This raises a couple of fairly interesting ideas, some of which I’m going to explore very briefly. This could be really boring.

Firstly – is inclusion a positive or a negative thing? And is it a real thing? In ‘real life’ you could argue that we practice inclusion, we don’t practice euthanasia on babies born with conditions that society deems ‘abnormal’ or ‘disabled’ and so we practice inclusion from the word go. But then we have special schools and special work places for people with both types of disability, we hospitalize and medicate them, we judge and exclude them.

Personally I think inclusion is a nonsense in that we should all be practicing it anyway. I was talking to the camp director today and I told her how I would demonstrate the futility of the idea of inclusion; get a bunch of Mr Potato Head dolls and instead of eyes and mouths, I’d have pins with ‘good a math’,’ blue eyes’, ‘great comedy timing’, ‘autism’ and ‘down syndrome’. The point being that fundamentally, we’re all Mr Potato Head dolls.

One thing that I don’t agree with is the idea that people have to be financially independent. I know that it’s the American dream and all but it’s fundamentally broken. If we’re fortunate, we need to share our fortune. I’m up for re-distribution of wealth, however I also am for Yachts. Life is full of contradictions.

It’s easy to say that the people who have a disability are the ones that benefit from inclusion but really, it’s the people without. Working and living in the kind of inclusion that is practiced here is really eye-opening. I keep saying that we’re all the same and that we just need to look after each other. Here they do just that, it’s pretty refreshing.

I had asked him if he needed to get back to work he simply shrugged, “Why?” I thought about it; after all the cigarettes and petrol costs I was pretty sure he was making nothing from me so the embassy job must have been paying quite well. He left me with a hearty handshake when the hostel girl and her friend arrived back from the pizza shop. “He was weird.” She told me in Californian. But I didn’t think so, I thought he was possibly the nicest person I met in the whole Balkan. And I felt guilty about not calling him for a taxi again. But Skopje’s just too small, and anyway I had a guide–with a car.

My guide was Zdenka, a fun, local lesbian, with lots of insider knowledge and connections. She was the friend of the hostel girl, Elena, who was unfortunately tied down at the hostel while Zdenka took me on a complicated night out which began with a tragic Arsenal defeat to Man U and ended with us waking Elena (and the angry neighbours) up back at the hostel at around 7am. Me and Elena smoked out on the patio awhile while Zdenka and her bisexual lover with a boyfriend made out on the sofas.

“It’s quite a small kind of place isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone seems to know each other.”

“Yeah, I bet I know all the clubs you went to,” She named them all correctly but in the wrong order. “Yeah all the usuals, there isn’t a lot of choice.”

“Just like my town.” I told her.

Once I had recovered at about 4pm Zdenka arrived to tour me around town. We went for ‘breakfast’ at her dad’s restaurant, a Communist themed place which is placed within the Splurge section of my budget guidebook. I ate three courses of traditional Macedonian cuisine, including the national dish of baked beans in a pot. Scoff if you will, but unless you’ve tasted their baked beans I’ll tell you that you do so in pitiful ignorance, those were beans fit for Gods, and their white cheese was also exceptional. It should have cost me many euros but Zdenka simply put it down in her father’s name. She showed me around the fort and the Turkish Bazaar and later I went back to the hostel and met a Macedonian from the Bronx.

“Choo wanna play pool?” He asked.

“Yeah man.”

“I’m from the Bronx.” He tells me in a Raging Bull/Bronx Bunny accent.

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah, I’m a boxer,” saw that one coming, “and I’m Muslim as well.”

“Ah.”

“So just don’t touch me, just don’t touch me. Sometimes, I just see things, like in the corner of my eye, and yeah I hit it. Cos’ choo jus’ don’ know what the fuck is coming at ya. Anytime, that’s jus’ the way it is these days. Its sad cos’ I’m a religious man essentially, I’m a man of peace, but just don‘t touch… It’s like I’m trained, I can do things with my fists, these fists. Choo jus’ wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t want to touch you.”

“Choo still wanna play pool?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, well just don’t touch me.”

“I won’t.”

In short he was the most clichéd representation of anyone ever to come from the Bronx. The fact that I met him in Skopje in a little backstreet hostel thousands of miles from New York, made him mentionable. The only other resident, a Swede, taking a two week holiday to Macedonia (bizarre people the Swedes) thought he was crazy, and lived in constant fear of the pool table, I found the caricature entertaining however. And I began to construct numerous possible back stories leading to his appearance and our meeting in Skopje.

Skopje was one of the best places I visited for this reason. I hadn’t ever found myself so completely assimilated into a group of locals. Everything, the food, the nightlife, the sights I was shown, the friendliness of the locals, I couldn’t have asked for much more from such a small place on my last night Zdenka took me up the road to Mt Vodna past all the embassies. Here she showed me all the dodgy lay-bys diplomatic plates on quite a few of the bouncing vehicles, she told me which diplomats were gay (Zdenka is quite well known in the gay community) and all the local gossip before we stopped at the top to look down on the whole town. Some moody blue clouds were rolling over each other to approach the city from the east, but the last rays of Sun were blinding through the surrounding hills to dazzle the west half of the city. It all looked proportionally magnificent. Zdenka dropped me off at the hostel and I left her my details in England. I planned my onward route through Greece that night, and packed for the morning. Thoroughly satisfied with Skopje.

As I left I ran into Dennis at the train station, he robbed me of 3000 Macedonian Denar (I‘m saving this one for the book). This left my bank account almost empty, bar a modest sum, possibly equivalent to the resale value of Ben’s car, to get to Istanbul for my return flight home, in 2 weeks time. And as we all know:

14 Days ÷ Ben’s Car – Travel = Bugger All¹

So I arrived in Greece, with a certain amount of anxiety. I visited Thessalonica with family as a ten-year old and loved it as one of my few junior expeditions into a world other than Scarborough. I distinctly remember going to visit the tomb of Phillip II, father of Alexander, which is located nearby; and falling in love with the mystery of Ancient Greece. This time around I slept in the train station, and then when they kicked me out at 3am, in the shrine of Mother Mary outside an Orthodox Church. I simply could not find a room or bed for less than 25 euros at such short notice.

