Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Bill Bryson is near the top of my Most Read Authors list, not because I'm a particular fan, but because his audiobooks make easy listening for my daily walks. He doesn't attempt to do voices, I don't need to think too hard, and sometimes his stabs at humour make me laugh (and more often, make me roll my eyes). Neither Here Nor There has the advantage of being an interesting concept to me: after living in England for a dozen years, Bryson spontaneously decided to go see the Northern Lights, and after being charmed by his stay in Hammerfest, Norway -- and regretting that he had only made a handful of trips onto the continent in his dozen years on its cusp -- he decided to recreate a backpacking trip he had made through Europe when he was twenty. 

This could have been very interesting -- revisiting the sites of his memories and re-evaluating cultures through his more mature viewpoint -- but that's not what Neither Here Nor There does. Instead it's a never-ending loop of Bryson: arriving in a foreign city without hotel reservations; being disappointed with the accommodations he can secure; complaining that he can't read the menus in restaurants (and constantly fearing that he will be served pig innards if he chooses unwisely); he either pays too much for not enough food or is filled comfortably at a reasonable cost; he drinks several beers with dinner while he reads a book; he walks the main boulevards and people-watches (without actually talking to anyone); he spends his days in museums, often complaining about the number of tourists that get in his way (without acknowledging that he, too, is simply one more tourist); and is usually surprised that there's no express travel route to the next city he'd like to visit. In one breath, Bryson declares that he loves to travel:

Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected cheque in the post, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.

And in the next, he's complaining:

I sat on a toilet watching the (brown) water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.

For a travel/humour writer, Bryson doesn't seem to particularly enjoy travelling, and the humour is nearly exclusively based on a kind of wearying and childish negativity:

There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those unassuageable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind -- the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer shorts that have somehow become concertinaed between your buttocks, the Kellogg’s corn flake that is unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril.

If you find that hilarious, you might get some laughs here, but what I found even worse is the mean-spirited assessments that Bryson makes of nearly every place he visits:

• Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn’t a country; it’s a near-death experience.
• Norwegian television gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
• Istanbul isn't a city, it is a collective delirium.
• What do you call a gathering of boring people in Switzerland? Zurich.
• Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motorcar.

Bryson also takes many opportunities to remind the reader of the unforgiveable actions of Germany and Austria during WWII -- and I mean many opportunities -- and while I certainly agree that Nazism was one of the great evils in the history of the world, Bryson's obsession here would be like me writing a travel book about the United States and repeatedly saying, "But of course these beautiful buildings wouldn't be here if the early Americans hadn't wiped out the Indians" or "One must always remember that America can thank 200 years of slavery for the foundation of their powerful economy" (and I don't mean to be offensive with that, but Bryson rather offended me in this same vein and it's meant as analogy only). And one last complaint: even though Bryson travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria and witnessed the citizens queuing in bread lines and being barred from eating in his posh hotel restaurant, he concludes dolefully:

This was 1990, the year that Communism died in Europe, and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the Iron Curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that Communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.

I would have expected that assessment from the 20-year-old hippy Bryson -- not a grown-up family man who has presumably benefitted from Capitalism -- and that's probably the major failing of Neither Here Nor There: it totally misses the opportunity for reflection. Never does Bryson observe the changes that time has made in his perspectives, this is just boom boom boom -- arrive, eat, sleep, look, leave -- with occasional memories of having been in a city before (usually involving drinking and girl-chasing), throwing in barbs about what he doesn't like about a country (usually involving the ways in which it's not like America or Britain), and concludes nothing. This book was rather pointless, but at least it was easy listening.

The Grand Tour

I probably didn't pick this book completely at random. Listening to Bill Bryson relive his youthful European backpacking trip reminds me of my own, and since I never even kept a travel journal at the time, I thought I'd take this opportunity to jot down what I remember -- 28 years later -- so while it may be fuzzy, these are the bits that have become a part of me; hopefully not too distorted through the lens of time. But to begin at the beginning:

