THE CATCH-22 OF TRAVEL.

"Calvin and Hobbes Go Exploring"- Cartoon by Bill Watterson

We get stale in the same place for years no matter how much we find to do or how busy our lives become.  I live in a lovely city but I need a break from it from time to time.  Travel blows a fresh breeze through my mind.  It almost literally feels like it and I feel invigorated and refreshed.

I guess brain cells need to take in something different from time to time to exercise them or they go onto automatic.  Just imagine all those tiny cells yawning as they channel the same information when you go through the same routine day after day.  No wonder they start to make you edgy for change.  They decide to revolt and give you a hard time: "Let's go on a holiday, we're bored," they nag me.

They don't seem to let up even when they know I haven't the money.  They just work on making me testier and testier until I have to have a word with them or threaten them with sedation.   So in order to shut them up while I'm attempting to save enough to go away I've taken up this blog to challenge them a little.  It's quieted them down a bit, or rather it's giving them something new to do, but I can still hear them whinging in the background even as I write this.  In order to placate them a little, I'm writing about travel.

The trouble with planning a trip to a place you've never been is that you need to have been there to do it properly.  It's the Catch-22 of travel.  Yes, I know there are travel agents, brochures and friends who have done the trip and can tell you about their experiences.

There are also travel shows on television but I have come to avoid these with religious zeal.  At first I couldn't figure out what bugged me about them, apart from the obvious, which is that the presenters are paid to travel all over the world.  This is my idea of a dream job except for the size of camera they have to lug around.

Eventually I figured out why they annoy me.  It is because presenters are people from my own country, or from a similar cultural background,  whose familiar language and manner overlay and obscure the cultural impact of the place they are covering.  It's like adding too much salt to a meal.  The subtle flavours beneath are overwhelmed by something stronger and thoroughly domestic with which you're all too familiar.

The presenters, although very professional and upbeat, also deliver their reports in a patois developed for the show.  This has the effect of causing them to come across as variations of one another and, by progression, the place they are covering suffers the same fate. 

Even with these factors taken into account a television travelogue can only cater to two senses; sight and sound.  It can't convey the cultural vibe, the atmosphere or the smell.  We use all five senses when we travel and so even the best show can't do more than show and tell.

The hotels, facilities and restaurants that appear on them also usually offer free accommodation and services to the presenters.  There's nothing like free advertising is there?  So you aren't going to hear the presenter say: "God the smell around here makes me want to puke", or "The locals all have their hands out begging and look like they want to cut my throat", or "It's so hot here I can't wait to get home."  What we get, therefore is a Pollyanna version of the place.

They will also decide what to film in order to portray the aspects of the destination they are there to promote.  All the different shots or videos are then edited to form a smooth dialogue, knitting together the pertinent pieces .  A travelogue might concentrate on hotels, local shopping and places of interest to the tourist.  I doubt that you'll catch a news item or a mugging happening in the background while the crew is filming.  If it did happen I bet you wouldn't get to see it.

Even on a large screen television you are limited to a miniature view of the whole.  I mean you can't just spin your head around and see everything as the presenter can.   Film only shows bits and pieces of places not the vistas surrounding them.  For instance, over the years I've watched television series and films set in London, however, nothing on the screen prepared me for what I experienced when I was actually there or its flatness or greyness.

The best part of travel is experiencing the unknown with every one of your senses.  If we've never been somewhere before, to arrive in the midst of it is almost like being reborn.  We have no familiar points of reference.  We don't know which corner to turn next or where anything is.  We can feel lost but renewed.  We can discover things again.  Naturally we go prepared, but imagine if you were sent there in the way Scottie in the Star Trek series beams Captain Kirk to a planet.

Imagine you landed like that in the middle of Paris as a complete newcomer.  What do you do?  You've probably seen films set there, you've seen pictures of the place, you've heard about it but you don't have a map and you probably don't speak the language.  You can't just cut and edit to the next hotel.  You have to figure out where one is and physically get there.  Some people would find this to be an exciting challenge, some others might panic, but not one of them would be bored.

Travel lets us become like a child again because it allows us to take in something new, which in our everyday environment rarely happens.  I think that's why travel satisfies us.  It has the effect of making us feel something that we haven't in years and also relieves the boredom of the same old, same old.

