NORWAY AND EUROPE TRIP 2of 3
FROM GORNERGRAT TO DISENTIS
SUNDAY, JUNE 24. Wake at 4 am and get to window with a CRUSHING headache. It's STOPPED snowing, and I can see the forms of lower clouds scudding against upper clouds and hope that it MAY clear. After a long while there is even a patch of light blue sky and the first white cloud of dawn, and the valleys are becoming visible for a LARGE distance. And I can make out the triangular BASE of the Matterhorn. About 5, banks of clouds turn slight pink, making the white and gray look BLUE in contrast, and there are some BEAUTIFUL sharp details of rocks and glaciers and mountain streams in bands of blue and red. Large patches of dark-blue sky now, and I hope for a window onto Cervin, but it never happens and my optimism wanes and I finally crawl back into bed at 6 am. Wake again at 8:30 and take two aspirins for headache, and down to breakfast of 6 cups of hot chocolate (small cups) and many rolls and tiny wedges of cheese flavored with ham and cream, and lots of jams and butter. Pack and John pays bill and we're dressed and I wander porches and down the tracks in the deep snow which has blue fissures in it. Catch the cable-car down at 10:30, with only a few people on it, scrambling crowds being now left BEHIND. It gets clearer in the valley and there are two groundhogs standing at the entrance to their rock-snow burrows. Zermatt looks ALL hotels and wandering tourists-might have been nice 75 years ago, but not NOW. Across to get tickets to St. Moritz on train and John shops for lunch while I look through to see WHERE we stop today. Go as far as possible and try to hit Sils/Maria? Stop at Brig and go to one of the hill towns? But NOTHING in Michelin OR the Brig brochure seems to offer anything. Into train at 12:15 when John's back, and loud voice of black girl from Lakewood proclaims her entrance. She and John talk and she babbles On and ON about her taking pictures of "Matterhorn" that turn out to be only a bottom spur, and her disgust with the rain. Down the picturesque valley to Tasch, and the train goes OK to a place where AGAIN they say to change to a bus. DAMN! She bitches and bitches and finally John tells her to STOP complaining, sharply. There's been a track out. Another man says there's a rock on the tracks. I think it's a story and agree disgustedly with the black, whom I can't STAND at this point: "Yes I wouldn't put it past them to put us to trouble for the SAKE of putting us to trouble." John says HE thought the bus driver took us AROUND the avalanche and left us for the train, not REALIZING that the CAR was derailed. Now I feel guilty for feeling so irritated and abusive. Wonder why I feel so AWFULLY irritable, except that I'd PREFER good weather to BAD. Jammed into bus for the trip through the scenic gorges (American girl put me off in the first train: brushing hair and cleaning brush, with self-centered concentration, through FABULOUS snow-peaks and waterfalls). Then onto train AGAIN down to Visp and Brig, and out at 2 to find that the train to Andermatt leaves at 4. We decide to go to Andermatt. Out to walk Brig, stopping to look at 3 or 4 menus and stop in a Weinstube for John's cold plate of ham and asparagus and my pork cutlet and fries and salad, and beers. CUTE guys walking past on street through crinkly bubbled-glass. Out at 3 and walk up tiny twisting streets, finding ourselves at the Oberalpenschloss so pictured, into courtyard to look at cloistered balconies and out the other side to remark at the perfect GERMANNESS of the town: neat, gabled houses, small-paned windows, all natural wood with cute signs out front. Walk along paved river and begin to feel the press of time, so we walk faster back to the station at 3:40 and get our 2F checked luggage and climb onto the train, thankfully almost empty so that we can get 8 seats in all, for ANY direction and ANY scenery, though I want to sit along river, and John goes to john as we pull out at 4:10, sweeping AROUND a wide arc to cross the Rhone, and start climbing almost at once. It gets clearer in parts and we even see snow peaks and the rushing river in the valley, and THIS, finally, is Swiss SCENERY. Higher and higher, and sun comes out and we hear cow-bells and church bells in various small towns. Great peaks and waterfalls in the sun. Little villages with onion-domes or candle-snuffer towers, people on and off, crew in smokers' section yowling and whistling and shouting at passing cars, cows, trains, and we get to the IMPRESSIVE peaks at Gleitch, going up and up to see the marvelous valley from whence the Rhone springs from the cerulean-fissured glacier tumbled back EVEN from the 1966 drawing in Michelin. Hotel Belvedere seems like a GREAT place to stay. Sadly, the train dives into tunnels for MORE than the road does, a point to remember, and we're in the dark with the hissing fluorescents more than we want. Out the other side to a steep climb down into the arctic valley, tumbles of rocks and glaciers and streams diving under huge untrodden covers of whitest snow. Down to Andermatt, but by this time I've looked at Lugano, and we plan NOW to stop at Disentis and take the bus down to Lugano before going to Milan, cutting off the fairly boring, once we've been to Zermatt, St. Moritz. Up to ANOTHER pass in the snow and rock, and down to Disentis at 7:15, seeing the huge block of the monastery. Out and get our tickets changed by a VERY helpful attendant, and we even get 2F back. Look for rooms, but the guesthouse has no bath at 40, and we're into the Hotel Cristallina for 48F, a BEAUTIFUL room. Have to get a KEY for the bath (and they charge us 3F for it, too) and we shave and get dressed and down to dining room at 8:55, just before they stop serving at 9, and I have MARVELOUS veal schnitzel, spaghetti that comes to life only with much Maggi and "super salt" (sel au Poudre with MSG), and salad, and we're out after to roam streets of town, looking at all the military, and to "Alte Weinstube" with marvelous 1804-05 ceiling arms and beer and back to hotel to sleep at 10:30, feeling good about finding this place. Beds are comfortable, but there'll be light in the morning and there's about as much STREET noise (we're built OVER RR tracks, too) as on 57th!
DISENTIS TO LUGANO, BELLA LUGANO
MONDAY, JUNE 25. Wake at 6:30 to baby THUMPING upstairs, trucks ROARING outside, people CLUMPING in hall. UGH! Out of bed at 6:45 and John wakes, and we're down for breakfast at 7. Lots of rolls and cheese and butter and jelly and chocolate. Pack and leave our suitcases at the station (after hearing PERFECTLY Straussean bell-chorus of goat-herd going up Main Street) and go for a walk, up to the lovely bright inside of the Abbey Church, buying a guide for 1.5F, and then to the Marian Chapel with the Miraculous Virgin and child that produced some of the folk art that John would so like to have: wood carvings and water colors and paintings and embroideries from victims of train and auto and motorcycle accidents, fires and operations and blindness and lameness and avalanches, old ex voto offerings covering the walls. Back to buy groceries for lunch, pick up the luggage and I stand outside and write, waiting for the 9:45 bus departure. Get front seats, but they're narrow so John sits behind, then moves to the back as we take off up Medch Valley, great views BACK to Disentis in the valley from as far up as Curaglia, and the sky opens to snow peaks at every side, and we stop at Platta and I continue to write, finally getting caught up to date at the Santa-Maria Hospice 25 minutes' stop from 10:25-10:50. Bus loads of tourist kids clamber over the hills, and we're into the restaurant to write post cards overlooking the peaks and lakes. Lots of DAMS, this one strange in that its face is concave, which would make me worried about living below it when it would be full TO the top, but it was far from that now, the power lines looking funny on their concrete stilts. MY observation was that the old wet-look wooden barns, dark with age, looked like NEPAL, but the ORDINARY traveler's view, I suppose, when they FINALLY got to Nepal, would be how SWISS it looked. Road is blocked at various turns by goats, cows, and pigs, all big and fat and healthy looking. Beautiful little villages to LOOK at, but they'd be a bore to LIVE in. Waterfalls and road tunnels and rocks and tumbled ravines, all very lovely. EVERYTHING wears BELLS, it seems. Fields around monastery a CARPET of flowers, large daisies, huge violet clover, and bits of red and yellow and bells in flowers and green grasses. Upland fields ALIVE with YELLOW flowers and green grasses, yellow rocks and bluish, polarized-reflecting rocks around water, blue in dams and sky blue behind white snows and clouds. The WAY to see Switzerland is to spend all DAY on her roads and rails, then sleep good in her sleepy towns, though Disentis DID have ads for a NUMBER of Italianate concerts of old and new music. Great difference the WEATHER makes! I go to john, soft turds at last, brown as if from chocolate, and bus honks to catch John at hillock-top staring at scenery, and he scoots quickly down to the bus after it starts. MAGNIFICENT views, peaks now ALONE against sky. MARVELOUS drive to Olivone. LOVELY sunny skies and GREAT perspectives of TINY towns below GRAND mountains. Norway is TAME in comparison. 15 minutes in Olivone, where we see that gas is .75/1 or $1/4 liters=4.4 quarts, or 90ó/gallon! Most snowy peaks blocked by lower hills from town-view, itself. German woman on bus talks ONLY of food: cows and pigs are to EAT, waves on the lake are FISH (they DO look it, rather), and she unerringly sees the hanging "fleisch" in the second story, drying at the butcher's. Faces of old Swiss men full of character: wrinkles, mustaches, and beer-reddened noses. Aquila has great 8-story church tower. Language mostly Italian now, not even translated. Gardens FULL of the most LUSH roses-Rhinopront again this morning, snuffling through day because I missed taking one last night. Each postal stop gives me a chance to JOT! Day getting HOT-haze forming in air, sadly "Cima Norma" in Pangio has CONCRETE tree-stumps and rocks and twigs as a FENCE around one part of upper story. Only 10 minutes from 12:05 to 12:15 in Acquarosa to catch train. Beginning to count each minute now that it's 11:15! In and bus turns and turns and turns, but we still get onto one-car Acquarosa train with no trouble. Hills get lower, and Biasca is only a train station, with people swimming in high falls across from the station. Change from boots to sandals and from wool shirt to pullover and pack jacket and sweater. Back to summer! Haze begins to deepen and we arrive in Lugano at 2:30 to find it on a HILL over town. Hassle over hotels and get NOWHERE, John finally saying "I want to SEE it." OK. Bus to center of town, but streets are so POORLY marked we have to ask cop where we ARE. Walk and walk in business district, and I'm tired and frustrated and finally say "Let's try THAT. The City Hotel. Up to elegant 3rd floor reception room and rooms are small but nice for 58F per night. John loves the intimate quality and the old furniture and the modern private bathroom. Reserve for two nights. Get maps of the city and I change to shorts and we're out walking. First to the Luini chapel, pleasant but I'm tired of such-like ALREADY. Walk along to Paradiso and stumble onto the road to San Salvator, and JUST get the 3:30 ascent. Up and up and we begin comparing it to Rio, and the trams meet HALFWAY, one for the upper part, one for lower. Eliminates a crossover and makes it more interesting. To top and up to top of church, and it's hazy, but we can see the mountain range BEFORE Monte Rosa only vaguely in the haze. Two days travel to miss seeing the mountain we missed seeing two days BEFORE! John's thirsty so we're down for gin and tonics, then TWO, and decide to go down when the winds start blowing and the sun goes behind clouds at 6. The OTHER part of the mountain hid all the lake, but all the city looked VERY nice. Down and walk streets buying wine and chocolate, looking at the three Italians-one father, one older and sexy, one younger who reached inside his loose low pants to play with himself. Walk roads and get back to Via Nassa and price restaurants and a 9.50F carte draws us into Monte Ceneri for GREAT veal and overdone zucchini and good wine. GREAT meal. Back to hotel to put on jacket and I long pants, and out to wander the NIGHT streets. Try to find the cruising sections by strolling into the malls, but we find ourselves first at the foot of the funicular and then at the Plaza in front of the Cathedral, and we can see that the colored fountains are on at the Lake, so we find our way down, past a park whose only buildings are WC's, down stairs linking one level of the city with another, and it's very cosmopolitan and pleasant. The moss-covered fountain is lit, and we go along the Promenade, where we pass many pretty boys who look, but none seem ready to settle down from the search. Sit and watch the fountains for a while, then go into the park with the gates and walk and walk and WALK past flowers and huge old trees and people and benches and ducks and birds and mostly OLDER people, but sets of lovers and singles on the prowl for everyone, too, and even kids, alone, which gives QUITE an impression of the well-lit, totally unpoliced park. The LIGHT, earlier on the lake, rosy, seeming to come from EVERYWHERE, was very spectacular and eye-dazzling without needing sunglasses. A shadowless stage-pinkness that was ILLUMINATING. Across a bridge and see a rat scurrying on the sand below, and there's been a BRIGHT light from Campione as if in competition with the lighted fountains, but there have to be snakes or it wouldn't be Paradiso. Through a gate to watch a high-scoring water polo game, then leave, walking back the same way, very impressed with the city: New York, Rio de Janeiro, Lugano? Kyoto? Now that I know that Copenhagen is no competition. Back at 10 and the streets are ALIVE with people in sidewalk cafes, walking up and down, looking at the fountains, and the city seems perfect with HUMANITY, though the car noises on the street are loud, and the boat fumes from the lake are acrid and characteristically fumey. Bed at 10:30.