The Prelude That May Be Skipped

Right out of high school -- sick of school, really -- I decided to take a semester off and work, and my Dad got me a job with Lilydale; a chicken processor. It was a pretty nasty job, but not terrible, and they paid well: I was making $10/hr in 1985, working overtime most shifts, and even though I was planning to pay for my own university expenses, the money accumulated in my bank account at an astounding rate (also, being so worn out and smelling of dead poultry at the end of every shift, I wasn't going out and blowing it all). My friend Nancy, who was also taking one semester off, was working at a cell phone manufacturer (I believe it was Nortel -- and remember, this is 1985, very early days for cell phones, when they were large enough for an assembly-line of hairnetted women to solder their components together) and, even though her parents took a cut of her earnings, she was feeling rich, too. Along with our friend Kevin (who worked at a sports store -- a job he kept at while starting university), we began daydreaming about how cool it would be to backpack in Europe. I mentioned the plan wistfully to my mother one day, saying something like, "But you'd never allow me to go and do something like that". And my mother -- controlling and mistrustful of me my entire teenage years -- said, "Krista, you'll be 18 next summer. How could I stop you?" Somehow, that was what I needed to hear, and I asked Nancy and Kevin how serious they had been. They both totally committed to going, and since Kevin was a student already, he contacted a discount student travel agency and started planning the trip.

Meanwhile, January rolled around and I joined Kevin at the University of Lethbridge, but because her parents still needed her to work and pitch in, Nancy put off school for another semester. We -- being a group of crazy-haired, thriftshop trenchcoat-wearing, alt-music-listening kids -- gravitated to other kids like ourselves, and within no time at all, had formed a group we named V.O.M.I.T. (the Victorian Order of Many Intelligent Trendies [although none of us liked the word "trendies" or thought of ourselves as "trendies", it was the word that fit the acronym]), and we started having crazy fun together.  

Not long after we super-bonded, I joined the females of V.O.M.I.T. to go to a university event: the Loose Ladies Cabaret. It was at this boozer -- while wearing my favourite outfit (a purple and bejewelled polyester thriftshop minidress and matching, same-length jacket that would have been fashionable in the 60s, so probably had been donated to Sally Ann by the kids of some dead old lady) -- that I met my first real love, the gorgeous and muscular redneck, Glen.  I had an asymmetrical half-mohawk (half pink), super-pointy black witch's shoes, and after slow-dancing with some other guy (who I was considering allowing to be my first real love until he asked me if I had any pot, and when I sighed and said no, he left to go find some), I returned to where I had been sitting, and seeing this fabulous slab of beefcake where I had left my purse and trenchcoat, I said, "I think you're sitting on my stuff". There is no way that anyone looking at us -- the redneck and the "trendy" -- would have thought us compatible, but that was the beginning of an emotional and  tumultuous two year relationship. The important thing to remember is that I was already planning my Europe trip before I met Glen, but his new presence in my life hung over everything that followed.

This is my actual passport photo -- taken right before this hair became a legit half-pink half-mohawk

The months went by and school happened, V.O.M.I.T. happened, Glen happened.  Eventually, Nancy dropped out of the trip (a financial thing with her parents again), and even though Kevin was (and the majority of the guys in our group were) gay, Glen assumed that there was no way a guy and a girl could travel alone together for weeks without something happening. Since I hadn't yet begun to allow Glen to control every aspect of my life, I could only reassure him that me and my gay friend were just friends, and after working back at Lilydale for something like six weeks after the semester ended, Kevin and I were ready to go.

Crossing the Pond

Kevin's sister Cheryl was a Rhodes Scholar -- taking her doctorate in philosophy at Oxford -- and it was her offer for Kevin and his friends to use her apartment there while she travelled in the summer that started us daydreaming. So, we flew from Calgary (funny, it was some V.O.M.I.T. friends who drove us the two hours to and from Calgary -- not my parents, not Glen) to Heathrow, and after taking one of those London black cabs (and feeling ripped-off that there was an extra charge for the driver to stow our packs in the "boot" -- compounded by his refusal to allow us to just keep the packs in the cab with us) to the train station, we made our way to Oxford. 

The apartment was very cozy -- in addition to working on her PhD, Cheryl made some money teaching undergrads -- and we stayed there alone for a few days, getting over jetlag and exploring the beautiful and historic campus. This stay could have been shorter -- there's really not that much to do in Oxford if you're not a student -- but this part of our trip had been scheduled and it did help us to acclimatise. 

I should mention that we thought of ourselves as V.O.M.I.T. ambassadors, and in addition to sending postcards every other day to V.O.M.I.T. HQ (which was Rob and Jaybo's basement apartment), we also kept a travelogue to later share with them: a notebook in which we told of our funny adventures, accompanied by drawings and comic strips. Kevin and I also sent off plenty of postcards to our boyfriends back home and talked about them nonstop.

