Miss Sydney

For a long time, Sydney was my enemy instead of just a city. She was coy and sly and she seduced my lifelong friend away. She used a number of guises. Sometimes she was coquettish and pretty with her idyllic harbours and quiet seaside walking paths. At other times, she was all sophistication and charm, all sleek restaurants and elegant wine bars. Sydney could change costumes more often than a showgirl. At her heart, the wide and expansive Martin Plaza seethed with life, opulent but accessible at the same time. Flower stalls sat well behaved in front of excessively expensive stores. The Pitt Street Mall was crowded with well dressed shoppers striding towards some appointment or other – lunch, a deal, probably both.

The Rocks was different again, crammed with historical plaques and buildings and indications that Sydney had a shady and dubious past. I begrudgingly acknowledged that she had managed to pick up her skirts and carry on regardless. Then again, Sydney didn’t even try to hide her dirty laundry. She revelled in it. She never asked you to forgive her or apologised for her own existence. She stood with two great feet planted on either side of the harbour and her hands on her hips saying, ‘Come on. I dare you’.

For one long afternoon I walked kilometers of her streets. From the centre of the city, starting in Hyde Park, all the way down Oxford Street, through Darlinghurst and Paddington. I bumped into countless beautiful men, preened and glamorous at 10am, charismatic homeless, the stiff suited, glaring tourists and careful shoppers. Every path seemed littered with people. It was muggy, the ground still damp and slightly slimy. Someone had left a small posy of purple flowers enigmatically on a concrete wall and I wondered why and how.

There was a grittiness to Sydney’s streets, an arrogant, crisp sound that said she was experienced – not old and comfortable, experienced. But perhaps she was no longer leering at me, not so sinister or manipulative. She started, instead, to look familiar, a little flawed and a little more vulnerable. Perfection is never endearing, but at the same time you have to be willing to see the faults.

So Sydney and I stopped circling each other warily and she showed me how beautiful she could be. Crossing the Harbour Bridge, we were driving home after another evening out with the hussy Sydney – the one that was game for anything.  It was cool. The air hummed the way cold air does – a sort of hissing. Sydney seemed to be whispering in my ear. I strained my neck around to look out the back window of the car, to look at the underside of the bridge. It was like a giant spider squatting protectively over the water. I felt like I was inside something secret, going through a passage or tunnel. Lights winked and sang their silent song. Other cars whistled past and eventually we had crossed the bridge and were back to ordinary.

Except on this night, the road seemed different to me. Traffic was thin and suddenly the wide expanse of tarmac was more like a runway and indeed I felt as if I could take off anywhere. There was an eerie glow ahead. The industrious North Shore was cushioned with fog and a fine mist of rain but luminous neon signs lit the way. Sydney seemed to have softened. She seemed ambiguous and a little insecure. That appealed to me. It didn’t play games with me. Instead it showed me its insides: ‘see what makes me tick’, she said.

I forgave her.

Adelaide on a Tuesday morning at 10am

So, as part of my Arts degree, I took a summer writing course called Writing the City. It gave me the chance to be a tourist in my own town, Adelaide. A whole luxurious week off full-time work, wandering around town, writing, reading and writing some more. Of course it included obligatory lattes, self-indulgent monologues about capturing a stranger’s character, and some definite surprises.

Tuesday morning we were sent forth with a decree to find something new. Look, really look, for something we’d never seen before. Well, this is a city I know well. A city I’ve spent time in almost every day of my working adult life. And yet I was astonished at what I found.

What did I find then?

It was 10am when a classmate, Brad, and I sauntered into the Crown and Anchor for a midmorning break from intense observation. One of Adelaide’s oldest pubs, the Crown and Anchor appeared a little bit grimy, a little bit dusty and a little bit dirty without necessarily being so. The bar top wasn’t sticky but it looked as though it should be. There were all sorts of old signs for ‘Shell’, ‘Flummins for Flus’ and an old ‘Union Street’ sign. There was an unmistakable smack of stale beer and cleaning products that pervades most hospitality establishments.

Just inside the narrow door, a loud and brash voice shouted ‘Come in!’. It was Jack and Brian. Who were Jack and Brian?