BOAT TOUR OF LAKE LUGANO
TUESDAY, JUNE 26. Wake at 6 because of the light and the noise, and doze till 8, when John wakes and we groggily, lazily, start playing with each other, and both get very hard and I come first, finally, and he comes easily after that and we lay for a bit, recuperating, and then get up at 9. To breakfast in the airy room (where all the tables NOT being used have embroidered tablecloths), and out at 10 to find that the GRAND tour of the lake we wanted isn't going-only for groups, and she can't get a phone line through to Italy, let alone Milan, let alone Edgardo, and the idea of STAYING seems remote now. Walk up the hill to the cathedral, and again it's very ornate and white, and many of the side altars have marvelous stonework. Old tabernacle at one side (I leave as a Swiss-flag-waving school tour thunders through) and he likes the stained glass [Forgot the tomb of the Count de Rohan in Geneva Cathedral] and the carved wooden figurines in the choir chairs. Up from here, along Via Bella Vista and pass houses and views and workmen, and find ourselves at the station and walk down the other way, through a schoolyard John likes, past the CafΘ Venetia that I seem to remember was gay, and pass a poster that says the Theater Apollo ticket office is open 11-12 TODAY, so we find THAT on boring Center City streets, buy two tickets, then go inland again to buy stuff for lunch, stopping at a Migros for beer and cheese and smoked pork and toast and a torte-piece for my dessert, and oranges for John. Try Museo Civico at noon, but it's closed. Out to the park to eat, watching many lovely crotches pass, and get on the boat for the 2:30 tour, after he goes back for his jacket. It's plenty too hot for that. First stop, Paradiso, then across hazy lake at a good clip for Gandria, a little too compact and tourist-oriented, but after stopping at Gandria Confine and another place, we stop at Santa Mamete: lovely and spread out, with the comfortable Stella d'Italia hotel on the lake with, John observes, beautiful coffee and wine colored tablecloths, and a town above, very compact and island-like in the woods, with a church, and a town back in the hills above THAT, with a LARGER church. THAT looks like it would be a good place to visit. Large new houses, wood and stucco, with a huge windowed room like a cabin cruiser's master room, round, on the fourth floor. Across to the OTHER side for a change, and then to Purlozzi, where they announce you should have your passports ready! I give John his ticket and prepare my scene, but we're off OK, and the only passports checked on the way back ON are those of single young ladies. Walk around town and John starts pricing "handiwork" leather bags that are too dear, and our FIRST church is huge and spectacular with red, blue (royal) and white silk hangings with gold tassels as if for a coronation permanently enlivening the white church. Another, later, was empty and unused, but STILL there were hundreds of putti and cherubs and seraphs and angels and glassy-eyed saints, saints molding clouds into cushions for Virgins and saints clutching Romanly at each other. ONE face on the side had a pleasant "copied from Leonardo" look about it. I see troglodyte church on hill, but it seems too far. Back down to shore in time to roam the other way and see a few girls sunning and some kids fishing, then buy tiny gelatis for the ridiculous 70ó apiece (23ó!). Back on ship and stop at EVERY place on the way back (except Paradiso), and I'm feeling heat and feeling tacky. Back to hotel to shower and I fear this evening: I almost fell asleep on the SHIP. John puts on his "black with flowers" shirt and I my red wool pullover, and we walk out for a bit at 6:30, and find that the Kursaal serves drinks only. Pity. [Later see the sign for the restaurant UPSTAIRS.] Walk up street and the Huguenin is elegant and the carte is only 13F, so we're inside, a great mistake. He sees a fungi pate and the head waiter, a real marvel, says that the veal scaloppini has LOTS of fresh local mushrooms for 20SF. Fine, and a bottle of red Merlot. I start with a cream of egg soup which is tasty but that's all for 2F, and then the veal is in SMALL US-sized pieces and there ARE lots of mushrooms on top-some quite soft, some chewy like the polyporus squamosis and some almost crisp, a bit like water chestnuts, Interesting. The wine is tart, but a bit of taste comes through after half a bottle, and we're happy with the meal-waiter's belch and all! Guy at next table turns and tells us about his living in Amsterdam, New York, and we sense an invitation to Rome in the air, but we leave. Stroll park and see LOTS of nice crotches, and fountains start even BEFORE dark, at 8:35. Into theater and it's like inside a blue jewelry box, and seats in CENTER are blocked by WALL. John storms down to change his seat, and he was sweating through the meal in Huguenin because of the plastic seat (and the American rock from the bar didn't help the atmosphere, either), and the ballet started. At the FIRST it seemed like it was in Brooklyn, great muscled drummers, women chanting and stomping, athletic dancers, but then they DIDN'T take off their brassieres until the last three numbers, there was a VOODOO number at the start of the second act that was new, and there were no specialty numbers as before, seemingly quite a different troupe. Audience was cold though dancers seemed to be going all out at the end, and we were out at 11:15, John dozing. Fountains OUT, walk for a bit, SOME cruising going on, but park seemed darker and MUCH emptier, and there's nothing doing. Turn back at 11:30 and walk QUICKLY emptying streets, sweepers out, doors closing, last tricks going home, and VERY tired to bed at midnight in the SLEEPing Lugano, after finishing the rest of the cherries.
TO MILAN AND BACK TO LUGANO
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27. Wake at 6:10 and for some strange reason think it's 10:30! Worry about this for a bit, and John wakes and says it SOUNDS like 6, not 10, and I look and it IS. Back to sleep, then up at 8:45, groggy from colds we BOTH seem to have, wash and shave and eat breakfast, all very slowly, and write a little bit and get out at 10 to shop for some Rhinopront, buy the boat tickets, get the rest of the SF and 200SF of John's checks cashed into lira, and sit on waterfront and I have a sherry-like Cape Corse for 2F until 11:15 and we're on boat, I sweat and write till we start, John remembers he's left his brown jacket in the closet but won't get off at Paradiso (and I could have seen Melide!) and we stop at Campione JUST as the bells toll noon, we stop again and again and at Morcote and finally Porta Ceresio, hot from trip and boozy from the faintly cold Fendant from the City Albergo fridge and two kinds of cheese and some chocolate and some toast. Quick customs and John buys ticket to Bergamo and I to Milan getting in at 4 and John's train leaves at 5:20 (one hour time ADVANCE to Italy-they must by ON daylight savings time and Swiss NOT). So there's not enough time to see anything. Train to Salzburg leaves from Central Station (probably where we should have gone, rather than to Garibaldi) and so I have to arrange train myself. Though John maybe wants to see the cathedral, if possible, but doesn't want to take the Metro to see it NOW. He "goes for a walk" (goes to the Airline Station across the street, has a beer, and checks to find no listings under sauna in the yellow pages) and I sit and write until now, 5:40, waiting to call Edgardo at 6. There are LOTS of good-looking guys wandering around, some so often that they MUST be cruising, but only ONE is explicit enough to have a car key dangling, and the large-chested big forearmed guy who SEEMS to be cruising me seems to look more at the young girl who comes in later than at me, which is PLENTY. He gets up to leave, finally. Others pass and repass, some I wouldn't take at all, but the others, who I would take, never really look at ME, and then of course there's the language barrier, my suitcase, my smell, and my phone call at 6. Otherwise I'm perfectly free. But there's the paranoia of the moment too. 50,000 lira in my wallet, $500 cash in my suitcase. Pick the wrong trick and BLAM, I'm cleaned out. Not the best way to look at things. ALL CUTE ones seem (to me) to be out for the lira, too-or at least a meal and a place to sleep (and a place to wash and shave, for most of them, too!). At 5:45, the second class waiting room seems PRIMARILY a cruising place, and passersby seem to be looking IN to see who's here. Only one old woman reads a paper; the rest may PRETEND to read, but mainly they seem to be all eyes. Finger sore from writing, and I'm up to date, so I'll stop and see what happens to the 13 (!) minutes that remain to Edgardo at 6. [Crans, Gampel and Verbier are all SITED like Zermatt.] Out to see how the phones work, and you need a gittone with two ridges on one side and one on another. Look around and try the newsstand, and it's 50 lira. Phone exactly at 6 and he answers, saving he'll be right there-I should wait at the front of the station. Down to the john and there's much cruising at the urinals, and up to stand, knowing not whether he's coming from the Metro or by car. At 6:30 he arrives by CAR, bless it, and, of all places, says he has a house for us to stay in tonight in LUGANO. I think this is too good to be true, and he says he just finished his tests YESTERDAY, so it was OK I couldn't get through to him. He has some errands to run, and tomorrow his parents are supposed to leave town, so we can stay at HIS place. IDEAL! He takes off into the HEIGHT of the traffic, and it's hot and I apologize for smelling and he says "You want to take a shower this minute?" Drive around and around, and the men are beautiful to pass and the drivers are amazingly stupid: they'll drive RIGHT into the intersection, then wave their arms indicating "I can't help it," when they block traffic. Edgardo often squeezes between two regular traffic lanes, or goes onto the walkway when stopping for a light, or even goes against lights, jumps them, or goes a bit down one-way streets if he "has" to. Every man in Italy obviously thinks he's the ONLY person who is REALLY worthwhile in the whole world. He parks around corners on wrong sides of one-way streets to dash down and get keys for the house, then runs back just as the person he blocked seems ready to drive THROUGH his new VW (with something wrong with a lower gear-shift which he constantly comments "Oh God" about) to get out. Then there's something wrong with his lowest gear and it appears his favorite phrase is "Oh, God," in a sort of "pity me" groan. Very Italian. Then he says we're to visit Erik, who might be a friend of his OR who might have some connection with the house, I'm not sure. He's never been there, so we drive and drive around and around asking for Balilla, and after EVERY one-way street seems to be against him, and EVERY crossroad the wrong one, we get to the house after going the wrong way on a one-way street. He parks on sidewalk after going one block down the wrong way. Edgardo says he doesn't know the names of the people he's