I’ve been told to avoid the weekend, but why? I like the crowds that stream downhill from the train station, and the partygoers perched like seagulls on rocks along the lakeshore, gabbing and jostling for space. In the Jazz Cafe, the evening audience sways, dense and sweaty. The elbow-to-elbow vibe is electric, but I still feel I’m the only one in the room as Anna Calvi moans into the microphone about the devil and desire. Her lips are a red slash, moody as her riffs.
The British singer and guitarist – so good she’s been compared to Jimi Hendrix – is a brooding presence on the stage, even across an undulation of heads. She sings with blues seduction and Goth edginess, plus a hint of flamenco passion in the way she strums her guitar and moans in the back of her throat. Maybe it’s just the humid summer night, but I’m hot under the collar.
Calvi has described her music as a mix of danger and exhilaration. Frankly, those aren’t adjectives that normally get an outing in the prim Swiss town of Montreux. Eleven months of the year, you could skip through it on a day trip with ‘pleasant’ your most intense description. The dukes of Savoy built a whopping castle just along Lake Geneva foreshore that’s now a prime tourist attraction, which brings most people here. Montreux got its start as a tourist spot in the nineteenth century, when it was favoured by the British and Russian nobility for their winter retreats. (A balmy climate allows palm trees and figs to flourish, bringing a touch of the Mediterranean to Switzerland.) Now wealthy tax-evaders skulk in big villas with alpine views as Chinese tour groups traipse past beneath their windows.
In short, Montreux is probably not a place you’d generally need to linger unless you have a blue rinse and an offshore account. The month of July is a different matter, however. July brings the three-week Montreux Jazz Festival to town, and you should stay as long as you can. Then, music oozes from this little lakeshore town’s every pore. It becomes sultry and unpredictable. You might catch an anti-establishment jazz singer croaking about poverty in South Africa. Or Herbie Hancock – improbably but rather splendidly – performing a duet with Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang. Swedish folk-rock drifting from a local late-night bar might make you stop in your slightly inebriated tracks and think: this place is wonderful.
When I was last at the Jazz Festival in 2011, Carlos Santana, Sting and Paul Simon were among the headline acts. A Sunday tribute jam featured BB King, and it was truly amazing to watch some of the world’s top guitarists on stage, strumming to each other in a two-hour jam session. BB King was 86 and didn’t make much music, but you could tell the other musicians were energised just by the legend’s presence.
That’s what I like about the Montreux Jazz Festival: the chance to see the world’s best, as well as obscure acts that just catch your ear. The event has been around since 1967 and, from the beginning, attracted big jazz names such as Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Jarrett and Nina Simone. But by the 1970s, it was already featuring soul, blues and rock artists, and causing a stir with the appearance of the likes of Prince, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. In 1970, Frank Zappa was performing at the Montreux Casino when a fan fired a flare gun and burned the place down, an event recorded in the Deep Purple song, ‘Smoke on the Water’. By the 1980s, the program had become very international – Brazilian music in particular has always been favoured – and mainstream pop and rock artists were increasingly invited. Despite its name, the Montreux Jazz Festival isn’t really a jazz festival anymore. You can expect anyone from Alicia Keys to the Black Eyed Peas or Phil Collins to play.
The big stars attract big-ticket prices and play in the two main venues, the Stravinsky Auditorium and Miles Davis Hall. But what’s great about the Montreux Jazz Festival is that the music just seems to trickle down everywhere, and lots of it is free. You can attend the best voice, guitar and piano competitions for nix and hope to catch the next star on the cusp of being discovered. Jam sessions are a late-night option at the Montreux Jazz Club, while DJs keep going until dawn at the Montreux Jazz Cafe and Studio 41. You can attend free music workshops too, and learn how to make those guitar strings twang from some of the masters of the trade.
I find music in the most unexpected places: in a train carriage, on one of the lake steamers that I catch for a scenic ride to Chillon Castle, in local restaurants and cafes where a sort of fringe festival has ivories tinkling. In the evenings at Vernex Park, I join picnickers on the grass under giant trees and drink wine to the sounds of Russian jazz one night, samba the next, as the moon shimmers over the lake.
What I like too is that the Montreux of the other 11 months never really goes away, underneath it all. It’s a grand old resort town with yellow-shuttered hotels and wrinkled people flopping in pocket-sized swimming pools. Jaunty marigolds are planted in neat rows along the waterfront, tablecloths in cafes are flawlessly ironed. The air smells of lake water, starch and Perrier with a twist of lemon. Out on the blue waters of Lake Geneva, yachts are tied up in parallel lines and festooned with brightly coloured squares of plastic to keep seagulls from crapping on the decks. The snow-dusted fangs of mountains loom on the horizon. It seems like the last place on Earth where you’d find one of the world’s best music festivals.
The Swiss staidness of Montreux is redeemed in unexpected ways, not least by a flamboyant statue of Freddie Mercury, slap-bang on the waterfront in his trademark strutting pose. Queen recorded several albums here at Mountain Studios prior to Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991. Montreux inspired one of the last songs Queen recorded, ‘A Winter’s Tale’ from the album Made in Heaven. “Seagulls are flying over / Swans are floating by” go the lyrics: Mercury too was apparently seduced by the chocolate-box kitsch of this absurdly pretty place.
The swans are a little jittery during the Jazz Festival. Visitors are out in rowing boats and sometimes they jump overboard from sheer giddiness, producing piercing screams from those who haven’t, until that moment, realised this water comes from alpine snow-melt, frigid even in summer. Among the promenade’s flowerbeds, Brazilians in pink feathers shimmy as the smell of satay sticks wafts from a food stand. Diana Krall passes by in a floppy sunhat. Plastic Heineken cups are scattered like confetti on the grass, though not for long. The Swiss soon have them swept away, and the lakeshore pristine for the start of another day. The music might be wantonly seductive, but there are civic standards to maintain.
I’m in a train station waiting room at 1am on a Saturday morning. The station is in Omsk, Siberia. Siberia is a long way from home. And I’m nervous because they just started kicking people out who don’t have a ticket. I’m not waiting for a train, I’m waiting for the safety of daylight to look for a hotel. Language barriers and the sheer lack of an Omsk tourist industry have left me homeless after a late-night arrival.
A gruff-looking inspector asks for my ticket and I hand him my used papers. He looks inquiringly and I blab something about waiting for the next train to Moscow. He’s unconvinced, mainly because the only word he understands is “Moscow”. Old Russians hate it when you don’t speak their language. No patience, no interest. He’s not sure if my claim is legit, so he’s about to order me out. The waiting room is for passengers only.
