution”. The young warriors of that day are now old and becalmed, and I reckon on the very unlikely chance that they picked up a paper and read about students in Dunedin rioting over what amounts to a few beer bottles and a half-eaten lasange topper, they'd have mixed feelings about the direction their revolutionary ideals have taken.
It's difficult to fathom that these seminal events took less than two decades ago on this very street upon which I stand. That these pavements, now adorned with hot dog and kebab stalls, once flowed with the blood of Czechoslovakia's young and idealistic freedom fighters. I'm on a self-guided walking tour of the city that has taken me – largely by accident – past Prague's iconic astronomical clock, down Národní Street to the epicentre of the protest. Prague is not one of the more carefully-planned cities in Europe, its sidestreets and alleys shooting off in every direction and twisting and turning every which way. Eat a bowl of spaghetti and regurgitate it upon a blank piece of paper, and you have a fair approximation of Prague's street layout. A couple of times already this morning, I've found myself taking a wrong turn and, in spite of close consultation with my map, finding myself back at the same spot from which I'd departed ten minutes hence. It would've been quite exciting to explore back in the olden days, but nowadays the risk of rounding a blind corner on foot and being cleaned up by a speeding care takes a bit of shine off the adventure.
Once I've regained my bearings, I head north along the right-hand bank of the Vltava River to one of Prague's most famous and remarkable tourist attractions. At ten metres wide and over half a kilometre long, Charles Bridge is a remarkable feat of architecture – not least because it was built over 600 years ago of Bohemian sandstone and egg-enriched mortar. The bridge established Prague as an important trading hub, played host to fierce battles and skirmishes between conquering forces, been battered and broken by countless floods, survived looting of its many famous statues and ballustrades, and still holds firm under the weight (in every sense of the word) of foreign tourists and the associated bottom-feeding rip-off merchants that line either side of the bridge.
Across the bridge and atop a steep hill rests the city's most famous attraction, Prague Castle. I'm not going to go to it, because I'm sick of the sight of castles and even more sick of the sight of package tourists (Prague is the sixth most-visited city in Europe after London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin). Instead, I follow a less-travelled path through the woods and gardens that surround the castle, pausing to admire the view of the city across the river, with its myriad towers and churches. The forest of baroque-era spires are enhanced by a brilliant blue sky on this cold but crisp autumn day. The path takes me behind the castle and into a peaceful, wooded glade. My only company appears in the form of a small red squirrel, snacking on something in the grass a few metres away. It looks up and sees me, then lets forth a terrified scream and scuttles away up the nearest tree. Something I said, perhaps?
After dusk I find myself again wandering the quiet city streets, and once again inevitably gravitating towards The Dubliner. It's the soft option I know, but this is a city where one wrong move in a bar could mean spending the rest of your life on a dialysis machine, and I'm happy to pay the little extra for a beer in an Irish pub if it guarantees peace of mind for my kidneys. I'm pleased to see that Monobrow is behind the bar, and the guy sitting to my right – a shaven-headed Englishman in his late 20s – is the same guy I sat next to yesterday. Since we were not formally introduced at the time, however, we pretend not to notice or recognise each other.
There's four different games of football being shown simultaneously on four different screens. The score in every game is 0-0 approaching halftime. Given their fierce passion for a sport in which something interesting usually happens once or twice in ninety minutes, it strikes me as odd that cricket doesn't appeal to Europeans. I suppose they are hamstrung by their deep-set and at least partially-valid suspicions that anything invented by the English must be shit. Every so often an excited cheer will go up from one of the tables of men on stag dos – they too appear not have shifted an inch from last night – signalling that something interesting may be about to happen in the particular game they're paying attention to, but I've yet to experience the boisterous singing and beer-spilling that would no doubt occur in the unlikely event that a goal is ever scored.
A scruffy looking middle-aged Irishman takes a seat at the bar next to me. He summons Monobrow over and orders a Heineken. “Bollocks!”, he barks, taking his pint, although it's not clear what he thinks is bollocks. He sees me gazing randomly at one of the TV screens and swivels his seat around to do the same. It's a full five minutes before he realises he's blocking my view.
“Fock! Sorry lad”, he says, hastily shifting his stool backwards.
“You're alright. I'm not missing anything”.
He asks what I'm doing here by myself; I tell him I have no mates and ask him what he's doing here. Turns out his wife has been kind enough to stay in the hotel room and look after the kids this evening while he gets drunk and watches football. Like any conversation between two half-cut strangers in a bar, the topic shifts around unpredictably before settling on an earnest exposition of the various crimes and misdemeanours committed by the fairer sex.
“One thing you'll learn, son, is that women don't give a fock about you. They don't give a fock about nothin', so. I've got four children by three different marriages, and believe me, I know”.
In spite of his blatant sexism, there is an endearing quality to the man that extends past the mere fact that he's Irish. I can tell by the conviction in his voice and the sadness in his eye that he loved all three of those women deeply at one time or another.
“I was gutted when the first one left me. Fockin' gutted. But ya know, I got over it, and I got another one. And funny ting is, two years later, fock me dronk, the first one was comin' back after me again! That's fockin' women for ya. Always wantin' what they can't fockin' have”.
We both turn back to the screen for a long while, sipping our beers and glancing around the room just to ensure that nope, no one has scored a goal in any of the other games either. Then he says, “ya know, I fockin' hate Arsenal. Anyway, better get back to the missus or I'm in trouble. Good luck, lad”. I'm not sure whether that was directed at me or Monobrow behind the bar. He looks like he needs it more than I do.
***
As much as I've enjoyed Prague, today I'm forced to put my Central European jaunt on hold for a few days and fly back to to London where my older and wiser brother, Adam, awaits my arrival. Part of Adam's current job involves travelling around the world and organising massive piss-ups on behalf of the beer company that employs him. This weekend he's taking the travelling beer show to a disused carpark in east London where, according to the media briefing he's sent me, “East meets West at this cultural fusion showdown which will flip the creative compass, redraw the musical map, and forge an international alliance of art”. Sounds like some Asians and some honkies are gonna meet up, get shitfaced and lay down some tunes, I conclude, before lugging my hastily-packed bag down to reception. I'd be silly to miss it.
Now, I've witnessed (and participated in) my fair share of awkward in moments in my lifetime, but nothing that can compare to the situation that greets me as I open the door to reception. There's a lady, who I recognise as a receptionist, seated at a swivel chair behind the desk. She gasps with surprise at my entry, prompting a male head to pop up inquisitively from between her legs. For a moment we all look at each other in sheer dear-in-the-headlights panic, then I pretend my shoelace is undone and crouch down in front of the desk to “tie” it while I regain my composure.
What the hell just happened? I feel like an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick. Maybe I am an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick.
“Can we help you?”, asks the man, who has swiftly recovered from whatever it was he was doing and is all smiles.
“Ummm, ahhh, um”. I can't even speak anymore. “Hope I'm not intruding on anything!”, I say, feigning nonchalance.
“Oh, no no, not at all”, they assure me in unison, even though we all know that a plainer lie has never been spoken.
“Well, errr, it's just that, I was wondering how to get to the airport”.
He tells me the name of a metro station that I immediately forget, and instructs me to take it for four stops to some other station whose name I immediately forget, and then take a bus whose number I also forget, which will drop me off at the airport. I don't even care at this point. I have to get the hell out of the room before the man plucks up the courage to ask, “hey, have you ever held a camera before?”, or something to that effect. My flight back to England, where public displays of affection are punishable by death, cannot come quick enough.
Thirty minutes later, by a random series of miraculous coincidences I find myself stepping off the bus outside the main terminal and negotiating my way past approximately thirteen McDonald's outlets and seventeen Duty Free stores to the main departure hall. Evening flights are departing Prague for every imaginable corner of Europe and beyond; except, conspicuously, London Gatwick. I check for my 9.40pm flight, but it is not displayed where it should be. Feeling my angst levels increasing exponentially, I scan up and down the board but no, it is simply not there. There's flights to godforsaken places I've never even heard of – Hurghada, Ekaterinburg, Thessaloniki, Lanzarote – but none to Gatwick.
Panic rapidly sets in, then gives way to a kind of detached, fatalistic stupor. I've come to the airport on the wrong day. Or just the wrong airport. Or more likely still, the flight for which I have a ticket probably never existed in the first place. So does that mean I don't exist either? I'm hovering outside my body now, watching myself crumble and disintegrate into the ether like the Wicked Witch. I know what's going to happen next. I'll realise that this whole journey was just a dream, that my culinary rampage across America and my hazy, pilsner-fuelled escapades through the streets and alleyways of Europe were just a fabrication of my Blue Powerade-addled brain and any moment now I'll wake up in my freezing cold, shitty Dunedin flat to the realisation that I still haven't handed in my bloody thesis. I stand frozen on the spot, but nothing happens.
Suddenly I realise what I must do. It's a crazy old scheme, but it might just work. Using what little reserves of initiative I have left, I divert my gaze from the Arrivals screen and turn my neck slowly to the right, such that I am now looking at the Depatures screen. And there – as promised and on time – is my 9.40pm flight to London Gatwick, departing from gate 23.
They do say travelling alone can be a dangerous business. Especially when you're travelling with me.
“It is traditional Czech aperatif! You will like this”, says the waiter reassuringly. He's been standing patiently over me with a platter of full shot glasses for the best part of a minute, like a puppy imploring its master to marvel at the dead rat it's just dragged in from the garden. I have no idea what's in this drink or what it's going to do to me. Never have I seen a spirit so jaundiced, murky and foreboding in colour. The waiter, Georgina, Caroline and the kindly old German couple sitting next to us at the table are all eyeing me in anticipation. The peer pressure is too much. I take a shot glass off the platter and raise it to my lips. The ethanol smell is overpowering; the memories of that horrible night eight years ago rushing back to me, just as the vomit rushed back up my digestive tract and down the front of my suit on that fateful spring evening.
I'm about to take a exploratory sip when the kindly old German man catches my eye. “In one go. You must drink in one go”, he instructs me. I frown apprehensively and he and his wife laugh, possibly already under the influence of whatever it is I'm about to consume. All eyes are still on me as I tilt my head back and send the mystery liquid down the hatch. It has a smooth, aniseed flavour and leaves a gentle burning sensation in the throat, similar to Icebreaker – the RTD of choice at Dunedin keg parties – but without the unpleasant feeling of your liver steadily accumulating toxins with each sip. It's not bad.
Tucked away on a dark, quiet central Prague street, we've found a beerhouse with an ambience as lively as you're likely to see this side of Munich. Everywhere I look, something humorous and utterly foreign is taking place. The two man polka band – a jolly fat man with a tuba and a small, wiry, moustachioed man on accordion – are performing local favourites to the delight of the drunken students at a big long table that spans the length of the room. They're singing heartily and swinging their beer glasses from side to side in the traditional European fashion, yelling more and more requests at the exasperated, sweat-drenched tuba player, who duly obliges because well, that's his job. Two men carrying massive trays of beer are gliding about the room, distributing pints for thirsty diners. One of them arrives now with a chaser for my aperatif, plonking a beer down in front of me and marking another notch on my bill. Then he's off again, somehow making the thankless task of pushing through crowds of drunken Czechs while balancing twenty pints of beer on a tray on his right hand seem like a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. He's obviously been getting tips from those African women who walk for six hours at a time with water pots on their heads.
Our meals arrive – the same flattened-meat-and-potatoes scenario I've been describing throughout my recent travels – and are washed down by more of the malty, house-brewed ales. The polka troupe are going from table to table now, giving private performances. They're playing for a party of four at the table in the corner, all of whom sport flowing and voluptuous mullets. A mother and father are sitting on one side of the table, facing a stocky young man with a porn star moustache and a blonde girl who must be his sister, or his girlfriend, or both. They all go to the same hairdresser, possibly via some secret time machine that transports them to the 1980s. At the long table to the left sits a woman who is probably the drunkest person in the world right now. Her husband is sober and has a bemused but resigned look on his face, as if he spends most of his weekend evenings apologising to strangers for the behaviour of his spouse. She's just spilled beer all over the old lady next to her, and now she falls backwards off the bench onto the floor and can't get up. The waiter with the twenty pints deftly hopscotches her with all the grace and poise of a gazelle. You can't buy entertainment like this. I finish my pint and am immediately aware of a warm, tipsy stupor coming over me. Then I look at the menu and discover that the alcohol content of the beer is 13%.
Back outside in the harsh reality of a freezing Prague night, Georgina and Caroline announce their predictable decision to the return the hostel. I don't want to waste my pleasant buzz from the two pints of beer – that amounted to a bottle and a half of wine – and I resolve to wander the wind-swept streets until I find another suitable drinking house. The downtown area is spookily abandoned and devoid of activity, as if everyone else has gone to some raging cocaine party on the other side of town and didn't think to invite me. Eventually I come across a seedy-looking bar with some pokies in the back and a sign out the front that says:
“Tonight: HAPPY HOUR 5-11. LIVE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL: LIVERPOOL V MARSEILLE”.
I love a happy hour that goes all night. Besides, my beloved Liverpool is playing live on TV. My grandmother spent a bit of time there, you see, plus it's the hometown of the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time (I am of course referring to Gerry & The Pacemakers). The barman pours me a pint of Budvar and I take a seat in a booth with a good view of the TV. It's not showing the Liverpool game though; it's the bloody Kings Road Mincers, Chelsea, against some rubbish European minnows.
“Could we change the channel, please?”, I ask the barman, who's sitting on the customers' side of the bar, smoking a cigarette.
“Sorry?”
“Liverpool game? Can we watch Liverpool game?”
“Ah, sorry, no, we watch Chelsea”. He takes another drag of his cigarette and gestures in the direction of three rough-looking Czech guys in the booth next to me, one of whom is wearing a Chelsea shirt. Looks like I'm outnumbered here.
Back in my booth, alone and vulnerable, I notice the Czech guys frequently glancing over at me and then talking amongst themselves in ominous tones. Oh God, what are they saying? My rudimentary Czech phrase book is no use to me here. They never tell you the crucial words, like “piano wire” or “kidneys”. Why is that exactly? My kidneys are the only valuable items I ever carry on my person. Not that they're worth much these days, either. Still, they don't know that, and I don't want to be one of those people who comes back from the bathroom to find that their beer tastes a bit funny, only to wake up eighteen hours later alone in a bath with a row of stitches down the left side of my torso.
I'm saved from this fate by two English football hooligans poking their head through the front door and asking where they could watch the Liverpool game.
“The Dubliner”, announces the barman without taking his eyes off the TV. Couldn't he have just told me that? “Go down street, first left, first right”.
I follow along behind the football hooligans, keeping a safe distance from them, and find myself descending below street level into a cavernous room with a bar on one side and tables of rowdy young Irishmen on stag weekends at the other. The bar is manned by a seedy Czech with a pony tail that makes him look like an out of work porn star, and a younger, hunched-over Irishman. He comes over to pour me a pint, and I notice that his eyebrows have grown perilously, almost fatally close together. It looks like a close run thing but one day, just as they looked like joining together and consigning him to a childhood of broken dreams and ridicule, they stopped, milimetres apart and in the nick of time, just like that giant crushing machine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He's sharp and assertive, but the wistful look in his eye tells the story of a young man who'd rather be managing a hedge fund than pouring pints for inebriated foreigners in an Irish Bar in Prague.
