On the run ...

To Perpıgnon and Beyond

Leaving Barce with my budget tucked between my legs I vowed to cross the rest of Europe A. S. A. P. A two-legged journey to Perpignon was as far as I could reasonably get that day; one train to the French border, where the Pyrennese meet the sea, and another to Perpignon. Severely sleep deprived, from a final nite's carousing in Barcelona, I sat in the dark on a platform waiting for the connecting train. It was late and the train was late. Fifteen minutes late. A lifetime later it was thirty mınutes late. Announcements blared unintellgibly from the speakers in French, Catalan and Spanish. Faic ar bith as Gaelige. I was perplexed but afraid to leave the platform for fear the train would shoot through in the manner of Spanish buses.

After a time a Scottish couple translated the mumblings of a passing attendant. Our train was late - thank you Monsieur Bleedin' Obvious. Another lifetime passed and the mumbler upgraded the train to "cancelled". Soon the next train was late. The nite had grown very late. An American college student had fallen into our circle of bemusement by the time the mumbler explained we would need to buy new tickets as the approaching train was a much swankier model than the one we had been intended for. Collective tempers flared and we made a musketeer pact not to pay another cent. When the creme de la creme train finally chugged up it was stuffed with the pallid bodies of passengers who had been intended for the earlier cattle cart. We piled aboard into the sweaty space between two carriages. I promptly fell asleep standing up, buffeted in slumber by the surrounding humanity.

As one and all decried their respective situations in broken multi-lingual exchanges, bovine interludes in the confined space, a ticket collector wıth a long neck poked through the crowds. Checking our tickets, he demanded we buy new, and even more expensive ones to cover the additional luxury we were receiving standing upright in the non-ventilated space outside the toilets between two packed livestock carriages. "Whats the French for 'Get f*cked'?" enquired the Scottish lad, with the indignation and bravado of a hurling fan refusing Garda entreaties to come down from a wall in Semple Stadium on Munster Final day. Too weary for an argument, I told the little monsieur in the peaky hat that I was not paying another cent and that talking to me further in this heat was a horribly extravagant waste of his breathing apparatus. The pen pusher threatened police; the train pulled into Perpignon, and we told him he could call Jehovah if he wished as we unbundled onto the plaform. Wandering down the main street from the train station I entered the first dive I laid eyes on. Rooms vacant over a dingy bar. Fine wıth me. A few morsels and bed.

Marseille

A brief stroll around a seemingly vacuous Perpignon in the morning and I returned to the train station, bound for Marseille. At Marseille I waited for a metro into town, meandering with my backpack up and down the platform. At one end was a plastic seat coated in blood and wrapped with one length of police tape. The blood was dark and sticky, but relatively fresh. Perhaps from the nite before. Echoes of a scream.

In Marseille's tourist information office I enquired after the cheapest room in town. A flurry of phonecalls, smiles and chit chat; the assistant asked if I minded having an external shower. Fine with me. And an external toilet. Also fine with me, I replied, but begining to wonder. Armed wıth directions and a map I headed off to find the cheapest room ın Marseille.

This old port city has the down-at-heel vibe of sunken grandeur. Crumbling old buildings, freshly painted, bespeak a past when they were greater than their younger neighbours are now. Witnesses to the launches and landings of countless Algerian and Moroccan adventures. Though of late the adventurers are mostly to be found lining up on the beaches of North Africa hoping to complete the journey the other way. A Presidentıal election was in the offing and Marseille's graffiti artists were expressing the views of many who lived there; "Nic Sarkozy = Nic Le Pen" scrawled in blood red near the old port.

My hotel was a patched up falling down microcosm of the town. Having once been a rather fine mansion, it is now the cheapest room in town. A young Arabic man greeted me, took my details and led me to my room. First along a corridor, then through a kitchen, then a laundry room and out back into a large overgrown garden. Winding around two trees bent low by weight of foliage a wooden staircase led up to three doors. One was mine. Downstairs on opposite sides of the garden were two cubicles; each one a three-sided timber frame affair set against the opposing cement walls. One was the toilet, the other was the shower; it was difficult to tell them apart. Fine wıth me. I think.

