A Stretch In Limousin – RSVP

I arrived here on Wednesday I think, and I leave in around two hours. It’s been great. The festival was kind of fascinating, with lots to write about. The Crazy Guides Communism Tour was excellent, with lots to write about. And Auschwitz earlier today was just about the most harrowing experience of my life. It must be one of the saddest places on earth. Lots to write about.

I’m currently outstaying my welcome in a restaurant with dodgy wireless.

I’ve just looked at my bank balance. Without putting too fine a point on it, I’m fucked.

Oh, how amusing. As I was typing those words, a deaf man with trinkets approached my table. I spoke to him in English. I said I was sorry but I had no money whatsoever. He made a sign to let me know that he was deaf. I made a sign to let him know that I was skint. We shared a moment.

I am skint. Proper skint. Time to put a Paypal button my website skint. Unfortunately I can’t access Paypal from here for some reason, so it’ll have to wait.

Oh, and my camera’s got a horrible smudge on it that will not go away. Look:

Look at that mark over the wheel. It’s a mark on the lens. It won’t come off.

It’s a sign of the times, and I have to leave. I’m starting to feel like a bit of a twat.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: I got the donate button to work. It’s over there on the right. You know. No pressure.

There is something exceptionally terrifying about being woken up at 4.30 in the morning by two armed policemen shouting at you in German. Particularly if, contrary to their demands, you do not have the right papers…

I was sharing a sleeper carriage with Sultan from Chechnya. We only had about a dozen words in common but I had established that Sultan was travelling across Europe from France (where he’d visited one brother) to Poland (where he was due to visit another brother) to Russia (where his mother and father live). One of the words we had in common, and one which Sultan probably used more than any other, was ‘problem’. It seems that in many countries, particularly in Russia, just the fact of being from Chechnya is a grave problem. Sultan made me understand this by turning his hand into a pistol and firing. ‘Tak, tak,’ he said. ‘Big problem.’

Sultan was a really nice, sweet, kind-faced young man. He offered me some of his fruit juice and pastries and he asked me if I minded if he prayed. This he did by holding his hands together in prayer and saying, ‘Problem?’

He’d already talked about his religion by this stage. He’d told me he was Muslim and asked me what I was. At the time I’d forgotten I was a budding Buddhist, so I told him, ‘Nothing. No God.’ He was shocked by this but kindly smiled his acceptance. He then explained to me, mostly with mime and repetition of the word ‘bok’, which I figured was the Russian word for God, that everything he did in his life, he dedicated it to God. Then, as if to prove his point, he prayed for around 20 minutes, read his travel-Koran for another 15, then went to sleep. In the absence of a working electricity point which would have enabled me to write, I carried on reading till just after midnight, then I turned out the light.

When they came, they came loudly, aggressively, rapping sharply at the window of the carriage door with something hard and heavy – maybe a gun. At the very least a nightstick. They announced themselves as Austrian police and demanded to see our papers. I fished out my passport and handed it down from my top bunk. The one with the moustache took it from me and examined it. He didn’t look too happy. The one without the moustache took Sultan’s passport. Eventually mine was handed back to me without a word. Sultan wasn’t so lucky.

‘Where are you from?’

I presumed this information was recorded in Sultan’s passport but still they asked.

‘Where do you go?’

‘Where did you come from? Milano?’

‘No English?’

I helped Sultan as best I could with these questions, but then came one I couldn’t help him with. It was a one-word question: ‘Visa?’

He was 28 years old and he had the warm open face of a little boy. He struggled to reply. I imagine he wanted to say, ‘I didn’t think I needed a visa.’ Instead he said, ‘Visa no. Problem?’

This time yes. There was a problem.

‘Come with us,’ said the one with the moustache.

Sultan resisted as best he could, attempting to imply with his tone that he really didn’t need a visa. The policemen, rather unkindly, laughed at this. Then the one with the moustache lost his patience a little and shouted, ‘Come, come, come!’ as the other one said, ‘Finito.’

I watched in dismay as Sultan pulled on his clothes and got his stuff together. It was utterly heartbreaking. I couldn’t help but think of Anne Frank, although obviously, the circumstances were very different.

As he left the carriage Sultan looked up at me and waved goodbye. He still managed a little smile.

One of the things he’d explained to me earlier – with the aid of my A4 pad and a pen – was that in Russia, Chechen women, children and old people were free from harm, but for young men, men like Sultan… he waved his finger pistol. ‘Tak, tak, tak,’ he said. ‘Big problem.’ Maybe then, under the circumstances, the Austrian border police were not something that particularly scared him. Or maybe he was just putting a brave face on. They certainly scared me. Or maybe Sultan’s faith was enough to keep the smile on his face.

