Rainy Nights in Georgia
There is a simple way to get to Central America and then there's the way that goes via Spain and the south eastern states of America. I chose the less direct route.
I left Europe in a sunny haze and touched down (or deplaned as the Americans say) in a torrent of rain in Atlanta. I delighted the guy sat next to me by spilling hot coffee into his lap. However much I apologised, we were never going to be friends. It took forever to clear the immigration controls at the airport. After a couple of hours they concluded that I was probably not a terrorist, 'Too clumsy'.
Atlanta was a huge urban sprawl, so I caught a Greyhound bus to Athens, Georgia. I've long had a romantic vision of traveling around the States by Greyhound. The reality is less appealing; the buses are often dirty and late and the terminals are in the scummy part of town, full of loners muttering to themselves. I blended in seamlessly.
The redeeming feature of Greyhound travel is the Pac-Man arcade game. Every terminal has one! I scored 50,000 in Athens, beat it in Augusta and by the time I got to Savannah I was topping 90,000 and had a crowd of impressed onlookers. I also had severe blisters, repetitive strain injury and was going blind. I took a break and booked into a hotel in downtown Athens.
Athens is basically the University of Georgia surrounded by a perfect circle of dorm towns. Although only 100 miles distant, it was half a world away from Atlanta. I could tell it was a university town because I was the only one about at 10.30 in the morning. Sadly, I was also the only one getting ready for bed at 10.30 at night. Athens was a chronic town to catch up on your sleep. I went to find the river and ended up in Weaver D's cafe. Their Automatic for the People sign was appropriated by some local residents for one of their albums a few years back.
What made the town for me was its residential districts. In England suburbia has derogatory implications but in Athens, the houses are full of character. I picked up some maps and legends and discovered pastel painted properties, framed by manicured lawns and arcaded porches. I would have liked to stay longer but I was running out of time. I looked for a bus to Savannah but you can't get there from here, so I took the Greyhound over the border into Aiken, South Carolina.
The man at the Aiken bus terminal said, "I went to England once. Do you know Swindon?" I said I did and hoped he didn't think all of England was like that. I went downtown on Saturday night, looking for adventure. I found a beer hall, ordered a Budweiser and sat at the bar to watch some all American sports on widescreen. Instead the TV was showing cricket. The owner of the bar turned out to be from south London and had a fanatical love for the game, much to the consternation of the locals. There is no better definition of bewilderment than an American watching cricket; "So you're telling me this game goes on all day?" "Yep, this is a short one, test matches last five days." "FIVE whole days?" "Yep, and even then, it's often a draw." "What? After FIVE days? Is this a sport or a punishment?"
I joined several conversations hoping to hear some reactionary southern stereotypes, but everyone I met was a liberal, albeit with Elvis accents and unsightly mullets. "Mike, I'm sorry we're not the rednecks you were looking for" said one. I found myself talking to a retired colonel, but even he voted Democrat.
Aiken was a pretty town and epitomised southern hospitality. I read the papers, ate all I could at the all you can eat buffet and even said, "uh-huh" with an Elvis inflection. There was even a prom dress shop straight out of a John Hughes movie. Everyone lived in huge houses that appeared to be auditioning for parts in the Gone with the Wind. I was sad to leave Aiken, but pleased to have my preconceptions shattered.
My final stop was Savannah, unusual in terms of American cities in that it was navigable on foot without the risk of being mown down by traffic. It poured non-stop in Savannah, but the grand pre civil war mansions and leafy squares still looked pretty in the rain. It was also an outside Hollywood studio, home to Forrest Gump, Cape Fear and Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil. The latter sustaining a tourist industry all of its own.
I took my final Greyhound bus back to Atlanta, breaking through the magical 100,000 barrier on Pac-Man at a stopover in Macon. My hotel had a 10th floor view of the Atlanta skyline and near midnight, a spectacular storm framed it beautifully. I've only ever been to the States once before, on a family holiday to Florida in 1982. I spent most of that holiday playing Pac-Man. I obviously haven't grown up much.
Thursday, 22 March 2007
Baddies in Buenos Aires
How do you get under the skin of a city? Some would suggest spending time with locals, others, drinking your way around the bars. Me? I go to football matches.
