No yesterdays on the road

The Audacity of Hope

climberchris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:32:00 GMT

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Or so some would have you believe from the hype surrounding his visit...

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat/.../Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!/.../He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave" and his is "a tidal wave of Change!", "Change is coming!" and "Yes we can!" (some of these are real slogans on t-shirts at the speech, one is not...)

Truly, I have seen the revolution. And I fear it may be something of a damp squib. As I write, it's not even an hour old yet, but I am willing to predict what reaction you will see on your TVs (or, more likely, on Youtube, who watches TV these days?) or read the Comment and Opinion section of your papers tomorro. Billed as probably the most anticipated American campaign speech ever held on foreign soil, it is undoubtedly going to be considered, well, good, but not great. A slight disappointment, in fact.

Yes, he's a great speaker, but this wasn't, in my opinion, a great speech. It was good. There was a slight tear in my eye at some points, but frankly I've been known to cry reading a Tom Clancy novel (this is actually true), so perhaps that isn't saying all that much. But it needs more than being good to be great. There wasn't any mass histeria, no fainting or screaming or crying that I could see. This wasn't yet JFK or Nixon or Jesus...

It started with a poor piece of organisation. The first large television screen wasn't close enough to the stage. This left a significant no-man's land where you weren't close enough to see him properly and yet all the screens were behind you. So naturally there was a gap. It got to 18:55 and stewards began to more and more frantically usher us forward. But the crowd wasn't here to make him look good. This is Germany. There were of course the, no doubt specially selected, American flag wavers right up there, but no one particularly cared to get close if they could see him better 50m further back. The gap never closed - this wasn't a delirious Democratic convention, this was Germany, they can't make the crowd move if they don't want to. Not when the speech is all about our common fight for freedom. I am sure that this spoiled the desired effect somewhat, it certainly didn't please the crowd nor draw them into the proceedings. And it ain't going to look too hot the cameras back home either.

He came on late (presumably while they waited for the crowd to move up) and finished early. Expected to talk for an hour, it lasted about half that. I have no idea of the numbers of people, but there were plenty there, stretching almost all the way up to the Branderbuger Tor along the Straße des 17. Juni, a good kilometre or more.

The rhetoric was fiery, the speech was well constructed, but it lacked that certain something that would have made it great. Perhaps his mispronunciation of Berlin's Mayor's name didn't help. Perhaps he thanked the crowd one too many times. But I rather think that what he lacked was the occasion.

The speech was carefully constructed, but without the sense of occasion, the bones of its structure were a little too bare. He dealt well with the controversy of the setting - along the lines of though this tower was built to celebrate victory in war, we stand here in celebration of peace, etc... - but one could see him do it, which disappointed, just as seeing how well a novel is constructed is a sign that it isn't quite constructed well enough.

Naturally he concentrated on the shared history of America and Berlin, empathising how Berlin has long stood at the frontline of the fight for democracy and the indomitable spirit of the people, from the Airdrop to the fall of the wall. He spoke fine, true and often stirring words about our common history - not ignoring Germany's past, but not dwelling on it either - and more importantly, our common humanity.

He referenced those famous speeches subtly and cleverly, but then of course he did. He came as a citizen not a politician (which is his excuse for not being able to talk at his first choice of venue). He spoke of Berliners and again, later, that all the world were citizens of Berlin. He talked continually of tearing down walls. And herein lies the crux of his failure I think.

His failure was twofold, but they are inter-related. He spoke of grand themes and great causes that unite us. He ticked all the usual boxes for the left. We had, albeit far too briefly, climate change and the environment, AIDS, an end to nuclear weapons, welcoming immigration, overcoming racism and discrimination and so on (I am sure there are more, I just can't remember them all). Not everything he said was crowd pleasing, speaking of a common duty to intervene and finish the job in Afghanistan (an unpopular view here, ask Merkel). Yes, he spoke to the crowd at home. Security was mentioned frequently, 9/11 touched on, terror and Iranian nuclear weapons. It was noticeable that whenever he mentioned a strong EU or a strong, united trans-Atlanticism the first reason mentioned was always our common security. In fact, I was surprised by how often he used the word security, terror too, but perhaps I was being naive about the demands of realpolitik back home.

Speaking to the middle ground back home wasn't where he went wrong though. No, for me, it was a lack of substance. A lack of substance and a lack of occasion. The latter highlighted the former. Great words are great, but they are only truly inspiring when the circumstance is great. Tear down the wall was a meaningful sentiment and even a meaningful policy position when there was a physical wall to bring down. What more sentiment or policy do you need? For every man to be a citizen of Berlin is fine indeed, when the danger is so apparent and stands right over there, wielding guns and manouvering tanks to prevent your family from enjoying basic freedoms, from seeing you. But when the walls that divide are internal, as he rightly said, it is no longer good enough to say that our common humanity must unite us to allow us to tear them down. What does that mean? How? How are you going to tear down the walls between you and the Serbs I met last month? How are you going to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the table? Why have you renounced unconditional talks with Iran or Syria or North Korea (ok, we know the answer to that one, duh, the voters won't go for it)? How?

Yes, it is naive to think that he is going to come to Berlin and spell out carefully his domestic policy. But without any details, without any promises of any substance, it leaves a bitter taste of rather too much politician in one's mouth. He promises change, but sadly I couldn't help wondering if he will be a real change at all. After all, didn't he just say what he knew we wanted to hear in Europe, without the substance we wanted, so that he could spin it as the folks would like to hear it back home. And here the audacity of hope founders against the reality of the world. Because what else could one really expect without incredible political naivety?

Surely the fact that he will be first Black President counts for change enough, you may say? Well, yes, that is undoubtedly a bid deal, but what does it matter whether it's a black man or white that refuses to bring the troops home from Iraq? They die all the same. Big business profits all the same. Climate change happens all the same. I suspect that the demands of the American election will bring him further and further from the change once promised and chasing the centre he will talk rather more about security and rather less about the personal sacrifice required to slow climate change. But don't they all?

Let's hope he does get elected. And let's hope that he returns to his strong positions on equality and open dialogue and real change. After all, what other chance have we got than the audacity of hope? It's either that or McCain and he is most definitely the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

Reflections

climberchris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:41:00 GMT

And so it is decided. I am going to Mongolia. Tomorrow. It's hard to believe that this most incompentent and harebrained of schemes has actually worked. I mean, I actually rocked up in Berlin, found the MIAT travel office and said I want to go to Mongolia this week. Right there and then I bought a ticket, in cash, and for almost half the price of the ones I found online before I left, way back when in March.

I suppose that it had seemed like such an unlikely eventuality, doubted by pretty much everyone that I mentioned it to, that I too had begun to convince myself that it wasn't going to happen. I had accepted that there wouldn't be an available flight, that I wouldn't have the money. I had constructed an alternative route, heading back East through Poland and Ukraine before heading North to the Baltic and then perhaps looping round through Scandinavia. Or something like that. I'd grown rather fond of this route. It meant I could see and tick off more countries, I could go back to the Eastern Europe that I enjoyed so much, get to see Ukraine, which I now have a strong desire to see, and perhaps most of all, it felt safe. I could do it easily, I know how to get around Europe, I wouldn't go anywhere wilder than I'd already been. It would have had a nice narrative arc, too; as a journey, it would make some sort of sense on the map. I knew I'd find couches and friendly people and internet and train timetables and all that. It was comfortable.

And so, in the manner of all things, do we come full circle.

Almost three months ago, I sat in French campsite wondering many things. As I approached this junction in my journey, not knowing which road through the "yellow wood" I would take, I have found myself reflecting again. I suddenly realised that I hadn't been thinking much recently. By the Seine, I'd wanted to be able to just sit, and like that moment climbing when you realise you haven't been thinking anything, it struck me that that was what I missed about Eastern Europe. Looking back I found that over time, as I ventured further and as time passed, I thought less and less. I could sit on a bench and watch the world go by or the sea sparkle; half an hour, and hour would go by. I could sit in a train contentedly, just looking out the window, perhaps waiting for something interesting to fly by, but if it didn't, well that was fine too.I t makes you patient, this travelling. Trains are late, connections are missed, but without commitments, without anyone else, what does it matter whether you are here or there? The present moment becomes the only thing, full and content in itself*.

As I reflected more and more on the journey I'd taken, I grew more and more attached to the idea of carrying on round Europe. After I had bought the ticket to Mongolia I was surprised to find myself neither excited nor satisfied, but a little disappointed. I was surprised, most of all, by the ambiguity of my feelings. All the old arguments I had rehearsed in France were there. On the one hand, I'd actually managed to get a flight to Mongolia, and, wow, I mean, it's Mongolia, it's going to be wild and exciting and adventurous and amazing, right? On the other lay the comforting idea of Eastern Europe. There were double layers beyond those too, the desire to do something that scares me a little, the need to overcome doubts and throw myself forward just because it scares me. Like Frost's traveller, I too found myself sorry that I could not travel both paths.

