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Jan. 9, 2005 At the beginning of April in 1991, I decided to return to the US from Egypt, where I had lived for several months. My tour had begun a year earlier in Los Angeles, but I planned to end it in New York, by flying first to Montreal, where I would board a Greyhound bus for the last leg of the journey. And so I did, but with some excitement in between. At a travel agency in Alexandria, I learned that Egypt Air does not fly to Canada, and that I would have to fly Lufthansa, the German line, making two separate flights: first Alexandria- Frankfurt, and then Frankfurt-Montreal. I would have to stay in Germany one day. I said to myself, "In that case, why don't I just leave the date of the second flight open, so that I can stay in Germany a little longer and look around?" I got the ticket as I wanted it, for about $800. I arrived in Frankfurt on a Sunday afternoon about 6, with a bicycle, a bag, and a bunch of money, US dollars and travelers' checks, plus a half-inch-thick stack of Egyptian 20-pound notes which would have housed and fed me 4 or 5 months in Egypt but which melted down to a few 100-mark notes at a currency exchange at Frankfurt Airport and were gone in a week. Cycling downtown, I got a room for one night that cost me as much as a month in Egypt. The next morning I discovered Eurailpass. I bought 21 travel days within two months for $700. Board the train as many times as you please within a day, and it counted as one day. Go five miles in a day, it still counted as one day. Overnight runs began at 11 PM, but you were charged one day, not two. You could buy a berth for extra money, but two of the reclining seats opposite each other made a free berth. You were gambling, though, on finding two vacant seats opposite each other, a safe bet at that time of year as it turned out. So, by planning your travels right, you could avoid the trouble and expense associated with hotel rooms. European terminals featured showers and lockers, which, by that time, were history in the US. I couldn't take my bicycle on the train, so I stored it in the station in Frankfurt, and I was off. I caught an overnighter to Paris, arriving at 7, and I spent the day there. The next night I was on a train to Barcelona, where I spent another day, looking around and paying a visit to Antonio Gaudí's Sagrada Familia Cathedral, then unfinished. The next night, I made Madrid, and the following night, I was in Lisbon. I wanted to get a room in Lisbon, but the first hotel I went to was skyhigh and had no vacancies anyway. Not wanting to spend hours searching, I decided to sleep in a park. Suspended from my waist by a chain was a Robinhood-style bag with money and documents, which would have been hidden in a sleeping bag, if I had had one. I lay simply on the grass, but was awakened at 2 AM by a man standing over me with a knife, trying to slit the bag, which would have done him no good whatsoever, as the bag had been constructed by me with people like him in mind. When he saw I was awake, he left. The next night, I was on my way back to Madrid, and the next to Barcelona once again, spending another day in each. Then I caught an overnighter to Genoa, Italy, passing through Monaco and Nice. I was getting tired of these one-day stands however, but didn't want to squander great sums of money on hotels, so I bought a sleeping bag in Genoa, where I spent a day, wandering among the hills there. The next day I made Rome. I spent 4 days in Rome, visiting St. Peter's, the Vatican Museum and the Coliseum, and I probably would have stayed a little longer, but it began to rain. Figuring it wouldn´t be much colder farther north but maybe dry, I caught a train to Verona and shuttled over to Venice on a short line. Venice was icy and windy, and I couldn´t find a room, even though I was willing to pay almost anything to get inside, so I went back to Verona, where I caught an overnighter to Vienna. Snow lay on the ground in most parts of Austria, but in Vienna it was drizzly instead, though cold nonetheless. I arrived at the Westbahnhof, where Hitler once had been a porter. I spent 3 days in Vienna, visiting the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, the Austrian Natural History Museum and Schonbrunn Palace, where the Hapsburgs reigned until their fall from power in 1918. I wanted to visit the houses of perhaps Mozart, Schubert and Freud, but it could wait until a second visit I would make before I left. I shopped on Mariahilferstrasse. Then I caught a train to Budapest, but this was extra money. Hungary was not then on Eurailpass. Budapest is a beautiful city, but hustlers and troublemakers abounded. Besides, I didn't know a word of Hungarian, so after 2 days I left. I trained back through Vienna and through Basel, Zurich and Geneva, in Switzerland. Citymayors.com rates Zurich and Geneva, along with Vancouver, as the best three cities in the world. To me, though, they were useless, hilly, cloudy, cold, expensive and