Kevin in Oxford, writing in the travelogue

We then met Cheryl and their visiting mother in London for lunch (my first Indian food), and that was slightly uncomfortable -- as we had been friends since grade 10, and as Kevin never had a girlfriend through high school, Kevin's parents had always hoped that he and I would get together, and even though by this time he was out of the closet, his Mom was grinning knowingly to see us together. After lunch, they brought us to the University of London -- where Cheryl had been able to use her connections to get us vacant dorm rooms for two nights  -- and after we were settled in, they brought us to buy our Eurail Passes, getting to the office just as it was closing. Cheryl was distressed to find out that I only had travellers cheques to pay for my pass (and no time to go cash some somewhere), but it worked out fine because they were in Pounds Sterling (which is what my mother told me I needed to have to get around Europe), and although Cheryl then predicted that I would have nothing but trouble using them on the continent, I never had a problem with them anywhere (thankfully).

Cheryl and their Mom then had to hurry to wherever their  vacation was leading them, and Kevin and I wasted a day and two nights in London because we had no clue what to do with ourselves (we wandered on foot forever, looking for the Hard Rock Café because -- being from backwater Lethbridge -- neither of us had ever been to one and thought it would be something more than just a restaurant, then randomly thought we should go check out the Hippodrome -- another disappointment because we didn't know what it was -- and we perked up when we passed the Royal Albert Hall because at least it was mentioned in a Beatles song [but strange that we never looked for Abbey Road], we considered going to a play but could have only seen The Mousetrap and both thought we were too sophisticated for Agatha Christie [but secretly I wished we had gone], and in the end just agreed that we were still acclimatising, and after all, we were coming back to London at the end of our trip). These first days in England would have been better used if we had gone to Liverpool -- as we were both big Beatles fans -- or even Stonehenge, but like with everything we never got around to doing, this honestly felt like our first of many European trips; it had been easy to save the money, we were both young and adventurous, we believed that we would just come back another time.

Original selfie, 1986: We briefly forgot our camera in a pub, and when we got the film developed back home, saw that the waitress had snapped a picture of herself in the minutes we were gone. 

Our trip really began with our flight to Italy (something like 5 days in) and I remember being at Heathrow again and seeing an arrow that said "To Europe" on it, pointing down a hallway. I turned to Kevin and said, "Funny, I thought we were in Europe". I turned as a voice harrumphed behind me and a man in an airport uniform said in a deep and offended voice, "Madam, you are not in Europe. You are in Britain." I wonder if the eventual formation of the EU has altered that view, but I somehow doubt it.

Itsa not so bad, itsa a nicea place...

We arrived in Rome, and with just a brand-new copy of Let's Go Europe -- no reservations, no plans, no place we had to be for about four weeks -- we headed to a payphone to call the first place we had circled, and with the good fortune reserved for the innocent and the stupid, we secured a room at the Pensione Navona.  We took a bus to the hotel, grinning ear to ear at everything we passed, knowing that we had arrived in Europe at last (okay, the guy at Heathrow was right). We confirmed a room with two beds at the front desk, threw our bags into what was an undeniably perfect room for the low price, and began to explore. What we hadn't even realised when we chose this place randomly was that the hotel opened onto the Piazza Navona -- a place we had never heard of but is famous for its beautiful fountains -- and that every evening the square would be filled with vendors and buskers; it was a nightly carnival and  free entertainment right outside our door.