“Busy night?”, I ask him.
“Ahhh, it's fairly steady, like”, he replies. “So you're from New Zealand then?”. He's the first guy to have got it right.
“You bet. You ever been down there?”
We're about to have a potentially interesting conversation when a pushy American couple around the side of the bar call him over and ask for drinks. He dutifully obliges, then is forced to stand and listen as the Americans – clearly oil barons, judging by their tacky clothes and thick southern drawl – regale the bar staff with outrageously embellished horror stories of their travails through Europe and Asia.
“I just couldn't believe it”, I can hear the wife saying. “When they had us at gunpoint and were ordering us out of the bus I really thought they were gonna kill us”. She moves seamlessly from the tale of this apparent hijacking to a near miss with a sword-wielding mugger in Istanbul, followed by an unfortunate run-in with gypsies in Romania. And so it goes on, the gathered crowd listening wide-eyed except for the cynical Irishman, who occasionally looks over to me and rolls his eyes as if to say, “can you believe these people?”.
They're still blabbering on about their various near-death experiences as the game finishes and I make my way back out onto the now even colder, more deserted, Prague streets. The Americans' anecdotes have made me wary of Czech gangsters lurking in alleyways, poised to strike out at my precious kidneys, but regrettably the two-minute walk back to the hostel passes without incident.
***
Everybody loves a good riot, and the hardy folk of North Dunedin are no exception. From its humble origins as a bogan pilgrimmage down the 360km of State Highway 1 from Christchurch to Dunedin, the annual Undie 500 race has become the pretext for a weekend of rioting, looting and debauchery so wanton and depraved that I'm both disgusted and secretly amused just thinking about it. Every time August rolls around, the tough-talking starts. No one wants to see a riot, say the students, the media and the police in a delicately-contrived joint statement intended to douse fears of an imminent societal regress into anarchy, but secretly they all do. The media because they know the public loves a good student beat-up story; the police because it gives them something to do; and the students because, well, who doesn't enjoy honouring our pagan heritage by getting naked and setting fire to things once in a while?
I believe we would do well to spare a thought for the 15,000 students who descended on downtown Prague on the afternoon of November 17, 1989. On that day, while Dunedin's best and brightest rioters-to-be were flapping about in paddling pools and riding on trainer wheels, Prague's students conducted a peaceful protest march down Národní Street to mark International Student Day. Growing ever more frustrated at the iron-fisted rule of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, they'd seen the wall come down a week before in Berlin, and now seized upon the chance to make history for themselves. As it happened, they were brutally beaten, bullied and shot at by state police, sparking nationwide strikes and protests against the increasingly unpopular government.
On November 28, with communism collapsing across Central Europe, the Communist Party relinquished power and the single-party state was dismantled. Six months later, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. The students had won a stirring victory against their erstwhile tormentors; their deeds coming to be immortalised by the phrase “Velvet Revolution”. The young warriors of that day are now old and becalmed, and I reckon on the very unlikely chance that they picked up a paper and read about students in Dunedin rioting over what amounts to a few beer bottles and a half-eaten lasange topper, they'd have mixed feelings about the direction their revolutionary ideals have taken.
It's difficult to fathom that these seminal events took less than two decades ago on this very street upon which I stand. That these pavements, now adorned with hot dog and kebab stalls, once flowed with the blood of Czechoslovakia's young and idealistic freedom fighters. I'm on a self-guided walking tour of the city that has taken me – largely by accident – past Prague's iconic astronomical clock, down Národní Street to the epicentre of the protest. Prague is not one of the more carefully-planned cities in Europe, its sidestreets and alleys shooting off in every direction and twisting and turning every which way. Eat a bowl of spaghetti and regurgitate it upon a blank piece of paper, and you have a fair approximation of Prague's street layout. A couple of times already this morning, I've found myself taking a wrong turn and, in spite of close consultation with my map, finding myself back at the same spot from which I'd departed ten minutes hence. It would've been quite exciting to explore back in the olden days, but nowadays the risk of rounding a blind corner on foot and being cleaned up by a speeding care takes a bit of shine off the adventure.
Once I've regained my bearings, I head north along the right-hand bank of the Vltava River to one of Prague's most famous and remarkable tourist attractions. At ten metres wide and over half a kilometre long, Charles Bridge is a remarkable feat of architecture – not least because it was built over 600 years ago of Bohemian sandstone and egg-enriched mortar. The bridge established Prague as an important trading hub, played host to fierce battles and skirmishes between conquering forces, been battered and broken by countless floods, survived looting of its many famous statues and ballustrades, and still holds firm under the weight (in every sense of the word) of foreign tourists and the associated bottom-feeding rip-off merchants that line either side of the bridge.
Across the bridge and atop a steep hill rests the city's most famous attraction, Prague Castle. I'm not going to go to it, because I'm sick of the sight of castles and even more sick of the sight of package tourists (Prague is the sixth most-visited city in Europe after London, Paris, Rome, Madrid and Berlin). Instead, I follow a less-travelled path through the woods and gardens that surround the castle, pausing to admire the view of the city across the river, with its myriad towers and churches. The forest of baroque-era spires are enhanced by a brilliant blue sky on this cold but crisp autumn day. The path takes me behind the castle and into a peaceful, wooded glade. My only company appears in the form of a small red squirrel, snacking on something in the grass a few metres away. It looks up and sees me, then lets forth a terrified scream and scuttles away up the nearest tree. Something I said, perhaps?
After dusk I find myself again wandering the quiet city streets, and once again inevitably gravitating towards The Dubliner. It's the soft option I know, but this is a city where one wrong move in a bar could mean spending the rest of your life on a dialysis machine, and I'm happy to pay the little extra for a beer in an Irish pub if it guarantees peace of mind for my kidneys. I'm pleased to see that Monobrow is behind the bar, and the guy sitting to my right – a shaven-headed Englishman in his late 20s – is the same guy I sat next to yesterday. Since we were not formally introduced at the time, however, we pretend not to notice or recognise each other.
There's four different games of football being shown simultaneously on four different screens. The score in every game is 0-0 approaching halftime. Given their fierce passion for a sport in which something interesting usually happens once or twice in ninety minutes, it strikes me as odd that cricket doesn't appeal to Europeans. I suppose they are hamstrung by their deep-set and at least partially-valid suspicions that anything invented by the English must be shit. Every so often an excited cheer will go up from one of the tables of men on stag dos – they too appear not have shifted an inch from last night – signalling that something interesting may be about to happen in the particular game they're paying attention to, but I've yet to experience the boisterous singing and beer-spilling that would no doubt occur in the unlikely event that a goal is ever scored.
A scruffy looking middle-aged Irishman takes a seat at the bar next to me. He summons Monobrow over and orders a Heineken. “Bollocks!”, he barks, taking his pint, although it's not clear what he thinks is bollocks. He sees me gazing randomly at one of the TV screens and swivels his seat around to do the same. It's a full five minutes before he realises he's blocking my view.
“Fock! Sorry lad”, he says, hastily shifting his stool backwards.
“You're alright. I'm not missing anything”.
He asks what I'm doing here by myself; I tell him I have no mates and ask him what he's doing here. Turns out his wife has been kind enough to stay in the hotel room and look after the kids this evening while he gets drunk and watches football. Like any conversation between two half-cut strangers in a bar, the topic shifts around unpredictably before settling on an earnest exposition of the various crimes and misdemeanours committed by the fairer sex.
“One thing you'll learn, son, is that women don't give a fock about you. They don't give a fock about nothin', so. I've got four children by three different marriages, and believe me, I know”.
In spite of his blatant sexism, there is an endearing quality to the man that extends past the mere fact that he's Irish. I can tell by the conviction in his voice and the sadness in his eye that he loved all three of those women deeply at one time or another.
“I was gutted when the first one left me. Fockin' gutted. But ya know, I got over it, and I got another one. And funny ting is, two years later, fock me dronk, the first one was comin' back after me again! That's fockin' women for ya. Always wantin' what they can't fockin' have”.
We both turn back to the screen for a long while, sipping our beers and glancing around the room just to ensure that nope, no one has scored a goal in any of the other games either. Then he says, “ya know, I fockin' hate Arsenal. Anyway, better get back to the missus or I'm in trouble. Good luck, lad”. I'm not sure whether that was directed at me or Monobrow behind the bar. He looks like he needs it more than I do.
***
As much as I've enjoyed Prague, today I'm forced to put my Central European jaunt on hold for a few days and fly back to to London where my older and wiser brother, Adam, awaits my arrival. Part of Adam's current job involves travelling around the world and organising massive piss-ups on behalf of the beer company that employs him. This weekend he's taking the travelling beer show to a disused carpark in east London where, according to the media briefing he's sent me, “East meets West at this cultural fusion showdown which will flip the creative compass, redraw the musical map, and forge an international alliance of art”. Sounds like some Asians and some honkies are gonna meet up, get shitfaced and lay down some tunes, I conclude, before lugging my hastily-packed bag down to reception. I'd be silly to miss it.
Now, I've witnessed (and participated in) my fair share of awkward in moments in my lifetime, but nothing that can compare to the situation that greets me as I open the door to reception. There's a lady, who I recognise as a receptionist, seated at a swivel chair behind the desk. She gasps with surprise at my entry, prompting a male head to pop up inquisitively from between her legs. For a moment we all look at each other in sheer dear-in-the-headlights panic, then I pretend my shoelace is undone and crouch down in front of the desk to “tie” it while I regain my composure.
What the hell just happened? I feel like an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick. Maybe I am an unwilling participant in a low-budget porno flick.
“Can we help you?”, asks the man, who has swiftly recovered from whatever it was he was doing and is all smiles.
“Ummm, ahhh, um”. I can't even speak anymore. “Hope I'm not intruding on anything!”, I say, feigning nonchalance.
“Oh, no no, not at all”, they assure me in unison, even though we all know that a plainer lie has never been spoken.
“Well, errr, it's just that, I was wondering how to get to the airport”.
He tells me the name of a metro station that I immediately forget, and instructs me to take it for four stops to some other station whose name I immediately forget, and then take a bus whose number I also forget, which will drop me off at the airport. I don't even care at this point. I have to get the hell out of the room before the man plucks up the courage to ask, “hey, have you ever held a camera before?”, or something to that effect. My flight back to England, where public displays of affection are punishable by death, cannot come quick enough.
Thirty minutes later, by a random series of miraculous coincidences I find myself stepping off the bus outside the main terminal and negotiating my way past approximately thirteen McDonald's outlets and seventeen Duty Free stores to the main departure hall. Evening flights are departing Prague for every imaginable corner of Europe and beyond; except, conspicuously, London Gatwick. I check for my 9.40pm flight, but it is not displayed where it should be. Feeling my angst levels increasing exponentially, I scan up and down the board but no, it is simply not there. There's flights to godforsaken places I've never even heard of – Hurghada, Ekaterinburg, Thessaloniki, Lanzarote – but none to Gatwick.
Panic rapidly sets in, then gives way to a kind of detached, fatalistic stupor. I've come to the airport on the wrong day. Or just the wrong airport. Or more likely still, the flight for which I have a ticket probably never existed in the first place. So does that mean I don't exist either? I'm hovering outside my body now, watching myself crumble and disintegrate into the ether like the Wicked Witch. I know what's going to happen next. I'll realise that this whole journey was just a dream, that my culinary rampage across America and my hazy, pilsner-fuelled escapades through the streets and alleyways of Europe were just a fabrication of my Blue Powerade-addled brain and any moment now I'll wake up in my freezing cold, shitty Dunedin flat to the realisation that I still haven't handed in my bloody thesis. I stand frozen on the spot, but nothing happens.
Suddenly I realise what I must do. It's a crazy old scheme, but it might just work. Using what little reserves of initiative I have left, I divert my gaze from the Arrivals screen and turn my neck slowly to the right, such that I am now looking at the Depatures screen. And there – as promised and on time – is my 9.40pm flight to London Gatwick, departing from gate 23.
They do say travelling alone can be a dangerous business. Especially when you're travelling with me.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Cesky Krumlov
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. So said the inimitable Benjamin Franklin, who didn't grow up in New Zealand in the 1990s and therefore couldn't have known that losing to Pakistan in the cricket is a third certainty. Here is my traveller's addendum to the list: there's now death, taxes, losing to Pakistan in the cricket and having your travel plans rooted by the incompetence of others.
We were meant to have been picked up in Salzburg by a shuttle and taken directly to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. But due to some unforseen cock-up on the part of the Czech shuttle bus company, our seats were re-sold and we were told there was no space on the shuttle for us. The upshot of it all is that we're now in Linz, having arrived here by train, and in a few short minutes we're going to hook up with the shuttle that didn't have enough room to pick us up in Salzburg but does have enough room to pick us up from Linz. I've given up trying to understand it and I'm now consigned to just going with the flow.
Linz has two major claims to fame, neither of which you will see mentioned on the road signs on the way into town. Firstly, it was Adolf Hitler's favourite town and secondly, it has a kind of cake named after it. This may provide some insight as to why tourists generally opt to give Linz a miss where possible. From where I'm standing, outside the train station, the the town looks as grey and dreary as the sky above it. I cannot speak highly enough, however, of the modern and expansive station; in particular the bookstore on the lower level, which does a nice line in pornography and sudoku books.
I'm just stuffing my new sudoku books into my backpack when the shuttle arrives and out steps the driver, a bulbous man in his 30s with conspicuously low levels of hygiene that are no doubt the envy of all his bus driver mates. With a well-practised gruffness, he hoists our gear into the boot and asks us if we'd like to “go a toilet” before departing, but I've just gone one earlier, so we hop aboard his van without delay.
It's one of those pack-'em-in-like-sardines minivans that in the interests of economy has been spared unnecessary luxuries, like comfortable seats or suspension. In the row in front of us, three middle-aged Japanese Hello Kitty devotees are chatting excitedly in their native tongue. In the front seat alongside the driver are a hippie couple from Australia, who look well into the 60s and are clearly too old to give a toss about what the world thinks of their appearance. The man is dressed in full khaki tramping gear and sports a thick white beard and the most ridiculous combover I've ever seen. What few fertile patches he has left on his melon have been grown out and then tied back over his head into a sweeping ponytail, creating the overall effect that he's just emerged from 30 years living in the Outback and scalped Willie Nelson. Perhaps he has: the remote mountains of the southern Czech Republic seem like he kind of place a fugitive would be headed and besides, you don't hear much from old Willie these days, do you?
“Ahhh, we don't have roads like this back in 'Straya”, he tells the driver enthusiastically. “No bloody cars to drive on 'em!”
“Oh. Really?”. You can tell this piece of news has made the driver's day.
“Yeah mate. Big long dirt roads and not a single bloody car on 'em”.
“I see”.