Brian had quite a sweet face, all things considered. Lined but gentle with a crinkly eye smile permanently pasted on his face. He laughed loud and long, trailing off in a series of sighs and nonsensical mumblings. He was small and wiry with skinny but fierce looking arms. His black and gray hair hung down his neck in limp welts. His goatee was the same - wiry, clumpy and uncomfortable looking.

Brian said, ‘Hey. Have a tequila with us. We’re celebrating’.

No thanks’- me.

‘Sure, why not’ - Brad.

It’s not that I was against drinking so early in the morning, it’s just that they wanted me to drink a tequila shot – the equivalent, in my humble alcoholic opinion, of pouring lighter fluid down my throat then following it up with a bit more self harm by sucking a lemon wedge.

The bar tender lined up the shots. We drank. I almost passed out. Recovered. And asked the obvious question: ‘What are we celebrating?’.

Brian’s grin was broad and toothy. He didn’t seem as drunk as he must have been. He sat fairly steadily on his stool, not even leaning on the bar.

He was celebrating his release from jail and somehow his small tale of armed robbery gone wrong was endearing. The policeman scared him, came up behind him suddenly, in the middle of the robbery and that’s the only reason he shot and wounded him. Jack hung his head, eyes closed for a minute with a big sorry sigh, ‘Lucky I didn’t kill him eh?’. I believed him.

Their camaraderie was charming. They laughed at private jokes, clutching each other in hysterics and then paused moodily to reflect on days gone by. ‘How long have you been friends?’ I asked. ‘We met last night’ they answered in chorus. ‘Jack saved my life’, said Brian. But he never explained how. Evidently the previous evening had been a dramatic and incident packed one.

Brian said he’d had a croissant for breakfast – with a scotch and coke. He kept laughing happily and slapping Jack on the back. Jack kept shaking his head, perhaps shaking out the last of the dark prison shadows, perhaps in disbelief of his freedom. Perhaps it was the cloudy tequila haze.

I said goodbye to Jack and wished him well. He smiled, shook my hand and thanked me. ‘Thank you’ he said, for no reason at all.

It makes you sick

It’s no fun at all falling sick when you’re on holidays. But it can by funny. Especially when you’re home again, recovered. I’ve so far avoided hospitals and anything really scary like surgery in a third world country. I’ve only been sick enough to be thoroughly annoyed. The sort of sickness that would definitely warrant a day off from work whilst at home, but on holidays only merits an early night, i.e. going to bed at 2am instead of 4am.

This vague dismissal of sickness whilst holidaying is an interesting phenomenon, possibly known also as denial. I have a morose tendency to get laryngitis but steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it. First comes the fever and lethargy (continue dancing and drinking but with caution), then comes the loss of voice, occasionally accompanied by a bone racking cough (discontinue talking but mime raucous laughter). At home, recovering would involve long hours in bed, plenty of non-alcoholic fluids and perhaps, in the latter stages, a good book. In Montreal I decided instead, despite a temperature and slight delirium, I really needed to visit the art gallery. I’m fond of European Art and they had a lovely little collection.

Surprisingly, I also decided that the best way to get to the Gallery was to walk. Ten minutes after setting out from my hotel, I had to stop in a cafe because I was afraid I might faint in the street. I wondered vaguely whether I had any ID on me, and who they might call to claim me. When I eventually reached the gallery, muttering under my breath in a hallucinatory kind of way, I staggered through each exhibit raising my eyes with effort, pathetically. I smiled wanly at beautiful paintings and oohed and aahhed appropriately, albeit croakily. But I’ll be damned if I can remember a darn thing. No idea. I don’t even remember how I got back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, denial left unchecked can lead to further sickness. I was all set to take a day tour out of Brisbane which included a 4km walk through Springbrook National Park. The night before I had felt slightly feverish and restless. I woke up with a suspiciously sore throat and a raspy voice. Nothing wrong here! No hint of laryngitis here! Travelling up through the lush forest I was smiling and breathing in those lovely healthy smells that remind you that you’re alive and well. But while having lunch at small cafe, just before our hike, it started to rain. Rain is an understatement. There were sheets of water pelting down and obliterating all clear vision. Birds stopped flying.

I turned to the guide sitting beside me and said, ‘It’s raining, so....?’.