In Buenos Aires there are two decent choices; River Plate, colloquially known as Los Millionaires and based in middle class suburbia, or Boca Juniors, Maradona’s alma mater, down by the docks. The district of La Boca is what guidebooks call a ‘tough’ neighbourhood. It has one camera friendly tourist street full of brightly painted buildings and smartly dressed tango dancers. Behind the façade lies a down at heel district, paint peeling from the shutters, an area where Lonely Planet advises vigilance.
The football ground sits in urban wasteland, an area of rusty cranes and abandoned cars. I walked around the stadium to the ticket office with two female friends. We passed a teenage boy sitting on a bike, otherwise the streets were empty. He rode away as we passed, his squeaky wheels in need of oil. Besides the ticket booth we stopped to sort out cash. Argentine football is incredibly cheap, about £4 a ticket. We pooled our pesos and I turned towards the ticket window. A hand written sign said Cerrado.
A familiar squeaky noise came from behind and I felt my arm pushed up into a half-nelson. I looked down to see a large kitchen knife held against my throat. A voice close to my ear hissed "Dinero! Dinero!" and flexed the knife threateningly. My wallet was in my hand, so I pulled the money out and threw the wallet to the ground. The girls did the same. The kid was screaming, "Todo! Todo!" adding pressure to the blade. We emptied our pockets of change. In one movement he withdrew the knife, snatched the cash from my hand and pushed me hard. He must have pocketed about £30 from us. Not peanuts, but below the value of my neck. He pedalled hard on his squeaky bike, looked back once and accelerated away.
My limbs were a little wobbly and I clumsily stabbed a cigarette into my mouth, lighting it at the fourth attempt. We sat down on a wall. The knife had cut through my St Christopher chain. Patron saint of travellers, my arse. Back at the hostel, backpackers crowded round to hear our tale. We tried to add a philosophical spin, the kids are desperate, he needed the money more than us. At the same time we considered plenty of what ifs? Why didn’t I try some Matrix moves? What if one of the girls had kicked him in the bollocks? All these theories were academic and most were likely to have left me in two bits.
Three years later on I can still picture the boy's bike (a Grifter no less!). I still have nightmares (the latest - last night), always in the same form; I'm walking down a street and someone jumps me from behind. I think part of the problem lies in never seeing the boy's face. In my dreams the attacker is always cloaked in shadows. I try to shout and the only person who hears is my girlfriend, who reminds me I'm home, in bed, and the baddies can’t get me.
In Buenos Aires there are two decent choices; River Plate, colloquially known as Los Millionaires and based in middle class suburbia, or Boca Juniors, Maradona’s alma mater, down by the docks. The district of La Boca is what guidebooks call a ‘tough’ neighbourhood. It has one camera friendly tourist street full of brightly painted buildings and smartly dressed tango dancers. Behind the façade lies a down at heel district, paint peeling from the shutters, an area where Lonely Planet advises vigilance.
The football ground sits in urban wasteland, an area of rusty cranes and abandoned cars. I walked around the stadium to the ticket office with two female friends. We passed a teenage boy sitting on a bike, otherwise the streets were empty. He rode away as we passed, his squeaky wheels in need of oil. Besides the ticket booth we stopped to sort out cash. Argentine football is incredibly cheap, about £4 a ticket. We pooled our pesos and I turned towards the ticket window. A hand written sign said Cerrado.
A familiar squeaky noise came from behind and I felt my arm pushed up into a half-nelson. I looked down to see a large kitchen knife held against my throat. A voice close to my ear hissed "Dinero! Dinero!" and flexed the knife threateningly. My wallet was in my hand, so I pulled the money out and threw the wallet to the ground. The girls did the same. The kid was screaming, "Todo! Todo!" adding pressure to the blade. We emptied our pockets of change. In one movement he withdrew the knife, snatched the cash from my hand and pushed me hard. He must have pocketed about £30 from us. Not peanuts, but below the value of my neck. He pedalled hard on his squeaky bike, looked back once and accelerated away.
My limbs were a little wobbly and I clumsily stabbed a cigarette into my mouth, lighting it at the fourth attempt. We sat down on a wall. The knife had cut through my St Christopher chain. Patron saint of travellers, my arse. Back at the hostel, backpackers crowded round to hear our tale. We tried to add a philosophical spin, the kids are desperate, he needed the money more than us. At the same time we considered plenty of what ifs? Why didn’t I try some Matrix moves? What if one of the girls had kicked him in the bollocks? All these theories were academic and most were likely to have left me in two bits.
