Waltzing Matilda VOLUME TWO
When last we saw our intrepid hero, he was on a train headed north from West Hampstead to Luton airport. Those worthy hosts, Rex and Kareem, were far behind, resuming their extremely British lives with the sort of style that only comes from drinking a lot of tea and knowing where "Putney" is.
I was a bit worried about making it to the airport on time, since I tend to habitually be about two hours early getting everywhere. I checked in, though, and made it to my departure gate, which was empty, like an American's mind on election day. There was no airplane outside. No pretty airline employee at the little podium. No portly passengers milling about. Nothing.
I waited while the clock ticked off the minutes until finally it was about a half hour past when my boarding pass told me I should be leaving. Convinced I had somehow ended up at the wrong gate, I finally found an airport employee and asked what the hell happened.
"Oh," she said. "The flight is delayed for about an hour while we find the aircraft."
"You lost the airplane?"
"We just aren't entirely sure where it is right now. It'll be cleared up in no time, don't worry."
"How can you lose an airplane? It's enormous! It's purple! You can't miss it."
Nevertheless, an hour or two went by while the found the goddamn airplane. While boarding it, I sort of wished they hadn't.
The only other remarkable thing about the flight was the six Italian women who were wearing headbands with pink, glittery, light-up penises on them. See?
Anyway. I got into Split (or, more accurately, Kastela, the town where the airport is...it's like thirty miles away from Split) well after dark. There was a rickety bus which ferried airport passengers to the city center, so I took it and spent a half hour watching a landscape of shattered cars, fires burning in metal garbage bins, piles of rubble, and tiny cantinas where swarthy men sat around jukeboxes. I loved it already.
Split is a great town. The old city is built on and around the ruins of Emperor Diocletian's palace, so everything is made of white limestone, including the streets. At night the whole city glows, and during the day it's blinding white, as though you were standing on the sun. Everywhere there are quiet squares with mysterious statues and cafes with overstuffed chairs that you have to pry yourself out of, and they are all linked by tiny, winding alleys where cheap pizza joints spring out of every shadow.
As soon as you step off a bus in Croatia, you are instantly mobbed by dozens of women offering you rooms. I like that in a country. I threaded my way through them and spent a solid hour wandering around the dark waterfront, trying hopelessly to find my hostel. All I had to go on was that it was in the "Narodni Trg." and that there were no signs because the whole area is a UNESCO heritage site, but if I followed a dark alley behind a cigarette stand, I'd find it.
And indeed I did. It had a little outdoor terrace thing where a dozen Australians sat around drinking Zlatorog, the local beer, and sometimes singing 80's power ballads. I went inside to check in and a massive Australian with dreadlocks demanded to know what sort of things a pothead might say.
"Burritos," I answered promptly. Which was clearly the password, since he not only did the paperwork, but walked me through the bewildering maze of streets to the best little pizza joint I've ever seen. His name was Paul and he'd turned up at the hostel about three months before and just never left. The two girls who owned it (Croatian born, but Australian raised) eventually employed him, and he knew absolutely everyone in the city.
By then it was about 10:30. I'd been travelling all day, and had had three nights worth of sleep in the past week. I was full of excellent pizza and returned to the hostel to find the Australians getting ready to go out. They asked if I wanted to go, and since I mostly just agree to stuff, I went.
Even in the off-season, the parties in Split are impressive. You can go to five different bars and still be at the same party. The people haemorrhage out into the narrow streets, some of them sitting on windowsills and in planter boxes, and they connect the bars in one massive, unbroken, smoking, drinking, reeling human chain. We went to three bars that I remember. I talked to two Brits who were on vacation (because I have never been let down by British conversation) and met an independently wealthy Irishman who bought me Heinekens and told stories about yachting. I remember being in a tiny blue bar packed with people where a line of women blockaded the bartender off into a tiny, pestilential corner. They were all dressed nearly identical, their bottoms twitching petulantly. It looked like an excellent opportunity to use my new pickup line:
"Move, I need a drink."
Some time later, we were walking along railroad tracks, headed for "Sandy beach" (which, incidentally, is just sandier than "Rocky beach" which looks like a building site) where we'd heard there were clubs. One of the Aussies laid down on a park bench and commenced vomitting directly up into the air. Everyone continued on regardless, tripping over railroad spikes, arguing about which way they were going, and peeing on things--except for one of the Aussie girls and another American and myself, who felt it was at least a little fucked up to leave this poor guy behind. So we flagged down a cab and piled inside.
