ESCAPE FROM THE COLD COLD ALPS

The train offers a unique and spectacular view of the Swiss landscape. The more pressure Africa puts on Europe the more these mountains just keep rising skyward, while renegade India covers the eastern flank doing the same thing in the Himalayas, sliding in and under like trying to steal a base. But for me Switzerland is defined by its lakes, not its mountains. They’re everywhere, pacifying the violent rugged landscape. It’s like a movie where the actors are natural landmarks and the acts are tectonic movements, all occurring in geologic time. It’s like a movie in 360 degree Sensurround happening right outside the train window, for Europe is defined by its train travel, too. Buses are typically only local here. It’s like a movie where all of Europe plays a partial supporting role, each major nation occupying a corner of the country and meeting somewhere in the middle. There’s a reason Switzerland is historically neutral. It has to be, with component German, French, Italian, and Romansch ‘other’ sections. This is Europe in microcosm, their pride and their prejudice, their heart and their handicap. While Switzerland learns four languages, America and the English-speaking countries create the popular culture that the world lives on, that serves as its operating system.

We’re moving into the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland now, a part I’ve only seen briefly before, crossing the border at Chiasso. Borders are only a formality now, and not even much of that, maybe a Customs or Immigration officer looking at a passport or poking a bag, MAYBE. Sometimes they don’t even wear uniforms, just flash a badge. It’s only a few minutes to Milano from here, where I catch the train to Torino. The industrial heart of Italy doesn’t offer too much more than that, if I remember correctly, though it was one of the great new cities of the Middle Ages, along with Paris and London. That’s young by Italian terms. I’m traveling light now for the first time this trip, all my road food gone and no reservation for the night. Whether I’d have made the reservation if I’d had the Net to do it, I’m not sure, but I won’t pay the price of a meal to use the Net for an hour unless it’s absolutely necessary. I still don’t know why the cost of living can be so high in some countries in Europe, typically cold low-population Germanic ones, and not others. I’ve almost decided it’s all ultimately based on real estate values, but I’m still not sure, and that in and of itself doesn’t really answer much. Why is the real estate expensive? Italians complain bitterly about prices going up with adoption of the €uro, and that seems correct, perhaps explained by an increase in real estate values, or just merchants taking advantage.

At least trains are cheaper in Italy, but nothing fancy like those in some other countries. The clickety-clack of rails and tracks is hypnotic and soon I catch myself nodding off. Then I catch everybody else nodding off. Exccept for one or two people, THE ENTIRE COACH IS ASLEEP! I feel better and cop another wink. People ask me what I do to pass the time on trains. I nod. Outside the sky is clouding up and soon it’s raining. At least it’s not cold like Zurich. The sun is still high in the sky and we’re running on schedule so I’m not too worried about finding a room. I only worry if it’s late and/or a weekend and/or high season. Worst I’ve ever done was a $129 room close to Stansted Airport outside London. Ouch! At least they picked me up, nice of them since I was half dead already, rigor mortis setting in and that smell emanating. I almost booked a $60 place in Torino several days ago from Ljubljana, but hesitated on the final click, deciding to keep my options open. I may regret that decision. If I’m lucky they’ll have a booking service at the train station. They do. I request a place with wi-fi but back off that quickly to keep the cost done and snag a place for $50+change. Italy still considers Internet a luxury, not a necessity, another reason to go with hostels. They’ve always got Internet if not wi-fi, usually free. Why not? They don’t pay by the hour any more than the hotels do for TV. Internet spots in Italy tend to get lumped and marketed with video games and other juvenile pursuits, like Thailand where Internet is considered play, not work.

By now of course it’s pouring down rain, but at least my place is close, or at least not TOO far. The nice lady there asks if I can speak Italian but before I can explain my twenty-five percent-and-rising level, she proceeds to proceed with her 30% Simplified English, filling in the gaps with extra thick linguistic molasses, sweet nothingness the consistency of axle grease, but so gooey you don’t want to bust her chops, since this is something she obviously loves to do. That’s okay, Psycholinguistics 102; I’ll be conversational in both French AND Italian by the end of this trip, Insh’allah. My main problem now is that I’m ssstttaaarrrvvviiinnnggg, since I had no time to eat in Milan. I’ve got to get a ticket for a train tomorrow to Cannes also, so I’ll grab something on the way. There the ticket seller can’t or doesn’t want to speak English, so we do that in Italian, my confidence growing. At least the street food is reasonably priced again and the pizza is made by real Italians, so I get into the Italian fast food swing, pizzerias and pasticcherias, talking funk and eatin’ junk. Other than that I try to see what I can of the city in the short time I have, a city made famous by a Winter Olympics a few years ago, and trying hard to live up to its fame. Tourism is way up in the Piemonte, they say. Italy has so many interesting places, it’d be hard to see them all in a lifetime. The few images I have here will have to suffice. My train leaves early tomorrow morning and I’m dead tired from an early departure from Zurich this morning, so when I click the light and hit the pillow… zzzzzz…

Somewhere there’s a beach, warm and sunny, with all the fresh fruit I can eat, sweet and sour, and a fat ol’ massage mama ready to pounce on my back and pound the kinks out of me, pound the kinks out of my tortured psyche, turn me into mush… aaahhh… I’m melting… Then the clouds begin to roll in and the sky grows black. But it doesn’t rain; it snows. Everybody packs up and goes back to from where they came, but I don’t know where to go, so I just get on a train going to some place I’ve only heard of, written in an alphabet I can’t read, everybody speaking a language I can’t speak. All I know is that I’m heading south. I know that by the location of the sun. But instead of getting out of the snow it just keeps falling harder. And instead of going downhill, we’re going up, past cactus and agave, juniper and sage, into tall straight pines and tall smoking chimneys. ‘Welcome to Flagstaff’. That’s what the sign said as we hit a bump in the track. That’s the last thing I remember as the screen goes black.

When I wake up we’re stopped on the tracks somewhere. It’s snowing. The sign on the train station says ‘Limone’. Well there’s a contradiction in terms, ‘Limones’ in the snowy mountains. It’s beautiful, though, I’ll have to admit, even though my main objective right now is just to get warm. I’ve been gone a month and a half on this trip, been to Tunis, Malta, and Athens, and have yet to see a day of 20C-68F. Now it’s snowing again as I head south. Oh boy! Then we go through a long tunnel and the other side is like another dimension, like we traversed a cosmic worm-hole. Snow is gone and a different language occupies the signs lining the tracks, lining the roads, lining the walls of my perception. Welcome to France. We straddle the border for a while, even changing trains again in Italy, but that line continues to define, even more so down the road. Soon the loudspeaker announces ‘next stop Monaco/Monte Carlo’, and then we enter another tunnel. When we stop I get a brief glimpse of the country of Monaco outside, one of 192 that are members of the UN and therefore on my list. Otherwise why would I be here? I’m just passing through on my way to Cannes and the south of France of such world renown. Though it hardly sounds like ‘me’, that’s a changing and ongoing concept, subject to constant revision. When you travel constantly, some comfort and superficial attractions are welcome. Welcome to Cannes.