Three years later on I can still picture the boy's bike (a Grifter no less!). I still have nightmares (the latest - last night), always in the same form; I'm walking down a street and someone jumps me from behind. I think part of the problem lies in never seeing the boy's face. In my dreams the attacker is always cloaked in shadows. I try to shout and the only person who hears is my girlfriend, who reminds me I'm home, in bed, and the baddies can’t get me.
James Joyce and the Adriatic
Our first encounter was in Trieste. Back in the days of empire this city port belonged to the Habsburgs and later became the southern pin of the iron curtain. Most of the surrounding coastal towns are Venetian in character, with tall campanile towers and arched loggias. Trieste has greater subtlety, atypical of Italian cities; a kind of Vienna-on-Sea. It's graceful rather than attractive, the squares floored with Carrera marble and behind the imposing civic buildings sits a crumbling medieval quarter built across Roman foundations.
One hundred years ago, in strode the young James Joyce. He was newly married with a degree in Latin and keen to take what we now call a gap-year, teaching English abroad. The year away eventually stretched to an on-off decade in this pretty corner of Europe. It was here, among the cafes and piazzas that he wrote Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and large chunks of The Dubliners.
A bronze statue of Joyce stands by the Grand Canal in Trieste. He looks in a hurry, with a book tucked tightly under his arm. The sculpture is lifesize and in the bustle of a passegiate, he merges with the crowd, head down, thoughts of literary genius on his mind no doubt. After that he seemed to follow us everywhere. At the Hotel James Joyce with its traces of the 18th century and Italian copies of Finnegans Wake in reception, we drank cheap fiery grappa and awoke with headaches.
In Pula, around the coast in Croatia, we bumped into him again. This time he sat outside a cafe (Cafe Ulysses inevitably) legs crossed, enjoying the April sun. Joyce taught English here, but showed little affection for the town. Pula has beautifully preserved Roman temples and a colossal amphitheatre and now celebrates a writer immune to its charms.
He returned to Trieste with the germ of a Homeric idea and tapped out early chapters of Ulysses. This most Dublin of novels evolved so many miles away from its backdrop. He wrote to his wife calling Trieste “the city which has sheltered us” and a century on, with its statues and plaques and literary trails, it shelters him still.
Originally posted April 25th, 2005
One hundred years ago, in strode the young James Joyce. He was newly married with a degree in Latin and keen to take what we now call a gap-year, teaching English abroad. The year away eventually stretched to an on-off decade in this pretty corner of Europe. It was here, among the cafes and piazzas that he wrote Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and large chunks of The Dubliners.
A bronze statue of Joyce stands by the Grand Canal in Trieste. He looks in a hurry, with a book tucked tightly under his arm. The sculpture is lifesize and in the bustle of a passegiate, he merges with the crowd, head down, thoughts of literary genius on his mind no doubt. After that he seemed to follow us everywhere. At the Hotel James Joyce with its traces of the 18th century and Italian copies of Finnegans Wake in reception, we drank cheap fiery grappa and awoke with headaches.
In Pula, around the coast in Croatia, we bumped into him again. This time he sat outside a cafe (Cafe Ulysses inevitably) legs crossed, enjoying the April sun. Joyce taught English here, but showed little affection for the town. Pula has beautifully preserved Roman temples and a colossal amphitheatre and now celebrates a writer immune to its charms.
He returned to Trieste with the germ of a Homeric idea and tapped out early chapters of Ulysses. This most Dublin of novels evolved so many miles away from its backdrop. He wrote to his wife calling Trieste “the city which has sheltered us” and a century on, with its statues and plaques and literary trails, it shelters him still.
Originally posted April 25th, 2005
Vienna and the Curse of Franz Ferdinand’s Car
I walk through Vienna across rain-sparkling cobbles to the History Museum. This Austrian city has fascinated me since childhood. At ten years old my favourite book was a mouldy paperback called Stranger than Science. These frightening stories of real life horror ignited my childish curiosity. The best was The Curse of Franz Ferdinand’s Car. It was a tale about a 'demonic motor' that ended up in a Viennese museum after a succession of owners met with grisly deaths.