Kevin in the airshaft of the Pensione Navona

We touristed hard in Rome. We set out early every morning, after enjoying the coffee and breads provided by the pensione, and often came back for a nap at the hottest part of the afternoon. We always returned to find our two beds pushed together, and we would push them back apart, snooze and then go out for dinner and evening wanderings, and return to our beds pushed back together. (Just who did we think we were fooling? Not the proprietors of the Pensione Navona!) We went to the Forum (what? just a bunch of knocked over columns?), the Colosseum (what? it has no floor?), the Pantheon (what? it has no ceiling?), entered every museum we passed, and spent an entire day in the Vatican -- piously mooning over the Pietà, goggling at the Sistine Chapel, endlessly climbing the stairs to the top of St. Peter's Cupola. I don't specifically remember the Trevi Fountain, and don't think we tossed coins into it, but I do remember using an ancient-looking public toilet and peeing directly through a hole into the Tiber River below (the variety of toilets and baths throughout our trip may have been the biggest culture shocks we experienced). We ate gelato and bought delicious Neapolitan pizza by the centimeter, and although Kevin teased me for not being more adventurous one night when I ordered spaghetti at a trattoria, he had to pretend to be delighted to discover that the unfamiliar dish he pointed to on the menu turned out to be a small plate of sliced tomatoes and mozzarella (buon appetito!). We were overwhelmed by the sense of history in Rome, and just by virtue of bearing witness to it, we felt like heirs to that history; like the descendants of Caesars. This was the end of July and we were warned to get out of the city by August because that's when Romans take their own holidays -- to coincide with the hottest time of the year -- and because everyone is gone, the city practically closes down.

Me being a bratty tourist in Rome (I'm the one on the lion)

We grabbed our backpacks, headed for the train station, and made our way to Florence. We found another pensione in Florence (unmemorable to me now) and were at first disappointed by the Statue of David that we discovered out in the open in the Palazzo della Signoria -- if it's so important, why is it exposed to the elements like this? And does every tourist to Florence then feel dumb when they see the real -- and breathtaking -- Statue of David in the Galleria dell'Accademia? We also went through the Uffizi and enjoyed walking around the city, crossing the bridges.  This one time, I walked the road that leads to the hilltop that overlooks the clay-tiled roofs of Florence, alone, to get some pictures, and was followed all the way back to the café where Kevin was waiting by a couple of young bucks on Vespas who kept calling out, "Ciao Bella! Ciao Rosa!" at me. They never got close enough to make me nervous, so I suppose I smiled all the way back down the hill.

While walking around one evening, we found ourselves outside the Space Electronic Video Discotheque, and being attracted to strobing lights like 18-year-olds to strobing lights, we went in and joined the crazy dancing, thinking that we had gone native and were fitting in with the scene. A young woman at my elbow yelled over the music, "Where are you guys from?" I answered, "Canada", and she laughed. "I think everyone here is from Canada," she said as she swept her arm around to include most of the dance floor.  "We're all on a Contiki Tour out of Toronto".  All we could do was laugh as well -- and continue the crazy dancing, making a scene if not joining one.

We discovered that most tourists who go to Pisa stay in Florence, so we took a side trip out there one day. We climbed the Leaning Tower (and were lucky to do so when we did because it was soon closed for 11 years for restorations), taking pictures of each other pretending to hold it up, and explored the Duomo, and since this was the day preplanned for doing so, I called my mother collect from a pay phone in the piazza. She was visiting my grandparents in P.E.I. at the time -- so I was really glad she remembered to be waiting by the phone to accept the charges -- and she was excited to hear where I was and what I had seen so far. Done with Florence, I was pushing to go to Venice next, but Kevin pulled out our maps and pointed at a town randomly on the Mediterranean. "Wouldn't it be nice," said he, "to hang out on a beach in, let's say, Tirrenia for a few days, after all the walking around we've done?" He made a good point. And, of course, we knew by now that we'd be back in Europe again one day. Plenty of time in a life to see everything there is to see.

We took the train out to the beach and walked to a nearby hotel. I was relaxing at a patio table while Kevin went to the front desk, but he soon came walking around the corner of the building with a little Italian man, Kevin making huge ushering movements towards me, miming desperately. When they got to us, Kevin explained that the man had no English -- had only shaken his head sadly when Kevin pointed to the Italian phrases in our guide book -- but he did have some French (yet neither he or Kevin knew enough to be mutually understandable). I was embarrassed by my own basic French, but did my best to ask for a room. The man explained that all of Italy was on vacation right then, and although he could give us a room, it could only be for two nights. That was fine with us, and we enjoyed two glorious days on the azure Mediterranean, both of us marvelling at the carefree way that the teenage girls swam and frolicked on the beach topless, me never regretting that I had a one piece swimsuit. We needed to take a short bus ride from the hotel to this beach that the locals used (the proprietor of the hotel recommended we not use the nearby crowded and pay-to-use touristy beach) and there were these Gypsies who would get on the bus with us, and while there was a fare, they wouldn't pay and the driver wouldn't say anything about it. They were bangled and multi-skirted, barefoot, and more than anything, dirty. There was at least one woman who would whip out a brown breast and start feeding a largish toddler, and small children who would tug at our sleeves and beg for lira. This was totally foreign to me -- Imagine! Real Live Gypsies! -- and I would be relieved when they got off at a stop other than our own. I remember picking up a couple of English language paperbacks at a convenience store (I even remember that they were The Two Mrs Grenvilles and Hollywood Wives -- both complete trash that I left behind in Europe)  and laying on my stomach to read them on the beach. I also remember that I drew the cartoon for that side trip in our travelogue and used a lot of red to convey my sunburnt legs and back. When our time in Tirrenia was up, we decided to head for France.