The fella next to me interjects. He’s been watching me and says something to the inspector that makes him hesitate. The inspector then shifts his attention to my seat-mate’s ticket. He walks away. I sigh. A reprieve.
“Hello man,” says the guy next to me. I size him up. He doesn’t look like a crook and he just helped me out. But I’m alone. In the middle of Siberia. In the middle of the night and my hackles are up. I smile back, nonetheless, and put on my broadest Aussie accent.
“G’day Mate! Gee, this isn’t exactly the Qantas Club, is it?!” Blank stare, toothy grin. Somewhere crickets are chirping. Clearly I’ve overplayed the accent a bit. “Sorry, you speak too queeekly,” the man says. “You are American?”
“Nah mate, I’m Australian.” We exchange names. Ivan’s smile becomes electric. “Osster-alian! I never met someone from here.”
“Well, I’m honoured to be the first,” I respond. Ivan then tells me that I’m only the second native English speaker he has ever met. The first was an American just four hours ago. I’m stunned.
It turns out old Ivan and his mates are movie buffs. They meet up weekly to watch Hollywood movies, practising their English with one-liners and clichéd phrases. They don’t have tutors. They just figure it out. They discover the world through cinema. Now Ivan is testing his linguistic skills – first with a Yank, then with an Aussie. And man, he passes with flying colours!
We have a brilliant discussion and I discover that Ivan knows more about the world, and Australia, than I’d ever expected. It’s remarkable considering Ivan hasn’t been outside Siberia. He hasn’t even made it to Moscow. When he learns that I’m running marathons around the world, he’s shocked, but gracious. I’d have been jealous.
Then, as Ivan picks up his kit to leave, giving me a warm handshake, I realise I’m jealous. Ivan speaks English and Russian. He knows plenty about my world, because he has made the effort to discover the nuances of my culture in my own language. I’ve had this growing feeling that everyone I meet is a whole lot smarter than me and it’s largely because they can understand me. But I’m not learning how to understand them. What’s that adage? You’re not learning anything if you’re doing all the talking.
I lie on my bench, gripping the handle of my pack, and consider my predicament. I’m spending more than $100,000 to see as many countries as possible in a year. I’m on an adventure of discovery. I’m here to get cultured, but I can’t read anything and most people can’t converse with me.
It begs a question. What if Hollywood wasn’t the centre of the film world and, arguably, modern pop culture? Imagine if the Russians spent as much as the Americans on cinematic rubbish with whizzbang effects. Instead of a Cold War with outrageously expensive nukes, they could have had a glitzy film blitz – winning the world’s hearts and minds through entertainment! I’d be fluent in Slavic, having grown up with Tsar Wars and Saving Comrade Rybakov.
I’m from the lucky country, but still I feel jibbed. Could it be a lack of decent movie choices that makes me ignorant? Or am I just a lazy bugger who should have done his homework by watching The Barber Of Siberia instead of Friday night football?
I wonder if I can make amends. If I watch a Russian movie every day I’m here, with subtitles of course, perhaps I’ll get the hang of it? I vow to get online and find Russia’s top 10 action movies; I’ll replay the coolest lines so that I can use them in conversation. Imagine, the locals would welcome me as a connoisseur of Russian cinema. I’d make friends and know how to book a hotel room.
And I wouldn’t be lying on a godforsaken bench, in the middle of Siberia, waiting for daylight.
The small Cessna Grand Caravan lurches forward as we gather speed. To my left, snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro looms large over Amboseli National Park. I recline in my wide, luxury leather chair just a touch, so I can still gaze out at a large group of 15 elephants bathing in one of two massive water springs funnelled from Kilimanjaro’s melting ice cap. Our pilot, Murtaza, has plugged an iPhone into the intercom system and as our wheels leave the ground the first chords of Toto’s ‘Africa’ flow into our headsets. Our heads bob in unison and, as the chorus breaks and lead singer David Paich sings of blessing “the rains down in Africa”, I cannot wipe the smile from my face.
We’ve spent the previous two days based at the luxurious Satao Elerai Lodge, marvelling at the elephants of Amboseli living alongside hippos and hyenas. We even caught a pride of lions stalking a wounded wildebeest. It has been indulgent to say the least, including sundowners that lasted well after the sun went down. It was our first stop on a two-day, two game park Scenic Air Safari, an ideal option for those short on time yet keen to experience the best of Kenya’s varied game reserves.
Our Caravan follows the Tanzanian border north towards the Masai Mara, one of the more popular wildlife reserves, famed for its big cats, including lions, cheetahs and the elusive leopard. Murtaza interrupts a Mick Jagger classic to tell us we’ll fly low over the Mara River and to keep an eye out for hippos. A lone elephant makes tracks in the long Masai grass as we fly overhead. The shiny black backs of a pod of hippos glisten as Murtaza follows the river deeper into the Masai. It is a surreal sight and a terrific perspective.
We land at Mara Serena airport and are greeted by our driver, who offers refreshing cold towels before whisking us away to Karen Blixen Camp, a perfect glamping set-up perched on the banks of the Mara. Here, we spend another two days on a driving safari, coming within a couple of metres of a pride of lions and stumbling across a cheetah catching the last rays of the setting African sun. It is almost too perfect. That evening I sip a cold Tusker, watching the hippos disappear and reappear in the running river. Like the guy in the song says: “It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.”
As far as ideas go, this doesn’t seem like one of my best. The front 10 centimetres of my snowboard juts out over the edge of a 20-metre vertical drop. The backlit spike of Mt Iwate hovers ahead like an apparition. A sea of snow peaks and troughs below me, little powdery tornados forming on its surface. The world shrinks. I start making slushies in my stomach. All I can hear is my breath and the blood pounding in my ears. I shimmy closer to the edge, point my board down and count slowly to three.
Shimokura at Hachimantai is one of 17 ski areas dispersed around Iwate-san, the highest peak (2038 metres) in the Tohoku region of northern Honshu, Japan. Here, powder is god, foreigners are unheard of and if you don’t attempt a three-metre wide, double-black diamond run – even as a beginner – then you’re missing out.
I arrived at Appi, the first stop on my itinerary, a complete novice snowboarder (I’ve attempted it once before). My mission, over the next seven days, is to sample several of the best ski areas in the Iwate prefecture and go home a confident boarder.