I had a rough sleep last night, and the rhythmic hammering of my head against the roof of the van is enough to send me into a light slumber. At some stage in the trip, this is interrupted by a loud bang and a series of gasps from the van's occupants. The driver, obviously bored with life and trying to inject some excitement into his day, has taken a corner too quickly and clipped a passing mail truck headed in the opposite direction. What remains of his left side mirror dangles limply, the mirror cracked beyond repair but still in one piece. The driver casually pulls over to the side of the road, reaches across and pats the shards of the mirror back into place, then zooms off again as if it's just a minor inconvenience that happens all the time.
“That'd never happen back in 'Straya!”, Willie Nelson says helpfully. “Big bloody wide roads in 'Straya!”
Straight away I can see I'm going to love Cesky Krumlov. At first glance it appears to be everything that Salzburg wasn't: quaint, picturesque and brimming with character. The entirety of the old town is closed off to vehicle traffic, giving pedestrians free reign over the winding, cobbled streets and alleys. Two church spires – one each side of the river – rise above the twisting rows of ancient houses. Atop the hill behind our hostel stands the most impressive structure of all: the castle and its imposing, uniquely-decorated tower. For the first time on the trip we have a hostel room to ourselves. After satisfying myself that the bathroom is free of used condoms, I lie down and treat myself to a well-earned afternoon nap.
“Welcome to this medieval house where time has stopped. Let's take a seat at the oak table and pause on how we can be inspired by the diet of our ancestors. Although old bohemian cuisine has basically vanished, let us offer you a taste of the past”.
My reading of the restaurant menu's introduction is briefly interrupted by the loud and absorbing conversation taking place in the small room behind us.
“Well today we came from Praaaague? But before that we were in Viennaaaa? And before that we were in Bratislavaaaaa?”
“Oh wow, that sounds great! Yeah we've never been to Oar-strail-ya but we'd love to visit! Are you from Bris-bain or Mel-born?”
A middle-aged American couple are dining with a middle-aged Australian couple in what resembles a kind of perfect storm of irritating travellers. Now they're joined by another Australian couple, who greet the original Australian couple with speechless astonishment, as if they'd never expected to meet people of their own creed so far from home, even though the bastards are everywhere.
I'm doing my best to tune it all out and engage myself in the fascinating menu. We are, after all, in a very peculiar and enchanting place. Tucked away down a narrow cobbled lane, we've found a house caught in some bizarre timewarp. It contains a restaurant that specialises in medieval bohemian cuisine, the owners of which have done everything possible to transport the diner back to the Middle Ages. The interior is wooden and dimly-lit, the décor is sparse; even the waiter is dressed as if he's just sprung forth from my fifth form English illustrated copy of the Canterbury Tales. The music doesn't quite date back to that time period – in fact it's Radiohead – but upon closer listening, Thom Yorke's ethereal wailings do have a kind of primeval quality to them.
“Might I suggest the feast platter for three”, says our waiter, placing a frothing pint of medieval ale in front of me. “It is roasted hare, roasted chicken, roasted pheasant, smoked meat with potato, millet and dumplings”. Well, why not indeed?
As I sip at my entree, a bowl of potato and daisy soup, I read more about the culinary traditions of ancient Bohemia. It's important to know these things. You never know when they might pop up in a job interview, or an episode of “Who Wants To Be Millionaire”.
“The poor usually ate bread with cheese, or onion and soups. The well-off ate fish with a glass of wine or beer. To finish their breakfast they drank a glass of good wine and brandy”. See, living in the Middle Ages doesn't sound nearly as bad as it's made out to be. The trick obviously was not to be one of the poor people.
Our dinner is an absolute visual delight. It arrives on one large platter for the three of us, the various meats stacked high on potato done fifty different ways (actually I lie. It's only about forty-five), with a colourful Bohemian salad in the middle to finish off the dish. Then something else wonderful happens: the Aussies in the next room bugger off, leaving us to enjoy our meal in relative peace. “Can't have too many 'Strayans in one area!”, says the lady as she departs. It's the first intelligent thing she's said all night. The meal is delicious, though if I am honest, it appears that modern Central European cuisine hasn't much deviated from the course set by their medieval ancestors. Plump and satisfied, we follow our Chaucerian waiter down into the bowls of the house to pay the bill. I'm slightly worried that he's going to ask me to hand over a pot of apple wine, a sack of magic beans or perhaps a couple of my goats in exchange for the meal, but it turns out they take Visa.
I can hear the tormented cackling of a witch burning at the stake as we step back out into the grimy, candle lit alley. An old man lies dying of the plague in a nearby doorway. The full moon illuminates the severed heads of traitors on display above the town gate and in the main courtyard, the town crier is ringing a bell as he relays news of the Saxons' crushing defeat in southern Moravia.
I wonder what they put in that medieval beer?
***
I can't say I wasn't warned there would be days like these. Now I'm having flashbacks to that chilly May night in Dunedin when I resolved I would never need any cold weather gear again, and lamenting my insolence.
“Don't you think you should keep some of those jerseys, Max?”, they asked. “You're gonna need them some time, you know”.
“Don't be stupid, you fools!”, I cried jovially as I sipped from my can of Southern Gold while gleefully throwing another sweater on the fire. “There's no rain and cold where I'm going! No bad weather for me ever again! Muhahaha!”.
Fast forward four months to a freezing September morning in the Czech Republic. I'm standing in the street outside our hostel as the rain hammers down upon my hunched over frame. I don't believe in umbrellas, and I don't own a raincoat. The only protection against the cold I've brought is a thin woollen sweater. Across the street, Willie Nelson and his wife are rugged up and peering through the windows of a grocery store. From an ice cream parlour down the road – which will presumably not be doing a roaring trade today – comes the sound of the local radio station cranking the latest Billboard Top 40 hits. I don't recognise the song but it sounds like sounds like that twat from Coldplay whining, as usual, about his vast fortunes and the possibility of Gwyneth leaving him. It seems like no matter where you go in Europe, you can't escape this particularly noxious form of noise pollution.
Cesky Krumlov is an easy town to explore, with most of its highlights found along one long road that crosses the river and joins the old town together. The old town was built along a stretch of the river where it curves so dramatically upon itself in an exaggerated S-bend that the river almost forms two islands, save for a thin strip of land. I set off towards the centre of the old town with the aim of navigating every alleyway without going down the same one twice. The town centre is extremely dense and its open doors and walkways give it a very communal feel. Shop owners setting up tables mingle with local grocers and old ladies out walking their dogs. Presently I find myself wandering down a narrow passageway and into a room which I could swear is someone's private kitchen, and that's because it is. A big pot of soup boils on the stove and a stocky, middle-aged lady looks up at me from her kitchen table with an air of indifference, as if complete strangers walk into her kitchen all the time. I cast my eyes around the room and raise my eyebrows as if to say “nice place you got here”, then turn on my heel and get the hell out.
The stroll up to the castle grounds offers pretty views of the town, the river, and the two German backpackers walking up the hill in front of me. The gardens are expansive, beautifully manicured and once again serve as a reminder that you definitely wanted to find yourself on the right side of the poverty line back in the Middle Ages. There's even a “revolving theatre” - a round grandstand structure with seating for about 200 people, that has been designed to rotate through 360 degrees during stage plays. I'm not sure how that works, since I generally prefer my theatre not to revolve while I'm trying to watch a performance in front of me, but who am I to poke fun at what is probably an ancient Czech ritual. Perhaps I might find some explanation on the sign on the base of the grandstand. Upon closer inspection, it says:
“Místnost ostrahy – Nekuřácké pracoviště”
I don't know what that means either. But a quick glance at my watch confirms my stomach's suspicions that a refuelling mission is in order. What to eat though? We can be fairly sure that the humble spud will be on the agenda. I don't really have much choice in that regard, unfortunately. “Monday special: Right wiener schnitzel of veal haunch, boiled potato”, says a large blackboard outside a culinary tourist trap in the square. No thanks. I walk down an alleyway and find a smaller restaurant pushing “gypsy sausage, sauerkraut, potato”. I don't know why they even bother mentioning that there's potato in it, since potato appears to be a non-negotiable item when it comes to ordering food in Central Europe.
I remember walking past a place called Joe's Living Restaurant last evening, the concept of which intrigues me. Living restaurant? Does this mean the animals are slaughtered at the table and vegetables are ripped out of the garden in front of your eyes? Sadly we will never know, since Joe's Living Restaurant is, ironically enough, not open for business today. Further down the street I find a traditional Bohemian barbecued meat restaurant that my guidebook recommended. A sign in the doorway promises “live entertainment with authentic Bohemian period music”, but they've got Justin Timberlake playing on the radio when I walk in, so I walk back out again. Back on the street I bump into Georgina and Caroline, who are similarly at a loss for what to eat, so we pool our collective thoughts and settle upon pizza. Not authentic by any means, but I really need a break from potatoes.
The rain hardens after lunch, making any outdoor exploration of the town an impossibility, so I set myself the task of finding a convivial local pub in which to pass the afternoon. Willie Nelson is standing in the town square as I walk past, chatting to a man who appears to be an Australian tour guide. I can't hear what he's saying, though it's always fun to guess.
“So I was out in the bush hunting for me tea and crikey! There he was, just sittin' around the campfire with a few of his roadies, strummin' his guitar. So I pulled my knife out, sneaked right up behind him, and-”
The rain is now intolerably heavy, forcing me to take shelter in the doorway of a pub on the outskirts of town. I take this as a cue to enter. The narrow doorway opens into a long, cavernous room with soft lighting and mud brick walls; it's immediately clear that I've found my place. The rest of the occupants – all local Czechs - are crowded around the bar, smoking and chatting with the bartender. A toddler is pushing an ashtray around on the counter as the tinny stereo speakers blast out that horrible song about kissing girls and liking it. It's always disappointing to visit a new country expecting to experience at least a sampling of the local culture, only to discover they're all listening to the same over-commercialised shite you'd hear in Royal Oak mall on a Saturday afternoon.
Everyone stops and stares at me – the toddler included – as I approach the barmaid. Pressure's on, Max. Better not stuff it up.
“Errr, one Budvar please”.
“Budvar, big?”
“Yes please”.
“20 koruna”.
Less than a Euro for a pint of Budvar. I want to pay her more, just as a token of my appreciation for giving the world this wonderful, hoppy brew. You'd pay seven bucks for a stubby of six-month-old Budvar back home, and here I've got a pint of the fresh stuff.
I find it comforting, and strangely gratifying, to know that generations of Czechs have been getting pissed in these very same environs since time immemorial. The décor has a wonderful timeless quality to it: lanterns hang from the curved ceiling, a hat stand adorns the corner and the walls are covered with agricultural tools – weigh scales, scythes, pitchforks – hark back to a bygone era long before the tourist dollar fed the beating heart of the town. It's just a shame about that bloody radio behind the bar. We're now being subjected to “Travelin' Man” by Ricky Nelson. At least it has lyrics that I can closely relate to, apart from all the boasting about rampant sex with prostitutes sugar-coated in 1960s pop twee.
“I'm a travelin' man and I've made a lot of stops all over the world,
And in every port I own the heart of at least one lovely girl.
I've a pretty senorita waitin' for me down in old Mexico
And if you're ever in Alaska stop and see my cute little Eskimo”
I drain my glass and make my way back to the bar for an all-but-free refill. Don't they prefer to be called “Inuits” these days?
Back at the table with my fresh pint, I open my guide book and discover that the town's history is almost too complex and diverse to follow, even while approximately sober. An important trading post along the Vltavy River since the 6th century, the area was controlled by the noble Czech Slavníkovci family until they were slaughtered by the rival Přemyslovci family in AD 995, in what may be a chilling foreshadowing of the murder of the MacDonalds by the Campbells at Glencoe in 1692. Since then, the town has alternatively fallen into the hands of the Rosenburgs, the Habsburgs, the Eggenburgs, the Czechs, the Austrians and latterly, the Australians.
I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why there are so many bloody Aussies in this town. It's not like it's a place that's renowned for having great surf, easy women and Sizzlers outlets. Nor does there appear to be any historical link between Bohemia and 'Straya. Yet I once again find myself surrounded by them as I embark upon my tipsy stagger back to the hostel, their goofy grins and Map-of-Noosa t-shirts sticking out through the rain and gathering gloom. On every street corner there's an Aussie couple, putting at a shop front or building and saying things like “corker, mate!”, or “grouse!” (ok, I lie, I've never actually heard an Australian say “grouse” outside of the Hardware House advertising jingle). My best guess is that Cesky Krumlov recently got a mention in a prominent Australian travel magazine or TV show. “Yeah, this town is like, totally wicked, mate! The sheilas are terrific and you can get a mad feed of steak for a corker of a price. It's like, fully sick, mate!”. Fair enough, but did anyone think to ask the poor locals whether they wanted them here?
***
Digging a moat to protect one's castle is a successful and time-honoured practice throughout the Old World. But what happens when your castle is built in a pronounced slope? The builders of Cesky Krumlov's impressive castle dug a moat around it alright, but instead of filling it with water, they filled it with bears. One of them is looking up at me now, with a singular hatred in his eye that says “don't even think about falling off that wide, safe pedestrian bridge and down into here”. With a grin and a salute, I heed his advice and carry on into the castle grounds.
It's just before 9 on my last morning in Cesky Krumlov and I'm on my way to the castle tower for a bird's eye view of the town. For all the thrills that adventure tourism can provide, the rush that I get by walking up a tower and looking down on something is all the fun I need in a holiday. The ticket booth appears to be unmanned, although as I approach it a gruff looking old man appears in the window.
“One student, please”.
“Your card, please”.
He takes a good, long, had stare at the card, then at me, then at the card again. As if it really matters who I am. It's a tower, for fuck's sake.
“Where is Otago?”, he asks suspiciously.
“In New Zealand”.
Suddenly an entirely different complexion comes over him. He's all smiles and exaggerated hand gestures. “Ahhh, New Zealand! I love New Zealand! Very, very beautiful country”.
“Well, you have a lovely country here too”, I reply.
“Is nothing like New Zealand! I am wanting to go there one day”.
“You should. Is the tower not open yet?”
“For you, my friend, it's open. Five Euro please. Ok, go. Go New Zealand!”
It's another miserable, cloudy day, but that does little to spoil the vista from the top. I have an uninterrupted view of the town and the dramatically arcing river that runs through and around it. People scurry about ant-like through the narrow alleys and in and out of the quaint little rows of houses. With no other tourists here to spoil the moment, I imagine being a medieval watchman surveying the hills beyond the town and scanning for any signs of an approaching enemy. Then I cast my eye westwards towards the new town that sits a mile or so away on the hill, a depressing jumble of gas stations, soullessly identical apartment blocks and buses rumbling up and down the hill. It's a stark reminder that even in an untouched historical wonderland such as this, the ugly realities of modern Europe are never that far away.
The old man is waiting for me enthusiastically as I make my way out of the castle. “Where you go next?”, he asks.
“Prague. Will the weather be any better there?”
He shrugs loosely. “It will be same. But you will like it there. I am from Prague. Very good beer”.
“Sounds like I will”, I tell him with a smile. “Well thank you, and have a nice day”.
“You too my friend! Go New Zealand!”. He raises a clenched fist to the air.