Travel also educates us as to how different other cultures can be.  A traveller from Australia or the US might think that asking a direct question of someone in a foreign country is perfectly fine, only to discover they are considered rude.  Many a traveller has had the dubious thrill of being tossed in gaol for doing something they consider innocent.  Travellers are always prone to greater danger through ignorance but that's the risk of exploration.  In fact the explorers of old seemed to be people who were addicted to danger.  Boredom drives people to extremes and that's why it's best to let off steam regularly.

I feel sorry for business people I talk to who say things like: "Oh, I travel overseas a lot for business but I'm just there for a few days.  I only see the airport and the office".  I bet these people have very unhappy brain cells or they've scared them into submission.

I'm building up quite a head of steam at the moment and my brain cells are almost in revolt.  I think I'm hearing talk of a union being formed in their mutterings.  I can only hope someone pays me to travel somewhere soon or I win some money.  I don't really care where I travel to, I just have to shut the little guys up.

END

TRAVEL TRAVAIL.

 

The French word for "work" is "travail", which is so like our English word "travel".  The similarity is fitting because often, no matter how hard you try to enjoy yourself when you take a trip, it feels like hard work.  It is also fair to make the comparison in this post because it is about my trip to that wonderfully egocentric, bloody-minded country of the Gauls.

My trip to France was in the late '90's, but don't think anything in France changes.  That's the beauty of the place.  In World War 2 the French had the Resistance.  They still resist almost everything.

I think that all the three and four star hotels my partner and I stayed at in France used "Fawlty Towers", John Cleese's television show of the '70's about a hotel in England, as a training video for their staff.

First I will describe the route we traveled on our three week journey.  We began with four days in Paris then hired a car and found our way to Versailles.  We then headed to the Loire district at a leisurely pace.   After exploring this area for a few days my partner began to head East.  I will explain why further on.  We went through the French Alps on the Route Napoleon until I was able to redirect him towards the south.

We stopped at Grasse for a day and then moved on to stay at St. Paul de Vence where we based ourselves for three days.  We moved on to Juan-les-Pins and from there explored Nice and made a quick trip to Monaco.  Later we discovered we could not leave the car in Nice and return to Paris by the TGV (Train Grand Vitesse) without paying a great deal more to the hire car company.  My partner drove up the Autoroute at speed for two days as France flitted past.  We spent the last three days in Paris.  Now, onto the trip.

Part of the exploring that you do when you travel to distant shores is into the personality of your partner.  You may discover that the person with whom you have lived for years is not Dr. Jekyll but Mr. Hyde.  This is a man who refuses to suffer from jet lag whether he is traveling from East to West or the other way around.

He can fall asleep in an air plane seat for the whole time it takes to travel half way around the globe and then will not sleep for the next three weeks at the times you need to, chiefly night time.

The same person will not eat dinner when you are hungry but insist on waiting until you find a hotel to stay the night, even if the kitchen has closed.  He was a boon to every pharmacy that we passed in France as he caused me such stomach spasms that I needed constant medication.  I don't know if the French still don't put Codeine in their over-the-counter analgesics but at that time, caffeine was used instead.  I love Codeine.  It is an upper far superior caffeine and I needed upping.

When our plane from Australia landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, Hyde's sister, who only spoke Polish and French, picked us up.  They hadn't seen each other for ten years.  If I thought Hyde was perverse, I hadn't taken into account the familial strain.  To be tactful his sister's arrangements went cockeyed at light speed.

As we whizzed past the Eiffel Tower, I excitedly pointed to it and asked if we could slow down.  She ignored me.  I suggested to Hyde that this was the kind of thing I had come to see.  I was admonished and reminded he hadn't seen his sister for years.  They continued yabbering away in Polish and ignoring me and she failed to point out any sights. Nothing about our trip was pre-booked.  We had decided to wing it.  That week we were meant to stay at an apartment his sister, who lives in Paris, had arranged free of charge. 

This accommodation wasn't yet available and she had placed us in a hotel that was at the intersection of five streets, not air-conditioned and incredibly noisy.  I lay down and attempted to sleep while they went somewhere.  When they returned they found me about to leave the hotel with luggage in hand.  I said I was going to find a quieter place where I could sleep.