I exit the chairlift on the first day – one foot strapped to my board – with the grace of a two-tonne elephant. Parking myself on the side of the wide, powdery white, groomed run, I try to make a snowball. But the tiny snowflakes refuse to stick and float away from my gloves like dust. This is what they mean by aspirin snow. It’s the light, dry and just-right stuff that makes even the most diehard snow junkie regress to a giggly 10-year-old.
“An ogre once lived on the mountain,” says Aki, my guide, pointing to the cup-shaped summit of nearby Iwate as I click the other foot into my board. “He kept annoying the local people so they asked him to stop. The ogre promised he would, but the people made him sign a contract by putting his hand on the rock. That’s how Mt Iwate got its name ‘rock hand’.”
I soon discover the most scenic, and thrilling, run down a mountain in Tohoku is achievable for even the most timid boarder. Appi’s yamabato run is a 5.5-kilometre beginner trail that starts at the summit of Mt Maemori and ends 20 minutes later at the backdoor to the hotel. It’s one of just a handful of spots in the region where beginners can actually descend from a mountain top.
Midway down the run, my concentration wavers from piloting my snowboard to looking around in awe. The outline of Iwate looms behind us as we glide over plains and past young forests. I hear the occasional swish-swish of ski pants and some nasally J-pop drifting from speakers as we pass the gondola.
It’s not long before I take my first tumble. After the initial shock of being rotated as if I’m on a spin cycle, I realise it’s more like rolling around in fluff. As soon as I recompose myself, the adrenaline kicks in. I soon find a rhythm and any fear of falling evaporates. My board gains momentum at shocking speed and I arrive at the bottom with a ridiculous grin on my face.
I spend the next couple of days getting some quality boarding time under my belt. I test out the gentle slopes of Shizukuishi, the intermediate snow at Geto Kogen and the squeaky blue-tinged runs at Tazawako, which offer a spectacular panoramic view of Lake Tarawa – at 423 metres, Japan’s deepest lake.
By the end of the fourth night, I’ve pretty much mastered turning, but my lower body feels like it’s in a coma. It’s time to test out the onsen.
The après-ski scene in Tohoku is far from the VB-swilling hoards at Niseko. Here, bars are non-existent, painful karaoke renditions of ‘Like a Virgin’ are mandatory, and steaming, sulphur-infused hot springs to relieve sore muscles are a must.
I find a particularly unusual onsen one evening at my hotel near Amihari. Instead of a hot tub and wet room with all the little soaps and shampoos, I discover a long space with unflattering McDonald’s-like lighting and a two-metre wide trough stretching down the middle. A couple of shower-capped heads poke out from beneath the surface of a big mound of dirt, which looks and smells like something you’d feed to a horse.
A woman in a pair of green gumboots steps towards me. She motions for me to disrobe and step into a coffin-sized hole in the muck. I resist the urge to put up a fight when I see she is waving a large garden shovel. Instead, I settle myself naked into the ground and watch as she covers me in chaff.
I’m told that the Japanese fermented rice bran bath has super-strong healing powers. The bran, which gets heated up to a toasty 55°C, is supposed to aid muscle relaxation, help weight loss and decrease body fat by up to three per cent. Why hasn’t Oprah cottoned on to this yet?
Twenty minutes in and I’m sweating like a stuffed chicken in a roasting tray. I signal I’m done to the woman in wellies by sweating through my eyes and squealing like a helpless animal. I wiggle my toes and fingers, break the surface like I’m Godzilla and go to wash up. My skin is smooth and my muscles feel like jelly, but my body smells like breakfast.
Iridescent blue skies and an unusually clear head greet me the next morning at Amihari. I jump onto a completely empty chairlift with my rosy-cheeked guide, Koami, heading towards the summit of Mt Inukura. Beneath my dangling legs, snow-cloaked firs give way to rows and rows of cedar trees, their powdery branches twisted like arthritic fingers in the chilly air. At times, the chairlift rumbles as it rises higher into the clouds. At other times, Koami breaks long-spells of silence with offers of “Beautiful?”, “Cold?” or “Mint chew?”
Three chairlifts later, I’m at the top of the mountain crunching through waist-deep snow. My arms struggle to hold onto my board with each gravity-defying moon-like leap. The low sun paints everything with a golden light and long blue shadows. A gentle wind sends peppery crystals into the sky. I follow Komai’s tracks like a snow-blind explorer. My mind oscillates between illusions of Santa’s Grotto and dancing elves in silly hats with bells.
After 10 minutes, we reach the beginning of the run. I struggle to strap in with so much snow, especially when my whole body is shaking with anticipation. I signal to Koami that I am ready, shuffle my hips, lean in and fly.
The snow before me gives way and I lose sight of my legs. Speed builds rapidly; fear disintegrates like snowflakes. It’s like riding the world’s creamiest ice-cream. My board sinks, scoops and glides as I rock all my weight to my back foot. We cut through some adventurous – possibly out-of-bounds – terrain that causes me to go faster and imagine I’m being chased by spies in the latest James Bond blockbuster.
“Sorry for snow,” apologises Koami, when I land back on earth 30 minutes later. “Not good season. We normally have many, many more snow.” I take a moment to catch my breath and finish shaking the entire Iwate prefecture from my goggles.
Over the next few days, if I’m not on the slopes then I find it impossible to concentrate. We sail the Geibikei (Geibi Gorge) in a traditional yakatabune (houseboat) and I picture myself getting airborne between the 100-metre cliffs. We go to see a festival of giant snow castles and Kirin bears at Koiwai Farm and I want to upturn a plastic tray and scream down the toboggan run. Instead of admiring the history of the Buddhist temple of Chuson-ji or the samurai houses of Kakunodate, I become transfixed by a pile of grubby snow under a bare cherry blossom. Snowboarding, it seems, has become an obsession.
And that brings me to the final day of my trip and back to the vertical drop at Shimokura. I suck in a deep breath and silently yell, “Three!” My emotions flit from nerves to excitement to an overwhelming sense of dread. The snow before me parts like I’m Moses and it’s the Red Sea. I hear myself yelp and whoop – or maybe it’s a scream – before a white wave swallows me.
After days of hardcore lower-body work and a whole load of thrills (and spills), I’m done. The mission is complete. Collapsing at the bottom of the mountain, legs shaking, I look back up at the black double-diamond run I’ve just survived. Over seven days, I’ve skied six different spots. I’ve boarded through snow so light and dry it disappears in your fingers. I’ve been up mountains, down runs, through forests and, most importantly, I’ve had a ball. After all, I conclude, often it’s the seemingly stupid ideas that actually end up being the best.