“Go New Zealand!” I reply, mimicking his gesture. Isn't it a shame that we don't even love our country as much as the Europeans do?
We were meant to have been picked up in Salzburg by a shuttle and taken directly to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. But due to some unforseen cock-up on the part of the Czech shuttle bus company, our seats were re-sold and we were told there was no space on the shuttle for us. The upshot of it all is that we're now in Linz, having arrived here by train, and in a few short minutes we're going to hook up with the shuttle that didn't have enough room to pick us up in Salzburg but does have enough room to pick us up from Linz. I've given up trying to understand it and I'm now consigned to just going with the flow.
Linz has two major claims to fame, neither of which you will see mentioned on the road signs on the way into town. Firstly, it was Adolf Hitler's favourite town and secondly, it has a kind of cake named after it. This may provide some insight as to why tourists generally opt to give Linz a miss where possible. From where I'm standing, outside the train station, the the town looks as grey and dreary as the sky above it. I cannot speak highly enough, however, of the modern and expansive station; in particular the bookstore on the lower level, which does a nice line in pornography and sudoku books.
I'm just stuffing my new sudoku books into my backpack when the shuttle arrives and out steps the driver, a bulbous man in his 30s with conspicuously low levels of hygiene that are no doubt the envy of all his bus driver mates. With a well-practised gruffness, he hoists our gear into the boot and asks us if we'd like to “go a toilet” before departing, but I've just gone one earlier, so we hop aboard his van without delay.
It's one of those pack-'em-in-like-sardines minivans that in the interests of economy has been spared unnecessary luxuries, like comfortable seats or suspension. In the row in front of us, three middle-aged Japanese Hello Kitty devotees are chatting excitedly in their native tongue. In the front seat alongside the driver are a hippie couple from Australia, who look well into the 60s and are clearly too old to give a toss about what the world thinks of their appearance. The man is dressed in full khaki tramping gear and sports a thick white beard and the most ridiculous combover I've ever seen. What few fertile patches he has left on his melon have been grown out and then tied back over his head into a sweeping ponytail, creating the overall effect that he's just emerged from 30 years living in the Outback and scalped Willie Nelson. Perhaps he has: the remote mountains of the southern Czech Republic seem like he kind of place a fugitive would be headed and besides, you don't hear much from old Willie these days, do you?
“Ahhh, we don't have roads like this back in 'Straya”, he tells the driver enthusiastically. “No bloody cars to drive on 'em!”
“Oh. Really?”. You can tell this piece of news has made the driver's day.
“Yeah mate. Big long dirt roads and not a single bloody car on 'em”.
“I see”.
I had a rough sleep last night, and the rhythmic hammering of my head against the roof of the van is enough to send me into a light slumber. At some stage in the trip, this is interrupted by a loud bang and a series of gasps from the van's occupants. The driver, obviously bored with life and trying to inject some excitement into his day, has taken a corner too quickly and clipped a passing mail truck headed in the opposite direction. What remains of his left side mirror dangles limply, the mirror cracked beyond repair but still in one piece. The driver casually pulls over to the side of the road, reaches across and pats the shards of the mirror back into place, then zooms off again as if it's just a minor inconvenience that happens all the time.
“That'd never happen back in 'Straya!”, Willie Nelson says helpfully. “Big bloody wide roads in 'Straya!”
Straight away I can see I'm going to love Cesky Krumlov. At first glance it appears to be everything that Salzburg wasn't: quaint, picturesque and brimming with character. The entirety of the old town is closed off to vehicle traffic, giving pedestrians free reign over the winding, cobbled streets and alleys. Two church spires – one each side of the river – rise above the twisting rows of ancient houses. Atop the hill behind our hostel stands the most impressive structure of all: the castle and its imposing, uniquely-decorated tower. For the first time on the trip we have a hostel room to ourselves. After satisfying myself that the bathroom is free of used condoms, I lie down and treat myself to a well-earned afternoon nap.
“Welcome to this medieval house where time has stopped. Let's take a seat at the oak table and pause on how we can be inspired by the diet of our ancestors. Although old bohemian cuisine has basically vanished, let us offer you a taste of the past”.
My reading of the restaurant menu's introduction is briefly interrupted by the loud and absorbing conversation taking place in the small room behind us.
“Well today we came from Praaaague? But before that we were in Viennaaaa? And before that we were in Bratislavaaaaa?”
“Oh wow, that sounds great! Yeah we've never been to Oar-strail-ya but we'd love to visit! Are you from Bris-bain or Mel-born?”
A middle-aged American couple are dining with a middle-aged Australian couple in what resembles a kind of perfect storm of irritating travellers. Now they're joined by another Australian couple, who greet the original Australian couple with speechless astonishment, as if they'd never expected to meet people of their own creed so far from home, even though the bastards are everywhere.
I'm doing my best to tune it all out and engage myself in the fascinating menu. We are, after all, in a very peculiar and enchanting place. Tucked away down a narrow cobbled lane, we've found a house caught in some bizarre timewarp. It contains a restaurant that specialises in medieval bohemian cuisine, the owners of which have done everything possible to transport the diner back to the Middle Ages. The interior is wooden and dimly-lit, the décor is sparse; even the waiter is dressed as if he's just sprung forth from my fifth form English illustrated copy of the Canterbury Tales. The music doesn't quite date back to that time period – in fact it's Radiohead – but upon closer listening, Thom Yorke's ethereal wailings do have a kind of primeval quality to them.
“Might I suggest the feast platter for three”, says our waiter, placing a frothing pint of medieval ale in front of me. “It is roasted hare, roasted chicken, roasted pheasant, smoked meat with potato, millet and dumplings”. Well, why not indeed?
As I sip at my entree, a bowl of potato and daisy soup, I read more about the culinary traditions of ancient Bohemia. It's important to know these things. You never know when they might pop up in a job interview, or an episode of “Who Wants To Be Millionaire”.
“The poor usually ate bread with cheese, or onion and soups. The well-off ate fish with a glass of wine or beer. To finish their breakfast they drank a glass of good wine and brandy”. See, living in the Middle Ages doesn't sound nearly as bad as it's made out to be. The trick obviously was not to be one of the poor people.
Our dinner is an absolute visual delight. It arrives on one large platter for the three of us, the various meats stacked high on potato done fifty different ways (actually I lie. It's only about forty-five), with a colourful Bohemian salad in the middle to finish off the dish. Then something else wonderful happens: the Aussies in the next room bugger off, leaving us to enjoy our meal in relative peace. “Can't have too many 'Strayans in one area!”, says the lady as she departs. It's the first intelligent thing she's said all night. The meal is delicious, though if I am honest, it appears that modern Central European cuisine hasn't much deviated from the course set by their medieval ancestors. Plump and satisfied, we follow our Chaucerian waiter down into the bowls of the house to pay the bill. I'm slightly worried that he's going to ask me to hand over a pot of apple wine, a sack of magic beans or perhaps a couple of my goats in exchange for the meal, but it turns out they take Visa.
I can hear the tormented cackling of a witch burning at the stake as we step back out into the grimy, candle lit alley. An old man lies dying of the plague in a nearby doorway. The full moon illuminates the severed heads of traitors on display above the town gate and in the main courtyard, the town crier is ringing a bell as he relays news of the Saxons' crushing defeat in southern Moravia.
I wonder what they put in that medieval beer?
***
I can't say I wasn't warned there would be days like these. Now I'm having flashbacks to that chilly May night in Dunedin when I resolved I would never need any cold weather gear again, and lamenting my insolence.
“Don't you think you should keep some of those jerseys, Max?”, they asked. “You're gonna need them some time, you know”.
“Don't be stupid, you fools!”, I cried jovially as I sipped from my can of Southern Gold while gleefully throwing another sweater on the fire. “There's no rain and cold where I'm going! No bad weather for me ever again! Muhahaha!”.
Fast forward four months to a freezing September morning in the Czech Republic. I'm standing in the street outside our hostel as the rain hammers down upon my hunched over frame. I don't believe in umbrellas, and I don't own a raincoat. The only protection against the cold I've brought is a thin woollen sweater. Across the street, Willie Nelson and his wife are rugged up and peering through the windows of a grocery store. From an ice cream parlour down the road – which will presumably not be doing a roaring trade today – comes the sound of the local radio station cranking the latest Billboard Top 40 hits. I don't recognise the song but it sounds like sounds like that twat from Coldplay whining, as usual, about his vast fortunes and the possibility of Gwyneth leaving him. It seems like no matter where you go in Europe, you can't escape this particularly noxious form of noise pollution.
Cesky Krumlov is an easy town to explore, with most of its highlights found along one long road that crosses the river and joins the old town together. The old town was built along a stretch of the river where it curves so dramatically upon itself in an exaggerated S-bend that the river almost forms two islands, save for a thin strip of land. I set off towards the centre of the old town with the aim of navigating every alleyway without going down the same one twice. The town centre is extremely dense and its open doors and walkways give it a very communal feel. Shop owners setting up tables mingle with local grocers and old ladies out walking their dogs. Presently I find myself wandering down a narrow passageway and into a room which I could swear is someone's private kitchen, and that's because it is. A big pot of soup boils on the stove and a stocky, middle-aged lady looks up at me from her kitchen table with an air of indifference, as if complete strangers walk into her kitchen all the time. I cast my eyes around the room and raise my eyebrows as if to say “nice place you got here”, then turn on my heel and get the hell out.
The stroll up to the castle grounds offers pretty views of the town, the river, and the two German backpackers walking up the hill in front of me. The gardens are expansive, beautifully manicured and once again serve as a reminder that you definitely wanted to find yourself on the right side of the poverty line back in the Middle Ages. There's even a “revolving theatre” - a round grandstand structure with seating for about 200 people, that has been designed to rotate through 360 degrees during stage plays. I'm not sure how that works, since I generally prefer my theatre not to revolve while I'm trying to watch a performance in front of me, but who am I to poke fun at what is probably an ancient Czech ritual. Perhaps I might find some explanation on the sign on the base of the grandstand. Upon closer inspection, it says:
“Místnost ostrahy – Nekuřácké pracoviště”
I don't know what that means either. But a quick glance at my watch confirms my stomach's suspicions that a refuelling mission is in order. What to eat though? We can be fairly sure that the humble spud will be on the agenda. I don't really have much choice in that regard, unfortunately. “Monday special: Right wiener schnitzel of veal haunch, boiled potato”, says a large blackboard outside a culinary tourist trap in the square. No thanks. I walk down an alleyway and find a smaller restaurant pushing “gypsy sausage, sauerkraut, potato”. I don't know why they even bother mentioning that there's potato in it, since potato appears to be a non-negotiable item when it comes to ordering food in Central Europe.
I remember walking past a place called Joe's Living Restaurant last evening, the concept of which intrigues me. Living restaurant? Does this mean the animals are slaughtered at the table and vegetables are ripped out of the garden in front of your eyes? Sadly we will never know, since Joe's Living Restaurant is, ironically enough, not open for business today. Further down the street I find a traditional Bohemian barbecued meat restaurant that my guidebook recommended. A sign in the doorway promises “live entertainment with authentic Bohemian period music”, but they've got Justin Timberlake playing on the radio when I walk in, so I walk back out again. Back on the street I bump into Georgina and Caroline, who are similarly at a loss for what to eat, so we pool our collective thoughts and settle upon pizza. Not authentic by any means, but I really need a break from potatoes.
The rain hardens after lunch, making any outdoor exploration of the town an impossibility, so I set myself the task of finding a convivial local pub in which to pass the afternoon. Willie Nelson is standing in the town square as I walk past, chatting to a man who appears to be an Australian tour guide. I can't hear what he's saying, though it's always fun to guess.
“So I was out in the bush hunting for me tea and crikey! There he was, just sittin' around the campfire with a few of his roadies, strummin' his guitar. So I pulled my knife out, sneaked right up behind him, and-”
The rain is now intolerably heavy, forcing me to take shelter in the doorway of a pub on the outskirts of town. I take this as a cue to enter. The narrow doorway opens into a long, cavernous room with soft lighting and mud brick walls; it's immediately clear that I've found my place. The rest of the occupants – all local Czechs - are crowded around the bar, smoking and chatting with the bartender. A toddler is pushing an ashtray around on the counter as the tinny stereo speakers blast out that horrible song about kissing girls and liking it. It's always disappointing to visit a new country expecting to experience at least a sampling of the local culture, only to discover they're all listening to the same over-commercialised shite you'd hear in Royal Oak mall on a Saturday afternoon.
Everyone stops and stares at me – the toddler included – as I approach the barmaid. Pressure's on, Max. Better not stuff it up.
“Errr, one Budvar please”.
“Budvar, big?”
“Yes please”.
“20 koruna”.
Less than a Euro for a pint of Budvar. I want to pay her more, just as a token of my appreciation for giving the world this wonderful, hoppy brew. You'd pay seven bucks for a stubby of six-month-old Budvar back home, and here I've got a pint of the fresh stuff.
I find it comforting, and strangely gratifying, to know that generations of Czechs have been getting pissed in these very same environs since time immemorial. The décor has a wonderful timeless quality to it: lanterns hang from the curved ceiling, a hat stand adorns the corner and the walls are covered with agricultural tools – weigh scales, scythes, pitchforks – hark back to a bygone era long before the tourist dollar fed the beating heart of the town. It's just a shame about that bloody radio behind the bar. We're now being subjected to “Travelin' Man” by Ricky Nelson. At least it has lyrics that I can closely relate to, apart from all the boasting about rampant sex with prostitutes sugar-coated in 1960s pop twee.
“I'm a travelin' man and I've made a lot of stops all over the world,
And in every port I own the heart of at least one lovely girl.
I've a pretty senorita waitin' for me down in old Mexico
And if you're ever in Alaska stop and see my cute little Eskimo”
I drain my glass and make my way back to the bar for an all-but-free refill. Don't they prefer to be called “Inuits” these days?
Back at the table with my fresh pint, I open my guide book and discover that the town's history is almost too complex and diverse to follow, even while approximately sober. An important trading post along the Vltavy River since the 6th century, the area was controlled by the noble Czech Slavníkovci family until they were slaughtered by the rival Přemyslovci family in AD 995, in what may be a chilling foreshadowing of the murder of the MacDonalds by the Campbells at Glencoe in 1692. Since then, the town has alternatively fallen into the hands of the Rosenburgs, the Habsburgs, the Eggenburgs, the Czechs, the Austrians and latterly, the Australians.
I still haven't gotten to the bottom of why there are so many bloody Aussies in this town. It's not like it's a place that's renowned for having great surf, easy women and Sizzlers outlets. Nor does there appear to be any historical link between Bohemia and 'Straya. Yet I once again find myself surrounded by them as I embark upon my tipsy stagger back to the hostel, their goofy grins and Map-of-Noosa t-shirts sticking out through the rain and gathering gloom. On every street corner there's an Aussie couple, putting at a shop front or building and saying things like “corker, mate!”, or “grouse!” (ok, I lie, I've never actually heard an Australian say “grouse” outside of the Hardware House advertising jingle). My best guess is that Cesky Krumlov recently got a mention in a prominent Australian travel magazine or TV show. “Yeah, this town is like, totally wicked, mate! The sheilas are terrific and you can get a mad feed of steak for a corker of a price. It's like, fully sick, mate!”. Fair enough, but did anyone think to ask the poor locals whether they wanted them here?