staying with, and tries to describe the family to the concierge, but it doesn't work. Finally Ed has to PHONE to find family name of De Bartoli, and we're around to wrong door, then wrong floor, and then finally into apartment, where Erik's taking a shower. "Is he gay?" I ask innocently, and Ed looks at me in shock and says "He's YOUR friend!" "MY friend--I don't know anyone named Erik." "But you WROTE me in the "letter-" "Oh, you mean SVEIN-Erik, and at that moment Svein comes out of the shower with a towel around his middle and around his head, very thin, and I collapse onto the sofa in total hysteria. Ed seems enormously relieved that I DO know him, and I'm laughing and sweating and very tired and mentally BLOWN. Then a couple come in and Ed talks to them in Italian, and I'm not sure if they're visitors, the owners of the house in Lugano, friends of Eddie's, Erik's, or the HOSTS. Erik comes out and we talk about how we met and where he's been since and my trip to Norway; the hostess is funny and Ed translates back and forth for us, and they bring out WATERMELON, which blows my mind again, and then I wash and it's about 8, so I say it's time to go and Ed seems relieved. Everyone is VERY friendly, and we say we'll meet Erik at 11 tomorrow night at La Scala. Traffic is still awful and he gets gas and curses and goes "Oh God" a couple of times and finally we're onto the Autostrada through Soronna and up toward Como. Flat and filled with factories, and there's no speed limit, cars cruising at 80 with left-turn lights flashing "In passing mode." Como is veiled in haze but still spectacular, and hills are craggy and green even in haze. Tunnels and we talk, then finally up the hill to the station and he begins to get lost. Asks 3-4 times for the directions to Montagnola, and gets some right and some wrong. We're barreling through small and large streets clinging to cliff sides, and it's getting darker and darker, steeper and steeper, and FINALLY we pass the American School in Switzerland and go around a few more turns, and it's like we're in farmland in the wooded countryside. "Two meters," he says, and I'm very weary now, but lug suitcase down path which gets steeper and steeper and as it passes the wall around the house where HERMAN HESSE used to live in Montagnola, it's QUITE dark and I can only barely make out the steps of earth edged in shale which are the roadway. I gasp "Two meters?" and he says he said it to encourage me. Down and down and around and FINALLY to the back door of a small stucco house, unlocking the low gate and fumbling with the door lock and I fear some catastrophe after getting THIS far. Door opens and we're into entrance hallway, with four or five musty little rooms opening off it, and he goes to open window onto the arm of Lake Lugano that faces the airport and the small town over the waters. Lovely and out to even BETTER garden over bay and kiss and hug, then inside to talk of LSD and philosophy and Castenada and peyote and a mystic versus a thinker, and we talk it to exhaustion at 11. I draw him a sketch with the mystic on the knife-edge between death and thinking. If he falls one BIT from the edge, he's either thinking or dead, but he's NO LONGER a mystic. That stops THAT conversation. Start making love after removing clothes in bedroom, but he never really comes up (though I'M very hard) and finally I suggest at 11:30 that we have dinner. He finds spaghetti and tuna fish, so makes that while we neck on the sofa, eat it, and then get BACK to necking and sucking and kissing and finally he's up, but doesn't want to come, then he loses it, and I'm desperate to come and so I grab myself and ABSOLUTELY spray BOTH of us. He says water is cold, but miraculously it turns hot, so I have a shower and wash and get comfortably to bed at 2:30, he in next bed, affectionate, and we hold hands across the gap until he withdraws and turns to sleep. Night noises and gentle darkness lull to sleep.
DRIVE LAKES LUGANO AND COMO, LA SCALA, BARS
THURSDAY, JUNE 28. Wake at 7:30 and lay till he wakes at 9, and we neck again and this time HE comes very nicely, and he DOES have the SEXIEST body! Out to garden in gentle rain and have breakfast, and he asks advice about his girl friend, and I get to THIS complicated conclusion. I would find it easier to say "Do as I say," but HE has the strength to tell her (saying it's EASIEST for HIM) "Do as YOU choose," and I find that my BELIEF in his STRENGTH to say that through three weeks with her in Europe gives ME the confidence to say "Do AS you choose," thereby gaining the same strength HE has. Some few troubles with words and understanding, but we both respect VERY much what we have as points of view. Even my BOTH/AND from last night! Out to walk as sun comes out, down fields to garden, humid under plastic wrappers, and lovely with flowers and roses and strawberries picked fresh from the path. I write "Marvelous SPIRIT to this place" on the sheet as she cleans up, and I pack and we kiss and get out about noon to return. He climbs up, then runs BACK when "Grandma" isn't home to take the keys, and thankfully the road UP seems short. Car hot, but we're down to Lugano and check the hours for the Villa Favorita and drive the north of Lugano road HE'S never driven before, quite nice and turning through towns. Stop in San Mamete where I remember the Cristallin or Caravelle restaurant, but it's not there under any of those names. Pity. Through rolling countryside and little towns to haze-shrouded Lake Como, and the town of Menagio is crowded and orange-tiled and beige-walled, and we're along Corniche to pass elegant villas of Milanese rich, and stop at restaurant about 20 km south of Menagio to check with gas station attendant that "It's OK," and up to find the place empty, 2:15 IS late, but they WILL serve us. Start by saying "no appetizers" and order cheese crepe and a cutlet Milanese for me and a bracciola for him, but then we have salami and dried meats and black and green olives and crunchy-boned anchovies and artichoke hearts and LOVELY tomatoes and lettuce on an APPETIZER tray. Great. Cheese fills me up, but the wine is good and we even drink the traditional mineral water, and find we're full but not OVERFULL, and Ed INSISTS on paying the 7600L bill which I thought at first was 76SF! Into car at 3:30 after looking over lake from balcony covered with flowers, watching a muscled pink-crotched snorkeler trying to spear fish, and wander the high and low streets of the small village. Feel LOVELY. Drive UPPER road past small villages on the lakeside above the west of Como, and drive through the pleasant town. Up and up to better and better views, and finally we're back on the busy Autostrada, getting caught in traffic AGAIN at 5. His parents are supposed to leave at 7, so we can't go there, so we have to kill 4 hours before the concert at La Scala at 9. We drive around parks and he stops at Sforza Castle and we wander through and look at the Italian workmen building the stage and seats for the outdoor ballet series that starts tomorrow with the likes of Fonteyn and Labis and Makarova and Nagy. To john and out other side to lay in the grass. Fatal mistake! Grass has gone to seed, and we start sneezing and coughing and crying and nose runs so much I finally just let it DRIP. Laugh at each other's misery, but the eyes itch so much, and scratching only makes them swell and close in redness. Feel AWFUL and unattractive with beautiful guys all about. NADIR. He says he can't survive without washing in cold water, but it really doesn't help. Hippies all around park, and flutist drives ME crazy with his continual monotonic piping. Decide we MUST check into hotel, so drive to Ariosto Hotel and get good room for 9000L, and both take TWO "fixes" and lay in cool room recovering. I can't resist his body after we both shower, and he comes AGAIN. Laze till 8:10, then dress (he in Indian cotton $1 shirt and faded jeans, I a BIT better in white shirt and blue pants) and drive past to see that it starts at 9:15. Stop for a cold drink and around to SEGREGATED entrance to galleries, and it's rather like a private staircase. Theatro La Scala is QUITE small, with what looks like a newly replastered ceiling of curves and lines, OLD curtains laden with dust and flanked with golden devil's heads, and ALL lower tiers are BOXES for 6 or 8, and in old times they'd EAT in LIKE boxes ACROSS the hall from theirs, which would be passed from generation to generation in one family. Brahms' 1st Piano Concerto is good from 9:20 to 10:10, bright and precise conducting by Abbado and pianist. Intermission in nice room, and Ed has a headache, sadly; Janacek's "Symphoniette" good at quadruple cymbal crash, and he doesn't like it. Great black swallow-tailed suits and silver sommelier chains for ushers, handsomer than VERY casual audience of SOME cute ones. Out at 11:15 and Erik's surprisingly not there, but at 11:20 he comes up, smoking, saying he's just got out of a taxi. Get the car and drive a bit to "New People" in the Brera section. Rather international type small bar with ultraviolet lighting that takes up Ed's and my shirt, his pants, my sock stripes and vodka/tonic. Only one or two VERY attractive people (as on the street) and lots of cliquishness, but hands on knees and OVER knees are nice. Stay only a bit and drive out toward the airport at Linate and the long named restaurant/dance palace at Idroscala 3, or something, marked by an anchor. FORMIDABLE! Hundreds of gays jumping about on the dance floor, and of a couple of butch GIRLS are leading the femme guys through jitterbugging routines. Yes, jitterbugging has retaken Italy, going so fast it looks like a speeded-up film. Lots of cute ones, some of the very handsome aloof types, lots of good tango and mambo and jitterbug and TWIST DANCERS. Some incredibly attractive asses, some marvelous crotches and the same type of older ones who wish they had ANYone and will get NO one. Ed and I dance some slow numbers, turning in place and kissing and rubbing backs and asses. I go to john couple of times, quite drunk by now, and the dancing goes on and on, old fag-hag singing to boys, orchestra throbbing away backing her. Finally they want to leave and I settle into the back of the car as before, Svein navigating [Upper Calliano, Ghost castle! 80km North of Verona] Think they're going home, but no, a THIRD bar, "The Black Horse," and Italian movies don't INVENT anything, the Dolce Vita EXISTS! Black-eyed women slope across the floor, wide-eyed men obviously ON something. Couches against the wall covered with bizarre bodies in even more bizarre clothes, overalls, silks, scarves, hats, bracelets, necklaces, duck-tail haircuts, face-makeup, earrings, dancing and cruising and pressing against each other. Down horsehide spiral staircases (and Svein remarks about fire) and it's one of the loosest, more bizarre places I've ever been. Finally leave about 3 am, leaving Svein who has his eyes on "someone beauuuuutiful," and get to hotel, weary, at 3:30, but again I can't keep hands off and after showers we smooch and sex and both come again, getting exhaustedly to sleep at 4:30 am! Svein to bed at 6:30!