But I thought more about this, wandering around Alexanderplatz and down Unter den Linden. And I saw that it wasn't simple comfort, that there was something more that I missed about my travels, something I'd missed whilst in Slovenia too. The people I'd met. I was sad to leave them behind. Buying a ticket to Mongolia meant the end of halfhoped ideas of seeing people again. While I was still in Europe the possibility remained that I could relatively easily have visited pretty much any of the travellers or hosts I'd got to know. That is gone now and the truth is that I don't know when I will see them again, because I know how life goes when you move somewhere new and start something as tough as a PhD and things just, well, overtake you.

Someone pointed out to me, a while ago now, that I never wrote about people in my blogs. I thought about this for a long time. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but I recognised that it was true. I think there were, and are, several reasons for this and, realising that these weren't going to change, the decision became conscious. I sought ways to get round it, flirting with the idea of simply listing all the people that have had some impact on my travels, from the most trivial to the most important, but I haven't tried that yet, I'm not sure why. Who knows, maybe I will towards the end. Why, then, have I avoided writing about people?

Maybe it is like painting or drawing, where I always found capturing faces the hardest aspect to manage, in that capturing a character in words is just too difficult. I shy away from trapping people in words that don't fit. If the reality of places is multifaceted, then people even more so. Too frequently I only see one part of them, one person of the many that make them who they are. Perhaps I miss their depths or sides hidden from even themselves. And if this happens when we meet, how crude any description must then be: one crudely sketched aspect of one aspect of of one side of one person. A sort of poor written equivalent of Sugimoto's "copies of copies of copies".

This could be seen as a cop-out of course. Perhaps it is. But maybe there is slightly more to it than that. I don't know how people would react to seeing themselves blogged about, it can be a strange experience. I wouldn't want to offend them or get them wrong and I am such an inexperienced writer I surely would. Many people have been incredibly kind to me, but write anything other than the highest praise and the internet is a big scary place and words can be interpreted in many ways... That might not be everyone's idea of fifteen minutes of fame.

Beyond that, many of the interesting things that have been said or shared with me are personal, perhaps not to me (but then if this blog doesn't attest to the fact that I have slightly unusual boundaries of what constitutes personal, then what does?) and who knows what people want for themselves and what they are prepared to share? Some of the magic of shared memories and special people are too easily lost when up there in neon. There is simply too much unknown, too much involved and that is why I stick to the places I see and the thoughts and feelings I have.

In many ways, it's a shame. Like looking at other's photos, perhaps blogs are more interesting when there are people in them, rather than an endless succession of beaches and mountain views. It is truly the people that make a journey. They make it worthwhile and it's from them that you learn. As I've been reflecting about the journey so far, it's the people I have met that stand out. For this, I have certainly couchsurfing to thank. I´ve been couchsurfing for over two months now and it has been a nothing short of a revelation.

It started as a way for me to save money, but it has rapidly become so much more. In fact it's now hard to imagine ever hostelling again, except through necessity. It's not just a way to meet people either, though that is what makes it great. No, for me, it represents my aspirations for the way the world should be: a global community based on trust, honesty, reciprocity, generosity, optimism and a sharing of all the good things in life. Above all it is about meeting some of the very best people I´ve had the fortune to spend time with; people that have changed my worldview, that constantly renew my faith in humanity and are rolemodels for ways to live well - thoughtfully, compassionately, meaningfully - wherever you find yourself. They have shown me how kind, considerate and generous it is possible to be**. Long live the couchsurfing revolution!

Speaking of revolutions, I am off to witness what might be the start of the next one, to see that harbinger of youth, passion and change. Yes, he who dares to hope for audacity - JFK. Wait, that is him right? ... maybe I'm just getting confused with all this Berlin history and symbolism and stuff... I'm sure no Berliner... Anyway I'm off to see him, because, well who knows what might happen and anyhow the museum I wanted to visit costs ten euros.

Little differences

climberchris — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:01:00 GMT

Crossing the border from Serbia to Croatia, the differences are immediately apparent. Actually, that isn't strictly accurate. Croatia does immediately feel different, if only in subtle ways, but it takes a little while to register just where those differences lie.

There's the same flat landscape of the edge of the Carpathian Basin, the crops much the same in similar looking fields. But look again and you notice the hedgerows and fences are better looked after. Tracks and paths and the strips of grass between crops are all tidier with less litter.

Thin white church toweres rise over scattered woods, hiding little villages in the middle distance and it looks so comfortable that it takes a moment to register that it is precisely those towers that are different. You don't see those signatures of Central European Catholicism dotted around the Serbian countryside any more than you see the bulging onion domes of Serbian Orthodoxy in the rolling Croatian plains. For that is where I most definitely I was as I crossed the border: back in Central Europe. The border marks, for me, the watershed between the Balkans and Central Europe. Naturally these distinctions are always rather murky and vague, a little arbitrary even - bullet holes still marr the concrete buildings of communism on both sides after all - but recent history has perhaps made the distinction rather sharper in this region than others.

Arriving in Zagreb only confirms the feeling that the Balkans have been left behind. It is a small city, compact and tidy. Things seem well organised and the streets are cleaner. Little differences like the lack of beeping horns, even in the worst traffic jams, attest to the pull of Central Europe. Seriously, the silence of a quiet traffic jam is a deafening surprise after the tumult of traffic in places like Skopje or Tirana, or even Belgrade, where people seem to beep just for the solidarity and sheer joy of the thing. There are recycling bins, non-existent in Belgrade, and fewer people just hanging around, passing the time because they've nothing else to do.

Zagreb is a charming city, though it suffers in reputation for the proximity of the Croatian coast (which I didn't visit). Some backpackers I met said it was a two-day city (on the backpacker circuit, cities are ranked according to the time required to see everything). I, of course, could have spent a week there. It is altogether a lovely city, unjustly ignored in the race for the beach. It is kind to tourists and travellers, of which there are many, both backpackers (two main types: those on the Southern trail to Istanbul - something like Venice, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul - and those on their way to the coast) and good old tourists of the usual sort, American, German and Japanese (us Brits still haven't made it out of Spain yet it seems). The streets are full of bustling cafes lining the picturesque squares, with trams wending their way down past regal houses and handsome churches. The city is also packed with museums. The Modern Art gallery is particularly good, though the upper rooms are covered in so much contemporary art it feels like you've been hit over the head with giant red and black iron installations when you walk in.

If Croatia is pretty much Central Europe (with a twist of the Mediterreanean and a touch of the Balkans), then Slovenia is just pure Central Europe, a veritable miniature Austria. Everything is on a small scale, the whole country has something like two million people, and you can drive across it in a couple of hours. It's by far the most Western and rich of the Balkan countries (I am never sure if Greece counts or not as a Balkan country). It's GDP per capita is 1.5 times that of Croatia and twice that of Serbia (it's about four times that of lawless Albania). The scenery is distinctly Alpine, little Austrian-like villages set in little Austrian-like mountains. It was almost a continual surprise to hear Slovenes speak with what was clearly a Slavic language and not some variant of German. Everything feels neat, prim and in its proper place and the whole atmosphere was one of typical Alpine health, as if the locals rose early to catch the sunrise on the local Alp before swishing stylishly down the perfect offpiste powder for a splendidly healthy breakfast and another day on the slopes. Ljubljana, the capital, is tiny, a little gem of a city that you can walk plain across in an hour. It does, however, feel rather too much like the perfect romantic weekend getaway rather than a budget backpackers destination. Restaurants full of fawning couples crowd the riverfront, the trees and cute little bridges reflected in the water in the still evening air. It's just the right size to do in two days, too.

Most people recommend basing yourself in Ljubljana and then seeing the rest of the country in a series of day trips. I, of course, like to do things differently. I spent the requisite two days in Ljubljana before even I began to wonder if I could bear walking up to see the view from the castle for the fourth time in 36 hours. I therefore thought I'd sacrifice my usually snobbery and use my third and last day to take a touristy day trip to Bled, a super picturesque village somewhere near the Southern reaches of the Alps.

Before I left, I thought I'd be clever and swap the book I'd just finished at the hostel bookswap where my host worked. Little did I know that it would be my undoing. Though, in retrospect, perhaps it was the punishment I incurred by my choice of book, because, yes, I did in fact choose The World According To Clarkson. But, actually, and bear with me here, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't nearly as outrageous as I'd expected. In fact, I found myself agreeing with some of what he said. Now I know that many of my friends, and some of my family too probably, would rather go whaling, felling rainforests and then voting Tory before admitting to agreeing with anything written by Clarkson. But travel broadens the mind, as they say. Isn't that one of the good things about travelling, the chance to expose oneself to differing views?