‘Sleeping’ probably doesn’t give the right impression of what that night was like. I spent the most part growling at tramps and drunks eyeing up my backpack, catching maybe two hours before dawn. That dawn mercy seemed to take an age to come. As soon as it was light enough, I hacked off the side of a cardboard box, scribbled αθηνα²on it and walked two miles to find the motorway leading to Athens. After about four hours I decided I wasn’t going to find a hitch. So I traipsed all the way back to the station to find that a rail ticket to Athens only cost 6 pounds, and I left Thessalonica feeling that the innocent schoolboy who read and reread The Odyssey and tales of Alexander had died in me, or at least crawled further away from the misery of real-life adult disappointment.

1. Hey, thanks for that lift to Stansted Ben!
2. Athens, natch – M

Rosie from Novi-Sad headed north from Dubrovnik, Croatia, after a bus station platform goodbye (my first one). From there she headed through Central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Prague) to Berlin, then on to France, and I believe she is just about making her way back to Birmingham now. I, on the other hand, headed south over the border to Montenegro, to a little seaside town called Kotor, a town full of Russian billionaires and their yacht crews. The little walled town nestled underneath the peak of the Mediterranean’s largest fjord was utterly charming.

A local family picked me up from the bus station and charged me crumbs to stay with them, they also drove me around the perilously narrow roads between the sea and the fjords.

Sun-soaked Kotor, I can safely say, was a beautiful surprise. Much more delicate and exclusive than its bigger Croatian neighbour Dubrovnik, it’s not exactly youthful but the Dalmatian Coast generally isn’t, so it helps to be able to stomach the mega yacht elite.

From here I headed inland to the capital Podgorica, a very different place. It had the youthful vigour visible in all the Former Yugoslav states, it’s the vigour of a student generation born under communism, raised in war and finally free to express themselves as willfully as ever before. Though not fully free from political injustice and corruption (Montenegro’s prime minister has been under investigation for ‘mafia-type’ tobacco smuggling charges in Italy since the early 2000’s), young ‘F-Yugoslavs’ have more gusto for life and debate than could be found in 5000 vacuous British teenagers. So it’s never completely dull hanging around in the Balkans.

Here I did my first couch surf, which was a highly rewarding experience. For those unfamiliar with the concept. CouchSurfing is a website for travellers, former travellers and would-be travellers; it enables them to make contact and stay on each others sofas. Essentially it’s Facebook for the backpacker fraternity. It’s actually remarkably safe due to a validation and referral system, where people vouchsafe you as sane; or hopefully even, in my case, quite sane. This system makes it difficult to become a Surfer, and as such I hadn’t been able to make much use of it previously in Europe. But in Podgorica I surfed with a Japo-French girl working an internship at the French embassy. I spent a pleasant few days hanging around with her stoner friend Snoopy.

We spent our time munching baklava on the hillside, and debating NATO’s bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. A subject which I knew too little about to be able to defend or criticise, either way. I still suspected Snoopy’s claim that his father, a pilot in the Yugoslavian Air Force, only ever bombed an unmanned Croatian weapons cache under a hill in the middle of nowhere as a denial of responsibility. It is fair to say that many Serbs still have something of chip on their shoulders and the War though I never brought it up in conversation, was always a hot topic; three or four times a Serb opened a conversation with, “You’re British? Oh, you bombed us.”

“Really we did? I had no idea, terribly sorry about that, it was probably for your own good.” Eyes on the floor, eyes on the floor, sip your drink, eyes on the floor.

I took a coach from Podgorica to Pristina capital of the newly established and only semi-recognised nation of Kosovo. Most of my travel in the south of Yugoslavia was by coach the lesser populated south is simply too mountainous to support a viable railway. These last three cities were all within 5 hours of each other though, so it isn’t all that taxing traveling between them.

Kosovo is still in Limbo, dependent on the US, Italian and any other first world country that fancies a spot of quick cash, for investing in its mineral wealth. For this reason a lot of anti-UN and EU antipathy has begun to manifest itself in the local Albanian majority and groups like Vetevendosje (meaning Self-Determination) have covered the walls of Pristina in anti-international graffiti referring to the UN‘s mission as neo-colonial. Looking around it was perhaps understandable, as you couldn’t imagine the luxury modern developments at one end of the city were going to be of any future benefit to the average Kosovar, but perhaps for the politicians and executives of the investing multinationals.

But such is the unfortunate way of the world, and I didn’t have time to dwell on the ethnic, economic, and political problems of the breakaway province so a couple of days later I took a coach south over the border into Macedonia, stopping in the capital Skopje. Here it struck me that I had visited every single Former Yugoslav state and its capital city. This was completely unintentional, and I had never made any certain plans in the months preceding my departure to visit even one Balkan state. But I in hindsight, I don’t think I could have spent a much more interesting and enjoyable month-and-half anywhere else in Europe. So I believe my Yugoslav feat is something to be proud of regardless of its accidental nature.

I found a candidate for world’s worst taxi driver in Podgorica ((I get angry just thinking about this guy so I won’t yet)), and for the best in Skopje. Rale: A large olive brown gentleman who spends most days chauffeuring diplomats between the embassies of the tiny city¹. On a Thursday however he spends his days sleeping in his dilapidated Yugo while waiting for fares outside of the bus station. I tapped on his window.

“You working?”

“Yes, NO problems!”

“Er. Great, you know a hostel nearby?”

“I don’t speak English, get in!”

“You on a meter?”

“I don’t speak English, get in!”