Later in the evening searching for deep sleep in my little room I had first contact with a new and irreconilable enemy. Hiding in the dark dinge, waiting until he thought I had fallen asleep, he suddenly swept down on my bed from above. In my ear was the rising, falling, soon to be familiar, buzzing of a hovering mosquito. I ignored the intruder as long as I could. I was willing to sacrifice some flesh but the infernal buzzing in my ear soon overrode all else. I flashed on the lights, rolled up a newspaper and leapt into battle. Furious swotting and more furious cursing, interspersed wıth futile offers of a cease-fire and even more futile attempts at sleep, led to the unavoidable conclusion that all mosquitos would have to be put to the sword. Lights back on. Rolled up newspaper re-drawn. A final showdown. For thirty minutes the lunactıc silhouette show raged for the benefit of anyone watching from the dark of the garden. Defeated and dispirited I eventually passed out and let his colleagues do what they would with my temporary corpse. In the morning I had my wounds and the mosquitoes had their dead.

In the afternoon I located an Oirish bar just in time to catch God Save the Queen blast out over Croke Park for the first time since the British monarch's forces last blasted out over Croke Park. A fitting massacre to match the occasion this time around.

When the Moon Hıts your Eye Lıke a ...

From Marseille I caught a train to Nice, from where the overnite train departs for Pisa. Rolling through the towns of the Cote D'azure I blinked out in through bleary eyes at the tree lined boulevards between the train tracks and the lazy blue sea. Flash cars and loud music idling along on one side. Plastic surgery platinum blondes on the other. Bright sunlight reflected from dark sunshades. Eyes hidden, bejewelled midriffs exposed.

On scrambling aboard the next choo-choo, I found I was sharing a cabin with the Griswalds; the other three beds being occupied by Chevy Chase, his wife and larger-than-life daughter Cassie, Krystle, Allie or something. The Griswalds hailed from Wisconsin and this was their first time over here in Europe. All three were terribly excited - not by Europe, but - to be spending their first nite sleeping on a train. This excited them even more than "doing Rome". On balance Tiffany seemed even more excited by her Hershy bar. God bless Rome and all who sail in her.

I prepared for some clickety-clack sleep with a final pee and a mild sedative. Clambering into the top bunk - initially assigned to insurance-salesman Chevy, who was not quite equal to the task (and neither was the bunk) - I noted the odour from my hiking boots diffusing into the atmosphere, suffocating conversation but somehow not my resilient companions. As I drifted away I thought Agent Orange might not be sufficient to suffocate this threesome.

So, like Hannibal and his elephants before, the Griswalds and I crossed the Alps. Hannibal lost most of his elephants crossing the Alps. I retained all of the Griswalds. Sadly history does not record whether Hannibal or the Griswalds inflicted the greater damage on the Italian peninsula.
When the train attendant woke me at about 6:00am I found all three Griswalds wide awake, unable to sleep due to their own excitement and the motion of the train. Marcy was sucking on some Chocolate Kisses and a bottle of Coke. We exchanged our goodbyes and well wishes and (their) hopes that we might meet again. I slinked away into the early morning with the gentle sound of slurping fading into the past.

Pisa train station was empty in the morning but the cafe across the road hummed wıth people waiting to commute to work. Ambulance workers and police officers filed in and out knocking back espressos and pain au chocolates. Not a fry up in sight. I chilled the mal-odourous boots for a couple of hours waiting for the baggage storage office to open. Backpack deposited I stumbled off into the morning to find the famed, negligently-designed tower of Pisa. It still leans over at an angle. No doubt about it. That much confirmed I recollected my bag and made the short trip to Florence.

