NORWAY AND EUROPE TRIP 1 of 3
June 9 - July 22, 1973
FLIGHT TO LUXEMBOURG
SATURDAY, JUNE 9: 8:30 pm. (Take off 8:15); incredible MOUNTAIN ranges of clouds allowing the sun to set and rise in minutes. Turning slowly to the left (a bit of a gulp at each 2 turn), we bring the setting sun in the West (going EAST) AHEAD of us for a bit, and then a grand turn right puts the sun again out left (but a sharp LEFT causes me to GRIP the armrest). MANY jet-trails off to the west. John's rum ingested in free Coke, I feel mellow and lean head against backrest and gaze out at dimming blue sky--at 10 pm, and clouds floating past. Turbulence, but with the grass, it's bearable. I TRY SO HARD TO LOVE MYSELF. If ONLY I could concentrate on the beauties of high-flying. It's lovely. WOW, Librium and rum and grass-quite everything working for me. 11:45 pm, sun RISES to left of plane! Sun BLAZING in plane window at 11:50 pm!
FIRST MIDNIGHT SUN!
SUNDAY, JUNE 10. At 11:45 she announced that it's 4:45 am and we'll be landing in Keflavik in a few minutes. Fantastic. PUREST water, WHITEST clouds. Sun at an UNKNOWN time. Wild!! Flew INTO thunder clouds, watching lightning illuminate the edges of thunderheads. Wild, too. But sun comes up and stays up and mysteriously we're in Keflavik at 5:15, and I buy $10.85 worth of mint stamps! And I figure in the notebook that they're essentially face value. Over England first, she says, and then France is beautiful, riverine, and pastoral. But all-over cloud cover! Next, green, irregular farm plots with curiously condensed villages of 3-4 houses. SNOW patches in first country from hills in the winter. Over modernly developed towns. [8:20-4:40, BUT 12:15 landed and it was 4:45?! On at 5:30, off at 6, for a flight of "two hours and 30 minutes!".] Dense clouds over ALL we've flown over so far: 8:10 am. 4:15 on neighbor's watch, 8:15 on mine. Getting lower. No longer did entire cloud mass slide beneath us-now nearer ones moved decidedly faster than distant ones. Land through clouds, LOVELY woods and scenery and out at airport to split up. NO one has stamps, and I try to buy one from bookshop, but after words, the owner throws me out! Finally I buy two cards, 6 stamps, and pay 24 francs. Over to sit with John, and my bus arrives in the square at 12:15. On after crying "Koln" to Germanic driver, and we're off on TINY roads. Stop for a beer once, for gas another time. Incredible laziness and casualness, and VERY prosperous houses along road. All houses with MOST solid shutters on ALL windows, many of them closed. Motor-noises of tiny cars on silent streets VERY loud. Stops in INCREDIBLE town square of Echtermach, than which Rothenberg could NOT be more picturesque-but loaded with touristy people. Stop in Echtermach at 1:50, leave only at 2:15. Meanwhile riders bitch, motorcyclists with blue vinyl pants ride by, and a bright red Simca has yellow blossoms in front of headlamps. AWFUL German harshness in voices. DOZENS of tour busses roar through, and there's a campground beyond the town. And then stop for passport check, NO stamp! Feel HIDEOUS knowing NO German. Land VERY tamed, except for woods (NOT forests); man pissing on plain, back to traffic. Each seat has individual window vents for air! Stop at 2:35 in Bitburg and they go to Hotel Plein for LUNCH. Getting back in bus at 3:10. And the hostess returns a $5 US that someone LEFT! Two men in SUITS frisking in a stream! Whole HILLS of Scotch Broom. Pine tree forms like cactus. 3:50, bus stops again and everyone's asking what's going on. Everyone MAY be having fun and chatting and laughing, but I feel SHITTY about it all. Into Cologne at 6:10. Rain finally drizzles after threatening all day. Third door opens for luggage, and lug it to nearby Hauptbanhof to (under shadow of ENORMOUS cathedral) extract rain jacket and Michelin and passport and get out at 6:30 to cathedral. BIG and ill-lit, enormous organ, strange onion dome in north-west corner, HUGE high plain windows above and knights below. Get pushed around because service is starting, and standing under a chipped dirty pillar reading Michelin I discover that the Alte Pinokoteck is in MUNICH, not Hamburg, and I have no REASON to go to Hamburg, and the temptation to go to Copenhagen TONIGHT strikes. Get to information office and they say railroad office. Information office at railroad station is TOTALLY jammed. Go to BED reservation room and THEY close at 7, saying I'll have to see conductor with 12.50 for a couchette! Around to regular office to ask "Speak English" and she says "Office 17." "Office 17," inside "Berlin" section, says closed. Back and ask for Copenhagen and she again says "Office 17." So I wait in line in window 18 and he says it's 90.80 (about $355) so I say OK BUT he won't take traveler's checks, so I have to go to BANK. Bank has long line and I write all THIS waiting in line for change, pair in front of me from US (back-packer trying to get a ship to South Africa from Hamburg by taking the Paris-Scandinavian express!), as were 4 or 5 from Icelandic Airlines bus from Luxembourg. HUGE crowds in station, only possibly standing in out of the rain. No sleep LAST night (though at 7:30 pm it's "only 2:30 in the afternoon." Hope to get SOME sleep even sitting UP in the train, and then spend time in Copenhagen FINALLY sleeping. So far, it feels like a day that started at 6 am Saturday, to 6 am Sunday, to 2:30 pm Sunday, or 32 1/2 hours! And now, after ONLY 10 minutes, I'm next on line (and STARVED since BREAKFAST this AM). From the right angle (or maybe the wrong one) the Cologne Cathedral looks EXACTLY like a Khajuraho temple! Towers are very THICK at the base, unlike any others. Very PYRAMIDAL shape, rather than needle-like. AND it's on a DIAS, that makes its cream and crud chiaroscuro stand out even more-over the whole city. An overall SPIKY or cactus-spiny silhouette against the sky. And, of course, the 4711 everywhere IS Cologne! Exterior is very bombarded and eroded-looking. Get something to eat while waiting for the train, and it comes in on time and there's VERY little space inside, but the conductor fusses and manages to put me in with a couple of Scandinavians who look quite tired, and immediately the suitcase is put up top, all the beds are readied, and everyone's crawled into their own sack before I can really think about it. Before ANY concept of not being able to sleep, I'm asleep, even THROUGH the passage across the Kiel Canal, so I was BOTH very tired and THEY handled the transfer with skill and silence. Slightly regret not seeing the countryside.
COPENHAGEN TIVOLI GARDENS
MONDAY, JUNE 11. Wake about 7 and beds are put away, and everywhere are MULTITUDES of flowers: purple spikes, white-blossomed trees, yellow fields of buttercups, white daisies, blue, red-fabulous! To the station at 8 and wait for the bank to open at 9, then get a room for a fairly cheap price, take the bus to the place, settle in, into the National Museum at 1, out at 5, STAGGERED. It costs 5K to get into Tivoli; "Tivoli beef" (about 2 ounces of hamburg and onions) is 3.50, pretty awful. "Pizza" about 2 slices, one round, ketchup more than tomato sauce, is 4.50. Popcorn, @2K, the world over is fine-so that's 10 shot. Looking for place to eat, hopefully NIMB, but band starts up, it starts raining, there's free orchestra at the Pavilion, THEN the marching band goes past, then it's 6:50 and the theater has three acts at 7, a girl-boy balance stopping with the girl, on her head, being tossed from his hand to his OTHER hand; a self-contained tight-rope artist with his comic friend who shocks by doing a right-angled-leg lift with only TWO fingers on the WIRE and then the normal number of somersaults and then he skips rope twice in wooden shoes. Finally the trampolinists go at it singly and together, ending with two guys EVENLY on the bottom one's shoulders, then one on top and the third goes three high. Finally they hold a balance pole between them and the third jumps and somersaults and (after missing once to show how hard it was, as the teeter-board head-to-head people did), then BALANCING rock-hard on the bar. Each was two minutes for free, maybe twelve in the paying part of the audience. Then to the pantomime theater for the 7:45 show, and it's full ALREADY, so I pay the 2K for a seat on the chilly windy aisle, sadly, and watch that OK, so it IS fun for the first time! Then shakoed bagpipe band marches by twice when I'm in NIMB (thick REAL cream of mushroom soup, pork "Italian style" with a salad on TOP of the spaghetti and frozen peas and onions, and half-carafe of red tasteless wine and BUTTER is 30ó extra, for 60.50. Then acrobats again, and songstress before fireworks-not so great, but I'm so CLOSE to them! Too tired to try the bars tonight, so I catch the last bus home and fall into bed VERY tired to sleep a LONG time.