The cab drove us exactly fifty yards, and the cabbie communicated to us that you aren't allowed to drive on the roads in the old city, so he'd have to drop us there. The Aussies, in what apparently is a sort of long-standing cultural tradition, bailed out of the car and left me throwing a ten krona note at the guy. The sick guy threw up on the back of the car and we got the hell out of there. The Aussie girl spent a lot of time protesting that she really didn't want to hook up with Vomit Guy (his response: "Yeah, I really recommend you don't." Vomit.) The other American, who was a strange chap but knew where a 24 hour bakery was, sat around on the terrace having the sorts of abstract sounding but generally meaningless conversations that I tend to have with strangers while on terraces looking at the stars in foreign cities. You'd be surprised how many of these conversations I've had.
The Aussies got home around 6 AM and crashed. One of them (a guy named Princey who looked like one of the Mighty Ducks and who is equally fluent in Hebrew, English, and French) snored so loudly that one of the Brits dragged his (his meaning Princey's) matress into the bathroom, shut the door, and stuffed blankets around the cracks. It didn't help much.
We all went out for breakfast at noon the next day to the Black Cat, which is a hell of a good place to have breakfast if you're ever in Split. The Aussies had their first beers of the day. I sat by a Brit named Alistair who recited to me every episode of the Ricky Gervais show Extras and used the phrase "taking the piss out of" eighty seven times. I tallied them on my napkin, and began to wonder if maybe due to the massive quantities of tea and beer the Brits consume, urine-theivery has somehow become a national pasttime.
I spent most of that day wandering the city, eating ice cream cones for fifty cents and giant slices of pizza for less than a dollar, and read a couple books down by the water. It was warm and sunny and full of tanned, attractive people. That night we went out drinking yet again, but I begged off early, feeling my age. Around two in the morning, a handful of the Aussies got home and decided it would be an excellent idea to attempt to shave their own heads. As soon as I hear from that other American, I'll get you guys the pictures, because it was goddamn hilarious.
Most of that crop of Aussies left on a ferry to Hvar the next day and were replaced by another shift. Everywhere I went I found Aussies (properly pronounced "Ozzie") , all of whom had been travelling for a year or so, and who angrily testified that no matter where they went in Europe, all they found were more goddamn Aussies. I assume Australia is entirely empty, maybe with one fat guy sitting around wondering where the hell everybody went.
With this new crop came this wanker from New Zealand who told the same goddamn story about a hobo trying to cuddle up next to him while he was sleeping on the floor in the Zagreb train station. He was thirty-six years old and sat around in the coffee shop irritating Australian girls who I was trying to chat up. Bastard.
I left the day after that, back to London. Found my way to the South Acton station without a problem, but turned out to be no pay phone there. I had vague memories of how to find my way back to Rex's place, but everything looked different in the dark, and all the houses looked the same. Eventually I asked the six skinhead guys who were throwing magazines at one another.
They said it would cost me, which I guess was sort of a polite version of a mugging.
"Okay," I said. "But all I have is Hungarian forint. It's about four hundred to the pound, so it's actually pretty much worthless. Here, you can have it if you want."
They pointed out a pay phone and told me to bugger off. I got ahold of Rex and we met up for Chinese food, which was excellent. Spent several hours sitting around his place, discussing various methods of destroying capitalism, and chortling about how horrified Lenny would be if he could hear us.
Went with Rex to his university the next day. He goes to Royal Holloway, University of London, although it appears to be located somewhere southeast of Essex, past a place called "The Monkey's Forehead." It looks like this:
I know.
Spent some time reading in the library there while Rex had a lecture on something spectacularly boring. Then it was time to bid the good man an adieu (or a blimey, or whatever they say in London) and head off to Hungary, where I took a long, harrowing shuttle bus journey to the hostel (as we bounced over the bumpiest goddamn roads in Europe, through the broken backstreets of Budapest, with nobody else in the bus, I thought quite reasonably, "Well this is it...death") where Olga was waiting for me. I'd constructed fairly elaborate schemes of how to hit on her, but I was too tired and grumpy when I arrived to enact any of them. Much like absolutely everything the UN does, it sounded good on paper, but never was actually implemented.
See, the problem was that I hadn't planned that second visit to Budapest very well. I got in at about midnight and my flight home left at around 10:00 the next morning. Thus, I have nothing interesting to report, other than the people outside who were filming an Italian TV commercial, complete with fake snow and singing children and reindeer and shit.
Then more airports, more busses, more trains, more waiting, blah blah blah. At about 7:oo Wednesday evening, I kicked open the corridor door, a bottle of duty-free Jim Beam in each hand, singing "Waltzing Matilda" to the surprised faces of my corridormates. Apparently I attained a sort of low-grade celebrity status in my absence, since I left only a liquor store recepit taped to the door ("I'm gone --T.) as notice. I'd sent them mysterious post cards reading things like "I wonder what I agreed to that got me here" and "Where the hell are my pants?" People came by looking for me, and were shown these cryptic clues, and everyone pretty much gave me up for dead. Now they just think I'm crazy, which I guess isn't far off.