“Do you know something?” the man in the toilet said. “It would be the best little country in the world if you could only put a roof over it.” And he was right.
Outside in the snug, yellow-lit front bar of Kane’s Pub a sing-along was in full flow, despite the fact it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Stories were being told, jokes whispered, and great guffaws of laughter were punctuated by sips taken from the black pints that dressed the mahogany.
At the bar a middle-aged woman leaned on the back of a cushioned stool, eyes closed, head back, spilling the words of ‘The Galway Shawl’ from her mouth like one drink too many as a knot of ruddy-faced country men stood in silence waiting for their noble call.
Beyond the bar’s fogged windows the streets of Lanesborough were deserted, as the rain continued to soften the earth and add vigour to the inky blackness of Ireland’s largest waterway, the River Shannon. Even the well-tooled anglers who travel from far and wide to fish the famous ‘hot water stretch’ beside the steaming turrets of the town’s power station had abandoned all hope and stowed their gear.
With the rain falling like a great grey sodden blanket, my colleagues and I had tied up our boat and raised the white flag of surrender for yet another day. Through the dripping windows of the other boats distorted faces peered out into the dampness. Bicycles remained tied firmly on the decks and plans to explore the beauty of the nearby forests and hills put on hold. It was a day to be inside for sure, and that, it appears, is what the entire population of the town had decided to do.
In Kane’s we were welcomed warmly by the girl behind the bar. “Are you off the boats?” she asked, serving our drinks with a considerate smile. We nodded wetly. There was a genuine friendliness in her voice and a willingness to engage in her eyes. “Even the ducks wouldn’t go out in that,” she laughed, breaking the ice.
It had been like this since we first tied off our lines and, like salmon, began our journey upstream four days earlier. In the towns of Portumna, Banagher, Athlone and Shannonbridge the rain and the heartwarming certainty of an engaging and enthusiastic Irish welcome were the two inseparable constants.
But the welcomes doled out along the banks of Ireland’s longest river were not always so friendly. Along its banks, in every town and village, castles, towers, forts and fortifications serve to illustrate the country’s long and troubled history. From Viking invasions, Anglo-Norman attacks and the subsequent British rule, each epoch of the country’s inhabitation is served in monument and stone.
Even the river appears to change around each new bend. Sometimes wide and slow, edged with low rolling fields that emerge directly from the lapping waters like some evolving creature; sometimes narrow and racing, where a tight hand on the helm is needed as you steer a course from marker to marker. The Shannon, like all living things, is engaged in a continuous cycle of change.
Rounding a sweeping bend near Athlone, in a rare moment of bright sunshine and azure skies, the ancient ruins of one of Ireland’s greatest relics, the monastic citadel of Clonmacnoise, appears like the set from some historic drama. Once a home of learning, spirituality and artistic pursuits – where some of Ireland’s most treasured and intricately decorated manuscripts were created – the site now welcomes all comers to explore its legacy of churches, round towers and famously carved high crosses.
Athlone with its imposing castle and long military history is another must for those cruising the river. From the town’s spacious marina the narrow medieval streets, bursting with life and commerce, are a mere stone’s throw. With an abundance of restaurants, theatres, galleries, museums and, of course, pubs – including Sean’s, reported to be the oldest bar in Europe – Athlone is always the boaters’ eagerly awaited favourite.
North of Athlone the river performs another great feat of change. Here it widens and becomes the vastness of Lough Ree (the Lake of Kings in Gaelic), with its myriad of islands, inlets and bays that anglers, sailors, waterskiers, divers and lovers of all things watery call their playground.
The river is a friendly place, where strangers piloting boats wave and salute each other like members of some cabalistic cult. After a long day of cruising, regardless of weather, there is always a welcoming hand waiting to take a thrown line and share in the day’s adventures. The river is a big place, but like a play with a limited cast the same faces appear again and again at each new mooring.
After two or three chance encounters along the voyage, handshakes are offered and names exchanged. After that it becomes inevitable that paths will cross again in some welcoming bar, while the strains of fiddles, banjos and accordions play the soundtrack to Ireland in the background, as another long day on the river becomes another long night on land.
In Carrick-on-Shannon, our final destination, the entire voyage seems
to culminate in the Oarsman Bar. One after another, people we had met along the way – at marinas, lock gates, bars and restaurants – appeared through the bar’s busy doors. In the corner musicians gathered, as they do throughout the country, to share a tune, learn from each other and revel in their shared musical traditions.
With creamy pints flowing like the Shannon’s dark water and the sound of song in the air, friendships are formed and degrees of separation realised. By now I am fully aware boating isn’t all about lines and charts, wind and weather, loughs and lakes. It’s about people and their willingness to come together in friendship, united by time shared on the flowing water. And they won’t let the weather get in the way of that.
All we have left for the morning fire is bark and Turkish newspapers flecked with candle wax and mutton grease. We’re in a six square metre cabin on the east side of the Rikoti Pass, just upslope from Surami, Georgia. Two days ago, we were admiring palm trees on the Black Sea coast, but here it’s cold. Snow fell overnight. Loading up the bikes, I hobble back inside for the last set of bags and the canvas backgammon board still spread on the table.
“How’s the Achilles?” John asks. My eyebrows arch and I shake my head: “Not great.” His sprained ankle is on the mend, but my tendons are getting worse.
Last night, two round women wrapped in tattered shawls and scarves had motioned us into the cabin, bustling about with kindling as they closed down their roadside soup dispensary. This morning, the Likhi Range is hung with cloud, and smoke sits on the ground and weaves into the forest. Just down from the cabin, we pause in the yard of the Kvirackhovlobis Church. I stretch, shiver and grimace. Wind plays on a twisted hornbeam nearby, swinging a green-black copper bell hung on jute.
We stop in Gori for lunch: khachapuri and khinkali, cheese bread and meat dumplings. Stalin was born here. Georgia is one of the few places still proud of the man, and a museum about his life flanks the square. A giant bronze statue of him once stood outside, but in 2010 it was removed in the dead of night by a government looking to Westernise. We stretch awkwardly in the warm cafe, plotting our escape. The pain is getting worse and I know I shouldn’t push on to Tbilisi, so instead we head for the train station.
Two old men play in the shelter of a collapsing bus stop; the crack of wooden pieces on a wooden board and the tinkle of tiny dice compete with the howling wind. We pass them, and wheel our bikes into the Gori train station, dodging puddles in the dim, faded entry hall. Parcels tied with plastic twine line one wall, and a few solitary mounds of fabric indicate pensioners queuing for sport. A disc of plaster lets go, sending a wet comet to the floor and leaving drifting particles in its wake. A short woman in technicolour robes emerges with broom and bucket to clean up the mess, the latest attempt in her comic quest to keep the ceiling off the floor.