Apparently this was terribly rude of me.  Like her brother she didn't understand the meaning of jet lag.  I didn't care.  I simply walked off and they trailed after me.  Soon we found a three star place in St. Germaine with a room available.  I asked for one at the back so it would be quiet.  There ensconced I again attempted sleep.

The Mr. Hyde part of my partner's character went into full swing.  He deserted me as I once again attempted to sleep off my jet lag.  We hadn't even been in Paris ten hours and he took off with the room's only key.  Still unable to fall asleep I had great need of some wine and, having arranged to get in and out of the room with the help of a porter, I bought a bottle and came back to find there was no way to open it.  The French aren't big on providing things and that includes bottle openers, glasses or cups.

I also didn't know the French word for corkscrew.  Having located my dictionary I looked it up and then made another excursion to the shops.  Luckily I managed to buy a '"tire-bouchon" but it was fairly basic .  So was the cork.  Back in the room as I attempted to pull it out, it broke into pieces.

Never has one person wanted a drink so much.  For over an hour I gouged at the cork.  I thought of breaking the bottle but I decided drinking from it might have resulted in disaster to my intestines.  I hadn't counted on my partner having the same effect as our trip continued.  Finally I broke through and drank straight from the bottle.  Needless to say my partner didn't receive the warmest welcome on his return.

We spent time with the sister in those first days but it was necessary for me to talk to her in French as she spoke no English, and I spoke no Polish.   After four days of this linguistic triangle, and trying to understand her Polish accented French, I was more jet lagged than when I had arrived.  She also insisted we walk 'a few metres' to a restaurant instead of taking a cab, for which I'd offered to pay.  Some three kilometres later and sick with jet lag and hunger, I burst into tears and went back to the hotel by cab.

A curious thing about the French is that they don't tell you anything in any language.  We took a cab to the Louvre on a Tuesday.  Not only did the driver dump us at the rear so that we had to walk a long distance to the front, when we reached it, we found it was closed.  It is always closed on Tuesdays as are many things in France as we later discovered.

We also went to the Eiffel Tower.  Do you think there is an obvious sign that shows in which of its four feet the entrance resides?  It may be better now but we weren't the only tourists wandering about trying to find it.  Once we got to the top the view was disappointing.  Paris is flat, the buildings not very tall and on this day it was hazy.  Well, it is still Paris and no one said it needed hills.  A tourist should have no expectations.

I am used to the view of Sydney Harbour and also, having lived in Hong Kong, its amazing views from the Peak and also those from the ferry when crossing Victoria Harbour.  Paris has other attributes and one of these is its history.

At last we hired a car and headed out of Paris alone.  The free apartment hadn't eventuated and maybe that was for the best.  We spent a few days in the Loire district seeing chateaux such as the magnificent Chateau Chenonceau and Chaumont-sur-Loire.  We based ourselves in a hotel in Charolais, a quaint old village in the Loire district.  There were lovely gardens and a little brook, however trucks roared through its narrow street during the daytime.  At night you could walk through the streets when it was quiet.  We stayed there twice, once on our way south and again on our way back to Paris.  This lovely village helped make our trip.

In the foyer of the hotel in Charolais, I had my first experience of sensor taps.  As soon as I entered the Ladies toilets on the ground floor of the hotel the faucets of all the three hand basins started flowing at once and I was nowhere near them.  I felt as if I was being applauded.

We drove eastwards again and found a  superb chateau that was now a hotel and the most beautiful place we stayed on our trip.  It wasn't the friendliest but it was magnificent.  We stayed two nights and on the second decided to eat in our room as we had eaten out the night before and wanted to save some money.

We asked for pate and toast to be sent to our room.  It is never easy to ask the French for such a thing.  They look at you as if you are a maggot crawling out of food.  The next morning we paid the bill.  I almost fell over when I saw the cost of the snack of the previous evening.  It came to AUD$100.  "Mais," I objected, "il etait pate seulement."

"Non," replied the chatelaine, "il etait foie gras."

In other words it was pate from zee liver of zee goose.  Well that cooked mine and our budget.  So beware of the beautiful chateau with la snooty chatelaine Francaise or yours will be too.

I knew about chateaux before I arrived in France but not about their wonderful gardens.  Surprises are the best thing about travel; the experiences you're not expecting that happen on foreign soil and make them even more exotic.