TUESDAY, JUNE 12. Clocks say 2:30 and my watch says 12:10. Woke with watch stopped at 10:30, so I woke 100 minutes ago, or at 12:50 (which would be 7:50 back home) and I got to bed at 12:50, so I slept 12 hours! [Carlsberg Glyptotek is good and bad-some great old stuff from Ishtar's gate at Babylon (faience lions, etc) but MUCH late Roman statues, in BAD style and condition (though a couple of eroded FRAGMENTS of torsos and heads from Para of 6th C. BC) and lots of secondary Egyptian stuff (but for a few fun phallic Bes statues). But a MOST marvelous MUSEUM-large and sunny, magnificently displayed, even mosaic floors in keeping with the Etruscan (HUGE atrium) and Roman and Egyptian motifs in black marble with white papyrus or scrollwork. BUT a Gauguin WOODCARVING of GREAT power with an animus-god's head peering down on a girl picking fruit from a tree full of monkeys. Many bad but some not so bad Gauguins, Monets, Renoirs, Cezannes, would you believe two DOZEN Gauguins?? (Many BEFORE Tahiti-two woodcarvings). A Courbet, too (1860) lushly GREEN to be quite true. [I must have given myself TOO much to do. (1) Travel FLYING: a. Bodo-Geneva 140 DK, or $230! TOO MUCH. b. Even COPENHAGEN-Geneva is 763, or $127. (2) Travel CHARTER staggering 395DK, or $66 for 7 days COMPLETE to Norway! (3) I'm HUNGRY and don't know where to eat. (4) See posh Hotel d'Angleterre and THERE is where I want to stay and how I want to travel! SO it looks like I go NORTH by TRAIN and BUS (SHOULD have gotten Eurailpass) and now, since I'm about there, I'll see Amalienborg and Mermaid and eat along the way, maybe stopping off at Studiestratt. Koning's Nyhavn park surrounded by TRIMMED trees! Walk toward Nyhavn, with young drunk sailors sitting at the bottom of the steps, and finally, at 6, the "Els" restaurant appeals with its special plate for 24 DK, and "Typical" people are eating: old man with newspapers, three businessmen, and an elderly couple being served from a HUGE platter of assorted foods. Pleasant room with yellow tablecloths and fresh thistles in a vase. Beer sets off the first sustenance of the day-actually 1 pm, and I guess I AM still on home schedule. But it's only the third day out! Amalienburg ODD, built around square. Guards march on clock-sound. Lots of food inside now, good. Every flower in the WORLD blooms in Langeline: daisies, verbena, lilac, mimosa, spirea, baby- breath, and there are public johns all over, of "continuous trough" type, but the STALLS have barbed wire over the open tops! Wonderfully busy harbor: huge "Gigantifoil" settles into the water as she passes into the quays; rococo-royal-yacht type ship poses sleekly; old rusty Absolom puts out in black and white, and the gold lettering of "Orasund" marks the only color above the blue plimsol line. A three-man shell steers into the rollers, and an 8-man scull flops about like a straw. Dog-walker looks at little bronze maiden, but dog pantingly sniffs benches and railings and road, oblivious to "Art." She may be blind, the Huvfru, with the lack of definition about the eyes, and her legs seem almost bell-bottomed, overlapping gills, definitely bifurcated. Her too-round rock perches Karnak-style atop three supporting rocks in the form of a pyramid. A bit too artificial, but the ambiance is casual, too. Great glass-walled restaurant a distance away, but otherwise, it's merely THERE. The visitors, really, are what stand out. SURELY a sad face, a figure with a bit of a pot, and what IS the hair or seaweed she has in one hand? Older sections of town: tiny-roomed town-houses, newer larger apartment buildings, ALL bicycles parked OUTSIDE with NO locks at all. AGONIZE about (1) not getting a Eurailpass, since I'll OBVIOUSLY be paying more than it cost, (2) that I didn't plan trip ENOUGH to even know how MUCH planes and trains cost, (3) that I don't have the time for CONNECTIONS for the fantastic 395K trip to Southern Norway Friday to Friday (but I AM willing to pay to be independent), (4) that I didn't somehow renew my student pass, so I could take advantage of that. But I HAVE decided to go to Oslo tomorrow-HANG it all. Can only take TWO full days to train across Europe, so I won't worry about getting BACK. BATH is closed at 7 pm and seems straight. GAY CLUB is closed at 10, though it says opened at 8. Cozy Bar is empty at 10, save for an Englishman asking "How do I get IN here?" But, alas, it IS Tuesday. What characters! First only me and the Englishman who lived all his life in South Africa, and the fat bartender and the long-torsoed funny-walking waiter. Then two young Danes, one TOO young and bland that the English liked, the other bigger, older, curly-blond, wanted to be an actor and now a sailor, and VERY handsome. Then the old fart who left early, then two older ones who sat and smiled at the other end, a "straight" couple at a table, and a cheery fellow who bought everyone a beer (Carlsberg and Tuborg tasteless EXACTLY alike) and an idiot-curly-hair who kissed anyone who would. Then a short, stacked (uncut, when he flopped out his big thick meat after following me to the urinal) fellow who KEPT looking at me, but he's no great catch. Other Englisher joins two kids and first guy at table, to everyone's surprise, then a cute one comes in, but then his fat eyebrowless keeper arrives and assumes I speak Danish, since they keep making jokes and looking at me with a smile. Then decide this is NONSENSE and leave at 12, but see someone coming OUT of the Gay DiscothΦque, so I knock on door and see sign for "temporary card" and they look at me and smile and say "You don't need one." I belong! Music is louder, guys, gals, EVERYONE dancing, three bars and a viewing balcony, low tables and a few people from the old place. Some of the guys are fabulous, including the tall leather-jacketed plush-trousered one who'd been so lovely outside on the street earlier. One dancer has THE most incredible ass, round, curved, in just the right proportions. Some marvelous crotches, though they tend to be in a tight bunch rather than a loose dangle. But the CRUISING is the same: furtive, no eyes, those who know talk to someone they know, those who don't, don't. Some lovely people near me, including a nodding leather-type behind me, but there's really NO one looking at me, so I leave at 1 am, walking long way home, wolfing 1K chocolate bar from a vending machine, tempted to stop at "Roberts to 5 am", but in without bathing and to sleep without earplugs.
TRAIN TO OSLO (ACCIDENT)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13. Wake at 7 and 7:30, up at 8:15, she raps at 8:50. Leisurely pack and shave and bathe and out at 10. To station for quick ticket, 1/2 chicken (KYLLING) lunch with kartoffelsalat (hot and cold potato salad) and look at dolls and down to platform at 11:45 and onto train at 12 for Oslo. There ARE reserved seats in second class, but luckily my reservation doesn't show (as MANY don't) so I get lovely seat on right on the cloudy day going north, with the wind blowing up the light leaf-underbellies. Stop once, 12:30, start again just as I finish writing THIS. 1:05, after going along "Danish Riviera" with tracks, line of houses, road, and seaside gardens (VERY narrow) to wind-swept sea, hardly good for anything for more than a few weeks during the summer, at 1:05, I say, we stop, Sweden in sight (and a grackle-voiced woman says they're going to build a bridge across), and I guess we wait in line for ferry, as I came across the Kiel Canal from Germany to Denmark without even waking. There are traces of the good Danes (1) the woman who told me about Traepning at the DSB station for information, (2) the man who said I could put my luggage on the bus luggage-rack-where it later tipped over, almost hurting an old woman's legs, (3) the agent at Traepning, (4) the guy who bought the beer at Cozy Bar) and BAD ones (the people who would NOT wait on me at DSB, making me SLAM my book on the counter in frustration. I can see why people would FORMERLY love Copenhagen: women are as openly appraising as straight men are. But GAY men are surely NOT! The mall-streets were fun, but it seems that Copenhagen, far from wanting more tourists, quite has its fill of them and would just as soon be UNKIND to tourists as kind. At 1:10 we stop in yard (to change engines?) and then at 1:20 we start going backward. Most houses have orange tile roofs, with little roof-windows that are open, more often than not. Off on the Najalin at 1:30, very painless-zip on and we're off. Doors in second class locked, but resourceful woman walks to the front and we're out, past restaurant deck and onto top. Great. Elsinore Castle MOST impressive from sea, with 8-storied small-windowed tower rising like a wedding cake at southeast corner and old eroded bronze tower series at the top. Blowing grass all around and waves washing on rocky shore. Atmospheric from afar, probably touristy up close. Down before docking, but we're stopped at 1:50, so a bridge would save trouble. Helsingborg seems to have castles too, but the slight mist, even at high afternoon, bodes no good for the further north. Arctic Circle has HAD midnight sun since June 6 ALREADY. Wait and wait just off the ferry, and two awful old ladies sit in aisle seats and talk and talk and talk and talk in their harsh German-Yiddish accents. Then a Swedish teacher "teaches" everyone sitting around her, and I can JUST hope they all quiet down for the rest of the eight hours to Oslo. They do quiet down, thank God. Rolling Danish forests before Helsingor, and Swedish territory is flat and manicured, but they have lovely buff-colored old big barns, and they have the ecologically pleasing habit of leaving rounds of trees and bushes or ponds in the middle of their farmlands. Beautiful waterholes surrounded by trees. Sharp scent of cow-dung. And I'm powerfully allergic to something! Awful sneezing and sniffling fits in the train, to echo the coughing and hacking up into a Sunkist juice can of the woman next to me. Bicycle paths and sidewalks almost as wide as roads for cars in the towns. Neat. In the sun in SOUTH Sweden, even my red pullover comes off and I sit in my undershirt it was so warm. Then the lowering clouds, dimmer and dimmer (though still sun-glass glare) make it cool and I put it back on. Tomorrow add a sweater, next day a jacket, and finally a raincoat? [House-sign in Falkenberg: GODSEXPEDITION]. 4 pm, starts raining. But, hey, at 4:05 it stops and by 4:20 the sky is only 50% cloudy. Rocks begin appearing above Varburg, and one cove with wave-rocked boats has the TINIEST houses facing the sea from their rock bluffs that are only 40% greenery. Beginning to have the barren look of Newfoundland. By 4:40 the sky is 90% pure blue. Decide to eat at 5:30, and prices are in SWEDISH Kroner, so I have to figure the $38 US for 100 German marks for which I got 223 NORSE kroner, and she says 10 Norse kroner to 7 Swedish kroner. Mental calculations through meal of omnipresent pork, vegetables and potatoes. It came out about $5, with soda breaking the bank at over 75ó. She insists on giving me change in Swedish, so I get a cheese smorrebrod for 2.95 (70ó) so I have ONE kroner and one 25 ore and one 5 ore Swedish piece. How ABOUT that? At 6:30 it's clouded again and a lovely set of sun's rays shines from behind cloud. MAKE DISCOVERY: you can't GET north along the coast from Bergen, so my NEXT train will be Oslo-Trondheim and then Trondheim-Bodo, and THAT should take only TWO days. Narvik and Hammerfest in two MORE days would be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday NORTH, MonTueWedThu SOUTH to Oslo, and some overnight trains COULD get even to Geneva by Friday. Looks GOOD. Rhododendrons ALL over, but north of Gothenburg we hit TULIPS. If we get to narcissus and anemones, we're north. The sheer quantity of wildflowers in the field I haven't seen ANYTHING like since Volubilis in Morocco. North of Ed, lovely fjord-like lake. About 7:10, past Ed, a slamming crash off the side of the car, at glass level, and I saw something WHITE flashing past, and thought of a ROCK fallen from a cliff, but two windows back the outside pane of glass was totally shattered and a piece of WHITE WOOD was caught in the crack, so a TREE fell and banged against the train. In the second section of the car, the glass came through completely and a girl stood in the aisle shaking glass from her hair! We stop for a bit while the glass is thrown out, and then we hear the news that the power on the line is out (and the lights inside are from another source, they say), and there seems to be NO good news of when we'll start. The two Canadian dolls are looking soulfully at the cruising English fellow and me, and the fantasies of a night in the dark (and the cold) are rather nice. They say the wind blew down the tree, and I have a LARGE hunk of the pine that came through the windows. Forward, in first class, where luckily the aisle was on the side of the crash, ALL the windows were completely broken and there were bits of sandy stuff on the wood of the compartment. ONE of the compartments had the door open and their floor was littered with glass. "How could the girl be sitting in the seat and the seat be full of glass?" I ask, and the older fellow smiles and says "That's a good question." Everyone settles in for a long wait, as the wind howls outside and the car rocks gently back and forth. I sit and read V, and at page 62, 8:45, the conductor gleefully announced that the spare engine has arrived. AND at 8:50 we take off, having been stranded for one hour and forty minutes. Let's hope we get into Oslo by midnight! Just lucky the panes were double. Woman next to me "You could be cut up, all hurt, miss your plane." In order of importance? Through pine forests now, many sections cut apart by logging. Then at 8:58 we go tootling back and forth for a bit, and start AGAIN at 9:05. Surely, now, not BEFORE midnight in Oslo. Stop at 9:10. No view of Oslo-Fjord on the way up! Last sun-whiteness leaves the tops of the low clouds at 9:20, but of course it's still light enough outside to read with ease. People from the train wander past-in at 12:15? Then at 9:30, horror of horrors, we have to LEAVE our car, and there's no place to sit (reasonably) but the corner of the dining car-at LEAST sitting forward again, at a window, and no one behind me. Chatter, chatter, chatter, jabber, jabber, jabber, everyone being around a table seems to make everyone convivial, and I write determined NOT to succumb to the hint that a dour husband sit next to his chattering wife who is sitting next to me. Off again at 9:35. About 10:30 it gets too dark to read outside. BUT at 11, it's lighter in the EAST than in the WEST, so could it be closer to dawn than to sunset? But at 11:30 it's back to the west, and I'm TIRED, and it isn't much (but SOME) brighter than night. Too bright, for instance, for stars in the north, and surely too bright for an effective fireworks display, and sadly too bright for any aurora! At 11:55 there is a definite pinkening of the sky! Off at Oslo at 12:30, and the race for the information booth is on. ONLY hotel available is the "Summer Hotel" on outskirts of town. 68K for a single, rather expensive, but five of us seem willing to share a cab, though the English fellow, surprise, isn't willing to share a double. Then guy who'd had a ticket to Bergen that night at 11:30 was told he could have a sleeping car in the station, and then ALL of us decided that would be fine. So we sat and chatted in the first-class car on track 5 until we pulled down at 1:15, and into a set of cars with people laughing and talking, and I'm in with a couple from Anchorage (with a 7-month pregnant woman who takes the jump from the car to the track nicely) and they chat about crab and clams and missing the earthquake. Off to sleep about 1:50 in a few minutes of luxuriating in the warm covers, and then there's a banging on the door and it's 6:50 am, and it's been light from the cracks in the blinds THROUGH the night: lighter, anyway, out there in the light than inside behind blinds.