The train first took us to Milan, where we had something like 90 minutes to make a connection. It was enough time for us to briefly leave the train station, but scared of wandering too far and losing our bearings, we can't say that we actually saw Milan (and I definitely wish we could have timed it to have seen the fresco of The Last Supper). When we were finally settled into a compartment of the train, excited for an overnight trip, a couple of other backpackers with maple leaves on their packs joined us. These guys were a few years older than us and made conversation about where we had all been and what we had seen. They were surprised that we had been staying in hotels instead of hostels, and they described some of the more dangerous places they had been; explained that in Amsterdam you will get mugged and need to prepare by having a small amount of mug money in your front pocket. They asked casually how much we thought we would be spending, and in a big-brotherly way, asked how much cash we kept on us at any time. And since it was all just conversation, and since they were Canadian like us, we answered them.

Eventually, a porter came to the compartment and explained that there was an additional -- compulsory -- fee for using the berth overnight; a fee that must be paid to him in cash. Since we were just leaving Italy, we gave him all our lira (the little we had left), the small amount of francs that we had ready, a travellers cheque that he at first refused (but it was honestly all we had), and still we had come up just barely short. In a flash of inspiration, I calculated that we were about one Canadian dollar short and pressed one into his hand. He tried to protest that he had no clue what the exchange value of my dollar was, but with Kevin and the other two backpackers agreeing with me, he reluctantly took it (and in retrospect, he was probably used to being tipped and was upset that I insisted this was a fair exchange to the penny). The porter then converted the two benches into four bunk beds, and we all tucked in to go to sleep. Just as the lights were turned out, one of the backpackers said, "In the future, you should never tell anyone how much money you're carrying on you". That really frightened me -- after all, our backpacks were on the floor for anyone to go through -- but I did eventually go to sleep, and am happy to say that the luck of the innocent and the dumb held out for us: we were neither robbed nor murdered by fellow Canadians as we slept our way through the Swiss Alps and entered France.

A Stranger In Paree

We got to Paris, consulted Let's Go Europe, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, secured a room at a cheap place, the quirky Hôtel de Nesle. And although we had been promised a room with two beds over the phone, when we got there, the imposing proprietress -- Madame Renée -- looked at us and explained that she preferred to keep doubles for those who really need it and offered us one queen bed or nothing. What could we do but accept? And in the end, it wasn't even that awkward to have to share a bed with Kevin.

Madame Renee 

But how we loved Paris! We went to the Louvre and every other museum we could find, we ate fresh ham croissants every morning (perhaps the best thing I have ever eaten), drank coffee on sidewalk cafes, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower (okay, the second highest stop because of the savings, but still…), entered every church and climbed to the top of Notre Dame, strolled the Champs-Élysées, posed under l'Arc de Triomphe, and ate baguettes and drank cheap wine and made friends with the other young tourists in our hotel.

Me with the two Americans, Mimi and Holiday, and Australian Rob

I remember there was this one American girl -- she was blonde and gorgeous, a real homecoming queen-type -- and she said that her grandmother had given her the money to go to the parfumerie on the Champs-Élysées to buy a bottle of Shalimar, because once upon a time, her grandfather had bought her grandmother that very perfume at that very store (and maybe that had been during the liberation of Paris in WWII? Maybe I'm just remembering it that way because it would make a better story?). Everything about this girl screamed rich and privileged, but she had also brought her guitar with her and was offended that busking had not been profitable for her.

