A Romance with Travel: The Night In Florence

Sometimes I decide I am through, forever through, with travel.

I had spent a beautiful weekend in Rome with someone I had left behind in England. The cost of travel was seeming pretty high. (And au pairing had mostly brought cleaning up food and soil and oil and having plates thrown at my head.) So after three delayed trains in a row, I ended up stuck in Florence for the night.

I know, it sounds like a good thing. But not after Rome, not after seeing him again.

Wandering out of the station with the intention of finding a hostel, I bumped into this guy. Well, he stopped me asking where he should go next. Then said, 'wow, you have such presence.' At which point I was already thinking, ‘will you just fuck off? I’m heart broken.’

When I asked him how old he was he said 17000 because I live every day as if it’s ten years. I asked him again and he said 3, because I never stop asking questions and the world is new. I said will you get to the fucking point, and he said 19. 

Pretty much the same thing with asking him his name:‘I don’t believe in names as they tie you to an identity’. 

He also made his own clothes as he thought we should express ourselves more freely. It was some kind of long dress that had an elegance and looked quite Eastern, as well as filthy and in desperate need of a wash. He also had shoes that were too big, and I might have thought he was homeless, except that he had a macbook pro.

He’d come to ‘Italia’ (I’m pretty sure ‘si’ and ‘Italia’ were his only Italian so he insisted upon using them constantly) to get a pen handmade by someone who promised to do it if he wrote an important essay with it.

He said one and only one interesting thing: Apparently ants use significantly more energy than we do (20 times more?) and yet they have no damaging impact. His explanation: clearly the Fourth Dimension. He then went on to write in reverse to show me the new 4D language he was forming.

So, I ended up wandering through Florence at night with him.

Him and a Portuguese guy who we met when he stopped us in the rain by saying, ‘Look! That’s where the cloud stops! I’ve always wondered where that happens…’

The Portuguese guy actually seemed fairly down to earth, minus his really annoying question to nameless guy: ‘So you like philosophy; does that mean you smoke weed?’

And there was a girl from Rome. The Portuguese guy's temporary girlfriend. They would break up when he went to Venice.

So the four of us went to ponte vecchio at night, and there were the padlocks. I don’t care what other people say. I think they’re cute. Each of them is where someone has said to someone else, ‘I care’. And that’s beautiful. 

It was pretty but I was trying to get back home after my Roman adventure. I’d done Florence another time, my head was spinning from the guy I'd left to travel, and I just wanted today to be yesterday so it could be a little less raw.

And there was Roman Girl blabbing on about, ‘where chance meets chance… destiny is at the crossroads’ meanwhile Too Much of a Twat for a Name Guy was sounding like he was being laid. ‘Oh yeah! Oh wow! Ahhhhhh! Where chance meets chance!’

Around 4, through the rain, I made it back to the train station. No Name still following. He took it up again, despite my insistent and explicit Not Interesteds.

‘Am I not courageous enough for you?’

Well, I've never been asked that before.

I got the train and had all of half an hour's sleep before going straight to another day of 4 crazy Italian boys.

And still, I didn't break up with travel.

Lose Yourself

Lost & Found is an artsy performancy festival in Manchester. It's aim? Inspire people to engage with the city around them. Below is my writing on a poster up around the city.

(I would like to point out my intention was for it to actually look like a map. I feel like "ceci n'est pas une pipe." would have had a different meaning if it really wasn't a pipe.)

A Crash Course in Italian

The World in the Palm of your Hands

In the car from the airport I wonder why I’m talking to the woman whose family I’ll be staying with. Not because the conversation is bad, but because she’s driving. She’s driving and apparently oblivious to the fact because she keeps taking both hands of the wheel. Apparently talking without hands just isn’t an option.

The more I realise this in Italy, the more I realise how useless all my verb conjugations are. The thing is, Italians don’t seem to get that hand gestures aren’t universal currency.

Love Birds

An Italian man asks me in Italian if I’m in a relationship, exaggeratedly bashing his index fingers together as if that clearly translates the question. I smile at this, then answer his question with a no. Which confuses him, because I shouldn’t be smiling, I should be getting myself an Italian. I bite back my response about having left an Italian to come to Italy, as I think this will just confuse him more.

