Sunday Morning Comin' Down Part 3

 Sunday Morning Comin' Down  Part 3

Mid November in 79 and we'd been overseas long enough, and done enough, that the thrill of being in a foreign land had faded. We'd established a kind of routine...as free form as it was. We had some ideas about Christmas and where we wanted to be...more on that later.  But..now we entered a period where things changed for us. And, for me, things changed inside me. 

We left Paris and had no particular plan.  We would spend the next few weeks richocheting randomly across Europe to different towns.  Our travel was as random as getting on whatever train was next leaving the station when we arrived...moderated only by a marked preference for journeys overnight. We were free.

I don't expect I had ever felt freedom before. Young as I was and as Stats was...we had always had ties. And though they were juvenile obligations...to family...to friend..to school...to a job...they were still obligations that ordered your life.  I guess since I had first gotten a job at age eleven to this moment...I had always had obligations. I had never lived completely untethered to any sort of duty or time schedule. I had never been free.  I was now. So was Stats. This was that sense of relief that we all only now get when we are 'on vacation'.  Free.

It's a hell of a thing to not have to answer to anybody..for anything. 

My exterior narrative breaks down here. My memories of our travel in these few weeks is scrambled. I recall towns, places..but they aren't ordered.  Bordeaux...a sexy older woman gave me 'the look',  London, where we encountered beans and tomato as a breakfast dish, Bern..where we met two pretty dental hygene trainees who were doing some kind of exchange training program.  We met them on the train platform and they invited us to their apartment and fed us...fondue.  We spent the night but did not ...'make out'. They were just glad to have American lads to talk to.  Lausanne Switzerland...where the hostel we stayed in had a television and the program was "How the West Was Won" ...dubbed in German. Munich..staying in a pension where they had a copy of "Mein Kampf" on the bookshelf and a photo of a family member in a Nazi uniform. Strasbourg...having some older man try to pick me up...and not realizing it until later. My interior narrative is different though

On the inside I was adjusting to becoming a wanderer. A traveler. As a boy, I recall fairy tales or fables that included a mysterious character...the traveler.  Usually depicted wearing green and a green cloak..he would appear in the tale ...it wasn't explained where he was from, where he was going or why he was travelling.  This figure captured and stuck in my imagination.  To me he symbolized a kind of freedom the other characters...with their assigned roles,  did not possess.  He acted and moved on.  I began to feel like this character. 

In this travel,  we weren't seeing tourist places so much. We witnessed ordinary life in a different land. People doing their work. People enjoying their life. And on my inside I was evaluating my own life.  My failures with school. My failures with young women I had cared about.  My deficiencies.  I began to also consider how meaningless my concerns were in my regular life.  Here, all around me were real people living their ordinary lives and not giving a good damn about how things were going in Louisville Kentucky...let alone Sellersburg...or even less...even less with one guy named "David".  I was nobody. Truly nobody and nobody cared. And...it was ok. 

I gained knowledge. Which cars to pick on the train. The universal smell of bus exhaust in a city in the early morning. How to locate the cheap food in a place. How to figure out transit routes in a foreign tongue. Being polite was important anywhere you went.  When to be adamant. Trading books with other travelers.  How to watch out for thieves. Buying pouch tobacco and rolling our own cigarettes. Why I wasn't important.  Why I was important. Who did I really love. Who had I wasted time on.  Why.  What was I going to do with my life when I got home? (I did not make a decision...but I started the inquiry as a serious question). 

We saw Cannes.  It was winter though and there was no beach life and no topless women. The streets were dirty so we went on down the coast and crossed the border to Ventimiglia. Italy was a relief. It was cheaper. We had a nice hotel room with a fricking balcony.  We went to a bar and played "SPACE INVADERS"  which, at home cost a quarter a game...here..it was about a nickel. Ten american dollars was about 5,000 italian lire.  We felt RICH. We met a funny french guy in the bar. He was embarassed when he told us the french word for "fuck" and we said it out loud.  Stats got drunk.  Back at the hotel he took off his clothes and went on the balcony..."WOMEN OF VENTIMIGLIA..HERE I AM!!" He was blowing off steam from putting up with my dumb ass for a month.  He had a terrible headache the next morning.  We went to the train station. Heading for Naples.  

We discovered why Naples was, on the backpack circuit, referred to as the "Calcutta of Europe"...I thought I was going to get my throat cut the first night we were there.  Later ...exploring the night scene..it was a Fellini circus of  hazy white lights and carnival.  We walked through a market where they sold 'panther'.  I bought a shot glass of salty water with part of a panther heart ..it was a scary place.  Went to Pompeii.  Toured the ruins.  Headed for Rome. 

END PART 3