Me and Kevin at the Georges Pompidou Centre

I remember being surprised to see the regular Paris policemen walking around with machine guns, and even so, we rashly jumped the turnstiles down in the Metro one day to avoid paying (other people were doing it, but even so, I can't explain what came over us -- and I recognise the irony of noting that Gypsies in Tirrenia did the same thing to my astonishment -- even the two American girls we were sight-seeing with that day thought we were crazy). Our favourite of the other tourists was Rob, who hailed from Australia, and over a modest dinner in a cozy café one evening, we asked him about his homeland and we answered his questions about what it was like to be from Canada -- this was a time when Reagan was in his second term and, with the Iran-Contra stuff coming to light, the invasion of tiny Grenada, and his government trying to force our country to become a launching base for ICBMs against the USSR, we expressed the viewpoint common amongst our university-student friends: we were scared to death of America and lived in fear of the war-machine crouching just to the south of the longest unprotected border in the world. After a pleasant meal and discovering how much more we had in common with this Australian than with our North American partners, our conversation was interrupted by two quite lovely young women who, standing with their backs to me and Kevin and addressing the Australian only, said, "We have met many smart and friendly Canadians on our trip. Maybe one day you will, too." As these Americans strode haughtily out, I was mildly stung by the words that they had obviously rehearsed to put us in our place, but I remember spreading my hands in a gesture of explication and saying, "You see what bullies Americans are? They could have tried to join our conversation and correct anything we got wrong but they dropped a bomb and moved on." Our newfound friendship none the worse for wear, we continued to talk and discover all of the political and cultural commonalities we had between our two Commonwealth nations. After we left the café, I remember how we taught each other our national anthems and walked the cobblestoned streets of the Left Bank belting out, "Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free!" 

Me and Rob atop Notre Dame

And here's what I will always remember about Paris: one morning I had gone out walking by myself (Kevin and I never really fought, but sometimes we needed a break from each other), and when it started to drizzle, I headed back to the hotel, and nearly immediately, this large black man appeared beside me, asking me if I speak French. I replied, "Un peu", and then he kept talking and walking beside me all the way to the hotel. Now, I mention that he was large and black not because I was afraid of him because of it, but being from Lethbridge, where I went to school with zero non-white kids, I was aware of my suburbanism and I didn't want him to think I was scared of him, so I couldn't ask him to leave me alone. He kept complimenting me on my French, and I was actually a bit delighted about that because this was the longest French conversation I had ever had (still true today). He followed me right into the lobby of the Hôtel de Nesle and then asked if he could have my address because he wanted to correspond with me. I wrote him out my actual address (I really couldn't think how not to: I felt a  strange mix of anxiety and helplessness, like I really didn't want to offend him and I knew he would know it if I lied to him) and he read each letter of my writing back to me, going over some of my letters with his pen so he could read it more easily, and when he got to the "Canada" part, he exclaimed, "But I thought you were English!". I explained that I was indeed Canadian, and Kevin soon entered the lobby -- looking at me and my new friend with a cocked eyebrow -- and I introduced them to each other, and after a bit, the man left. He never did correspond with me and I always wondered about that -- was he looking for a British girl that he could pop in on someday? If he just wanted to write, what difference did it make how far away I lived?

There were many things we didn't do in Paris -- we stood outside the walls of the Père Lachaise Cemetery, knowing that Jim Morrison was buried there but deciding not to enter, and it never even occurred to us to go to Versailles -- but the days and evenings were packed with sight-seeing and much fun with our fellow travellers. Ah, Paree; all too soon it was time to head back to London, where we had  scheduled a prepaid hotel room for the end of our trip.

To economise, we made the dumb decision to sleep in the train station on our last night in Paris -- and didn't really sleep -- and took the first train to the coast the next morning. We got to Dieppe, and because Kevin remembered there was some Canadian connection to that name, we asked at the pub where we had lunch if there had been a Canadian presence in the area during WWII. The bartender was delighted to hear that we were Canadian, thanked us from his country to ours, and pointed the way to the Canadian War Cemetery along the dirt road right outside the door. We had many hours until our ferry, so we swung the packs on our backs and tromped down to the cemetery, and after the decadence of our Parisian experience, the rows upon rows of white crosses was humbling and inspiring. We spent quite a while there, signed the guest book solemnly, and had much to talk about as we made our way back to town -- remember, we were 80s university students who scoffed at Reagan and his war-making, but seeing the reminder of a "just war" -- and of the Canadians who had believed in such a thing -- gave us an interesting perspective.