And I found myself on the train to Bled, absorbed in Clarkson's battles with the lawn. I should point out, that while it's ok, it's not a great read and it most definitely not "the funniest book you'll read this year" - it will be a million years before Clarkson is funnier than Sedaris - and it did suffer somewhat in comparison with the book I'd just handed in, Anna Karenina. (After all, one is one of the greatest works ever written and the other is Anna Karenina, right?) But anyway, I was absorbed (maybe it's a worrying sign that I thought much of what he said was basically common sense, though we do comforting differ on what makes a good book, so that's ok, right?). When we stopped after about an hour, and I looked up and saw a sign with Bled on it, I jumped up, slammed the book the shut and rushed out, congratulating myself on escaping just before the doors closed and the train pulled away. To quote Ron Burgundy, I immediately this decision. The sign in fact said Lesce-Bled. And then I remembered I was supposed to change trains anyway. Hmm. I glanced around me. Beautiful Alps soared on the horizon, always just out of sight behind the admittedly quite clean and handsome Builder's Merchants (thanks to Dad I consider myself something of a Builder's Merchants connoisseur: this one was good but no HIS).

The next train was in an hour, leaving me with about 10 minutes in Bled before I had to get the last train back to Ljubljana. There was nothing for it but to explore Lesce. I walked along the main road for five minutes until I hit the edge of the village. I walked back the way I'd come, past the railway station, the Builder's Mechants, the supermarket and out the other side. That was it, I'd seen the entire place in about 15 minutes. The main road branched, one way dipping down towards fields filling flat valley leading to the soaring Alps. The sign pointed to Bled. Yep, that is where I should have been I thought. I tried to halfheartedly hitchhike, but gave up after 10 minutes, knowing I was running out of time anyway. There was nothing for it but to have a beer in the town's only cafe (which was in the station) and get the next train back to Ljubljana.

That evening, I walked up to the Castle for a fifth time...

Perhaps it is just jealousy. Perhaps I too wanted to swish stylishly down the slopes to breakfast, naturally conducted fluently in five languages with my good looking friends with their great complexions, or maybe it was simply the prices. Whatever it was, I soon missed being in the East. It was all too perfect, all too tidy and just too damn cute. I missed being able to stick my head out of the window of the ramshackle trains of Romania and Bulgaria, travelling so slowly I could make out the curled russet husk of a mouse impaled on a thorn by a Shrike. I missed good old concrete and no one speaking much English. Rakia and meat stew for breakfast. Hot, hot countryside and communist statues in baked and ugly towns... It's just not the same, this travelling in Central Europe, it's just all too pretty...

Rakia: connecting people

climberchris — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:34:00 GMT

If I were forced to choose a word to describe the Serbs I've met, it would be proud. Or maybe tall. No, definitely proud. But they are also all really tall. It's like being in Brobdingnag...

I've had an extraordinary time in Serbia. The kind of experience that makes me thank the Lord for couchsurfing and all the good people in this World. I'd struggled to find a place to stay in Belgrade and so it was with real gratitude that I finally found an kind and accommodating host. I'd heard good things about Belgrade: famous for its arts and music, its brave journalists (especially its radio), its bohemian edge and its nightlife, all during dark times for Eastern European arts and free thought and press. So I was looking forward to experiencing it all, meeting young Serbs and finding out what it was like to live here. Seeing a slice of real Belgrade.

What I didn't expect was that the slice of real Belgrade I would see was the infamous* force of nature that is the Balkan Granny.

My host had planned to have me stay with him and his family, but in the end it wasn't possible and he arranged for me to stay with his Grandmother. I couldn't have been more delighted. Go looking for reality and it finds you - in the most unexpected ways. My host's Grandmother was 82 and came up to my waist when she stretched. She spoke not a word of English and on meeting me refused to believe I was really from the UK, believing instead that I was one of those unfortunate souls whose parents had emigrated and neglected to teach me my Mother tongue.

She insisted that I sleep in her bed, while she took the couch. I struggled at first with the suggestion that I should be the one to turf an 82 year old woman out of her bed, but after a moment's reflection conceded (though I could no more have resisted the flow of an oncoming glacier). Firstly she was right that I would be less disturbed in her room (there were two rooms and the bathroom in her cottage) as she got up at 5am everyday. Secondly it occurred to me that she had, in her 82 years, been through more hardship than I could imagine or would want to. She'd lived through the Second World War and its aftermath, through communism and through another war, barely 15 years old, during which she and her family had been forced to leave their home in Dalmatia (in what is now Croatia) and resettle in Serbia, ethnically cleansed with so many others (on all sides). A night on the couch would likely do her less harm than it would me.

My days there followed the same pattern. I got up about four or five hours after my host, who'd got up at dawn, and as I showered she put on some Serbian coffee (which is or isn't, depending whom you ask, very much like Turkish coffee). In her case she didn't believe in small portions (this is another Serbian trait: they eat enormous amounts - I was permanently stuffed) and I started the day with the largest mug of sweet black coffee I've ever seen. Along with the coffee she gave me a shot of Rakia to whet my appetite. Rakia is a strong, often home-brewed, spirit, found throughout the Balkans, and even in Turkey, in various guises: Raki, Rakia, Rakija etc. It tends to be drunk by older generations and is known to be the cure for all manner of ills. Especially if drunk every monrning. The variants are all pretty much the same and all sufficiently strong (usually 45 to 50 %) to burn all the way down. The title of this blog is taken from a Balkan play on the Nokia slogan and the effects of Rakia.

And so my days started half drunk and wild-eyed from the coffee, listening to a tape of Dalmatian folk music that my host played at every opportunity. She first put it on the evening I arrived and as I sat there in her small cottage, nodding and smiling at a four foot Serbian woman in her headscarf and with her hens pecking outside and the smell of freshly spread muck pervading the neighbourhood, I couldn't help but inwardly smile. An ethnomusicologist's wetdream, the music initially sounded like someone trying to play the bagpipes and the harmonica at the same time, but as I heard it more and more I began to distinguish more subtlety in it than I'd first imagined. It was in simple time, with what I guessed was only one instrument, playing a droning note on the beat and a melody that was more rhythm than tune, a sort of Dalmatian funk. A bar-long phrase would be repeated five or six times and then a slight variation would be introduced and that phrase repeated, the whole thing four or five minutes long.

As I sat outside in the shade of the garden on my first morning, I reflected on the music. I'd tried to ask if it was from Dalmatia and when she in turn tried to explain it brought tears to her eyes. I first heard the music as something I could easily categorise - this was "real" folk music - not the kind you buy in the airport or watch at shows in your hotel restaurant, but a tape of real live musicians who'd really played this music in a remote village in Dalmatia. Listening to it felt exactly like the authentic experience I was looking for on my travels. And that made me smile. But as I sat there in the sunshine and thought how real this experience was and how great it was to stumble across this slice of real Serbia and experience it all, soak it up, I realised how shallow an initial response that was. I found myself listening to the music, not understanding it, almost looking down on it or looking in from the outside. It was as if rather than really experience it meaningfully, my search for the authentic had lead me to feel everything at one stage removed. I could see myself turning it about in my head as an abstract thing, not inside the very here and now, with all its attendant emotions and impressions, but outside.

I heard anew the music, trying to understand what it meant to the old woman sitting next to me. I tried to imagine what it was like for this, a single tape played over and over again, to be the only link to my home. I imagined all the pain of living a new life, losing life as you know it, being transplanted into a new country, a new town, and living there alone, far from home. And in this light the music became intolerably sad, the rhythmic tune reflecting the endless thoughts of what once was. So it became real folk music, music of heritage and memory and loss and finally I began to understand what I was looking for and what I'd found...

I said that if I'd been forced to choose one word to describe the Serbs I'd met it would be proud, and that's true. It's almost impossible to imagine asking the question "Are you proud of your country, are you proud to be where you're from?" and receiving the negative answer I found in Romania, where many I spoke to seemed to be sick of being in Romania and being Romanian. After Serbia, the difference was striking. The Serbs I chatted with saw corruption as a problem (it is a truth universally acknowledged that the curse of the Balkans is corruption), though none could have imagined a better country to herald from and none seemed to move abroad.

Pride is close, but it isn't quite right. It would in fact be inat. But this is a Serbian word, apparently untranslatable, but, for many Serbs, summing up their national spirit exactly. The closest English expression that I can make it out to be is something like Fighting Spirit. They could only translate it via examples, such as "if someone tells you you can't do something, then you do it, just to prove you can." Or "if someone knocks you down then you get up to prove that you can, that you're not beaten".