The car’s relationship with its owners generally followed this formula: car breaks down, baffled driver peers under chassis, car reverses over baffled driver. The car fell into the hands of the Hapsburg Court and in 1914, claimed its most famous victim, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The shots fired on that Sarajevo morning lit the touchpaper for a world war. The book is unequivocal; the car was the evil mastermind. The story engrained itself in my young memory and although it took some years, I finally reached the city that fired my childhood imagination.
The ring road preserves an old city atmosphere, creating an island in the centre of the metropolis. The streets have spillover cafes and elegant shops, architecturally independent but never crassly juxtaposed. Eccentric public housing sits alongside slim art nouveau offices and rose-bordered gardens add colour and scent. I see Stefansdom and its reflected glory in the glass facade opposite the church. Mozart lived here, Haydn just over there. I hurry past the Third Man sewer tours, away from the city of Orson Welles and Graham Greene. The streets have a brooding, moonlit atmosphere and the squares shine romantically as locals splash through the rain. Vienna has many stories; of smuggling and war and demonic cars from cheap horror books.
Inside the museum, against a plain orange wall is the cursed car from my childhood. It appears innocuous, studded with leather and a faint smell of engine oil hangs in the gallery. It looks in better shape than several cars I've owned. I tell the curator the story and he laughs, "do I believe the car has its own will?" My hesitation amuses him. "Your first visit?" I nod, "The city of Klimt and Schiele, Mozart and Freud and you’re interested in this car!"
I grin, recalling that tatty paperback story that brought me all the way here and I think of all those other Viennas, waiting, just outside the door.
The car’s relationship with its owners generally followed this formula: car breaks down, baffled driver peers under chassis, car reverses over baffled driver. The car fell into the hands of the Hapsburg Court and in 1914, claimed its most famous victim, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The shots fired on that Sarajevo morning lit the touchpaper for a world war. The book is unequivocal; the car was the evil mastermind. The story engrained itself in my young memory and although it took some years, I finally reached the city that fired my childhood imagination.
The ring road preserves an old city atmosphere, creating an island in the centre of the metropolis. The streets have spillover cafes and elegant shops, architecturally independent but never crassly juxtaposed. Eccentric public housing sits alongside slim art nouveau offices and rose-bordered gardens add colour and scent. I see Stefansdom and its reflected glory in the glass facade opposite the church. Mozart lived here, Haydn just over there. I hurry past the Third Man sewer tours, away from the city of Orson Welles and Graham Greene. The streets have a brooding, moonlit atmosphere and the squares shine romantically as locals splash through the rain. Vienna has many stories; of smuggling and war and demonic cars from cheap horror books.
Inside the museum, against a plain orange wall is the cursed car from my childhood. It appears innocuous, studded with leather and a faint smell of engine oil hangs in the gallery. It looks in better shape than several cars I've owned. I tell the curator the story and he laughs, "do I believe the car has its own will?" My hesitation amuses him. "Your first visit?" I nod, "The city of Klimt and Schiele, Mozart and Freud and you’re interested in this car!"
I grin, recalling that tatty paperback story that brought me all the way here and I think of all those other Viennas, waiting, just outside the door.
Bernardo Belloto & Dresden
Slaughterhouse Five is a book I read every couple of years. It is strange and horribly beautiful and I’m not sure I understand it all. More civilians died in Dresden than in both nuclear attacks on Japan combined. I don't think that’s a widely shared fact and perhaps the central message of the book.
When Billy Pilgrim describes pre-war Dresden as a Sunday school picture of heaven, it makes me think of the man who painted it, Bernardo Bellotto.
A few years ago I went to a Bellotto exhibition in the Basque Country. He was Canaletto’s nephew and lay long in his relative shadow. His style is very much like his uncles’, but rather than paint endless views of Venice (and those little wiry dogs which seem to inhabit every picture), Bellotto's landscape was northern Europe. Both Dresden and Warsaw owe him a huge debt.