I don’t know if it was his gentle but authoritative tone or the beaming brand-new dad smile he pulled off while opening the passenger door for me, but I felt compelled to get into a vehicle in an area with “unpredictable”² standards of road safety, with a man who I could barely communicate, without any legal standard of pricing and no set destination.

For all my traveling experience gained, I will fully admit to being very stupid most of the time.

After driving me about a mile down an unknown road repeating the foreign word: hostel, over and over thoughtfully he asked, “You do,” pause, “speak Belgian?”

“Non français?” One of the languages of Belgium, “Je parle un petit français. Je veux aller à une auberge de jeunesse.” I tried to mangle this out but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. “No Belgium… I uh,” He, strangely, imitates steering a wheel whilst actually driving by clutching thin air with both hands and moving them side to side them in unison., “Embassy, Belgium.”

“You drive the Belgian ambassador around?”

“Yes!” He said with enthusiasm, I suppose he was very proud of his work.

“Very nice. I’m looking for a youth hostel.”

Blank.

Then he had a thought to call his English speaking friend, and after handing the phone to be and a brief conversation in which I described my necessity for a youth hostel and my inability to explain this to Rale. The guy at the other end told me to hand the phone back, and after a few mumbled Macedonian words Rale hung up. Looked at me and “ah! Cheap hotel?”

“Yes sort of. About 20 euros a night kind of thing.”

“20 euros?”

“Yeah.”

He gave me another big smile. “Oh God I hope I haven’t just promised you 20 euros.”

After another few minutes of driving Embassy-chauffeur-driving-at-break-neck-speed-to-avoid-the-bullets-of-militant-insurgents kind of pace, we arrived at the ART hostel.

“Perfect. How much?” I added wincingly. Another big smile broke across his big face, I was prepared for the worst if this was anything like my ride in Podgorica. We had been in the car a good 25 minutes, and although most of it had been in a fairly miscellaneous direction, I was in no position to argue, him being much bigger than me and my bags being in the boot etcetera, etcetera.

“2 euro.” In Macedonia they use the Denar but euro is accepted quite frequently.

“Really?” my relief was tangible, he could have inhaled it if he wanted to. “2 Euro?”

“You want taxi,” he nodded and handed me his card, “Rale’s your taxi.”

“Awesome, thanks man!” He nodded and got out to help me with my bags. The hostel girl was at the gate just by chance, Rale asked her something in Macedonian. She told me in a distinct American accent, that he wanted to come in and have a look around the place for future reference. She told me what to do with the bags and told me I was in charge while she went out to get some pizza. Did I want some?

Yeah sure, that‘d be great. Hawaiian please.

1. The US maintains its second largest embassy in Macedonia, a country only slightly larger than Wales, it is eight floors high with fifteen floors below ground level. Presumably it’s in a handy location for all the Americans dealing with neighbouring Kosovo
2. http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travelling-and-living-overseas/travel-advice-by-country/europe/macedonia

I am sat in an Australian themed restaurant in Pa Tong, and the resemblance between the texture of my fried egg and that expat’s sunburned and blistered collar skin is nauseatingly apparent. Countless electronic fans have been strategically placed to turn the interior into a refreshing typhoon away from the humidity of the Phuket morning but my notebook rustles incessantly. The TV blurs a replay of last night’s Champions League final; which I stayed up until 5am local time to watch, to this end I was assisted by a very kinetic bout of diarrhea. The waitress is very rude and I feel quite miserable.

This is the first time I have tried to venture into town proper, and also the only thing I’ve eaten since yesterday morning. Peculiarly enough the dish I assumed poisoned me yesterday- fried eggs you could drink and rashers with margins of fat thicker than the meat itself- is the very same dish that has been placed before me today, though by accident – I ordered a pork noodle soup.

I saw only 1 kilometer of Pa Tong after being dropped off by Songthaew (a pickup with benches in the back) from Phuket Town, before I took my petulant breakfast and checked into a very reasonable guest-house, because ten minutes into my stay I was bedridden. I have since seen nothing of the town except for the shops in the immediate vicinity which include an electronics shop and a hairdresser’s. Constrained to my room like a prisoner with ball and chain, the chain in this case being composed of the length of my intestinal tract,¹ my grumpy disposition is perhaps understandable.

I’ve just jolted upright suddenly; and my sphincter has tightened instinctively, so I throw my bill in baht down on the table and exit very carefully, I make a peculiar wobble the three blocks back to my hotel. So much for the morning stroll on the beach. Strangely, here in Asia I feel more distant from Buddhism than ever before, as only two weeks ago I spent several days nursing a helpless fellow traveler, who I happened to give all my diarrhea medicine to. Karma? Anybody?

Find out what happens in the next part if I write it. Oh, and what the hell happened between Bosnia and Thailand? Yeah, I might summarize that…

Joe z

1. A length equal to the perimeter of a standard tennis court. source: penguin wrapper 1996

These guys are really good, they really know what they are doing. I actually went to see them at their tiny office in Brussels, just to thank them for such wonderfully relevant and economical city-maps of Belgium¹. They are also presented with a distinctly unfunny Belgian humour, which is massively amusing for the wrong reasons and encapsulates the place perfectly. It can even at times be quite racist but I don’t think they realise.

Note this little blinder: “Bad news for the Irish; in shops, changing rooms only have curtains and not doors.” I should have left a post-it somewhere for them reading: “Don’t worry, those crafty mick bastards will still find a way of nicking something!”

* I don’t know why I keep referring to you media people, I am myself about to embark on an English and Media degree after all.

After about a quarter of an hour, a scruffy boy, shirt untucked and trainers on (probably the youngest brother of the family) appeared and dropped a dish of little puffy crisps in front of me. I delved in to try and dull my hunger pangs, but they tasted odd, hard to describe, I suppose they tasted like certain parts of the female anatomy (can I write that Ben?). Yes, that sums the crisps up quite adequately. I could only manage four then pushed them away and waited another quarter of an hour for my rabbit to arrive.