The Serbs I met were certainly full of inat. Perhaps because I stayed in a community of Serbs exiled from Dalmatia and Krajina (now Croatia), but I got the impression they believed most, if not all, Serbs were similar. I can't vouch for that, but somehow I wouldn't be surprised. The pride I saw was muscular, almost pugnacious. As the Serbs saw it, Serbia had once been great and had had its heart ripped out. Worse still, it had had its heart ripped out and the World didn't just stand by and watch, but had participated, and still the West's media portrayed the Serbs as wrongdoers. From the Serbs point of view the injustice could not have been greater.

It was from my friend Goran that I learnt of how most Serbs felt about Kosovo. Goran, the proud singer of proud Serbian songs, an entertainer known throughout the local community (a suburb on the edge of Belgrade) for his guitar and ready banter and his songs of home. We got on well, introduced by my host on the first night while he worked in his parent's cafe. (His parents were as kind as his Grandmother, welcoming me into their home and even going so far as to give me a t-shirt from their cafe 'Zaljubiska', which, I am told means 'In love'. In fact all the Serbs I met were incredibly kind and welcoming.) We sat in the carpark of the high school, watching the world go by, drinking cheap beer from a plastic bottle as he sang Serbian songs in the warm night's air. And there, from Goran the proud Serb, I learnt just a little more about another side of the Balkans, one that we don't see too often in the West, or perhaps rather, a side that I haven't seen too often in the West. It's not an easy or comfortable side, I personally don't find it easy to empathise with - perhaps you do, but it's there nonetheless. As I've said in a previous blog, I never want to be accused of seeing the world in black and white. The Balkans couldn't be less black and white. I've heard the clouds over the Balkans have two sides, but I'm not sure there's a silver lining. In fact, to steal a song, I would say I've looked at clouds from both sides now, but still I really dont know clouds at all.

*Ok, so I'm not sure they're really infamous, but they should be.
staying with a Serbian Grandmother who didn't speak a word of English.

Impressions of the End of the Orient Express

climberchris — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 17:21:00 GMT

Steam swirled around legs as I stepped elegantly off the carriage, momentarily casting my flannel walkıng suıt in monotone grey. Harrıed porters hurrıed past, theır shouts mınglıng wıth the clanking engıne and the pop and hıss of coolıng metal. The acrıd smell of the porter´s sweat mingled with the smoke, a hınt of spıces ın hıdden bazaars and darkened souks on the aır. Shafts of lıght poured through the hıgh wındows, illuminating the young French Countess who´d laughed a lıttle too readıly at my tales of goıng down to Cambrıdge and lost summers on the Rıvıere for her Italıan Governess´s comfort. Catching myself, I beckoned to a porter to fetch my hamper and trunk from the compartment. The world was black and whıte...

Sadly my arrival didn't quite go like that. I'd just finished Tender is the Night (another example of books bending my expectations), giving me a rather more Jazz Age view of the Orient Express than my budget allows, and really it went more like ... this.

Shouldering my backpack I stepped out of the carriage. The station was quiet, surprisingly empty. A few other backpackers spilled out onto the platform, a few consulted their guidebooks nervously, a couple chattering in loud American accents. The station was small, perhaps four platforms. Down one side ran wrought iron curlicues, hints of glories past. A small sign pointing to a closed museum and a cafe restaurant served tea on ostentatious trays with immaculate white tablecloths, strange and isolated reminders of what once was.

Stepping out of my own dreams and into the bright sunshine I was in Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient, the city that "If the Earth were a single state ... would be its capital". Istanbul is a huge city, something like 12 million inhabitants, spanning two continents. A lifetime here and you still wouldn't know it, never mind attempt to describe it in 2000 words (I think that is roughly what my blogs come to these days; 1999 words too long many of you might think). I will content myself with the few impressions I had of it.

Much to my host's bemusement I found it an ineffably romantic city, a city that, if I were pushed to associate with other memories, I would say reminded me of Jerusalem. It has that same air of a meeting place of many cultures, a heroic city, walled and fortified, home to empires lost and perhaps to come, a city that untold numbers have fought and died for. There is the mix of the West and the Middle East too. It feels an undeniably Western, if not European, city (it doesn't have the wide central avenues of more or less grand buildings that make European cities so quintessentially European), but equally, paradoxically, it is undeniably not a Western city.

It is one of the few places I have visited that I have felt slip through my fingers as I tried to grasp it, as if it were too grand, too dignified and just too complex to let itself be caught in the amateur descriptions of a young backpacker, even the internal ones. Seen through the lens of a 24 hour train ride, all I can see is vague memories, impressions, nothing definite that I could pin my hat on and say, "For me, at least, Istanbul was just so."

And what do I remember, perhaps more interestingly, what I do think I will remember in years from now?

Sitting on the steps of the Yeni (New) Mosque, undoubtedly; the Golden Horn before me, chewing on salted corn and watching the devout pour into the courtyard at the insistence of the evening call to prayer. Sun catching on the water and sparkling, heat and crowds and the noise of people milling around, idly passing the time, chatting, joking and simply sitting. Getting vaguely lost in the Sultanahmet, blinded by store after store after store of gold and silver, cheap t-shirts and rugs, tourist tat and local bargains. Small dark passageways and strong coffee maybe. Kebabs.

I will remember the Ayasofya. Or will I? Like the station, it's perhaps an idea of a building that suffers from a surfeit of imagination. I was told it was so beautiful it had rendered strong men speechless, struck by the glories of both Man and God. And as I approached it reverentially, I could feel the emotion, the presence that it must of had on so many people of the past (though for not inconsiderable periods of its 1500 year existence it had been destroyed, desecrated and otherwise in less than perfect state). I prepared myself for its majesty, readied myself for its marvels. I walked finally through the Emperors doors (which are simply enormous, they must 8 metres high) and lo was there scaffolding. Great, magnificaent scaffolding that stretched to the very height of the dome, all 55.6 metres of it. Of course, it remained an astoundingly beautiful building, the biggest cathedral in the entire world for over a 1000 years. The famous pendentives were still visible; some of the mosaics - that caused Justinian to exclaim "Solomon, I have surpassed thee" - were uncovered and light streamed in through windows that could give even Dawkins pause for thought. It's just a shame about that scaffolding really. At least the almost equally fantastic Sultan Ahmed Mosque didn't have the same problems. And it was free to enter. I love Mosques, perhaps even more than Orthodox Basilicas, with the calm, quiet light and their spacious domes. Maybe they're really the buildings to give Dawkins pause for thought?

Istanbul is a modern city too. My host was convinced that I'd find it almost "a little bit 3rd world" and I had trouble persuading him that, actually, my impressions couldn't have been further from that. I had difficulty explaining that after the Balkans, and Albania in particular, Istanbul felt quite quite 'developed'. I had little trouble with taxi drivers - only one half-heartedly called "Taksi" at the station on my arrival - and almost no one tried to sell me anything on the street. Perhaps it was just testament to my 'trying-desperately-to-blend-in' outfit of ragged t-shirt and wares stored in my "Bulgarian Handbag" (i.e. a plastic bag), because some travellers I knew told me they'd got sick of the carpet sellers and tea vendors calling after them. But then they were two Norwegian girls, so they were never quite going to manage to blend in. It might also have been that I only really spent one day in Sultanahmet, the touristy part. My host lived a little way away from that, close to the cafes and bars of Taksim.

In the evening crowds filled the several kilometres of Istiklal (I think that is what it's called!), tables and chairs cramming the side streets in a sea of bars. It was warm, pleasant after hot days (usually 35+) to drink beer and chat. All my host's friends spoke English and as he was busy, only back in town for a week after a year away, he was happy to hand me over to them. And, to be honest, so passed much of my time in Istanbul. But then, it's not really a bad way to pass time anywhere...

So why Istanbul? Why not just keep going, why not pass time in Ankara? I thought about this for a long time, enjoying the idea of just keepin' on goin'. I'd considered carrying on into Turkey and exploring the lesser explored East, perhaps even going to Cyprus. In the end I realised that to really travel Turkey I'd need more time. I couldn't make it part of my journey Eastwards, the Israel stamp preventing me from getting any further East than the Turkish-Iranian border. Armenia and Georgia, even Azerbaijan, would be fascinating places to see, but ultimately I decided that was another trip entirely. To go into Turkey only to turn around again seemed too arbitrary, too much of a loose end for my narrative arc. And therefore I contented myself with Istanbul, the edge of Europe, the end of the Orient Express. The symmetry of a journey to the end of Europe appealed to the field theorist in me; I'd touch Asia and no more and leave the rest for another time. It seemed, well, dulce et decorum (without the rest of it...!). What more romantic destination or glamorous turning point could there be for a train journey than the end of the Orient Express? I've come to the edge of a continent: it's time to turn back.

From Albania to the Acropolis

climberchris — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:52:00 GMT

Well, I've made it to Athens; dreamlike, I'm almost unsure of how I got here. After Albania, Athens is a waking dream of Frappes and Smart cars; of Bluetooth and ipods. I'm back in the West. However Eastern that West may be.