I was a bit worried about making it to the airport on time, since I tend to habitually be about two hours early getting everywhere. I checked in, though, and made it to my departure gate, which was empty, like an American's mind on election day. There was no airplane outside. No pretty airline employee at the little podium. No portly passengers milling about. Nothing.
I waited while the clock ticked off the minutes until finally it was about a half hour past when my boarding pass told me I should be leaving. Convinced I had somehow ended up at the wrong gate, I finally found an airport employee and asked what the hell happened.
"Oh," she said. "The flight is delayed for about an hour while we find the aircraft."
"You lost the airplane?"
"We just aren't entirely sure where it is right now. It'll be cleared up in no time, don't worry."
"How can you lose an airplane? It's enormous! It's purple! You can't miss it."
Nevertheless, an hour or two went by while the found the goddamn airplane. While boarding it, I sort of wished they hadn't.
The only other remarkable thing about the flight was the six Italian women who were wearing headbands with pink, glittery, light-up penises on them. See?
Anyway. I got into Split (or, more accurately, Kastela, the town where the airport is...it's like thirty miles away from Split) well after dark. There was a rickety bus which ferried airport passengers to the city center, so I took it and spent a half hour watching a landscape of shattered cars, fires burning in metal garbage bins, piles of rubble, and tiny cantinas where swarthy men sat around jukeboxes. I loved it already.
Split is a great town. The old city is built on and around the ruins of Emperor Diocletian's palace, so everything is made of white limestone, including the streets. At night the whole city glows, and during the day it's blinding white, as though you were standing on the sun. Everywhere there are quiet squares with mysterious statues and cafes with overstuffed chairs that you have to pry yourself out of, and they are all linked by tiny, winding alleys where cheap pizza joints spring out of every shadow.
As soon as you step off a bus in Croatia, you are instantly mobbed by dozens of women offering you rooms. I like that in a country. I threaded my way through them and spent a solid hour wandering around the dark waterfront, trying hopelessly to find my hostel. All I had to go on was that it was in the "Narodni Trg." and that there were no signs because the whole area is a UNESCO heritage site, but if I followed a dark alley behind a cigarette stand, I'd find it.
And indeed I did. It had a little outdoor terrace thing where a dozen Australians sat around drinking Zlatorog, the local beer, and sometimes singing 80's power ballads. I went inside to check in and a massive Australian with dreadlocks demanded to know what sort of things a pothead might say.
"Burritos," I answered promptly. Which was clearly the password, since he not only did the paperwork, but walked me through the bewildering maze of streets to the best little pizza joint I've ever seen. His name was Paul and he'd turned up at the hostel about three months before and just never left. The two girls who owned it (Croatian born, but Australian raised) eventually employed him, and he knew absolutely everyone in the city.
By then it was about 10:30. I'd been travelling all day, and had had three nights worth of sleep in the past week. I was full of excellent pizza and returned to the hostel to find the Australians getting ready to go out. They asked if I wanted to go, and since I mostly just agree to stuff, I went.
Even in the off-season, the parties in Split are impressive. You can go to five different bars and still be at the same party. The people haemorrhage out into the narrow streets, some of them sitting on windowsills and in planter boxes, and they connect the bars in one massive, unbroken, smoking, drinking, reeling human chain. We went to three bars that I remember. I talked to two Brits who were on vacation (because I have never been let down by British conversation) and met an independently wealthy Irishman who bought me Heinekens and told stories about yachting. I remember being in a tiny blue bar packed with people where a line of women blockaded the bartender off into a tiny, pestilential corner. They were all dressed nearly identical, their bottoms twitching petulantly. It looked like an excellent opportunity to use my new pickup line:
"Move, I need a drink."
Some time later, we were walking along railroad tracks, headed for "Sandy beach" (which, incidentally, is just sandier than "Rocky beach" which looks like a building site) where we'd heard there were clubs. One of the Aussies laid down on a park bench and commenced vomitting directly up into the air. Everyone continued on regardless, tripping over railroad spikes, arguing about which way they were going, and peeing on things--except for one of the Aussie girls and another American and myself, who felt it was at least a little fucked up to leave this poor guy behind. So we flagged down a cab and piled inside.
The cab drove us exactly fifty yards, and the cabbie communicated to us that you aren't allowed to drive on the roads in the old city, so he'd have to drop us there. The Aussies, in what apparently is a sort of long-standing cultural tradition, bailed out of the car and left me throwing a ten krona note at the guy. The sick guy threw up on the back of the car and we got the hell out of there. The Aussie girl spent a lot of time protesting that she really didn't want to hook up with Vomit Guy (his response: "Yeah, I really recommend you don't." Vomit.) The other American, who was a strange chap but knew where a 24 hour bakery was, sat around on the terrace having the sorts of abstract sounding but generally meaningless conversations that I tend to have with strangers while on terraces looking at the stars in foreign cities. You'd be surprised how many of these conversations I've had.