TRAIN TO TRONDHIEM
THURSDAY, JUNE 14. [8:45 to 5:40 to Trondheim via Rorus.] First train returns at 7:15, and I miss it trying to clean up. Walk 20 feet and see another train at 7:30 scheduled to "leave for Oslo" at 8. Talk with Aussies who lived in Kuala Lumpur, that there WAS no place to visit, but they DID talk about tin mines and Batu Caves and palm-oil factory and batik industry, and said to be SURE to see Taxila (Alexander the Great's last outpost) and (Abbatabad(?) in the marvelous hills. Into station at 8:25 after starting at 8:15, and see a sign for Trondheim at 8:45! Into office to ask for tickets, told Billeter, and get ticket for 139NK, a somewhat LESS expensive shot, on train to get ousted from reserved seat, try another, then off to get seat 38 reserved for me and next to broken-nose Norwegian who tossed out three gals who wanted to sit together and we have front four double seats to ourselves. Out of town at 8:50, passing what could be University City scattered on a hill to the right, and then on the left a GREAT apartment housing project, about two dozen 8-story buildings, about half of which have great abstract connected elongated triangles of darker stone on light depicting children at play, swinging, playing ball, chasing, very pleasant. Pass fields and fields of the most beautiful flair: bright green grass with loads of Queen Anne's Lace for white, tones of a delicate violet flower for a carpet effect, and the merest sprinkling of buttercups. Bright sun through fluffy clouds, and the only problem today will be eating, since I had no chance to buy groceries, and we're not into Trondheim until 6. Have to have at least one meal by then! They use everything [HAD a sandwich of ham for 6.50-assuaged hunger at least till lunch, but I do have about 30K left, so it's not bad] in Norway INCLUDING the oink. Forests for lumber and pulp and they even "harvest" piles of roots and earth for SOME use. Some land in forest, some grain, others seems to be grass-I guess young grain or fallow. Then there are gravel pits and SOME kind of open pit mining-a dirt mine? Huge GM and VW plants and a square mile concrete blockhouse with one visible door on three sides for something. Absolute clarity of air, pines spiking horizon, some nice vistas, but nothing really craggy by 10 am. But by noon there are bits of snow on the sides of hills, and the hills get higher with bald domed rocks on top, and the woods get wilder, laced with lakes and rushing streams and dams. Lambs and ewes, horses, cows, but no pigs. A few ducks and many seabirds far inland. Higher still, until Rorus is on a plateau at 3:30, and go into low clouds with snowy patches on each side, and in some cases just below us. Clouds close in until we're literally in the middle of them, and just before 4 what HAD been light rain changes into a few flakes of snow, but the sun comes and goes so quickly that it's back to rain in an instant. Had a hot dog (about 11") for a surprisingly low 3.75, and a whole BOX of cookies for 2.75. So no need to eat in the two remaining hours to Trondhiem. Leaves on trees are small and new, and we seem to float over valleys spectacular in sun and shade in colors of green and reflections from rushing water and white, red, and yellow farmhouses. Many barns and outhouses have grass and even flowers on the roofs, and there are lots of houses put together with great lincoln logs. Above Rorus we get quite spectacular Alpine scenery, with a gorge with waterfalls rolling into it, the only real "scenery" on the trip, except for the first quiet views of some of the larger lakes. Into Trondhiem just after 6, after an announcement that my nameless friend (who blanched not nor changed his attitude toward me one bit after I told him I was homosexual) translated as saying that the train left for Bodo at 10:35 pm. Perfect! Into town in gentle rain and somewhat harsh wind and cold. Into terminal to find I can cash traveler's checks (which friend said I should be more careful of, since they're NOT returnable if they're lost or stolen!! So it's NEVER worth it, for insurance purposes, to be without American Express!) at ticket counter (how sensible) and ask for left window seat and he says he THINKS it's going in the direction he thinks it is but "if it's not, come back." I decide AGAINST an extra 20K for a couchette since IN THE MORNING I CROSS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, almost the entire purpose of the trip! Buy ticket and check at the cafeteria and restaurant (sort of liking the looks of the Veal Cordon Bleu) but decide, since it's only 6:30 and I have the time, to check the suitcase and case the town. Ask and find the lockers are downstairs and lock the suitcase in before I remember I wanted to take out my rain jacket. Out in the cold windy drizzle and walk main street to main cross street, and come across Larssen's Hotel Restaurant, and they not only have Veal Cordon Bleu for 23K, but Poire Belle Helene for 6K. In and get a seat and wash, and lots of veal (very thin, however, with barely discernible cheese and ham) and lemon with capers and anchovies, separate sauce in a silver cruet, and lots of peas and carrots and a cucumber salad I requested special (lovely and crisp) and the Norwegian mustard, sweet and tasty, is marvelous on the ubiquitous boiled potatoes. Eat it ALL with beer and pear (not very good, but the spirit was willing) and the TV is playing one of my fantasies: A TV channel to make this tiny empty restaurant seem to be the center of society with an MC and amateur hour and loud clientele and happy music and people. People come in and absolutely accept me in my bright orange sweater, the old grandmotherly waitress smiles happily as I pat my stomach and say "very good," and brings the menu and THEN understands I want the pear. So I prepare to go out and wander the streets, feeling VERY good, thinking of saying "I composed a marvelous song called "Twilight in Trondhiem" at 11 pm, but forgot all the words." Possibly gay guy sits at the opposite corner table, looking at me, and I may represent HIS BEST CHANCE IN THE WORLD. How'd THAT for a Messiah complex? Now my hand is tired of writing, I'll pay the bill and walk about a bit. It's only 8. Two hours to kill. Would she think that I, writing, am a writer of the Norwegian Michelin? Back early because it's raining and the town is VERY dreary, and into the station to read the little train-schedule book. WELL, first I find that there's a bus to Narvik, but NOT from Bodo, from FAUSKE. So I go in to inquire if I can get my ticket changed, and it turns out that I only have a SEAT reservation and not a ticket. They'll take care of it. Fine. WHILE they take care of it, I browse through the list of folders, and come across a brochure about the northland, and see things like BUSSES to Tromso and HAMMERFEST AND NORTHCAPE! Flip gently and go back to inquire, and I really don't want to go to TROMSO if I want to go to Hammerfest, I want to go to Sorkjosen (Surjoeson, sort of) and then to Hammerfest. But each LEG takes one DAY. Well, OK, I start putting down days, avoiding his "Sunday's no good," and come out too many. How can I FLY? Come up with Bodo-Bergen, but that's too far out of the way. Think of how to get back, and he says "There's a STEAMER from Hamnmerfest to Tromso," after establishing that there's a flight from Tromso to Oslo; I sit and stand and browse around and actually find I have an EXTRA DAY to spend in OSLO, and it's not TOO much money! Though I have to get Anita to cash a check for me from my bank balance. So it looks like THIS, which I describe in lesser detail on a card to John from Hell:
TRAIN TO FAUSKE
THURSDAY, JUNE 14: 22:35: Leave Trondhiem on train.
FRIDAY, JUNE 15: 9:32: SCHEDULE: Arrive Fauske on train; 10, leave Fauske on bus, paying about 230K for ONE ticket to Hammerfest; 16:20: arrive Narvik Saturday, June 16: 11:30: leave Narvik on bus; 20:30: arrive Sorkjosen on bus. Sunday, June 17: 9:30: leave Sorkjosen on bus; 19:15: arrive Hammerfest on bus
Monday, June 18: 12:45: Leave Hammerfest by boat; 23:45,arrive Tromso on boat.
Tuesday, June 19: Stay in Tromso? Day insurance for delay?
Wednesday, June 20: 7:00: Leave Tromso by plane; 8:00 arrive Oslo by plane. Spend day in Oslo/Frogener/Vigeland; pm Oslo-Copenhagen by train.
Thursday, June 21: 10:00: Copenhagen, board train for Geneva at 8:41 am
on FRIDAY, June 22, right on schedule. So it's INCREDIBLE! Take off at 10:35 pm in the car with 11 of 30 seats filled, VERY quiet. Trondhiem fjord quite flat, looking like river mouth, but train goes MOST spectacular way JUST along southern coast, with white gulls flying off across elegant green fields stretching like English lawns to the fjord. Great. SHEER cliffs alternate with tunnels. It got lighter and lighter until 11:30, when I note the fantasy that, at midnight, we'll meet the rising sun! Train personnel really seem to expect you to be awake! Lights all on, tickets being collected, girl selling things. And it still gets lighter. Orchards in bloom and STILL lilac. WHEN do the birds and cattle sleep? You could go out of your mind trying to decide if it looks more like dusk or more like dawn. In fact, it's BOTH. Newly-plowed fields at Levanger rich dark brown contrasting with lush grass green. Occurs to me now that since we've been near sea level there's been NO snow.