It's been two weeks since I last wrote and it's been an up and down two weeks. From Varna I took the train West to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria: the highest capital in Europe. My couchsurfing host was fantastic and I was thrown straight into meeting her Sex and the City friends, as she called them, for dinner. (As I sat there with them, it occurred to me that that must make me Stanford...*) Sofia was fun, vibrant and, surrounded by mountains, felt fresher and more exciting than the slightly faded streets first suggested. I loved the people I met there, friendly and interesting and engaging. In a wonderfully random series of days we visited the justly famous and gorgeous Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, pausing to listen to the low sounds and breath in the scents of Mass; went to the ubiquitous Irish pub, present in every city in the World; played table tennis with a former semi-professional; watched a hip-hop dance competition and then danced until 4:30 in the morning. Looking back, the slump that came next was inevitable.

From Sofia I took the bus to Skopje, a spectacular winding drive through ravines and hidden valleys, Italian job moments threatening at every corner. Deposited unceremoniously in Skopje, jolted awake by the dust and heat, I joined up with two other backpackers and headed to the hostel. I'd been unable to find couchsurfers in FYROM or Albania and sadly it would be hostels until Greece. Two nights in Skopje was enough, abandoning my planned third night for an unexpected trip to Ohrid, in Southwestern Macedonia. I spent two days there, absorbed in sunbathing and swimming in the clear blue Lake Ohrid. The hostel in Ohrid was nice, but with that slightly strange atmosphere of expat, overloud nerviness that solitary hostels in small towns can acquire. With nowhere else for backpackers to stay, the hostel becomes a shelter and a warning beacon. It's that distinctive air of foreigners crowded together in a foreign land, sheltering perhaps, a little bit of home mixed up alcohol and incest and powerful personalities.

I had fun: eight of us hired a boat and the kind boatman dropeed us off on a spectacular, secluded beach. We had beer and a picnic, books to read and the crystal clear waters to swim in after the bright sunshine became too hot. It was fun and I had a good time, unable to keep the smile from my face at the beauty of it all.

But for reasons I can't quite work out, Macedonia was still the low point of my trip. I felt tired and underwhelmed by Macedonia, Skopje was a disappointment, boring with little to stay for. I walked round the castle and the old town bazaar twice and couldn't face a third time; there's really nothing else to do, no nice big parks to kill time in or shady avenues with benches on which to read your book. There are no trains and bus travel is much less pleasant. I felt hassled by taxi drivers and market vendors. No one spoke English and everything felt difficult.

The problem, of course, lay not with Macedonia, but with me. I felt a general malaise, a melancholy that had no obvious reason, but just was. I was tired and I no longer had my heart in travelling. My mindset was all wrong. Rather than thinking "A 10 hour bus journey? What an adventure. No air conditioning or opening windows? Even better!" - the prerequisite paradigm for long distance travelling and the way I'd viewed the trip up to this point - I was just tired of it all. I was tired of waiting, of being hot and dusty, of not understanding, of nothing being on time and of nothing being easy.

Perhaps it was a combination of a number of so-called reasons. It was possibly just those unexplained but inevitable lows that accompany long journeys, the melancholy that sometimes strikes, wherever you are or whatever you are doing. They pass, of course, and I knew this one would too. Maybe it was tiredness, or maybe a little homesickness. I still don't know. It gradually passed in Albania, and I'm back to loving the whole thing, eating up the miles and relishing the adventure.

From Ohrid, a bus took me, slowly and painfully, to Tirana, the capital of Albania. I've noticed a strong trend that, as you travel Southeast through Europe, each country views your next stop as being more backward, more difficult and less friendly for visitors. The Czech consider themselves more advanced than the Slovaks, who, in turn, consider their country more developed than Romania, which is, of course, less backward than Bulgaria. Here you hit the sea and the process heads West. Bulgarians consider Macedonia a backwater (albeit a pretty one) and Macedonians view Albania with suspicion. Here it all stops; you've reached the end of the world as far as many people in the neighbouring countries see it. In general most people living in the Balkans had visited their neighbours, but very few, if any at all, that I met had been to Albania. As one Macedonian observed, "I have Albanian friends, they're nice. But in their own country, they live like gypsies."...

Tirana is certainly a crazy place. There are no trains to speak of in Albania, a few that run occasionally and very slowly, but absolutely no international rail links. The buses don't usually have timetables, they just wait until they are full, the ticket collector standing on the street shouting himself (it's invariably a man) hoarse, encouraging travellers to get on. Pavements are generally non-existent, or just mud, and crossing the street is as adventurous as anywhere you could care to think of, especially with drivers frequently ignoring redlights. Power cuts and water shortages are common, particularly in winter, though I experienced a random blackout while I was there. It does feel safe though. And this isn't just due to the 700,000 indestructible concrete bunkers constructed by the crazed dictator Hoxha, who ruled until twenty years ago (though the Communists ruled until 1992, when economic mismanagement finally did for them).

The people were helpful and friendly, though no one spoke English (Italian is the most common Western European language spoken). And the hostel was fun, less fraught, more relaxed than the one in Ohrid. I really enjoyed my time there. Albania was beautiful, though obviously poor even for the Balkans, and there's a lot to see, if little infrastructure to see it. I guess that it's all changing but I'd like to go back, with more time and well rested, to see the beaches and mountains of the South and to dip my feet in the Adriatic again. In two weeks I'd watched the sun rise over the Black Sea, I'd crossed the Balkan peninsula, and I'd seen the sun set over the Adriatic. It was time to head South.

Which I did at four am. A foolish thing to do, it turns out, but I made it in the end. The bus was uncomfy and, despite my exhaustion (I hadn't had more than four or five hours sleep for nearly a week), I couldn't sleep. Loud Albanian music filled the bus and everyone was content to leave the lights on and chat. I was not. We made it, of course, arriving at the border six hours later. The border took nearly two hours to cross (getting into the EU isn't so easy as getting out), though as soon as they saw my British passport, customs waved me on and the border guards dismissed me. An hour later and we were in Ioannina. This being an Albanian bus, it didn't stop at the bus station, preferring to drop me on the outskirts before driving off in a cloud of dust. I wandered for a while, looking for a pharmacy (traveller's tip people: high probability of someone speaking English in a pharmacy) and they directed me to the centre of town.

And so I'm in Greece. I love it. The bus to Patra was fast and comfortable, the drive down the coast every bit as spectacular as the One in California, though perhaps not as long. As I arrived at my hosts in Patra, there for only one night, I took a shower and, reaching for my wallet, I had that sickening feeling you get when you just know it's not there. I searched and I emptied my bag and I searched again, but I knew it was gone. There were two options: I had either left my wallet in the bus station or on the bus.

It turned out to be the former and a kind woman had handed it in. Thank you World for kind people. They are out there. I had it back within two hours and I liked Greece already. The next day seemed only to confirm my impression. The bus ride to Athens was almost as spectacular as the day before, as if there isn't a boring view to be had in Greece at all (until the suburbs of Athens anyway). My first day here and I've seen the Acropolis, gawped at the Pantheon and wandered around the Ancient Agora. My couchsurfing host is lovely, the perfect host in fact, and Athens a wonder of sights and sounds yet to be explored. The world is sunny again and Macedonia long forgotten.

* For those of you who haven't seen it (i.e. probably large sections of my family) he's the Gay Bestfriend, the "Fifth lady" of the group.

The Cyrillic and the Sea

climberchris — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:46:00 GMT

I swam in the Black Sea this morning. A cool, salty-blue surprise to someone who had originally planned to be somewhere in Eastern Poland about now. An email from The Parents reminded that I'd been lax in keeping you all up to date with where I was and where I'm going, a situation I can only put down to laziness and ignorance.

My original conception of the journey had been to go as far as realistically possible without flying. I'd first thought this would be China, but then discovered the boat to Japan and that became my goal. Shortly after leaving I learnt that I couldn't get a visa to Russia and the plan changed to accommodate this - I would fly to Mongolia and carry on from there. I'd said I'd go to Romania in the first week of June, the first fixed point of my trip. From there I thought I could loop northwards through Ukraine and Poland, on and up to the Baltic, perhaps crossing to Finland from Estonia, then Sweden, Denmark and to Berlin, the only European city with a direct flight to Mongolia. However, as I progressed through the Czech Republic and Slovakia, I began to change my mind. Having finally actually looked at a map, I realised that from Romania I could equally well head south: Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey even. Time constraints would then (probably) necessitate flying back to Berlin, so I resolved to put off my decision until I Romania, where I'd be spending nearly a week in one place and could ask my friends what they thought.

And, after a few pints, that is why I'm here, in Varna, on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. Rather than take the straight forward option - do I ever? - I thought I'd meander my way through Macedonia and Albania before heading to Greece and then Turkey. We shall see. At any rate, I have a ticket to Sofia and what more do I need?