***
Digging a moat to protect one's castle is a successful and time-honoured practice throughout the Old World. But what happens when your castle is built in a pronounced slope? The builders of Cesky Krumlov's impressive castle dug a moat around it alright, but instead of filling it with water, they filled it with bears. One of them is looking up at me now, with a singular hatred in his eye that says “don't even think about falling off that wide, safe pedestrian bridge and down into here”. With a grin and a salute, I heed his advice and carry on into the castle grounds.
It's just before 9 on my last morning in Cesky Krumlov and I'm on my way to the castle tower for a bird's eye view of the town. For all the thrills that adventure tourism can provide, the rush that I get by walking up a tower and looking down on something is all the fun I need in a holiday. The ticket booth appears to be unmanned, although as I approach it a gruff looking old man appears in the window.
“One student, please”.
“Your card, please”.
He takes a good, long, had stare at the card, then at me, then at the card again. As if it really matters who I am. It's a tower, for fuck's sake.
“Where is Otago?”, he asks suspiciously.
“In New Zealand”.
Suddenly an entirely different complexion comes over him. He's all smiles and exaggerated hand gestures. “Ahhh, New Zealand! I love New Zealand! Very, very beautiful country”.
“Well, you have a lovely country here too”, I reply.
“Is nothing like New Zealand! I am wanting to go there one day”.
“You should. Is the tower not open yet?”
“For you, my friend, it's open. Five Euro please. Ok, go. Go New Zealand!”
It's another miserable, cloudy day, but that does little to spoil the vista from the top. I have an uninterrupted view of the town and the dramatically arcing river that runs through and around it. People scurry about ant-like through the narrow alleys and in and out of the quaint little rows of houses. With no other tourists here to spoil the moment, I imagine being a medieval watchman surveying the hills beyond the town and scanning for any signs of an approaching enemy. Then I cast my eye westwards towards the new town that sits a mile or so away on the hill, a depressing jumble of gas stations, soullessly identical apartment blocks and buses rumbling up and down the hill. It's a stark reminder that even in an untouched historical wonderland such as this, the ugly realities of modern Europe are never that far away.
The old man is waiting for me enthusiastically as I make my way out of the castle. “Where you go next?”, he asks.
“Prague. Will the weather be any better there?”
He shrugs loosely. “It will be same. But you will like it there. I am from Prague. Very good beer”.
“Sounds like I will”, I tell him with a smile. “Well thank you, and have a nice day”.
“You too my friend! Go New Zealand!”. He raises a clenched fist to the air.
“Go New Zealand!” I reply, mimicking his gesture. Isn't it a shame that we don't even love our country as much as the Europeans do?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Salzburg
Imagine a typical household scene involving mother and child that could take place in any town in any country in any part of the world. It's late afternoon and mother is working in the kitchen when twelve-year-old Billy comes bounding through the door, not a care in the world.
“Where on earth have you been, young Billy?”, asks the concerned mother.
“Fucking!”, comes the eager reply.
You can picture this going downhill pretty fast. Pity the poor mothers, then, of the small western Austrian town of Fucking, for whom such conversations are a daily occurrence.
Yes, there is a town called Fucking. Well, not so much of a town as a collection of houses 20 miles up the road from Salzburg with the most frequently-stolen roadsign in Central Europe. So bad was the sign theft getting that in 2004 a referendum was held on changing the small town's name. Its hardy – and probably giggling – residents opted to maintain the status quo, much to the presumable chagrin of Billy's mother. Personally, I'm glad the town kept its name. While most visitors (Georgina and Caroline included) come to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour and general associated gaiety, I have no problem putting my hand up and professing that I've only come here for Fucking.
That's if I survive the train ride from Lake Bled. Just our luck that we've picked to get on a carriage of weirdos and misfits that wouldn't be out of place on a circus train. Seated a few rows ahead of me is the fattest man I've ever seen. He's also the tallest man I've ever seen. I'd swear he was some sort of freakshow escapee, except he's wearing quite a fancy suit. Perhaps he's trying to go incognito. The seat behind me was occupied by some tosser listening to trance music – which seems a strange choice of genre for someone who is patently not in a nightclub and presumably not on drugs – but he's got up and been replaced by a … you know, one of them. It's not a he, it's not a she, it's somewhere in between. It's tall, has long grey hair in the immortal words of Ray Davies, “walks like a woman but talks like a man”. He/she talks loudly too, and is currently berating the poor elderly man across the aisle from her/him in Austrian. A man wearing a kilt has just come in from the front carriage, walked down the aisle to the rear carriage and back again, which puzzles me because I thought this train had come from Dubrovnik, not Dunfermline. There's obviously been a mass-breakout from somewhere with barbed wire and padded walls – a sort of 21st century Great Escape - and all the escapees are making their play for freedom upon this train.
But strangest of all is the man standing in the aisle next to my seat, gazing mournfully out at the countryside as it whizzes by. His sweater puts me in mind of David Bain and his morose, glazed-over look is consistent with a man whose entire family has just been shot. He's silent and stoic, his only movement the occasional raising of the elbow to take a sip from his can of Hollandia. I wish I could join him in that regard, but I've promised myself I wouldn't drink any beer before 11am. Not until we get to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, anyways. Once we're there all bets are off.
I do however have in my possession a bottle of wonderfully-titled Almdudler. It's a kind of fruity Austrian soft drink, with an L&P-meets-Appletise zing to it. It would appear - certainly from the packaging anyway - that consuming this stuff transforms a man into an irresistible sex machine, and I have no reason to doubt it. The label illustration features a strong, strapping Austrian mountain man in a green suit with a thick mop of brown hair partially covered by a wide-brimmed green hat with a white ribbon flapping gaily in the breeze. Clinking glasses with him is a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein, also decked out in a wide-brimmed green hat. She's fixing him with a look of pure mischief that says “once you've finished consuming that refreshing, lightly-carbonated beverage, I'm gonna take you back to the log cabin and do things to you that will make you scream for mercy”. It's a look I've seen a few times before, though not as often as I'd have liked, and never from a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. A few more bottles of Almdudler and that is bound to change.
Back on the train, and the mournful starer has moved closer to me so that he's almost standing directly over me. It's impossible for me to pretend not to notice him, yet he has given no indication of acknowledging my existence, which leaves me in the socially-awkward position of not knowing whether to say hello or not. Besides this, I don't know whether we're in Austria or Slovenia and I'm not familiar with cross-border language protocol, so wouldn't know which language in which to greet him. Eventually I come to the compromise decision of playing the dumb tourist card and greeting him in English.
“Hello”.
He looks down and regards me for a long while with a face betraying a mixture of blankness, surprise and confusion, like John Key at the front of a fast food queue. Then he takes another sip of his beer and resumes his silent vigil out the window. I glance outside myself and it's just the same countryside we've been passing through for hours: towering, snowy peaks plunging into wooded valleys with meandering streams. It's like New Zealand but with more church steeples and less roadside barns selling horse poo for $3 a bag.
Salzburg greets us under a grey, murky sky and for the first time since leaving London, there's a nasty chill in the air. There's more bad news waiting for me when we arrive at the hostel. It turns out that the guy who runs the tours from the hostel to Fucking has fucking broken his fucking leg, and so the fucking Fucking tour has been fucking postponed in-fucking-definitely. Gosh darn it!
“Well, is it worth trying to get there under my steam?”, I ask the receptionist, who incidentally happens to be a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. Too bad I've thrown out that bottle of Almdudler or else I'd have had her swinging from the chandeliers in ten minutes flat.
“Not really”, she replies. “Well, it would take you a long time to go there. You would have to be changing buses three times, and then some walking”.
“But what's the town like? Is it worth it?”
“The town, it is nothing. There is just a big swamp … and the sign”. She smiles knowingly
“Ok, well thank you anyway”.
I feel crushed by this news, like a schoolkid who's shown up for his mate's birthday party a day late and missed all the fun. My Fucking dreams are at an end. Who knows if I'll ever be here again. I could die a Fucking virgin.
Still, this is Salzburg and there must be other ways for a man – even one who has never seen The Sound Of Music – to entertain himself. After all, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Wolfgang Mozart and an important regional centre since Roman times. Not that much of this history is on proud display this particular afternoon. The fortress Hohensalzburg towers imposingly above the old town as it has for the past 900 years, but the fascinating history of the town itself has been swamped by the tourists pouring through every narrow, cobbled street and alleyway with ceaseless vigour. Turkish restaurants and hot dog stalls line every street. “Live Premiership Football” scream billboards outside Irish and English pubs. Fair enough I suppose, why would you spend your Saturday afternoons eating kebabs and watching football in a pub on the rain-soaked streets of Blackburn, Bolton or Wigan when you could watch it in a pub on the rain-stoked streets of Salzburg? The beer's better here, for one thing.
I leave the old town and walk east along the river, and quickly find myself in a run-down industrial neighbourhood. The main theme of this no doubt once-picturesque river is concrete: concrete banks, concrete piers, wide concrete walkways on either side. A cluster of unsavoury-looking teenagers are congregating around a large concrete skateboard ramp. This is the part of Salzburg that they obviously don't want the tourists to see. It's too bad that at the part of Salzburg they do want the tourists to see, you can't see a thing because of all the bloody tourists in the way.
It's not until I get back to my four-bed dorm room that I sense my luck beginning to turn. There's no one else there, but on the bunk bed below me, the occupant has placed a Billabong bag, a tank top and the shortest pair of denim shorts I've ever seen. Thus far our random dorm mates have all proven to be less-than-wholesome characters – a farting Singaporean in Vienna, a socially-retarded, monobrowed Czech in Ljubljana, Stefan in Budapest – so the discovery that I'm sharing a room with a shapely Aussie girl with (probably) loose morals is a pleasant one indeed. You can only imagine my disappointment when the two other occupants – a 30-something couple from Wellington – walk through the door. Still, they're friendly enough, and obviously won't be keeping me up all night playing drinking games.
“We just had three weeks in London. It was two weeks too long”, says the man, whose pale complexion confirms that he did not once see the sun in that time.
“Yeah, I know the feeling”, I reply. “What have you guys been up to in this area?”
“We went to some ice caves today”, says the woman. “It was pretty cold! Not sure I'd recommend it”.
And what of the Sound of Music tour? Any plans to visit Fucking?
“Haha, nah. It's just a few houses and a sign in the middle of a swamp”.
We all agree that we miss New Zealand with its friendly, uncomplicated locals, low crime, and the way you don't have to auction off body parts to have enough cash to make it from town to town.
“The Sound of Music tour was pretty shit, by the way”, says the man. I could've told him that before he even went. We're about to switch off the lights when the Australian girl, owner of the skimpy denim shorts, returns home for the evening. Turns out she's ugly, and can't speak English properly. No loss.
***
“Yeah, London is great, yeah! I love it how all the museums, are like, free? So you can go as many times as you want? Ohhh I love the Tate Modern, I went there three times? Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I'm like, a young 'Strayan female? So I end all my sentences with question marks? Even when they're not questions?”
If there hasn't been scientific research conducted into why Australian accents carry over the top of everyone else's, there bloody well should be. Maybe then we'd stand a chance of putting a stop to the phenomenon. The hostel dining room is abuzz with excited chatter, but all that can be heard with clarity is a porky Australian girl in the corner telling a bored-looking Scotsman about her time in London. The Scot probably had some loose designs on getting in her pants when he initiated the conversation, but now that it's clear she's of about as much interest as a game of Six Nations rugby, he's resigned to just sitting impassively, nodding occasionally looking at his watch, like a bored office worker hanging out for the five o'clock bell. Back at our table, my “Authetic Austrian Breakfast” is making pretty dubious claims to originality considering it's just scrambled eggs with some ham, onion and tomato mixed through, but I'm prepared to give the chef the benefit of the doubt.
It's another overcast day, and the girls have headed off early to embark on their Sound of Music guided tour. They asked me again this morning whether I would like to tag along but I declined, citing far more important business to attend to. The Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations decider is on this afternoon and I have to find a pub in which to watch it. Logically, the first place to look would be the Aussie-themed pub on the outskirts of the Old Town. It's manned by a solitary Australian behind the bar, with a goatee that he's waited until his OE to start growing because he knows he'd get too much shit about it from his mates if he grew one at home.
“You'll be showing the rugby here this arvo, mate?”, I ask in a neutral accent.
“Ahhhh, I dunno if we have the channel, mate”, he says with furrowed brow.
“Well what is gonna be on then?”
“Um, Premiership football probably. It's a Saturday”. He flicks through his TV guide. “Yeah. Newcastle against Hull”. Jesus.
“But this is an Aussie pub, right?”
“Ahhh. Yeah, it is. Sorry mate”.
That's shithouse, mate, I think to myself as I step back out into the gloomy afternoon light. My hasty reconnoitres around the English and Irish pubs in the area also come to nothing. Newcastle v Hull is obviously the premier sporting fixture anywhere in the world this afternoon, and if that's what brings the crowd in, so be it. But we're rapidly approaching kickoff in the rugby and the thought of missing out on seeing our boys give the Ockers a hiding has me in a mild panic. Only one thing for it. I'll go back to the hostel and follow the action via live text commentary.
I suppose you might say that sitting in an internet room as live text updates of a rugby game pop up every ninety seconds or so isn't exactly your idea of a swell time in Europe, but I merely see it as doing my patriotic duty for the country. After all, what did Kiwis and Aussies on their OE do before the wonders of internet and satellite TV came along? Were they too busy sinking Guinness and shagging local sheilas to care about these vital rugby clashes, or did they sit huddled around a radio listening intently? I'm fairly sure it would be the latter. At any rate, the updates tell the story of a see-saw match in which first we take the lead, then the Aussies sieze control, then the good guys go on a three-try burst and hold off a late rally from the convicts to win 28-24 and retain the Bledisloe Cup. My fellow travellers in the computer room look up curiously as I dance around the room making suppressed whooping noises, before eventually taking my seat again and triumphantly punching the air and banging my fists excitedly on the desk. If only they could understand the unbridled joy and raw emotion of watching your team win rugby's second-biggest trophy via text update.
And in the other big match of the day, Hull won 2-1.
***
It's our last morning in Salzburg as I walk into the bathroom and find a used condom on the floor. Wow. It's quite the shocking discovery – like finding a hair in your risotto, only slightly less personal – and it's shaken my faith in humankind to its very foundations. What, pray tell, would possibly compel two human beings (sober or otherwise) to engage in sexual congress in a confined space that plays host to germs and other filthy rot from naked backpackers the world over? What kind of people could be so morally depraved and ethically bankrupt as to do the wild monkey dance in a public bathroom and then leave the condom proudly on display like a steaming dog turd in an upmarket fashion store? Oh yeah, our friends across the ditch.