CROSS ARCTIC CIRCLE, TO NARVIK
FRIDAY, JUNE 15. At 12:50 am the lights in the car go out. I read and write on. Deep rocky gorges and many tunnels. Like a too-long Maine. Even Pynchon's V beginning to drag at 2 am. Only 7 of us left in car, and it's getting chilly as mist and rain descend outside the steel cigar-holder of a car. Falls at Grong (BC-ish) at 2:15, and cute guy gets on in blue tee-shirt and light jacket. Many fat full GLORIOUS waterfalls. Mountains meld upwards into clouds around Dunderland, bringing back forcefully the book I read about the Chinese family that climbs the mountain, then steps off, UP into the clouds! 8:05 am: Arctic Circle crossed in the midst of some of the most other-worldly atmospheres I've ever seen. Snow peaks rising to misty heights, with rock outcroppings seeming to float in the clouds. Patches of yellow earth with blackish brown vegetation, a foot high at most, mixed with yellowish gravel and veined gray rocks. Snow covers about 60% of the ground, ranging from purest white to dusky black to yellowish to, in one place, a patch of blood red. Electric wires venture lonelily across the plain, and vagrant streams, following no fixed direction, make the undersides of flat glaciers blue under the cloudy sky. Rows of snow fence in places form actual tunnels for the tracks to go under, and the road roughly parallels the tracks with battered gray stretches of its own wood snow fencing. The Arctic Circle line itself, announced with the traditional "Hello, Hello," is marked with two green-corroded bronze armillary spheres about a foot in diameter with a directional triangle angled through the pair of them in one plane, on either side, on pyramids formed of duck-pin size balls, about six feet high. But the VARIATIONS of the land are the most striking-high and low snow piles, high and low rock piles, high peaks and low lakes of water, patched totally at random: circles, bands, ellipses, rectangles, swatches, clumps, towers. Like the remains of an open-pit mining operation after a bombing attack and a crazy snowstorm falling and flood and freezing weather. Snow-fence tunnels eerie with slatted streaks of light showing through. Then we move lower; dead bushes and twigs of trees appear; clouds lower even further; vistas of far peaks, looking more "normal," come into view; the sun's generally hidden, erasing the equally random pattern of light and shade on the mottled ground. the STRIATIONS and BREAKAGES in the rocks added enormously. NO houses near Circle, but there are houses and working equipment scattered about later. Absolutely a milestone reached, and my initial two weeks not even half over. LONG session in bathroom where I wash my asshole, sore from much rough paper, shit and wash again, then wash face and ears, getting paper towel shreds all over, but in trying to brush them out of my beard, my chin line of beard is becoming definitely gray. Drowsiness of "night" finally past: I feel refreshed AS if I'd slept last night. Now 9, only half-hour more of this train which had started so quietly I moved a wooden hanger bouncing against a partition, to the DAMNED baby boarding at 3, to shriek and howl and bother the young mother and VERY young grandmother, only the younger of the 10 and 5 year old sisters cares for the 2-year old squalling, spoiled, rotten brat. Then another bawler about 6 spends her chortling time running clumping up and down the aisle. Oh, for an ADULT no-smoking class on trains. Rather fear what those BUSSES will hold in store for 6, 9, and 10 hours today, tomorrow, and the next day. Lower now, snow gone AGAIN, and sweaters begins to feel warm in the sunlight, now more general. Skjerstadfjord steeper, some nice waterfalls, but nothing to rave about. Triple palisades of shingle beach (tide about five feet down), then embankment for road, then embankment for train an impressive engineering feat. Out of train when he makes all kinds of announcements about busses but NOTHING about FAUSKE! Dive into cafeteria and gulp down an egg/anchovy smorrebrod and put two more items-a very tasty smoked cheese on a waffle-heart and a sweet roll, in my suitcase for eating later, and FORGET it when I check my bag. Oh, well, here's hoping the ferry isn't choppy or long. String of busses, many for Narvik, a couple of tours, I guess. Bus has gentle Norse Musak, damn it. Haven't hit any mosquitoes yet, but then I haven't really been OUTSIDE yet. Onto bus at 9:50, in back of US couple, and hope their intelligible conversation doesn't distract me; so nice to hear an ununderstandable babble. Somewhere between Fauske and Sommerat, there's a sheer wall divided into niches. Seemed, from left, for Buddha viewed from straight across inlet (one with quay at its base). 11 am ferry out of Sommerat, BEST to be on a bus, since the three busses got right on but about two ferry-loads of cars had to wait for next two trips (if more busses didn't come). Well, it IS a fjord and a NICE one. Beautiful pyramidal mountain with Corbusier scoop of snow on one side of the island to the REAL, HUGE zebra-striped backs of grazing mountains that are probably in SWEDEN they're so distant to the east. Very tops vanish into clouds, making them look even romantically higher. The "Lake" on the map is atop a hill and the "river" to the fjord is a lovely 200 foot or so cascade. Another shallower cascade pours from valley aside ferry slip, disfigured by large Esso tank for ferry fuel. This DOES look very much like waterway between Llao-Llao and Puerto Montt. Dock at 11:15, only 15 minutes, not bad at all. Mountain at back EVEN lovelier dappled with sun. Bus 47, didn't bother to check number. Map says it's not a fjord, but a "folder." Hm. Waterfalls EVERYWHERE-from top, profile, down side, streamers, bottom, cascades. GREAT! ONE hill will have DOZENS: INCREDIBLE striations on mountain; FANTASTIC PLANES: one a PERFECT wave crest: . 12:15: 25 minutes for lunch. I get tasty salami and rolls and a fruity syrup, and the couple in front take none of mine and share cheese, milk and cookies. Bunch of Norse kids sing "This land is your land," and "The Saints Come Marchin' In," and leave for bus for Skutvik. Incredible panoramas of bright blue and yellow-green shored lakes set in BRIGHT green and yellow-green foliage, with noon hills dark and shaded and ominous and for mountains bright with stripes and swards of snow and rock and striations stretching across an immensely far horizon. True Fantasyland. Next ferry is 2:10-2:30, somewhat longer, and he takes about five minutes to hit the dock, poor since I'm inside and can't see anything: Alps, Andes, Norwegian fjords, Himalayas from Nepal and India-what more is there? Alaska and Antarctica and Kilimanjaro, for 3! Fabulous Matterhorn-on-one-side, blacked-volcano-on-other. Mind boggling. Driving down 1/2 lane road and hit sign indicating: "Road Narrows". Around and around the fjord to get to Narvik on time, a sprawling city dominated by a HUGE ore loader, and there are THOUSANDS of kids. Couple starts toward Youth Hostel but say they were asked for a card. Of course I don't have one. Back to bureau of information and find I left V and coin purse in bus! Out to back, gone; ask, around side, gone; ask, I'm driving down, and JUST as we get there he's bringing them to front of bus. Back to office: no singles only DOUBLES (robbery?) do you want a guest house? Sure! To 29 Griegsvag ON the coast (looking toward town) and Lief Elstael (and his wife Solveg and children Sonya and Starner!) and up to room to wash my hair and take a bath and decide it's silly to go out because it's raining. Touch of diarrhea (ass sore from not washing) from awful fruit for lunch and my EYES are sore and my GLASSES make me sore, so I figure it's time to go to bed, at 7:45. Probably to sleep another 12 hours, Try to black sun with rug, but it's really still light in the overcast and rainy "night", so I put on blinders and am delighted that I have NO trouble falling asleep immediately. To sleep about 8:30.
BUS TO ALTA
SATURDAY, JUNE 16. Finally out of bed at 7:30, repack, and looking AGAIN at the bus schedule, find I can make it to NORTH CAPE (thereby cutting out the 10-hour coastal steamer, but that might by OK, as EVERYBODY agrees that EVERYBODY vomits, it's only a debatable point how SICK it makes you). Also change from "community" of Sorkjosen to Alta for stopping tonight, as the idea of getting to NORDKAPP at 2400 hours on Sunday, June 17 (tomorrow MIDNIGHT) and staying there two hours is a rather delightful thought. If somehow, it's possible to wiggle from Skaidi to Hammerfest, I'll DO it, but it doesn't seem possible on THIS schedule. Now 9 pm, time to go out and check the countryside and buy some food to carry along on the 14 1/4 hour bus ride to Alta. Hope my INTESTINES hold out. Sadly, no johns on bus. Just keep eating bread, that will bind me! Lovely things in bathroom: Gillette Foamy Barberskum, Helena and Hektor Helst Famalie Deodorant, and ASIDE from wash mitten from Solveig, Leif, Sonja and Steinar, there's a BIG one, for the dog, I guess, labeled "Gjestar." But I DO wonder about gaunt haunted-eyed Leif: kids' things ALL over the place, and the bath is an ORGY of fish and ducks and unopened and still priced bath brushes and hanging soaps (though he doesn't have a shower except for a hand-sprayer) and inflated hangers and trays for soaps and shampoos and bath salts by the dozens. Strange. Clogs labeled with names, too. I seem, finally, to have burnt out my transformer, so there's ANOTHER debate, either BUY a razor before getting to John's in less than a week, or do without shaving (which appeals, since there are hardly any gay bars up here). Also, have to carry my raincoat, since it's needed at moments, and probably pack my sweater-or-wish I had a carrying bag for food, since the suitcase is usually packed away in the BACK of the bus. Troubles, troubles! Now almost 10, so I won't leave suitcase here, but lug it along with me. No, guess I'll WEAR my sweater, too. Who KNOWS? No one, one just tries one's best. Sigh. Well, try the blessed transformer one last time and it DOES work, so I can finish shaving the OTHER half of my chin! [and on door to bathroom, the red heart is "Ledig" for Free and "Opptatt" for not free-beautiful.] Bounce down on waiting room chair expecting to find leather, but *klunk* it's wood. Leave off bag at station and walk up hill to find restaurant, and get a supermarket instead. OK. Pick up raisins, and get the idea: ice cream, cheese, salami, rolls, chocolate bar. DON'T believe it, don't believe it, I don't BELIEVE it. Finally get on bus AFTER I get another schedule that makes it look like I CAN get to Hammerfest from Skaidi and CAN take the boat. Sit in BACK of bus and bounce about, hoping there's no one beside me. But THINK of the back-of-bus bounce to 1 am and look to see that the THIRD seat on left, by PERFECT window, is free next to woman. Woman says it IS free, then gets OFF about 1 hour out, and I have perfect seat AGAIN. I don't BELIEVE it! So delighted my stomach is AGOG with GLEE. Kid from Canada BICYCLING up to Nordkapp? Another beautiful day with clouds brushing mountain peaks, and harbors EMPTIED by low tide. Bus load of ENGLISH! Stop in Bjerkvik and get MANY people on and off, but it's really a local, people getting on and off. At this point 24 out of 45 seats-well, 27 now. Day clouds and clears so quickly. Never CAN tell, I suppose, WHEN it will rain, but you can be pretty sure it WILL rain. Everyone seems to have adapted the snack: munching on fruit and sandwiches and cheese through the ride. English women spread out on two sides, like me, too. Fantastic how I've written for MORE than I scheduled-probably (OK, certainly) because I don't have John to TALK to. Oh, oh, revelation coming? If my writing was a substitute for a father or a lover or stability-or recognition of myself AS myself, maybe with John there'll be no NEED to write-the "need" (or the time to FILL without reading, anyway) is surely stronger without John. Or does John just make it harder? Odd how constant light hits ME. I KNOW I've had no sleep for 37 hours, but since it's not dark I don't FEEL like going to bed. Only my tired eyes compel me to sleep. And then I sleep 11 hours. Sleet on windshield. Marvelous view of Narvik one hour north of it before heading into final pass. Ferns just blooming, like thin figures in clusters with their heads bowed in sleep. Funny to SEE incredible Norse wastes and hear "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah." And throaty Vera Lynn with "Auf Wiedersehn." High into passes and AGAIN the other-worldliness of the Arctic snow and rock and floating ice-floes on the few lakes that have even thawed. Trees shrink to man-height, and at the latitude many are still only fat BUDS for leaves. Hundreds of incredible waterfalls and FAST views. BEFORE dandelions had just gone to fluff, now they're in bloom, and I just saw my first daffodils! Strange black birds with white undersides fly with a metallic whirring sound as if they were mechanical. Hitchhikers, even with signs, seem to have little luck. Interesting curtains in many windows: one piece, lacy. Sunny further north of Narvik is rather the same as south (except for that marvelous vision across the lake from Storsteinnes), and so, from sameness, suffers in comparison to the south. Driver stops for a whole bunch of camper/hitchhikers and for the first time the bus is totally filled. The mountain I estimated at 1500 feet in height across from Storsteinnes turns out to be 1377 meters or over 4000 feet! Nordkapp mountains themselves are about 1000 feet. Nordkapp is 71 11' as close as I can estimate from a big ship's map, and the cape to the LEFT looks NORTHER! No, my height estimate is OK, since the mountains that looked so impressive just before Lojofoton, or whatever, are about the size of the hill I liked, and the mountain BEHIND is about three times as high. Lower mountains have spots of snow; highest peaks have only SPOTS of ROCK. Highest in area is 5500 feet. Highest north of Bussenes is only 200 feet, even lower as you get to Kirkenes. Down to 19 after ferry, off a bit late at 7:40. He speeded along. About an acre of dried fish on the perpetually-sunned racks. A stretch of new, pure, unadulterated tundra-lichen is incredibly colorful. Second bus, from Sorkjosen, definitely less touristy-babies again and old women who look at me with more suspicion than curiosity. Seats about the same: somewhat small, though