I said goodbye, locked the compartment door and turned off the light. Utterly godless,  I sent an aimless prayer into the universe, hoping that somehow Sultan would be OK and delivered to his parents in Russia, where they could disguise him as an old man or else keep him in the cellar, safe from harm.

Then I lay awake for 15 minutes or so, thinking about what had happened, what might be happening now, trying to remember what happened in Stephen Poliakoff’s Caught On a Train and feeling really, really grateful that I happened to have been born in a country that – well, that once raped the world and is still reaping the rewards.

When I woke up, I was in Vienna.

But only for five hours in total. At 13:33 I catch a train to Warsaw. But I get off at Katowice and 23 minutes later catch a train to Krakow.

So, five hours in Vienna. What to do. I don’t really know anything about Vienna. My associations are mostly based on English culture references. The Ultravox song. The sugary whirl. Rigsby’s cat. The Ringo Starr album. None of these things are really of much use. So the first thing I did was to look at the tube map for inspiration. And there it was.

I am in Karlsplatz.

And it looks like a good choice because there are lots of spectacular art galleries scattered about the place. Unfortunately it’s freezing outside and I really wanted to catch up on my emails and, if I’m honest, I really wanted to write a blog post entitled ‘I Am In Vienna’, because it might never happen again.

Now, before I brave the bitter cold again and have an hour or so of sightseeing before Poland, here are a couple of photographs of Bologna…

This was in Bologna’s main square a week or two ago. This man was very peeved at the state of Italian politics – at the state of Italy in general actually – so he took his plastic stool to the square and had his say. It was rather encouraging that lots of people gathered to listen and debate with him. After all, if ever a country was in need of a political coup, it’s Italy. Maybe this is how it starts. Or maybe this is how it starts…

Or maybe not.

This apparently, is a tribute to Bologna’s truck drivers. It’s also one of the best pieces of public sculpture I’ve ever seen. Isn’t it grand?

He even has his own website.

Now I must go explore.

Anon!

Oh my. How the weeks skip by when you’re treading water. I’ve been waiting for money to arrive. It didn’t arrive – it hasn’t arrived rather, so I had to do a shameful thing. No. No, not that. Not yet. I’m saving that for Thailand. What I had to do was borrow £500 off of my mother. Or if you want the truth, another £500 off of my mother. I don’t know if you can imagine what that feels like. You probably can’t. If you’re anything like my age, you’re probably more used to treating your parents with the wealth that you’ve accumulated as a responsible adult, paying them back for the years that they supported you when you were still a child. Good God, I’m wretched.

No. I’m not. I will pay her back. You’ll see.

With the money I borrowed, I bought an InterRail ticket for 10 days travel anywhere in Europe. I have just over three weeks to use them. So, with that in mind, tomorrow I leave Bologna for Milan. Tomorrow night I’ll take an overnight train from Milan to Vienna. Then, a few short hours later, I’ll take another train to Krakow, where I will find out all I can about Eastern Europe’s foremost sea shanties festival. And Auschwitz of course. Because it has to be done. It feels like a duty. I have also been advised to take the Crazy Guides Communism tour, which, run by Crazy Mike, looks thoroughly excellent. And not remotely crazy. We shall see.

In case you missed it, I wrote up the first festival here. A man called Jesus allowed me to use his fantastic photos because I suffered an organisation failure and had very few of my own.

I can’t wait to get going again, I must say. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying, sporadically, to find other outlets for which to write. There are a couple of possibilities bubbling away, so I have my fingers crossed. I’m also hopeful that the more festivals I cover, and the more I write, the more attractive to potential editors, collaborators and sponsors it will all become.

Yeah? Yeah? Of course it will. Everything is going to be just dandy. You’ll see.

I woke up at 7am. It was still dark. I packed up my stuff and very carefully pulled my soiled trainers on to the ice sculptures into which my feet had become transformed overnight. I stuffed my dew-damp sleeping bag into my rucksack, traipsed back to the bus stop that would take me back to Madrid, and proceeded to walk backwards and forwards like a man in a film about mental illness till five past eight. Then the bus came. And I got on it.

I ate an apple on the bus, made a film of a sun farm and a few flocks of geese, then slept till 10.30. Back at the hostel, I repacked quickly and got out in time to pick up my ten-euro deposit. Then a couple of hours in an excellent little bar on Calle Olmo with wifi and brie-and-honey-based comestibles, and I was ready to make for the airport.

On the way to the airport, I got lost. Stupidly. Really stupidly. However, because I’d given myself plenty of time, and because it was such a lovely day, it really didn’t matter. I was heavily weighed down though, and had walked an unnecessarily long way, and my blisters were biting. So I bought a bottle of Fanta and started walking in the right direction. That bottle of Fanta was one of the best things I have ever drunk.