It arrived, in a steamy glazed pot, alongside a plate of mash potato and vegetables. It looked great but I was left in a situation of not knowing whether to tip the stew out onto the plate, or to wait until I had eaten enough of the stew to make this a more practical operation. I sat there a moment, eyeing my pot of stew and the empty area of my plate while running volume equations in my head. “They wouldn’t have given me a pot of stew bigger than my plate” I finally surmised and proceeded to pour the full contents onto the plate in one swift movement. Of course, it overflowed and spilled onto the table and began to seep over the edge onto my crotch. I let out a short burst of angry curses, the couple on the next table looked over at me with disdain; the boyfriend saying something in Flemish along the lines of “What a fucking idiot!”

I cleaned up with my napkin and one of the Valentine’s tablecloths stolen from the chair opposite me. The bunny was devoured in minutes, it was good, tender in a nice spicy gravy, but with bits of vertebrae that had to be plucked out or they chipped your teeth. The mash and veg was disappointing. The mash especially, it was dry and crusty, the kind that is whipped up to make it look like an ice cream or something. It didn’t matter, I was satisfied, and wanted to get out of there quickly, so I called the waitress over and asked for the bill which came to about eighteen Euros. I looked through my wallet, and placed a twenty under the bill, then threw my wallet down on the table while I got up, donned my coat, filled my daybag with my various notebooks and guides and left the restaurant.

The town was calmer now, only perhaps 10 o’clock but the streets were slowly succumbing to an eerie quiet. I looked up to the sky, Venus was drifting slowly through the gaps between the buildings of the Meir, the only celestial body bright enough to shine through the haze of the city’s street lighting, “Ha, love all lonely and alone!” I scoffed at the irony and kicked a McDonald’s burger carton into a gutter. It was actually a good reminder that I needed to steal some Macky D wifi to email Barclay’s and let them know I was in Belgium, and ask them not to cut my card off as a case of identity theft abroad. I would be in serious trouble if this happened, no money for a week until they could send me a replacement card. I don’t know what I’d do.

I crossed the road to get to the McDonald’s. This was a difficult process I had to sidestep a small crowd of statuesque Antverpians and lead them like Moses over the tramway lines. Halfway I froze utterly still, everything just stopped. I struggled to breath for an eternal two seconds, then gasped deeply as my hands began to whirl across my body frantically checking my various pockets and hiding spaces. I tore open my bag and rifled madly through it’s contents, the blare of an oncoming tram’s horn tried to alert me but I was already turning on my heels and moving as quick as I possibly could without breaking into a run back to the restaurant.

I had left my wallet on the table.

I didn’t run, at least I tried not to, instead I just put my head down and tried to play the events of the last 30 minutes back to myself. But my self-control was wavering and I found myself sprinting short distances at a time before, slowing to a quick walk pace again. Anyone following me would have taking me for a paranoid schizophrenic. You definitely paid, you definitely paid. I search my bag again. All pockets twice, then rummage between the books inside the bag to check between their pages. Someone will have handed it in, it was a family restaurant. After ten minutes I reached the Frankrijklei, a crowd of sixty is blocking the crossing, I lost it a little bit and sprinted through them almost causing a sixty-person-auto-accident in my wake. I turned the corner onto the square and was verbally muttering, “Please be there, just be there, please.”

I blew into the Hotel Monico, and looked around, it had been half an hour since I left, but almost all of the diners that had been present while I ate were still present now. I reached my table, which had been cleared, no sign, checked underneath, no sign, down the back of the chair, on the floor, nothing. The waiter from earlier came forward, he now looked as though he wanted to kill me, possibly not quite as much as I wanted to kill him though, I think he sensed and became very helpful. The waitress came over and explained nothing had been handed in, and they brought over the scruffy boy who had been helping out. That bastard! That little bastard’s had it! The waitress asked him whether he’d seen my wallet and he just shrugged. That bastard! I was however maintaining my cool. I asked them to keep an eye out for it, and that I would be back in the morning to see if it had turned up. I then gave the boy what I hoped would seem like a paralysing glare, and left buttoning my long-coat up fully and trying to regain some dignity.

I counted my losses as I made it back to the hostel. Around sixty-five Euros in cash, and my debit card, my only debit card. I had gone into Nationwide the day before I left to ask where my new ‘free to use abroad’ card was and why it hadn’t turned up, “Sorry? Mr Zammit? No we’ve never heard of you.”
“I was in here being interviewed for an hour and a half last week. What do you mean you haven’t heard of me?” Since then I’ve been clinging onto my little expensive Barclay’s connect card, which I originally intended to use as an emergency spare.

It came to me to check my ankle holster, a secret pocket in case of muggings or pickpockets. In which I had been keeping my passport, debit card and fifty Euro note, but had got sick of having to bend down and conspicuously reveal to the whole world I was wearing it every time I needed to use my debit card. Thus almost immediately before I entered the Monico I had decided to keep my card in my wallet for convenience — typical. Now as I checked to see if I had forgotten my new resolution and gone back to placing my debit card in my ankle holster, I was disappointed.

I stopped being angry halfway back to the hostel, it wasn’t going to help, and I needed to decide what to do. My situation was this: I had no cash money, and no prospect of cash money. I had accommodation paid for for two days, including breakfasts. I had to make a decision on whether or not to cancel the card. If I didn’t and the wallet turned up there could be no money left on it to use; on the other hand if I did, it would take many days for a new one to arrive. I was alone, without any resources, in a foreign country, and only four days into the Grand World Tour.

After four days the thought of calling home and asking for help was unthinkable. But I thought about it hard. The embarrassment would have destroyed me. This was simply my first real test.