We ate dinner at a small yet amazing restaurant -- it had a prix fixe menu with so many delicious courses (fish soup and meat and vegetable courses and a huge cheese and fruit platter at the end that we picked at with catlike satisfaction) -- and then made our way to the ferry. As we approached the ticket taker and I went to take my ferry voucher out of my Eurail folder -- the voucher I had obsessively checked for every time I had opened that folder on a train -- that voucher was missing. Kevin presented his as I pawed through my papers, both of us helplessly trying to explain that we were travelling together, we had bought the same package -- obviously -- and with a deep sigh, the ticket taker waved his hand, telling me to board the ferry. (And I found the voucher several days later and wished I had some way to send it to the ticket taker; to prove that his trust wasn't misplaced; to prove I wasn't some scammer.) It may have been about this time that we realised we had misplaced the V.O.M.I.T. travelogue as well -- it was gone, we were too disappointed to try to recreate it, and that's why I started by saying that I didn't even have a travel journal from this trip (and in the end, precious few pictures).

London Calling

We arrived in London in the morning, far too early to check into our hotel, and as we were passing Hyde Park -- and noticed lounge chairs on the lawn -- we settled in for a little snooze. Within no time, a park official came by and demanded some rental fee for the chairs (and remembering our original disgust with London when the cabby charged us to put our backpacks in his boot), we apologised for the misunderstanding and started walking again. I was delighted to find Canada Geese in the park, and we happily stumbled onto the Canadian Embassy, finding red-serged Mounties standing at attention that we took pictures with; five or so weeks in and we were a bit homesick, happy to see reminders of home.

Hyde Park

We thought to get the lay of the city by riding a loop on the top of a double-decker bus, but it turns out they don't loop -- in the middle of nowhere, the bus pulled over and the driver announced that the people on board were all to disembark. We asked him if there was any way to get back downtown and the driver told us to simply stand on the other side of the road with our arms out and a bus would come by eventually (one did, and we were dying of thirst and exhaustion by then). Finally checked into our hotel, we saw London properly this time.

How to catch a London bus

We hit the British and Natural History Museums -- particularly enjoying the mummies and the Rosetta Stone -- and shopped at Covent Garden, travelling everywhere by Tube. We ate at medieval pubs --  where the doorways and ceilings were so low we couldn't believe how small the people must have been at one time -- enjoying bangers and mash and lagers and lime. We hung around Piccadilly Circus at night to see the crazy neon and ogled Buckingham Palace and Big Ben by day. As we walked down the street one afternoon, I spied a fancy looking hair salon and told Kevin that I felt like getting a hair cut; that I needed a new 'do to match the changes I felt that Europe had made inside me. I went in, and I think I got the owner of the salon because I was put on a stool in the middle of a bay window facing the street, and this maniac -- without washing or even wetting my hair -- began to cut it like Edward Scissorhands, he circling around me on a wheeled stool, me with no mirror to watch what was going on. After all of about five minutes, the maniac was done, I paid too much money, and I cried as soon as I hit the sidewalk -- my asymmetrical mohawk had been grown out and evened up before our trip but my head now resembled a five-year-old boy's after hockey practise. For some reason, Kevin thought I would feel better if I bought some false eyelashes (we were in London and he may have been thinking Twiggy), and I bought some and it worked. I did feel better, even though I never even tried the lashes on; I felt, somehow, like a girl again.

Although we dressed fairly normally while abroad, where we came from, Kevin and I were not exactly mainstream. He wore eyeliner and spiked up hair to school, and although I speak of my "legit mohawk", it was shaved down on the sides but not to bare skin; it was "legit" only in that I could spike the middle up into a mohawkish brush. We were rebelling against boring old normalcy but we didn't look dangerous -- not like the punks we saw in London. These young people did look dangerous -- with their Doc Martens and safety pins and legit mohawks and sneers -- and we noticed right away that they always seemed to be talking amongst themselves, oblivious to everything around them, but the second that some dumb tourist would snap a picture of them, one of them would rush the picture taker and demand money from him. Repeatedly we saw the tourists trying to say that they were taking a picture of some building in the distance, but it didn't matter -- the punks wanted to get paid and they always did. While in London, we even saw the movie Sid and Nancy, and no matter how violent that was or how dangerous actual punks looked, we never recognised the irony in our mild affectations of that scene.