I made the airport in good time, checked in, found a ridiculously expensive ‘restaurant’, bought some sandwiches and wine and wrote some stuff.

The plane was painless. There was an air-hostess who – to my mind – personified physical perfection. I yearned for a moment, as my instinct decreed, then I allowed myself to drift off to sleep. I think I should really sleep less when I travel and use my time more productively,  but the motion is just so conducive.

I woke up as we were dipping into Milan. It was dark already.

Just about every time I write something online, I instinctively imagine what might come of it. For example, if I write: ‘Crumbs. I wish someone would pay me to write a weekly column for the Guardian Travel section’, then part of me, if only fleetingly, will imagine someone at the Guardian reading it and thinking: ‘By Christ, why aren’t we employing this guy? Metaphorically speaking, he is a tennis ball machine with the knob set to pearls!’ I imagine it because these things happen. Not that one obviously. But some things. Life is full of possibilities, that’s all I’m saying. And if you put stuff out there, sometimes it comes back at you.

However, I must admit, when I mentioned in a blog post I’d written in Spain that I might be forced to sleep rough in Milan, it never occurred to me, even for a second, that someone in Milan might read my words and take pity on me. But a man called Andy did. And I was very pleased to make my way to his delightful home on Thursday evening, and then even more pleased to eat pizza frutti di mare con la mozzarella and olio piccante (even if the olio wasn’t that piccante) with Andy and two of his delightful friends in a local restaurant. And let us not even speak of the pleasure sleeping on his sofa afforded (as opposed, that is, to sleeping in a doorway in Milan train station, where I have slept once before, and where another man tried to take my shoes from me). So I had a thoroughly wonderful evening, thanks to some complete strangers and frankly, the whole experience filled me with hope for the next however long I happen to be away. I know there’ll be times when people turn on me, but just knowing that there are other people, ready and willing to be so utterly, selflessly nice… it means everything.

The next morning Andy went to work frighteningly early and I left with him to explore Milan. One thing really struck me. Two things actually. The fascist architecture was one. And in a good way. The other thing, however, is the alarming lack of internet-friendliness in Milan, and Italy in general. In Madrid I got to know an Argentinean called Paulo. Paulo carried a very expensive umbrella and told me that Madrid was terrible for internet cafes and wifi availability in general. He was wrong. Wildly wrong. Madrid was amazing. Milan, however, is truly abysmal. Not even at the giant train station is there wifi capability. I asked. The information man laughed. ‘Not yet,’ he said. Milan! Not Almonacid de Marquesada. Milan! So I had to wait till I arrived in Bologna some time after lunch.

And here – in Bologna – I remain. I have just about exactly a hundred quid left of my overdraft facility. I should really be sniffing round for a proper job about now, were it not for one thing. The thing with feathers. Ah yes. I have been promised a couple of sums for writing stuff from my travels. One of them in particular should set me up for a couple of months. Naturally I am overjoyed, but – naturally – I am nervous. Things go wrong. Words are meaningless. Promises fade and disappear like smoke. So I wait. A couple of days and I’m hoping this money will appear in my bank account. And just as soon as it does… BOOM! Yes, boom. That’s when this trip can begin in earnest.

Fingers crossed.

I’m not sure exactly where I was but it was one of the places I rejected, so possibly in the churchyard, or possibly in the ruins of whatever that building used to be –  with the chunks of broken sink and the dogshit – or possibly on that strip of concrete, up against that white wall that kept safe whatever it was keeping safe – I think it was there, in one of those places, as I shuffled around in my sleeping bag, desperately trying to keep the cold out of my bones, staring up at the most hectic night sky I had ever seen, that I thought: I should really start picking out my choices for Desert Island Discs now so I don’t panic like Duncan Bannatyne and accidentally pick the ten worst songs ever written.

Well, they weren’t all bad, to be fair. Give Peace a Chance, Maggie May and Green, Green Grass of Home are probably all classics in their own way. But Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree? Love Changes Everything? The One and Only? BY CHESNEY HAWKES???

Chesney Hawkes. Britain's Most Offensive Man, 1992.

He must’ve panicked. It’s the only possible explanation. He was probably too involved retweeting all the nice things that people say about his health clubs when he realised he only had ten minutes left to choose the songs that have meant the most to him in his entire life. He’d left it too late. He panicked.

I could see the same thing happening to me if I’m honest. Because I’m so badly organised, I’d have left it till the very last minute and still not decided. I’d have Kirsty Young on the telephone, bawling at me. ‘I need your last two choices!’ she’d bawl.

‘ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT!’ I’d bawl back. ‘Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder and Would I Lie To You? by Charles and Eddie.’

And I would never, ever be happy again.