We buy tickets to Tbilisi by drawing a picture of a train, clock and bicycle and settle in to wait. There is no lighting or heat, and the cheap concrete seems to soak up any ambient warmth, leaving a damp chill to settle over the waiting passengers. We set to playing with gloved hands, matching the rhythm of the men outside. I win once, and John three times before we notice the two-and-a-half-metre statue of Stalin staring at us from the next room. He has been hiding here where no tourist will find him, while everywhere else in the old empire his likeness has been torn down. We play for six hours, freezing, reading when we get bored then starting up again under his marble gaze.
One of the old ladies strides up to us, pulling our tickets from our hands and shouting. We carry our gear across the tracks to the far platform and wait. A minute later, an hour late, a train appears and begins to slow. We prepare for a fight to get our bikes on board, but it doesn’t stop. The train blasts its horn and sails past the platform, casting on us rows of glassed, curious eyes. In Georgia, we are told, getting on a train is more like hailing a taxi. We trade tickets for a fist full of lari, minus a fee, and exit to the street. The players have packed up and gone home.
“To Tbilisi?” comes a shout from an idling car. At our nod, the driver reaches out and puts a magnetic cone on his roof. His name is Boris, and he’ll do it for 80 lari (about AU$50). He taps the homemade rack on his Lada and smiles a ruin of gold teeth. We pile in and he hands us apples, shining red in startling contrast to the muted tones of the station. We set off, stopping only so we can buy the tank of natural gas needed to make it to the capital.
Hearing of our travel plans, a couple of friends joked that me and my buddy Dave should fly to Tahiti on a package honeymoon. But as anyone who’s been to French Polynesia will know, there’s far more to it to than canoodling couples sipping cocktails under nodding palms, and taking occasional breathers to shop for black pearl earrings. And besides, my ears aren’t pierced.
Tahiti is an anachronism wrapped in a culture clash enveloped in a Polynesian Eden, tens of thousands of kilometres from its infatuated coloniser. It’s said that French Polynesia, a nominally autonomous overseas dependency of France, costs the French government a billion euros a year. It has no natural resources, little obvious strategic advantage, and a growing independence movement, but the French just can’t let it go – it’s just too achingly beautiful. Meanwhile, the locals couldn’t really live without the French: zero income tax for anyone who’s not self-employed; outstanding healthcare, education and infrastructure; and government-mandated minimum prices for crops such as copra that are well above the regional average. All of this manifests in ethnic Tahitians gadding about with baguettes, the ready availability of heart-stopping French pastries, and hulking, tattooed young men playing Sunday afternoon petanque.
In the balmy light of our first morning on Tahiti, from the balcony of our room, we’re greeted by Bora Bora, hazy in the distance. We walk outside to a compressed staircase of folded green mountains, rising high into Tahiti’s deep interior, where there’s a two-day hike to the summit of the highest peak.
We’re in French Polynesia for 10 days, island hopping around the Society Islands group, of which Tahiti is principal, to see what makes the region tick. The first thing I want to do is a circumnavigation by road (117 kilometres in this case). What is commonly known as Tahiti is actually two islands – Tahiti Nui (Big Tahiti) and Tahiti Iti (Little Tahiti) – joined like a lopsided barbell by a narrow strip. Despite the presence of that four-lane highway on Nui (of which many of the locals are immensely proud), at the other end of the two-island complex there’s no road at all. If you want to keep going it’s a precarious predicament of picking your way over rocks, and defending yourself against stray dogs as mad as hellspawn. It’s like driving from the backblocks of Paris to the edge of the earth in about half an hour.
Some way along Iti we’re struck by a string of waterfalls, ribboning down the mountainous spine of the mini island and disappearing into the density of treetops behind roadside villages. We pull over. And stare. Imagine a thundering waterfall in your backyard.
Around 300,000 lucky people call the 130 or so islands of French Polynesia home. Well over half live on the island of Tahiti, the overwhelming majority of whom (about 120,000) live in and around the sprawl of the capital, Papeete.
The populace is ethnically stratified into resident French, native Tahitians, a significant and long-term diasporic Chinese population, and the demi, as they call themselves, who are mixed-race. That said, everyone is such a melange that in many cases these distinctions don’t apply. As a result of all the intermingling, racism seems virtually non-existent.
Barely a take-off and landing away from Tahiti, Raiatea is an island with very different energy – it’s said this is the spiritual ground zero for Polynesians, where all souls must pass through to get to heaven. And from where all souls come in the first place. Some of the rarest plants in the world grow here. There’s something special, odd, in the air. Maybe that’s why the eels are so big. We’re snorkelling off the side of a private speedboat, maybe a kilometre or so offshore when I take a deep drag of air and dive to the sandy bottom. I’m met with schools of brightly coloured fish, the occasional coral crop, and a ray in the distance. Just near a drop-off, a monstrously long moray eel nips in and out of its hide. Almost in greeting; almost in reproach. And then I see another. Even bigger. Probably two metres long, if it felt like revealing its entire self.
I could be imagining things, but when I surface and remove my mask, I can smell vanilla. It’s wafting from the plantations on the nearby island of Taha’a, only a few kilometres away, and in plain view. Later on, when we do get to Taha’a, you really can smell vanilla in the air, well before we reach the plantation, where I buy a bundle of 20 pods for about US$23. They’re the finest in the world, with a perfect moisture content, sun-dried by hand, shifted and turned to face the rays, for at least a year. You’d struggle to find them in Australia, and if you did, they’d cost almost twice that much each.
The other great culinary highlight of French Polynesia is the local tuna – kilo upon kilo of the freshest, most supple fish I’ve ever experienced. In an all-night supermarket, alongside a range of baked sweets, we find fresh tuna in all its glory – great big inky hunks of it presented as sushi, sashimi and all the rest. Beats Doritos for a snack. At every lunch stop along the way, poisson cru (the local raw tuna salad) is the star dish, alongside melt-in-the mouth carpaccio de thon – paper-thin slices of fish drizzled with vanilla-infused olive oil. If you like your tuna cooked, you’ll find it smothered in rich vanilla sauce. Given half a chance, I would have sat around eating various forms of tuna for the entire trip.