After the firebombing of Dresden, Bellotto's pictures were used as the architectural blueprint for the rebuilding of the city. The famous picture from the tower of the Frauenkirche taken on February 13th 1945 is one of utter devastation. "Those who had forgotten how to cry learnt it again in the destruction of Dresden." The old market squares and the view from the opposite shore of the Elbe were reconstructed from the artist's paintings. Today, Dresden again has a beautiful centre, it's a magical place of honey stone and rain on cobbles. From this via this to this. The old quarter of Warsaw was also rebuilt from scratch using Bellotto as its guide. Vonnegut wrote so well about the senseless destruction of Dresden, but Bellotto captured its beauty.
Originally posted October 12th, 2004
When Billy Pilgrim describes pre-war Dresden as a Sunday school picture of heaven, it makes me think of the man who painted it, Bernardo Bellotto.
A few years ago I went to a Bellotto exhibition in the Basque Country. He was Canaletto’s nephew and lay long in his relative shadow. His style is very much like his uncles’, but rather than paint endless views of Venice (and those little wiry dogs which seem to inhabit every picture), Bellotto's landscape was northern Europe. Both Dresden and Warsaw owe him a huge debt.
After the firebombing of Dresden, Bellotto's pictures were used as the architectural blueprint for the rebuilding of the city. The famous picture from the tower of the Frauenkirche taken on February 13th 1945 is one of utter devastation. "Those who had forgotten how to cry learnt it again in the destruction of Dresden." The old market squares and the view from the opposite shore of the Elbe were reconstructed from the artist's paintings. Today, Dresden again has a beautiful centre, it's a magical place of honey stone and rain on cobbles. From this via this to this. The old quarter of Warsaw was also rebuilt from scratch using Bellotto as its guide. Vonnegut wrote so well about the senseless destruction of Dresden, but Bellotto captured its beauty.
Originally posted October 12th, 2004
Looking after Dracula in Transylvania
A bust of Vlad the Impaler sat atop a stone pedestal. His eyes were mean and cold beneath thick matted hair. Laid around the base were a collection of offerings; ground saltpetre overlaid with flowers. The petals were bound tightly in cotton and the stems handbroken and twined into a circle. Shockingly, in the middle lay a dead sparrow, tiny feet pointing upwards. A trickle of blood congealed into a sticky pool. I couldn't begin to guess the significance, but it made me shudder. Welcome to Transylvania.
I was in the central Romanian city of Sighisoara. The walled settlement sat on a bluff enclosing narrow cobbled streets too tight for cars. In Ceaucescu’s time, agriculture drove the town’s economy, now it's unashamedly tourism. Pastel coloured houses fronted cobbled plazas, many with chipped stucco and dark painted shutters. Cameras clicked at a mustard coloured house; Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace, now a restaurant with sullen service. I sat patiently for ten minutes as the waiter finished his newspaper. Finally he sloped past. I asked for coffee. He looked at me with distaste and returned with a Fanta.
Dracula's author, Bram Stoker, never visited Romania. He wrote most of the Transylvania chapters from his writer’s retreat in Aberdeen but it's still possible to follow the novel's journey through the region. The historical parallel with Vlad Tepes (The Impaler) is pure fable. The fictional Dracula is a composite character drawn from diverse sources. Part Jack the Ripper, part Romanian folklore, but the name Stoker borrowed for his creation belongs to a barbaric and very real individual.
Vlad Tepes was the son of a warlord known as The Dragon (Dracul in the local vernacular). The Impaler suffix came later, synonymous with Vlad’s favoured method of execution. Those who displeased him; such as thieves, the workshy, or particularly the Turks, were bound to a cross and violently slaughtered with sharpened stakes.
I left Sighisoara just after dawn, travelling south by modern train and rickety bus, arriving in Bran at midday. Transport is cheap, even by Central European standards. It's in this tiny town that Transylvania's number one tourist attraction lies; Dracula's Castle. It's called Dracula's Castle because the Romanian Tourist Board know an opportunity when they see one. In reality, Vlad didn't live here, in fact he may even have attacked it once. Filtered through the lens of countless Hollywood movies, it has the trappings of the gothic imagination, all hidden doors and secret stairs. "A vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky" reads the book. It is uncannily accurate.
From Bran I bussed north along bumpy roads and up onto the high plains. I was heading away from the historical context and back into the imagination of Bram Stoker. Like Jonathan Harker, the hero of the novel, "it was on the dark side of twilight when I got to Bistrita." I headed into town, reading as I walked, "Dracula directed me to go to the Golden Crown Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old fashioned." Well, my guidebook suggested the same approach but old fashioned it isn't.