unfriendly, a far cry from warm, sunny, friendly, inexpensive Egypt. The Alps were stunning though. I passed a third time through Barcelona on my way to Algeciras, Spain. There I boarded a ship for Tangiers, Morocco. It was great to be back in Araby a few days. I spent a day or so in Tangiers, where meeting a few Algerians, I offered to pay one's passage to cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain, but he would have to wait a few days, as I wanted to take a train to Casablanca, which I did, passing through Rabat. This was extra money too. I stayed a day or two in Casablanca and returned to Tangiers on an overnight train, where I found my Algerian friend. I did pay his passage too, about $20, but Spanish authorities would not let him in, and he was deported on the spot, along with others. Back in Algeciras, I caught successive trains without stopping, first to Madrid, then Paris, then Hamburg, then Copenhagen. Copenhagen is on an island called Sjaelland, and in order to negotiate the water, the whole train went on a ship. After I spent a day or so in Copenhagen, visiting Tivoli Gardens, I got on another train, which rolled aboard another ship, crossing over the waves to Malmo, Sweden. Today I think there´s a bridge to Sweden, but then there wasn't. Stockholm was so gray and gloomy that I spent just a couple hours there before getting on a train to Oslo, Norway. Prices in Scandinavia were absolutely outrageous, teenagers taunted me, policemen and security guards bothered me and it was cold. A day in Oslo was enough. I trained back down through the former Eastern Germany, to Berlin. It was raining torrents in Berlin, but I managed to go to Berlin Zoo before I left. Then I went through Munich and Stuttgart back to Vienna, for my second visit, which didn't materialize, as rain was pouring there as well. So I went right back through Switzerland to Paris, which was also wet. Finally, passing through Brussels, I ended up in Amsterdam, dry but cold. After a short stay in Holland, I went back to Paris for a longer stay. I arrived at Gare Austerlitz, where I put my sleeping bag and carrying bag in a locker. In the next few days, I visited the Louvre, the Natural History Museum, Place Vendome and other points of interest. Each evening, I'd take out my stuff and go sleep on the banks of the Seine. In the morning, I'd put it back in the locker, and I'd shower in the station. The shower and the locker cost six times as much per day as my two-room apartment in Egypt. I'd hate to price a hotel there. In the seventies, Paris had been reasonable; in the nineties, it was steep. Then I caught an overnighter back to Frankfurt. Of course, now I had my bicycle again and cycled all over town, camping out in a big park in downtown Frankfurt, for a couple of weeks. Anyone who thinks Germans are all rich should see the colonies of 10-by-10 houses, with chain-link fences and barbed wire, hidden discreetly in the woods in suburban Frankfurt, more crowded and more congested than the worst trailer court in New Mexico. The city is a typical Caucasian city, with lots of red brick apartment buildings. For a town of only a million, Frankfurt is great for stores though. Am der Haupstrasse features about 10 major department stores, just like New York or Paris. In the US, if you go to a department store wishing to buy, say, four identical sweaters of the same size and color, you'll never do it. You'll end up settling for three different colors in two different sizes, if you can get four at all. In Frankfurt, though, they're there in abundance, but, unfortunately, with stiff price tags. Nonetheless, like a child, I wanted to shop. I rented a hotel room for a week, so I would have a place to try on and keep my purchases. The best I could do was $35 a night with a shared bath. I bought a new bike in Germany, but it was more expensive than and proved inferior to an American bike. I should have waited. Finally, around the end of May, now with two big bags strapped to my bike, I cycled out to awesome Frankfurt Airport in the morning. Gaining six hours on time zones, I arrived about noon at Maribel International Airport, 35 miles north of Montreal. I cycled towards the city. A few miles later I got a flat tire, which meant I'd have to undo the bags, open everything up, get out the spare tube and the pump, and fix the tire. I was so tired or lazy that I decided just to rent a motel room right there, and attend to the bike later. This motel was in the lovely town of Rosemere, Quebec, where a river, with islets green with willows weeping withes into the water, flows. Oh, if Canada weren't so cold! I biked downtown two or three times, changing lots of money in different currencies and shopping at Eaton's and La Baie. Finally I got on the Greyhound bus that I had had in mind. Eight hours later I was at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. What a letdown! ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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