When events like this occur, it's hard not to let them tarnish your overall experience of a place or trip. Like that time in Tauranga mall when a seven-year-old Max put a coin into a love tester and, to his sheer horror, the machine began making all sorts of loud siren noises that caused everyone to stop and stare. Or our weekend away in Whangerei in '93 when my brother smacked his head open on the side of the Hamburgler's head in a McDonald's playground and we spent most of the night in an A&E ward. Which, granted, is probably one of the safer places to spend a Friday night in the far north.
Not that Salzburg appears to have much going for it in the first place. The old town, wedged precariously as it is between the river on two sides and hills on the other two, is just too compact and full of tourists to showcase any of its ancient charm. Across the river is the impressive Palace of Mirabell with its elegant gardens, and the fortress Hohensalzburg cuts an imposing figure upon the skyline to the north, but much of the rest of the city is the same nondescript jumble of heavy industry and characterless buildings that you'd find anywhere across Central Europe. If you don't like The Sound Of Music, or watching unimportant football games in Irish pubs, it's probably worth giving this corner of Austria a miss.
There's one final gutting piece of news awaiting me as we pack our bags and head for the train station.
“I overheard these four Aussie guys talking down here just before you came down”, Caroline says. “They were about to go and rent a car and drive to Fucking for the day”.
“They were going to fucking? When??”
“They were going to rent the car just now”.
“I could've gone with them! They left already?”
“Yeah, just then”.
Fucking hell.
“Where on earth have you been, young Billy?”, asks the concerned mother.
“Fucking!”, comes the eager reply.
You can picture this going downhill pretty fast. Pity the poor mothers, then, of the small western Austrian town of Fucking, for whom such conversations are a daily occurrence.
Yes, there is a town called Fucking. Well, not so much of a town as a collection of houses 20 miles up the road from Salzburg with the most frequently-stolen roadsign in Central Europe. So bad was the sign theft getting that in 2004 a referendum was held on changing the small town's name. Its hardy – and probably giggling – residents opted to maintain the status quo, much to the presumable chagrin of Billy's mother. Personally, I'm glad the town kept its name. While most visitors (Georgina and Caroline included) come to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour and general associated gaiety, I have no problem putting my hand up and professing that I've only come here for Fucking.
That's if I survive the train ride from Lake Bled. Just our luck that we've picked to get on a carriage of weirdos and misfits that wouldn't be out of place on a circus train. Seated a few rows ahead of me is the fattest man I've ever seen. He's also the tallest man I've ever seen. I'd swear he was some sort of freakshow escapee, except he's wearing quite a fancy suit. Perhaps he's trying to go incognito. The seat behind me was occupied by some tosser listening to trance music – which seems a strange choice of genre for someone who is patently not in a nightclub and presumably not on drugs – but he's got up and been replaced by a … you know, one of them. It's not a he, it's not a she, it's somewhere in between. It's tall, has long grey hair in the immortal words of Ray Davies, “walks like a woman but talks like a man”. He/she talks loudly too, and is currently berating the poor elderly man across the aisle from her/him in Austrian. A man wearing a kilt has just come in from the front carriage, walked down the aisle to the rear carriage and back again, which puzzles me because I thought this train had come from Dubrovnik, not Dunfermline. There's obviously been a mass-breakout from somewhere with barbed wire and padded walls – a sort of 21st century Great Escape - and all the escapees are making their play for freedom upon this train.
But strangest of all is the man standing in the aisle next to my seat, gazing mournfully out at the countryside as it whizzes by. His sweater puts me in mind of David Bain and his morose, glazed-over look is consistent with a man whose entire family has just been shot. He's silent and stoic, his only movement the occasional raising of the elbow to take a sip from his can of Hollandia. I wish I could join him in that regard, but I've promised myself I wouldn't drink any beer before 11am. Not until we get to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, anyways. Once we're there all bets are off.
I do however have in my possession a bottle of wonderfully-titled Almdudler. It's a kind of fruity Austrian soft drink, with an L&P-meets-Appletise zing to it. It would appear - certainly from the packaging anyway - that consuming this stuff transforms a man into an irresistible sex machine, and I have no reason to doubt it. The label illustration features a strong, strapping Austrian mountain man in a green suit with a thick mop of brown hair partially covered by a wide-brimmed green hat with a white ribbon flapping gaily in the breeze. Clinking glasses with him is a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein, also decked out in a wide-brimmed green hat. She's fixing him with a look of pure mischief that says “once you've finished consuming that refreshing, lightly-carbonated beverage, I'm gonna take you back to the log cabin and do things to you that will make you scream for mercy”. It's a look I've seen a few times before, though not as often as I'd have liked, and never from a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. A few more bottles of Almdudler and that is bound to change.
Back on the train, and the mournful starer has moved closer to me so that he's almost standing directly over me. It's impossible for me to pretend not to notice him, yet he has given no indication of acknowledging my existence, which leaves me in the socially-awkward position of not knowing whether to say hello or not. Besides this, I don't know whether we're in Austria or Slovenia and I'm not familiar with cross-border language protocol, so wouldn't know which language in which to greet him. Eventually I come to the compromise decision of playing the dumb tourist card and greeting him in English.
“Hello”.
He looks down and regards me for a long while with a face betraying a mixture of blankness, surprise and confusion, like John Key at the front of a fast food queue. Then he takes another sip of his beer and resumes his silent vigil out the window. I glance outside myself and it's just the same countryside we've been passing through for hours: towering, snowy peaks plunging into wooded valleys with meandering streams. It's like New Zealand but with more church steeples and less roadside barns selling horse poo for $3 a bag.
Salzburg greets us under a grey, murky sky and for the first time since leaving London, there's a nasty chill in the air. There's more bad news waiting for me when we arrive at the hostel. It turns out that the guy who runs the tours from the hostel to Fucking has fucking broken his fucking leg, and so the fucking Fucking tour has been fucking postponed in-fucking-definitely. Gosh darn it!
“Well, is it worth trying to get there under my steam?”, I ask the receptionist, who incidentally happens to be a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. Too bad I've thrown out that bottle of Almdudler or else I'd have had her swinging from the chandeliers in ten minutes flat.
“Not really”, she replies. “Well, it would take you a long time to go there. You would have to be changing buses three times, and then some walking”.
“But what's the town like? Is it worth it?”
“The town, it is nothing. There is just a big swamp … and the sign”. She smiles knowingly
“Ok, well thank you anyway”.
I feel crushed by this news, like a schoolkid who's shown up for his mate's birthday party a day late and missed all the fun. My Fucking dreams are at an end. Who knows if I'll ever be here again. I could die a Fucking virgin.
Still, this is Salzburg and there must be other ways for a man – even one who has never seen The Sound Of Music – to entertain himself. After all, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Wolfgang Mozart and an important regional centre since Roman times. Not that much of this history is on proud display this particular afternoon. The fortress Hohensalzburg towers imposingly above the old town as it has for the past 900 years, but the fascinating history of the town itself has been swamped by the tourists pouring through every narrow, cobbled street and alleyway with ceaseless vigour. Turkish restaurants and hot dog stalls line every street. “Live Premiership Football” scream billboards outside Irish and English pubs. Fair enough I suppose, why would you spend your Saturday afternoons eating kebabs and watching football in a pub on the rain-soaked streets of Blackburn, Bolton or Wigan when you could watch it in a pub on the rain-stoked streets of Salzburg? The beer's better here, for one thing.
I leave the old town and walk east along the river, and quickly find myself in a run-down industrial neighbourhood. The main theme of this no doubt once-picturesque river is concrete: concrete banks, concrete piers, wide concrete walkways on either side. A cluster of unsavoury-looking teenagers are congregating around a large concrete skateboard ramp. This is the part of Salzburg that they obviously don't want the tourists to see. It's too bad that at the part of Salzburg they do want the tourists to see, you can't see a thing because of all the bloody tourists in the way.
It's not until I get back to my four-bed dorm room that I sense my luck beginning to turn. There's no one else there, but on the bunk bed below me, the occupant has placed a Billabong bag, a tank top and the shortest pair of denim shorts I've ever seen. Thus far our random dorm mates have all proven to be less-than-wholesome characters – a farting Singaporean in Vienna, a socially-retarded, monobrowed Czech in Ljubljana, Stefan in Budapest – so the discovery that I'm sharing a room with a shapely Aussie girl with (probably) loose morals is a pleasant one indeed. You can only imagine my disappointment when the two other occupants – a 30-something couple from Wellington – walk through the door. Still, they're friendly enough, and obviously won't be keeping me up all night playing drinking games.
“We just had three weeks in London. It was two weeks too long”, says the man, whose pale complexion confirms that he did not once see the sun in that time.
“Yeah, I know the feeling”, I reply. “What have you guys been up to in this area?”
“We went to some ice caves today”, says the woman. “It was pretty cold! Not sure I'd recommend it”.
And what of the Sound of Music tour? Any plans to visit Fucking?
“Haha, nah. It's just a few houses and a sign in the middle of a swamp”.
We all agree that we miss New Zealand with its friendly, uncomplicated locals, low crime, and the way you don't have to auction off body parts to have enough cash to make it from town to town.
“The Sound of Music tour was pretty shit, by the way”, says the man. I could've told him that before he even went. We're about to switch off the lights when the Australian girl, owner of the skimpy denim shorts, returns home for the evening. Turns out she's ugly, and can't speak English properly. No loss.
***
“Yeah, London is great, yeah! I love it how all the museums, are like, free? So you can go as many times as you want? Ohhh I love the Tate Modern, I went there three times? Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I'm like, a young 'Strayan female? So I end all my sentences with question marks? Even when they're not questions?”
If there hasn't been scientific research conducted into why Australian accents carry over the top of everyone else's, there bloody well should be. Maybe then we'd stand a chance of putting a stop to the phenomenon. The hostel dining room is abuzz with excited chatter, but all that can be heard with clarity is a porky Australian girl in the corner telling a bored-looking Scotsman about her time in London. The Scot probably had some loose designs on getting in her pants when he initiated the conversation, but now that it's clear she's of about as much interest as a game of Six Nations rugby, he's resigned to just sitting impassively, nodding occasionally looking at his watch, like a bored office worker hanging out for the five o'clock bell. Back at our table, my “Authetic Austrian Breakfast” is making pretty dubious claims to originality considering it's just scrambled eggs with some ham, onion and tomato mixed through, but I'm prepared to give the chef the benefit of the doubt.
It's another overcast day, and the girls have headed off early to embark on their Sound of Music guided tour. They asked me again this morning whether I would like to tag along but I declined, citing far more important business to attend to. The Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations decider is on this afternoon and I have to find a pub in which to watch it. Logically, the first place to look would be the Aussie-themed pub on the outskirts of the Old Town. It's manned by a solitary Australian behind the bar, with a goatee that he's waited until his OE to start growing because he knows he'd get too much shit about it from his mates if he grew one at home.
“You'll be showing the rugby here this arvo, mate?”, I ask in a neutral accent.
“Ahhhh, I dunno if we have the channel, mate”, he says with furrowed brow.
“Well what is gonna be on then?”
“Um, Premiership football probably. It's a Saturday”. He flicks through his TV guide. “Yeah. Newcastle against Hull”. Jesus.
“But this is an Aussie pub, right?”
“Ahhh. Yeah, it is. Sorry mate”.
That's shithouse, mate, I think to myself as I step back out into the gloomy afternoon light. My hasty reconnoitres around the English and Irish pubs in the area also come to nothing. Newcastle v Hull is obviously the premier sporting fixture anywhere in the world this afternoon, and if that's what brings the crowd in, so be it. But we're rapidly approaching kickoff in the rugby and the thought of missing out on seeing our boys give the Ockers a hiding has me in a mild panic. Only one thing for it. I'll go back to the hostel and follow the action via live text commentary.
I suppose you might say that sitting in an internet room as live text updates of a rugby game pop up every ninety seconds or so isn't exactly your idea of a swell time in Europe, but I merely see it as doing my patriotic duty for the country. After all, what did Kiwis and Aussies on their OE do before the wonders of internet and satellite TV came along? Were they too busy sinking Guinness and shagging local sheilas to care about these vital rugby clashes, or did they sit huddled around a radio listening intently? I'm fairly sure it would be the latter. At any rate, the updates tell the story of a see-saw match in which first we take the lead, then the Aussies sieze control, then the good guys go on a three-try burst and hold off a late rally from the convicts to win 28-24 and retain the Bledisloe Cup. My fellow travellers in the computer room look up curiously as I dance around the room making suppressed whooping noises, before eventually taking my seat again and triumphantly punching the air and banging my fists excitedly on the desk. If only they could understand the unbridled joy and raw emotion of watching your team win rugby's second-biggest trophy via text update.
And in the other big match of the day, Hull won 2-1.
***
It's our last morning in Salzburg as I walk into the bathroom and find a used condom on the floor. Wow. It's quite the shocking discovery – like finding a hair in your risotto, only slightly less personal – and it's shaken my faith in humankind to its very foundations. What, pray tell, would possibly compel two human beings (sober or otherwise) to engage in sexual congress in a confined space that plays host to germs and other filthy rot from naked backpackers the world over? What kind of people could be so morally depraved and ethically bankrupt as to do the wild monkey dance in a public bathroom and then leave the condom proudly on display like a steaming dog turd in an upmarket fashion store? Oh yeah, our friends across the ditch.
When events like this occur, it's hard not to let them tarnish your overall experience of a place or trip. Like that time in Tauranga mall when a seven-year-old Max put a coin into a love tester and, to his sheer horror, the machine began making all sorts of loud siren noises that caused everyone to stop and stare. Or our weekend away in Whangerei in '93 when my brother smacked his head open on the side of the Hamburgler's head in a McDonald's playground and we spent most of the night in an A&E ward. Which, granted, is probably one of the safer places to spend a Friday night in the far north.
Not that Salzburg appears to have much going for it in the first place. The old town, wedged precariously as it is between the river on two sides and hills on the other two, is just too compact and full of tourists to showcase any of its ancient charm. Across the river is the impressive Palace of Mirabell with its elegant gardens, and the fortress Hohensalzburg cuts an imposing figure upon the skyline to the north, but much of the rest of the city is the same nondescript jumble of heavy industry and characterless buildings that you'd find anywhere across Central Europe. If you don't like The Sound Of Music, or watching unimportant football games in Irish pubs, it's probably worth giving this corner of Austria a miss.
There's one final gutting piece of news awaiting me as we pack our bags and head for the train station.
“I overheard these four Aussie guys talking down here just before you came down”, Caroline says. “They were about to go and rent a car and drive to Fucking for the day”.
“They were going to fucking? When??”
“They were going to rent the car just now”.
“I could've gone with them! They left already?”
“Yeah, just then”.
Fucking hell.
Lake Bled
“Why should we lie still?”, asks the Slovenian travel brochure I've picked up from the hostel office. It's a good question, and one I dare not think about too hard lest I decide never to get out of bed again. So I read on. “Natural beauties and fresh Alpine air are inviting you to take highly active holidays. Rowing and surfing on the lake, angling, kayaking and rafting on the Alpine rivers, riding in nature and climbing the surrounding mountains, cycling and golfing, ballooning and parachute gliding”...