 ‘.... we put on a raincoat’, he replied, smiling. Our guide used to be in the military.  

I muttered something about pneumonia but he pointed out it was a rain forest – we were probably going to get a bit damp anyway, but the canopy was pretty thick.  I trudged that 4km with fluctuating elation and foreboding. The pitter patter of rain on my raincoat hood was merciless but the lush brooks, the trilling bird call and the idyllic waterfall lulled me into thinking no harm could come of this.  

Sure.

As soon as I got back to the hotel I noticed that my fever had skyrocketed and all my bones ached. It hurt to swallow and my head was pounding. The serious onset of laryngitis was surely only hours away. What was required was a soak in a hot bath, some tea and a nice long sleep. As opposed to dinner out, a movie and then drinks in the casino bar.

Guess which option I chose.

Homesick (A train ride from Rome to Formia and back again)

I was on a train from Rome, heading towards my mother’s home town by the sea – Formia. This wasn’t my first visit. Ten years earlier I was here with my mum and dad. This time I was on my own and it had been three months since I’d seen them.

I was infinitely sad. Without any real reason I wanted to cry quietly for most of the two hour journey. Maybe I was just homesick, I thought at the time, perplexed.

I knew I’d glimpse the Mediterranean in the Gulf of Gaeta when I got closer to Formia. As I looked out the window waiting for it, I thought about how little I knew of my mother’s youth here. Bits and pieces of information gleaned from snippets of conversation, some of them only overhead by chance. It was so little. All that I knew about my mother’s life in Formia I could list in bullet point. Sketchy ideas that didn’t even make sense sometimes – she stayed in a convent during part of World War Two (where?); Mussolini made a speech on the town hall balcony (why?); American tanks rolled down Via Appia which cuts through the middle of Formia, on their way to Rome; her father died in a road accident when she was a child; her single mother was so poor that they had to keep moving every time rent was overdue. Her family later ran a bar and this at least I can confirm is true – I’ve seen the black and white photos of her older brothers in white jackets, circa 1950-something, serving aperitifs on tiny silver trays. I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother working there too, with a cynical smile and her arms folded. They didn’t get along – so many misunderstandings between them, cleared up decades too late.  

The train kept shuffling along. I tried in vain to remember the station names and their order, to judge how far we still were from Formia. Then I thought of my first trip with my parents a decade ago and how much my mother loved just walking along the beach. It had been years since she’d been in the water so one day she just kept wandering out further and further, past her ankles, past her knees and then her thighs so that she ended up waist deep – fully clothed in her sundress and clutching her handbag. Someone from the jetty called out jokingly ‘Hey lady, what have you got in that handbag that you couldn’t leave it behind!’. She just laughed and wandered back to shore, utterly content.

That summer we ate gelati every night at the local lido. Her sister-in-law made tomato salad that we ate with crunchy bread and milky buffalo mozzarella. We promenaded down the esplanade late at night and went for long drives along the coast. Every afternoon the town fell quiet for the siesta that everyone denied still existed. I remember my mother telling me, on one of our beach walks, how glad she was to have me there with her – to show, to tell and to know.

Close to Formia and there it was, the Mediterranean as you would surely know it – sapphire blue, shimmering cool in the contrasting heat. Deep breath and smile. I was met by my cousin at the station and she drove me back to my aunt’s for the very same tomato salad and buffalo mozzarella as a decade ago. I started to feel content.

Three days later I was back at the station. My sister had called to say my mother had an extremely aggressive form of leukaemia and I should hurry back home to Australia. My cousin hugged me and told me to be strong. She didn’t say how? This time I did cry for the whole journey. A middle aged man wrung his hands and begged me to stop crying – he was anguished by my grief. But when I told him my mother was dying – the first time I’d said those words aloud – he nodded sadly and left me alone.

Waving goodbye at the platform felt like I was already saying goodbye to my mother. I was leaving, but she was leaving too. I found it bizarre and ironic to be so close to and so far from her. So close to the heart of her existence but unable to hold her hand and tell her it would be ok. All the same memories I’d had on the earlier journey had a strange intensity about them this time. So many things to ask before she left. And I was alarmed that I knew. This sadness already felt familiar. I already knew on the train journey there that something was terribly wrong and that I should be catching a plane instead. A thread still held me close to home.