I’d had quite a lot of whisky in the bar – one of the two bars in Almonacid de Marquesada. I’d had a sandwich, a few halves of Amstel and towards the end, whilst watching a television programme entitled, ‘Duran Duran: Kings of the New Romantics’, I had what probably amounted to six or seven shots of whisky. In one glass. I’d also watched a football match. Real Madrid versus Seville. The first fifteen minutes or so were actually very entertaining, I guess because the players were all fresh and excited, then they just settled into the game and started going through the motions.

It’s like a relationship really, football. There’s the first flush, when both sides are really trying hard, pulling out all the stops, actually enjoying themselves; then the familiarity creeps in and the dawning realisation that you’re stuck with each other for the foreseeable future; then comes boredom, contempt and depression, when you just get your head down and concentrate on getting through it, getting to the end of your allotted time together without ripping out your own jugular with your bare hands.

Some of the teenagers from the repository came to the bar to watch the match. Beyond the smalltalk that we’d made earlier, we didn’t really have a lot to say to one another. ‘Manchester United!’ ‘Si, si.’ After the match, they retired to the town’s other bar for drinking and dancing and – according to the most confident of the bunch – ‘fucking!’ I thought for a minute they were inviting me along. ‘Karl, we go now other bar!’ sounded like an invitation. But then they just got up and went. ‘Bye bye!’ Oh.

So I drank nine euros of whisky and I walked back to where I’d been dropped off almost twelve hours previously. It was about 1am. The bus left in seven hours.

As I wandered out of the centre of town, I realised afresh – perhaps more fully than I’d ever realised before – that beyond the reach of light pollution, the night sky really is a lively, simmering soup of a thing. However, if the moon is hidden behind a bandage of cloud, it’s also unfeasibly dark. I’m not 100% sure that I would have found somewhere better to sleep if I’d remembered to pack my wind-up torch, but I like to think I would have avoided the dogshit. You never know though.

I made my first bed on a narrow concrete strip up against a  wall that formed the perimeter of some kind of factory or warehouse. After ten minutes or so, I came to the conclusion that it was simply too cold. The concrete slowly seeped through my skin and meat, deep into my insides. It sounds like a cliché to say that cold gets in your bones, but I think it might be true. You can feel it creeping through to your core.

So I packed up and walked back into town. I made my second bed in front of the church, but quickly realised it was too exposed. It was also too close to the bar where the young people of Almonacid practised their drinking and dancing and maybe even their fucking, and the repetitive beats  from their Eurotrash quickly crept into my core and set up camp with the cold.

So I found a building which had either been half-torn down and gutted or never quite finished in the first place, and I scrambled over the rubble and made my bed in one of the corners. Like a tramp. It wasn’t very nice. I tried to get comfortable but the smell of urine was distracting. I decided after not very long that I would go back to the first place I’d tried. The concrete strip. I realised I’d never had it so good. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, I thought. How right you are, how right you are. So I brought my feet out of my sleeping bag and grabbed one of my trainers. That’s when I felt something wet on hand. A quick sniff revealed that something to be excrement, probably canine, possibly human.

And that was as close as I got. That was as close as I got to regretting not taking that room.

I soldiered on. I wiped my hand on various surfaces, gathered my things together, walked back down the Madrid road, found my factory wall and instead of the concrete strip, I actually found some tall grass and something approaching earth. I took my trainers off carefully and laid my rucksack beneath my head. I lay on my back, looking up at the stars. I was smiling. It was funny. Only a week earlier I’d been in London, going through the motions of normalcy, working and commuting like a good little boy, ish, now here I was in Spain, sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures with dogshit remnants sticking to my fingers. I turned onto my side, adopted the foetal position and hid my face in the cocoon of my sleeping bag. Then I heard it. The buzzing.

Thankfully it was far too cold for mosquitoes. Especially as this would’ve had to have been a giant mosquito, like a wrestler’s fist. What it actually was, was my electric toothbrush, in my washbag, in my rucksack, beneath my head. So I sat up, struggled with the zip on the sleeping bag, opened up the rucksack and pulled out the washbag. Then I couldn’t find the toothbrush, but I eventually did, grabbing it by the brush and silencing it. It was then that I remembered the dogshit on my fingers, at least some of which was almost certainly transferred to my toothbrush. That wasn’t a nice thought. I had a spare head though, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

And so it was, thinking positive, that I settled back down, zipped myself up, glanced back up at the sky and saw it.

It lasted less than a second and let’s face it, I could have been mistaken, but I’m pretty sure – 97% sure – that I saw a shooting star. So, as tradition decrees, I made a wish. And it was a piece of cake – which is to say, my wish came easily. I wished that events would conspire, one way or the other, to enable me to carry on doing this thing – this travelling around visiting festivals and meeting people thing – because already, just a few days in, I was having a whale of a time.