Varna is a wonderful mix of Balkan and Mediterreanean, of Orthodox churches and carefully coiffed mullets (that most Mediterreanean of things). It has an air of an Edwardian seaside resort, though I doubt the speedos the men wear here would escape censure in Margate (and I think I'd be inclined to agree with the Edwardians on this one). The Cyrillic script (a tangent: wouldn't it suck to be called Methodius, possibly the greatest name ever, help invent an entire alphabet and then have it named after your brother Cyril?) adds an air of the unknown to the familiarity of a faded beach resort. The city centre is open, pedestrianised in the main part, with the large Seaside Park leading down to the beach. The latter is, according to the delightful City guide lent to me by my host, home to not only the Dolphinarium - "with an amusing show etc" - but also the "Astronomical Observatory and the Planetarium which organises observation seances for visitors". Perhaps that's where we are going wrong with public science education in the UK: we need more mediums (should that be media?). And wouldn't it just solve the great science religion schism in a stroke?

Bulgaria is apparently poorer than Romania, but I've seen no sign of that yet. The train journey here passed through fields more reminiscent of France or England than Romania. Gone were the horse-drawn ploughs and small plots, replaced with huge rolling fields of potatoes, rape and wheat. The villages were different too, no longer odd mixtures of concrete and stone, Communist and traditional. Instead the houses marched in loose rows down hillsides, in rough white uniform with red-tiled roofs, nestled against the rolling fields.

Varna is probably better off than most other towns in Bulgaria, being the 'tourist capital of Bulgaria'. Russian tourists come in large numbers and I've heard a lot of German, a stroke of luck that allowed me to actually find my couchsurfing host. I was given instructions to take bus number 8 to Trakata, but it turned out to be a restaurant that no Bulgarians (one or two of whom that I spoke to could speak some English) had heard of. I was saved by two elderly Germans who spoke no English but, astonishingly, had both heard of the restaurant and could understand my atrocious German.

Varna is also a popular area for British ex-pats, tired of the weather and Tony Blair, or whatever his name is. There are numerous signs for companies specialising in British Bulgarian real estate ("We Build We Sale"). The beaches are narrow strips of rough sand, yellow-white in the sunshine. The water is clear: bright, bright-blue and glinting; you can swim leisurely before heading up to the beachside restaurants and cafes. At night these become wild bars or clubs and it seems like half the Balkans are here to promenade the front in the warm air. It's cheap here too, the food delicious (especially the fantaaastic salads and their famous Bulgarian portions) and the weather has so far been amazing: I can certainly see the appeal.

It's a real town though and perhaps that's why I like it. Most of the visitors to the beach are young Bulgarians and behind the hotels lie the vast cranes and rusting piles of containers of an active port with the smokestacks of large factories just visible in the background. Yesterday afternoon we witnessed a local drama, evidence in miniature, as if it were needed, of real life.

Meandering down from the Seaside Park to the beachfront we passed a rough knot of Bulgarians, all leaning on the railings of a fence. We stopped and as we peered over the barrier we saw a diving tower, outlined high against the sky. A boy detached himself from the top and twisting and turning, he landed with a slap against the water.

A younger boy, perhaps 9 or 10, appeared at the second highest board. He carried on climbing, obviously nervous. The boys' coach wandered over to the music playing and turned it off, taking up a microphone. Now 10 metres up, the boy peered over the edge of the board, unconvinced. His coach began to urge him on in gruff Bulgarian, encouragement perhaps or maybe instructions. The boy climbed down to the lower board, picked up two small squares of towel and re-ascended to the top. He laid one of the squares delicately over the edge, minutely repositioning it exactly in a ritual of careful preparation. He walked purposefully back to the steps and, turning, paused. We waited. Slowly the boy approached the edge and, pausing finally, he spun round. Silhouetted against the bright sky, he stood on the edge, his heels taut, stretched over nothing but sparkling water. 10 seconds passed, then 20, maybe 30. With a start he stepped forward and away from the edge. The man began talking to the boy, urging, cajoling, persuading perhaps. We waited. As if unexpectedly resolved he stepped forward once more, spinning and then stopping. He lifted his head, his heels in that same stretched position, his calves ridged and rigid, arms outstretched, gymnastic and ready. As he fought for composure, the crowd fell silent, each of us perhaps imagining our battles, fighting our own fears through the image of the diving board. The noise and colour of the beach, out of sight behind the pool, had seemed to fade and now there was just the boy and the water and the bright blue sky. With a jerk he leapt backwards, turning twice until, at a barked shout from his coach, he stretched out, arms and legs now vertical and - crack - he hit the water, all lithe line and stretched muscle. A Bulgarian Bigger Splash. Applause broke out, the crowd gradually dispersing with the too-bright conversation of the relieved.

It had become theatre, drama that engaged and questioned, challenging each of us to ask whether we would have jumped. It challenged us to weigh ourselves in the balance, to measure our own courage, to ask whether we too could fight our own fears: art of the very highest kind. Deeper than that, it had become existential art too; the diving board a very literal representation of angst - that condition so often compared with vertigo - and the acknowledgement of our total freedom. Would we take that step, accepting, not certain but with courage enough? Or would we step away, retreating into the inauthenticity of the board, the myth of the solid?

As we watched, his battle had become our own individual struggle; he had taken on the metaphor of the heroic, the idol of those who are life's spectators. Through his triumph we too had triumphed. His success was ours, as the success of all idols through all ages has taken on the rich metaphor of own struggles with our own demons and become ours. And so are myths born. We watch and we know that perhaps we would have failed. Perhaps not. Perhaps we will never know until the time comes. All I know is that I'll remember that boy and his courage when mine next fails.

Carbuncle of the East

climberchris — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:29:00 GMT

Bucharest is, without wishing to be too rude, the ugliest city I have ever seen. There is almost entirely without redeeming features, except perhaps my couchsurfing hosts, but they're planning to leave anyway. You know how some things are so ugly, or so kitsch, that they become beautiful or cool again? Well Bucharest is uglier still. It's like gone through ugly, through so-ugly-it's-beautiful and carried on going so that it's ugly again. And, as someone who positively adored Bratislava, that's really saying something. It's really that bad. (If you haven't seen Eurotrip and how it portrays Bratislava, go see it. It's far from a good movie - it is to the backpacking experience what l'Auberge Espagnole is to Erasmus, but without any of the latter's more subtle cinematic charms - but I did laugh pretty hard watching it).

Ok, so it's not that bad actually. I'd arrived on the overnight train and, though I'd slept well, I was exhausted and overwrought and the skies had clouded over menacingly. The next day I'd slept, the sun was out and I could appreciate the wonders of Bucharest a little more. And wonders they are, in their own way. Not in the usual sense; worth seeing, as Johnson would have it, but not worth going to see.

Pride of place necessarily goes to the Palace of the Parliament, Ceaucescu's greatest folly. It is apparently the largest civilian administrative building in the world (the Pentagon claims to be the largest office building in the world). Interestingly enough, it is also the third ugliest building in the history of mankind, just after the Centre George Pompidou and just one place ahead of the Highland Council Offices in Inverness. Who knew? It's simply enormous, a squat grey cube with ungainly pillars and unending balconies. You really can't miss it. It is home to the parliament and to the National Contemporary Art Gallery, perhaps the strangest I've ever visited. The rooms are gigantic, white washed and bare. I began to worry about taking the wrong turning or getting lost walking between the art. It didn't help that three floors were dedicated to a temporary exhibition about some architect or other, profoundly boring to my eyes anyway. Of the rest, there were a couple of good works, the large, cartoon like anti-war sculpture in the foyer and a couple of cartoons with some wit and originality. Too much was banal, though; the kind of art that too easily gives fodder to that common criticism - My kid could have done better than that! It's probably great if you like architecture though.

The centre of Bucharest is carved up by wide, wide avenues, criss-crossing seemingly forever from one side of the city to the other. Things are on a grand scale here. After all, much of it was designed by a man who went to North Korea and came back inspired. What more can be said? The massive blocks closest to the parliament are all designed to echo and fit in with the parliament but many were not completed. In fact, most of Bucharest appeared to be under construction, victims of the two main forces that shaped the city: Ceaucescu and earthquakes. It's a city to give building control and health and safety inspectors epilepsy.

Tiny old churches, frequently saved by the Church's collusion with Communism, nestle against massive concrete apartments. Old houses crumble against modern shops. The old city centre is a maze of falling down houses and partially constructed shops, with the debris and detritus of construction and destruction littering the streets. Corruption is apparently rife and building is totally unregulated. There are red discs on the most dangerous buildings, the ones with the worst earthquake damage. It's never clear whether there's a real threat or whether someone has paid someone else to put them there, allowing the building to be knocked down cheap and replaced with yet another concrete, rent-earning monstrosity.