I was greeted at the hostel by a yellowy gaunt man, with a goatee and beard. I thought him to be the owner and asked him if I could use his computer. I didn’t know why, I just felt the need to contact someone for some solace. He instead insisted, quite rightly, I go to the police station and gave me decent directions, which I completely forgot as soon as I was back on the street. I hadn’t noticed before but the hostel was in the direct center of the city’s Hasidic Jewish area. At least I guessed so by the hats the gentlemen were wearing, I had never met a real life Hasidic Jew, they seem a very close knit people. They were all gathered in families outside their terraces and being jovial. They do have an annoying habit of muttering things at you as you pass, which I assumed to be blessings, and found the notion that any deity, Jewish or otherwise, at that present moment gave a cold lump of shit about me quite offensive.

I asked one of the older men for directions, his English wasn’t great but they made a group effort to send me in the right direction, and within half an hour I was in front of the police station. I went up and tried to pull the door open, and it wouldn’t, the foyer was lit but empty. I translated the sign next to the door to say ‘closed 10pm.’ Ridiculous, this is the second biggest city in Belgium! Then a young police officer (it’s as if they’re all on work experience) came up the stairs and pushed the door open. I followed him sheepishly.

I walked through the empty foyer and woke the fat sergeant at the desk up. “You speak English?”
“Little,” he wasn’t keen on my abrupt tone, but I was reaching the end of my tether, “you want?”
“I have lost my wallet in a restaurant.”
“Yes?”
Pause, “Well I’d like to report it!”
“Oh,” he looked at his computer, with slow droopy eyes, then back at me, “you wait.” He pointed a fat finger at a seating area where I need to wait, I sit down opposite what I had thought was a heap of anoraks, but it turns out to be a junkie, who starts to look at me with a pale, pained expression he twitches violently every few minutes. I look back at him and get caught up in a staring competition with a Belgian smack-head. After twenty minutes of this the fat sergeant calls me back over.

“What do you want?” Is there some airborne illness plaguing Belgium that the NHS that forgot to tell me about, does it make everyone incredibly forgetful and apathetic? If so I’d like to emigrate here.
“I want to report that my wallet is missing.”
“Oh yes. What was in this walletzs?”
“OK, my debit card, you know debit card?” he nods, “About eighty Euros, my International Student Card,” Fuck! I just bought that like a week ago, “and my EHIC” He understands nothing after Euros, and it takes a long time to compile the full report. After which he asks me to go and sit with the junkie again. I got back to find that the junkie hadn’t moved and was still staring at the area of the wall behind where my eyes once were, I wondered if I had killed him with the intensity of my grief, but then he snaps back and gives me a stupid yellow grin.

Another eternity passes and I to move into a period of self-loathing. How could I be such an idiot, how can you go carry on now? How can you stop? What will they think? Put your head into a wall, you shit, you stupid shit! Lay it on a fucking tramline…

“Mr Zammit?”
“Yes?” I pick my head out of my hands.
“Thish is you reports.” I walk over and take the A4 sheet from him, and retrieve my passport which he took for some reason.
“OK, thanks,” I know what it says vaguely, but it’s in Flemish and I can’t read it, “what does it say?”
“It’s a reports.”
“I know. What does it say?”
“Its in Flemish.”

“Yes,” losing my patience, “what does it say?” He shrugs, and I go berserk internally, “Thank you,” maintaining my smile albeit with gritted teeth, “You have been very helpful, while why don’t you put that Beretta in my ear and blow my fucking brains out?” He hasn’t understood a word. He nods me goodbye with an impatient grimace and I leave the station.

In despair I cross the road without paying any attention to the traffic, hell a serious injury and repatriation could be the perfect way out of this mess. I stumble straight into a park, the same one I was in earlier, I sit down heavily on a bench, try in vain to hold it back, then begin to weep uncontrollably.

One of those stupid rabbits hops around my foot.

Joe z

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Okay, it’s important to note a couple of things here, firstly, and most importantly; Joe is okay (to the best of my knowledge) and he does in fact get out of “Antwerp – City of hell” in one piece.

Secondly, the reason this has been split up is because all together the second part was over 5000 words, people love Joe, but they won’t stand for that.

Thirdly, I shouldn’t have to edit your damn posts Joe! And even though I found one or two things to correct in this one, I bet there is more, please everyone, point them out in the comments.

Lastly, the next thing I have from Joe is more current and is quite good, so that will go up next.

Ben

1. we got talking and I…well sort of agreed to set a similar franchise up in Scarborough when I got back; more on that later though. A few of you media people* might actually be very interested: http://www.use-it.be/en/page/20/use-it/

I walked. For a long time, I walked. Stopping perhaps every mile to dump my bags, stretch my back, and accost some passer by for directions, but was still having no luck finding Lange Leemstraat. Antwerp is a frustrating place to walk around. It’s a grid system and actually quite a vast place. It’s also depressingly flat and featureless, and since the avenues are almost exclusively lined by tall townhouses it is impossible to pick out any real landmarks. You are an ant walking through a blue roofed labyrinth. The other frustrations, perhaps surprisingly, are the other pedestrians, particularly their inability to cross roads.

You see, Belgians, despite living in a country with very strict motoring laws that hand pedestrians right of way in almost all situations, are completely dependent on pedestrian (pelican) crossings. Not a bad idea, you might think, the crossings are certainly useful for traversing the busy Frankrijklei intersecting the train station and the Meir, but these crossings are so ubiquitous that even one-lane one-way back-streets have them; and the locals are so docilely deficient in the art of crossing a simple empty street without a green man’s guidance that they will simply stand there; gawping.

When I approached empty roads with red men and small queues, it made me quite nervous. They surely must all be locals, so perhaps they no something I don’t, I thought. I stood and waited along with the group becoming increasingly impatient and bemused as still no cars passed. Finally I decided twenty-five awkward seconds was enough, and strode through the crowd to cross the perfectly safe street defying the illuminated warning of the little red man. I crossed quite safely and turned to see the crowd of Belgians suddenly waking up to this prospect of independent thought and making their own small adventure across the road. This is amusing at first but it becomes a something of drag sixteen tiny one-way streets later. Also I was worried about the legal implications of my leading herds of dosy Flemish people under the wheels of a tram.