Was that 'Angry' or 'Hungry'?

As I've noted before, these two words are the same for Italians - both in how they say them and in meaning.

But I will give them credit for adding some humor to any tense situation with The Dance of The Angry Italian. It’s just beautiful to watch. It starts with the exasperation of the hands in prayer being shaken at the offender, then the hand gestures get wider as the problem escalates until finally the arms fall down by the side, palms up, with something between force and laziness: I give up with you.

NB: Go here for more insults to throw out in your next argument. Which if you're in Italy will be soon.

Something Fishy Going On...

Sometimes though, I really think a few mirrors could fix the problem. If they could just see what they were doing, then surely some of it would stop. One of these moments takes place between a couple I meet in Rome. A friend of theirs disappears for a moment and they look at each other. Next thing I know, they’re stood side by side looking like a pair of fish playing the piano. I stare in utter confusion until I remember my Italian lesson.

‘Underhand business!’ I proudly shout.

Which is a bit like staring at a waving hand and saying to the person waving at you ‘I believe this translates as… Hello.’

The Italic Font

One day I ask an Italian why I’m struggling so much. Being a graphic designer he explains it in the following way:

The Origins of the Italic Font
(image by professional graphic designer)

‘There is a reason why it’s called Italic.’ He throws an arm upwards with a diagonal flick. 'We like to elaborate. To embellish our words. To add character!...But you English. No. You are like this.' He stands rigidly with his arms by his side. You are from Bristol? Like the Gill Sans font. You're probably a slim.’ Before I get all pleased about my weight despite how many gelatos I’ve eaten, I remember he’s talking fonts. He means my gestures have less presence.

Determined to prove him wrong, I’ve taken on trying to use my hands when I talk. The problem is, I can’t keep telling everyone there’s underhand business going on. So I’m writing my own font by using my hands in any and every way possible, giving every elaborate flick I can.

Of course it looks completely unnatural. Like watching your Grandma graffiti. But I so want to be… Italic.

Travel without a Camera: Berlin to Prague

Photographs capture your memories. They’re how you share moments with people who weren’t in them. They give you something to keep.

But as I think of my favourite photos, I realise this isn’t quite true. There’s that photo of my mum as a child buried in the sand, the one of me as a toddler in the sink, the one of my great grandparents outside their house… They’re a way of sharing, but those will never be memories for me. Only images and whatever imagination has added. Whatever they meant at the time is lost on me now.

As for the places I’ve been…I like the photos of me with the people I’ve met. But the photos of the landmarks can be found online. And the photos of my discoveries miss the act of discovery.

You can’t photograph smell or taste. You can’t photograph the way your legs feel after running up steps and you can’t photograph that feeling inside when a view opens up that you weren’t expecting.

I’m thinking of Prague. The steps I’m thinking of lead up to the gothic cathedral. When I reached the top, the city opened up beneath me. One of the reasons I remember this moment so well is because I remember thinking: If only I had a camera.

The truth is, I don’t remember exactly what I saw, even though I remember looking for a long time, trying to absorb every detail. What I do remember though, is being glad that I was there.

If I had a photo, I wouldn’t have had that moment. I wouldn’t have thought so much about all that I was getting from that moment that a camera couldn’t. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much at the time.

When I have a camera, I often notice something, take a picture and move on. Without my camera, I was under no illusion that I could keep those places.

The funny thing is, I remember that trip so much more visually than any other, because I was so aware of each sight I couldn't capture. I remember how the life ring with the ropes perfectly framed that museum in Berlin. I remember the blue and pink pipes that looked like they were from a Roald Dahl story. I remember Dresden at night and the lampposts that looked like they were made from icicles. I remember the graffiti on the wall outside the hostel in Prague – the Mobius loop of trucks and tanks that spoke of the city’s continuous cycle through destruction and rebirth.

I remember the mirror at the bottom of the stairs in the Kafka museum that makes you feel like you’re falling upwards.

This is where I stop and see that by remembering, rather than looking, I have to access these images through the chain of memories surrounding them. That mirror in the Kafka museum wouldn't have been half as unnerving if the city outside had been bathed in sunshine.