Cripes, you'd need a holiday for sure after all that. Just thinking about it makes me feel like a beer. So I put down the brochure and walk across the street to the supermarket, where for 50 Euro cents I purchase a can of something that tastes like it's been brewed in the store room out the back (and upon closer inspection of the can, it has) and take it back to my sun-lit hostel room. The proprietor, a tall slender woman in her 30s, is talking to the girls about something. She is a wonderfully cheerful lady and bears a startling resemblance to an older Cassie from Home And Away, except that she speaks better English than Cassie. Knowing we'd arrive during her lunch hour, she left a key and a friendly message for us at reception. It's hard to imagine Cassie ever being that hospitable.
Indeed, every person I've met so far in Slovenia has been warm, friendly and thankfully multilingual. After becoming instantly lost while making the 200-metre journey from the train station to our hostel in Ljubljana last evening, we were stopped three times in as many minutes by kind strangers who were only too happy to provide directions. Never mind that none of them knew the way either, it still gave us a warm fuzzy feeling you wouldn't get in many other parts of Europe. We had dinner at a pizzeria on the river where our waiter – a polite, dapper young man – brought us pizzas so large they wouldn't have fit on an average European plate.
“You don't have to eat it all, you know”, Caroline said.
“Yes I do” I replied through gritted teeth, driven on by the the sad visage of a million starving refugee children tut-tutting if I let so much as a scrap go to waste.
Now we are in Lake Bled, a stunningly beautiful lakeside alpine town that the tourists haven't discovered yet. It's a bit like a Slovenian Queenstown, but with castles instead of cafes. I notice a good sprinkling of bars and traditional restaurants as I walk down through the main drag in search of an ATM. There are a few shops selling tourist tat, but they're not quite as garish and in-your-face as they are in Queenstown. I can see a casino around the shoreline, which is good news for now as there is bound to be an ATM nearby, but may be bad news later when I've had a few beers. I locate the ATM outside a cafe across the road, put my card and pin in, and signify my intent withdraw money.
“TRANSACTION CANCELLED”, it says, and spits my card out. Interesting. Lucky for me I've got a plan B.
“Oi! Just work, ya bastard!”, I yell, slapping the screen admonishingly. An American lady in tight white pants and a floral shirt looks up from her coffee. I repeat the card-and-pin trick and it goes through it's usual “please wait while we waste your time and piss you and everyone else behind you in the line” routine again.
“TRANSACTION CANCELLED”. Oh dear, this is a setback. I don't know quite what to do now. I don't have a Plan C. To be honest, I hadn't even considered the eventuality of Plan B working. I do remember passing a gas station on the bus on the way in, and so I make my way up the hill in its direction, a sudden feeling of dread settling upon my shoulders like the stifling afternoon heat.
The gas station is there alright, and it has an ATM, but it won't give me money either. Nor will the one across the road. I have next to no cash left, just a smattering of coins in each pocket left over from Vienna. This is bad, really bad. But it's how a man reacts in these situations that is a true measure of his pedigree. What's the old chestnut, legends aren't born, they're made?
I'm just about ready to cry and demand to be taken home to my mummy by the time I get back to the hostel and break the bad news to the girls. But I somehow manage to hold it together and keep a sound mind. With the intention of purchasing essential supplies, I walk back over to the supermarket with my handful of remaining coins. Almost immediately I bump into a display stand and let go of the coins, sending them bouncing off the floor in all directions, many into irretrievable positions under benches and shelves. With what little I'm able to regather, I make my purchase and return to the hostel. God willing these four beers, two packets of chips and a banana will keep me alive until sunup tomorrow, by which time the ATM gods will hopefully be smiling upon me once more.
***
One of the most astute parenting decisions my folks ever made was to put up a map of the world in the bathroom. This may seem like a fairly inconsequential matter to a five-year-old, but my hours spent in the dunny while my mates rolled around in the mud and chased seagulls led me to become the proud geography afficionado I am today. Trouble is, that now-famous map was printed before the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, and so Slovenia did not appear on it. It pains me greatly to admit that, when I heard we'd be visiting there, I needed to check my atlas to work out where the bloody place was.
Slovenia. It's not Slovakia and it's not Venice, nor is it anything like either of those places. It's a former Yugoslav republic, sandwiched between Italy, Austria, Croatia and a small stretch of Adriatic coast. Of all the ex-Yugoslav states it is by far the most progressive and economically prosperous, and at the time of writing is the only one of the ten newly-accepted EU states to have adopted the Euro. Its history is as long and varied as ours isn't, and centuries of resisting foreign invasion and occupation has left the country with a “can-do” attitude and a strong sense of nationhood. Legend has it that Jason and the Argonauts (the band of mythical Greek heroes, not the prog rock band from New York) once sailed down Slovenia's Sava River while in possession of the mythical Golden Fleece.
What really sets Slovenia apart from the other places I've visited, though, is its natural beauty. In this oft-overlooked part of the continent we've found a place that reminds us of home: a tiny, heavily-forested nation overflowing with natural beauty and a small population determined to keep their land that way. And I'm told that Lake Bled, nestled high in the western mountains, presents the most compelling scene of all. At first glance its hard to argue: the lake, a kilometre wide by a few kilometres long, is as still and pristine as anything you'd find in our South Island. It is hemmed in on all sides by towering, wooded mountains that taper off into craggy peaks, their reflections mirrored in the calm water of the lake. Just to add to the majesty of the surroundings, on a rocky outcrop that soars a hundred metres vertically above the lake sits a medieval castle, and an island at the far end of the lake (Slovenia's only natural island) is home to a 15th century church. Not even the tacky casino can detract from the lake's awesomeness, and I mean that in the biblical sense of the word.
It's a warm, sunny morning and the girls and I have found a suitable sunbathing spot by the lake in close proximity to a supermarket selling 50c beer. We have a postcard view over the lake, with the castle in the background, the church on the island in the foreground and more mountains completing the framing to our right. The serenity is only occasionally broken by a trio of unruly local fisherman, barking at each other in Slovenian and throwing stones at ducks to keep them away from their lines. Georgina and Caroline are the first to jump in the water and beckon me in. I make my way down to the water, hoping a quick dip will shake loose the cobwebs spun by last night's store room beer. Then I remember that Georgina has an irrational fear of fish.
“I don't know”, I say warily. “I can see a bunch of fish in there”.
“What? Where?”, Georgina says with alarm.
“Right down here where I'm standing. Look!”, I point to a small, harmless fish near the shore, maybe ten centimetres long.
“Stop it, you dick”.
The water is cold but refreshing and after a brief swim I'm back on the shore again, enjoying a picnic lunch and sipping another 50c beer; yesterday's credit card fiasco thankfully just a distant and unpleasant memory.
Learning and remembering the essentials of previously unseen languages is never easy, especially when moving so swiftly from country to country, but a trick I've learned is to memorise a phrase based on what it loosely sounds like in English. For example, to order three beers in Dutch you say something like “dree beeren, Ulster beef” and hope to hell that they bring you three beers, rather than a large plate of Irish-reared steak. The Slovenian word for hello is “dober dan”, which sounds close enough to “Diver Dan” for me to commit to memory. I'm going to need to use it, because we've now walked around to a small bay directly opposite the island, where we're going to procure a rowboat. I've never rowed in my life – at least not outside the safety of a gymnasium anyways – but how hard can it be?
We can see a hunched-over old lady guarding five or six boats on the shore. I approach her from behind, preparing to hit her with a bit of my best Slovenian.
“Dober dan!”
“Ahhh, dober dan!”, she says, turning around to reveal a warm, smiling face. Then she unleashes a torrent of Slovenian garble, and for a moment we all stand and stare blankly at one another.
“Ahhh, sprechen sie Deutsch?”
Nope, but you're getting closer.
“Francais?”
Warmer still.
“Ahhh, you are English! Very good, very good. You want a boat? Ok, you have this one. One hour, ten Euro. Very good, very good”.
“How long will it take us to row to the island?”, Caroline asks.
“It will take only ten minutes. But for you” - she quickly eyes me up and down - “maybe twenty. Ha ha!”. She laughs heartily again. This time I don't share the joke.
Georgina and Caroline hop into the passenger seats, then follows a mildly humilitating episode as the old lady holds the boat firm to the shore while I hop in. Now she's lecturing me on how to grip the oars and row in a straight line. It's harder than it looks on TV. Plus I've got unoccupied boats either side of me to contend to. Once I can get out past them and into the lake, I'll be fine. I hope.
“No! No! Pull the left oar! Yes, no not like that! Just the left!”. She's yelling now so that I can hear her clearly, and a few tourists in the beach are now looking on in restrained amusement. Seems to me the fundamental problem with rowing is that you can't bloody well see where you're going. What's up with that?
“Ok! Now you are fine! Have a nice time!”. Though we're well on the way to the island she's still standing on the beach watching us, hunched over, a grin spread wide across her face. I'm not the only one who enjoys 50c beers in the afternoon, it appears.
Once out on the lake and under Caroline's direction, it's a fairly short row out to the island. Still, it's more physical exertion than I've put in since that horrific day on the sand dunes of Colorado and there's beads of sweat forming on my brow as we approach the island. Two English girls in bikinis watch my awkward attempt at docking at the wharf, exhibiting the same inexplicable curiosity with which the old lady watched me depart awkwardly from the shore. They're obviously here to try and get a tan but, like all English girls, they've just ended up all red and freckly.
“Hi there!”, says one of the girls, affecting an innocent schoolgirl tone. “We swam all the way out here, but we're too knackered to swim back to shore. Can we get a ride back with you?”
Five in the boat? I wonder how this would go down with the old lady on the shore. I'd hate to sour the otherwise cordial Kiwi-Slovenian relations that have prevailed to this point.
“Sure you can, no worries”, I find myself saying. “I'm just gonna have a walk around the island first”.
“Ok! We'll be here waiting, boy”.
From the wharf, a path leads around the shoreline, offering one breathtaking view after another of the forested mountains rising above the peaceful lake. Five pleasant minutes later, I've completed the loop and find myself back at the wharf, where the English girls are flirting with a Brazilian backpacker while his girlfriend sits in the boat looking on. Obviously there's no hurry, so I retrace my steps for a few yards and then ascend 99 steps to find myself in a cosy, sunlit glade surrounded by tall pines. Straight ahead is the church, whose 52-metre high tower has looked out over the tiny island and the lake for five centuries. Ensconsed as it is in such majestic and natural surroundings, the church seems to take on a whole new level of holiness and serenity; the idea that the view it beholds has changed little in half a millennia is pretty neat. This is Europe though, and the great thing about Europe is that irrespective of the spiritual value of a site, a bar is never far away.
In this case, it's just off the main path, attached to the gift shop selling tacky souvenirs and overpriced postcards. The sun is still brutally strong and I'm exhausted from the day's adventures. The barman can sense it and he's pouring me an ice cold pint before I can even say “Diver Dan” - or was it “dober dan?”. As I sip the libation and feel the strength returning to my bones, I can't help but question what the poor monks did on this island before there was a bar. It occurs to me that beer was only introduced to Europe by Belgian monks, and feel a kind of synergy at play between this glorious amber nectar and the will of God Almighty himself. If some higher power has ordained it, then surely the consumption of beer is some form of ritual worship of the God, a celebration of His benevolence and the unending quest of man to carry out His divine will? Then I remember the English girls by the wharf, and down my pint.
A couple of hours later, we're sitting down at a traditional Slovenian restaurant in the town. I'm drinking Heineken out of a Guinness glass, which isn't necessarily Slovenian, but does reflect its rapidly-evolving and sophisticated image. Given we're less than thirty miles from the Italian border, one would expect some seepage of its influence into the local cuisine, in the form of pasta and salads perhaps. But no, it's just the standard Germanic fare: Schnitzel, sausages, dumplings, roasts.
Ominously, there's also a “mixed grill” option and it appears to be the favoured dish of our waiter, judging by the look of him. He is, of course, the only waiter on duty and is showing the full effects of it. Sweat pours off his ruddy, rapidly-aging face – which he occasionally wipes with a towel draped across his right shoulder – and he is continously out of breath, even as he stands over diners frantically jotting down their orders. Then he's away again, huffing and puffing as he goes, his enormous frame sending a glistening arc of sweat across the room with every step. Never mind the tips, he looks like he'd be happy just to survive the night.
“Ok, hello”, he mutters breathlessly as he arrives to take our order. “What would you like? Oh God, hang on”, he suddenly remembers something and rushes back into the kitchen, returning shortly thereafter with beers for the people at the next table. “Ok, hello. What would you like?”
Georgina and Caroline plump for the schnitzel, which is so large that our poor waiter can barely carry the plates. I can identify at least four of the seven meats on my mixed grill platter. One of the unidentified ones could be spiced mince, though none of the three of us can make a positive identification. The meat bonanza is only mitigated slightly by some sauerkraut and a side order of dumplings. The girls can only manage about half of their meal, much to the disgust of our waiter.
“This is it?”, he asks in a mocking tone. “This is all you can eat? Come on!”. He's joking around, but we all know he'll be gleefully tucking into the leftovers once his shift finishes. If it ever finishes. My meat platter is disgracefully large and decadent and once again I'm reminded by the girls that I don't have to eat it all, you know. So I just close my eyes, think of the Darfur children, and plough on until every last scrap is gone. Then I order another beer.
***
It's our last morning in Bled and, prompted by the previous evening's display of disgusting excess, I'm going for a walk. I've been told of a beautiful gorge a few miles up the road that lies within the Triglavski Narodni Park. Trouble is, I've just walked off the edge of my map – always a dangerous and disconcerting experience – and I've found myself at a fork in the road. I remember Cassie telling me as I was leaving, “there will be a fork in the road, and you go right”, so I decide to follow my natural instinct and go left.
I don't want to talk about what happens next, but suffice it to say that after getting a little more up close and personal with the Slovenian countryside than I'd bargained for, I miraculously stumble upon said gorge. It truly is a place of unspoiled beauty: the water is clear as day and rushes along between sheer rock walls that give way to a green canopy of forest high above. The sunlight filters through to the water and lights up the walkway in an ethereal, iridescent glow. I follow the walkway along the river through the length of the gorge and it pops out at Slovenia's highest waterfall, broadening into a handsome valley that spreads out below my feet. I continue along the forested path until I find myself back on a quaint country road and then, much to my amused surprise, back at the fork in the road again, but approaching from the opposite direction. Funny how often that happens.
It is with a measure of sadness that I depart Lake Bled. It's a stunningly beautiful part of the world that serves as a reminder that there's more to Europe than historic town centres and endless bloody castles. Bled is endowed with beautiful scenery, as well as endless bloody castles. Undoubtedly part of its appeal lies in its resemblance to New Zealand – right down to the endearing locals and cheap shitty beer – but there is an historical gravitas to it that you could never experience back home. Slovenia is one country in Europe that has thus far resisted the inexorable tide of low-budget tourism and retained much of its indviduality and local charm. The mountains, the lake, the church, the castle and the old lady taking the piss out of my rowing style have been here for hundreds of years, and they'll still be here for hundreds of years to come. Including, I suspect, the old lady.