the headrests aren't cupped and are a bit lower. Just not quite the same quality. Hope I find a place to SLEEP in Alta-which has a lovely meaning: halt for the night; HIGH on the map, and tomorrow I go HIGHER than ALTA. But thank GOD the babies get off at 9:25, and there are just 8 of us on the bus (including the stocky blond in tight bells that I THINK was cruising me on the ferry, sitting way in the back. Hmmm?) Bus went a couple kilometers out of its way, too. Nice. Up to another pass past Hammerlot, and trees melt holes for themselves in the snow! Why? Metabolism generates heat? More light reflected? They breathe? Still five FEET of snow at plowed roadsides! View magnificent! Stone huts of Lapps? Gold from low sun at 10 and BLUE must be reflected from sea or snow onto cloud bottoms! UNBELIEVABLE cloud colors. Sun stalks on golden stilts between snow peaks. It IS a local, going down to slate factory. I guess it was a boat I saw from Gildrudru "spa" where I could HEAR a dog barking from an island 10 miles away! Some sheep appear to be going to sleep? Sadly there ARE some oil slicks even up HERE; thin, sure, but there! Driving on road 6 (NOT all paved and graded and two lane) would be a nightmare, particularly passed by our maniacal driver, who has everyone (but me) staring fixedly out the front window. "Alta, 136 km." at 10:45. Three hours to go 81 miles? All of 27 mph? Maybe as crow flies? Into Kraenongsbotn horn BLARING. Delivery? At Kjaekans he got out to give himself some Esso diesel fuel! A WILD time just going all the way around this one fjord. Touring this 50 years from now will be VERY different. Look with some fear toward seeing Nordkapp PLASTERED with souvenir stands (as one rock looked like a NYC SUBWAY train). Birds singing away at 11 pm, car comes racing up with another passenger. ALL SORTS of gay life in the far north. Haven't SEEN the sun, but it's surely behind horizontal clouds. Some clouds in the blue sky, however, look like rain clouds when they're probably not. Cooler, too, and my sunglasses are off. Stop at 11:05, he goes into a house with the gal he picked up way back at a restaurant. BUT he's driving again in three minutes. The tundra starts LOWER and LOWER in the passes. Seems barely 500 feet now, with snow and snowflakes, and incredible BLUE ridges at snow's edges. Sun ALMOST comes through clouds at 11:30. I WOULD like to buy an embroidered Lapp coat (though the low-slung belt and micro-skirt looks funny). "Alta 100 at 11:35, yep, it will take to 1:45. Only 4 of us and driver left. He sure does slow FAST for bumps! Sun glares FULL in face, just above fjord-mountain, from 11:38-11:40. 11:45, gorgeous snow-plumes blowing from peaks. Mountaintops golden. I expect birds to go "Tekeli-li" any minute now. Fantasy time over: driver and HIS girl, guy in back and me, newly-arrived sailor and newly-arrived gal from car with gal-and "What the world needs now is love, sweet love" breaking me into a GRIN. But, alas, the new girl leaves WITHOUT her boy, and we're now an unlikely 5-some. This afternoon a reindeer running beside the bus, and at 12:25 (as sun GLARES in my eyes so I can barely read what I write) I just saw a LARGE rangy fox-like creature with close-placed worried black eyes looking at the bus. Food in mouth. About two feet high at the shoulder, but only about three feet long. Tail formless. Talvik is about as perfect a harbor as Peggy's Cove is. Perfect shape, houses, color, shading, look, feel. at 12:30 the sun RISES enough to get above horizontal clouds and SPLASHES sun on hills and shore and places between, including the seat in front of me. Day has certainly begun, but still the saying "It's always darkest before the dawn," is still true, but barely, because it ignores the sun. Driving between 12:30-1:30 is VERY dangerous: sun IN eyes On road, DIRECTLY. Whew! Into Alta Hotel at 1:25. No room. She tries a few places, two men come in and it SOUNDS like there's been an accident and I can get a room. In and shit a small tough turd and wash my face in thankfully hot water, brush my teeth, listen to the HOLLER of the man next door. Bed at 2:15.
TRIP TO NORDKAPP
SUNDAY, JUNE 17. GOD, I feel strange. With EVERYTHING removed I feel face to face with the literal nothingness which is not only MYSELF but which is, EXCEPT basically (when they're God), EVERYONE. That's a complex sentence. Semantically and logically and logistically. Wake at 9, sated with sleep though I somehow feel I haven't had enough. Then. I couldn't say why, NOW, at 11:30. I can say "I'd rather have slept until 3, so that I would have to rush around with a full mind and not have to confront ME. NOT that the confrontation is so awful. I've confronted it before, and there's a feeling of "stability" in its basic "schizophrenia." Look at it. (IS this a chronicle of a disintegrating mind? If it is, I find it interesting to watch-and I think I should diagram the dichotomies as they come up, for clarity of the following exposition:
Reading books )
Coming )
) DOING Talking ) These are all defined
) Writing ) by the DOING.
ME ) Working )
) Touring )
)
) NOT-DOING
Perpend: the top half is how I ESCAPE from me; the bottom half, in utterest simplicity is: ME --> NOT-DOING --> ME.
They WORK during the week, PLAY on weekends. Fine. I don't have to feel jealous, or that I'm missing something and HATE them for it, and now there are laughing girls next door! Shitting done satisfactorily enough on a permafrost cement-floored john, and a deep rambling drunken song, as lugubrious as a Byzantine Requiem, fills the empty halls with its mournfulness-it sounds NEXT door to the john and next door to me in room 8, [DRAWING] so heaven knows where he IS. The 15-minute sink bath is bizarre, but better AFTER it's clear there IS hot water, as it appeared for 5 minutes there WASN'T. Air is SO dry that the soap dries almost on application; and it's almost impossible to get off, a wet towel merely slides it around and then won't rinse out. Finally finish and dry instantly with a dry towel feeling not TOO badly off, and smell underarms and socks and guess it will do for the overnight jaunt "to the Pole," again VERY in keeping with "V." No, decide on clean. I may be up TWO nights running. Always best to plan on the WORST. Decide to shave in cycles now, since the transformer always gets so HOT. Pity I can't shave as fast as I can brush my teeth. Finally, at 2, I'm ready to see about getting money, food, and the bus. What a MORNING! Walk into "town" and find everything closed. All had gone into Alta Snack Bar so I went too, to find a GREAT serving system, that even I didn't understand the FULL impact of. Press a button on a menu board, and little colored balls drop into a slot right at the stove. And though I got uptight because I pressed it twice and thought they thought I goofed, giving me one, they made me one so I could eat it hot and then they brought me the second. Hardly the gourmet breakfast in the world "Karbonade mit Spielegg" awful beef turd with a fried egg on top, but two of them with cake and milk (for 17.25!) were quite a bit MORE than filling. All the beautiful LARGE Norse boys are in the room, hopefully on the bus, quite lovely, some of them, yet so young and untrodden looking. Up and get check cashed with no trouble, and the English-speaking (as was the cashier at the Snack Bar) cashier told me the midnight bus WAITED at Nordkapp to leave at 2. By NO stretch is "Nordkapp" the north CAPE. First, it's on an island; second, the more WESTERLY point is northernmost on ALL maps. We'll see how it stacks up against the Midnight Sun. Price cards at Alta, and they're ONE krone, or just under 19ó apiece! This will HAVE to wait for Nordkapp, phony as it IS. And the ratio I've been using at 6 is really more like 5. How AWFUL. I'm too sick to THINK about it! On bus to Russenes at 4 (how they DO break up the final push!) with same English crew, pick up a flying Italian couple from Alta airport, and at 4:30 see MOST cars since Oslo around a soccer game: THAT'S why all the good-looking guys were in town today. Only twenty of us onto bus to Nordkapp, mostly the English. The colors: red, black and white, shades of yellow and green, and trees in bug at pass at B are a PHENOMENON. Soil quality of tundra perfectly conveyed by a clipped British "Quite BOGGY, isn't it?" Almost ALL pass north of Alta. Skidoos all over. Great mine-glaciers along torrential streams. Holes form around telephone poles, too. I guess snow MELTS (or sublimes) from the outside surface, including surfaces against trees and rocks and poles, and THAT'S what causes the holes. Out for a walk at 5:30, dryish bog, plastic bottles, rusted piece of metal, plastic wrap, jaw from which I extracted two ruminant teeth as souvenirs: one with the roots eaten away, not pushed through jaw, another USED and now worn down. NEAT! HOVELS of huts pass with windows curtained and Skidoos. Neat footbridges suspended across streams. Tundra is a FASCINATING world three inches high: there isn't anything BIGGER to distract your attention. Take 1000 photos of it! ONE home labeled "Fanny Hill." Just before Skiadi, whole herd of 12-15 deer, male, female, young, all with fuzzy stumpy horns and bright, black-ringed eyes. Then a distant, yellow-white Mountain Goat, and another, larger, maybe 20, herd of deer. And a THIRD. "Oh, aren't they clever?" "CLEVER?" Forest: buds of wild roses and tiny yellow flowers; bush stumps become bright green from gardens fit for a terrarium. Dogs and train-sounds and rain on suit (not to mention trash thrown from restaurant). Fungus and ring-things, dried grasses and twigs, rocks covered with ground or showing edges. Bird feathers, bones, birch skin and skeletons, human refuse. LOVELY patterns of sunlight and shade on silver birches and newly printed currency-green of leaves. Mosses and lichens and whitening excrement. Old rotted black-brown and new-hanging leaves. Dry twigs and spring young lithe withes. Delicate beautiful, green-flowered spores, fragile lampposts of pink and powder, but they wouldn't last if picked and pressed. Stars of pine tops, 1/2 inch high. An old fire pit and a drift that's no longer snow, but two-carat diamonds, twirling in my gloved grasp with a sound of glass beads; solidifying into Austrian crystal chandeliers in my warm hands. Odd fellow in bar, chanting gibberish to a blushing girl sipping soda through a collapsed straw, while his black-edged-toothed fellow laughs and laughs. So far there've been black, blue and red Lapp coats, all with the same gold-band strip-embroidery of green, blue, red, yellow flowers and designs. LOVE to have one. Running LATE; leave at 6:30 for Russenes, not 6:20. Sign outside Skaiki: "Nordkapp 105." 51/2 hours! To Repvag in twenty minutes, down monorail road to beach and grand bus switch. CAN'T figure why. How could I have forgotten the rock-the all-over rock: in huge unbroken slabs, like flattened, shingled and shattered and broken and torn and crumpled and fallen from cliffs? 12 girls get on bus, 6 stayed in back, seat next to me is still empty. Then girl sits next to me with my folded arms and I see the air of hostility it seems. Gulls fishing on the tide-left shingle. Now there are deer ALL over, including tiny white and a TINIER black one. AND 3-5 SKELETONS on the beach! Cloudy now, hopefully heading for clear at 12. LONG tunnel Russenes-Repvag. And beaches have patches of that extraordinarily fine-grained shale that breaks into such squares and ARCHITECTURAL fragments along the beautiful shores. Oh, THOUSANDS of photos of MARVELOUS buildings. No trees or houses of ANY kind beyond the tunnel, only a few camping hunters, and one SINGLE camper in a whole PERFECT bay. LUSH patches of sandy-bottomed EMERALD in the water (yellow-green-milk is tourmaline?). Onto ferry at 9:15, getting charged 10.50, not 7.50 (as opposed to tour, who paid 12.50), and it's a BRIGHT trip across, with the sun vanishing at last as we entered the quay at Honingsvag by, of ALL things, the rising PROW of the FERRY at 12 minutes of 11. But it MIGHT be OK. True APOTHEOSIS of beauty on the way out: passing through a shower, there was an arc en ciel across the ENTIRE south, the WHOLE of the world, in which wheeled a snow-white gull, lit dazzling by the sun, as a TRUE Holy Ghost! Sun in and out, cape beyond cape playing hide and seek, passing other ferries and many fishing boats, bobbing in the LONG rollers from the Arctic Ocean, and get in at 10 of 11, and the English to their hotel, and I'm on the bus and pay the regulation 24 going AND coming, and get the FRONT seat for the view of the SUN in my eyes, if any. A DOLL of a humpy, chesty, arm-y, assy, crotchy sailor steered the ship the last part of the way and I KEPT staring at him. Sign "Nordkapp 34" at the pier, and we'd better get everyone paid up QUICK to get there at the REGULAR bus travel rate! Cold as HELL, and I'll be keeping IN the raincoat when it gets warmer with the DOOR shut. The French in the bus (replace one tourist group with another) absolutely RAVE about the sights from Bergen. Don't know WHAT guys will be doing who do NOT return. And, voila, the English are BACK, puffing up the steps, to delay us even FURTHER. AND we're waiting for two MORE from the hotel. The suspense builds to the LAST moment! HUGE snowstorm, and the suspense SUCCEEDS in building while a car from Rome backs up awkwardly, other cars make US back up, there's a strange CHECKPOINT to fill out, and we can see the hills stretching before us. Worse, the driver doesn't seem to care. French start "Allez-y, Allez-y" and the driver pulls to the top of the peak (peaks in front, but all obscured in fog, and he glances backward to survey the disappointment in the audience). Long slopes ahead and only seven minutes to go. But he speeds UP, about catching up with the bus and car in front, and we dip into the LAST valley at 4 of, to see sunlight on the ADJACENT point of land, and a skyline of parked busses and buildings and even people. Drive up at 2 of, and a little white car finesses his way between us and the bus in front. I'm STANDING in frustration, having put on my coat. But the driver roars up to the gate ITSELF, opens the door and I RACE out at 1 of 12. Round the corner of the "NORDKAPPHALLEN 71, 10', 21"" and the sun is TRULY obscured, but in a most MARVELOUS way: by a yellow-gray screen of countable, discrete flakes of snow, suspended through an ENORMOUS distance, with the sun as a slide-show lamp behind it all.