The Mediterranean held it’s tongue. But I remember the bright blue flashes between trees, hills, buildings as we turned inland, saying goodbye to Formia.

Which way to the toilet please?

Toilet humour....and so soon. I’ve hardly blogged a year and already I’m going to talk about toilets. This is because, surprisingly, many of my travels have been punctuated with amusing ablution stories. But I’m also prepared to argue that there’s a unique cultural element to the body waste management systems of each nation that’s just as worth noting as, say, eating customs (bad choice of comparisons?).

Travellers can be sooky babies when it comes to the simplest cultural differences. It’s surprising how confronting a squat toilet is to a Westerner who just wants to perform their daily task in peace and quiet. Equally as confronting, I would say, to any Asian who wanted to visit the toilets at my workplace in Australia – there are little pictograms on the inside of every cubicle in the requisite green and red circles, indicating how to and how not to use the toilet. Apparently, it’s an occupational health and safety concern if you try to squat over a regular toilet.... so very Western.

Most of my confronting or culturally baffling bathroom episodes have occurred in Italy.

I travelled to my mother’s town with my parents one year to stay with family I’d never met. It had been a long and tiresome journey – I was emotionally, physically, mentally distraught. Relatives had greeted us at the airport and though it was wonderful, these people were complete strangers to me just then. We drove for more than two hours and finally arrived at my aunt’s house. Great. Bathroom. Needed some repair work. Trouble is, when I tried to leave the bathroom, I couldn’t open the door. It had an old fashioned key to lock it. I turned it once each way and tried the handle. Nope. I turned the key again and discovered it just kept turning. In my delicate, semi-hysterical state I started to panic. The window was too small to crawl out of and was, besides, two stories up. I knocked on the door and shouted to my aunt. ‘What are you doing in there?’, she asked politely. ‘I can’t open the door’. Silence. ‘You just turn the key sweetie’. ‘Yep, I’ve tried that’. Silence. Then I heard my mother say, ‘She’s very jetlagged and tired. Otherwise,  she’s quite an intelligent girl....’. I turned the key furiously and suddenly I was free and the door swung open. Dubious faces smiled kindly at me.

I was told that, for some reason, this little bathroom in a tiny apartment in a small town had a lock that had three degrees of strength, depending on how many times you turned the key. Consequently, to unlock it you potentially needed to turn the key three times. I could not fathom the meaning of this. Was it one key turn if you were just brushing your teeth but three key turns if you planned to gad about naked for a while and really needed some privacy?

On another trip, my cousin and I wandered into a very upmarket shopping gallery and decided this was as good a place as any to use the public facilities. We wandered down a side corridor and found a line-up of four or five people (not, I might add, an unusual occurrence anywhere in the world it seems). We waited patiently but the women just ahead of us looked distressed. She turned to the cleaner and said, ‘Please, can’t I just use the disabled toilet – I’m desperate’. I use the word ‘cleaner’ but this woman had the bearing and authority of a prison warden. This was her toilet block, her domain and she was clearly very proud of its immaculate appearance and fresh aroma. The cleaner looked the other woman up and down and ushered her in without a word. A few minutes later, the clearly grateful and relieved woman came out and politely thanked the cleaner, who nodded in reply.

Then the cleaner started to frown. She sniffed sharply and narrowed her eyes. She opened the door to the disabled cubicle again and poked her head in. ‘Oh my God!’ she shouted alarmed and dismayed. She turned back to the woman who was now fixing her hair in the mirror. The cleaner rounded on her accusingly. ‘What creature did you give birth to in there? That is utterly disgusting. I just cleaned that toilet and you had to go in and do that! That’s disgusting!’. On and on she went. The cleaner was clearly furious and outraged. Admirably, in what I myself would have deemed a mortifying moment, the other woman kept her composure. I can’t remember the exact words she replied with but I remember they were haughty and tossed over her shoulder as she walked out; something along the lines of ‘It’s a toilet. So clean it.’.

Definitely something I could only have experienced in exactly that way in Italy.