LUGANO AND THE VILLA FAVORITA
FRIDAY, JUNE 29. I wake at 8, again at 9, and 10, and up at 11 to shave and shower, and FINALLY wake Ed at 11:50 and phone Erik, waking SVEIN at 12, and then begins an Italian comedy of errors. Punctuated by incessant "Oh Gods", Ed gets through showering and brushing his teeth with my toothpaste, leaving the bathroom looking like an abattoir for animals with Sensodyne in their veins; I even get some on my LEG from the swatch under the SINK, and when I stoop to pack, get a big glob on my shirt. He's GOT to have coffee, so we're out to a place on the corner, cutting across all traffic, and he calls home to find to his chagrin that his parents are HOME, because his father's secretary was TYPING his paper, and Ed has to go home SOMETIME and PROOFREAD it, probably tonight. Then tried Bergamo. The Comedy increases: first he gets wrong number, then dials 2, rather than 7, until I write 7, 3 times, and gets numbers fouled up in SYSTEM and gets 78 rather than 71. Back and forth to cashier, dropping wallet, matches, cigarette packs all over, scattering ashes ALL over, voice foggy, stomach not yet reacting to tannic acid inform of HALF-espresso cup of STRONGEST stuff to which he adds NO milk or sugar. I get FULL cup of WEAKER stuff, add cream, drink off half the potent portion, add half cream, drink off half again, fill it AGAIN with cream and it FINALLY tastes good to MY palate. No answer in Bergamo (no RIGHT answer, about 3 WRONG ones, however). Not yet found train schedule. Finally, about 1, after telling Svein we'd be there in 45 minutes, we get to his place, and he's had breakfast already. We're still full from that LUNCH yesterday. Again on expressway to Como and Lugano, clearer today and the mountains even more lovely, and around to Castagnola at 2:15, only to find that the 1 hour time difference makes it 1:15 in Switzerland. Decide on lunch and "the tourist" directs Ed to drive up Monte Bre. Spectacular climb to top over cliff-edge roads, looking down on whole of Lugano, empty Lido and full POOL ("The water's dirty") and past lovely sky-topped apartments, private homes, and lots of new construction, each with its own yellow derrick. High over lake we park and go to a German restaurant whose owner angers us by SAYING that he won't accept lira unless he gets some fantastic premium, and then ENDS (after we DETEST him despite the goodness of the plates of dried tongue, beef, ham, salami, and pork, the coldness and flavor of the four beers we have) by being PERFECTLY fair and charging us 4800L! Down at 2:30 THEIR time, 3:30 OUR time to walk down the hot walk a SECOND time to the gate, and she won't accept ANYTHING but SF! Disgusted BACK to main road and cambio closed (today is SOME kind of holiday: St. Peter's, or something) and get to a bar and get 19.2F for 4000L. Along walk for THIRD time, and look at the house of the cook and the boat of the chauffeur and the huge ENSEMBLE of the place, and into the cooled hallways to be disappointed by the lower floors with their old furniture and awful paintings and GOOD woodcarvings, then up to the picture gallery and it's a RIOT of colors and avant garde design, whether the artist INTENDED it that way or NOT. All have been cleaned and scrubbed almost down to the CANVAS, making a Raphael look like a pastel in the brightness of the face, and old Belgian masters look like IMPRESSIONISTS because the lines of their UNDER PAINTING show through. But SOME are great, particularly OLD Italian and Belgian stuff-some of the "new" like Nattier and Gainsborough and Reynolds and others look like "Let's get ONE of this name to make the catalog look good." El Greco downstairs NOT like one; sprinklers on roof nice patterns on glass ceiling; LOADS of people around, including fat-bellied, nice-faced guy appearing to cruise, and I see that the catalog which was SAID to have NO photos actually has 42 of them, over 10% of the about 350 pieces. But lady INSIDE accepts Lire, so Ed pays for rest of my .8SF. Bless her. No postcards of the El Greco musicians for Mary Rasmussen, the lady iconographer in New Hampshire. Out at 4:30, VERY thirsty, and park in town and sit at cafΘ drinking squeezed lemon and ice cream, and pay HIGH bill in lire and get into car for Ed to go wrong way down street marked but NOT - . He argues with traffic cop, but he has to pay 5000L fine. He HATES Swiss, he says, who say "I don't care WHAT Italian laws are, you're in Switzerland now," and all Italians are such WILD drivers I guess I can't really BLAME them. Ed is CAREFUL afterwards, a NOTABLE IMPROVEMENT. Back along hot road and chocolate bar melts over my pants and has to be thrown out (and windows are closed so "poor Svein" won't have to squint his eyes in the breeze), and back to a quick-stop for ANOTHER lemonade and try and call Bergamo, no answer, and into town about 7, drive to Erik's and Ed SITS and SITS and drinks whiskey to get courage to go home, Svein lazing off on a sofa, and FINALLY he leaves at 8:20, and Svein and I talk listlessly. Then JOHN calls, having called Ed, talking in phone-produced MARVELOUS cadencing accent, and says friends say Salzburg will be JAMMED with tourists, we should go to Innsbruck, AND that Bergamo IS worth seeing, so much so that he'll WAIT to share it with me tomorrow at noon from his hotel room. Well, OK. Ed says he must work, and finally comes at 10:30, driving to couple places and they're all closing toward 11. Finally to the Ticinese Canal and a BARGE on the windy canal and fairly good food and enough to keep us going. I have to pay since Ed lost his 5000L in fines, and at 12:30 BACK to the Aristo to fall into bed even too tired for sex, Ed coughing and sneezing and saying "Oh God" in sheer fatigue.
BUS TO BERGAMO WITH SVEIN
SATURDAY, JUNE 30. Wake At 9 to more lovely sex, but the novelty is sort of gone from it. Call Svein and say to meet at 10 at the Autostrada, and I get down at 9:55 to buy ticket (saying goodbye to Ed in the car; he wants the Village Voice for August sublets, may go to Oslo with Svein to see about getting a whip to work on to the US), and watch LOVELY people walk by, and sure enough Svein is 20 minutes late again, and we get on front seats of 10:30 bus to Bergamo, hot in the sun, through flat farmlands and factories until the hills back dropping Bergamo, and as we turn off the Autostrada at 11:110 the strains of Bach's "Air on a G-String" waft over the bus radio to lift us onto the medieval plane of the upper town we can see above the urban sprawl of the lower town. Into the bus-train station (having left my suitcase at the Aristo to sneak in with John tonight) and buy a map and walk down the busy street that Svein likes past the Donizetti Bar and Theater, and into the hotel JUST as the bells ring 12. Up to 701 and John's ICE cold from a cold bath, smiling and kissing and liking Svein, and we walk out onto the sunny streets for the pleasant climb through woods to the Lion Gate to the old city, and through narrow streets to the pizza restaurant John has selected for lunch, and aside from the SAD BOSSY Italian brat at the next table, it's PERFECT, except for the crawly bugs hopping from the trees. The pizzas are truly marvelous, and the fresh fruit for 400L for dessert is a trip: apricots and juicy peaches and hard pears and loads of PERFECT sweet huge cherries. Out to find the Rocca, walking back and forth and finally Erik finds directions from a doll under a car, and we're up the road to the Lisbon-like fort at the top of the hill, up the stairs to the courtyard, up to the walls, where the parapets are colorful with flowers growing RIGHT out of the walls. See someone else climb the ultimate tower and we're up there in the heat and the humidity to look out over the houses along the walls, the churches and monasteries, the old Roman parapets, and the sprawl of the lower city and the haze beyond. Down dying for a drink, looking into the tiny St. Euphemia Church, closed, and sit in the cafe in the old square. Up the elevator in the Civic Hall for the same view, essentially, except that it's possible to identify the two churches and chapel right next to each other. Down and into the chapel, not much in stone carving if you've been to Belur and Halebid, and turn down a gory color photo of Count Cocliana for 400L. Into the Cathedral, huge and fairly empty, but Santa Maria Maggiore takes the cake with AS much plaster carvings of nymphs clutching their breasts or their pubes as there are paintings. Ask John to look at the man-sucking-man of the Hercules and Antaeus, and he goes only reluctantly and then likes it, and I'm VERY irritable and say that he USUALLY likes what I refer to him, and he says with maddening quietness, "Sometimes." Walk through streets and decide to go DOWN for a bit, and take the funicular, fun for only 50L, and walk through town and take showers and wash feet and get to the main tree-lined promenade for drinks. Order beer, but I don't LIKE beer. Ask for a menu and they HAVE none. John suggests Punt e Mes, and I don't like THAT, so he drinks it after he finishes my beer. Then in high anger I go inside and see what they HAVE, and end up with a Stock Cherry Brandy. GRRR! Back to the hotel and I write a bit, and then it's 8 and time to get back UP the hill on the funicular for John's OTHER restaurant. Luckily Erik understands most of the items on the menu (having only been in Milan since October) and they have wild duck, which I get, fabulous in a gravy over the ground corn cooked into a gruel-like polenta which IS, as everyone told us, pretty awful. John has the rabbit, which isn't very good, and when the "Fillet de Bue" is out, Svein has a stuffed breast of veal which comes out VERY bare-looking. The pasta at the start was pretty good after enough cheese was put on it, and John had his desired noodles con funghi, not very interesting. Two bottles of wine as usual, and there are confusions at the END of the meal that piss me off. They order raspberries and cream for my dessert before I even have my SALAD. Svein retires into his silent shell when I make my fuss, and I SAID, "Salata," but he didn't seems to WANT to hear me (the waiter). DAMN! So no salad, but the raspberries WERE nice. And all for only 10,800L. And a cute poorly-postured assistant made things nice to look at at the end. Then it's after 10 and Svein must get down to his bus at 11, so we're down to the hotel alone in the funicular, and John has a maid-took-grass scare until he finds WHERE he put the pack of cigarettes. I tear off the filter of the next-to-last joint (Ed said grass was IMPOSSIBLE to get in Italy.) [Erik said Scandinavia had a BAD time some years ago with many kids DYING from misuse of drugs.] Ed says there is lots of hash, but HIS was at the University, and there was no time to get it. We smoke grass, but hardly FEEL the smoke. Have nice thoughts, springing eternally, that hope, of being "found" by a local rich handsome aggressive sexy someone, but we sit and sit, walk and walk, and there's really NO one around, so we walk back streets back to the hotel, and I'm really feeling too IRRITABLE and awful (John INSISTED I don't take my PM fix, and it's really not BAD today, but I'm more stuffed in the nose than BEFORE). Into the double bed with the air conditioner on, too breezy. We TRY to have sex, but he has cock ring on and bidis and Baby Magic doesn't help, so I bring myself off and he tries and I try and he tries and TRIES and can't do it so we're to sleep at 1.