The Aussies got home around 6 AM and crashed. One of them (a guy named Princey who looked like one of the Mighty Ducks and who is equally fluent in Hebrew, English, and French) snored so loudly that one of the Brits dragged his (his meaning Princey's) matress into the bathroom, shut the door, and stuffed blankets around the cracks. It didn't help much.
We all went out for breakfast at noon the next day to the Black Cat, which is a hell of a good place to have breakfast if you're ever in Split. The Aussies had their first beers of the day. I sat by a Brit named Alistair who recited to me every episode of the Ricky Gervais show Extras and used the phrase "taking the piss out of" eighty seven times. I tallied them on my napkin, and began to wonder if maybe due to the massive quantities of tea and beer the Brits consume, urine-theivery has somehow become a national pasttime.
I spent most of that day wandering the city, eating ice cream cones for fifty cents and giant slices of pizza for less than a dollar, and read a couple books down by the water. It was warm and sunny and full of tanned, attractive people. That night we went out drinking yet again, but I begged off early, feeling my age. Around two in the morning, a handful of the Aussies got home and decided it would be an excellent idea to attempt to shave their own heads. As soon as I hear from that other American, I'll get you guys the pictures, because it was goddamn hilarious.
Most of that crop of Aussies left on a ferry to Hvar the next day and were replaced by another shift. Everywhere I went I found Aussies (properly pronounced "Ozzie") , all of whom had been travelling for a year or so, and who angrily testified that no matter where they went in Europe, all they found were more goddamn Aussies. I assume Australia is entirely empty, maybe with one fat guy sitting around wondering where the hell everybody went.
With this new crop came this wanker from New Zealand who told the same goddamn story about a hobo trying to cuddle up next to him while he was sleeping on the floor in the Zagreb train station. He was thirty-six years old and sat around in the coffee shop irritating Australian girls who I was trying to chat up. Bastard.
I left the day after that, back to London. Found my way to the South Acton station without a problem, but turned out to be no pay phone there. I had vague memories of how to find my way back to Rex's place, but everything looked different in the dark, and all the houses looked the same. Eventually I asked the six skinhead guys who were throwing magazines at one another.
They said it would cost me, which I guess was sort of a polite version of a mugging.
"Okay," I said. "But all I have is Hungarian forint. It's about four hundred to the pound, so it's actually pretty much worthless. Here, you can have it if you want."
They pointed out a pay phone and told me to bugger off. I got ahold of Rex and we met up for Chinese food, which was excellent. Spent several hours sitting around his place, discussing various methods of destroying capitalism, and chortling about how horrified Lenny would be if he could hear us.
Went with Rex to his university the next day. He goes to Royal Holloway, University of London, although it appears to be located somewhere southeast of Essex, past a place called "The Monkey's Forehead." It looks like this:
I know.
Spent some time reading in the library there while Rex had a lecture on something spectacularly boring. Then it was time to bid the good man an adieu (or a blimey, or whatever they say in London) and head off to Hungary, where I took a long, harrowing shuttle bus journey to the hostel (as we bounced over the bumpiest goddamn roads in Europe, through the broken backstreets of Budapest, with nobody else in the bus, I thought quite reasonably, "Well this is it...death") where Olga was waiting for me. I'd constructed fairly elaborate schemes of how to hit on her, but I was too tired and grumpy when I arrived to enact any of them. Much like absolutely everything the UN does, it sounded good on paper, but never was actually implemented.
See, the problem was that I hadn't planned that second visit to Budapest very well. I got in at about midnight and my flight home left at around 10:00 the next morning. Thus, I have nothing interesting to report, other than the people outside who were filming an Italian TV commercial, complete with fake snow and singing children and reindeer and shit.
Then more airports, more busses, more trains, more waiting, blah blah blah. At about 7:oo Wednesday evening, I kicked open the corridor door, a bottle of duty-free Jim Beam in each hand, singing "Waltzing Matilda" to the surprised faces of my corridormates. Apparently I attained a sort of low-grade celebrity status in my absence, since I left only a liquor store recepit taped to the door ("I'm gone --T.) as notice. I'd sent them mysterious post cards reading things like "I wonder what I agreed to that got me here" and "Where the hell are my pants?" People came by looking for me, and were shown these cryptic clues, and everyone pretty much gave me up for dead. Now they just think I'm crazy, which I guess isn't far off.
posted by Eccarius | 11:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home