If you reflect a moment, I’m sure you’ll remember some interesting bathroom episode on your travels. Like me, have you ever had to shove tissues up your nose just to be able to walk into a public toilet without gagging? Did an aunt wander into the bathroom while you were brushing your teeth and plonk herself down on the toilet with a satisfied sigh? And most bizarrely, have you ever walked into a toilet block and found yourself face-to-face with a life-sized Madonna smiling benignly at you?

Travelling alone


Never travelled on your own? I’m a big fan of solo travel. You find yourself tapping into resources and strengths you didn’t even know you had. It’s challenging, scary and, let’s face it, sometimes deliciously dangerous. I always meet an incredible array of people – probably because my insatiable need for people and chat doesn’t necessarily diminish when I’m on my own, I just need to work harder to get my fix. There are some negatives though – a small problem can turn into a catastrophe when you don’t have someone to share it with, and eating dinner by yourself night after night could make even a reclusive mute feel lonely.

So what are the pros and cons?

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Twin sharing with strangers

CONS

Even people loving folks like me have reservations about sharing hotel rooms with strangers. On a European tour I had to share a room with a girl who sheepishly tried to warn me that she had a slight foot odour problem. ‘Slight odour’ couldn’t begin to describe the rancid, fetid smell emanating from her when she removed her sneakers. It’s hard to maintain a polite facade when you’re dry retching.

PROS

While I didn’t share an actual room, I discovered a fellow Formula 1 fan in a hotel in Sao Paolo and we became firm friends immediately.  Jackie and I met in the hotel lobby for a cocktail and ordered Campari and lemonades. The non-English speaking bartender consulted his manager who confirmed with us that it was indeed lemonade we wanted. Then we watched as he cracked open a cocktail shaker, poured in some spring water, squeezed in half a dozen limes, a big scoop of sugar and ice and suavely mixed our ‘lemonade’. It was such a large scale production for a simple drink that we laughed until tears rolled down our faces. The bartender was confused and a little annoyed. We discovered later that we should have ordered Campari and Sprite!

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Sharing unique experiences

CONS

A shared experience -
drinking out of urinals at Modern Toilet in Hong Kong

When I say experiences, I don’t necessarily mean floating down the Grand Canal on a gondola in Venice. I mean those experiences that are so strange or silly that you and a travelling companion would cry with laughter about it, bringing it up several times over the next few days, forever remaining an ‘in joke’ between you and retold countless times at Sunday pub sessions for the rest of your life.

Sometimes, when you’re travelling on your own, these sorts of experiences don’t really reach their full potential. My sister kindly bought me some silky bright purple satin pyjamas as a going away present. Which was great, thank you. But at 3am, in a hostel in Bath the fire alarm went off. Diligently, I leapt out of bed, grabbed my laptop and handbag and ran down the fire escape. In the foyer I discovered only a small handful of people had bothered to get out of bed. They were fully dressed. And wearing shoes. They looked at my disco pyjamas, the pants way too long and gathered around my ankles, and raised their eyebrows.

This story still makes me laugh now as it did then and I do tell it occasionally. But it’s not the quite the same.... right?

PROS

There are some things you just wouldn’t experience at all if you were travelling with someone. In a small garden piazza in Granada at twilight I was writing in my journal, very happily people watching when an old couple shuffled along. The wife deposited her husband among some other senior citizens and they immediately started a lively debate. She instead came over to sit next to me on my bench. She tried to strike up a conversation but she couldn’t speak English or Italian and I couldn’t speak Spanish. Shame. Or so I thought. This didn’t deter her at all and we chatted comfortably for half an hour. I couldn’t tell you what that conversation was about but she offered me her trail mix and I offered her some of my water and we smiled and nodded happily.

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Loneliness

CONS

There’s no doubt that at some point, even if for only half a day or half an hour, you’ll succumb to this melancholy feeling. I was at a particularly low point while staying at a Bed and Breakfast in the Lake District. Quite frankly, I’d had enough of the whole travelling lark. I’d barely spoken to anyone in couple of days. I’d eaten a sad and dreadful dinner the night before. I slunk down to breakfast and sat at a table set for two. It was an awkward breakfast room with just a few people chatting carefully so as not to disturb the quiet.