Instead I’d spent the whole day walking through pouring rain with a heavy bag, no umbrella, nowhere to stay, and not a penny of the national currency. In this state, the strange architecture looked like it was clawing the sky and at last the twisted workings of Kafka’s stories made sense.

Other moments, like sitting on plastic chairs on an ugly concrete balcony outside a large hostel in Berlin, would never have made a photo at all. And yet drinking cheap red wine with Israelis and a German as he decided to raise the somewhat sensitive issue of genocide, was so much more memorable than sections of the Berlin wall arranged like postcards near Checkpoint Charlie.

So will I go without a camera again? Maybe in a year or two as my memories fade I’ll change my mind, but for now, no regrets. A diary is far more important. 

My First Stolen Traffic Cone

Starting out in life Icona had many dreams about how her future could be.

But life as a cone was not easy. Adolescence hit her hard.

She kept working the streets. Using her body night and day. The stress took its toll. When we found her she was on top of a bus stop.

Here comes the happy part of the tale. WE RESCUED HER! She took her first ever ride on the tube. The lovely man at the barriers didn’t even make her pay.

For the first time in her life, Icona had a home. She slept in a bed (the flowerbed). She was fed breakfast (by the squirrels).

Alas, such blissful happiness could not last. She had dreams, big dreams.

So one morning she packed her bags. She was off to Sweden to form a band…

The End

London for a Londoner

I made myself an alter ego. Meet Tourist Girl:

While Tourist Girl roams the city with her time freeze power (a camera) and gets excited by silly details (oooooh! A telephone box! A Real One. And it’s red!) the rest of us see it as it is.

Pretend Red Phone Boxes

Instead of looking at the Big Ben and going ooooooh! A CLOCK! The rest of us walk by, to get somewhere, quickly, very quickly because we’re very important and are far too wise and apathetic to get all excited by clocks because they’re big and phone boxes because they’re red.

But through all my hardened London ways, there was something I liked about their childish delight.

So I sent Tourist Girl out to explore. She went on the opentop bus and admired the sights.

I realised the tickets cost £26 and bought some wine instead.

This is Tourist Girl gaily frolicking along Hampstead Heath:

This is me writing essay draft number 214:

For a few weeks I let Tourist Girl put on a French accent and wear a detective style trench coat, while I sat at my desk, busy as usual. Tourist Girl’s adventures slowly crept more and more into my thoughts until I found myself wondering, briefly, how people would look at me if I was wearing a cloak (…hmmmm). Or how people would react when I told them what I did for a living (what? You’re a superhero whose biggest power is getting excited by phone boxes?).

I knew it wasn’t going to work. But I wasn’t going to let a simple matter like that stop me. I donned the robes of Tourist Girl. Translation: I wore what I always wear and used my phone to take photos.

I soon realised that everyone who lives somewhere explores. I had to rethink my plan. Things weren’t looking good. The open top bus company was ignoring my attempts at ticket forgery, and my French accent was all too quickly met with Ah! Tu es Française? Moi aussi!

Fleet Street

Then I struck gold. I could explore the places I walked by every day. Again.

The doorways beckoned. I went into the original Twining’s teashop. Again. And with my camera, it was quite literally a different place. Tourist Girl had the power of making rooms bigger, of putting portraits on the walls that hadn’t been there before, of seeing strange teas that weren’t in boxes, of being excited.

St Dunstan in the East

Art Galleries were no longer just the paintings, but the people looking at the paintings, faintly disturbed by me following them. Tropical gettaways magically appeared in the heart of the city. People got annoyed with me for standing on the wrong side of the escalator. (oh dear. I forgot the word and just had to type ‘stairs that move’ into Google).

Then again, Tourist Girl wasn’t really Tourist Girl. I couldn’t shake that all the places had memories. I couldn’t, much as I wanted, be free from the pressure of deadlines and work in the way Tourist Girl would be. Neither could I get excited by red phone boxes. Even though they were red.

But I had super powers Tourist Girl could only dream of. Super powers like not confusing the words Hungry and Angry. Unless for Italians the two really are the same.

Instead I mix leyendo and liando to proudly inform my Spanish housemate I’ve been rolling joints all day.

Which leads me onto the final twist in this happy ending – in London, the world comes to you:

The End