Monthly Archive

I have a special place in my heart for Bonn because I spent around 5 hours walking and stopping and walking and stopping along the Rhine. During which time I stroked a lovable golden retriever through a fence; lay against a tree to watch and listen to other trees shimmering in the wind and light; got asked for directions I didn’t really know by two German women; and sat down on a shore of pebbles where clear, miniature waves would come in from the river to topple. I saw the sexiest tree bark in my life, and walked a long way on a small path flanked on both sides by swaying grass as tall as myself.

I know it would have been quicker and more comfortable to cycle. At the start I kicked myself for not going that route as I watched carefree person after carefree person whiz by. But I got into my walking groove, which only gets groovier as surroundings get woollier. I hope I can bike more throughout my life - it’s refreshing, not slow, energy saving and energy harnessing (psst, this = muscles for you!). I love the wind through my hair, although the full brunt of it on my face and torso on a cold evening is a tad less thrilling.

Walking is my first love though. It comes from somewhere. It comes from the extreme disgust and boredom I felt as a child as my mum made us trudge over some big grey bridge in Singapore after what seemed like hours of being on foot already. From the cynicism and boredom I felt as an adolescent as our teachers made us trudge through soggy, dripping New Zealand bush for school camp. From the anticipation and desperation (so, so far from boredom!) I felt a few years ago in Madagascar when my volunteer co-ordinators guided me in trudging through rural land and forest to get to base at the end of a long, effortful day with no food in stomach… But two soggy baguettes wrapped in newspaper in hand Dunking soggy baguette into nutella in the hut that’s been yours for 10 minutes as the world outside starts to grey with the ending day and quieten with rainfall. That’s the definition of heaven! :)) Read the rest of this entry »

So I’m fascinated by strange old men. I’m not entirely sure why. Let me think through it a bit.

There’s the fact that they’re outcasts, and I’m uncertain as to whether this is by choice or by happenstance.

There is the link with alcohol. Is it a causal relationship? But which way around?

There is their great thirst for attention. And how usually when they get it they’re actually quite nice about it… they are pleasant and grateful for the company by and large. Even if their talking is nonsensical, they feel good to be able to share it.

Whenever I see and watch a strange old man I can’t help but wonder if he has a family. Both because I wonder how long it took him to get so strange and because I wonder if you can be a strange old man and still have close ties.

I’m also interested in them because it does seem a heterogeneous group, for example the drunk man on the train. Or the lucid Swiss “bum”. Does smelly clothes identify you as a bum? Does not wearing shoes? Or being completely hammered much of the day? I guess it doesn’t. There’s also always the possibility that it is the expression of an extreme need for independence.

So a strange old man is not necessarily a bum. Certainly the American artist had a steady living. The guy on the train was a wild card because he looked reasonable when no great action or being of himself was required. Watching him, I really wondered… What is his destination? Will he have people who will give him warmth and their unguarded selves in return for his visit? Will he have no one happy to see him? Or will he have relatives who will stand there thinking “Oh god, not again. Why do we have to be here for this…….” Or will he have friends at a bar somewhere? Are they friends? And I think I would wonder the same thing even for the American man, who was isolated in his own way.

It’s in my nature to be curious about who they are and how they got there. And about what it is they want for themselves. But when I was in Nuremberg I bought the book Are you somebody?, an autobiography by Irish Times columnist Nuala O’Faolain, and one of its central themes is the plague of alcoholism in Ireland. I want to know, I always want to know the story, the life behind and within it all… but reading this book really scared me. Who knows, maybe alcoholism wouldn’t figure greatly in the stories of the strange old men. Either way, this book reminded me that although I do want to know, finding out the truth alone could take a while to recover from.

I don’t know if I’ve really gone anywhere with this. Boiling it down my questions when I watch them are basically these two: What does it take to get there? and Why does he want to be there?