Then, my wish taken up by the cosmos, I went back to more pressing matters: Suffocated Love by Tricky or In a Manner of Speaking by Nouvelle Vague? Christ, it isn’t easy. No wonder Bannatyne panicked.

'Ain't nothing gonna break my stride. Nobody's gonna slow me down. Oh no. I got to keep on movin'.' Matthew Wilder, 1983.

Last Tuesday night in Madrid I started to get a little bit lonely. It doesn’t take long. Just one day in fact and I get to the point where I really feel the need of unstilted conversation. So after a few hours’ writing in the afternoon and early evening, I set out in the direction of a couple of ex-pat pubs I’d found online. I know, I know. Ex-pat pubs. It shames me rather to admit it because I think it makes me sound horribly insular. Like I might be one of those people who holidays in the South of Turkey for a week (because after a week you start to miss home comforts) and every day eats an English breakfast. Or like I might actually prefer English people to foreign people and secretly wish the Pakistanis across the street would just move out of the area and find their own little enclave somewhere far, far away. It seems like a slippery slope to me. One minute it’s ex-pat bars, the next you’re marching with Nazis through Golders Green, hate in your heart and nail-bombs in your knapsack. But I did it anyway. And then I got hopelessly lost.

And when I was hopelessly lost, I got cold, teeth-chatteringly cold, so I marched up the nearest hill as fast and as fierce as I possibly could, until I got that sweat that clings to your back like a bad memory and turns cold when the wind blows. And then I got hungry, so I just smoked some more fags like a supermodel. And when that didn’t work, I dipped into a Mexican fast food shop and ate a limp chicken fajita. It was there that I heard a voice speaking English. The voice was attached to a young American woman who understood my need for conversation and rather than judging me, gave me directions to the nearest Irish bar. Pointing out the route on my map, she said, ‘Be careful of the prostitutes there. They may try and grab your penis.’

‘They grab my penis and they have to pay,’ I replied, or would have if it had occurred to me. Instead I just guffawed in a slightly embarrassed way, like an Englishman.

The Irish bar was called O’Donnells and there were three separate football matches on four or five different TV screens. One of the football matches was between Sunderland and Chelsea. I am from Sunderland. Sunderland were losing 2-3. I smiled.

After five minutes or so, I said hello to a couple at the end of the bar…

Kevin and Melissa have been together around five years. He’s an accountant in the armed forces, currently stationed in Italy if I remember correctly, and she is a teacher in New Jersey. Pre-school. They see one another for one week every three months. Usually they meet in a European city they don’t know. This time Madrid. Next time Amsterdam. It sounded like quite an arrangement to me. I figured they must have phenomenal sex whenever they get together. We chatted for about an hour which was long enough for me not to feel quite so lonely, and short enough for me not to feel like I was ruining the very little time they actually get to spend together.

Whenever you tell anyone that you’re attempting to travel the world visiting festivals, generally at least one of the people you’re talking to will suggest one that you must see. Kevin told me about Dark Lord Day, which sounds – I suspect – more interesting than it is. No disrespect intended – I’m sure it’s a wonderful little festival – but the name suggests something super-Satanic, like a scene from Henry Miller’s Opus Pistorum. In actual fact, Dark Lord Day is a beer festival in Kevin’s home town of Munster, Indiana and the Dark Lord in question is merely a chocolatey stout from the 3 Floyds brewery which can only be sold on one day of the year. Hence, Dark Lord Day. I wrote it down. We shall see.

Smoking a cigarette in the street I got talking to a couple of young Argentinians who the very next day were due to move to Bath to study business. One of these suggested the Greenfields festival in Buenos Aires. He promised me I would have a good time.

‘But the women are difficult,’ he said.

‘Women are difficult everywhere,’ I said, trying to bond with him.

He disagreed. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘it’s like fishing with dynamite.’

Aaah, to be young and handsome and not remotely afraid of dynamite.  

So the day before, on my first day in Madrid, I visited the tourist board and asked about getting to Almonacid de Marquesada, the location of La Endiablada, my first actual festival. Unfortunately, the nice lady there had never heard of it. She did a little research, however, and told me there was only one bus to Almonacid, that it left Madrid at midday and returned the following morning at 8am. I was nonplussed. How can a bus go but not come back? This seemed a little thoughtless. The lady agreed, then suggested I go to the Cuenca tourist board on the other side of town. They would know more, she reckoned.

I went there and met Inma, who did indeed know more. She knew that a) the bus information was accurate – you could go but you could never leave, b) there were no trains, and c) there was only one place to stay once you were there and it was too expensive for the likes of me and probably fully booked anyway. On my behalf, Inma spoke to someone in Almonacid who explained that basically, La Endiablada is a local festival for local people. ‘They say, “Don’t come here”,’ said Inma, smiling brightly.