I really wanted to see the old parts of France; the villages, some ruins, the chateaux and finally Avignon and the south.  But all did not go as I had planned.  Mr. Hyde had seen all of Europe when he had lived in Poland and he drove our hire car as I wasn't used to driving on the right.  He tried to trick me and kept driving East.  I could have explored more of the Loire district before heading south, but that was not his evil plan.

We started to head across the French Alps.  He was attempting to get to Poland but kept denying it.  In my opinion, once you've seen one mountain, you've seen them all. Also it was chilly up there even in September.  Mr. Hyde hadn't brought a sweater with him so he wore one of mine.

Every half hour he would insist on opening his window and smoking a cigarette.  I would freeze but fortunately my body, already wracked by stomach spasms, couldn't handle getting pneumonia on top.

The Alps, however, did hold one or two surprises.  One was a place called Sisteron.  It is a natural pass through cliffs and the rock formations are amazing.  Atop one side high on a cliff perched the ruin of a building, either a monastery or a fortress.  As usual, there was no real information and it hadn't been mentioned in the various books I had studied before leaving.

The other surprise was a restaurant, the Hotel de la Poste Corps.  It was in a small village, on the Route Napoleon, Place de Mairie, that appeared as we rounded a corner.  There were two buses outside it.  We were in need of a coffee and a little something to eat so we went in.

It was full of very portly German tourists and they were there to feast.  A caravan of silver trays paraded past us to an area below where the Germans were seated.  The trays were so long that each was carried by four waiters.  The array of food on them was like nothing I have seen before or since.

It seemed a crime to ask for mere cake so we ordered a hot dessert of crepes in chocolate sauce which was magnificent.  We stayed for a while and watched the banquet below us.  Just as we decided to leave the Germans stood en masse and began to depart so we let them go ahead rather than be crushed.

The chef stood by the exit to bid everyone farewell.  When our turn came I thought he would know we were just stray tourists but he took me by both hands and kissed me on either cheek.  Nobody else had received this treatment and both Mr. Hyde and I were astonished.  Perhaps it was  because I was the only slim woman there.

It's those kind of things that really make a trip.  I often wonder if you should return to a place that has given you such enjoyment but I believe you shouldn't.  If you've had a terrific time and been surprised once, the next time can never live up to it again as the element of surprise has gone.

Later, having managed to re-route Mr. Hyde southward again, we arrived at a lovely town called St. Paul de Vence.  We spent two nights there and explored the surrounding areas. 

This town had the original fortress town within it.  The old town's buildings were constructed of stone and winding cobbled paths ran between them.  There were flowers on creeping vines everywhere and its buildings were full of art and craft galleries.  If I could have afforded any, these were the type of things I would have liked to buy, but I did have the pleasure of looking.

We went on to Monaco after St. Paul de Vence.  Approaching it from the winding roads above is one of the most stunning views I have ever seen and I would love to go back.  Every person there looked as if they had fallen out of the pages of a magazine.  There wasn't a woman over a size ten in the place.  We parked and walked around near the marina in the evening but I had traveled all day and looked like something the cat had dragged in.  I just wasn't going to be seen like that or eat out there.  We agreed we would return later when we were refreshed and had changed.  Due to a mix up with the hire car, we never did.

The next few nights we stayed at a villa hotel in St. Juan-les-Pins.  From there we did day trips, one to Nice which was lovely.  My stomach spasms, however, had increased to the point where we called the medical insurance company with which we had taken out cover for the trip; one that guaranteed an English speaking doctor in an emergency.  A female doctor arrived at our hotel and her grasp of English was non-existent.  I had to make do with my French and I had never learned anything to explain stomach spasms.  She got the drift and gave me some pills she had on her.  They were actually quite good.

We returned to St. Paul de Vence and the hotel we stayed at previously.  The only room available was an attic room and we took it.  We could only stand erect in one small section.  The rest of the time we stooped or lay on the bed.

We planned to go down to Monaco again but first phoned the hire car company to arrange to drop off the car so we could take the TGV back to Paris.  The chatelaine was an English woman married to the French proprietor.  She phoned on our behalf and discovered there was a penalty for not getting the car back to Paris.

