Just A Dream?

"Have you ever thought about this, that right now this instant every one of them is somewhere being real? The Pope and the President and also certain surviving kings, the people whose secrets we know and the ones of whom we know no more than the newspaper confides, all the people you have met and all the people you will meet, and all you have never met and will never meet, all of them they are somewhere now right this instant being real. Even when you are not talking about them, not thinking about them perhaps not even remembering them in spite of these insults they are somewhere being real.... At the very same instant they are being real right now. It is too much to comprehend that, still they dare it, but it is too much."
     —Gaddis, The Recognitions

Packing up, heading out. Goodbye Europe, hello Life.

Oh Well

I went to Berkeley Square, but I didn't find a nightingale. So I had a beer in a nearby pub and sang to myself. Consequence of traveling alone.

London Town

The last stop of my adventure was least likely. Cheap flights to Europe route through Ireland and Eurail passes don't cover the Channel crossing. Also, they speak English, whoop-dee-friggin-doo. I wanted foreign, not my homeland's former colonial overlord. Silly me, always thinking my preconceived notions are worth a damn.

An important realization I've made is that my impressions are overwhelmingly subjective. My affinity for new music, for example, is scarily correlated with my esteem for the person recommending it. Also, if I'm in a bad mood, I might not like anything, even my front rows at a Timberlake/Usher concert. (The one certain exception is beautiful women—I always like them.) One of the moments in this realization was Scot Murray, back in Rome, describing his experience at Sorelle Picchi, a restaurant in Parma he was sending me to, as "the best meal of his life". I paused, thinking Do I have a Best Meal of my life? I may be misremembering his quote, because I remember also that he was commenting specifically on the food there. Either way, I am not capable of such a statement. Statements I am capable of include "The best prosciutto I've ever had was at Sorelle Picchi.", "The best steak tartare I've ever had was at Bofinger yesterday in Paris.", and "I swear to God, Mom makes the best chocolate cookies on earth.", but do not include those beginning with "The best food..." or "The best meal...". My Quality Of Meal function considers the location, the company, the weather, and the overall state of my soul, among other things. And, to put it alchemically, my quicksilver soul is not the most reliable reagent.

Why am I saying this? Today the status of my soul was Good, and today I walked around London. It was sunny, too. I didn't make it out of the apartment until about 5 pm for a few really mundane reasons, but once I did, oh boy. London is clean and beautiful. People are well-dressed and clean, by which I mean not sweaty when you stand next to them on the tube. (Depending on who I am standing next to, I might get sweaty myself, but that’s a different issue.) There are parks everywhere—so many that, despite good distribution, two of the biggest (Hyde and Green) ended up meeting at opposite corners of a traffic circle. I’m losing the steam for more waxing, but I think my impression boils down to this well-dressed thing. It’s really the people either. The whole city is well-dressed. The streets, the buildings, the cabs, the buses, the parks, the monuments, the metro (Metro!)... everything. And all this these pleasantries populate a street plan that certainly approaches some perfect balance of logic and idiosyncrasy, navigability and personality. London has a soul. And unlike Florence, London’s soul cannot is not stifled by tourism, because it is the center not only of British tourism, but of government, business, and culture, as well. How can you not love a place that sends its businessmen to their desks in the glass and steel towers of Canary Wharf on a metro line named Jubilee?

Enough talk. I know I'm not as good at it as I think I am.

Divine light shines on Hyde Park:



Piccadilly Circus, the Times Square of London, complete with Virgin Megastore and Coke sign. Not only can you not argue with a name like that, you can't even strike up a conversation with it. It's way out of your league:



Tomorrow I try to figure out whether it was my soul in the city or the soul of the city that left me swooning.

So Stupid

Turns out my flight leaves from Shannon, Ireland, not London, as I thought. Hmm. Must have committed that one to forgetery when I booked it back in Naples. Is it cheaper to fly to Ireland or change the flight? A question for tomorrow morning. Right now I'm dead tired: I woke up this morning in Switzerland, woke up this afternoon in Paris, and looked up from the New Yorker this evening in London. Three days in, but not for the price of, one—those trains were expensive.

It Was Written

Sitting on a stand-up cafe table at the boulanger just to the left of the information and travel kiosks at the Lausanne train station, next to an empty bottle of water, is a black journal with a Eurail train schedule, a few train tickets (including the one I needed for the ride to Paris), and inscriptions by all the people I've hung out with in the past six weeks. If you're passing through, please keep and eye out for it. A lot people drew fish in there, and I know they wouldn't want their time and effort squandered. There will be a reward.

I suppose there is a decent chance of recovery, because it is worthless to anybody but my theoretical stalkers and biographers. And me. I was pretty torn up about it. I forgot about it while reading the short story in this week's New Yorker. Then I remembered it and got upset again. Then I fell asleep, and upon waking had resigned it to the wasteland of lost and forgotten objects encoding information too esoteric to be deciphered or valued by anybody but their creators. Perhaps somebody will find it and read trough. They might marvel at the drawings, wonder how the author reconciled the Biblicality of the title (The Book of Matthew) with references (telling all in their illegibility) to a weekend in Amsterdam, or miss their train as I did not, sitting stunned, awed by the obvious genius that put it all together. And then maybe they'll overcome their inevitable desire to possess such a priceless work or art and mind, and contact me through one of the people who wrote in it. Because I want it back.

It wasn't finished.

Ahh

I spent the day lying in the sun on the shore of Lake Geneva. I don't really have anything else to say. Do you have any questions?

I'm heading to Paris tomorrow morning and London either tomorrow night or Wednesday. The westward journey home begins.

A Good Place To Be

I have visited many wonderful places in the last six weeks. Clear stand-outs: Barcelona, Bilbao, Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Prague, Florence, Perugia, Bologna, and Interlaken. Of these, only two were completely overwhelming. Of those two, one famously allows activites illegal elsewhere, and the other is Interlaken.