After about 20 minutes with Inma, trying to figure out a way of getting to Almonacid, seeing the festival and getting out again without having to sleep in the street, we came up blank and I stood up, dejected, defeated and frankly a little embarrassed that I hadn’t bothered to organise myself better before paying for a flight to Madrid. I thanked Inma for her valiant attempts to help me and we said goodbye.

Walking down the street, I began to think what I would do instead – spend another pointless day schlepping around Madrid taking photos of hobos, apologise to the guys at Joobili, the travel site to whom I had promised a write-up of the festival, and probably blog about what a complete cock-up I’d made of my first attempt to be a proper travel writer, or whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. I stopped walking. I went back to see Inma.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got to go.’ I explained that I had a sleeping bag and if it came to it, I could definitely find somewhere to sleep, somewhere outside. She looked shocked. ‘But it’s cold,’ she said. She was right. It was cold. According to a weather report in the restaurant where I’d had supper the night before, it was as cold as minus two. I brushed aside her concerns. ‘I’ll be alright,’ I said. ‘It’s not like it’ll kill me.’ 

After leaving O’Donnell’s on Tuesday night, I went back to the hostel and repacked my rucksack with just my sleeping bag, an extra hoodie and two extra t-shirts. The next day I spent an hour in an internet café before buying bananas and apples and setting off to find the bus-stop for Almonacid.

It wasn’t there.

I showed an old man a piece of paper with instructions that Inma had written for me. The old man gesticulated but did not speak: the other side of the street, a way away. I set off. The next person I asked – a kind man in an office who spoke little English – told me that the bus-stop I needed was inside the bar just a short way up the street. Naturally, when he said ‘inside the bar’, I assumed he was mistaken. So I walked past the bar and turned left into an underground car park. Then I asked the car park attendant, who came out of his little box and looked at my instructions. He told me in Spanish, with gestures, turn right, go inside the bar. They must all be mad, I thought. You can’t have a bus station inside a bar. So I walked past the bar and found myself in another underground car park. This time three very friendly people without a word of English between them all told me that the bus station was inside the fucking bar, you fool. Then one of them took pity on the mounting bewilderment and confusion on my face and walked me back onto the street and to the front door of the bar. He pointed. ‘In there,’ he seemed to say. ‘At the back.’Turns out the bar was called La Estación, and the bus-stop – get this – was actually INSIDE THE BAR. At the back, behind where they served coffee and sandwiches all day, there was a ticket-booth, followed by a waiting room and then an underground car park where the bus pulled in at a quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes later, I was on my way.

Trundling out of the city and into the Spanish countryside was exciting. It featured more of those moments – of which there were quite a few in Spain – where I was briefly overwhelmed by the fact that I had done it. No matter how long it lasted – and with every day I was feeling that I definitely wanted it to last as long as it possibly could – I’d done it. I was no longer in London. I was no longer sitting in an office on Oxford Street with the same people having the same conversations every single day. I was no longer stuck on a tube train unable to read a book because I was pinned to the door by three separate armpits and a fuckwit with a rucksack in my face. I was no longer doing anything I really didn’t want to be doing. And when, in those moments that came from nowhere, I realised that I was somewhere I’d never been before doing something I’d never done before, it took my breath away and on one or two occasions, made me a little bit teary, like an old man remembering a special friend he’d lost in some pointless war.

Yeah. Just like that.

Arriving in Almonacid de Marquesada was odd. Because it was such a small town, I was expecting to be dropped in the middle of, or at least in sight of, the celebrations. But it was dead. There was just a dusty crossroads like something from a spaghetti western, a display cabinet with a little write-up for the town and road signs pointing to other tiny towns. 

I finished my last banana, hoisted my rucksack onto my back and picked a road.

At the top of the road was a cemetery. As it was rather beautiful, I tried the gate. It was locked. I wandered around the perimeter and found another gate. This one was open.

I like cemeteries. This one was particularly pretty.

As I took photographs, I felt slightly guilty and half-expected a tiny man in a sombrero to appear from behind one of the stones and shout at me. No one appeared.

I can't look at this photo without thinking of The Life of Brian.

Aside from pretty, it was all rather eerie. I had at least expected to hear the distant clunk of cowbells. All I really knew about the festival was that lots of men in colourful pyjamas ran around the town with cowbells bouncing off their buttocks. It was noisy. That’s what I knew above all else. But all I could hear was cocks crowing and dogs barking. I found three empty graves and wondered briefly if one of them had my name on it.