After burning two nice new blisters onto my heels I found myself in a park with a little ox-bow lake and a pleasant bit of greenery. It wasn’t really big enough for joggers of any real distinction, but a few fat people were lapping around the lake nevertheless. I sat on a bench for a while and observed what I at first presumed to be discarded tissues wavering around the lawns on the wind. As they wavered over toward me however it became clear that they were in fact rabbits. Little, ridiculous fluffy-white bunnies. And there were dozens of them, I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before. They were hopping brazenly up to nearby toddlers for treats of lettuce, and one even hopped over to the bench I was sitting at, only to make a small pile of raisin-like excrement a short distance from my bags. Grinning at the absurdity I got up, checked my belongings and set off again. I had now been walking an hour since I left the last hostel. I was beginning to think about going back to see if the Japanese guy had decided to stay in the bath.

A van was parked outside the park, its rear doors were open and the compartment was full of laughing police officers. I approached and knocked the inside of the door for manners sake, despite them obviously being aware of my presence. They eyed me suspiciously as I asked where the nearest Youth Hostel was, then after I had finished, all turned around in unison and ignored me completely. This was exasperating and I began to move away from the vehicle, suddenly a young copper, perhaps less than a year older than myself jumps out from the van, the guy was pimply and looked like somebody I know from school. He definitely doesn’t look like the kind of guy you’d put in charge of that firearm I thought as I eyed the pistol hanging from his waist.

“Youth hoshtels down there.” He says pointing at a street about half a kilometer further down the road, “Pasht the Pizsha Huts.” He confirms.
“That’s Langeleem Straat?” I ask, I have already walked up and down it twice.
“Yesh.”

I make my way to it relived and rejuvenated. I know the street now, which narrows down to a mere three kilometers of Antwerp that the hostel could be located upon, now it is surely just a matter of time and increased foot pain before I can rest happily in a soft bunk. The street, as well as being long, is bland, the only noticeable features are laundrettes and closed-down barbershops. The eternal kind of street, where distance was only measurable by the milliliters of sweat rolling from my shoulders and pooling into a cold, clammy reservoir in the small of my back.

I gave in and turned into a bar. There’s only myself, a dog and an old man with a flamboyant mustache inside. I took a stool at the bar, raised my hand to scratch the dog’s head, looked at the dog, thought: if I scratch that dog its pestilent skin will fall from its old flaky skull, looked up and started a conversation with the old guy instead. There didn’t seem to be any barman around to order a drink.

“I’m looking for a youth hostel.” The man looks at me blankly for a short while, “Nevermind.” I say and shuffle around on my stool. Then the man jumps up and grabs my shoulder. “AAAh!” he exclaims, he is obviously very inebriated and his translating faculties are running at a delay. “Yesh, come with me! I know hoshtels. I’ll take yous,” He walks to the door and swings it open theatrically into his face. He tries again and this time exits the building. His little old dog follows and walks into the shut door. It looks at the door with the same patience as an OAP that doesn’t realise the ATM has eaten his bus-pass. Once I attach all my bags onto my back I open the door for it and find its master outside hanging onto a lampost.

“Theres!” The old man points at a building only six doors down and on the other side of the road, “Hoshtels!” It’s no wonder I hadn’t spotted it earlier. It looks just like any other building on the street, and has only a tiny sign next to the buzzer. Boomerang, it says. “Thanks man, I’ll come and have a drink later!” I won’t, but it pleases him and he gives me a wink and a thumbs up then staggers back the ten paces to the bar.

BUZZ, “Yes?” comes a woman’s voice, the tone dull and electronic.
“Do you have, er, like a bed to spare for the night?”
“Wait please.” something goes BUZZ again. I wait for awhile, “Hello?” she asks.
“Hello?” I reply.
“Come in please.”
“Oh right!” I open the door and pass through the cavernous porch. The building didn’t look much from the outside, but inside it is a beautiful, if slightly derelict, Georgian townhouse.

I love these buildings, how you can get lost in them, how the stairs seem to travel higher than their causal increments should physically allow. The sheer ballsyness of their proportion smack bang in the middle of a bustling city. The way they creek and move under your feet, and the ripples of the glass in the window. I shall become rich and buy one very soon, I prophesise self-indulgently before a petite Japanese girl pops her head around the grand doorway of the kitchen and grins me a hello.

I pay 19 Euros for the night figuring that I can always pay for another night the next day if I wanted to. The girl shows me around, my dorm is a brilliant bright huge bedroom on the first floor with about 12 bunks. Only three are occupied; one by a very pretty Spanish girl; one by an absent Polish girl, off studying; and the last one by me. Upstairs there’s a small group of older, gruff-looking Slavs in town looking for somewhere long term to stay and work. Apart from that the place is quiet. I dump my stuff, and aware that I probably smell quite bad, I shower, then climb up into my bed and drift off for an hour or two.

I was awoken at around eight at night by sharp hunger pains. I hadn’t eaten anything since the meager breakfast of bread and cheese, at my hostel in Amsterdam. I felt dreadful, I had to go into the bathroom put my head under the cold tap and brush my teeth to wash away that strange taste of bile that always follows an afternoon nap. Once recovered I whipped my coat on and headed down to the Meir, grabbing a little USE-IT guide and map from a stand by the door as I went. Finding the Meir was easy now, but still a lengthy walk from the hostel. With a slight tinge of bitterness, I joined the throngs of happy couples walking hand in hand through the cosy medieval streets on this crisp St Valentine’s Night. I didn’t think I’d have a problem finding a table though; anyone who takes his girlfriend to the kind of restaurants I usually eat in for their Valentine’s meal, is either looking for an excuse to break up, or simply stupid.