SOUTH TO HAMMERFEST
MONDAY, JUNE 18. Dash down to the gate JUST as the sun clears through the snow, SO bright that it's impossible to view, and it COULDN'T be more than midnight (or 30 seconds after, but who says my WATCH is right, it's USUALLY FAST) and the snow CONTINUES to fall in large wet flakes, but by 5 after it's totally passed, as could be SEEN, since the edge of the CLOUD of snow was visible, and the view is SPECTACULAR, but even THEN I see people looking over the side at the KNIVESJKAELLAN "The knife that cuts off the top of the sea." I look and it surely LOOKS further north. Nordkyn isn't really close (except it IS the mainland). Look and look, pick flowers to press in V, pick up a rock, buy a book and a certificate and send five cards, sweating, and go out to the extreme LEFT to look at the sea, then to the RIGHT to look at the sea, and get an idea. Walk in FRONT of the fence to see-KNIVESJKAELLAN! Now REALLY! Either MY point is to the north, which seems silly since Nordkapp seem north of where I stand, or KNIVESJKAELLAN is further to the north, according to perspective and eye and map. Inside, grinning inside, and ask the charming certificate-signers. "No, it's not further north," but I explain my point, the GUY says no. But the GAL has obviously done the SAME thing I did, and waves her arms ALONG and NORTH and says the same thing I did. I say "I suspect if I come back in 10 years this kiosk will be down THERE," and they all laugh WITH me. What, of course, is anyone to do? Back at the bus (where my suitcase remains), there are OTHERS on the bus (after one of the tourists says the Sognefjord was AWFULLY beautiful with orchards when she saw it) and there seems to be confusion where the bus is going. Then a GUY comes in and says "This is NOT the Oresund bus, everyone for Oresund get OFF." 6-7 people file off, and a multi-lingual (French, German, Austrian) comedy-fest begins-a comedy of errors of getting on the wrong bus twice, the wrong boat, the wrong ferry. Everyone is splitting their sides laughing while I busily scratch away writing. A fat woman explains that Oresund is a British cruise boat parked at Skarsvag, and this bus is NOT going there. Two drunk characters in the back are saying it goes somewhere else, and when someone tries to explain in a language other than theirs (Norse?) they rattle off "Takatakatakatakatak," which sound quite unproductive. Honningsvag is one of the BRIGHTEST harbors-sharp-edged houses in blues and reds and white and ochres, and greens with WHITE windows, whether from sea-reflection or from shades, all foursquare at the foot of its mountain, like a cardboard Lilliput from a distance. Wonder what "SAKTE FART" means, other than an Indian goddess with gas? Amazing. Agonize that I never noticed the ferry was supposed to leave Honningsvag at 6, but it leaves at 3:15. Hurray for our side! NOW if only there's a BUS at Repvag, at Russenes, and at Skaidi, I'm in HAMMERFEST. However, I fear staying in Repvag until the scheduled 7:40. Getting in at 4:45, there's a bus standing on the hill, but everyone gets into their own cars while I watch the Italian couple (who have bought a PAIR of deerskins!) seem to walk toward a taxi with the old man. I take my bag to the stops of the Repvag Kro, see our ferry IS scheduled, walk to the bus kiosk to find NO schedule posted, and back to stand catatonically on the stairs: everyone GONE! Is this REALLY happening to me? Visions of vileness (breaking windows, looting houses vaguely float through my mind). The ferry leaves at 6, I SUPPOSE I could sit on it until then and then only an hour and 40 minutes before the 7:40 SCHEDULED bus. Hot damn. Good thing there are no mosquitoes! Then decide to check out the WC and LO, the same two guys who were stretched out across benches on the boat are stretched out along four chairs each, the old guy is looking at a map, a young fellow is gazing moodily out the window smoking a cigarette, and the Italian couple are sacked out on chairs and a table. Oh. Outside again after looking out the window (time passes VERY slowly this way), and guy appears at the top of the embankment-FANTASY! He walks down the embankment and to his house down the road without looking back. END OF FANTASY. I get my bags and lug them in, sit to write in the corner, the Italiana sneezes, the Italiano comforts, the guys on the chairs scratch non-sexually, and I'm back to page 376 of V, which has begun to lag, along with my mentality, at 5:30 am. Well, only 2 hours to the bus. FINISH V at 7:30, a DREADFUL letdown. But he's worth reading to see what his NEXT one is like. Wearily get it out of the suitcase: GO. Get to the first page of the second book at 7:31, and the bus drives in. Boring ride, all being still inland, I forgot, and the sun is on the left and murder. I doze through multifaceted architectural shale constructions. At Russenes there's some question, but we get onto bus that goes DIRECT to Hammerfest. Wash my face in the restaurant, using restaurant's napkins as paper towels, and feel MUCH better. Across ten minute ferry to island that Hammerfest's on and arrive at 11:15, early. Look for ticket office and finally check with the Information Booth, at the corner, and buy an 80K ticket to Tromso. Bag on board in huge racks, then out to wait for someone to cash my check for 211K, buy cold cuts and cheese, to a bakery for lovely fruitbread and eat half of stuff on rusty girder, also ingesting needed Dramamine. On at 12:30, get a room, but the combination of 119K extra AND a besotted vodka swiller-by-tumblers in the bedroom make me give it BACK. Watch loading of ice-topped Findums fish until 1:30, and immediately we're off. Sit outside eating for a bit, then down to read and laze a bit, up for more sun, finding it will take this boat until FRIDAY to reach Bergen. So that's out of the question, as is going OVERLAND, so the flight IS necessary. Boat is PHYSICALLY interesting. Large numbers of post-teenagers on camping trips with their buddies in their bells, some taking off shirts and even stripping to shorts for the sun on the deck. But though the blond muscles may be pretty to look at, they're not ATTRACTIVE, much, because most of them seem such brainless beer swillers. Was EXTREMELY annoyed (through lack of sleep, partly) on the bus this morning at BLATHERING girls trying to get the boys' attention-and succeeding (probably giving rise to envy in me). But worse was the CRUELTY of the sound of the remarks, the SNIPPINESS of the boys and girls to the conductor and to anyone who wanted to sit on the seats their belongings were scattered over. They just don't seem very WARM people. but there ARE some whose pleasant eyes give enormous possibilities. But there's not even john scenes. Sit and try to sleep, but boat has crazy habits of turning CORNERS. It will dip down, well, down, and DOWN on one side, until everyone stops what they're doing, clutches their chair arms, catches things from toppling off the table, and we're turned through 90 in less than 1/2 minute. Precarious. Norse sometimes take the sun funny, on very DISTINCT triangular patches on the cheeks that look more sick than healthy. And, although there is sometimes a face that stops me hot, there are more than their share of moles, pimples, scratches, splotches, discolorations, mouth sores-maybe they just SHOW UP more against fair skin. Stop at Okafjord and Skjamvag (which I even NAP through from 7:30-8:30) and every so often look out the window to check the scenery. Well, if you're in the back you get a stream of smoke smell. If you're in the middle you have the superstructure and battens and derricks and lines and birds to constantly detract. And then the horizon changes so SLOWLY that it tends to LOOK boring, though the mountains are definitely higher over and probably around Bergen WOULD be great. But the water tends to DISTANCE the scene the SAME amount, passing at the SAME SPEED, whereas bus or train will sometimes climb up and over, go around, or "play around" on, giving one view from a number of different angles and sightlines. On the boat, it's merely the unrolling of two parallel scrolls of mountains and snow. From 8 am today the sky's been PERFECTLY clear, as it was only about 6 pm today that there was the merest WISP of a cloud and now at 9 there are some chenille-y clouds 2/3 way up separate islands floating north, in respect to my view, like majestic battleships with battlements built in. Also, view from salon windows tends to trivialize the scenery by framing them in a TV screen. And the lounge, even on this UNCROWDED ship, is unpleasant: radios on loud, babies bawling, card players going, people eating and blocking the aisles with their sleeping feet. Empty beer bottles are everywhere. Get a beer at 6:30 to take a second Dramamine, just to make sure, since I don't feel like either eating or getting sick. Eyes VERY tired, body looking forward to a day of REST in Tromso. Just hope I can get a ROOM-the last one to supper through getting without John.