I walked back to the crossroads and started to wonder if perhaps I’d made a dreadful mistake. Maybe the festival had been cancelled. Maybe it only lasted an hour or two and stopped just before the bus arrived from Madrid, bringing non-locals. I chose another street, which led me to the centre of town where I realised that the reason I couldn’t hear any bells or firecrackers was that everyone was in church. I took off my rucksack and joined them.

I’ll write more about La Endiablada on Collective Effervescence when I’m good and ready. Suffice to say, it is very unusual and in many ways, the perfect start to this journey.

I spent the rest of the day, till around 9pm, trying to understand the festival, taking photos, making films and failing to communicate with people.

In the late afternoon, a bunch of kids found out I was English and started taking an interest in me. After a few rounds of ‘How are you?’, ‘Fine, thanks’ and ‘How do you do?’ (the latter of which never fails to amuse), one of them grabbed his toilet area and asked me how he should refer to his penis in English. I laughed, not sure how to respond. ‘Cock,’ I said.

I wouldn’t say it was exactly a mistake, but it was followed by five four-to-eight-year-old boys running round in circles in the main square shouting, ‘Cock! Cock! Cock!’ and I felt a little naughty. And a little weird.

Before long I was befriended by Piedro, who was from Almonacid but studying to be a journalist in Madrid. He made me film him talking about the festival in Spanish, then he took me into the large repository in the square where the menfolk got changed in and out of their devil costumes. Soon they started to amass as it was time to put their cowbells back on for the final procession around the town. A bunch of the younger ones started talking to me. After a few rounds of ‘Manchester United’, ‘Fernando Torres’ and ‘Tony Blair!’, one of them asked me where I was staying that night. I said I didn’t know. Maybe in the street. I had a sleeping bag, I explained.

‘But it’s cold,’ they said. Then they told me about the guesthouse which Inma in Madrid had told me about. I asked for more details, so Jose walked me up a couple of streets and together we discovered that there was in fact a room at the Casa Rural La Peñata, which would cost €55. I had to make a decision. It was about 7.30 and already shivering weather. I had a couple of hundred quid left of my overdraft. I could definitely afford it, but it might mean struggling more quickly later on, once I arrived in Italy. Then the woman to whom Jose was talking offered me a discount. She could do it for €53. I thanked her but declined. I would sleep outside if it killed me….

I wrote this yesterday afternoon:

I watched a great short film today by a man named Julian Rosefeldt. Lonely Planet was part of an exhibition at La Caixa called ‘The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image’. I liked most of the exhibition but Rosefeldt’s film was my favourite. It followed an American-looking backpacker as he flip-flopped his way though India. First he’s the tramping lonely foreigner, stared and pointed at, then suddenly he’s a figure on a cinema screen, then an extra in a Bollywood-style pop video. In one scene, our point-of-view camera pulls back to reveal a crane-camera tracking the backpacker as he trudges out of shot.

The film is all about the nature of reality. You know, what’s real, what’s not – all that, but it made me think how great it would be if you could summon that crane in real life; if you could step out of reality at any moment and become merely an actor in a film.

I think it particularly struck me because when you’re walking around foreign cities on your own, there is a recurring sense that you are in a film. The strangeness of your environment, the not-quite-rightness of life in a country where everyone is speaking and nothing they say is being understood – it’s slightly unreal. It’s like a weird film. Like the ones they used to show on Channel 4 in the early days. But there is no cameraman. And there is no make-up.

So I joined Couchsurfer a week or so ago and wrote to a few people here in Madrid. Only two of them got back to me and they both had people staying this week. One of them, however, said she’d like to meet up with me for a drink and I should drop her a line when I got here. So I did. But she must have changed her mind, because she didn’t get back to me. Which, I must admit, is a little disappointing. It’s only been a couple of days, but I need to talk to some people soon, or I’ll start to feel sad.

Speaking of sad, the wifi at this hostel is abysmal. It simply doesn’t work. At least not for me. The fact that it works for other people makes me think that perhaps my laptop is closer to dying on me that I had hoped. If it starts to refuse to connect to the internet, it really is worse than useless. I guess I’ll find out in Bologna. For now, I’ll probably upload this to the tiny memory stick I have and take it to an internet café.

Another slightly disappointing thing about this hostel is that it’s cold. I trusted to their blankets last night. This was a mistake. Tonight I’ll be getting in the bag.

Tomorrow night of course, if the buses don’t let me down and I manage to get to Almonicad del Marquesado, the chances are I’ll be sleeping outside somewhere. (There will be no couchsurfers there, believe me. There is nothing there.) I’ll be wearing three or four t-shirts and two hoodies too, so I should probably survive the night, but it’ll still be cold, I’m sure. It’s much nicer than London here during the day – even though it’s cold, the days are sunny and Spring-like – the nights, however, are just as cold. It was definitely less than zero last night.