We made it back there in time to return the car only stopping for on night to stay at the lovely hotel in Charolais again.  Once we reached Paris we stayed at the same hotel as before in St. Germaine.  On one our last nights we found a French, French restaurant nearby.  With my adequate French I ordered a lamb dish and specified that it must not have a cream sauce.

Naturally it arrived swimming in the stuff as if it was born in it.  I called the waiter who was the archetypal French kind, portly with black hair slicked down, a moustache and a sneer.  On informing him that I had asked for the dish without cream, he snorted, picked up the plate as if I had stolen it in the first place and stomped into the kitchen.  He stomped back some time later with the lamb "sans crème".  It was as if a lactose intolerant tourist had absolutely no right to be in France if she could not eat their magnificent food.

One thing the French do well is conserve power.  In many hotels the hallways are unlit.  You need to push a switch, when you can find it, that gives you about thirty seconds to find your room.  Notre Dame Cathedral is dim inside in the daytime and there is also no lighting until someone puts a coin in a slot.  The lighting doesn't stay on long so it's best to work in relay with other tourists so you can look around and take some photos.

There also isn't much lighting used in the Palace of Versailles and you are not permitted to take photos with a flash.  It is said bursts of bright light gradually damage the décor and artworks.  This is also true in the Louvre.

The gardens at Versailles aren't as beautiful, in my opinion, as those surrounding other lesser chateaux.  The worst part of Versailles, however, were the toilets that you pay to use.  French toilets are problematic at the best of times, but these catered to many tourists and were dirty, smelly and not the best memory of my trip.

Good and bad memories both make a trip and, had we traveled on a pre-arranged tour, there is a lot we would have missed.  Although doing it on your own can be stressful, it's more of an adventure and the unexpected really adds another dimension to the experience.

On the subject of shopping, I didn't find it any better in France than here in Australia.  I can hear you say, "Oh, you must be joking."  No, I'm not.  Not only that, Australian cafes were superior in their variety of food if not in their sense of superiority.  In fact frites (now I know why they are called French fries) were available in the cafes there which I found amazing.

I did try to shop for clothes and shoes and to find something different to what is on offer in Australia, but to no avail.  I went through department stores, along the boutiques of the Champs Elysees, past the couturiers and I looked in every shoe shop I passed.  In Nice I finally bought two pairs of shoes but in the end I didn't buy much at all.

Before leaving Paris I just had to buy something that would be a memento of the trip.  In a Limoges shop I found just the thing.  It was a candle holder made of  delicate, bisque white porcelain made by Bernardaud, an allied company of Limoges.  It was about ten centimetres in diameter and made up of a dome that sits on a small plate.  The plate holds a jasmine scented tea candle.  The dome had been engraved by laser with the great landmarks of Paris and, when lit from inside by the candle, they look three-dimensional.  The candle lights up the thin shell of the dome and it makes it glow.  It cost me AUD$110 and must have been one of the first of its kind.

A few years later in Australia I found just such a dome again, a number of them in fact, with different engravings.  The inside was glazed white but that was the only difference.  It was manufactured by the Japanese and cost AUD$12 but I still treasure the one I bought in France.  It also has "Limoges, Bernardaud, France", stamped underneath.

We had to move hotels on our last two nights in Paris as our room had been booked in advance for that time.  Fortunately we found an even nicer hotel nearby.  The last night in Paris, Hyde's sister came over when I was safely asleep.  I really didn't wish to see her again. They spent the entire night in the lobby smoking and talking.  Hyde didn't sleep at all.  The concierge at the desk for the night was probably treated to more smoke inhalation than he had ever had in his life up to that time.  Poles can really smoke.  Of course Hyde fell asleep on the journey home even though we were crammed into the plane like sardines.

Perhaps I should take up smoking too.  He seems to cope with things better than I do.

END.

SOUND TRAVELS.

 

I've decided to write some Travel posts.  It is fitting, however, to start with something I wrote almost nineteen years ago.  It appeared in The Courier-Mail, in Queensland on March 28, 1994.  At the time I was recovering in hospital from an emergency appendectomy.  I was forty-one.  Strangely my father also had an emergency appendectomy at the age of forty-one.