TUESDAY, JUNE 19. NO room. HOURS of disgust. Finally try ALL hotels, take a bus top the airport, price a ticket to Geneva, and take flight 375 from Tromso to Bodo 4:05-4:50. Flight 361 Bodo-Oslo 5:40-7, Oslo-Copenhagen 8-9, Copenhagen 9:45 SCHEDULED, but due to crowding actually OFF at 10:50, into FABULOUS alps at noon-FABULOUS, and land in Geneva at 11:33, DELIRIOUS with happiness. Change Norge to Swiss, check that getting my binox OK'd here is no good, pack everything into the suitcase except money and this, after calling both ERA numbers at 12:45 and write THIS waiting for them to get back from LUNCH (hopefully) at 1 pm. 3SF to $1 EASY to remember, and I get a 33ó piece for a call, but in flipping up a phone book what should fall out but a "new penny"-probably an effective slug, and a 20ó piece, what's needed for a CALL. 7ó a call is about RIGHT. But there's no answer. Look in the phone book for the other number, but there's no answer at that one either. To the information desk and find they have NO information brochures in English and no "This Week in Geneva" at ALL. Ugh. Get a paper and finally find our ad for the Parc Tremblay, which isn't far from the airport, so I get walking directions, pay 3 20ó pieces to put the suitcase into a locker, and am about to take off walking when I try one last time-and someone answers, saying that the troupe is STAYING at Charles Bonnet, so I take the suitcase OUT of the locker after all of 15 minutes storage and get out to bus line 33. The system operates solely on an honor system: putting in 4 20ó pieces to get a slip that entitles you to ride anywhere for one hour, up to 12 hours after you buy it-but no one checks that you HAVE it, and I really have the feeling that most people don't buy the little slips. Out at Claparade, having gotten the impression of a typically French-brownstone type block-facaded town, and Charles-Bonnet is a street of elegant greeneried townhouses, and in to ask for John. No one knows where he is. Talk to Art, who's in poor shape physically (his back), financially (Jim May had to spend $20 for a pair of sneakers for a program they have to do early because Ze'eva's in Bonn performing), and emotionally (listing the people he's had arguments with). I take off VERY smelly clothes and shower with him, feeling clean outside finally by putting on OTHER pants and shirt and sandals, and find that everyone's SLEEPING at a place called La Bellotte, so I haven't gotten my bag to the right place yet. Have some lunch of fruit-LOVELY peaches-and start writing and reading a bit in Anita's office. She comes in and stares at me in puzzlement and we introduce and shake hands and she leaves to do her business elsewhere. Some LOVELY students wandering halls. But finally about 5 my eyes are TOO sore (after making a list of hours I slept in back of "Gravity's Rainbow" and find that it HASN'T been that bad, an average of 5.5 hours of sleep for the last 11 days. Though I plan to stay up to 9 pm tonight and extend my sleeplessness record (before at IBM, at WORST only 7 am day one to 11 pm day two, or 40 hours) to 60, increasing my record by 50%) and stretch out on the sofa and fall asleep. Somewhat later (at 7) John comes in WITHOUT having heard I was here, looks at me stretched on the sofa and says to himself, "Students shouldn't be here-the clothes look familiar," and is about to go out when I say "Aren't you going to SAY anything?" He gasps and turns red and comes over to kiss me. He's rather distant all evening and the next afternoon apologizes because "I really haven't convinced myself you're HERE yet." We're out to catch cab to hotel, pleasantly scruffy place on lakeshore, and I brush TEETH for first time in three days and get down to dinner of trout-like lake fish (13F) in a tomato sauce, a GOOD fresh tiny melon (3F), and a bottle of ordinary local wine (14F), that comes to 56 francs, or over $9 apiece for a perfectly ORDINARY meal! John tells about his weekend with Gilles and at Pere Bise (for 385F, about $85) and sex five times and lovely country around Anency. Upstairs to grass (almost nothing) and bidis (strong) and sex (he comes quickly and RUBS me sore, so I finish myself) and I put in earplugs against his report of loud birds at 3 am, and lay in a BED for the first time in 61 hours at 10 pm, feeling quite LOVELY.
GENEVA ERRANDS AND NOTHING MUCH
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20. Wake just at 7:15 and John leaves for breakfast at Anita's and I wake AGAIN at 8:45, having dreamed for the first time in ages: a young boy named Bippy is disturbed when I call him Ippy and I give him explanation that EVERYone makes mistakes, even his Father and Mother, and he bursts into tears and somehow I become responsible for his therapeutic safeguard. Odd. Force myself out of bed and get to the dock to walk along shore to wall, around curved wall to entryway, and there's a large house in green grass, a tennis court, then a ledged garden and pool, and another lawn up to a large greenhouse and dining patio, and John's just coming out of the kitchen. I have some fruit while he shows me over the begonia wall, the innumerable varieties of roses, the bees about the single bush, the dock where the husband's gone off from to see about the yacht, and there are large and small boats and cars throughout the family: her third husband who's in pharmaceuticals and her three girls and two boys from Linus Pauling II, whom John says are all dolls when he saw them playing tennis. Fruit, then have some muesli and look at the incredible glass, book, and antiques living room with about six different areas around piano, sofas, porch, bookcases, or fireplace. Then at 10:30 she has to take Art to an 11 am appointment with a chiropractor, so we drive to ERA. I gather all my stuff together, and then into the car to pick up some plastic foil for Art (who hadn't bothered to mention he wanted it very FLEXIBLE, so he's gotten it too THICK) and back to hotel in DRIVING rain to pick up my dry cleaning and book and BACK to ERA for lunch. After Baechler is open at 2 I take down two shirts and sweater and jacket and pants and she says 26.50F (6 + 4.50+ 4.50+ 4.50 + 7)! Almost $9! Finally three sweaters can be done without ironing for 6F, almost regular, but the pants are still 6 and the jacket is 7, so the bill is STILL 19F, or $5.33. TOO MUCH. But leave it, HOPING to get it back Friday afternoon. Back to ERA to write this, but it's still raining so John stretches out to sleep, I don't feel like doing much (finally make out a list of things to do, which makes me feel better, and get money settled with John and DTW), so at 3:15 I'll just take a crap, have some water-my constant nasal drip makes me dry-as Anita-recommended Rhinopront hasn't seemed to do much yet. But I'll keep it up. Haven't SNEEZED much in past hour, a blessing. Same as Nepal? Wild flowers? Roses? Then read a bit and everyone's off to a rehearsal, waking John up to drive them there, then other drivers take over and he decides to get painted chairs from Anita's and take them, so he does, leaving me off in the hotel, and I sort through suitcase, repacking past conveniences and souvenirs and consolidating future information, then get TERRIBLY depressed by the scream of the kid next door, and scrape my knuckles by pounding, hearing "He wants his Mommy, who's downstairs on the telephone," but I hear nary a peep out of any of the six or seven kids for the rest of the night. Read a bit, getting tired, down to boeuf a la creme for 15 and a Cote du Rhone that's pretty awful and strawberries that are either TASTELESS or RENDERED tasteless by the wine soporization of my tongue. Out in John's sweater to look at the clear lights of the city after the day of rain, then VERY cold upstairs to crawl into bed about 10, leaving on a light for John, taking another Rhinopront (though John says that it's addicting, and I'll suffer even MORE when I have to finish using it), and feeling out of sorts-maybe I'm coming down with a cold (and I FORGOT our Swiss-travel office search in pm, again getting wet, and finding there are small hotels AROUND Zermatt, including a place called GORNERGRAT.)
GENEVA'S MUSEUMS AND THE DANCE PROGRAM
THURSDAY, JUNE 21. Wake about 4 to take off the blanket since John's put ON the coverlet, and then about 7:30 to caress and be caressed, and we're being VERY deliberate about it, I feel I'm pleasing him very much and he's making ME feel good, too, and he comes and I come and we lie joined for minutes, feeling good together, and out of bed at 8. I take bath (thankfully he didn't express displeasure that I hadn't bothered to bathe since sex NIGHT BEFORE LAST), and I go in to bathe and clean my teeth, then at 8:30 over to Anita's to wash one load of overalls and socks and one of white stuff and go to the Museum of Natural History from 11-12, perfectly ordinary display of rocks and crystals and some very few semi-precious stones (amethyst and onyx about richest and best) and geology of Switzerland on 3rd floor, down to animals and birds and fish and reptiles and alligators and lists of creatures that have vanished or SURVIVANT--that are about to vanish, and brief geological ages and fossils and ancient shells. Nothing really extraordinary, outside the only other (outside the Paris Museum) existing stuffed black Emu from Australia, and a few other rarities. Out at 12, visit the tiny modern-iconed St. Peters Byzantine Church with a casket covered with flowers, then back to ERA to find key to kitchen atop the soda stand thanks to the Mays, who eat in the lounge, the three of them, and share NOT ONE word with me while I eat and read, then put ALL dishes away and leave to wander small streets of old town, seeing people shiver in sidewalk cafes in the breezy winds, and wander the said-to-be-cruisy Jardin Anglais and merely follow a tanned torsoed fellow with a bare midriff and nice narrow ass up to the Museum of Art and History at 2 pm to look out from grassy HIGH park and then in to see two MARVELOUS prehistoric carvings: one of an elk on bone from Kesslerloch, one almost a STATUETTE of a cow licking herself from the Magdalenian Era. Then across to the Greek and Roman statues, a phallic god of plenty is fun, and then to the OVERLY-large collection of arms and armor, upstairs to old room after old room full of shadows and shoelaces of history, the enormous collection of money and medals, then way to the "Beaux Arts" section, with sexy too-large-chested men INWARD for the Past, and OUTWARD and cocky for the future, and around to MEDIOCRE painters of Switzerland, even to the "Miracle of the Fish," though I AM surprised at its historic value of being the (1444) "first real countryside in the history of painting," to translate from the French-only guide-brochures bought for 7ó. Can see why John thought it was poor. Except for the phallic Roma, the funny "Decollation" of John the Baptist, and some AGONIZINGLY poor Liotards and some of the WORST Renoirs and Sisleys ever, a VERY mediocre collection, except for the "romantic realism" of de la Rive, Aguau, Calami, and Diday, for sunsets, something else, Bierstadt-like mountains, and Dore richness, respectively. A NICE nude of "After the bath" by Corot. Hodler seems pitifully REPRESSED homosexually-his crotches seem to WANT to be MUCH sexier, and he LOVES sexy asses. Couple fancy Greek cups, one with satyrs with HORSES with erections, one with guy in chamber pot, cock and balls and tail sticking out. The museum's MUMMY is almost an obscenity. Lying with her dried dugs over her chest, forearms cradled in her pelvis, AWFUL to think of HER around, screaming, somewhere! Look to 4:30, then down to see the model of the old city, while a BEAUTIFUL male in a neat blue suit MAY be the attendant or MAY be a visitor. And there are more Hodlers, though I'm surprised to see that he DIED in the 1850's, and he's surely ahead of his time. Out in the cold to see the Stamp collection, and meet JOHN coming over the bridge over Via Helvetica. We find the stamps are closed, and walk back toward ERA where we meet ZE'EVA coming over the NEXT bridge. Find that we're NOT going back to the hotel so that I can borrow John's sweater, and look around "Lost and Found" for something and find NOTHING, so I appropriate John's raincoat while he takes a towel to wrap around. Walk to the Bourg de Four to eat at 5:45, and have the almost carbonated wine ordinaire Fernent, tasty and tart, for an hour until they serve the menu. JOHN insists that language differences ENRICH the world, while I say that if everyone at least understood everyone's WORDS, they would BEGIN to get a better idea of their MENTAL differences. I said that our night in BORNEO was so great because the mission kids spoke ENGLISH, and when we get on the bus afterward a French-speaking fellow says that there's a green button outside the door that we should have pushed to get IN. No possible communication WITHOUT a shared language. He say not. He had maison Pied au Cochon with meat, and I had it grilled, with bones and skin and fat. Onion soup good. Out at 8 (he says I rushed out, I guess I did) to get the bus and the tent IS closed at the sides, fine. Read until it starts, and audience grows to about 60. Ze'eva's "32 Variations" is very quirky, some funny, some solemn, others enigmatic. Not her best. Then Art's "Errands" is another comment on business life-with races, pushups, chairs, falls, and flashlights. Audience loves it. Kathy's "Days" as a seal is even MORE powerful. Then "Variations on a Theme of Rudy Perez" caps the evening with antics by cellist Gwen and GREAT improvisations by John Wilson, particularly. Party across the street, and I fear it'll be as it is: Anita on the outside wanting to be in, I with nothing to say, only to listen to Ze'eva and John Wilson's jokes, and there's wine for everyone and lasagna for the dancers, and we're driven back to the hotel by Anita at midnight, she and Jeff happy about the evening, and we get directly to bed, earplugs in again against kids' sounds next door.