Pictures have never really done it for me. I've seen the pictures of things I saw yesterday before, but they never impressed me or at all prepared me for the view walking from the balcony of the Hotel Interlaken, the view from the Valley floor walking north from Lauterbrunen, or the view from Mürren, one thousand meters above the valley floor and a mile below the highest neighboring peak.

I wish I could describe it for those that haven't seen it. Time runs short in internet cafes, so I won't even try. Maybe when I get back home and look through the pictures. Or when I'm back there with a laptop as soon as possible, looking off a balcony at it.

I miss it already.

The Mountains

If Interlaken looks anywhere near as beautiful as it smells, getting off the train at midnight, then I'm in love. Oxygen is the new Oxycontin.

I'm with Ben Isaac now. Tomorrow we're going to perch on top of a nearby peak and meditate like true Williams men: books in hand. I anticipate myself wondering why I never did homework on top of Mt. Greylock.

A Good Place to be From

I am finally done with the Italian train system, here in a Swiss internet bar as I am. The train left on time and through we didn't switch trains, it seemed to run smoother after we crossed into Switzerland. Maybe they lay their tracks straighter too.

My first stop after getting off the train was the ATM. I've got a bunch of Euros, but I figured they wouldn't be good past the bar cart on the train. I chose English as my language, selected Withdrawal (assuming correctly it wasn't referring to alcohol withdrawal), then chose an amount in the middle of those offered—500 francs—not wanting to make the mistake I made in Copenhagen that sent me to the ATM four times in two days. The machine revealed five stunningl attractive 100 franc notes. I'll check the exchange rate when I get to the internet cafe, I told myself. I had assumed the exchange rate to be something like four or five francs to the dollar. On the way to the cafe, I saw a menu offering Tarte Lorraine for 25 francs, which seemed quite reasonable, maybe I'll check it out in a little while. Now I've just checked the actual exchange rate, thank you Google: 1.2 francs to the dollar. Meaning I've just put 8.3 dollars into this computer, that tarte cost 20.82, and I will probably not escape this country with the meager dignity afforded by having any money on you at all. I am now both anxious about carrying so much cash and in wealth withdrawal. Contradictory sensations.

In conclusion, don't get worried if I post less frequently in next few days. I still love you.

Vaffanculo

The ride from Napoli to Perugia on Monday was the worst train day of the trip and it was mostly other people's faults. I had finally confirmed meeting up with Scot and Charles in Perugia, but I didn't go to the Napoli train station between confirmation and departure, so the plan was to get up Monday morning, catch the Circumvesuviana (suburban metro) to the station, and get reservations on the first trains possible. The line at the station was long, but moved quickly, so I made it to the ticket window with a couple minutes to spare before the 11:10 Eurostar left for Roma. For whatever reason, my Eurorail pass was somewhere in my bag other than its usual location, so expedited the sale by paying full price. Mistake #1. Booking tickets on the more expensive high-speed trains, mistake #2, especially in retrospect, knowing it long it actually took me to get there, that is, eight hours. It would take less than half that time to drive it.

The clock on the wall next to me as I paid said 11:08, giving me 1-2 minutes to walk around the ticket office to my track. I covered this distance at a fast walk, exhausting no more than 45 seconds, but I only arrived in time to watch that train leave from the cheap seats, the ones I didn't pay for, and wouldn't have needed to. If for some reason a conductor was in the driver's seat at the back of the train and were looking out the back, he could've seen the most appalled look I've ever directed at something several hundred feet long. Either the clock was slow or the train left early. This is Italy. Can't rule out anything, but I'm told and have experienced that the adjective "early" is far less promiscuous than its antonym in Italian railroad circles.

I hopped on the 11:24 regional (and cheap) train to Roma, which left late and arrived later. Total ritard, ~45 minutes, on a two-hour ride. That's 37.5% error, which is almost more amazing than offensive. This improbability caused me to miss the high-speed (and expensive) train to Perugia by several minutes, when by the schedule I should've had half an hour to kill. By this time I had found my Eurorail pass, which would've gotten me onto all the trains I ended up taking, but for free.

Regional service to Perugia changes at Foligno. I got off there to await the connecting train. Looking at the departures board, I saw a train terminating in Perugia leaving in a bit more than an hour. Great, I'll walk around the city. Got some gelato, sat down in a cathedral. Wow sunscreen is expensive in Italy. Bought some. I went back to the station, where the train to Perugia was not listed on the departures board. With an audible groan and rolled eyes, I reconsulted the schedule. The train I saw earlier doesn't run this time of the year. The train I need to catch was the regional train to Terontola, which stops in Perugia. One of those had left in the previous hour. The next was an hour later. I'm an idiot.

This whole time I had been sending text messages to Scot saying, first, "4:00", then "5:00", "6:00", and "7:00" with each successive setback. I finally caught the right train and made it to Perugia, though not without an inexplicable 20-minutes pause at the station before mine.

Yesterday, the Italian train system added injury to the insult of having to ride it by fining me 50 euros for not marking the travel day on my railpass before getting on the train, something nobody else, not even the French and Germans, have minded. And their trains run on time. You have to follow the rules yourself if you're going to punish others for bending them. That train left half an hour late, too.

Umbria, Lazio

I hope you are not interested in details, stories, or thoughts, merely location and times, because I totally lack the energy to say more than that I hung with Charles Howard and Scot Murray in Perugia last night, and now I'm in Rome with Scot. He takes off for Hamburg tomorrow and I'll catch a train to Bologna and Parma tomorrow before arriving in Switzerland on Friday. There's more to say that this, but it will all come out in time.

This is a wonderful country.