At any rate, afterwards, I left hospital more dead than alive.  Prior to discharging me one week after the operation, the surgeon who had removed my appendix said there could be nothing wrong with me as I had no temperature or swelling.  I felt worse than when I'd entered hospital and had to be given anti nausea medication to keep food down.  The day nurse had decided I was a hypochondriac and passed her diagnosis on to him.  This was her opinion because, at the time, I was on an anti-depressant.  I will add that I had lowered the dose gradually from three tablets to a half a tablet a day over the course of a year.

At home the following day the swelling finally showed itself.  I called in a locum who advised me what to expect and prescribed antibiotics.  She suggested I get in the shower and when I did, what followed wasn't pretty.  It took three months for me to even begin to feel well again.

The surgeon apologised.  I had developed a huge post-operative abscess and was too unwell to even think about suing him.  The only thing that cheered me up was having my travel story printed in the newspaper.  It follows and it's all true.

"IN OUR CASE SOUND TRAVELS."

 

In the Outback there is a silence so profound it almost possesses a voice, as if mere humans are called upon to listen to something they don't have the means to hear.

I was seven when I discovered this eerie quality of the red centre.  My enjoyment of it must have drawn the attention of some mischievous spirit which decided to stir up noise on my future travels.  It became a curse.

It began in earnest when I arrived in London six years ago, alone and almost terminally jet-lagged.  After an interminable trip in a bus from the airport to my hotel, I begged the staff for any room that was ready.

Seeing my glazed look they offered me a pit near the goods entry driveway on the ground floor.  I took it and fell into bed.

It was 7.30am.  Time for jackhammers to wake up.  One did, about 15 metres
from my window.  I don't know how I did it, but I fell asleep anyway.

That must have made the gremlin really mad.  It would get me another time.

Back home with my husband and son in Perth, I decided to join my parents on a trip to Sydney.  We flew on the midnight "red-eye" flight and arrived ready to fall into our hotel beds, again at the witching hour of 7.30am.  The gremlin breathed at our necks.  it didn't know the meaning of moderation, or even subtle torture.

Jackhammers wake everywhere at that time.  My head had hit the pillow when a harangue from hell started in what seemed like the wall of the next room.  We phoned reception and were told that the hotel was under renovation.  The jackhammer was four floors below.  We were moved further up, to a penthouse suite.

We caught up on our sleep that night, but the fun began early the next day.  Dressed in my nightie, I threw open the curtains, safe in the knowledge only birds could see me.  Right in front of me stood two men on a scaffold.

"Morning", they said, "Can we start work now?"  Did we have a choice?

They began to hammer away at the exterior of the building.  Not another room could  be found anywhere in Sydney, so we went out a lot.

I returned to Perth a nervous wreck.  It was then that construction began on a mini-mansion next door.  One weekend, to escape the endless noise, my husband, son and I drove down to Albany.  We booked into a good motel.  We joked there would be no jackhammers there, but then, we'd arrived in the dark.

Saturday morning, a bulldozer began to demolish the building next door.  We stayed, thinking they wouldn't work on Sunday.  They did.

When we decided to move to Queensland, we made a trip up to Cairns for a vacation first.  You know the scene: nice hotel, etc.  But it's night that's dangerous in the tropics.

I called him Albert.  I find it helps to give a name to something you're swearing at.  He croaked.  There were plenty of cane toads under the surrounds of the hotel pool, but Albert was the Pavarotti of all cane toads and he was right under our window.

We begged the hotel to do away with him.  They laughed.  After three nights of this, however, Albert must have croaked for good.  Not a sound by evening.

That night a very loud drunk started singing in the hotel restaurant.  He continued late into the night in the outside bar, straight across the pool from our room.  I think Albert's spirit had possessed him.  He was singing over and over, "Ayo, ayo, daylight comes and I want to go home".

I began to feel like singing along with him.

End of excerpt of "In Our Case Sound Travels".  Read on for the rest of the post.

 

It's strange reading this back after all these years.  In fact I'd like to correct some of the punctuation and grammar but I've left it as the paper did.

As for the 'drunk' who sang the same song endlessly, I believe he must have had Tourette's Syndrome.  He may not even have been drunk.  He had started singing loudly in the restaurant during our dinner and continued as he moved to the bar and sang into the early hours of the morning.

The sound curse stopped after that last episode thank heavens.  I'd  traveled prior to this time and afterwards.  My next posts will be about those times, but it seemed only fitting to start with this one.  It may be hard to believe all this happened.  It certainly was for me. 



END.