I walked through the seedier areas of town closer to the station. Checking the prices on the menus of the numerous sushi bars and ‘Argentinian grills’ nestled between casinos and strip joints. I didn’t really know what I wanted to eat so I simply looked for the cheapest place possible. Eventually I came out onto the large square before the railway station. It was quite a bleak sight that sweet Valentine’s night, the outside of the Centraal Station- reputed to be amongst the finest pieces of civic architecture in Belgium- was covered in scaffold, undergoing serious renovation to turn it from a terminus to a thoroughfare; and the grand but gloomy Gothic hotels surrounding the square only leave me feeling somewhat melancholic and insignificant.

Fortunately I found a nice bright place right next door to the Station entrance called the Hotel Monico. It was heaving full inside, but I’m pretty sure everywhere else would have been too. I looked the prices up and down and was further resolved. This is the place, I thought and my stomach churned happily. I stumbled in from the cold sniffling, and looked around noticing to my relief that the place was a little more grimy than you would expect from the outside, and although the staff had set up the room with a Valentine’s theme in mind, it was mostly full of frumpy families.

“Table for one please.” I ask the waiter, who looks as though he wants to kill something, he beckons me to follow him with a sharp finger gesture, and he leads me to a table in the far corner near the bar but nearer the toilets. I sit down, and have to stifle a cold humourless snort of laughter when I see the chair opposite me is being used by the staff to drape the fresh Valentine’s theme tablecloths. Whilst sitting waiting, I fiddle with my empty wine glass and think of the girls I’d like to take out back home, becoming more and more sombre until a waitress arrives with a menu and the distraction perks me up.

One scan of the menu and I have settled on my choice, having seen how cute the Flemish rabbit was earlier I was going to eat one served in a gravy stew with mash. I was seriously hungry, and in dire need of a beer, so I summoned the waitress back quickly to get things moving. She informed me that there would be a slight delay with my rabbit. “That’s OK, you gotta catch it first I suppose.” She just looked blankly back at me, before raising an eyebrow and finally leaving. I had turned red…

Joe z

I got off the train in at Antwerp Central, and walked towards the exit through an impressive dome shaped auditorium which was currently hosting a local school choir doing an African aid gig. The children were lined up the sides of the stone stairways and the crowd, quite a large one, had congregated under the dome. I picked my way through them, the protrusions of the tent from my backpack concussing old ladies as I went. I reached the back and stood awhile waiting for something to happen, but the kids just stood there giggling between themselves while their teachers dashed frantically to and fro the center stage, generally looking quite worried. I assumed the CD player was knackered or something so I set off to find a hostel.

It was a cool but brilliant bright February morning, I checked my bag for my fake Ray Bans and went for it, despite a quick scan down the main shopping street, the Meir, showing me to be the only one doing so. I didn’t care I was just pleased to be out of Amsterdam and out of the rain. The Meir is an impressive neoclassical avenue, lined with grand shopping arcades, all topped with angelic gold leaf statuettes, that people like me just won’t notice the first time as we usually have our heads down looking for stray cash (I had found a rain-sodden tenner early on in Amsterdam and since then I have barely glimpsed a rooftop).

I walked to the end of the Meir and past the Cathedral, which took me quite by surprise. It stood up majestically above the main square and looked quite splendid cast against the sunshine. I marked it down for a return visit and walked on. According to my guidebook the hostel was supposed to be quite a rustic little dig further on toward the waterfront. It promised good Belgian beer, and traditional folk music in the evening. Great I needed somewhere truly relaxed and unpretentious after the disappointment of Amsterdam, but after a good hour searching, guidebook flailing in my hand, I was still at a loss. Fortunately a young couple on bicycles freewheeled up alongside me.

“You looking for the backpacker hostel?”
“Easy to tell is it?”
“Quite.”

Anyway they seemed to know which one I must have been looking for and took me along with them as it was on their way. I waved goodbye as they pointed me down a narrow shambly, Tudorish kind of street, the kind of place where the buildings should have had thatched roofs; young oiks should have been running up and down hopscotching their way through the horseshit; and a drunk should have been resting his face against an open sewer. But it didn’t have any of this. The hostel itself was halfway along and had a big oak door that looked shut. I say this as there are certain types of doors that look more shut than others. This door was as shut as a door could be, and buzzing the buzzer made no difference.

I walked down the little street looking for a side-door or back-alley, then returned to have another go on the buzzer before I noticed a small note in the window left of the door, written in Flemish but quite basic enough to translate into “check in 2:30”. It was only one, so I unloaded my bags scarf and hat onto the pavement and crumpled into an unsightly sweaty heap.

About half an hour later a Japanese guy turned up. And went through the same procedure as I had myself. I had tried to explain to him on his arrival, but he spoke so little English that he mistook me as a street bum and paid no attention whatsoever. He proved a little more persistent buzzerwise than me and eventually the door was open my a small bat-faced woman. This was embarrassing, I was sitting leaning against the door with my legs crossed into the lotus position, suddenly I was falling backwards into the midsts of this strange old Belgian’s blouse. My head smacked the hard floor, and I screwed my eyes as shut as possible, even more so than the aforementioned door, when I discovered exactly where my head was.

Eventually I disentangled myself, and tried to nonchalantly shrug the incident off, ignoring the Asian man’s look of horrified disbelief. I turned to the old woman, who apparently hadn’t noticed. She certainly showed no sign of embarrassment or shock, but on her old, leathery brown face it was difficult to ascertain any emotion at all.

“We’re not open yet,” I presume is what she said in Flemish.
“You speak English?”
“No.”
“You have a bed for the night?” I persevered.
“Full.”
“Shit. You know another hostel?”
“Wait moment,” She shifted her malevolent gaze to the Asian man, “You want?”
“Room. Me have a reservation for room.”
“Name?”

I didn’t catch his name.

“I’m sorry (she didn’t look it), we don’t have any room, we gave your room away. Since you have a reservation you sleep in bath.” Her English wasn’t bad for someone who doesn’t talk English. I looked over to the Japanese guy (I think he was Japanese, so I’ll call him that- it feels rude calling him Asian repeatedly), he hadn’t understood a word and looked across nervously to me.