The hotel was built during the nineteen-eighties. Nearly one hundred years after the events described in the book. I ate dinner in the Jonathan Harker suite, drinking the sweet Golden Mediasch wine just like the protagonist himself. Two German lads rolled in and ordered beers. They told me of a hotel not far from the Bistrita Pass, where the Dracula connection was camped up even further. Staff jumped out of hidden cavities to frighten guests. "But no longer!" A Canadian tourist had been so shocked by the sudden appearance of a vampire he died from heart failure. The hotel was now struggling to break even.
Jonathan only managed two glasses of Golden Mediasch. I polished off the bottle surrounded by stuffed bats and red velvet drapes. A waitress pulled a rope and the drapes opened to reveal a widescreen television. The Germans found a channel showing football and I crept off to bed. I could hear their shouting from six floors up.
In the morning I headed away from the charming and back towards the charmless, destination Bucharest. Once the train had threaded through a narrow pass in the Carpathian Mountains and swayed away from the fields of Transylvania, the prettiness faded. The capital began to swallow up the rural heartland with battered factories and dreary estates. I read Stoker’s closing description of Transylvanians, "the women looked pretty, except when you got near them." I laughed and thought of Stoker writing his sinister book in Scotland with no idea of what these people looked like, or how beautiful their country was.
I was in the central Romanian city of Sighisoara. The walled settlement sat on a bluff enclosing narrow cobbled streets too tight for cars. In Ceaucescu’s time, agriculture drove the town’s economy, now it's unashamedly tourism. Pastel coloured houses fronted cobbled plazas, many with chipped stucco and dark painted shutters. Cameras clicked at a mustard coloured house; Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace, now a restaurant with sullen service. I sat patiently for ten minutes as the waiter finished his newspaper. Finally he sloped past. I asked for coffee. He looked at me with distaste and returned with a Fanta.
Dracula's author, Bram Stoker, never visited Romania. He wrote most of the Transylvania chapters from his writer’s retreat in Aberdeen but it's still possible to follow the novel's journey through the region. The historical parallel with Vlad Tepes (The Impaler) is pure fable. The fictional Dracula is a composite character drawn from diverse sources. Part Jack the Ripper, part Romanian folklore, but the name Stoker borrowed for his creation belongs to a barbaric and very real individual.
Vlad Tepes was the son of a warlord known as The Dragon (Dracul in the local vernacular). The Impaler suffix came later, synonymous with Vlad’s favoured method of execution. Those who displeased him; such as thieves, the workshy, or particularly the Turks, were bound to a cross and violently slaughtered with sharpened stakes.
I left Sighisoara just after dawn, travelling south by modern train and rickety bus, arriving in Bran at midday. Transport is cheap, even by Central European standards. It's in this tiny town that Transylvania's number one tourist attraction lies; Dracula's Castle. It's called Dracula's Castle because the Romanian Tourist Board know an opportunity when they see one. In reality, Vlad didn't live here, in fact he may even have attacked it once. Filtered through the lens of countless Hollywood movies, it has the trappings of the gothic imagination, all hidden doors and secret stairs. "A vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky" reads the book. It is uncannily accurate.
From Bran I bussed north along bumpy roads and up onto the high plains. I was heading away from the historical context and back into the imagination of Bram Stoker. Like Jonathan Harker, the hero of the novel, "it was on the dark side of twilight when I got to Bistrita." I headed into town, reading as I walked, "Dracula directed me to go to the Golden Crown Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old fashioned." Well, my guidebook suggested the same approach but old fashioned it isn't.
The hotel was built during the nineteen-eighties. Nearly one hundred years after the events described in the book. I ate dinner in the Jonathan Harker suite, drinking the sweet Golden Mediasch wine just like the protagonist himself. Two German lads rolled in and ordered beers. They told me of a hotel not far from the Bistrita Pass, where the Dracula connection was camped up even further. Staff jumped out of hidden cavities to frighten guests. "But no longer!" A Canadian tourist had been so shocked by the sudden appearance of a vampire he died from heart failure. The hotel was now struggling to break even.
Jonathan only managed two glasses of Golden Mediasch. I polished off the bottle surrounded by stuffed bats and red velvet drapes. A waitress pulled a rope and the drapes opened to reveal a widescreen television. The Germans found a channel showing football and I crept off to bed. I could hear their shouting from six floors up.