During my main stay in Switzerland a couple of months ago I visited the city of Luzern (Lucerne in English) twice. The first time was to scope it out, the second time to indulge again in what my scoping out had told me was a good place to be and to take a boat ride on Lake Lucerne. Actually I had even grander plans: I was planning on visiting Rütli, the field where the germination of Switzerland is said to have been set in motion…

So there I am sitting on the open air deck of a mid-sized boat. With my feet curled up under my legs on the seat, the side of my back leaning inevitably against the rail and my arms and neck stretching themselves out naturally to enjoy the warm contact of the sun as I scribble something or other in my notebook. Let’s enjoy that nice image for a moment before I tell you that I was also surrounded by a Korean tour group and a bunch of Swiss schoolkids under supervision on an excursion. Oh wait, did you enjoy the image?

I can’t remember how it happened exactly anymore, but at some point the shoulder length, curly-haired man “of a certain age” sitting on the other side of the deck made a comment to me out of nowhere about how cool it was to have the Swiss flag on each boat, before he got up to unfurl said flag that had been wrapped up around its pole by the wind. I responded somehow, something non-committal but acknowledging and friendly one imagines. This paved the way to asking if he could join me for a chat, which itself paved the way to inviting me to get off at his stop (a great number of stops earlier than Rütli) so as to continue chatting for a bit longer. He assured me I could continue my mission for history an hour later at the next boat departure point, which we would walk to. Read the rest of this entry »

In Switzerland the old men bums are very chatty.

At a train station close to the border between Switzerland and Lichtenstein (which yes…I very very briefly visited) a presumably homeless man bounded over excitedly to talk to me. He had just finished a one-sided conversation with two teenage girls sitting on the further away bench. The conversation he had with me was not much different either, despite the fact that I did try at the beginning to be an equal participant too. It was one-sided mainly because he didn’t speak much English, so what he did instead was rattle off an endless (seriously) list of names of famous great guitar players and old rock bands. This because I had my borrowed guitar sitting beside me. When some 15 minutes later he winded down with the list, he was very pleased to be able to inform me that I could buy a guitar book in the train bookshop. After leaving for 2 minutes to scout things out at the bookshop, he returned and handed me an empty lottery ticket, on the back of which he had written that I looked like an angel and that all the pretty girls were nice to him.

A different train station was where I had my second encounter with a Swiss man, presumed bum. This man however talked very lucidly to me about how his daughter had lived in NZ for a year, and though he couldn’t remember where it was, told me that she had loved it. Being clearly a different breed of strange old man than the one in the preceding paragraph, he also asked me how I was enjoying my travels in Switzerland, and highly recommended that I go to Fribourg. All in all, a typical sort of conversation to have. I would have felt quite comfortable with him, if it weren’t for the beer can in his hand, the funky smell coming off his clothing and the fact that he came in close as he was emphasising a particular point and ended up projecting several droplets of spit into my left eye. An unabashed charmer like the first Swiss bum, he too flattered me upon parting by declaring that he couldn’t get enough of my beautiful smile.

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I sit in the park in the company of strange old men.

One man wears a red and black striped shirt underneath a jean jacket and pants combination. His thick grey moustache only accentuates the twisted O his pink lips are making. His eyes convey feelings of confusion and hurt simultaneously. As he gets up to change benches it becomes clear that some deformity of his right leg is making the task painstaking.

The other man wears a cap with the logo of the post office on it. On his body he wears a faded olive chenille jacket, blue work shirt and black work trousers. His hair, thick, wavy and turning to grey from a sandy blond, curls back into his neck at his shoulders and form the major part of the set which also includes full beard and moustache. His eyes are barely distinguishable on his face, since his face itself is not so big as his hair. After seating himself he opens a one litre bottle of beer, lights a cigarette and hunches forward with both in hand.

The jean suit man now sits on the same bench as the hair man looking bewildered and helpless, his right hand resting on his thigh while his left rests off the side of the arm of the bench, resting place for a cigarette that he isn’t much interested in.

The hair man takes a swig from his brown bottle.

Jean suit man sits back against the bench, legs together and both hands in his lap like a shy young boy.

