suggzy

Let’s go back a long long way, to the early years of the current century; and I think, in fact, to the year 2001. This was early on in my project to start the process of claiming as many countries as I can. As I type this, I have just hit 46, with SWK and ‘self having popped over to Turkey from the beautiful Greek island of Rhodes, for a spot of lunch and to break new territory. Our honeymoon was most splendid indeed; there are a few tales to tell at some point, but it’s more fun for me as author to jump around a bit and pull some stories out of the fading ether. Here are some more..

2001 was one of those ‘double country’ holidays which are so useful for upping one’s overall score. Discussion in our household of late has been to do another one, next year, taking in Romania and Moldova – the magic number 50 draws ever closer..

So my good friend Nicholas and I made out for the Czech Republic and for Poland. The two halves of these eight days of joy would be sewn together with an overnight sleeper train between the two capitals, Prague and Warsaw.

We flew out from Manchester on a Sunday morning, and at that stage he was still residing in Blackpool, so I trickled up the M6 at the end of the working week, and we made some merry for a day or two. As one does, in the ‘pool, which is a place I have come to love very much. Probably too much merry, in all honesty. As I look back on my life over the years during which I have travelled extensively, there have been a number of instances where the pre-holiday excitement has rather got the better of us. Alright, of me, then. I can still recall my last holiday with Sarah I (Copenhagen, another place where they pretty much charge you to breathe – just with more Lego than usual), where we rather overcooked it on a cold January night, woke in utter horror at the time the following morning, packed in the ohfuckitcramitin style and drove over the Peaks at just this side of the speed of light. Our little Citroen was visibly sweating as we pulled into the Jet Park.

Anyway, yes. Back to the Blackpool to Manchester Airport journey. In fact we were up in time, but one was a little on the bleary side. Coffee (well, his version of coffee) cut through the mist a bit, but there was still a rather nerve-jangling moment when in a slightly complacent manoeuvre I briefly piloted us up the wrong carriageway of the M55. Happily it was ridiculous o’clock, so in between m’colleague’s screams I found myself able to correct the misplacement of the motor car unhindered by (that much) traffic.

And yes, off we went to my first experience of the Czech Republic, and, to date, my only experience of Prague. Stayed in an enormous corridor of a bedroom, attempting to kill one another with Pilsnery-farts and the fumes from local ciggies of doom. Managed to actually take in some culture, here and there, in-between stopping every five bloody minutes so my dear friend could secretively count the contents of his purchased-for-the-purpose old man’s money-belt. He had the aspect of a man who felt we would come upon some dreadful footpads at any moment. But we did not, and in fact we had a high old time in a friendly place.

As the years went by, we were to holiday again. And in fairness he grew a less troubled traveller. Our last foray abroad came in 2010, to the city of Marrakech. In July, because we are idiots. Just about everything was on the point of melting, it was so hot. But still, a sign of the new jet-setting pal of mine being more at ease, and the witty raconteur we know and love being returned to us, came during a Sunday morning stroll through a shady avenue of trees in the park in the French Quarter.

I was recalling to him how my in-laws had a large brood (if that is the collective noun I am stumbling for) of pigeons, which they raced, quite regularly.

“Yep, more than a hundred racing pigeons”, I told him.

“A hundred racist pigeons?” he responded, enquiringly. I opened my mouth to speak but he continued..

“What do they do? Sit on the perch all day softly repeating Coooooon.. Coooooon.. Coooooon?”

Collapse of stout parties followed.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Prague.

We behaved alright, I suppose. Nicholas fought off that prostitute I mentioned some way back, I drank Czech red wine, which was dry and delicious. And on the Sunday afternoon of our trip we went in search of a fabled Russian Restaurant, rumoured by my guide book to serve Bear.

I quite like eating my way through the animal kingdom. Bit by bit. Like a sort of dense Darwin. At this stage we were both affirmed carnivores, so eventually we found the place, after not a little searching. It had the feel of a recently-abandoned cinema foyer, with a really weirdly low ceiling, but we were keen for our ursine consumption debut. In we strolled, to be met at the door by a diminutive Russian waitress. And, by shamefully objective standards, a very beautiful Russian waitress. But alas not one evincing much by way of a humorous take on events. Any events. Her career as a waitress, the fact it was Sunday, the sunshine. She frowned; however prettily. And without a language in which we also shared she found herself about to have a tricky time of it with two dozy Englishmen in search a spot of fricasseed bear.

We walked off together in the general direction of the toilets, and she stationed us together directly outside them. And disappeared. Some time later she strode towards us and laid out cutlery and gave us some menus. And disappeared again. My fellow traveller was now hopelessly in love with her, of course, and his talk had become rather bawdy and vulgar. Discussion of the dining options was not going to divert the conversation away from statements like “I reckon she’s a KGB spy, and could kill you by having sex with you”. Mostly because the menu was written wholly in the Cyrillic alphabet, so that was us boned.

The object of Nicholas’ affection returned. Sign language ensued (the mime for ‘drinkies’) and some time later a couple of bottles of lovely tepid Baltika appeared. And then, a moment that will live long in my memory. The time had clearly come to consider some solids, judging by the interrogative stare we found ourselves on the end of. M’colleague waded straight in:

“Do you do bear”? he asked.

Knitted eyebrows. Confusion. Something muttered in Russian.

“Oh come on, y’know, BEAR!?” he followed up, placing his hands above his head to make them look like a pair of ears, and giving a creditable if over-loud growl through bared teeth. International mime for bear, apparently.