GENEVA: ARIANA AND MOVIES
FRIDAY, JUNE 22. Wake at 8:10, surprising, and lay together, then up to shave and over to Anita's to get $542 in cash, with ALL silver coins (including a NEATLY dated 1925 quarter) and even a $1 silver certificate, probably worth about $1.50 by now. Take that and clean clothes back, run into the Mays again when I want eggs, HE's monopolizing the egg beater and frying pan for MINUTES farting around, so I take rest of cereal that's either HIS or cereal he's PLANNED on. HATE him. Cereal, and THEN a 3-egg parsley omelet when he finishes; John calls Zermatt to hear "we'll have NO trouble getting hotel rooms"-probably because the weather's foul and there's nothing to SEE and so no one's GOING there, and then he sits down looking for something to DO tonight, and I have only Ariana to see today, a shoulder bag to buy (borrow 100F from John to have some), and the dry cleaning to pick up. Saw lovely swan and four GRAY cygnets swimming in lake yesterday. Finished writing this at 10:45, happy that TOMORROW, at this time, we won't BE here, and I'll no longer feel a TERRIBLE imposition on Anita and the people of DTW. Well, the CHURCH doesn't turn me on much, either. Walk to the windy top of the north tower, and the jet's off and the nearest mountains are visible in the haze. The back choir is nicely lit, but I don't even have the energy to study the capitals that they indicate as being of special interest. It seems to be EMPTY, having been DENUDED of anything CATHOLIC. Like examining a skeleton. I sit in St. Peter's Chapel, fairly plush, and figure how to spend the REST of the day! Buy a shoulder bag after looking in a few places for 20F, capacious and black, and sit in island-bus-terminal to pass time, then find you can guy bus tickets in SHOPS for 80ó, or from DRIVER for 9 for 6F! Or 11/2 free. No WONDER only tourists use the stations on the sidewalks. Bus to Ariana, nice building, and get swamped: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, German, British, Austrian, and then the DOZENS of KINDS of Swiss. from different TIMES, from different WORKSHOPS, in different STYLES, of different OBJECTS, and I look vaguely for sex and see only draped Hercules, some Mulhouse dirty drawings of asses and lascivious tits, and a dish of green olives and another of frogs and snakes. Pierced, painted, marked, dated, enameled, gilded, Arabic, some painting and stoneware and terra cotta and bisques, colors and styles and COLLECTIONS of things-but I'm just TIRED of THINGS. It's all so SPECIALIZED (and stained glass and marble curved pillars) and so FEW people are LOOKING at them, and the guard looks so BORED. Downstairs are modern things of INCREDIBLE newness. The complexification of EVERYTHING continues! Leave at 3:15, mentally exhausted, and walk in the rain to the bus which is WAITING at the stop for us. Into town and pick up my laundry without ANY need of the slip, which I seem to have lost, since she remembers BOTH packages. 13 for two pieces, I'd paid for 6 for the 3. Across at 4 and John says there are no sure cars BACK to hotel to take my STUFF back. Get UNREASONABLY disconsolate about this, and finally he commandeers the mini at 5:30 for us, and we go to the Bauer collection, staggering for its SELECTIVITY and marvelousness. Incredible pieces, each of which looks like it could hardly be 1000 days, let alone 1000 years, old. Absolutely perfect condition of each piece, and the arrangement of the pieces is most easy on the eyes. The room devoted to jades is overwhelming, with incredible virtuosity of carving a hollow basket with VINES all around it, or vases COVERED with loops and rings, or bowls with GREEN locusts on the rim or RUBY-colored crystal men on white, or the HUGE purple-shading-to-green vase of great size. Buy a book for 5F and wish there was a SPECIAL one on the jade. John falls in love with "a bowl of light green that vanishes as you look at it." Back at 5:30 to a meeting at ERA, and John gets Joan to bring my stuff back with HER. I'd eaten some cheese and bread and bananas before, and am hungry now. We get back to the Palais de Justice for dinner, looking through the paper for places to go, and decide on a "horror show." Eat a "Trois Etages of gruyere in a wrap of dough, surmounted by a slice of ham and an egg," good for 75F. I'd started working on a crossword, crossing OUT words, and find, as John frets outside, that the word left, for "peine" is "maladie." Walk and walk in rain and cold and dash to "La Star" theater and find it's a WESTERN "The Bastards of Satan," made in Italy and subtitled in German and French. The lead guy is cute in a young Brando way, but the story is INCREDIBLY inept and RIDICULOUSLY acted for the most part. At 10 they start the SAME film, and we leave to find that film A is scheduled at 2, 3, and 6, and film B is scheduled at 8 and 10. Odd. Italian audiences in a flying-saucer theater, stage tilted AWAY from audience tilted the OTHER way. Out and case the Scheherazade, mixed at least; then the Broadway, unsure, and the Whiskey, with 2F entrée for men and 3F for women. Out in rain at 10:30 and JUST miss a #9, and next is at MIDNIGHT. Back, disgusted, to center of town for a cab at 11, and pay the 11F we SHOULD have paid at FIRST. Disgusted with the town and the rain and the cold, and into bed at 11:30, alarm set for 6:30 to make a train at 9:27. John wants to be ON TIME. [End of book one] [Book 2f: Book 1 was EXACTLY 14 days]
TRAIN TO ZERMATT AND GORNERGRAT
SATURDAY, JUNE 23. Up at 6:20 at alarm, pack and out at 7 to stand on rainy road, cars whipping up spray and cyclists looking very strained against rain and we BEGIN to worry as #9 comes at 7:30, followed by a SECOND one. Into town to Bel-Villa Plein, transfer to #11 to ride to station at 8:15, and have rolls and coffee for 5.20! But even THAT seems better than the ham and scrambled eggs for 5: $1.66! Down to john and John shops which I mark 12 highest peaks on good Swiss map, and go to train platform at 9, on at 9:15 after finding the BEST car is RESERVED and we lose time, having to take a place in the smoking section on the right aisle. But it stops raining and the windows cloud from the smoke of the smokers, and though some few clouds change from a DARK gray to a LIGHT gray, it's still VERY dim. Cloudy lake visible in patches as we pass through the very tranquil countryside between Geneva and Lausanne, and there seems no reason to consider THIS section of Swiss for any kind of future visits. Just hope it clears before we get to Visp. Sit in Lausanne station from 10:05-10:15, while I write this, keeping up to date easily. John moves to non-smoking compartment on LEFT side of train. Drat. LOADS of flowers in window boxes, nice houses along lake, Lausanne pleasant, but rather a bore. By Aigle we're starting to see high hills, like 4000 feet, and SOME views are pleasant by 11 am. Huge slices of hills from sides and some snows on tops partly obscured by clouds. Into Visp at 12:30 and dash across to the train for Zermatt, only to be told that the one standing there is NOT for Zermatt. Wait with many Japanese on walk, and in to TINY train cars, very narrow seats, and we sit near windows over HOT radiators, next to two LOVELY Britishers, but they get off at Stalden, the crossing to Saas-Fee-then the conductor says that we ALL get off. Lug luggage off rack and haul up the hill to a group of five busses, only one to Zermatt and it's loaded with people. John claims the two foldable front seats, and we GET them, and the front seat into the head of the valley is quite marvelous: cool and comfortable. But at St. Niklaus the driver says "Everyone get off," and the two guys BEHIND us slip out and WE get out, he opens the luggage compartment and we take ours, back to the platform to see a train to the left, but on closer look it's STRANDED across TWO tracks, and they're jacking it up to try to get it back in order, and John says we should have STAYED in the bus: it's the only way to Zermatt! Angry and he says he was told to get the bus in the plaza below. We lug luggage down THERE, but it's not the RIGHT bus, as I thought I saw from ABOVE. Bags BACK up hill and watch them pull trains back ALMOST onto track, and John says a bus leaves from BELOW in 15 minutes. When does the TRAIN leave? He doesn't know. I'm FUMING now, and ask him to find what leaves SOONEST. He says he already bothered the guy twice. So I go in and stand and glare and wait, and finally a YOUNG guy comes to the window (the OLD one just kept TALKING with his friend), and he says the train will leave in 20 minutes JUST as John dashes into say he's put the suitcases ON the bus. On and we take off again, GREAT waterfalls and chasms and rushing rivers below and snow-sheds and tunnels. At stop BETWEEN he thinks we might get back ON train, but finally drives up to Tasch, where we get ANOTHER train and ride into Zermatt fairly alone, except for YOWLING Italian baby that's I'd GLADLY choke. Out in rain and see "Gornergrat Station," and I go over, they HAVE a hotel, it's OPEN, and the doodlebug leaves in TWO MINUTES. Over to claim John, hasten to ticket office and train, and take off. MARVELOUS view over crowded Zermatt, NOT a good impression of the city at ALL-just too many PLACES and too many PEOPLE-and up and up into farmlands and horses and streams and bridges over GREAT chasms (just before Findelsbach) and waterfalls and up INTO the clouds, one guy seeing a chevreuil (chamois) and we see a furry possum-like critter bobsled away from the tracks. Clouds part to show SOME of neighboring snowfields, but the cloud gets BRIGHT, it doesn't CLEAR. See as far as the Riffelhorn and Riffelsee at Rotbader, but clouds erase Kulmhotel, making it look like Dracula's castle. Carry suitcase up slippery walk, panting at the 10,170 foot height, and it IS open, and we get small double room for 42F apiece WITH meals. Not TOO bad, since the menu says Tournedos! John washes socks and I change from boots which no longer keep out wet to damp sandals from last night, and explore the non-existent public areas: a bar and a restaurant (inhabited by the cigar-smoking Deutsch-French we rode up with, and our 5 co-tenants clustered around a loud TV set. Back up to 36 and write this, and John comes back puffing from the height. Snowing HARDER at 4:30, and the girl said snow USUALLY stops in April or May, but it's been snowing for the last three days and God ALONE knew when it would stop. No one, either, seemed to be going to Stockhorn to see if that's the 1200 feet needed to get ABOVE the clouds. Birds flying in snow, I start reading in Whitman again, and John reads, and we're down to VERY cold dining room at 7:30. Cold and cold, and even the tournedos grow cold on their tray. But the food IS good, the steak and the noodles, the "Cream of Queen" soup, and the mousse ice for dessert. Upstairs in the cold and smoke bidis and have sex, though I seem not really interested in it, and can't even get up the courage to tell John to lay off the head of the cock. Come mechanically, GASPING after it at the altitude, and am surprised to find that it's 10:30 when we got to bed. I say leave blinds open 1/2, he closes them completely. I'm hoping for clearing tomorrow. Start under down comforter, but throw it off quickly as being much too hot. Only sound the drip of melting snow.