“She says you can sleep in the bath.” I repeated slowly. He looked at me vacant, mouth hanging open, for at least another 10 seconds, “Bath,” I repeated.

“OH OK!” He replied enthusiastically, giving me a big open mouthed smile. He obviously not understood a word I’d said either, but he trotted past me into the dark reception room where the old woman had already returned.

I followed them in to see what would happen, the woman was redundantly explaining the house rules to her new guest. This went on for at about six minutes then the Korean guy took his key and headed out into the hall and upstairs, she turned to me in the darkness and peered at my face. She seemed to have forgotten who I was. “Ja?” She asked, God she was nasty! She was so leathery her head was like an old leather football, laced at the back with a tight weave of Grey hair.
“Another hostel?” I reminded her.

“Computer there,” She said pointing at a heavy closed curtain partitioning the reception from the kitchen, looking around I thought it was a shame the place was full, I could have easily spent a night there it did seem to have a cool country rustic thing going on, in fact I was beginning to think about asking for another bath. I turned to ask the old woman and immediately thought better of it.
“You GOOOGLESEARCH,” Old Belgian ladies shouldn’t say things like Googlesearch, it’s just disconcerting. I found another hostel but there was no printer to make a print a copy of the find us here map. So I wrote the address down instead.

I thanked the football and walked out again into the corridor just in time to see the Korean coming downstairs, his keys held out in front of his face staring at them incredibly perplexed. Surely they don’t sleep in baths in Europe? I picked up the big pile of stuff and headed back down toward the Meir. I was halfway along the Meir when I noticed I’d left my scarf, hat and fake Ray-Bans on the pavement outside the hostel. “Aww fuck,” I said.

Joe z

Occasionally there are opportunities: A town with a good free bibliotheque, or a friendly co-traveller with a laptop to spare; currently I’m writing from a hostel in Slovenia where I was able to hack (quite amateurishly) into the PC and circumvent it’s annoying half-hour time lockout. But after I’ve handled all of my relevant affairs, my emails, couchsurfing.com, facebook, persuading Barclay’s Online not to write my card off as fraudulent etc. I have very little time or energy for any serious writing.

I have thought about investing in a small laptop or something, but that would draw me over toward the legions of the flashpackers. Flashpackers are the kids who stroll about with their Apple iMacs concealed within the layers of specially made rucksacks. They are generally American, most European travelers-especially in this economic climate are, and there is nothing wrong with the idea in itself. It’s just that I kind of think we’re defeating the object of a backpacking excursion when we start carrying entire offices around with us. We lose a sense of adventure and reckless abandon when we have to worry about 600 quids worth of computer equipment hanging from our backsides.

I have even come to resent my little pocket camera for similar reasons. It’s quite unnecessary in this day and age where a simple image search on the Internet could, with so much more convenience, show you any building, town or view I happen to be looking at worldwide. Also there’s only me traveling now that Tom’s gone home, and he… let me put this nicely, isn’t the most photogenic creature I’ve come across on my travels. He hates being photographed (for good reason), and taking photographs. Therefore the gallery so far is made up mostly of unimaginative pictures of myself in front of various landmarks and scenery, scowling through the sunshine in a series of escalating portraits of malcontent, tiredness and general discomfort that is backpacking. So for all the trouble of worrying about losing, breaking or getting it stolen, I haven’t got any decent bloody pictures. So I’m putting off buying a Laptop for the sake of these same worries exacerbated. And because they all have Slovenian bloody keyboards.

So what then? You’ve let us down, you fraud, you charlatan. You’re no writer, no journalist, and you should stop telling all your fellow backpackers otherwise.

Well no, actually, I have maintained a journal in a traditional written form which I’m going to compile into a real physical book when I get home, and probably self-publish with Ben’s money, as mine has pretty much run out already. Until then I intend to take a little leaf from the book of you media types and scrippet. I believe that’s the word. Hopefully that should sate your urges for the poorly written and pretentious blabber of a really shit budget traveler.

I’ll start with a quick summary of stuff I’ve done and eventually get to where I am now in the coming day’s. I should be able to dedicate myself a little more now. I’ve found a hostel in a ski resort in the Bohinj Valley, Slovenia, where hopefully they might be able to give me a job (the boss is going to have a word with me in the morning). This is great because I still have a month and a half before I need to be in Istanbul, and because the girl on reception is a Goddess.

OK, after Hull obviously came Rotterdam and a bus to Amsterdam, on the ferry I had made friends with a couple of chav sixth formers, they were just sixteen, and very keen to discover the Red Light District and smoke a lot of green before they boarded the ferry back that night. I don’t know if they succeeded, because I lost them as soon as it was almost polite. I felt a bit bad, because they were looking up to me as a slightly more experienced dossabout and I think were actually themselves quite intimidated by the prospect of naked ladies. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I had actually never been in a brothel either, so instead I dropped them in a cafe after breakfast.

I was myself, a little disappointed with the RLD, for some reason it took me ages to find, despite being only a street away from my hostel. In fact I came across it by accident walking through an alley on my way to find a frittes shop. Hands in pockets, head down to keep the rain off my face, when a knocking on a shop front window made me turn to see a group of hookers beckoning me over from a luminous red screen. Stark naked, they smiled toothless grins from greasy made up faces, sagging and wrinkled not one of them younger than sixty years old at least. It quite understandably put me off.

In fact I’m not sure I enjoyed Amsterdam very much. It wasn’t the price of the place, or the sheer tackiness of the tourist touts, although these did diminish it’s appeal also. It was just that I had been unable to settle into a traveling mindset. I felt out of place in the hostel, like a cub at a boy scout’s birthday party, and found it difficult to engage with anybody. I went to the Reichmuseum and saw the Rembrandts and Vermeers, considered The Nightwatch my cultural hit and made for Antwerp, Belgium.

Joe z