In the morning I headed away from the charming and back towards the charmless, destination Bucharest. Once the train had threaded through a narrow pass in the Carpathian Mountains and swayed away from the fields of Transylvania, the prettiness faded. The capital began to swallow up the rural heartland with battered factories and dreary estates. I read Stoker’s closing description of Transylvanians, "the women looked pretty, except when you got near them." I laughed and thought of Stoker writing his sinister book in Scotland with no idea of what these people looked like, or how beautiful their country was.
When is a tourist attraction not a tourist attraction?
When it has Arbeit Macht Frei written above the entrance and harbours the apparatus for millions of executions. Auschwitz has been open to the public for a good number of years. Do you need to justify a visit? I guess some tourists have a conscience-wrestling match and decide to skip it for various reasons, but judging by the coach park and the organised tours from Krakow, curiosity gets the better of most.
I saw many older people crying and also busloads of schoolkids play-fighting, bored. What can it mean to a ten year old? How do you begin to explain it? Concentration camps are a part of history, albeit history in its most awful guise. This is no First World War battleground, where your imagination has to add noise and mud and gunfire. All the fixtures are still at the camp, the barbed wire, the 'showers', endless railtrack.
A short film forms an introduction to the horrors. Full of crackly edits and stomping boots. It looks so cold in black and white and the striped prisoners all drained and gaunt. Leaving through an unremarkable door, you walk into the camp with its lying sign suggesting work brings freedom.
It's the scale that hits hardest. The order and symmetry of the construction is terrifyingly vast. Whole rooms contain the remains of the everyday; shaving brushes, shoes, hair, spectacles. All stacked to the ceiling and stripped of their context. The photographs are equally harrowing; bodies stacked like butchers meat, the shaved heads and twiggy limbs. One of an uncovered mass grave was grotesque and simultaneously compelling. One corpse was lying half submerged by the hardened mud and you couldn’t work out where the body ended and the ground began.
The showers were simply squat brick buildings. The sort of structure that graces any campsite. Except, in camp, you have options. These were one-way showers, a mass guillotine. You can view the holes where Zyklon B was piped in. I remember a tourist asking the guide a very detailed scientific question about the composition of the poison. The guide became impatient, "does it really matter what it was?"
On the way out, a young boy asked a received wisdom question, "is it true that birds don't fly over Auschwitz?" The guide had a stock response, "birds fly over the camp, but they never sing." The rain started hammering down as I came out. I rushed to find cover. By the exit is a café, but how can you eat in Auschwitz?
I saw many older people crying and also busloads of schoolkids play-fighting, bored. What can it mean to a ten year old? How do you begin to explain it? Concentration camps are a part of history, albeit history in its most awful guise. This is no First World War battleground, where your imagination has to add noise and mud and gunfire. All the fixtures are still at the camp, the barbed wire, the 'showers', endless railtrack.
A short film forms an introduction to the horrors. Full of crackly edits and stomping boots. It looks so cold in black and white and the striped prisoners all drained and gaunt. Leaving through an unremarkable door, you walk into the camp with its lying sign suggesting work brings freedom.
It's the scale that hits hardest. The order and symmetry of the construction is terrifyingly vast. Whole rooms contain the remains of the everyday; shaving brushes, shoes, hair, spectacles. All stacked to the ceiling and stripped of their context. The photographs are equally harrowing; bodies stacked like butchers meat, the shaved heads and twiggy limbs. One of an uncovered mass grave was grotesque and simultaneously compelling. One corpse was lying half submerged by the hardened mud and you couldn’t work out where the body ended and the ground began.
The showers were simply squat brick buildings. The sort of structure that graces any campsite. Except, in camp, you have options. These were one-way showers, a mass guillotine. You can view the holes where Zyklon B was piped in. I remember a tourist asking the guide a very detailed scientific question about the composition of the poison. The guide became impatient, "does it really matter what it was?"
On the way out, a young boy asked a received wisdom question, "is it true that birds don't fly over Auschwitz?" The guide had a stock response, "birds fly over the camp, but they never sing." The rain started hammering down as I came out. I rushed to find cover. By the exit is a café, but how can you eat in Auschwitz?
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