Cripes, you'd need a holiday for sure after all that. Just thinking about it makes me feel like a beer. So I put down the brochure and walk across the street to the supermarket, where for 50 Euro cents I purchase a can of something that tastes like it's been brewed in the store room out the back (and upon closer inspection of the can, it has) and take it back to my sun-lit hostel room. The proprietor, a tall slender woman in her 30s, is talking to the girls about something. She is a wonderfully cheerful lady and bears a startling resemblance to an older Cassie from Home And Away, except that she speaks better English than Cassie. Knowing we'd arrive during her lunch hour, she left a key and a friendly message for us at reception. It's hard to imagine Cassie ever being that hospitable.
Indeed, every person I've met so far in Slovenia has been warm, friendly and thankfully multilingual. After becoming instantly lost while making the 200-metre journey from the train station to our hostel in Ljubljana last evening, we were stopped three times in as many minutes by kind strangers who were only too happy to provide directions. Never mind that none of them knew the way either, it still gave us a warm fuzzy feeling you wouldn't get in many other parts of Europe. We had dinner at a pizzeria on the river where our waiter – a polite, dapper young man – brought us pizzas so large they wouldn't have fit on an average European plate.
“You don't have to eat it all, you know”, Caroline said.
“Yes I do” I replied through gritted teeth, driven on by the the sad visage of a million starving refugee children tut-tutting if I let so much as a scrap go to waste.
Now we are in Lake Bled, a stunningly beautiful lakeside alpine town that the tourists haven't discovered yet. It's a bit like a Slovenian Queenstown, but with castles instead of cafes. I notice a good sprinkling of bars and traditional restaurants as I walk down through the main drag in search of an ATM. There are a few shops selling tourist tat, but they're not quite as garish and in-your-face as they are in Queenstown. I can see a casino around the shoreline, which is good news for now as there is bound to be an ATM nearby, but may be bad news later when I've had a few beers. I locate the ATM outside a cafe across the road, put my card and pin in, and signify my intent withdraw money.
“TRANSACTION CANCELLED”, it says, and spits my card out. Interesting. Lucky for me I've got a plan B.
“Oi! Just work, ya bastard!”, I yell, slapping the screen admonishingly. An American lady in tight white pants and a floral shirt looks up from her coffee. I repeat the card-and-pin trick and it goes through it's usual “please wait while we waste your time and piss you and everyone else behind you in the line” routine again.
“TRANSACTION CANCELLED”. Oh dear, this is a setback. I don't know quite what to do now. I don't have a Plan C. To be honest, I hadn't even considered the eventuality of Plan B working. I do remember passing a gas station on the bus on the way in, and so I make my way up the hill in its direction, a sudden feeling of dread settling upon my shoulders like the stifling afternoon heat.
The gas station is there alright, and it has an ATM, but it won't give me money either. Nor will the one across the road. I have next to no cash left, just a smattering of coins in each pocket left over from Vienna. This is bad, really bad. But it's how a man reacts in these situations that is a true measure of his pedigree. What's the old chestnut, legends aren't born, they're made?
I'm just about ready to cry and demand to be taken home to my mummy by the time I get back to the hostel and break the bad news to the girls. But I somehow manage to hold it together and keep a sound mind. With the intention of purchasing essential supplies, I walk back over to the supermarket with my handful of remaining coins. Almost immediately I bump into a display stand and let go of the coins, sending them bouncing off the floor in all directions, many into irretrievable positions under benches and shelves. With what little I'm able to regather, I make my purchase and return to the hostel. God willing these four beers, two packets of chips and a banana will keep me alive until sunup tomorrow, by which time the ATM gods will hopefully be smiling upon me once more.
***
One of the most astute parenting decisions my folks ever made was to put up a map of the world in the bathroom. This may seem like a fairly inconsequential matter to a five-year-old, but my hours spent in the dunny while my mates rolled around in the mud and chased seagulls led me to become the proud geography afficionado I am today. Trouble is, that now-famous map was printed before the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, and so Slovenia did not appear on it. It pains me greatly to admit that, when I heard we'd be visiting there, I needed to check my atlas to work out where the bloody place was.
Slovenia. It's not Slovakia and it's not Venice, nor is it anything like either of those places. It's a former Yugoslav republic, sandwiched between Italy, Austria, Croatia and a small stretch of Adriatic coast. Of all the ex-Yugoslav states it is by far the most progressive and economically prosperous, and at the time of writing is the only one of the ten newly-accepted EU states to have adopted the Euro. Its history is as long and varied as ours isn't, and centuries of resisting foreign invasion and occupation has left the country with a “can-do” attitude and a strong sense of nationhood. Legend has it that Jason and the Argonauts (the band of mythical Greek heroes, not the prog rock band from New York) once sailed down Slovenia's Sava River while in possession of the mythical Golden Fleece.
What really sets Slovenia apart from the other places I've visited, though, is its natural beauty. In this oft-overlooked part of the continent we've found a place that reminds us of home: a tiny, heavily-forested nation overflowing with natural beauty and a small population determined to keep their land that way. And I'm told that Lake Bled, nestled high in the western mountains, presents the most compelling scene of all. At first glance its hard to argue: the lake, a kilometre wide by a few kilometres long, is as still and pristine as anything you'd find in our South Island. It is hemmed in on all sides by towering, wooded mountains that taper off into craggy peaks, their reflections mirrored in the calm water of the lake. Just to add to the majesty of the surroundings, on a rocky outcrop that soars a hundred metres vertically above the lake sits a medieval castle, and an island at the far end of the lake (Slovenia's only natural island) is home to a 15th century church. Not even the tacky casino can detract from the lake's awesomeness, and I mean that in the biblical sense of the word.
It's a warm, sunny morning and the girls and I have found a suitable sunbathing spot by the lake in close proximity to a supermarket selling 50c beer. We have a postcard view over the lake, with the castle in the background, the church on the island in the foreground and more mountains completing the framing to our right. The serenity is only occasionally broken by a trio of unruly local fisherman, barking at each other in Slovenian and throwing stones at ducks to keep them away from their lines. Georgina and Caroline are the first to jump in the water and beckon me in. I make my way down to the water, hoping a quick dip will shake loose the cobwebs spun by last night's store room beer. Then I remember that Georgina has an irrational fear of fish.
“I don't know”, I say warily. “I can see a bunch of fish in there”.
“What? Where?”, Georgina says with alarm.
“Right down here where I'm standing. Look!”, I point to a small, harmless fish near the shore, maybe ten centimetres long.
“Stop it, you dick”.
The water is cold but refreshing and after a brief swim I'm back on the shore again, enjoying a picnic lunch and sipping another 50c beer; yesterday's credit card fiasco thankfully just a distant and unpleasant memory.
Learning and remembering the essentials of previously unseen languages is never easy, especially when moving so swiftly from country to country, but a trick I've learned is to memorise a phrase based on what it loosely sounds like in English. For example, to order three beers in Dutch you say something like “dree beeren, Ulster beef” and hope to hell that they bring you three beers, rather than a large plate of Irish-reared steak. The Slovenian word for hello is “dober dan”, which sounds close enough to “Diver Dan” for me to commit to memory. I'm going to need to use it, because we've now walked around to a small bay directly opposite the island, where we're going to procure a rowboat. I've never rowed in my life – at least not outside the safety of a gymnasium anyways – but how hard can it be?
We can see a hunched-over old lady guarding five or six boats on the shore. I approach her from behind, preparing to hit her with a bit of my best Slovenian.
“Dober dan!”
“Ahhh, dober dan!”, she says, turning around to reveal a warm, smiling face. Then she unleashes a torrent of Slovenian garble, and for a moment we all stand and stare blankly at one another.
“Ahhh, sprechen sie Deutsch?”
Nope, but you're getting closer.
“Francais?”
Warmer still.
“Ahhh, you are English! Very good, very good. You want a boat? Ok, you have this one. One hour, ten Euro. Very good, very good”.
“How long will it take us to row to the island?”, Caroline asks.
“It will take only ten minutes. But for you” - she quickly eyes me up and down - “maybe twenty. Ha ha!”. She laughs heartily again. This time I don't share the joke.
Georgina and Caroline hop into the passenger seats, then follows a mildly humilitating episode as the old lady holds the boat firm to the shore while I hop in. Now she's lecturing me on how to grip the oars and row in a straight line. It's harder than it looks on TV. Plus I've got unoccupied boats either side of me to contend to. Once I can get out past them and into the lake, I'll be fine. I hope.
“No! No! Pull the left oar! Yes, no not like that! Just the left!”. She's yelling now so that I can hear her clearly, and a few tourists in the beach are now looking on in restrained amusement. Seems to me the fundamental problem with rowing is that you can't bloody well see where you're going. What's up with that?
“Ok! Now you are fine! Have a nice time!”. Though we're well on the way to the island she's still standing on the beach watching us, hunched over, a grin spread wide across her face. I'm not the only one who enjoys 50c beers in the afternoon, it appears.
Once out on the lake and under Caroline's direction, it's a fairly short row out to the island. Still, it's more physical exertion than I've put in since that horrific day on the sand dunes of Colorado and there's beads of sweat forming on my brow as we approach the island. Two English girls in bikinis watch my awkward attempt at docking at the wharf, exhibiting the same inexplicable curiosity with which the old lady watched me depart awkwardly from the shore. They're obviously here to try and get a tan but, like all English girls, they've just ended up all red and freckly.
“Hi there!”, says one of the girls, affecting an innocent schoolgirl tone. “We swam all the way out here, but we're too knackered to swim back to shore. Can we get a ride back with you?”
Five in the boat? I wonder how this would go down with the old lady on the shore. I'd hate to sour the otherwise cordial Kiwi-Slovenian relations that have prevailed to this point.
“Sure you can, no worries”, I find myself saying. “I'm just gonna have a walk around the island first”.
“Ok! We'll be here waiting, boy”.
From the wharf, a path leads around the shoreline, offering one breathtaking view after another of the forested mountains rising above the peaceful lake. Five pleasant minutes later, I've completed the loop and find myself back at the wharf, where the English girls are flirting with a Brazilian backpacker while his girlfriend sits in the boat looking on. Obviously there's no hurry, so I retrace my steps for a few yards and then ascend 99 steps to find myself in a cosy, sunlit glade surrounded by tall pines. Straight ahead is the church, whose 52-metre high tower has looked out over the tiny island and the lake for five centuries. Ensconsed as it is in such majestic and natural surroundings, the church seems to take on a whole new level of holiness and serenity; the idea that the view it beholds has changed little in half a millennia is pretty neat. This is Europe though, and the great thing about Europe is that irrespective of the spiritual value of a site, a bar is never far away.
In this case, it's just off the main path, attached to the gift shop selling tacky souvenirs and overpriced postcards. The sun is still brutally strong and I'm exhausted from the day's adventures. The barman can sense it and he's pouring me an ice cold pint before I can even say “Diver Dan” - or was it “dober dan?”. As I sip the libation and feel the strength returning to my bones, I can't help but question what the poor monks did on this island before there was a bar. It occurs to me that beer was only introduced to Europe by Belgian monks, and feel a kind of synergy at play between this glorious amber nectar and the will of God Almighty himself. If some higher power has ordained it, then surely the consumption of beer is some form of ritual worship of the God, a celebration of His benevolence and the unending quest of man to carry out His divine will? Then I remember the English girls by the wharf, and down my pint.
A couple of hours later, we're sitting down at a traditional Slovenian restaurant in the town. I'm drinking Heineken out of a Guinness glass, which isn't necessarily Slovenian, but does reflect its rapidly-evolving and sophisticated image. Given we're less than thirty miles from the Italian border, one would expect some seepage of its influence into the local cuisine, in the form of pasta and salads perhaps. But no, it's just the standard Germanic fare: Schnitzel, sausages, dumplings, roasts.
Ominously, there's also a “mixed grill” option and it appears to be the favoured dish of our waiter, judging by the look of him. He is, of course, the only waiter on duty and is showing the full effects of it. Sweat pours off his ruddy, rapidly-aging face – which he occasionally wipes with a towel draped across his right shoulder – and he is continously out of breath, even as he stands over diners frantically jotting down their orders. Then he's away again, huffing and puffing as he goes, his enormous frame sending a glistening arc of sweat across the room with every step. Never mind the tips, he looks like he'd be happy just to survive the night.
“Ok, hello”, he mutters breathlessly as he arrives to take our order. “What would you like? Oh God, hang on”, he suddenly remembers something and rushes back into the kitchen, returning shortly thereafter with beers for the people at the next table. “Ok, hello. What would you like?”
Georgina and Caroline plump for the schnitzel, which is so large that our poor waiter can barely carry the plates. I can identify at least four of the seven meats on my mixed grill platter. One of the unidentified ones could be spiced mince, though none of the three of us can make a positive identification. The meat bonanza is only mitigated slightly by some sauerkraut and a side order of dumplings. The girls can only manage about half of their meal, much to the disgust of our waiter.
“This is it?”, he asks in a mocking tone. “This is all you can eat? Come on!”. He's joking around, but we all know he'll be gleefully tucking into the leftovers once his shift finishes. If it ever finishes. My meat platter is disgracefully large and decadent and once again I'm reminded by the girls that I don't have to eat it all, you know. So I just close my eyes, think of the Darfur children, and plough on until every last scrap is gone. Then I order another beer.
***
It's our last morning in Bled and, prompted by the previous evening's display of disgusting excess, I'm going for a walk. I've been told of a beautiful gorge a few miles up the road that lies within the Triglavski Narodni Park. Trouble is, I've just walked off the edge of my map – always a dangerous and disconcerting experience – and I've found myself at a fork in the road. I remember Cassie telling me as I was leaving, “there will be a fork in the road, and you go right”, so I decide to follow my natural instinct and go left.
I don't want to talk about what happens next, but suffice it to say that after getting a little more up close and personal with the Slovenian countryside than I'd bargained for, I miraculously stumble upon said gorge. It truly is a place of unspoiled beauty: the water is clear as day and rushes along between sheer rock walls that give way to a green canopy of forest high above. The sunlight filters through to the water and lights up the walkway in an ethereal, iridescent glow. I follow the walkway along the river through the length of the gorge and it pops out at Slovenia's highest waterfall, broadening into a handsome valley that spreads out below my feet. I continue along the forested path until I find myself back on a quaint country road and then, much to my amused surprise, back at the fork in the road again, but approaching from the opposite direction. Funny how often that happens.
It is with a measure of sadness that I depart Lake Bled. It's a stunningly beautiful part of the world that serves as a reminder that there's more to Europe than historic town centres and endless bloody castles. Bled is endowed with beautiful scenery, as well as endless bloody castles. Undoubtedly part of its appeal lies in its resemblance to New Zealand – right down to the endearing locals and cheap shitty beer – but there is an historical gravitas to it that you could never experience back home. Slovenia is one country in Europe that has thus far resisted the inexorable tide of low-budget tourism and retained much of its indviduality and local charm. The mountains, the lake, the church, the castle and the old lady taking the piss out of my rowing style have been here for hundreds of years, and they'll still be here for hundreds of years to come. Including, I suspect, the old lady.
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