BERGAMO END AND MILAN AGAIN
SUNDAY, JULY 1. Wake about 8 and start idly playing with John and he with me, and it's gentle, soft, shooting sex with maximum feeling for both of us. Shower and up to the roof for breakfast, and it's hot and overpriced, though the view of the old city is nice. Out on the quiet streets to walk down the narrow, treeless streets to the Carrara Academy and Museum, and it happens to be free on Sunday morning. Up to the top to their despised "primitives" (before perspective) paintings [Keep forgetting to note the DREAMS I've had. One pair of nights it was the long-since-last-time nightmare of going to college and having a load of classes that I never go to, with homework I never turn in, and with tests that I know nothing about coming up, and since I can't quite remember where the classroom is, or what my LAB assignment was, I feel VERY unsure of myself. The next night this unsureness transferred to working, where I would spend TIME at my desk, but not know what I was SUPPOSED to be doing, what those around me (none of whom I knew) were doing, and how I could go on being paid for a job I knew nothing ABOUT. Then I lay in bed on the morning of 7/4, (p.3959) thinking of "CENSUS-2028," and how the "incident in Celebes" of 1987 would be caused by 51-year-old tourist ME, getting angry at some Indonesian peasant for wanting me to move out of 1st class into second class on a train and I tell him to do it himself and he kills me, a famous writer, and I gain the same doleful historical notoriety as Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, a nobody whose ACTUALLY inconsequential assassination has been "used" as the start of WWI. Then I think of the classic Japanese-rape-story style of telling the incident (Rashomon) from the news-hungry US newspaper's point of view, the brief INDONESIAN point of view, my fantasy (he was a lover I jilted and he killed me in a jealous rage), his fantasy (my death was a blow for the freedom of his people), and the ideas that it might have been actually UNPREMEDITATED, an accident, an act of madness, or TOTALLY predetermined. Good idea.], and some of the Bellinis and Francias are good, but soon acres and acres of Madonnas and nymphs and grass and fruit and horses and landscapes all blend into a blur. David (of Goliath fame) usually ends up looking pretty sexy and epicene, a child's head on either a giant's body or a WOMAN'S body. Some of the Madonnas are obviously from life, and one particularly was marvelously beautiful, yet a woman, seductive, yet a virgin. Huge boring things, small boring things, and the lower floors go VERY quickly. Buy a book for 1000L that has MANY of the paintings I liked, and we're back through the streets to the hotel to pick up the luggage, and get the bus to the station at 11:15. Ask and ASK about busses, but it appears they don't run TODAY, just TODAY, though it says EVERY day, and we have to go across to the train. John's in line for tickets and I see that there's an 11:15 to Milan, it's STILL in the station, but as I shout to him to catch the train, it pulls out, and the next one's not until 12:55! He again, maddeningly, says it's OK with him, but I shout it's NOT OK with ME. In fact if we KNEW the "Last Supper" was only open to 1 pm Sunday and then not until 9 am Tuesday, we probably could have SEEN it. Sit dejectedly in the station restaurant and AGAIN they don't have a menu---he doesn't even RECOGNIZE the term "una lista." Finally get a bitter soda, and John goes off to buy pizza and desserts for the train. On at 12:40, and it's hot and crowded, and of course the brat Giuseppe who was crying at the table sits in the car and absolutely SHRIEKS for his daddy. I'd written lots, which is nice, and we have the cold tasteless pizza and the reasonably tasty five dessert tarts, and the train is hot and dusty, but fast, and we're in about 2, lug the luggage down the long station and into a cab to the Aristo Hotel, and John starts bitching about the treelessness of the city and the heat and he doesn't care for the hotel, either, saying it's too expensive. I listen patiently. Call Svein as we all take showers, and arrange to meet at Last Supper at 4. Out for a walk, and find ourselves there after getting WRONG direction from gal at desk, and find CHURCH open, but it's not the greatest, though some of the side chapels have wonderfully Michaelangeloesque bulky male nudes. Out and try to find telephone on deserted Sunday streets, and finally the DaVinci Technical Museum has one, but I have trouble finding information, frustration speaking in phonetic Italian, and then find it's not De Bartoli and De Bortoli, and by 3:40 he's left! DAMN! [Never catch up! 7/5: (p.3961) Roam through cemetery. Symbol of a STAR for birth date, and a cross for death date. Most ARE quite meticulously maintained (all 3.5' x 4.5'), which makes the one gone to seed and the two gone to ivy look even sadder in contrast. Wood crosses nice, one effective Ecce Homo in wood, the idea of letters of metal on the surface of rough stone is good.] [7/7, p.3965, John floated like an apparition in the woods flanking Eischenback Bridge. The trees from different levels hid the rocks that marked the levels of the cliff, and he hovered as if weightless in a tree-window, his red shirt standing out in the green. Also remembered the NUMBER of farming implements drawn by tractors: a chicken-foot scraper, rotary row-makers, row rakers, circular scatterers, others. The Bridge is certainly a CONSTRUCTED stop. NOTHING really there, but the snack shop.] Over to the Ambrosian Church to find that IT is open, then back a different way (for John) (seeing a few more of those mysterious "U.S." signs with red, white, and blue arrows pointing to basement windows) and meet Svein, then over to Ambrosian again, look through church and the saint blessing lions that John likes for its primitiveness and then walk through side streets (after climbing around the impressive underground veteran's memorial with thousands of names of war-dead from Milan ALONE), and get to the Duomo. In to the dark interior, but the groining is lit, but there's a service echoing on and the whole back is closed for construction. John's told to LEAVE as he's leaving in his sleeveless shirt (sign SO far says only sleeveless WOMEN are obscene), and they're over to drink while I walk around place, gazing up at all the statues, some sexy, but can't climb to the top, "for 10 months, because of r-r-r-r-r-reconstruction," and I go to the 16th Century Lombardy exhibit, HUGE AWFUL paintings of saints in sexual ecstasies, and then to look through and through the Galleria and find them the second time through, and they're to Erik's for a nap and letter, respectively, and I walk to Sforza at 7:05 to see Gli Etruscani are on exhibit until 7:30! Rush through the small exhibit, but there's really not much to SEE. Walk around Sempione Park but find no cruising, only lots of kids and families, and back to corner at 8 and watch people sitting on Metro railings, getting ice cream, barefoot hippies carrying babies, a money guy cruises me, and it's a BETTER corner than ANYWHERE but Christopher Street of Fire Island for male beauty. They arrive at 9:10, sexless, and we go to outdoor bar for SCREAMING fags, for drinks, bland orzata, and to Soldati bar in Brera for a good soapy wash of hands and face and arms and FEET, and GREAT kidneys. John sadly with burned mushrooms, and out to see the cruisy dark park, John getting many hard asses, he says, but I only see the old fags who frequent EVERY park. Tired and walk home and VERY fatigued and angry to bed at 12:45 pm.
TRAIN TO INNSBRUCK
MONDAY, JULY 2. Up at 8, eyes and nose awful and stuck tight shut. [7/10. p.3970, DON'T feel like writing, don't feel like doing ANYTHING. Had my fill of Rothenburg two days ago, but still John insists on staying on, even ignoring my plea that EVERYTHING I encounter turns me OFF. I may be tired, I may be coming down with something, but I really expect that I'm just plain BORED. Got to bed at 9:30 last night and slept till 8 this morning---there's just nothing more interesting to DO. John says he's not interested in Europe anymore except as someone's guest, but I still want to see Dublin and Oslo and the fjords and Munich and Berlin and Vienna and Budapest and Prague and Warsaw and more of Greece. Then just Africa (which he says he can't see unless there are all kinds of special arrangements for seeing music and dance), and Australia/New Zealand/Tahiti/New Guinea, Antarctica and the North Pole. Plus Alaska and Manitoba and the Yukon and Northwest Territories and Mexico and Central America and the rest of South America. That's all. AND Bruges and Ghent on THIS trip. So I guess I still want to travel, but travel MY way, SEEING things; not John's way, vegetating after two hours' hectic activity in his "only good hours" in the morning. He's simply got the upper hand. When I travel at MY speed he whines and hangs back and gets tired and achy and complaining. When HE travels at HIS speed, I can only make the best of it---which isn't very good. It's not even like the Everglades where I can zip around doing things while he loafs. There's no way to zip around and do the not much of anything that's around here, anyway. I debated going off on my OWN, but that's VERY expensive, and it's lonely-making, too. (Though I didn't have terribly much opportunity to feel alone in NORWAY.) DON'T feel like writing, so I'll just OUTLINE what I remember as a guide to writing later.] Loaf around room until train time, and John insists on the Metro. Lug luggage down the long hot blocks, then down the endless stairs, and he gets into an argument with the attendant who insists that we get TWO tickets each, one for ourselves and one for the suitcases. Finally John has to do it. Down to the well-directed platform, and the comfortable trains roll in on rubber wheels that they've managed to cool sufficiently with a system so efficient that it permits passengers to SMOKE on the platforms. Efficient, but poor form. Onto the trains, to sit while they fill up, and there's just a MOMENT of slow speed under the Duomo, and then it's up to full force quickly. The transfer is somewhat of a pain, through gates and stairs, and it's quite crowded, and then we ride the last two stops to the station, and take the wrong escalator, getting a ride up one flight and having to WALK up one flight. I stand with the bags while he rushes around getting information and tickets. LOVELY people coming and going, and when he zips up the escalator I think he waves me to follow him, so I start waiting at the TOP of the stairs, but everyone I think is cruising ends up waiting for some dame, so I can't tell a THING. Hunt John in the bank to say I'm upstairs, and the train STILL hasn't been announced for track 15, and we walk along the track to see a sign with the car to Innsbruck WAY the hell back. Walk and walk and walk, cursing the station, and then John ASKS someone, since the signs don't agree, and the train's coming in, today only, I guess, on track 18, and thankfully there's a passage right where we ARE, rather than having to return to GO. Across and the train's JAMMED with people, only one car---DOWN AT THE END WHERE WE STARTED---for Innsbruck, and we JAM past people and FORCE our way to a window, next to a sexy guy with one eye missing, and it loads up fuller, and we leave about an hour late. Exquisite tortures. Nice gal talks to John, who sits in the first-class seat while I watch the beautiful Lago de Guarda pass by near Verona, which looks pleasant. (Note p.3946) It gets later and later, we go through the Dolomite Alps, many slashes cut out for marble works, pointy peaks with snow on them quite impressive. Nothing to drink for a long time, then we FINALLY hit a salesperson and get salami sandwiches, almost too dry to chew, and bottles of mineral water for expensive prices, and then John gets a LARGE mineral water which I stupidly leave in the car when we change in Austria. No one TELLS us to change in Austria, however, and we later decide that car was locked because of boundary inspections, and we snuck into the NEXT car and across, sitting in empty seats for the nice ride down the pass into Austria, spectacular clouds, marvelous Europe bridge, nice scenery, hanging out the window looking at hills and towns and reading Michelin between times, while I look at a younger-type Paul McLean dozing in a car-seat next to ours. Long tunnels again, and past a huge yellow building into Innsbruck, only about an hour late in total. Check at the hotel window, John has to get change, I chat with backpackers who talk about curfews at youth hostels and lack of showers, and then he's back with a Pension near the Schloss Ambras we want to see, and ride a bus to the end of the line and then---Oh God---WALK three LONG blocks with the heavy bags, sweating and aching, to the Pensione Magnini, or something, overlooking the misty mountains hanging over the city. He recommends the Gasthaus down the block for dinner, and it's nice, though plain, and the schnapps is sheer fire, no flavor. Walk back through fragrant streets and get into bed, tired from the day, looking forward to seeing the town tomorrow.