I did grow to like it a little more as time passed. The sun helped, and a recognition that after the fun that I'd had in Cluj, Bucharest was always going to be something of a come-down. Some sleep, a nice place to stay and a host prepared to show me some of the less obvious, but vaguely prettier parts, did no harm either. I'd almost be tempted to say some of it was quite pretty.

Romania has been undoubtedly the most interesting part of my trip. The contrast with Hungary is striking. From Budapest, the train takes you East through the Carpathian Basin towards the Romanian border. The countryside stretches out, flat to the horizon. The fields are large, expansive; modern fields. The only reminder that you are not in France are the interminable stops in tiny stations, the platforms nothing more than concrete beds next to the tracks. For four or five hours there's nothing but fields and flowers and sky.

At the border with Romania everything changes. Not immediately, but quickly. The fields wither away to become small strips of individual crops with no borders between them. Hayricks become common, every bit of spare grazing, from the side of the tracks to the paths between the houses, is mown and heaped in drying stacks. For the first time I see horse drawn carts and then horse-drawn ploughs. Old women, in long dark skirts and colourful headscarves hand-weed the higgledy-piggledy patches of crops. Further east, the train begins to snake its way through low hills, densely wooded, far more like the hills of the Czech Republic than the vast plains of Hungary. There are the same thick, dense hedges and ancient trees too, but slightly wilder, more full of birdsong and flashes of colour than previously. It's really beautiful, by far the most beautiful scenery I've seen.

And the memory of a kind Hungarian had stayed with me as I entered Romania. When I booked my ticket in Bratislava the woman didn't tell me - or didn't know - that I needed a seat reservation. I, of course, hadn't any Forints as I thought I'd only be passing through Hungary. So when the ticket collector asked for my reservation I was a little surprised and slightly nervous. I thought that perhaps he was just looking to extort something extra from an unwitting foreigner, but the other passenger in the carriage didn't look perturbed. Perhaps he was in on it. The conductor called another conductor and they conversed for five minutes. All I had was some Slovak Crowns and, randomly, a $20 dollar bill. So the conductors eventually decided to charge me in dollars. Ok, I thought, as long as you don't throw me off the train, I don't really care. 500 forints, or $10, the conductor said. Suddenly the other man stepped in and handed over a 500 note. We all looked surprised and the conductor seemed just a little miffed. So I thanked him profusely (he spoke some English and I some German, between them we managed). He said it was really nothing, it was fine. "But $10 is not nothing. Are you going to Cluj, I can pay you back maybe when we get there?" "No, actually it's about $3.". I guess that you really do need a reservation and no doubt the conductor would have been happy with the actual fare, had I had it. When I didn't I suppose he saw an opportunity for a little tip and the stranger, seeing this, stepped in. So thank you strange Hungarian man. If we ever meet again, I hope I get the chance to repay the favour.

Great Expectations

climberchris — Sat, 31 May 2008 10:39:00 GMT

Warning: this one is an unconnected jumble of thoughts and inadequate philosophising. It sort of follows on from the previous one, but I thought I'd break it up so that if you only want to know roughly what I've been doing or seeing, rather than what I've been thinking, you can skip it.

My reactions to Prague and Bratislava have been making me think. Just as I wonder what I make this trip, so do I wonder what this trip makes me. They are bound up together; the experiences of travel undoubtedly shape you, if you allow them, but you shape your experiences. It is obvious that in reflecting on your reaction to events, you learn as much as you do from the actual events themselves, but, more subtly, it is just as valuable to understand why you sought those experiences in the first place, and why took what you did from them.

My feelings towards the two cities are not just a matter of simple expectations: everyone told me Prague was beautiful, Munich and Bratislava (and even Madrid - "why are you going there, why not Barcelona?" - to some extent) boring or ugly and so, expecting the best or the worst, what I found naturally didn't fit. Expectations effect reactions: it is often easier to deal with difficult situations by managing expectations to prevent the need to deal with unhealthy thought patterns than attempting to directly manipulate said thought patterns after the fact. So these are not unrelated, but neither are they simply related. One aspect of this complexity is perhaps not in explicit expectations but (subconscious) mental 'landscapes' that condition our perception. This might explain my strong experience in Munich, conditioned by my reading, in Fontainebleau, of a number of books about the Middle East that I had picked up in charity shops over my last six months in Edinburgh (and that I hadn't previously found time to read).

Nor are my reactions, as some cynics might suggest, just a matter of me being contrary or obstreperous (I suspect you could mark that one down, along with stubbornness, as another family trait). I've begun to wonder if it isn't more complicated than that.

In reading my description of Braislava, it occurred to me that maybe the keyword there is quintessential. It's a telling term, saying as much about the describer as the described. Perhaps it's also telling that my favourite building in Prague was the magnificent and playful, but thoroughly contemporary, dancing "Fred and Ginger" Milunić and Gehry building, a contrast to the Neo-Baroque and Neo-Gothic panoramas of the old town. (It might also be worth noting that it is not unlike, in some respects, the Scottish Parliament building, my favourite building in Edinburgh.)

As someone who would like to consider themselves a traveller rather than a tourist, I seek authenticity. Not existential authenticity - the authenticity of being - but that of experience. I want to experience the 'real' country. Ticking off the tourist sites, snapping holiday snaps and following the crowd are not what I want. I want to go off the beaten path perhaps, try to find out what life is 'really' like in the countries I visit, uncover what people 'really' think.

It was a shock to realise that on my final morning in Prague I was glad to finally see some dilapidated buildings, graffitied and run-down. That I was glad to see them made me realise the absurdity of the lengths I go to, perhaps subconsciously, to find the authentic. And I suddenly understood that I, too, just see what I want to see. In travel, as in science, all observations are theory-laden. By that I mean that in observing, we necessarily use terms that are grounded in a net of pre-existing metaphysical concepts.

In order to describe what we see, we must use concepts and terms we already understand, terms that have connotations and meanings in the context of our entire world-view. We cannot truly see something afresh. The concepts we have available to describe the world are proscribed bthe fetters of our upbringing, our culture and, perhaps most importantly, our language. Those things for which we don't have the concepts cannot be conceptualised and so cannot be perceived - they fall through our perceptual net. G.K. Chesterton was wrong in claiming the difference between a traveller and a tourist is that the former sees what he sees and the latter what he wants to see; in this regard there is no difference. In some sense, we all see what we want to see.

This is, perhaps, related to the subconscious mental landscapes of which I spoke earlier. One way to view this is to imagine that experiences shape our internal landscape, but subsequent experiences must lie in the plane of that landscape, confined to its contours, though those later experiences change the landscape to which they are bound (analogous, if you like, to General Relativity: matter shapes spacetime and spacetime tells matter how to move). A cynic might say that the difference between tourist and traveller is just a bourgeois conceit constructed to differentiate the tourist with pretensions to intellectualism and upward mobility from the other, the plain tourist, the proletariat (and it's pretty clear I'm a tourist with pretensions to intellectualism if not upward-mobility). And so Alice Thompson was wrong too: Inter-railers aren't "the ambulatory equivalent of McDonalds, walking testimony to the erosion of French culture": that's just middle-class snobbery.

There is a second side to this, perhaps just the other side of the same coin. That is to view the different modes of travel experience as simply differents methods of illuminating the same reality. Here I'm going to lay out my cards and admit to being a realist about reality - I don't think that we all simply construct our own, or that some demon (or, yes, some sort of matrix) is feeding us a bunch of lies about our world. One half-reasons for this is just economy of metaphysical explanation - it's simply more sensible to explain how we all manage to perceive roughly the same stuff most of the time using the rather simple and obvious explanation that that stuff is actually there. If you don't think that stuff actually exists, you've got a lot of explanatory work to do in mapping out how we are all so similar when it comes to seeing the world (in particular why science gets such uniform results).

Of course we can doubt this, but in the end, even Descartes didn't deny the existence of an external reality, just the possibility that we could definitely know about it. And, as Hume pointed out, any reasoned thinking about sceptism leads to schizophrenic intellectualism and doubts about the existence of external reality quickly vanish in the light of the quotidien world. It is simply impossible to function as a true sceptic in everyday life - try it. And, as someone who would like to think of themselves as taking a down-to-earth approach to metaphysical philosophy, this dichotomy suggests the error lies in the library-bound rationalisations of true scepticisms, rather than everyday experience. So that was a rather long, and possibly muddle-headed, tangent. The point is that through our perceptions, we all perceive the same underlying stuff, stuff that actually exists (like different shafts of light partially illuminating a sculpture in a dark room).