And here's my strangest London story: The next day Kevin and I split up to do some souvenir shopping, and I decided to have lunch at the McDonald's in Piccadilly Circus (knowing that Kevin would sneer at that, but my money was nearly gone and I took advantage of being alone). I got my meal, looked around, and the place was packed. Thinking that my new hairdo might make me a more confident person, I saw an older man sitting alone and asked if I could join him. He nodded, I sat, and I avoided looking at him as I ate, just pretending to myself that I sit with strangers every time I'm in a crowded McDonald's in England. What I did see of this man wasn't appealing -- he was heavyset and swarthy with dark rings under weepy eyes, a pencil-thin moustache over a wide froggy mouth -- and he eventually cleared his throat and said quietly, "Would you like to go back to my room?" I have no idea what expression then crowded my face but I tried to remain aloof as I said, "No". He exited nearly right away and I was left thinking, "Ok, so that's how that works. Just because this is a crowded restaurant in a crowded city at lunch time doesn't mean that strangers can just sit and eat together. Lesson learned."

I know I've shared several stories now about being accosted by strange men in strange cities but I think that's probably because I stood out as a tourist everywhere I went -- I likely looked vulnerable, and for all I know, plenty of young tourists are looking for holiday flings and the locals are happy to oblige. Travelling with a gay guy was a great shield against unwanted attention and only one time did some guys catcall as we walked along together. As soon as it happened, I turned to Kevin and saw him waving at the guys. I said, "You know that was for me, right?" He just laughed and said, "No, I'm pretty sure that was for me." And for all I know, he was right.

The Epilogue That May Also Be Skipped

And that is pretty much what I remember from my Europe trip, then the flight home, and Rob and Hilary picking us up in Calgary and back home to real life. My gorgeous redneck boyfriend called me within an hour of me getting home, mad that I hadn't called him first. I really should have known this guy was dangerous for me: nearly as soon as I left, Glen had a fling with a co-worker, justifying it by saying that he had no reason to believe I wasn't cheating on him with my gay male friend (I think he honestly believed that opportunity was all a gay man needed in order to throw up his hands and say, "I'm not attracted to you, but you'll do"). When I was telling him about my trip, Glen got so angry about me talking to and giving my real address to the man in Paris ("Why didn't you make up a fake address? Do you want him to find you?"), and I somehow let him be the mad one; like as though him cheating on me with a co-worker -- who he continued to see at work, and presumably lust after, every day -- was way more understandable than anything I had done or anything he had imagined that I had done. I don't know how I got knocked onto the defensive on that but that's the position I was in for the next year and a half. I also don't know how long it took for Kevin to find out that his boyfriend was also cheating on him -- also from nearly the moment we left for Calgary -- with a mutual friend that we continued to hang out with forever.

Kevin and I came back from that trip vowing to go again, a vow we were making to ourselves more than to each other. This was seen as an advance scouting trip -- next time would include more of V.O.M.I.T.; we'd see Liverpool and Venice and Versailles; we'd put mug money in our pockets and check out Amsterdam; maybe someday we'd even go to Australia and visit Rob; we were young and had nothing but time and dreams. By the next summer, I was so under Glen's thumb that I didn't go to the movies with friends, let alone halfway across the world; I didn't even wear crazy thriftstore clothes anymore because he wondered whose attention I was trying to attract "with all that". The summer after that, I left to start my new and independent life in Edmonton and never had the stacks of disposable cash again -- and while Dave and I have taken the girls to plenty of cool places, I haven't been back to Europe; not in these 28 years.

I'm probably writing this all out because I'm feeling jealously protective of these memories right now -- Dave is just getting back from an amazing work trip to Japan, and even though he's not particularly crazy about travel and experiencing other cultures, in the past few years work has also taken him to Iceland, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, and many places in Canada and the States. I could never do the job that Dave does, but this feels like just one more sacrifice I've made as the stay-at-home Mom. This mixture of fond memory and regret probably explains why I was so quick to say yes when Mal asked if she could go on the Europe trip with school this year (she was just in Greece, Italy and Spain). Even though she paid for part of her trip by working at the pork plant job her Dad got for her (plus ça change…), we did pay for more of it than we really should have, but really, how could I not but support the wanderlust? How could I not but want my girls to live even bigger lives than I have?

I wish I had more pictures from my trip, but we mostly took pictures of things and places that I can google and find better images of than we captured back then, and at least half of the pictures we took were of Kevin, but I always liked this strange film hiccup as a summary of my adventure; my one and only grand tour: