Bridge-bound in Vilnius, saved by the great people of Uzupis...

I had already understood that travelling implies a constant dislocation of expectations when destiny proposed a memory exercise. Vladas, mi host and founder of Vilnius Hitch Hiking Club, let me know he expected me to leave the house as soon as possible as a result, presumably, of cultural differences. “You are behaving like in a hotel!” he had said. Well, I had taken two eggs from the fridge and have them boiled, and also a piece of cake, since there was nobody in the house and I was starving. I had assumed that the mentioned items did not constitute a hard financial setback for my hosts, but I could have been wrong. My host later explained in an e-mail that you are not supposed to use your host’s resources without permission. By resources, he was not referring to a credit card but apparently to the couple of eggs. In Latin America we don’t complete forms to receive or give hospitality, or phone people to their jobs to ask permission for such things. The host would feel humiliated. A pity, since I otherwise appreciate Vladas very much for his commitment with building a hitch-hiking community.

In that way I meet again with Vilnius in a new way: homeless, bridgebound. I will always ask myself why the bridge has become such an icon of homelessness. In Argentina one thinks first in a petrol station if you don’t have a place to sleep. In Vilnius, after double checking that my friend Sigita’s mobile had disappeared from the universe, I headed for the center. Under the cathedral tower, point of reference of all appointments, a lot of people awaited other their dates. The joy of those who found contrasted with the frustration of those who didn’t. In the same place where Sigita and I had met in our first date, nobody waited for me this time. So I walked to mythic Uzupis, the art district. If a miracle was to happen it had to happen there.

I think it’s clear that Rasta is my protective urbane tribe. In Vilnius they underlined their status. I was soon befriended by a nice bunch of new Rasta friends. They all smoked Russian cigarettes of 7 eurocents a pack. What a delicatessen. Lina and her boyfriend Pukala invited me home. Ona, a friend of Lina, formulated the most specific question about Argentinean culture I was ever asked: what is the chupacabras? I am so surprised I can hardly answer. From their place I explore the decadent glamour of Uzupis...

The Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

When the slow ferry left in Tallinn, the Estonian Capital, I hastened my pace trough the intrincated network of alleys of the medieval town. I was technically in Eastern Europe. Talking about the ex Socialist Republics gets complicated. To most of us these countries are indistinguishable.

.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The three countries share in a high degree its cultural background. In medieval times the area was under strong germanic influence. The Teutonic Knights, a religious – militar order retreating from Holy Land, found in the paganism of Lithuania (last european country to convert to Christianism) an excuse to invade the neighborhood. Part of the Russian Empire, the three countries were passed on into the USSR after a short breath independence in the 20s. They regained their soberanity in 1990. In 2004 the three all togheter joined the European Union, as witnessed by 200,000 Lithuanians living and working in London.

The three countries share, as natural consequence of all prohibition, the phenomena of unmeasured growth. This growth can never be equal for everyone, giving place to weird condensations, last model Mercedes parked among Ladas loaded with peasants and babushkas. In Tallinn, the Estonian capital, glass towers grow like mushrooms, the same to be obsreved in Riga and Vilnius. But set your foot out the city centre and you will find an army of unmantained soviet era appartment blocks, not to talk about great looking and gracefully crumbling 19th century buildings, its stairs arched by uncounted bolchevik and perestroikan paces.. There, in any moment, it seems we are gonna find Raskolnikov flying down the stairs after killing the old woman...


I made it to Riga in the car of a man whose case illustrates the “Baltic proximity”. He was a Lithuanian that was warehouse manager for Coca Cola in Riga and was coming from a business meeting in Estonia... Who better than him to give me a picture of what the people think of themselves. After 300 kms it turned out that the Estonians are the slow going lads, for what they are the target of all jokes, altough their the economy is the one that best resembles a western european one in the area. Average salary here is around 200 euros... Lithuanians (and here the driver talks about himslef) selfportrait themselves as warm (“italians of the north”) ans somewhat unproductive by Estonian standards. In sports, Lithuanian is basketball country, Latvia dies for ice hockey while Estonians are to slow for any ball sport. Other issue that come to light is the independence process. It was not an easy process for everybody. While in Lithuania everybody got the citizenship of the new country right away, in Latvia the goverment denied citizenship to all the population of Russian ascendance, no less than 40% of the pie. Thus, in Latvia, there is a subworld of second class citizens...

On my way to Vilnius I decided to take distance from highways and proceed on minor roads. The change was greater than I had forecasted. Automaticvally i found myself in unpaved roads, where cars were a couple of decades older than the european average. Cool. The towns, ringed by a mist of abbandonment, didn’t qualify to be picturesque. Ocassionaly horse drawn karts mixed with cars. And there i shed a tear. Everything was Argentinian enough to spark my homesickness. A German that gave me a lift put it this way: “It is a pitty that these countries are slowly loosing their culture (he meant poverty). In 10 years everybody is gonna have a new car and everything will look just like any other European country.” He doesn’t know that the people here want to live like in an average European country.

Afterwards, a man stoppped me as I was walking a minor road swearing me that a friend of him could take me to next town. 10 minutes later his friend showed up in a scooter... Mi backpack caused the scooter’s suspension to bend in a way that the men changed their minds. It is getting dark. I see two kids who were back from fishing in the river, and were holding a bucket full of small fish. They are cute and I take a picture of them. When their mother appears I show her the picture of her kids. She is moved, and proud, says that I can camp in their garden, under some apple trees. Next day I made it to Vilnius, and got to know that mi italian passport is delayed because the Consulate in Argentina hasn’t sent the approval, confirming that I am not Bin Laden. Ragazzi, my steps have found an anchor in you. The passport...that chassis of the soul...

Berry-picking in Katajamaki community in Finland.

Katajamaki is only one of the more than hundred sustainable communities described in the 2005 edition of Eurotopia, a volume that each year compiles on going social experiments in the Old World, including info as its population, number of acres, decision making system, and property status. I had heard of Katajamaki in the Rainbow Gathering in the Polar Circle, from Touco, Katrii and Aleksi, three finnish guys whom I later visited in Jyvaskyla, their home town, on the way to the Community. In those days the guys were conspiring how to make money out of the sell of electric mandolines made with biscuits tins. Between line and line they realised the telephone number of the community.

Katajamaki is in the middle of a conifer forest, altoguh the same can be said just about every place in Finland. The main house where its 10 inhabitants gather for each meal dates back to 1905 and was the main buiding of a mental sanatory that functioned until 1917 and that used alternative (and controversial for the time) therapies as taking the inmates to tree houses for some days and colortherapy. Kiutso, one of the 3 survivors of the original experiment team, narrates this with pride, while the sun, childish, plays among the threads of his beard. Self sufficiency is the idea behind any community, and according to the degree it is achieved they can be categorized. Self sufficienccy as a contestation to the divion of work, in which the worker that operates the TV making machine changes his salary for cucumbers and the one operating the cucumber making machine changes his salary for TVs. The idea is to recover the lost conexion with the food we serve on our table, but they also thrust against the idea of private property, everything is owned colectively, the land, the animals, the money. The salary, in case a community sell part of their products in the market, is distributed according to necessity. The model is similar in some points to a kibbutz. Gathered all the members, decision are taken only with total consensus. In this context, I felt honoured when Kiutso asked me if direct trade in Argentina was still flourishing.

But one cannot visit this places and pretend to be an anthropologist and set to scribble lines in a copybook. During the mornings, with a bucket fixed to the body by a belt, we would sit by the berry plants to pick individually those mature, which were later kept in a freezer for the long winter coming. There was job there for an army, it seems we were milking an infinite cow. Somebody in the house was listening to a Mozart vinyl, human sophistication to accompany the most basic of tasks, receiving the fruits of the land. By afternoond we would walk in the forest to collect mushrooms, we would collect potatoes from the garden and prepare a nice meal for the group. In the house (that smells of wood and herbs because they have a large drying room) is always with some visitant. 

The community encourages visitors, curious leave not only a few euros or their work in exchange of their board and food but they also substitute the connectivity of the abbandoned and criticized city, at the same time propagating the communitarian values outwards. In the whole, Katajamaki seemed to me underdeveloped in relation to their potential. Which is good. There is lot to do, but finding people with long term commitment is no easy. Now, Kiutso and Ossi plan to extend the garden to the forset respecting the principles of permaculture, a discipline in vogue among contemporary organic farmers, and which aims to make agriculture and nature coexist.

To Helsinki I arived using the same sign that, attempting to say “Around the world” it merely stammered a “The world, around you”. I had already discovered the mistake, but I had learned from vendors in the streets of Buenos Aires that ortography mistakes are eye catching. My fisrt impression of Helsinki had nothing to do with helsinki itself, and it was happiness, or better stated, melancholy. After so many rural experience and hipie meetings I was I a capital city. That melancholy dennounced an umbilical stigma with urbanism I still suffer. Automatically I started to musitate some tango, the esthetic vibes, that impredictable radio, had tunned with the other capital: Buenos Aires. I awaked from the hallucination and walked trough the city, modern and scandinavianly boring. I had arrived to attend in time th star of the marathon of the Athetics World Championship… Masses of people in the Esplanaadi, that danddy boulevard, fisrtly made me shy to sell my poetry books to people sitting in benches, but then I was turned on by the absurd of the poet Neruda who I was reading and said “it would be nice to roam the streets with a green knife and shouting until freezing to death”. I stayed two days in Siljia’s and jani’s appartment. Siljia was the daughter of the driver that had taken me to Oulu, she had kindly offered me accomodation. With her and her two german friends, Annika and Laura we strolled around the city. Two days later I ferried it to Tallinn, Estonia. On the board, the Baltic States….

AN ARGENTINEAN IN LAPLAND

 

In Gamvik, the fishing village in Northern Norway in which I had been mistaken for a migrant bird and ringed with the number BA20016, the continent had ended. To the north only the Spitzbergen islands and North Pole. Time to set thumbs, dreams and sails southwards, to Istambul, a trip of several months trough all Eastern Europe with the whole of Finland still ahead. In Lakselv I stayed a night in the house of Anna, a local teacher who spoke perfect spanish and whose contact had been given to me by Birgitte in Slettnes. Anna also allowed me to use the photocopying machine in the school to do 35 of my books, enough to keep me alive 35 days more! And the I set off, towards Finland.

An easy way to know Finland without moving from home is to imagine a pine: strong, tall and green. When we have this pine, we only have to multiply it for one billon. The we add an horizon line, some 40000 lakes and that’s Finland. These lands are not deserted: several millon reindeers and some finnish people live there. It’s still not clear how finnish culture has been able to develop in spite of the reeindeer. Some historians also point that even sauna, the finnish national pride, may be nothing but another way of the primitive finns to escape, for some minutes, the reindeer. In north of Finland, called Lappland, another race, pristine, native from these lands, has made the reindeer the center of their subsistence. I have met them before in Norway, they are the sami.

Inari, Ivalo and Vuotso are the three sami villages that I crossed in my way south. In Vuotso I decided to stay the night. From the road I had seen a family gathered around a fire behind their house. To make contact this time, I used a new technic, tea cup in hand I approached them and asked for some tea. Aki’s family understood that I was asking for much more than tea, mainly for company and some place to stay. After the vainilla twinings the beer arrived and then a terrible rain that made us move the fire into a tipee. Only inside the tipee I was asked my nationality, and even in this latitude when they listen Argentina they say Maradona and they do the mimic of “the hand of god”. We could plant bananos in the whole of our country and declare the skateboard only valid public transport, never mind, they will always know us for Maradona. I was asked what did I know about Finland, so I told them, that they had kicked stalinist troops out in an efficient way, almost using stones,that they invented sauna and that they had invaded the whole world with tiny Nokia phones. I was slow, I should have declined the offer kindly, but it was too late, Aki was standing, shouting “sauna, sauna!” and his family prepearing the sauna for me. Inside, Aki poored inmense spoonfuls of water over the heated stones. He seemed to be giving soup to a dragon. I thought I was gonna volatilize in the 10 minutes I joined Aki in this cruel finnish hobby. But I survived and that night I had a bed waiting for me.

 

After 4 hours, the following morning, a car stopped in Vuotso. It was a local sami girl called Saara. Saara split her time beetwen reindeer herding and studying International Relations at Rovaniemi University. Saara thought that using snowboards to work with the animals doesn’t imply a loss of traditional sami values, or the vanishing of their culture. On the contrary she thought that the problem were the southern finnish that still want to see the sami as primitive people who chase reindeer with skiies and live in tends. I am sure the sami are pretty sure of what they are, but in a touristic level, unfortunately, this is the image they give of themselves, converting themselves into their own stereotype, acquired reflexevely trough the expectations of the southern finnish in daytrip from Helsinki. The same happens in the Quebrada de Humahuaca since the mediatization of the Tilcara Carnival. Evverything seems to be about cactus, weaven things and llamas. This takes us to the question if it is possible to contact with corrupting. Can we talk even today about a natural line of development for native people around the world?

                                                     ¡Extraños vehículos que se ven en Laponia!

I stayed one night in Rovaniemi, I wanted to talk more with Saara. She explained me that the rheindeer was so important in her culture that when once a woman from her village married Finland’s second richest man, the townman who arrived with the news said that “the man is very good with computers but doesn’t have any reindeers”. I am still surprised that Saara didn’t earmark me as she does with her animals. Having been ringed in Norway as a bird, I was already afraid that I would arrive to Istambul bearing dozens of marks for different kind of cattle, rings, bar codes, etc.

To Oulu I arrived in one ride in Kari’s car, who lent me his laptop with wireless internet to contact on the spot members of Hospitality Club. Kari stopped for me also with the porpouse of educating his 12 year old son, who was also in the car. A really open minded person. So in Oulu I stayed in Passi’s flat. Passi had just arrived from a year in Ireland and spoke english with a funny western irish accent. These were rainy days, so I mainly stayed home to write.

From Oulu to Jyvaskyla I traveled with Esa. Esa had been in the UN peace corps before becoming a pacifist, and now was hoping to get a life in Lappland permanently. He took me to Katriina’s Touco’s and Aleksi’s house, a beautiful and relaxed place I really enjoyed. I had met them in the norwegina rainbow. When I visited them they were analysing the possibility of building home made electric mandolins with biscuits cans, in order to get some cash. Those days passed timeless, oppoertunity for inner travel.

Frozen bread, black Porsches and migrant birds in Slettnes, Finnmark’s far North.

How dou you say “the end of the world” in norwegian. You say that “Finnmark”. Even if the name makes unnecesary any further explanation, let’s say this is norways far North, Europe’s northermost territory. The landscape is barren, with an average winter temperature of under 10 C. In spite of this, a handful of norwegian and sami people strive to earn a living from this nature, the first fishing and the later reindeer herding. In 1944 the retreating nazi army burn everything to avoid the advancing russians to find any kind of shelter. Those refusing to migrate south were shot down. That event is still a stigma: no construction predates the 1950s. In winter people stroll in their snowmobiles (if you don’t hace one you are not in) or practice ski. There’s not much more to do.

In this land I was hitch hiking after the Raibow gathering in Dividalen. To memorize the name of the fiords that the road passes one of my drivers suggested a nemotechnic that he used with his kids: “a-po-la-ta-ba” (Altafjord, Porsangerfjord, Laksefjord, etc). While for the average tourist the series evokes memories of homogenous experiences, I was still to discover the wide range of things I was to live, walking from fiord to fiord, sometimes as much as 15 kms a day, hitch hiking if vehicules passed, as I did my way to Gamvik, a tiny fishing village in the far north of Nordkinnhelvoya penninsula. I was to explore all degrees of fortune from empty cans collecting to whale biff.

Even before reaching Altafjorden I met Gun and Salah (she, norwegian, he algerian). They stopped for me on the road and shortly after we were having dinner in their mother’s house in Nordstraumen. Her family had a long tradition of helping travelers, sometimes ven giving them some job in the farm. So, the dinner was exceptionally sophisticated (better than the half pack of biscuits my dinner would ‘ve consisted of) and included this flat fish whose name in english I ignore, but it doesn’t matter, there is only one fish which is flat… The flat fish had been captured in the same fiord. Gun’s mother silently orchetered all the hospitality from a corner in front of her TV, without speaking a word of english, and she took care of every detail as much as Gun and Salah. Before letting me go, the following morning, they gave me a pack of sandwiches of herring, salmon, flatfish and dry rheindeer meat (delicious). The first driver of the morning donated the beer abd thus I walked happily, probably with the vipest load of food my backpack has ever carried.

I arrived to Alta, main and only city in Finnmark, owner of a square and cheap modernism (again the german’s fault), with a terrible rain that wasn’t gonna let me alone for two days. It wasn’t the ideal weather for camping but the precious snacks I was carrying motivated me. But I didn’t have the chance, a local man I asked where to camp took me to his house, He was engineer in the local power plant. By evening I was drinking brandy with his family + curious neighbours arrived to meet the southern man… I Alta, that unfrequent card of the hitchhikers tarot, the washing machine, arose. (there were socks waiting since Sweden) Also in Alta I got to know trough an e-mail that my pans, forgotten in the Netherlands, were taking by a friend by car to Srajevo, Bosnia, and are waiting for me there….

Oh fortuna, velut luna, status variabilis” is the first verse of Carl Orffs’s Carmina Burana. And in the following days the moon was to change. It didn’t stop raining for a second, temperature dropped and trafic extinguished. On the 28 I arrived laboriously to Porsangerfjord and locked in my tent at 6 Pm, unable to resist the rain for a further minute (and I consider myself Ireland-proof, but that was too much). At least four rheindeers were lying at 50 mts from my tent. On the 29 I reached Lakselv, another town in the same fiord. I was walking all day under the rain with my water bag full of hot water and pressed against my face to keep me warm. (I had to asked for new hot water every 15 minutes). I also collected every empty can I would see (you get 1 kr for each). I camped behind a big wooden pale blue house near the fiord, beautifuol and abbandoned.

On the 30th I arrived to Laksefiord and stayed the afternoon in a sami settlement, helping to organize the rheindeers labels (they were gonna be marked). Sami people keep a semi nomadic life, living in the inner Finnmark in winter and taking their herds to the shores to graze in the summer. They really live up to date and even use helicopters to trace their herds. Some people expect the sami to live as picturesque primitive people and deny them the possibility of progress, so they can be nice thing to look at during holidays….

I thought it would take me a week to reach Gamvik, but then a constelation of nice events happened. I said goodbye to the sami family and started to walk. I had the hope of buying biscuits on the way, but some place that come up on the map are not towns at all, but the product of optimist cartographers. Nothing did I cross in 20 kms and went to tent dinnerless. The following morning I arrived to Lebesby with only one thing in mind: buying food. But it was Sunday, I had forgotten that detail… so I had no choice but to knock doord and ask for bread. The woman in the first house didn’t speak any english and wasn’t very helpful either: she came back with a big piece of forzen bread, rock frozen, bagged and smelling of salmon. Closer to murder than to gratefulness I addressed my fists to the second door. I still didn’t suspect that that rock hard bread was the first move in a hospitality domino effect. Because Pal’s familiy in the second house not only had bread to offer, but also they invited me in for a shower and a nice hot lunch. It was a numerous familiy, and during the year the all lived in Nepal. So also a door was being opened in Katmandu. That was the first miracle of the frozen bread. When I was about to set sails and thumbs to Gamvik they decided to visit some friends of them there, taking me some 100 kms to the place. Their friends lived in Slettnes, 2 kms north of Gamvik, in a WWF Migrating bird ringing station. Their names were Roy and Birgitte and they were ornitologists.

The 5 of us had tea in the compact, observatory looking station, in the middle of a plain which only other construction was the Slettnes lighthouse, the world’s Northernmost lighthouse on the mainland. I was first introduced to the basic aspects of the habitws of some of the 160 bird species that inhabit the area, some of which come from as far as Antarctica. Some other notably come only in the dark winter months, when it seems there’s no life at all. One hour later Roy had decided I should saty in the exclusive guesthouse that operates in the former’s lighthouse keeper’s house. His experience in Middle East more than qualified him to negotiate the price and make it plummet to less than half of the original. He ninvited me and I couldn’t decline the extravagancy of staying in the first class place. The guest house owner was also surprised of my journey, and invited me some extras, as roayal crab, speciality from the region, that I could have never payed myself. Another plate I had the chance to taste, this time invited by Birgitte, was whalebiff. All seemed to be too much. I had only knocked the door for a piece of bread.

During dinner Roy told me a bit abour his life. As a scientist he jas worked in dozen of countries from Yemen to Iran, in each of which he is happy to give me contacts. In top of ornitologist Roy works as a psicologist, and his concept of life as a game is fond to me: “I lived three months of my life throwing dads to take each decision”. That lightness of being didn’t stopped him from pregressing in our mundane material world, fact witnessed by the black Porsche Boxster he insist to drive at 40 km/h in the unpaved roads of Slettnes!!! Duriong the weekend Birgitte took me in the Porsche to visit some friends to Kjollefjord. When we would hop off the Porsche some young lad would rise his thumb to express his admiration for the bolid. How to explain it was all the fault of a piece of frozen bread?

The last night was emotive for me. We were in the station when Roy and Birgitte decided to give me a souvenir: one of the rings used for migratory birds. He took the special plies, my finger, and pressed it gently. In the metal the name of the station and the number BA20016 are engraved. We also know because of the records that 20015 was a cormorant. The situation was like this: I had reached the extreme north of the world, where fisrt I had been given old bread and then somebody had taken me for a bird and had ringed me. I know I haven’t shaved but… do I look like a bird. Or maybe it’s just that people in this area, so unvisited by tourist expect any arriving being to be a bird! Well, personally I don’t know if I deserve the honour of being compared with the ilustrous birds that cross oceans and continents each year,, but the metaphore planned by Roy’s sensibility fills me with pride. Still to be seen how far I can fly.

Hospitality in Finnmark

In Gamvik bus station I had the pleasure to had a rather quick chat with Vegard Valberg, from the town’s museum. According to Vegard, when the first guesthouses opened in Finnmark in the 19th century, locals complained that people should get hospitality for free. It was the beginning of tourism. More info can be found, in norwegian language, en el libro “Nesselkongene” (Knutsen, 1990) about the process of trade dinasties and guesthouses in Northern Norway.

Chasing hippies in the Artic!!! (Rainbow Gathering)

I have been living in a week-long day which only my biological clock fragments into periods of sleep and awakeness. It’s summer in Northern Norway, the sun shines at midnight, and five past twelve is already sunset. I stayed in bodo for two weeks, with Mohammed and Josefina, two local musicians, Bodo itself is rather ugly, with the average harbour infraestructures at least giving the town a very artic feel. When a local journalist asked me if I liked the town I thought of a chocolate cake and sayed yes with the head.
I had to move, I was still 450 kms away from the Rinbow- Ting hippie gathering, but the second car that stopped for me was that of our norwegians with the genuine offer of trekking over a glaciar inside a cave, and I couldn’t resist. Obviously that night I dodn’t get very far and just camped by the side of the road.
The next day I could see the first effects of the interview with my picture in Bodo newspaper: a amn stops because he read about me in his breakfast, and the officers of the ferry operating from Bognes to Narvik welcome me free on board. Travelling along the E-6 is sets me nostalgic: narrow road but well kept, lakes and fiords, mountains with the last snows, scarce towns and little traffic: everything indicates a nordic sister of the Route 40 (suns for 4,667 kms from Patagonia to northern Argentina). When on the way to Narvik I traveled for the first time in this 3 months in the back of a pick up, the similarity became unbearable. A petty the prices don’t join the game.
Narvik, another gray harbour in a dramatically beautiful fiord, was the artic sanctuary of many nazi battleships. There, loyal to my “spend 0” policy I changed accomodation for a mention in the website of the project, in the hostel where I slept (Spor 1 Guesthouse http://www.spor1.no/)
The Rainbow Family meeting was located in the very end of a valley called Dividalen, which is 50 kms long, in sami territoriy. The samis are the last european indigenous people, they live from rheindeer herding, but they live up to date, with mobile phones and Volvo’s. My first impression when I got to the meeting, with a polich hitch hiker (Maciek) that had joined me, was that I had reached an uncontacted tribe. A couple of dozen people were talking beneath a fire, around there are several tipees. When they see us they shout “Welcome home!” A second look was required to confirm that those nice people belonged to my same time and culture, maybe because of their succesful efforts towards a timeless esthetic. Most of them went barefoot, most of them had dreadlocks, beards were long. They are students, they are mothers with children, they are middle age men. They are european, they are japanese, they are Southamerican. They seem excesivelly cultured and aware, and they think (and I agree) that in some stage we took the wrong turn and that we should trade big cities for small self sufficient communities. They consider themselves a family and they nickname the outside and corrupted world as ‘Babylon’.
I had started tto talk with an icelandic guy who blamed the patriarcal society for all our pain when another arrival happened: a blonde, moustached american guy that dropped his backpack and hugged three of us as if we were his sons. In general there is a kindness and a human warmth that babilonics have long since lost: any eye contact can spark wide and cuasi idiotic smiles. Others live, three swedish guys set off walking for their country (3 days)
In a moment we moved to another fire, near the river. There, Eduard from Romania did a kind comment about Borges, so I thanked by praising Cioran. In the group, in which scandinavians are majority, many speak spanish and have lived several months in LatinAmerica. It’s nice to see american, swedish and french using Spanish as common channel. After the first day my conclusion is that, if Christiania was a revolutionary place, the Rainbow Family was defenitly the “Foreing Legion” in charge of exporting that pride, of keeping the fire alive. I went to sleep just when many others were waking up. The absence of night takes people here to slep rather randomly according to chaotic schedules.
The ‘family’ as any human group also has rituals. By lunchtime we all did a “food circle”, and took each other by the hand to sing: “We are circling, circling togheter, we are singing, singing our heart songs, this is family, this is unity, this is celebration, this is sacred.” It’ s our way of thanking nature for the food we are about to eat: polenta with apple and raisines. Alcohol is banned.
That night I had the opportuniy to join a “vision circle”, in which one of the ‘brothers’ announced a vision of a big meeting in the Altai mountains, in the border between China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The visions of future meetings should be ratified by absolute consensus in previous meetings. People talk one by one as a ‘talking stick’ is passed to them, never interrumpting (in theory, with some exceptoins) subsequently giving the right of speech to their neighbours. The melancholic american girl ended talking about nomadism and Flavio asks please to focalize on the vision, just when the ‘talking stick’ reaches the french guy with turbant who has just arrived and knows nothing about the gravity of the issue, so he seats, takes the stick to this forehead gently, closes his eyes and announces that he visualizes a yellow eagle. Flavio asks again please to leave our eagles out… All that day people was talking about Altai, about the visas, about a truck that the someone of tha family had in Marocco and that could be used for the long trip there. Miki from israel and me think the same, we should set the stress in communities, the meetings are necesaary but are picnics in nature that will not change the world themselves.
The last day (it’s a metaphor, it’s always day) started with a surprise. I wasn’t the only argentinean. Candelaria has tavelling since 1989. She is 41, and her daughter Paula , that was born in Costa Rica, is 5 and can even speak some english. “I saw Menem caming to power and I rushed to buy the ticket”. In the city, one always comes across people that never hot the road or people who did it but came back rather soon (these are anyway those inspiring us). Only in the road we meet the people that made the road their home and movement their air. Cande shares a ‘mate’ with me and tells me about a French family she knows who is having problems with the state because they don’t want to send their child to school, because they are always moving and the child is anyway learning really important things with them and the people they meet. I think in concertino, the german man who has been travelling for 25 years with his bandoneon and his hamag. I also met him here. Some examples can be too much for a single day, I have better go to sleep.

Homefulness in Gothenburg. The three Thors in the E-6. Midnight sun in Bodo

Taking distance from Christiania was difficult, but I finally kept on with my original plan, that of traveling Scandinavia clockwise via Nordkapp, the northermost point in Europe, land of the Sami, europenn last native tribe, and of modern home german tourists. In spite of this, Nordkapp dropped to second row when somebody in Christiania said that the Rainbow Family was gathering somewhere near Oslo. The rainbow Familiy has been gathering people al around the world since the sixties under the ideals of peace and respect for nature. The exact coordinates of the event were unknown. It seems as if the organizers trust Freya will lead the travelers into the right path…. And if you don’t get there is because you didn’t have to be there. The only thing we knew is that the gathering will be on going all july and that it actually was a re-edition of the centuries-old tradition of the “Ting”, popular councils of pagan times. Towards it I directed my intention even before my steps.
Entry to Sweden was made in the car of an afghan exporter who gave me his telephone in Kabul. The following drivers were peruvian, estonian and palestinian, and that gave me a parameter of what I coould expect from Sweden in terms of hospitality. This, added to prices that invite to ascetism (U$D20 for a pizza) caused a first pesimistic day. That day I made it to Helsingborg after having waited for near 3 hours in the road. There I camped in a park by the sea that was crowded but gradually cleared. All of Scandinavia’s national territory is technically free camping space (it’s called the right of all men”), so when I doblu check with a policeman, skeptic myself, he laughed, said yes, and wished me a pleasant stay in Sweden.
The dollowing morning I continued to Gothenburg. There Gunilla was waiting for me, but she left to visit her parents and leaving me her appartment for two days, fridge and internet included (thank you!!). Homefulness was something I had honestly forgoten. Still obnubilated by Christiania I paid little attention to the city, which seemed a bit mediocre to me. Sure it’s a cultured city, but still a normal city with malls and stuff. So I limted myself to strol around the harbour.
In Gotenburg I got to know trough an internet forum that the hippies were meeting not near Oslo as I thought but in some settlement lost above the Artci Circle, and I tooked the decision of going there giving Bergen and other more obvius attraction a great miss. I try to make an ode to mevement out of this trip, not just a rosary of postcards. I promised to let myself be guide more by intuition that by the Lonely Planet. I also took the decision of not spending any more money that I haven’t earned in the same day. With this prices I declare myself in strike. So, I started to offer “Harmony of Chaos”, my travel story book to my drivers.
Trusting provindence I left for Oslo, with zero norwegian kronen in my pocket. In the way a bus stopped for me taking me some 90 kms for free, the a man that bought my book in 100 kr (thank you Klaus), then a vangardist artist (he called himself the Art Ranger) who lived in a camp near Frederikstad in an old russsian army truck and who invited me a pizza and finally a turkish man (Ozdemir) who left me in Oslo Bus Station and even gave me coins to call him if I couldn’t find my contact in the city. I stayed only one night in Ligas’s house, a latvian girl volunteering to convince the norwegian people of joining the EU. I advicesd her that if her really loved Norway she should convince them of talking to each other to prevent extinction (they are 4 millon with an average of U$S50.000 in the bank each).
In Oslo I started my pilgrimage to the Artic Circle. Endless pine forest cover the territory, soon mountains appear, which tops still harbour snow. At the side of the road signs alert drivers of the presence of Muss, the “king of the forest”. I got two rides with guys whose names were the same: Tor, like the viking God of thunder, and in Fagernas I got a ride with my third Tor!!! The third Tor asked me where I was going: “the northernmost possible” – I replied- He was going to Bodo, far in the North, so we drived more than 1000 kms togheter, and what a better guide to Norway that Tor himself…. In Dombas we stayed in a motel that gave me a free night accomodation in exchange for publicity on the website. You can contact them on http://www.slettenmotell.com/
One hour after crossing the Artic Circle we arrived to Bodo, an industrial harbour in a big and scenic fiord. Mohammed, the norwegian musician that I had met in Christiania. You can check their cool ethnic music out at http://www.batty.no/ . With Josefina (the band’s singer) and him we drove to a cliff at 23:45 to see the midnight sun. The sun went down to the horizon line, attempted to sink, and rised again. “Good morning!” –said Mohammed- It won’t get dark until next september. Welcome to the North” . Mohammed also informed me that the clip was a norwegian invention…. Their house was great, with a big carpet with a Buda on the wall, bongos, vinilos and lots of vegi food, and of course..them!! I will stay in Bodo for another “night”, I need to do washing, write this report and get ready to march to north of the north.

The Mercedes of the turkish shoe maker goes off the motorway. Christiania: fatherland of those emigrating from the system.

My entry to Denmark was untidy, it started as a ballet movment but dropped out as bowling strike. In fact, I entered in the Mercedes of a drunkmen turkish man who had just had 25 beers, with the predictable consequence of almost rolling over and ending off the road (I was quick enough to get the wheel myself). As compensation he payed the dinner and that night and camped in a park in Odense.
The following morning my stomach took me to the supermarket rather than to the road. Denmark is not yet in the eurozone, which accidently made me discover how to shop for free. The method implies asking a random person if he could change you a 2 euro coin into local currency. Normally people wants to help so they give you some coins but don’t accept the 2 euros, and the same coin can survive several breakfast and lunches.
In that way I arrived to Copenague. My plan was to stay there just a couple of days. But I discovered Christiania, a section of Copenhaguen that, after funtioning for centuries as militar barracks, it was derelict and subsequently occupied by pacifist, unemployed, junkies and hippies in 1972. All people in genuine search of an alternative social space. The following day a left wing newspaper comes out with the headline “Emigrate with bus number 8”. Against all odds (everyone seemed to be quite sure that the area was gonna be just a shelter for shoplifters and junkies) and after surviving several police raids, Christiania gained its right to exist as a social experiment and now counts 1000 inhabitants which are highly organized into a free town with its own currency and so on. Danish government present atittude towards the Christiania issue is to kick them out: 85 acres in downtown Copenhaguen are a real estate temptation. So slowly measures are being taking, as forcing the inhabitants to take a legal address (so from now on Christiania as an entity doesn’t exist anymore and we can understand what individual rights were always intended for…)
The first thing you see when you ger in is a sign that when you look at it from the back it says: “You are entering the EU” (in reference to Copenahaguen. Another signs says: “Say no to hard drugs”. Saying that in Chrstiania everybody smokes hash without, even in front of their children, without moral dilemas, is to reduce things to a single dimension. The point is for me that it’s a space design to live and not to consume. All the town is pedetrian area, people move around in bicycles, and trash is recycled. A big factory whose chimney has been covered by vegetation (what a metaphor!) houses several flats as well as a café. Opposite it there’sa tibetan stupa and a large parke where corwds sit to read a book, eat out salads (everybody seems to be vegetarians), smoke, jaggle, etc. When police is around people’s attitude rasumes their philosophy: they do “om” all together to keep the off…
Christiania is by force a meeting point for people in spiritual trips. We all look for a way out and we try all sort of keys. I could prove it, I stayed all week in the house that a group of people were inhabiting near the lake. They were Kir, blonde rasta danish girl, pacifist and owner of the VW van, she spends several months a year volunteering in Cambodia; her friend Maya, danish, taoist, with whom we shared the idea of letting the flow of the universe determine our steps, Helga (only Christiania citizen of the group), Lisa and Nina, to whom I helped to build a metal ostrige for a circcus event I will never see.. And there was also Mikkel, from Sri Lanka, who also thought someday to start a self sufficient community. And many other norwegians, spanish, dreamers, lost ones, they all promise to leave and next day they are meeting in the park and saying to each other: “still here?”. The place is sticky.
In the evennings we would go dumpster diving, that here throw away packed and safe food, God knows why. Parasiting the system we complain about doesn’t seem to be very coherent, but it’s good for my budget and all those bananas and apples and vegetables don’t have the fault and should be eaten, it’a matter of respect for the food. At night we would grill everything collected and it was hard to believe that all that delicious food was basically from the bin. Little did I get out of Christiania during the week, and one of the times it was to print my book, that finally is ready. I finished it in Claudio’s house, an argentinean exiled in Denmark in the early 80s, who never came back. He lives from social security, in haooy loneliness. Lot of people that fought for liberty in our countries are here. That’s why when we attend a concert in Southamerica we only see under 40s. Where are the missing ones?
Christiania shows the world two things, that rebelion is not generational determined, and that the hippie movement didn’t collapse, it is just suffering a low tide. So I exited Denmark, without having ever changed a single danish crown but with cash, thanks to the books and to the providential finding of 400 DKR in the street.

The argentinean virus in Holland. “Mate” in The Hague. BBQ in the squathause at Delft. Walking over the water in the North Sea.

Considering the size of Holland, its people has done many tricks. When thinkinf of Holland some conjure up the famous wind mills or colourful tulips. The postcards have the fault for that, but these guys also founded New York (under the name of New Amsterdam, before being elbowed out by the British) and Big Brother (yes, Dutch idea). Other things were not invented but improved, as bicycles (not only each street has a parallel bike path but also cities are linked by them). Other Dutch delikatessen is legalizing everthing that has been forbidden for centuries by Roman right: private property finds a nice stop in the right to squat houses whose owners cannot keep in inhabitable conditions. And legalized marijuana deserves a separate essay. Enough with saying that half of the drivers were smoking and driving without worries. What an irony that with all this legal relax it’s to Holland where you go if you behave really bad (ask Milosevic).
Mi friend Stephen lived in Delft, a small managable, and old nice city, with it’s mandatory channels crossing it, it’s burg houses in flemish style and a couple of 13th century churches/ The first hing I saw when I entered his house was a pack of yerba (Stephen has Dutch passport but blue and white heart) and a cat making unreturned caresses to a beer box. The first day was for nostalgy, we remembered the time we both walked to the town of Crotto (in Argentinean Pampas)… The wines are just like wines, they get better with pass of time.
On Sunday we rode our bicycles to The Hague, where there was a free muscic festival which was attended by 100,000 people. There, wuth perverse pleasure, Stephen took the “mate” out of his backpack and started it. In land of free marihuana the old yerba caused a magnific interest and a prportional deception. They would get close tiptoeing to see what our strange pipe was, asked if you could get high and went back to their places. Big news during the concert: Maxima, the argentinean born Dutch princess has had a new son. People clap… but it’s not mine!!! I swear!!!
The conspiracy’s agenda said on Tuesday we were to do an asado (large argentinean BBQ with steaks and stuff). This was carried on in the squat house at Nieuweelaan. It was the first asado I did in the shadows of the law, since dutch law banns fire… But the steaks coocked well anyway. While we eat we talk. Stephen is tired of working in Holland. As an hidraulic engineer his job is to calculate the impact of a 5mm water level rise in 2114…. And he feels his job is useless to the rest of mankind, so he is evaluating accepting a job for the UN in Chad. That’s why you worked in Argentina? “Yes – he answers- but there the more expensive my project was the merrier for the government”
Two days were used in getting a new italian passport in Amsterdam. I went and came back in train using Stephen’s month pass and smiling without saying a sinlge word to the inspector. My italian passport went missing in a letter from Dublin to Milan. When the new one is ready Stephwn will post it to wherever I’ll be. So far the “blue” (the argentinean one) goes unscatched, with the syrian visa and a rather lost looking swiss entry stamp. The italian ID is used as ajoker sometimes should I prove my tecnnich europeanhood… That’s what I call “selective invocation of grandparents”
The week ended with an attempt to walk to one of the islands in the North Sea during low tide. Something like the dream of all hidraulic engineer… to feel like Moses as the watera give way. We moved to Gronningen for that. The driver that took me there pick his girlfriend up in a sort of transitory camp with many old circus wagons used as houses. More people looking for a way out of this system. I loved it. So we finally started our water trekking, with maps and GPS, but half an hour later we had the water in the neck so we went back. As you see I carried the cross in Dysseldorf but failed to walk over the waters. I am sorry to upset those who saw in me some kind of mesihas. But multiplying bread I do it quite well. My original budget was 5 euros and thanks to everybodys hospitality I couls reduce it to 2,60. The disaster of the week: the toothpaste opened in the backpack… I set off for Denmark

Soccer in Dresden. Carrying a cross in Dusseldorf. Arrival to Holland.

Week number 7, country n.10, city n.22, car n.100. The week started with my arrival to Dresden, in Saxony, Germany, famous for having been reduced to rubbles in a febraury noght of 1945, in which the most devastating conventional bombing in history. During DDR times the area was known as “the valley of the people who don’t know”, due the city’s to deep location to receive western TV waves. In Dresden I was waited by Veit, founder of Hospitality Club, a free accomodation exchange website with 60,000 members worldwide. That explains why I don’t use hostels and people is waiting for me in every city I go. It’s two years since argentinian backpackers organized in http://www.autostopargentina.com.ar/ have been pushing the Club in the latino web space, so meeting each other in the real world was something in the to-do list. Since both of us were quite busy with web-related projects we quickly adopted a rutine. We would wake up and turn our laptops on even before thinking in breakfast. This rutine had two major exceptions. The first when a heat wave pushed Veit out of his bunker and onto his grandmas’s pool. Surprise for me, shameful latin in a land of retired hippies, his gradnma was a fierce naturist and didn’t allow anyone to walk into her house with shoes, or into the pool with bathing clothes. The second time off was going to the Altstadt to see Argentina- Germany match. The Dresden Altstadt, or Old Town, is only now completely rebuilt after 50 years of looking like an abbandoned building site. In the bar all they were all germans, so I had to wait for the goals to unveil my small argentinian flag.
I arrived to Dusseldorf on Wednesday. Dusseldorf is one of the cities of the famed Ruhrgebiet, heart of german steel industry until the 50s, an amazing net of urban tissue in which no less than 10 cities have over-fenced their neighbours to become just one big amorphous mega city of 7m people. I was taking there by a bussinesman anxious to change his life. We talked about time management in our lives, He said: “Death is a good consultant” when I suggested the idea that, if given 24 hs left to live we would reconsider the way we used our time. Sanna waited for me in Dusseldorf, a swedish student that lived in a students resident with other connationals. I had to enter and leave the premises using the backdoor. The girls at the nicknamed “swedish embassy” were keen on preparating a midsummer party-bbq to celebrate the longest day of the year, loyal to that nordic costume of feeling grateful to life whenever temperature reaches 21 degrees. The celebration consisted in, according to Sanna’s words, dancing like froggs around the middsummer tree, actually a wooden cross festooned with leaves and flowers. With such a program who would even think in the cinema… Iy’s the kind of activities which I regard as extremely important and worthy of all international cooperation, so next night we were roaming the Rhein’s shores in our bikes and depredating its flora (tradition said no less than 7 different flowera should be part of the ornates). Sanna had already sketched the midsummer tree, and with that IKEA-spirit the tree was rady the following morning. Just that it was actaully a cross. “And how do we carry the so-heavy cross on our own?” I was easy prey of the persuation that a couple of swedish barbies can operate on a southern man, and not that I give any religious connotations to my trip, but midday found me crossing Dusseldorf’s downtown with the cross on my back. Some women made the signal of the cross, all the cars gave way, everything but the printed towel trick. In the Rheinpark the girls said here and we hammered the cross to ground. If the scene seemed an anachronic christianazation of the germanic lands, when the rest of the swedish comitee arrived with salmons, herrings and beers it was clear it was about about partying. Soon they started to dance around the decorated cross. And yes, I had to dance like a frog. Some Hospitalitu Club members in Dusseldorf also turned up in the party, really interested to photograph HC peace flag number 3, which I am carrying aroun. It seemed they had bid with HC members of some other german city that they would receive one the flags before them. In the gropu there was also a guy from the US and a girl from Poland.
On Saturday I left for Delft, Holland, where Stephen was waiting for me. Stephen is a Dutch hifric engineer that drinks mate and sings cumbia perfectly. Terrible what the argentinian virus has done to european backpackers. Five months in Tapalqué were enough for Stephen. I found him in a regretable condition, his shelf stocking packs of Rosamonte yerba mate. The trip to Delft was a bit complicated in the beginning, due to the density of cities in the Ruhr area and I have to admit that I got the forst ride in the wrong direction, to Bochum. But I was lucky and the second driver took me to the German border in Venlo, even if he was traveling nowhere. During this week my finnances recovered a bit, thanks to my friends and HC members. Some day I manages to spend 0, and that’s good after the devastating effects the Calais robbery had on my wallet.

A lake in Sudtirol, a soup at Munich-s Hofbrauhaus...

The sixth week of this trip was the first I started alone. In the last seven days I pilgrimed around the valleys and villages of Sudtirol, and then I crossed the Alps trough Austria, into Munich, in my way to Lepzig.
In a gas station in the Milan-Venice highway it only took me 4’ to find Francesco, a psicodramatist who was going to Bolzano, in that province that italians cal Alto Adige and locals mora apropiately Sudtirol. At the foot of the Alps, this lands belongued for centuries to the Austrian Empire, who lost it to Italy in WWI. Three things took me to spend a few days in the region. The first: the european highways good quality conspire to conceal the fact that one is crossing mountains. To feel the distance I felt it necessary to spend some time in the mountains themselves. I decided that on the sport, in the car that could ‘ve taken me to Munich, my original destination. Secondly, I wanted to see myself that Sudtirolers didn’t speak italian but german as first tongue. And finally, I wanted to get lost in the mountains for a couple of days.
In this qway I took a laterals road and there I had the forst contact: the young guy who was driving the VW Golf didn’t speak italian at all, but german. He took me to his town, Muhlbach, whose name indicates to whom this lands should belong… There I realised it was Sunday and all the shops were closed, so I had to pay E5 for a plate of pasta!! In a 3 star “Gasthof”. I camped near town.
The next day I bought a trekking map of the Pfunders valley at Mulhbach Tourist Office and I sit there to update last weeks reports to the newspaper which Sasha (thank you) kindly sent for me. I left some lulggage in the T.O and set for the “remote” Pfunders valley. My destination was the Eisebregsee , a lake at 2500 m in the Dolomitian Alps. Pfunders is a typic alpine village with calssic german houses, with fowered balconies and gothic writing signs. Trafic signs are bilingual, but commmercial ones rarey are. Each house is twin: at the side there is a giant wooden store house which looks like a inhabited chalet from the distance but is only used to store wood and tools. In the supermarket they spoke ti me first in italian for courtesy, but then thy repeat in german, it’s clear who is in charge. When Sudtirolers speak in italian they innocently transport their accent and the result is a pace marked italian, in which each word seems to be individualy kicked into the air. But I couldn’t complain: I had learnt german thanks to the weirf combinationof a philatelic catalogue and the CDs of Lacrimosa, a german gothic metal band, which left me in better conditions to discuss philosophy than to ask where the WC was.
From Pfunders I walked to next village, Dun, where italian miners left their tools and there’s no more road. I camped that night in the towns parking place, and eat sandwiches. Following morning I started my trekking to Eisebrugsee. Zigzaging among huts and cows and following a fiere stream that descended from unreachable heights. Soon the mountains loose their pines and the valley opens into high pastures, from where the first snow surfaces are visible. Two hours later I was in the lake, sumissed in an artic sleep. Being only two hours from the glaciars where Oetzi was found I had to go back: the ice started suddenly to cever many meters of the footpath, and I didn’t have any special boots to walk in the ice. When I went back to town I was soacked, but sudtirolers are hospitable. A asked a young woman and she seemed happy that I took a shower in her very nice house. That night I put up the tent iside an alpine storehouse, and used the camping kitchen to cook some spaghettis with sweetcorn, cheese and ham.
On Wednesday I went back to the motorway and headed for Munich, where I got in 4 lifts. First a girls from Sudtirol who didn’t feel herself italian or austrian, but whose father was a fanatic pro-austrian, to Innsbruck, then a electromechanic technic in overall to Garmisch Partenkirchen and then a lawyer to Munich. I was dropped off in a petrol station near Westendst where Christian from HospitalityClub.org collected me. Christian was a french guy studying chemics in Germany.
Munich produced in the last century a millon BMWs, a Pope (the last one) and infinite liters of good beer. Some weakness of the flesh makes me more grateful for the third thing. Soon Christian and his friends, a bunch of french students, took to my first Biergarten. These are a victory of the superlative. Far from the tiny spaces of british pubs the german alcoholic culture estipulates big open spaces for 2000 people, with tables all over and where the empty pints are collected in a little truck… Does the drinking manners of germans and british mirror their personality or even political ideas? Could be. British victorian ethics of private actions are still visible in the facts that no serious pub has windows showing the inside, while german collective spirit finds expressions in biergartens. On thurdsay I visited the Hofbrauhaus, a beer hall for the last 500 years. I took sit, but when I saw the price (E6,20 for a liter of beer!!) I reconsidered the idea, and started looking in the menu in search of a compromise between decorum and affordability. Decorum mean that mustard and ketchup were out of the question. I will start saying that I am deeply proud of the soup of the day that I had. Any tourist can say he has had a beer in Hofbrauhaus, but anecdotes consist of the contrary, they are deviations from the average. I paid th E2 of the bill and went away happy with my class…
To Leipzig I arrived in two lifts. First just from one part of Munich to the other, in a very nice sport car, a Smart Bravus, his owner, Kai, was very kind and even if it was not his way took me to right place to hh. There a czech girl who worked in Munich as a waitress, and who had a very particular dilema: a man who attended the restaurant wanted to present her with a Porsche in order to win her favours. “Yesterday he phoned me and asked what colour did I want. What should I answer?” “Naturaly, black!” – I replied. In such a relax way we entered the ex- DDR, with no walls or Stasi agents checking our passports.
In Lepzig I was waited by Clemens and Katahrina, who I had met in Pueblo Tomado 2002, one of the Southmerican hitch hikers meetings (http://www.autostopargentina.com.ar/), in Orense. He is a psichiatrist and she is an architect, and the have tiny Franz too! One year and a half old. They showed me around town, a mix of barroque buildings and functionalist communist era buildings which Katharin thinks are in any case better in style than the new shopping malls. We saw St Nikolai church, where the peaceful demostrations that culminated with the dimision of the DDR government started. Also, close by, the church where Bach used to perform. We had a BBQ on the last night, and the folllowing morning I left for Dresden, with a new European road map, present from my friends! (thank you!)

Milan: trains and goodbyes.

The last 2 weeks happened in Milan, Italy, where we arrived in 30 hs from Calais, France, where all our camping gear had been stolen. Milan purveyed, thereafter, tranquility to organize ourselves, evaluate the damage and continue. It was also a lapse to take important decision.
Whern we stepped down from the 4x4 that had taken us to Milano from Locarno, Switzerland, we were recceived by my sister Verónica and my brother in law. Horacio. I hadn’t seen them for 4 years. My sister is expecting his first son for the end of June. He will be called Jeremías,and in the ecographies he seems, according to my sister, to be sucking his thumb. I suggest he is thumbing… confirming that he takes after his uncle. In that way. Each time my sister would say “ah” we would all stand up, ready to run to the hospital.
The following mid day, we set to the city. New for Verónica, I had already lived in Milan in 1993 for a whole year, and beside famose monuments and landmarks the city was incorporated in me in a more quintessential mode, as if a particular orchid identifiable because of its fragance. Thinking of Milan my mind would thus evoque its old orange trams harvesting sparks among high turn of the century palazzi and an embracing heat. Yes, trams and heat.
For those who prefer more conventional reference points, we quickly arrived to the Duomo, a gothic cathedral which construction lasted over 700 years. No wonder it’s the biggest in its style. Napoleon was crowned king of Italy here in 1802. Crossing the Piazza del Duomo among millons of pigeons who must have bothered Napoleon as well we arrived to Galería Vittorio Emanuelle, goof place to drink an expensive coffee or try clothes from humble designers such as Gucci.
Milan can show off the architecture laid to it by the genious or the megalomania of famous men. The Stazione Centrale was built following Mussolini’s wishes, and if one focuses over the stampid of japanese tourists on the details of the marble one finds the fascio (little axe simbolizing fascism) and the roman number IX at a side. That is 1931, or year 9 in Mussolini era. Modest dude.
On the other side of the city we find the Naviglio a channel that has connected the city with Pavia since the 12th century. The net was improved according to the plans of Leonardo Da Vinci, who among other thing embellished the city with a mural of twelve men waiting for a dinner that turned to be only bread and wine. Since the catering sector has improved. So much that the sculptors and painters that have nestled around the Naviglio area for centuries are challenged now by pizzerias and posh restaurants. The shop owners don’t want to renew the rnt contract to the artist because they receive more tempting offers from gastronomic developers. In this way economic functionalism and estate agents promise to cancel art there where it should grow stronger, close to Leoanardo’s masterpiece. As a way of protest, the Naviglio artists organize singing sessions on the riverside boulevard, which also have politic colours: they sing in milanese dialect. When I told them I was writing for a newspaper they declare their simpaty for Lega Lombarda, a conservative regional party, and their apaty for the clandestine sellers from Senegal that work unmolested and untaxed in front of their atelliers. They artist were also very happy with my comments on air to the radio, in favour of the conservation of the art district, so they invited us to dinner in one of the studios. (picture)
In other provinces of art, Milan is also famous for being the sit of the biggest Centro Socialeof the country: the Leoncavallo, which operates in a unoperating factory. A Social Center pushes arts but is also socially commited with a whole series of issues (as defending the rights of senegalese people to sell in front of the atelliers). No wonder here it also smells of displacement: the directors told us, among batucadas, that they have to move, and not that the factory plans to open its doors again. To summarize the spirit of the place let’s say that we asked for a bottel of wine which label was mute about any harvest, origin or variety, but instead commemorated I don’t know which demostration of the 1970s, with detail of the number of arrested and opressed…
But what do italians think of Italy? Coming from the north of Europe the word ‘crisis’ becomes new. And since when? All agree: from the beginning of Berlusconi era. But they also blame the euro, not so much because the the poor bimetallic coin, but because of the insane way in which italian companies converted prices. When last week France vetoed European Constitution, Lega Lombarda proposed the return of the old lira. The idea generated more than the consistent enthusiasm of old ladies. It left italians thoughtful, thing worsened by the pale draw of the azzurri with Serbia.. At least those from Milan could celebrate Clementina’s liberation from her kidnappers in Kabul.
Milan also marks a giant turn in this trip. Veronica and I decided to take different roads and split for as long as life wants it. She received some nice proposals to work with her paintings in Spain, and it would have been of infinite egoism to ask her to continue such a long trip. Verito, your were brought by a beer in the narrow wooden bar of Centro Cultural Cortázar, your were taken away by the train E327 of plataform 8 at Milan Train Station. Well, I guess trains are often servants of destiny, nothing left to do.
I held my tears as I could, but when they finaly flowed they condensed the sadness of a thousand empty Duomos. But life and this trip continue.Tomorrow I set thumbs to Germany.