Firenze

Florence I have long wanted to visit. Ancestral home of the the renaissance, seat of the Medici and host to Michaelangelo's David, the Ponte Vecchio and Sante Maria del Fiore. I happened upon an excellent hostel and stayed for a week. The Renaissance architecture is fulfillingly stunning, the cathedrals and museums superlative. But, even out of season, the place was flooded. Thirty minutes queing outside the Galleria Academia to see Michaelengelo's David. It did however not disappoint. A giant chunk of marble so life-like, it seems that at any moment of his choosing David could set forward and mooch out the front door to offend public decency. One college student whimpered that she felt sorry for all of the statues having such small peckers. But hey, its cold in here and there's nothing much exciting going on. And usually its much bigger ... I heard David say to himself, before smiting her like once he smote an impudent Hittite wench who shouted "Hey Smallknob!".

The Sante Maria cathedral is incredibly detailed and ornately beautıful, but ringed by traffic; the ever-present grinding buzz of scooters more annoying than mosquitos in the dark. Tourist groups flowed hither and thither, blindly slouching along behind their flag-bearers. One super-cool dude at the back of a group wears a beanie, sunglasses, chunky gold chain, wife-beater vest and lolli-pop in the gob. Walking so languidly that his shoulders may have been unsocketed he holds the hand of his girlfriend who was kitted out in the fashion of a school-girl uniform: knee-high grey socks, pleated grey skirt, white blouse, ponytail slung over her shoulder. How cool can you be? ... if you are dressed like pop's next greatest thing and travelling with a coach load of grey headed, gum toothed retirees.

Italy being Italy, nothing works quite as it should or as might be expected. Everything is ever so slightly through the looking glass. The newly elected Prime Minister loses a Senate vote and resigns. And is reappointed. And threatens to resign again a few days later. Online gambling is forbidden. Unless you gamble with one of the state licenced monoplies - the group of companies alternatively known as "Berlusconi's best mates." The chicks are beautiful and chique. But the men are more chique and cannot pass a mirror, or reflective sunglasses, or a refecting pool of water. Waiters have elevated ignoring customers to an art form - far exceeding the borders of a professional science. Its life Jim ...

Just one cornetto...


After Florence I had intended taking a ferry to Croatia. At the last moment - waiting for my train - I jumped on a train for Venice instead. So many people had said so many good things I decided on a detour. Florence is beautıful, but Venice more so and it has no grinding, lawnmower-engined scooters cutting through the sidestreets of your mind. Only cheesey looking gondoliers charging 'having a laff' prices for pushing through the canals. And Venice is so much cleaner. And so much more expensıve. €10 an hour for internet access forced an email black-out.


In St Mark's square people pay €1 for cups of corn that cause frenzied pigeons to flash back and forth the square, trailing great gobs of shit behind them. Arms wide, tourists pose with pigeons dangling from heads, shoulders, anywhere they can grip. As each new cup is spilled these flying rats flutter en masse decorating anyone unfortunate enough to be underneath. Kids run through the crowds of these vermin, ocassionally revenging themselves by managing to boot one or other of them. Feathers fly, parents scold then chuckle, sore-arsed pigeons fly off for the next cup of corn, the next tourist wıth a target on his head.

Is Ireland in the EU yet?


At the Doge's Palace I presented my ISIC card for the student discount. Curtly I was informed that the student discount applied only to students from EU countries. I said I was Irish and produced my passport. The lady, even more testily, replied that the discount only applied to citizens of EU countries. Eh, Ireland is in the EU I retorted as placidly as I could. She looked at me as though I had told a good joke and laughed something in Italian at her colleague. I pointed to the gold "European Union" print on the front of my passport. After deep inspection - including rubbing the print to see if it would flake off! - and with all the good grace of Silvio Berlusconi on election nite she finally issued me the half price ticket with a harrump. It was plain to see she felt she was beıng had. Which of course she was, in part. The other part.

Leaving Venice I headed off for new adventures in the former Yugoslavia ...