Imagine my consternation then, when the waitress came over and looked at the spare seat. She poured me a cup of tea and then said, ‘Will your friend be down shortly?’. What? No, no friends. She was determined to pour a second cup of tea. ‘Where’s your friend?’. ‘No’ I simply said, squirming. Clearly she didn’t think I spoke English, so she raised her voice and asked ‘DO YOU HAVE ANY FRIENDS’. To which, of course, I could only logically answer, ‘NO’. As if the embarrassment could get any worse she then said, ‘Oh, you have to sit at the table with the corresponding room number – that’s your table there’. She pointed to a little corner table for one, the setting and chair facing the wall. She made me get up, slink across the dining room in the now resounding silence and sit at my allotted table, carrying my own cup of tea.

I wasn’t feeling strong, I went meekly. It still shames me.

PROS

On the plus side of loneliness, being stuck with only yourself for company means you can do whatever you like, whenever you like, however you like it. No matter how wonderful and/or compatible a travelling companion might be, there’s bound to be something you want to do that they don’t (and vice versa, of course). This includes sitting in a quiet pub in total silence, reading a book, sipping a gin and tonic. I brought along my flamenco shoes one long holiday and ended up practicing on a cruise ship theatre stage at midnight (the theatre was empty!).

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The level of freedom and self indulgence you experience on any holiday, even a volunteering holiday, is usually unlike anything at home where there are always dear ones to think about, care for and love. A solo holiday is all about me, me, me at my narcissistic best! :-) 

Disappointments

Ok I’m going to risk sounding like an arrogant prat. I’m going to confess that not every place I’ve been fortunate enough to visit has been amazing, wonderful and/or incredible. I blame it entirely on the 21st century. Six hundred years ago travellers were still conquerors, discovering lands for the first time and being amazed by what they saw, simply because it was novel and therefore exotic. (When I say ‘the first time’ yes, I fully acknowledge my white Western colonial bastard perspective.) Nowadays, before you even step foot on a place, you can Google a place, read about it in a magazine or book, watch YouTube videos and, if you’re really diligent, talk to the people of just about any nation on this planet. Possibly even other planets! There’s little ‘new’ left. I’m pretty sure I can run an internet search on a backwater African village, population 42 and ‘discover’ the opening times of their local market.

The point is, these days we run the risk of not only ‘knowing’ our destination before we get there, but consequently being totally underwhelmed by it. I was choking with indignation when, gazing out over the Colosseum, I overheard one person say to another ‘Mmm... it’s not as big as I thought it would be. A bit disappointing’. I was astonished and even a little bit upset. But the truth is, I arrived at the Great Wall of China and thought ‘It is amazing, no doubt, but really..... it’s just a wall. The surrounding scenery is far more spectacular’. Before you choke too, consider that it was minus 8⁰C, I was woefully underdressed, I’d just ridden in a tiny tiny glass gondola that was so frightening it made me cry, there were hundreds of people, I slipped over on the ice and I’d already seen this image a thousand times. It was only later when I found out something about its history – the incredible story behind its creation, it’s woeful underutilisation and its fascinating construction – that I actually appreciated what I’d seen.

Appreciating travel icons actually takes a bit of work and, ridiculous  I know, a little of our own imagination. It’s still about connection, and for me it always will be.

I’ll leave the last word on travel icon saturation to my mother. An Italian senior citizen, sceptical and impatient at the best of times, she was excited about seeing Uluru. She had already heard so much about it. Her tour bus pulled into the carpark with hundreds of other vehicles. She noted people were having silver service dinners, sipping champagne, others were chattering excitedly about the imminent sunset. Everyone was lining up their cameras and videos for that special moment when the sun dips over the horizon. She was all hyped up for it. Well, the moment arrived and although she could hear the ‘ooohs’ and ‘aahhhs’ around her she couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then suddenly everyone was getting back into their cars and driving away. ‘That was it’, she said. ‘We drove all this way to see.... what?’. She was truly perplexed. I’m not sure what she was expecting, but someone explained to her that the novelty was seeing the beautiful colours of the rock shimmer and deepen in the changing light.

In true form she snorted in disgust and muttered the Italian equivalent of ‘Well, f..k me’ as she clambered back on the bus. ‘That was a f...g waste of time’ she said.

It made us laugh for years. :-)