I was thinking earlier that there must be a police station and that maybe they’ll let have a cell for the night. If they don’t, I suppose there’s always the option of drinking too much and shouting and swearing a lot, and maybe threatening to fight people and falling down a fair bit. It used to work for my dad when I was a kid. He was often treated to a night in the cells for his ugliness. Unfortunately I’m not sure they’d let me out in time for my 8am bus back to Madrid.

I keep waiting for one of those travel book moments, when fate smiles on me and someone to whom I mention the festival says: ‘La Endiablada? But I’m driving there myself! Let’s go!’ But it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe just mentioning it will bring it into existence. Maybe not. I got to go find something to eat now. And hopefully someone to talk to. The hostel I’m at is full of children. They eye me suspiciously. Actually that’s not true. They just look through me. Little cunts.

Pardon my Spanish.

Anon!

Now it’s today and I’m off to catch the bus.

Aaaaaaand… action!

I really wish it was warmer.

Smile!

This man arrived at the fountain, put his bag on the ground and just watched it, like it was special in some way. It was a fine moment. I grabbed it.

This is the main square in Madrid - Plaza Mayor. There is lots of lovely architecture, but I have to say, I am more drawn to the hobos.

I was pretending to care about the architecture but I think this guy saw through me. Which makes a change.

Tired feet are like red wine. Fact.

I liked this man's face. So I took it. I don't think he was a hobo though.

There are lots of people pretending to be sculptures in Madrid. This guy was the best I saw. So good was he that I gave him five euros. It was only four hours later I realised my mistake.

I don't really know. Some kind of comment on the sex industry? Um... whatever.

After a little less than four hours’ sleep on Sunday night, I took the night bus from Peckham to Victoria, where I caught the 5.15am Gatwick Express and made the airport with an hour and a half to spare. I had a little snooze.

It’s probably best not to mention the repugnant accident I almost had on the night bus which was probably as much due to nerves as it was to too much wine and chilli pesto in Sophia Loren’s Ass the night before. (Sophia Loren’s Ass by the way, is a pizzeria in Peckham. A very good one too, if you’re ever in the area, the area being Bellenden Road by the way, which is the nice bit of Peckham, with lots of pizza, cake and books, and very few grisly, pointless murders.)

I slept on the plane. Before I knew it, I was in Spain.

This is my first time in Spain. I like it a lot. It’s very civilised. All of the beggars have little cups, I guess so you don’t have to make contact with them if you’re giving them money.

It’s also cheap. My first meal was a real eye-opener. I speak no Spanish so I had no idea what I was actually ordering. I do speak Italian though, which is close enough – or so I thought. All I really knew was that I had ordered two courses – the first with chips and something – and a glass of white wine. Imagine my surprise when the first course – bones and potato soup – was preceded by a whole bottle of red wine.

Turns out you just drink as much as you want and they charge you accordingly. I had three little glasses. It was very good.

So, three little glasses of wine, a small bottle of water, a large bowl of bones and potato soup, a plate of steak, mushrooms and potato wedges, and a crème caramel which the waiter insisted on calling ‘flan’. I was thinking, ‘Bugger. First meal, first mistake. I’ve left myself wide open – come the bill – for a shafting. If it’s more than €20, I’ll complain, or at least act surly.’

It was €11.50. Eleven euros and fifty cents. That’s less than a tenner. I was breathless with joy.

Spain is also very friendly. As I write up these notes, I’ve been here a good day and a half and although a couple of old ladies have scowled at me when my pleas for information have been delivered in Italian and then English and then just gibberish, no one has been actually unfriendly yet.

Even when they’re telling you what you don’t want to hear (for example, that the place you want to go to is populated solely by people who do not want you to go there), they do so with joyous, gushing smiles.

I know these are nothing more than first impressions, but for better or worse, I trust them. I like Madrid a great deal, even though I’ve seen a disabled man lying unconscious in the street, out of his chair in front of an expensive cinema. I took his photo I’m afraid.

I tossed a euro on his blanket though, as payment, or blood-money, whatever you want to call it.
There’ll be nicer photos to follow. I promise.
But yes, despite the sadness, I do like it here. I like it even though old men void their nostrils like horses and old women play on fruit machines in restaurants where bad television blasts out banalities that wouldn’t be out of place on Italian TV. I could live here. Easily.

Also, it’s true what they say about them eating late. I was in a restaurant at 10.30 last night and it was getting busier by the minute. On a Monday night! I like that.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is my first festival. Fingers crossed. Turns out it’s almost impossible to reach without a driving licence. We shall see. Then after that, I’ll be going straight to Italy. Barcelona’s off. I just don’t have enough money. So Milan could actually be my second night in a row sleeping rough. (Watch this space – or the other space.) But nothing is sure yet. Nothing at all.

Anon!