Local specialities aside, France ensures that all the denizens of its national mistress are fed and watered with the finest the world can offer. Here, New Zealand beef is streaks better than the best of what the Kiwis eat. Every French cheese known to man is available in the hangar-sized Carrefour supermarket near the airport in Faaa. A nice bottle of bordeaux with the evening meal seems a constitutional right.
A 20-minute hop from Raiatea is the marvellous tangle of mountains, inlets and lagoon known in Tahitian as Huahine. For better or worse, this translates most directly as ‘vagina’. I’m not entirely sure what that’s about. A local tells us it’s likely Huahine means something closer to ‘woman’, in which case it’s probably got something to do with all the many curvy curves of the island, and its extraordinary aesthetic attributes.
As soon as we arrive on Huahine, we hire some underpowered Yamahas. It’s 60 kilometres around the island, which is structured like Tahiti, with a Huahine Nui and a Huahine Iti linked by an isthmus, and our steeds manage much of it, with the notable exception of an outlandishly steep section on the west side of the island up to the belvedere or lookout. Putting along like a golf cart containing a sumo wrestler, our Yammies deliver us to the lookout and its cloud of ravenous mosquitoes, through which we take in an expansive confluence of blues and greens of inlets, lagoons and forested hills. By the time we return to our digs, the colour palette has changed to yellow, orange and ochre. The sun drops below Taha’a, setting it ablaze.
The next day we find ourselves on an isolated promontory of Huahine in the village of Haapu. Here, we find a clutch of petanque players and, after a few passes on the scooters, we climb delinquent-like through a hole in a chain-link fence to join them. A backdrop of bright water and mountains, the handful of singleted men and their almost dainty, chrome balls play out their game as if in provincial France. We engage in some banter about the weather “Chaud,” I remark, sweating profusely to emphasise the point. “Oui,” one of them indulges me, sweating only a little: “Très chaud.” It’s only when we scoot off, and around the rest of the island, that we realise this is one such scene of many. There is petanque, swimming kids and family gatherings the whole way around.
At the beginning of a slow dusk, near the island’s main village of Fare, we’re out on another promontory, watching an adolescent fisherman haul in his catch. His mum and dad wait for him, lazing under a small shelter. There’s a beaten-up Corolla hatch, with a boombox in the back playing something 90s. Then fisherboy turns around, with the most incredible riot of rainbow-splashed fish I’ve ever seen. It’s like a scaly disco ball, dangling at the end of his line. He chucks the fish in the boot where they slap against the boombox. We hop on our scooters, wave goodbye, and ride into the sunset.
On our last afternoon on Huahine, we’re paddling out near where the reef drops off into the ocean. We’ve had a go at the heavy wooden outrigger canoe that is the national sport here, the va’a, but we ended up going round in circles and traded it for two plastic kayaks. The lagoon is so perspex blue it’s like an artist’s impression of how a lagoon should be. A ray smudges grey along the bottom. The sun is low, the water blood warm, and the sprawling amorphous shape of Huahine appears as nothing more than a green lump on the horizon. We contemplate paddling around the coast to the stunning, fjord-like inlet where we’d seen the fishy disco ball. Stroke by stroke, the lagoon turns purple, blends into the sky, and I can already taste tonight’s vanilla-sauced tuna.
Phil Kaufman and Michael Martin had everything they needed: a busted-arse hearse borrowed from Martin’s girlfriend, matching wardrobes of Levi’s, cowboy hats and tour jackets, a case of beer and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The unencumbered boldness of extreme drunkenness was a necessary accoutrement to their end game – what was to become the rock-and-roll heist of the century.
Arriving at the mortuary hangar at Los Angeles International Airport, the pair saw a truck carrying a casket pull up. “Is that the Parsons remains?” Kaufman asked the driver, who answered in the affirmative. “The family has changed their plans,” Kaufman told him, making up a story as he went along: “They want to fly the body by private plane from Van Nuys.”
Not surprisingly, considering their state, the driver was wary. “Look, man, it’s late,” continued Kaufman. “We’ve got a couple of girls lined up, and then we got this call. We want to do this quickly.”
The paperwork was handed over and, as he was signing it (with the name Jeremy Nobody), a police car pulled up, blocking the exit. Thinking the gig was up, Kaufman walked towards the cop, waving the papers and asked him to move the car. The policeman apologised, backed his vehicle away and helped Kaufman move the casket from the gurney into the back of the hearse.
In the driver’s seat, Martin promptly took off and drove the hearse into a wall. The cop watched on incredulously, but didn’t stop them. Part one of the plan was a go.
Gram Parsons was born Cecil Ingram Connor III in Florida during the winter of 1946. His mother Avis was an heir to the Snively citrus fruit fortune; his father Cecil a World War II pilot who came home to work in the Snively Groves packing division. From an early age, Gram showed an interest in music, but he had a sad childhood. Cecil committed suicide two days before Christmas 1958. Avis remarried but she was unhappy and, although her new husband Bob Parsons loved Gram, he was a philanderer.
It was at Harvard University that Parsons found his true calling: country music. In the ensuing years he would join the Byrds, form the Flying Burrito Brothers and record an album with the Fallen Angels, called GP. Now these recordings are considered the beginning of the country-rock scene; Parsons the father of alt country.
For all his genius – perhaps because of it – Parsons had a long, troubling relationship with drugs. Lots of them, often chased by enormous quantities of alcohol. In July 1973, at the funeral for friend and guitarist Clarence White, who’d been killed by a drunk driver, Parsons and Kaufman got loaded and made a pledge: the first to die would be taken by the other to Joshua Tree and cremated. Not for them a stuffy funeral attended by family and acquaintances neither cared for.
Joshua Tree, a stunning desert area in south-east California, had become a place Parsons loved. He’d been going there for a few years to get high and, from Cap Rock, stare at the night sky looking for shooting stars and UFOs. He’d even taken Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull out there one night to enjoy the psychedelic view.
Parsons had just finished recording a new album – Grievous Angel, with Emmylou Harris – when, in September, he headed out to Joshua Tree with some friends. Days later Kaufman took a phone call – Gram was dead. In his autobiography, Road Mangler Deluxe, Kaufman says the cause was a morphine overdose. The autopsy report, however, names the cause of death as drug toxicity – the morphine may have been the final straw but it was Parsons’s years of drug and alcohol abuse that sealed his fate. He was 26 years old.
Kaufman blew into town, cleared room number eight at the Joshua Tree Inn of any drugs before the police arrived, and whisked away the female hangers-on. Back in Los Angeles though, he railed against Bob Parsons, who had organised a family-only service in New Orleans. For some reason, Kaufman thought Bob was after his son’s estate, but Gram was married (however unhappily) at the time. His wife Gretchen was to inherit the little money that was left from his mother’s family and, up to that point, Parsons had only ever received one royalty cheque for his music.