SCHLOSS AMBRAS AND HAFELKAR
TUESDAY, JULY 3. Up And eat downstairs where everyone speaks English, and then walk under the busy highway just across the field from us to a small road winding up to Schloss Ambras---infested with hoards of kids on their last days of school with teachers who can't decide what to do with them, so they take them for guided tours of castles. I shout for privacy, pushing kids out of the way after they tussle around US, and we have to see the armor with the kids, but the rest of it is alone, but it's MUCH too fast and not NEARLY enough time spent in the decaying "curiosities" room, which is poorly lit, anyway, and WHOOSH, we're out. Sit on a bench to regain a kind of equilibrium, then walk down a different way to come to the bus stop, so we decide to ride into town, going down some of the picturesque side streets and finding a guest house restaurant whose menu we like, eating fairly well in a typical German-tourist atmosphere (and John finds a Schnauzery dachshund to scratch, though he smells), and we walk along the river to get up to the railway to the mountain-middle, then the first cable car up to the FIRST eyebrow of lights we saw on the hill, then immediately to the SECOND eyebrow of lights, above, and walk to the top of Hafelkar, where the clouds come and go to the north, allowing some spectacular views over peaks and ridges, and climbers are scaling slightly higher peaks off to the west as we watch, and I climb a tiny bit further, past a snowdrift that captures the fancy of camera nuts, hill all to myself, and like the view, but John's gone back down, obviously bored, so we're down on the next swing through, with sexy guys on the Gondola, to the bottom. I detour by the round painting, good of its kind because it has a VANTAGE point at one side and distances at another. We pass church after church, looking into all of them, including a colorful cathedral with a VERY drab exterior that they're fixing up, then the mausoleum surrounded with GRAND statues of black people, and then just wander street per the guide, talking to bored Americans who don't know where to take their boredom next, and we sit at a café and talk and look at the tour groups passing through. Bus back to shower and change, and rebus into town to the Alte Innsprung for a roomful of tourists and a reasonably good dinner, wander through the town again looking at all the lights and tourists, and take one of the last busses back to our place at 11.
TRAIN TO GARMISCH, UP ZUGSPITZ
WEDNESDAY, JULY 4. [Dream on p. 3952] Up for what we think is an early breakfast, but everyone's eaten before us, which explains why there were so few there yesterday morning when we ate at 8:30. Deaf English couple are taking a cab to the train station which they offer to share with us, and we have non-sequential conversation with them until we smile and leave them at the station. Onto the train to Garmisch which ripples up and down cliffs nicely, again reading the high spots, most of which we miss, from Michelin, and again rather late, so we're into the station about 12:30, and John's hungry. Find the address of a guesthouse, but John wants to WALK there, but I insist that we check the bags and look for a place to eat NOW. So we do that, crossing the river into Partenkirchen, and find the Partenkirchen Hof Hotel which looks quite elegant. In, and the prices are elegant too, but the omelet is pleasant and the service spotty, and John's annoyed, as he was in Innsbruck, by the incessant TOURIST orientation of everything. Back to the station to inquire about getting up the Zugspitz, and find that one of the last trains of the day leaves at 3. It's about 2:15, so we unlock the suitcase and I put on boots and get sweaters, while John keeps to sandals and gets his sweater, and we're across to the Zugspitzbahn (which the tour organizations don't tell you about, hoping to rope you into one of the TOURS), and through quite LOVELY untouristed countryside (except for some crowded hotels with teeming swimming pools) to the end of the train station, and across into the cog railway station to be almost the only ones going up, since the peak, obviously from the ground, is hidden in clouds. Up and up over the hazy valleys, then the last half is in a TUNNEL spiraling up the mountain, complete with neon advertisements and signs saying "You've just passed the height of Zermatt" and such. Out in a morass of tunnels and signs and conflicting directions, and we ride up a small distance in a huge elevator to the next tiny cable car, and we're off into a total haze of cloud, with jagged edges of bare snowy rock showing below, and a stray glimpse of the green hills off to the east. The cables vanish into the murk. Over a sun terrace groaning under its burden of two people, and into another confusing melee of signs and directions and hallways. Out to climb the small tower which surmounts everything, and am entranced by the sheer pinnacle rising just to the west, and climb down and up, by stone-cut steps, iron ladder, and woven-wire handrails and pitons, onto the very peak, surprised to find flowers even up HERE, though we're far above the tree line, and the sun breaks on neighboring peaks in golden washes of granite color, and there are even some stray fragments of rainbows bouncing around in the clouds. Occasional views down into the snow-furrowed valleys, but also rising clouds sometimes block views of EVERYTHING. Warm in sun, chilly in shade, and down to see that ticket SUPPOSEDLY says we have to go back down the tunnel, but we don't want to, John wants to separate, but I find him still THERE when we get into the 5:30 car down to the last train back. The sweep of the cables HAS to be one of the greatest anywhere, an incredible weight of CABLE to support, and the weight of the car must be fairly negligible. Swoop down into clouds, then over tiny trees, burnt-out homes, swatches of lumbering, lights beamed toward the hotel near the peak, and shelters for lost skiers. With about 45 minutes to wait for the train, we stroll around the lake and the decaying hotel which had been taken over by the US Army for a rest center, with its American Officers looking silly in civvies, and their plain wives and pain-in-the-ass children. Read a bit while waiting for the train, which is quite crowded, and down in a good mood to the station, then decide on one of the cheaper Pensions that we want to stay in the Frotsze guesthouse, and it's not bad, though the woman says that each bath is 3.5M, more than $1, and the oil for heating the water is expensive, so John say's he'll bathe in COLD water, and she ends up NOT charging us. Wash, out to walk and eat at the Drei Mohren, pretty good for a change, try to locate a "Boys and Sex" movie he saw advertised, then he loses his list of bars after finding one on our street, and we walk, then go to bar, meet an AMERICAN, talk, I dash after him to meet tomorrow to give John addresses, back to bed at 11.
ETTAL, OBERAMMERGAU, LINDERHOF
THURSDAY, JULY 5. Up and east JUST at 7 in order to get the postal tour bus for a circle route at 8, and we ride first to Ettal, which seems to be torn apart for sewers, or something, and inside to the SPLENDIDLY baroque church, VERY light and beautiful, and across the street to sip the two kinds of chartreuse-like local liquor they have here, tasty but not worth bringing back in contrast to Drambuie and Grand Marnier, with water, and we find that we've miscalculated a bus, so we walk down street, then out to the field in back of the town, barefoot in the grass, and John wanders up the wooded path, obviously doing something he'd like this tour to be MORE like, and says it's quite beautiful, going on for miles through the forests. Bunch of kids shouting with their baby-sitters, we piss for relief and then back to the road. I continue up the road to the cemetery (see note on p. 3954), then back to find John nowhere. Wait for the bus, more impatient with him by the minute, and he rounds the corner just as the bus pulls up. Continue on road to Oberammergau, a larger city with many pleasantly painted walls on houses, and get left off. Again it's time for John to be hungry, so we walk and walk through streets trying to find an untouristy place to eat, but it's not possible, so we stop off anywhere and get annoyed by a bustling waitress who's obviously got to keep moving or she'll NEVER get to all the customers. I want to see the Spielhaus, which John doesn't want to, so we part, and I get to the huge concrete-block structure and find that the photos of the play seem to imply lots of static areas around a huge space, but there are only GUIDED tours through. Leave in anger, not wanting to PAY to see an EMPTY HALL, but then decide "I'm only here ONCE, so I might as well see it." But the guy says that the next English tour is in 20 minutes, and I say I just want to SEE it, but he says I have to wait for the tour, so I storm out in even GREATER anger. Turned off also by all the sort-of-same religiousness of the wood carvings all around. Meet John by a lovely grassy stream with little ducks caught in the border-eddies, and back on the bus, increasingly hot and hazy, into the woods to Linderhof. Dozens of busses in the parking lot, dust, hundreds of kids and tourists. Line for the tickets, pushy crowd down the path to the building, and we decide we want to see the fountains from the Venus hill for the first time, but the terrace itself is closed, so we go along fairly deserted path to the totally deserted temple, walk on the "Do not walk" grass to see the fountain come on GRADUALLY, growing and growing until it seems to be supporting the topmost globe as a ball on its spout. The castle looks great, except for the ants of tourists surrounding it. Down the side to the Moorish Kiosk, which I think is closed, so I climb on scaffolding to look in the side window, and John observes that the fountain is trickling, so it must be in order. German tour comes past, loads of people, and inside to the nice dimness, to be told about the carpets and hangings and fans and hookahs, and I figure they MUST have had hash to enliven the evenings, or maybe even opium (maybe THAT's why they wanted to get rid of him!) Then BACKWARDS along the normal tour route to the Grotto, waiting while kids shout and scream against the door, then the rock swings open and we're into the dank coolness of the grotto, sadly changed because the colored lights aren't on the rocks, the waterfall isn't babbling, and the swan-boat is up on struts in the middle of the lake, with a silly-looking chair sitting in it. Guide goes on and on, and some of the mirrors and flaking plaster MUST have looked more convincing when it was new, but not it seems almost like an EMBARRASSING invasion of privacy. Back to the house, where an English tour starts that I'm thrown out of because "They paid a lot of money for this tour, and you can't come with them." Wait for the next GERMAN tour, and through all the rooms, many QUITE spectacular, PARTICULARLY the gold-and-mirror extravaganza, and the bedroom is BEAUTIFULLY elegant with the UNFINISHED blue of the bedstead lending a point of non-gold glitter to the elegance of the room. Watch the fountain from the bottom, walking around gathering rainbows, then to 3:20 bus, back and wash, meet Carl at the Post Hotel for weitzenbeer (soda and lemon?) and, sadly, the Guild Guide, not the Gray Guide, we stroll more, eat in a busy guesthouse, walk dark streets, bed.