From that moment, the wedding was off. Our girl leapt upwards and backwards about six feet in shock. Stumbling rather, I thought for a moment she might be about to pop out a small pistol and simply plug the clown there and then. Looking back it might have been a mercy. After a few moments, she regained her composure, and rather took charge of the situation. Someone needed to.

“Borscht?” she enquired.

“Borscht?” We responded.

“Borscht” she declared.

Things went quiet. A few minutes passed, until a rather insipid pair of bowls of watery Russian soup appeared. We ate in silence, paid handsomely, and left.

And then I started to feel rather ill. Not immediately, but a background tickly cough followed me around, and began to grow in intensity and soreness all the way through the rest of the day and then the following day, when were due to make our way a few hundred miles over the border, overnight, to Warsaw. By the time we holed-up at Prague train station I was in pretty ropey order. Nicholas enquired as to why I “had a face like a slapped arse” and I conceded I was struggling. Wizard that he is, he prescribed a litre of cold, soothing pilsner and a small handful of paracetamol.

Did the trick for a while, but by the time we were lay down on our bunks in what was a matchbox of a cabin, it returned with a vengeance, incubating all the while through the gift of a warm, damp bedroom and suspiciously yellowing bedding. I coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed. We attempted to cool the place by opening the window for a bit, but the amazing cacophonous noise that brought made the chances of restorative sleep almost zero.

Onwards through the night we rattled. Things were worsening, but, as I alluded to some time ago, there was a moment of drama or two.

There was a small fellow aboard with a very fulsome and neatly trimmed moustache. He and we shared, once again, no language, but by his epaulettes it became clear to us both he was some sort of train manager, as we would have it these days. As borders were crossed at various stations of the night, he would burst unbidden into the cabin, and shout POLICE! Alright, we got used to this after a while, but the first such utterance gave us a bit of a start. It had rather an accusatory ring to it – suggesting somehow they had been called to deal with the bald man and the coughing man. In fact it was just a rather laborious and entirely routine passport check, conducted by yet another trench-coated man with a gun and a dog (I like to be consistent as I whizz through Eastern Europe). Not made any easier by my ill temper, I have to confess. I’m never so chipper when I am sickening for something. A few words got bandied around, but no one left in irons, so we’ll leave it there.

There was another casualty, too. Poor old Igor the train manager, in fact. In between bursting into our cabin to scare us, he had some manner of cubby-hole of his own to skulk in. One of us got up to go for a pee, and popped the light on to get out. On returning, clicking the switch did not extinguish the naked glaring bulb in the ceiling. Had a couple more goes, and no, nothing. With sleep elusive, this was not going to make matters anything easier. We summoned our man, and mimed, somehow, our predicament. He looked at us like utter idiots, and clicked the switch. Same result, and a bulb of his own went on, as he fingered his moustache thoughtfully.

In a flash he withdrew a substantial handkerchief and threw it across his hand and reached up for the bulb. My buttocks clenched, as the room plunged into a darkness that echoed with the man’s screams as the bulb burned his wrist. Moments later came the trickle of water from our miniature sink, as he whimpered a little as the water cooled the burn. Some time later, he exited. I coughed a lot more, and eventually after what felt like weeks we arrived in Warsaw.

Straight to the hotel we went; I don’t recall how we swung it, but they saw I was unwell and allowed us in at something ridiculous like 7.00am. We both slept for a couple of hours, but then on waking we both realised something had to be done about my acute ague.

Through the mists, I remembered I had bought insurance with medical cover. There was a number one could call where folk speaking English would take your location, policy number and whatnot and would dispatch a medic to come and give you a once-over. More sympathetic now, Nicholas went off to do the necessary.

It must have been an hour later when he returned, joined by a teeny tiny Polish lady of about 50, with jet black hair and, splendidly, a long white medic’s coat and a stethoscope. A cartoon Doctor!

However, she was not for joking. Oh no. She spoke in a faintly accusing monotone, and periodically opened up her lungs to bark and order at me. I was ordered up from my sick bed, told to open my shirt so she could have a bit of a listen to the internal wiring. However she tired of that, and impolitely bade me undress down to my boxers. I baulked a bit at this, and sort of coughed a bit to indicate what I thought might be the locus of the problem she was summoned to attend to. But no, she prodded my gut a bit (thanks, lady) and it was only after a fairly extended period of standing there in my trolleys that I was told to sit down and open my mouth.

I did so, and she swooped in with some enormous manner of tongue depressing device. I began to gag, rather, and she managed just a grimace at the sight of the back of my cakehole, and if I remember rightly, gave something of a squeak of terror of my breath which, by then, would have made an efficient paint stripped.

She bounced away from me, and announced:

“You have Tonsilitis, it’s really quite serious”.

I had no opportunity to thank her for her attentions. She scribbled something on a pretty non-descript piece of official paper and directed my chum to a nearby pharmacy, and left as quickly as she had arrived. Presumably to look closely into the ear of a man with a broken leg? Dunno.

Drugs always work better overseas. I think they must just cut everything with a little bit of heroin, or something. I drank water and took my pills for two days, and emerged bright and sparkling from the whole thing for an assault on Warsaw’s hospitality. I clapped in the wrong places at a jazz concert, ate a tremendous rabbit stew, and generally had a jolly good time. Nicholas went rather downhill, having gone a two-day bender the moment I had to retire to our infirmary. He crashed through the door pissed at 3.00am on one of the nights, announcing how he had just fled from a likely fight in the hotel’s casino. Something about Blackjack, I think? Never been good on card games.

We returned to the UK with little money, but some fine memories. He wants us to go to Iceland together, next. I am concerned, because there are volcanoes there, but watch this space, eh?