Hair man leans forward so far that it looks like he’s trying to crouch. His lips move slightly. He is dissatisfied and restless, he would want to move and talk. He has already tried a friendly hello to the jean suit man.

He glances over in my direction, I look down at the ground.

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Read the rest of this entry »

A quick update and dedication before I continue on with the posts I am currently writing.

Update: I am in Switzerland for a short stay while I decide my next move. Italy in particular looks to be on the cards soon.

Dedication: I’ve today come across Idiolect, a blog that has posted some great quotes as well as some interesting discussion. This is where I found the following quote, which goes out to you mum.

People think of good and bad teachers as engaged in the same activity, as if education was a substance, and that bad teachers supply a little of the substance, and good teachers supply a lot. This makes it difficult to understand that education can be a destructive process, and that bad teachers are wrecking talent, and that good and bad teachers are engaged in opposite activities.

Keith Johnstone, in Impro

Right on. I’m glad that you fight the good fight.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about this as it’s nothing but vitriol and spit. The latest incident of today clinched it.

I was walking through my last stretch of Vondelpark (in Amsterdam) contemplating having a hot drink at the nearby film museum cafe. I take the corner, turn my head to look at the stereo blasting some reggae, turn it back round and keep walking straight ahead. Some seconds later a man on a bicycle is crossing my path so I try to step more to the side, and still he cycles across to get in my way. Cycles to a stop, blocking me with his bike and his mass, and turning his front wheel into me.

“……………?” he asks as I take some trouble to move on around him, pretty thoroughly pissed at this stage.

“Excuse me?” I respond, still walking on. Read the rest of this entry »

I´m writing now from Bonn where I´m staying with a lovely friend and his lovely girlfriend. My first stop in Germany however was Munich, still my pet favourite.

One night there I decided to track down a jazz club that had its week´s programme typed up on an A4 piece of paper and stuck on one of the walls of the hostel. This club was called Jazzclub Vogler, located on Rumfordstrasse.

Vogler has the perfect decor for a jazz club, dim lighting supplemented by small candles in the centre of the tables, dark brown wooden tables with wooden chairs or else black banquettes along the wall. Corners and a few booths so that people can get cosy in their own area. A stage that seemed to take up a fifth of the room, to make the performers look close and the music sound loud. The band comprised four people: a pianist, a double bass player, a saxophone/tambourine/cow bell (?) player and the star of the show, a Panamanian man called Cesar playing the bongos as well as the square box he was seated on.

I sat one small cafe table back from the stage and was alone in that particular section until a German couple came and sat down near there partway through the first set. At the end of this set at around 10:30pm, the figure of an old man appeared in front of our tables and inquired as to whether he could take the place next to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Like a hyperactive small dog with my to-ing and fro-ing, I am now back in Switzerland and writing this post on the eve of my departure for Germany. A number of reasons contributed to my exit from France, none of which are especially provocative so no need to worry. One simple way of explaining it is to say that I picked sides. No one ever asked me to of course, my allegiance to France loosened of its own accord following a number of incidents, which include watching one young French guy express great disgust after hearing that I had tried to learn some Swiss German (Schwiizerdütsch) while in Switzerland. In his response I saw several things: intolerance, a sense of superiority for his own culture, and ignorance about what Swiss German actually is - i.e. pretty different in numerous respects to German. Swiss German folk speak both Swiss German and (High)German, while Germans have genuine difficulty understanding Schwiizerdütsch. Swiss German is technically a spoken language, and only turns up in written form in informal mediums of communication such as email and internet writings.

I find the language in stark contrast to the image and understanding most people would have of Switzerland and its citizens. Namely that of being orderly, reserved, clean ( ) and staid.

It’s a language that implies movement. Simply put, its sounds are very up and down. Descriptively put, some parts of their words create sounds like that of a smallish round stone plopping into the river; of sand shaken within a container to slosh against and fall back from its walls. Of an object pushing into and then bounding off of a material that’s slightly elastic but still innately taut; and of a spring being twisted closer and closer around into itself. Read the rest of this entry »