The robbery: half Europe in two days.

The fourth week started with a side trip to Wales which ended as a side trip to Cornwall when the driver of the Volkswagen van that gave us a ride said that was his destination. I know, we find perverse pleasure in obbeying to the sudden branches of the road. In that way we had a nice day in a remote fishing village called St.Ives, where low tide caused boats to seem abbandoned toys on the beach. We then went to London to collect our sirian visas. On the way we got a ride with a couple, she was english, he was maori, and they suggested we should all go and camp togheter. That’s how we ended drinking japanese rice wine (saki) with a maori in an english forest. Before getting to London we saw Stonhenge and traveled in the car of a former football manager of the Islas Malvinas team.
In London we collected our sirian visas and hit the road for France, taking the Channel Tunnel road. Once on the other side the idea was to reach Milan, where my sister Veronica lives from 1989. We talked to many truck drivers, but they were all afraid we would be trying to get to France ilegaly. We managed to get to the slipway to the tunnel, only to be removed by the Kent police. We camped in a soccer ground in the closest village.
It was the ferry to take us to France, on the following morning. As we had already hitch hiked across the sea from N.Ireland to Scotland the thing wasn’t a challenge at all, and we really wanted to leave England at once. In France there is no one to stamp our passports. Frontier Police stand is empty, they are sensible enough to lunch time as to forget their commitment with paneuropean paranoia. We walked to a giant Elf truck stop, what everybody’s plan there was to sleep. We met a couple from Etiopia, who were trying to cross to England without passports. We talk to them, we know how impossible is their plan, but they want to try it no matter how, so we don’t want to discourage them. We slept in a truck from Cyprus, whose driver had promised to take us as far south as Venice next day.
On the morning we found all of our camping gear was gone. Kitchen, tent, sleeping bags, and the list goes on. We had left our backpacks in the back of the truck. We were already on board the truck, bound for Venice, when we connect things and we discover we were traveling with the thief. We asked to be dropped off in a petrol station. It’s midday and the sun burns, we are somewhere in Belgium, we don’t know where, with no map, no tent and more than 1000 kms away from Milan. It’s the beginning of a road marathon against time. As a hitted ship that sets sails to a friendly harbour, in that way we headed for Milan. Three years before I had lost a tent on the first day of a long trip to Argentinian Nortwestern Valleys, and it had been the best trip of my life, sleeping in curches, monasteries and the ocassional hostel. Yet, Frankfurt promissed to be more expensive than Cafayate for lodging.
With that scenario we did a really technic trip, thus priorizing speed of the road chosen and their landscape value. Belgium lasted less than a cube of ice on whisky. Belgian hospitality deserves mention: a woman phoned all his phone list looking for a second hand tent for us. Around 5 pm we were near Koln, in Germany, thanks to a Ford Mondeo of a belgian army officer whose job during the Cold War was repairing atomic bombs. We move fast, in the autobahn there are no speed limits. A police inspector drove us in his BMW at 210 km/h to Montabauer, where the ICE train station is, and there a man who defined himself as a doctor for the soul took un in a Land Rover Discovery to Limburg. It seemed the man was just back from a conference in Montabauer of an argentinian shaman who couls see the future.
When Limburg turned up with its glorious gothic cathedral presiding the Lahn Valley we knew we deserved to stay overnight in a nice place.. We are in Hesse, one of the german 16 landers. Hesse was always famous for exporting mercenary troops, some of which were sent to soffocate rebelions in the american colonies for example. Veronica was worried, I promise her we will sleeo under roof, no matter how, to see a smile again in her face. We started to walk around town. Its beauty makes us forget about the situation for a while. The old town is plenty of fachwerk style houses from the 13th century. They seem to be about to fall in any moment.
Looking at those wonderful houses today transformed into pizzerias and beer gardens we realized that it’s actually plenty of italian establishments. I talk to some of them, and one gives me a hint: the priest at the church is italian. It’s night and the gothic cathedral shines in the distance. Fascinated with the possibility of sleeping in a place all tourists only see from a distance we climbed the steep streets, only to find the priest was on holidays. But we found an Italian Association. Dinner is on them, tasty pizzas with mushrooms and salami.
But we still don’t know where we’ll sleep. We go to down town again. Families socialize among mozarella and lagers. We talk to many other italian shop owners, but none of them gives a solution. Paying a hotel means spending the money of the next ten days. Italy seemed a star who had already performed its nefeci influence of the day. We had already decided to stay awake in the park, already used to that happiness style “lady and the tramp” when sothing happened. I asked for fresh water in an ice cream shop –naturaly owned by italians- to discover that Fabio, the owner, had backpacked in Patagonia three times and knew the place better than us. After enjoying excelent ice crems and talking for a long while we went to sleep, in a nice room in the first floor of the ice cream shop.
At the following mid day we were already crossing into Baden, the last of the german landers before Switzerland. It’s a land of inventions: automobile and coo-koo clocks were invented here. We got into Switzerland with argentinian passports without hassles. We quickly passed by Zurich and went for Luzern. Only afterwards the Alps turned up in the horizon and we started piercing mountains… Piero, a swiss from the italian cantón Ticino tells us proudly that his country is the homeland of direct democracy. The government makes a referendum for each law. The second pride of the swiss is their neutrality. Swiss hasn’t gone to war for 800 years. But the issue needs a deeper analysis. It’s easy to believe in the idea of a romantic and filantropic pacifism. But the country is armed to teeth and even women do militar service. Neutrality and highly trained army seem to me the 2 sides of a false coin, morover when you understand that it’s in the banks of the pacifist Switzerland where tyrans and multinationals have deposited the earnings caused by their wars and explotations. Piero assures may Switzerland be challenged, the population is able to self movilize. 700,000 Swiss keep weapons at home and once a year their skills to use the are tested. “Only when you are strong you can be gentile” –it’s the natinal moto- It seems the government took William Tell seriously.
We layed San Gottarde tunnel behind. On the other side the radio transmits in italian, we are in canton Ticino. Piero leaves us in Locarno, in a petrol station, around 9 pm. A man goes down his new 4x4 and takes the hand of the petrol pump. He doesn’t know what is gonna happen to him. He wears suit, tie and glasses, and due to statistics more than to prejudice we don’t trust it’s going to work. But when I explained him we were going to Milan I can’t hold a tear. I am emotionally tied to Milan for having lived one year of my childhood. Antonio must have perceived this, for he not only took us to Milan but left us in the door step of my sister house. During the trip we enjoyed a nice chat, he was always kind in spite of having a radically different lifestyle. We had made it, we were in Milan. They will need to do more than steeling our gear to stop us!!!