FUSSEN, HOHENSCHWANGAU, NEUSCHWANSTEIN
FRIDAY, JULY 6. Up at 5:45 to pack and get downstairs at 6:30 expecting to find nobody, but the maid says she'll serve us breakfast. Great! We eat (John used her yesterday to hang his shirts after he washed them, to dry in the sun for a change) and pay the bill, pleasant at last, and the taxi is waiting for us. We tip the maid who stays to wave goodbye to us, and have an expensive ride to the station, since we're charged for the luggage about twice what it costs for US. The bus starts crowded and gets more crowded as we go through the familiar sights of many of the towns, and into Fussen, which looks VERY bustling and busy. John spots the Pension Elizabeth right near the station, so we walk there, get a room with bath, and then find there's a 10:55 bus to the castles, so I dash out to cash checks to pay the bill in advance, as he wishes (John seemed very annoyed about the kitty in Innsbruck, and I said "Well, you WANTED it," and he said snidely "I didn't have much CHOICE", and so I took it over when we got into Germany, to keep it for the rest of the trip), and John goes to get groceries for lunch in the busy streets, and I check on a bus to Ottobeuren, and get sent to the train station, and it seems to be almost a three-day trip of great expense, so I have to meet John quickly. I leave it till LATER to show it's impossible on our schedule, and we're on JAMMED bus, people even STANDING, and we go PAST the road to the castle to another little town, and down ANOTHER way, and even lady NEXT to me shouts out "When are we getting to the CASTLE?" and the car breaks up, but it IS their stupidity not to take the MAJORITY where they want to go FIRST, rather than lugging them around like cattle to the local stops where no one has room to get on. Finally stop at the base and we climb through the pretty woods around Hohenschwangau, and the line IS HUGE and crowded, and they don't have an English book so I guy a German one, and we wait and wait for an English-French tour which finally takes off in the care of a small plump girl who RATTLES everything off in order to keep ahead of the ONE-language tour following. Pleasant castle (sort of "grandmother's place"), and we're out onto the fountain-patio to unwrap the lunch John brought, and there's dried meat and HUGE pork cutlets and a delicious cheesecake for dessert. Then down the walk, liking the quiet of the woods for contrast, and up the NEXT hill to Neuschwanstein. The walk is a little too steep for slippery sandals, which makes it a drag to ascend, and we're into the small round roadside entrance, too low to see the "classic" view---it was hard to realize that that fat box on the hill was Neuschwanstein from the road the bus entered on---and the inner court is under repairs, so we can't go in there, and the souvenir hall is littered with people, and we get tickets and sit desultorily in the warm dim hall waiting for the English tour at 2, and a dull-speaking girl takes us around to the mostly-unbuilt castle, with strange perspectives in the hallways which the carpets don't echo by going squarely back to almost meet the "further" walls. The throne room is elaborate, though half the mosaic floor is covered by a carpet for the tourists to stand on; and the music room is quite grand, John enjoying standing on the stage and destroying the "feel" of photographs for the next few dozen groups. Up and down the spiral stairs in the towers, and the place DOES miss a grand entrance staircase. Out to Jugend point to look over Hohenschwangau, and up to the Marianbruke (oh, yes, the artificial falls out the bedroom of Linderhof, and the REAL great falls outside Neuschwanstein's window, under the ELABORATE carved forest-canopy of his bed), quite a stunning creation, to look DOWN on the box of the castle, surely being able to watch ALL the construction. It begins to rain, we get back to town to have just missed bus, over an hour to wait, and John's impatient with my hitch-hiking until I GET a ride with the guide for a "Christ with us" tour, and we're backs for John to nap and me to study the German Castle guide (which we never use), then up at 6 for a stroll, but the rain PELTS down, so I'm back for the suits, we continue the walk up the hill through the nice park to the closed castle, the open church, the crypt church below, then across the river to falls, back to a busy guesthouse for a two-dish shared dinner which is pretty good, and I hear band music from the town-hall room, and we listen to FUNNY band concert, with ironic German, and bed.
FUSSEN TO ROTHENBURG ON THE ROMANTIC ROAD
SATURDAY, JULY 7. Up early again to eat in pleasant small breakfast room overlooking rose garden of pension, and walk to Romantic Road bus at 7:50, and when we leave Fussen on time there's only one American couple besides us on the bus. Pick up 5 German women along the way, and we get to the Weis Cathedral in the middle of a six-pack of tour busses whose sitters are seated in the church listening to their guide jabber from the altar-rail. I step up, he says "Please don't" in German. So I figure he'll be through soon. No such luck, he keeps on and on, and finally I want to see what I want to see, and look around AS IF the church were empty, though not actually standing right in FRONT of him. Buy a good book and back to complain to the plain-Jane guide "I'm sure YOU have a very important company and THEY have a very important company, couldn't you come to some ADJUSTMENT of time so that they're not there at your SCHEDULED arrival?" "Oh, it's not their church, you have a right to see it, you did right to walk around." "Yes, but they get annoyed with stupid American tourists." "It doesn't matter," she shrugs it off. John asks the driver to turn the radio down, please. Driver shouts at him in a nasty temper, and John shouts back, "I didn't come to Germany to listen to American music," and stomps off into the woods below the bridge (see note p. 3954). Get to Augsburg at noon, and John wants to stay there. I have my heart set on Rothenburg, saying Augsburg will be too big, and it surely looks it, though for the first time we start seeing some attractive German men on the sidewalks and streets. Out to shop before noon, because John doesn't understand that these shops are obviously open all the time, and there's a pleasant mall JAMMED with people shoulder to shoulder and crotch to ass, and we're over to the Cathedral, quite plain except for the Mary portal, and the organ's playing a wedding out just as we get in. Walk down to the Fuggerai, neat yellowish houses on cobblestone streets, obviously a nice place to live these days, and back up to Maxmillian Strasse, which is JAMMED with people. Walk around looking at some of the fountains, but John wants to return, and we pass a band playing somewhat better than yesterday, buy popcorn in the bustling sales-park in the heart of town, and get back to the bus station to sit on a low wall and litter their garden with rinds pulled from the blutwurst and other goodies that John bought by the half-kilo. John persuades the driver to open our suitcase and gets the corkscrew for the wine he bought (while I fumed outside the shop: for a savings of 25 he makes both of us wait 10 minutes while he shops a supermarket complete with carts and checkout lines and long waits.) and after finishing the drink we're both feeling somewhat better. Rain comes and goes, and I have the Michelin out which describes the places we're passing and what we're not seeing. Countryside was quite boring in the south, beyond the mountains, but now it's beginning to get hilly and pleasant again, and some storm clouds and rain-blows make the drive fairly interesting, though John naps through most of it. Nordlingen is walled, the first of three, and the cathedral is nice, the plaza outside is pleasantly hippy, the town is nice and old-looking, and we get back on the bus with reluctance. Dinkelsbuhl has streets which are broad and "produced" looking, but John wants to stop there, and dejectedly gets back on the bus moaning that "We're passing THROUGH everything that we came to see." I say that it's like wanting to visit Akron before seeing what Cleveland's like. Rothenburg is impressing to see from a distance, even though we come on it from the worst angle, and we get off in the courtyard and lug the suitcases toward the information station, stopping at "Die Reich Kuchenmeister" to price rooms, and for a bathless room tonight and a bathed room for two nights, John figures it's OK. I'm out for a walk to the walls, GREAT view over elegant roofs of town, he meets Gerd in the sidewalk café, and we eat in the Ratstube, fairly poor, before the organ concert in the church, which we'd paid to get into before, which is long and not so good from 7:30-9:30, though the organ has more potential than the French organist. Stroll afterwards with Gerd, through the dark town streets, jazzy sounds of dancing coming from various places, and leave him to meet his friend and wander colorful streets back to hotel for ice cream and bed.
WALK TO DETWANG, ROTHERBURG FAIR
SUNDAY, JULY 8. My eyes, ears, nose, and throat had been tortured throughout the entire last week by the aftermath of stopping Rhinopront, and today, FINALLY, the cold symptoms seemed to be going. We get down to the Marktplatz at 10 for the band concert, with a few cute trumpeters, and just as we're about to leave, having climbed to the balcony of the Town Hall, the Mannerchor comes on, and they're fairly good, even though everything sounds more or less the same. Down a side street and pass a recorder/piano duet, and into an auditorium for a rehearsal for the Goetz concert tonight, and it sounds like it'll be quite charming, John saying that the program is VERY progressive. We head toward the northwest corner of the town walls to look through the church there, after giving our "donation," and the guy encourages us to go down into the cellars and up into the barracks and the areas around, and we wander around in a perfect freedom, going into rooms which seem once to have been someone's dwelling place, and there seems infinite room for private individuals to come in, saying they'll keep it old from the outside, and making it livable inside, and having the best of both worlds. Explore the ins and outs and turrets and passageways and gun mounts of the area, and then outside the gates to try a couple of blind alleys on the wooded walks in the direction of Detwang, and ask a passing couple, and the guy's American and the gal's German, who says that Detwang is down that way. Stroll pleasantly in the green morning, and along a smelly stream to the tiny town, and there's an outdoor café under a shedding tree with people placing beer coasters as patens over the chalices of their wine, and we have brunch there, reasonably good, but more the atmosphere than the food, and get a couple of WELL-behaved children, such a relief, and another brat. John is one of the smelliest yet. Over to the church and explore the Riemanschneider altar to exhaustion, and walk back at 3, John to nap, and I go to sit in the square to read and write. Don't feel like doing either, for from 3:15 to 5 I just sit and watch people pass by, particularly those thinking the "Drinking scene" takes place EVERY hour, but it just takes place SOME hours. Lots of American soldiers on leave, barefoot hippies, uncomfortable tourists in SUITS, foreign languages, staring and guidebooks. Back expecting him to be gone to meet Gerd at the bus station, as he said, at 5, but he's still THERE, and we have dinner in the hotel, ending with a good pear helene, and then go to the Greta Goetz concert, pleasant and lots of quick things to not get bored with, but for the final exhausting piece, and then out to stroll to the walls to go through for the fair. The bierstube is obviously where everyone is: hundreds of people, maybe 20 at a table, maybe 6 by 10 tables and lots of walking around, so maybe 1500 laughing, crinkly-smiling, drinking, shouting, singing, bouncing, shouting, smoking, drinking people all jammed inside the smoky tent while the loud band jumped up and down and turned from side to side, chorus after chorus, encore after encore, while the waitresses pushed through the crowd with tankards of beer, beer, beer, and the smoke curled up to make the air actually DENSE. "Let's get out of here," said John, and I remarked that this is the FIRST time that we're confronted with ACTUAL, AUTHENTIC, UNTOURISTED German culture, and we flee for our virginity. We wouldn't be found DEAD in there, and any real German in Rothenburg probably wouldn't be found dead OUT of there, this final night of the fair. Through the main drag to watch the people grabbing each other's swings, have some candied nuts, better than the rocks from Augsburg, but boys aren't really cute here, and everyone is VERY heterosexual looking, and there's lots of food, including pizza and shish-kebab, and selling of junk and contests, and John REALLY wants to leave this "natural German" surrounding, so we get back to sit on a stoop in the square from 10-11, watching the same cars race around the square, tourists zip in, stare, and zip out, motorcycles buzzing through, people walking, shouting, with the sound of the loudspeakers from the fair coming clear through the air. He's back at 11, and I get back at 11:15, convinced that if I wanted to see the town quiet, the last night of the FAIR is not the time to do it. VERY tired and bone-weary back to bed.