In this sort of view, the modes of travel experience could possibly be viewed like modes of literary criticism: we can intepret a text in many ways, depending on our intellectual bent, or school of thought. The text is the same underlying object (yes, this is most definitely controversial, please feel free to comment or email me to point out my errors), but no one way of reading it will capture it in its entirety. A feminist reading is as valid as a close account of its historical context, but neither is complete. Reality and our experience of it (most importantly and pertinently for our discussion, our travel reality - that of a foreign, unknown destination) is like this. Maybe. (If you prefer shafts of light illuminating a sculpture, fine. It's probably less controversial.)

My view of Prague, in this account, is just another way of looking, just as pitching up, like the three Irishmen I met on the train, to do nothing but get drunk is a way of seeing the reality (ha, some people might say getting drunk is the only way to see reality). These guys were on a month long trip, their sole proclaimed aim to 'drink their way round Europe'. One of them was chiefly excited about Prague because it had excellent brothels and you could go to a firing range and fire a real AK47.

And so the question is as follows: there are many ways of accessing the same reality (ie many ways of travelling, or many ways of experiencing the same destination) - does that mean all are equally valid? This is an open question for me, though I have some thoughts.

My couchsurfing host in Prague was a pubcrawl guide. I'd never come across the concept of paying to go on a pubcrawl, but apparently it's very common, especially in Berlin, Amsterdam and Prague. So my first evening there (and my second too) was a pub crawl, an experience I would never have contemplated had it not been my host's job (I must point out that it wasn't something they were that psyched about, but it paid the bills). And I should say I felt very uncomfortable. Not least when we went to Coyote's, a bar based on the film Coyote Ugly, where, in fact, I felt so uncomfortable I almost left. Not since Bangkok had I been somewhere so flagrantly exploitative and I didn't like it. However, spurned on by the fact that when you're having a rubbish time it's often largely you, rather than your circumstances, I became more accepting and ended up having a reasonable night.

This forced me to become more accepting in general of the type of traveller that would seek out a pub crawl as way of experiencing a city such as Prague. If we are all conditioned to see what we want to see, and all modes of experience are just the same, no better and no worse, then maybe it really is just middle-class conceit to think that I'm a traveller and not a tourist. Or even to distinguish them at all.

And then, just as I became more accepting, more tolerant of that type of all drinking tourist, as I strove to understand and accept the insight that all modes of travel experience are equal, I heard some Aussies brag about a hilarious taxi ride in which they found the driver couldn't speak English. So they swore at him and insulted him in English for the entirety of the ride, to gales of laughter from all concerned. I don't even know what to say.

Slow train to Bratislava.

climberchris — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:52:00 GMT

We leave Prague slowly, winding our way past overgrown tracks and large, concrete, bunker-shaped buildings; sidings graffiti-covered and desolate. Even the myth of central Prague only extends a little way, it seems. If you head the right way, towards the bus station, Prague is just another city and as the train crawls out of the station you see its ugly face.

Gradually the city disappears and trees line the tracks. The sun begins to break through the high, thin cloud and catches the windows of houses through the trees, glinting amid the brick building behind the trees. The train doesn't speed up as we head out into the countryside, but as the landscape opens out, the slow pace ceases to matter. Undulating countryside stretches out on both sides, lush, green and inviting in the hot sun. There are little villages and towns, strange mixes of alpine cottages with steep roofs, white-washed walls and dark wooden balconies and blocks of 1960s flats, concrete and grey. The fields are at times flat and then gently rolling, leading the eye to low hills in the distance. Lines of poplars and thick, untamed hedgerows mark out the fields, mostly hay pastures with the occasional oil seed rape adding bright, sunflower-yellow splashes of colour.

We rattle by seemingly deserted train stations, nothing more than single platforms, overgrown and alone with their rusting rolling stock in lonely sidings. There are the signs of heavy industry too, factories and, once, the huge chimney stacks of a power station. Like the villages, these become more sporadic as we travel until eventually there are only little collections of houses nestling in the folds of the landscape.

Somewhere the border slips by unnoticed and we are in Slovakia, less than an hour from Bratislava. The final stretch towards the capital is surprisingly beautiful: a low pass through the southern-most Little Carpathians. The tracks hug the side of a steep, thickly wooded V-shaped valley. Tiny hay pastures snuggle between the tracks and the river meandering beside it.

I like Bratislava, it feels real somehow, more real than Prague. I'd expected Prague to be beautiful, cultural, a magnificent European city. And it was, I suppose. It was certainly pretty. And, after a day or two, I could begin to see the romance. But it wasn't the romance of the old town or the castle (which, by the way is a funny sort of castle with no castellations, battlements or proper towers at all; it looks like a Chateau, not a good honest-to-God, cold, stone construction). No, it was liminal, in the parks on the banks of the Vltava, or on the edge of the New Town. Places Czech couples gather, away from the tourists. I grew to appreciate Prague, but it took a day or two of wandering by myself, heading off in random directions to see what was round the corner.

Certainly Prague has history and romance, but it's all too packaged, too convenient and just too damn full of tourists. You simply can't escape the crowds. You can't discover Prague, it's all just there, signposted in English; turn right at the Cambio/Wechsel/Exchange sign and left after that tour group of Americans.

No, I much prefer Bratislava. It's small - about 450,000 inhabitants - and charming. Not beautiful, but turn the corner and you find an unexpectedly grand building, every bit as lovely as Prague, sandwhiched between the concrete stores, a higgledypiggedly collection of architectural styles. There's an historic square, marking the centre of town, but remains relatively tourist free, all the signs in Slovak, no concessions to the Stag parties that are beginning to discover the cheap beer. Almost no one I've met speaks English, a pleasant culture shock after the gratuitous fluency of Prague. The main street feels quintessentially Central European, a modern mix of communist buildings and turn of the century houses, pedestrianised, trams running between the high street shops and local bars. And it's hot - 33°C today (that's 91°F for the wrinklies) - almost too hot to do anything at midday.

Slovakia, according to the tourism posters 'Part of Europe worth seeing', is relatively small, about 5 million people in a country about one and a half times the area of Scotland (or, using the international agreed unit of country-area, 6 Wales). 500,000 of them live in Bratislava, a city similar in size to Edinburgh, with much of the country sparsely populated, mountainous and spectacularly beautiful (it also has a closely-related, larger and more dominant neighbour - are you beginning to get the parallels here?). It's relatively undiscovered and the stag parties haven't yet arrived in full strength. It's all about to change though. At the moment it's generally cheaper than the Czech Republic and the currency is slightly weaker, but in 2009 Slovakia is joining the Euro and currently it's GDP growth rate is among the highest in the OECD. Foreign investment is growing and the signs of Westernisation are already here, MacDonalds on the high street and Tescos down the road. See it while you can is what I've been told.

And so I thought I'd go in search of a reality that's changing, a record of something other than the average tourist trip. I walked across the Nový Most (New Bridge), with its distinctive flying saucer tower, towards the enormous rectangular blocks of flats visible from the castle on the other side of the Danube. It was my first experience ofpaneláks, classic communist residential buildings: functional, collectivist and ugly, built from pre-fabricated and pre-stressed concrete panels and poorly constructed. Huge, hulking monoliths dominating the skyline, they sprawl across the West bank of the Danube and form a massive residentialarea called Petržalka (which, I later found out, is the most densely populated region of cental Europe), with no real centre and certainly no charisma. Paths run between them through unkempt grass and across half-empty carparks. A few shops are open, but there's not much to do. Graffiti and broken glass abound and there's a rundown, soulless feel to this place, fading remnants once hailed as the ideal in collectivist community living for the proletariat.

It's sunny and people are strolling around, in couples and singly or with children, but I don't feel entirely comfortable. I am most definitely the only foreigner here - no Prague old town centre this - and there are a few groups of teenagers drinking lazily, groups I hesitate to pass too closely (it's not until I'm back at the hostel - I couldn't find anywhere to couchsurf - that I discover in a guidebook that this district was known as the Bronx of Bratislava for its crime rate and drug problems). I take pictures, but shoot from the hip and quickly, until I grow tired of walking the paths between the buildings, all of which look the same and none of which offer much excitement.

Walking back through a large, shady park I stumble across an open air concert, held next to an adventure playground. Kids run riot amongst the stalls of balloons and candyfloss, the parents glad to sit down on the benches and watch them play. Teenagers strut backwards and forwards in giggling pairs and segregated groups, the same self-conscious behaviour the world over. All the while Slovak bands play on the stage next to what turns out to be a very modern shopping centre. Good music that has the crowd singing along and my foot tapping, though I haven't the faintest idea what is going on or why. Still, it's good. And I've finally found my authentic experience - this is real Bratislava - not another tourist in sight, no foreign language in the air. It's pretty clear that visitors just don't bother crossing the bridge, and what a shame, because the best of Bratislava is here, rejoicing in the Saturday sunshine.

I have decided: Slovakia, I shall be back.