So began Kaufman’s plan to carry out his friend’s wishes. Clear of the airport and the cops, he and Martin drove Parsons into the desert, stopping on the way to buy a can of petrol and eat a burger. At Cap Rock, they unloaded the coffin, opened the lid and poured in the petrol. According to Kaufman, he played ‘gotcha’ with the corpse, touching the autopsy scar on Parsons’s chest before flicking the singer’s nose. He poured in the petrol and threw in a lit match. The coffin went up in a ball of flames that shot into the sky. Seeing lights in the distance, Kaufman and Martin got back in the hearse and took off, scared the police had caught up to them. They hadn’t, and Parsons’s body was discovered the next day by hikers.
It took the police a while to catch up with the body snatchers, and they were charged with misdemeanour theft, fined $300 each and ordered to pay back about $700 for the destruction of the coffin. Kaufman, who had no money, organised a party – part wake and part benefit – to raise the funds.
In some ways, Kaufman’s actions made Gram Parsons far more famous than he might well have been had Bob and the family had their intimate funeral. It’s the legend that still brings new listeners to his extraordinary catalogue of songs, as well as Grievous Angel that was released posthumously to critical acclaim. But for some of Gram’s friends and his family, it robbed them of an opportunity to mourn him properly. The claims that Bob was after Gram’s money are spurious at best. Despite being in the midst of divorce proceedings, Gretchen was entitled to whatever there was. In the end, Parsons’s remains were taken to New Orleans where his family buried him at Memorial Lawn Cemetery, where he lays beneath a gravestone carved with lyrics from his song ‘In My Hour of Darkness’: “Another young man safely strummed / his silver string guitar / And he played to people everywhere / Some say he was a star / But he was just a country boy. / His simple songs confess / And the music he had in him / So very few possess.”
Sex education barely exists in Myanmar, and yet somehow I’d been roped into teaching sex ed classes in Yangon. I was spending the evening in a hokey internet cafe near Sule, pulling images off Google to compile a PowerPoint slideshow for the lesson.
“This is what the female reproductive system looks like from the front,” I imagined myself saying to the Burmese students. “And this is what it looks like when a woman spreads her legs.”
I compiled images and bullet points outlining the main symptoms of gonorrhoea, syphilis, herpes and chlamydia. By the end of the evening, I’d trawled through so many images of infections, diseases and pus-filled genitals, I suspected I didn’t ever want to have sex again. I definitely had developed a new-found aversion to mayonnaise.
My lesson plan was simple: basic anatomy, reproduction, sexual risks and diseases, safer sex, anonymous question time. I would be a bastion of open learning! I would democratise this country through frank discussions about genitals!
I compared notes with my fellow teacher – an American girl named Hannah – before we split off into separate classrooms of men and women. My classroom was a small air-conditioned room, and the 10 students were adult men. They looked at me expectantly.
“OK, before we start, let’s lay out some rules,” I said. “Number one. There are no stupid questions. Every question is a good question!”
They nodded uncertainly.
“Also, you’re allowed to laugh!” I said. “Because let’s face it, sex can be funny sometimes!”
They shot secret grins at each other. I grinned back like an idiot. See, this isn’t so scary.
I booted up my laptop and brought up the anatomy slideshow. We started off with the male reproductive system – familiar friends like the penis, testicles, vas deferens and urethra. My fingers traced over my laptop screen like a television weatherman, whose forecast consisted entirely of dick.
“See, this is where the urine goes,” I heard myself saying. “And that’s the thing that makes the semen.”
Everyone nodded. Before we moved onto the female reproductive system, I offered a pop quiz called ‘How Many Holes Does a Woman Have?’
“One!” someone said.
Howls of laughter.
“They have two,” someone else said. “One is anus, the other is for the baby.”
A few boys nodded in agreement.
“No, they have three,” another guy said smugly. “Anus, vagina, urine hole.”
I said he was correct – ding ding ding! – then brought up the slides. We went through it all together: the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and urethra. I explained that when some women ovulated, they cramped up badly in pain. Later in the 28-day cycle, when they were menstruating, they would bleed a lot, and that all of this was why guys had to be very nice to women and respect them, because they really went through a lot, didn’t they? Everyone nodded sombrely. I felt we were making good ground.
We went through the voyage of puberty and the marvels of reproduction. When we talked about the changes that happened in the male body during puberty, I also brought up wet dreams and masturbation. From a medical perspective, I said, no one could possibly damage their bodies from excess masturbation, and everyone’s posture simultaneously adjusted with private relief.
Just as I started to feel smug about how comprehensive my lesson was, students started asking questions, like: “Is it okay to drug women and sleep with them, using the ‘special juice’?” Dear god. Trying my best not to sound like a shrill, scandalised nun, we talked at length about concepts like consent, choice, rape and possible prison terms. The lesson ended when I split the class up into different corners of the room, so they had privacy to write their final questions. I collected them in a bucket, and told them every question would be answered the next lesson.
– What happens if you drink vagina fluid or semen? – Pubic hair. Can it help or hinder sex? What is it there for? – What does the hymen look like? – Is there medicine to give pleasure to the woman in sex? – Friend has inflammation of uterus after sex. Qhat should she do? – What is homosexuality? Is it wrong? – What is the point of oral sex? – Spot in Woman’s vagina that can cause sexual pleasure for the female. IS THIS TRUE?
Jesus. Like everything else in Myanmar, we clearly had a long way to go. But, hey, we’d made a start. And in this country, that is everything.
A gentle offshore breeze ripples the face of the Atlantic breakers. Fresh off the still snowy mountains it carries with it a wintery hint of the txirimiri. This is the poetic – almost endearing – name by which the people of San Sebastián know their drizzle. For whole seasons the txirimiri seems to be the default weather system here. Pulling on my wetsuit, I begin to question the wisdom of my decision to come to San Sebastián so early in the Spanish summer on the trail of what is said to be a surfing revolution.
Carrying my board across the rain-pocked sand of La Zurriola beach I count about 30 surfers lined up along the clean, eight-foot faces. The Basques are a hardy race, tempered by a land of mist-shrouded mountains and rugged coastlines. Apparently it takes more than the nip of the txirimiri to keep the local surfers from their waves.