ROTHENBURG WALK AND BUS TO GRUNEWALD
MONDAY, JULY 9. Out in the morning after breakfast to climb the tower up VERY dangerous steps (another nice thing about the place, when they put in elevators, it's ruined) for a great view over the whole town, with all its towers, and then walk toward the still unexplored south end of town: the Ploinen with its two-level street much-photographed, the Spital gate and tower, and look around the walls. Pass the Red tower and I don't even have the energy to climb it, and walk around the youth hostels and look out over the walls. But great chicken in the place that's always open, Americanized but good, and walk into the park for lunch, feeling somewhat better with wine (I guess cold cuts, one of which John let fall onto the ground, and beer was today, chicken and wine tomorrow), and take a tour at 1:30 within a few hundred feet of Creglingen, with no hope of stopping because ANOTHER of their tours goes THERE, and stop at the Grunewald, which again seems overcleaned, and I suppose he would have LIKED her face to dominate the painting with her ethereal glow, but it seems almost like a WATER-COLOR YELLOW which comprises her face, just over the white canvas, and that's not so good. The parakeet-cote outside was somewhat more interesting. The museum in the old fort is closed, and we meet Gerd and his lover, quite embarrassing for John, who doesn't even SAY why he didn't meet Gerd at the bus at 5 yesterday. Up a nice spiral staircase, and into the church, and then back to sit on the street and watch passing people and cars for a couple of hours, including Russians, and women picking over bargains at the local "John's Bargain Store," and then back to the bus, where John sacks out on the back seat and I get TOTALLY turned off by the Simpering American Girl with her over-solicitous German friend, both dykes of the first water, probably, and totally disgusting personality-wise. Stop for a truly nice view over Rothenburg on der Tauber, and into town, hungry, but wanting to see the 8 pm "musical entertainment" at the Baumeisterhaus, so we sit at a café in the southerly section of town and have beer and Hungarian goulash soup, VERY expensive, and wander and wash until 7:30 into the Baumeisterhaus for a pleasant waitress and regular German food and a PIANO starts at 8, playing Montovani music, and we leave before anyone picks up the accordion. The much-vaunted inner terrace has been plasticked over, with vines growing down with such REGULARITY that I'm convinced they're artificial. John wants to stroll, so I go to bed at 9:30 and smoke some bidis and try to get excited enough to play with myself, but can't do it and just end up by jerking off with GREAT dissatisfaction. Just SO eager to leave Rothenburg.
BUS TO WURZBURG
TUESDAY, JULY 10. (See note p. 3955). Write note and summary of days I've missed writing about in room until maid enters at 10, then on terrace to 11; John writes cards through breakfast, pissing me off, kids released from school (they go until July 22!) for recess screaming below. Hordes of tourists. Cold feet even in socks. Water is VERY hard, skin tacky, hair sticky. Air dry, throat sore three days, eyes STILL faintly gummed in AM, nose MORE stuffed this AM than yesterday. Vaguely gassy and constipated: always feel to go, going produced TPTs: tiniest possible turds. Feel awful about bitching yesterday, but John's tolerant because HE'S getting HIS way! So now I consider myself up to date with diary. Try to get at least HALF the remaining 14 days (7 x 3 = 21 sheets, at LEAST finish THIS book and START on last one) done to ease final typing. Every so often the 120 agents float through my mind: I suppose this will get stronger as the last two weeks come to a close. NO thought of FLIGHT yet, just the desire to END the TRIP. John's been writing cards to various people on MY list, so I should catch up on THAT, too. NO reading in past week. Start again? Back to room at 11, now that the terrace is being readied for lunch and our room should be clean. Wine for lunch helped a lot, and a talk with John about what I wanted with sex. But I think he didn't REALLY understand. Back to the torture chamber and a real PERFORMANCE by the tour guide, and to the 2 pm museum tour, that turned into an astounding collection of junky old and vaguely contemporary paintings and some FABULOUS wooded cabinets and an AMBIANCE from 950 that I haven't seen ANYWHERE else: old wood, ripply windows, creaking floors, dim doorsills leading into old kitchens filled with ancient utensils. Out at 3, John goes to john, to post office, and to buy a leather pouch for 30DM. Sit on terrace, writing: to Wurzburg at 5, dear John relenting. He even said, "I begin to like you again," after I relent from my horrible bitchiness when I think I have to spend another day in Rothenburg. So the 10th to Wurzburg, the 12th to Heidelberg, the 14th to Rhine, the 16th to Belgium for Bruges and Ghent, and the 20-21 to Trier and Luxembourg. Doesn't sound TOO difficult, either for me to enjoy or John to "Soak into." Still feeling too drunk to write, but at 3:30 I feel more HUMAN than I've felt for the past few days. Maybe I'll get an ice now. Oh yes, VERY sadly: the ARMY presence: jets ROARING over much too low for a gape at the city. Soldiers on leave slouching and playing harmonicas and guitars, drinking beer, littering, acting loud and awful. Officers in their lack of style in the hotels with their Woolworth wives. DREADFUL. Army trucks on the roads and signs specifying limit for ARMORED cars and TANKS. DREADFUL. Guys cruising for gals and NOT for US. Insect-irritant motorbikes buzzing past. [7/12. It's the DETAILS that count, and are most easily forgotten: the dream of a bus passenger, crippled, in NYC, who won't get off the bus at 48th and 8th because he's going to 30th and 8th, but I explain that the bus goes ACROSS 48th to THIRD, and it's longer from 3rd to 8th than from 48th to 30th. The Wurzburg Greek vases have NO reproductions of the lovely erotic collections, and one vase has the ONLY incidence of COMING that I recall: about a dozen little tiny drops coming from the erect cock---also many had their hands on their cocks, and in some the vases were monochromatic white on black, except that the cock HEADS were colored RED. And a description for that vase had SOMETHING blocked out. The fact that the small but elegant Wurzburg Theater was lit with hundreds of 40 watt bare bulbs, but at least 15 were burned out in the auditorium and 8 and 9 of the larger ones were burnt out in the side promenades. The other chandeliers and the lobby they kept repaired. Nice shiny-silk grainy fabric on walls, too, and the chairs in the four steep balcony rows were as high in back as bus seats, and they even had little seats on the corners for the ushers. I'd feared that all the pretty boys had vanished with Augsburg, but they showed up in somewhat lesser numbers in Wurzburg, particularly the spectacular, shirtless tanned one that preened past the Theater Café yesterday noon. Passed only BACK of single long-haired jean-suited male in the corridor and his room, and thought to stare at him and the pupils mutually enlarge and it's love. Suddenly it seems that ENLARGED PUPILS are a main characteristic of the AWARE state: 1) science shows that when people are ATTRACTED, their pupils enlarge, 2) and that people are more attracted to PHOTOGRAPHS of people whose pupils have been enlarged, 3) that the "high" person on GRASS has enlarged pupils, 4) the me, on LSD, felt that my pupils covered my whole eye, 5) that the height of the stroboscope experience was described as "my eyeball sawn in half," 6) that "love at first sight" probably involves such a simple physiological tag, 7) that the higher-developed person of the future would be able to CONTROL this basic reaction, to APPEAR more attractive. Actually, now, this can be an effective way of checking OUT a person cruising: if the eye pupil is contracted to a point with the hustler's urge to swindle, or dilated large by a person SINCERELY, almost against his WILL, attracted PHYSICALLY to you. It's ALMOST a facet of reading the mind through the windows of the eyes. The Marian Festung totally burned out (except for stone vaults) and being completely reconstructed. The quantities of STUFF (including an 1805 self-portrait of a women) in the museum which is only in the PROCESS of growing! The splendor of some of the pieces in the Residenz, saved during the war, elaborate in wood and inlay and mother of pearl and varnish and lacquer. The glitter of the stucco when the "ice-cream glisten" white is THINLY overlaid with INTRICATE patterns of gold, like frost on a glass, and then interspersed with small MIRRORS is really a VERY spectacular sight, like the infinite mirrors of Ludwig's Linderhof bedroom. Be glad to see the reconstructed EGLOSIME (process I'd never heard of for painting on the REFLECTING SURFACE of a mirror, and getting reflections in COLOR) mirror chamber destroyed during the War, with the ONLY note of some kind of REGRET that destroyed the room, rather than a bald historical statement of the FACT of the bombing or fires or raids---of course without mentioning SIDES, for fear of irritating the TOURIST. A strange double feeling, though WWI takes its place with all the OTHER silly feuds between small people who have since grown into a larger nation, almost as Europe and the US have grown united against Russia and China and Africa. The case of "us" against "the other," where, historically, the "us" keeps getting bigger and bigger, until there's ONLY US and THEM.] I took off for the last sights of Rothenburg, but the Franciscan church was closed and I was sad that the walls weren't even ever continuous around Burgstrasse, the "oldest" street of town. Strange hotel THROUGH the wall. Rebuilding stone roads by hammering stones into a sand bed. Then to bus and get on with a childishly whistling driver and drive through some LOVELY vistas while John chats with someone we both figure is gay but who keeps talking about gals. Into Wurzburg at 6:30, at most distant strain station, information office closed, no map, but I see to take bus 3, and we ride PAST hotels out to the ring, and have to walk BACK, passing awful place, girl helping, getting room 41, a little loft to ourselves with a bathroom with sound-trumpet walls. John showers, we eat in restaurant, out for walk to reconstructed Dom, bed tired at 9:30, nice quiet room.