Tucked into the corner where Spain and France meet, San Sebastián seems to benefit as the focus point for any swell that is generated by the spiralling currents of the Bay of Biscay. To the east lies French Basque Country and to the west a rugged coastline of wave-smashed cliffs and wild, windswept beaches stretches unbroken to Fisterra – literally the End of the Land – in far off Galicia. San Sebastián’s Gipuzkoa province is particularly famed for spots like the legendary surf beach at Zarautz (10 minutes from the city) and the infamous Playa Gris, which seems almost to have acted as a magnet for some of the biggest waves in the history of surfing.
The city itself has two beaches with two very different characters. The immense sweeping arc of soft sand that is La Concha is a tranquil natural harbour and the ideal town beach. The great curving promenade here is fringed with Art Deco hotels and palaces, built way back when this was the prime summer getaway for Spanish royalty who came to take in the waters and breathe the cool air of green Spain. La Concha has been called the pearl of the Cantabrian Sea, but its Spanish name simply means ‘the shell’.
Beyond the plazas, palaces and tangled alleyways of the old town, across the river in Gros quarter, you find wild La Zurriola – a beach with an altogether different mood. The humble little quarter of Gros has now launched a bid to claim the title of European Capital of Surf. This seems unlikely, until you remember Gros is just an hour from legendary Mundaka, the river-mouth wave that is rated as one of the 10 best waves on the planet.
Riding on the swell of La Zurriola, San Sebastián is leading a World Surf Cities Network, a group of nine destinations striving to have more of an impact on one of the world’s fastest growing sports. Durban in South Africa and France’s Hossegor are already fixtures on any travelling surfer’s wishlist, along with Australia’s Gold Coast and Newcastle. The others – Ericeira (Portugal), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), Arica (Chile) and Santos (Brazil) – are less well known, but are respected for truly world-class surf.
After a winter spent surfing balmier waves in Brazil, the chill seeping through my wetsuit is somewhat numbing. But there is more than one side to the surf revolution taking place on the Spanish north coast at the moment and I’m anxious to check it out. The board I’m now paddling out into the lineout is already getting some appraising looks – along with a few doubtfully raised eyebrows. It’s what is known as a parabolic shape: its curves go inwards where those on conventional boards go out. It’s a surfboard with a waist and hips. Engineers at Pamplona-based Trinity Board Sport perfected the design using aerodynamics software normally reserved for the production of wind turbines.
My first slide down the face and swooping bottom turn convinces me the hype about these boards is not overstated. It’s shorter than any board I would normally ride, but is very stable and extremely fast. So fast, in fact, that I arrive back at the top of the wave far quicker than expected. As I go flying up over the lip and the board goes spinning up into the spattering txirimiri, I have a moment to reflect that this isn’t the most impressive start to the session. By the time another set comes through, however, I’m prepared for the phenomenal acceleration. If it’s true that these are indeed the surfboards of the future then all I can say is ¡Viva la Revolución!
A few hours later I’m in a backstreet taberna, lifting a glass of Basque cider and drinking a toast to surfboards with hips and San Sebastián’s place as the capital of European surfing.
There can be nowhere in the world that is better for curing après-surf munchies than San Seb. There are more Michelin stars here per square metre than anywhere else in the world, but it is the celebrated pintxos that are the most alluring option when you have just returned, muscles buzzing, from the surf.
Pintxos are the local version of tapas. In San Sebastián these normally simple snacks have been refined to the point where, in even the humblest bars, they are haute cuisine. I head for the first bar I see and, as I step in onto the sawdust floor, find myself faced with an entire feast. More than 20 plates are lined up along the bar. Each is heaped with perfectly prepared snack-size morsels. The place is still empty but the old bartender is busy laying out more delicacies. I ask him if they normally offer such incredible variety.
“Sometimes more, never less,” he answers with a shrug. “It takes most of the afternoon for the chef to prepare everything, but here a bar isn’t worthy of the name if it doesn’t offer good pintxos.”
He offers me a plate and starts to talk me through the list: “Mountain ham with goat cheese on oiled bread, prawns in garlic mayonnaise, baby octopus with chillies…” It goes on.
Some of the offerings are from the mountains and fertile valleys of the surrounding region. There’s cured ham, black pudding, spicy del Padrón peppers and asparagus that the king himself once famously described as cojonudo (balls-out spectacular).
Mostly, however, the bar’s specialities reflect San Sebastián’s fishing background: tuna, salted bacalao cod, delicious grilled sardines, tangy pickled anchovies and the little percebes that are delicious until somebody points out that these giant barnacles are almost entirely just huge (relatively speaking) penises.
It’s no coincidence that some of the best pintxo places are in the network of cobblestone alleyways between the market and the port. The towering statue of the Madonna on her hilltop perch looms over the grand old Santa Maria church and the pretty little fishing port. The Basques are not generally religious people and many of the fishermen here believe that a freshly painted livery of the green, red and white of the Basque flag offers all the protection their boats will ever need against the terrible Bay of Biscay storms.
The little port is a particularly evocative place to wander if you want to grasp the character of old San Sebastián. A few tourists mosey to and from the naval museum or the wonderful aquarium, with its walk-through shark tunnel, and at weekends the cluster of little seafood restaurants rumbles with Basque banter. The Euskera language is spoken more in San Sebastián and the surrounding Gipuzkoa area than anywhere else in the Eu (Basque) region. The streets of Donostia, as the city is called locally, are signposted with strange-looking words that are liberally spiked with Zs, Xs and Ks.
Despite its dual languages San Sebastián is one of the easiest Spanish cities to come to terms with. Where the cities of Spain’s far south are sultry and temperamental and the ancient fortress-towns of the central plateau are conservatively aloof, San Sebastián strikes you at first sight as chic and sexy. Outwardly it seems to encapsulate the stylish side of the Spanish character, but there’s an easygoing backstreet ambience that lures you onward into long, lazy rambles through the old-town alleys. Whatever your temperament, there can be few cities in all of Europe where it is so easy to feel at home.
By the time I’ve sated my hunger and finished my bottle of cider the streetlights are starting to come on. Despite the drizzle all is well with the world. I pull my collar up and wander the cobbled streets to the wave-break wall – a battlement to hold back the interminable onslaught of the Biscay breakers – to check out La Zurriola again.
The rain seems to be coming down heavier and a few dark storm clouds are now blotting out the setting sun. I watch several teenaged schoolboy surfers sprinting down the beach to catch a last few waves before a damp darkness falls on surf city. With this level of dedication it will take more than the txirimiri to keep San Sebastián from taking her place as the queen of European surfing.
(
