Part 1 (1/2)

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE.

Travels in Europe.

by Bill Bryson.

To Cynthia

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was 'A smell of petroleum prevails throughout'.Bertrand RussellA History of Western Philosophy

1. To the North

In winter Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering. It is on the edge of the world, the northernmost town in Europe, as far from London as London is from Tunis, a place of dark and brutal winters, where the sun sinks into the Arctic Ocean in November and does not rise again for ten weeks.

I wanted to see the Northern Lights. Also, I had long harboured a half-formed urge to experience what life was like in such a remote and forbidding place. Sitting at home in England with a gla.s.s of whisky and a book of maps, this had seemed a capital idea. But now as I picked my way through the grey, late-December slush of Oslo I was beginning to have my doubts.

Things had not started well. I had overslept at the hotel, missing breakfast, and had to leap into my clothes. I couldn't find a cab and had to drag my ludicrously overweighted bag eight blocks through slush to the central bus station. I had had huge difficulty persuading the staff at the Kreditka.s.sen Bank on Karl Johans Gate to cash sufficient traveller's cheques to pay the extortionate 1,200-kroner bus fare they simply could not be made to grasp that the William McGuire Bryson on my pa.s.sport and the Bill Bryson on my traveller's cheques were both me and now here I was arriving at the station two minutes before departure, breathless and steaming from the endless uphill exertion that is my life, and the girl at the ticket counter was telling me that she had no record of my reservation.

'This isn't happening,' I said. 'I'm still at home in England enjoying Christmas. Pa.s.s me a drop more port, will you, darling?' Actually, I said, 'There must be some mistake. Please look again.'

The girl studied the pa.s.senger manifest. 'No, Mr Bryson, your name is not here.'

But I I could see it, even upside-down. 'There it is, second from the bottom.' could see it, even upside-down. 'There it is, second from the bottom.'

'No,' the girl decided, 'that says Bernt Bjornson. That's a Norwegian name.'

'It doesn't say Bernt Bjornson. It says Bill Bryson. Look at the loop of the y y, the two ls. ls. Miss, please.' But she wouldn't have it. 'If I miss this bus when does the next one go?' Miss, please.' But she wouldn't have it. 'If I miss this bus when does the next one go?'

'Next week at the same time.'

Oh, splendid.

'Miss, believe me, it says Bill Bryson.'

'No, it doesn't.'

'Miss, look, I've come from England. I'm carrying some medicine that could save a child's life.' She didn't buy this. 'I want to see the manager.'

'He's in Stavanger.'

'Listen, I made a reservation by telephone. If I don't get on this bus I'm going to write a letter to your manager that will cast a shadow over your career prospects for the rest of this century.' This clearly did not alarm her. Then it occurred to me. 'If this Bernt Bjornson doesn't show up, can I have his seat?'

'Sure.'

Why don't I think of these things in the first place and save myself the anguish? 'Thank you', I said, and lugged my bag outside.

The bus was a large double-decker, like an American Greyhound, but only the front half of the upstairs had seats and windows. The rest was solid aluminium, covered with a worryingly psychedelic painting of an intergalactic landscape, like the cover of a pulp science-fiction novel, with the words EXPRESS EXPRESS 2000 emblazoned across the tail of a comet. For one giddy moment I thought the windowless back end might contain a kind of dormitory and that at bedtime we would be escorted back there by a stewardess who would invite us to choose a couchette. I was prepared to pay any amount of money for this option. But I was mistaken. The back end, and all the s.p.a.ce below us, was for freight. Express 2000 was really just a long-distance lorry with pa.s.sengers. 2000 emblazoned across the tail of a comet. For one giddy moment I thought the windowless back end might contain a kind of dormitory and that at bedtime we would be escorted back there by a stewardess who would invite us to choose a couchette. I was prepared to pay any amount of money for this option. But I was mistaken. The back end, and all the s.p.a.ce below us, was for freight. Express 2000 was really just a long-distance lorry with pa.s.sengers.

We left at exactly noon. I quickly realized that everything about the bus was designed for discomfort. I was sitting beside the heater, so that while chill draughts teased my upper extremities, my left leg grew so hot that I could hear the hairs on it crackle. The seats were designed by a dwarf seeking revenge on full-sized people; there was no other explanation. The young man in front of me put his seat so far back that his head was all but in my lap. He was reading a comic book called Tommy og Tigern Tommy og Tigern and he had the sort of face that makes you realize G.o.d does have a sense of humour. My own seat was raked at a peculiar angle that induced immediate and lasting neckache. It had a lever on its side, which I supposed might bring it back to a more comfortable position, but I knew from long experience that if I touched it even tentatively the seat would fly back and crush the kneecaps of the sweet little old lady sitting behind me, so I left it alone. The woman beside me, who was obviously a veteran of these polar campaigns, unloaded quant.i.ties of magazines, tissues, throat lozenges, ointments, unguents and fruit pastilles into the seat pocket in front of her, then settled beneath a blanket and slept more or less continuously through the whole trip. and he had the sort of face that makes you realize G.o.d does have a sense of humour. My own seat was raked at a peculiar angle that induced immediate and lasting neckache. It had a lever on its side, which I supposed might bring it back to a more comfortable position, but I knew from long experience that if I touched it even tentatively the seat would fly back and crush the kneecaps of the sweet little old lady sitting behind me, so I left it alone. The woman beside me, who was obviously a veteran of these polar campaigns, unloaded quant.i.ties of magazines, tissues, throat lozenges, ointments, unguents and fruit pastilles into the seat pocket in front of her, then settled beneath a blanket and slept more or less continuously through the whole trip.

We bounced through a snowy half-light, out through the sprawling suburbs of Oslo and into the countryside. The scattered villages and farmhouses looked trim and prosperous in the endless dusk. Every house had Christmas lights burning cheerily in the windows. I quickly settled into that not unpleasant state of mindlessness that tends to overcome me on long journeys, my head lolling loosely on my shoulders in the manner of someone who has lost all control of his neck muscles and doesn't really mind.

My trip had begun. I was about to see Europe again.

The first time I came to Europe was in 1972, skinny, shy, alone. In those days the only cheap flights were from New York to Luxembourg, with a refuelling stop en route at Keflavik Airport at Reykjavik. The aeroplanes were old and engagingly past their prime oxygen masks would sometimes drop unbidden from their overheated storage compartments and dangle there until a stewardess with a hammer and a mouthful of nails came along to put things right, and the door of the lavatory tended to swing open on you if you didn't hold it shut with a foot, which brought a certain dimension of challenge to anything else you planned to do in there and they were achingly slow. It took a week and a half to reach Keflavik, a small grey airport in the middle of a flat grey nowhere, and another week and a half to bounce on through the skies to Luxembourg.

Everyone on the plane was a hippie, except the crew and two herring-factory executives in first cla.s.s. It was rather like being on a Greyhound bus on the way to a folk-singers' convention. People were forever pulling out guitars and mandolins and bottles of Thunderbird wine and forging relations.h.i.+ps with their seatmates that were clearly going to lead to lots of energetic s.e.x on a succession of Mediterranean beaches.

In the long, exciting weeks preceding the flight I had sustained myself, I confess, with a series of bedroom-ceiling fantasies that generally involved finding myself seated next to a panting young beauty being sent by her father against her wishes to the Lausanne Inst.i.tute for Nymphomaniacal Disorders, who would turn to me somewhere over mid-Atlantic and say, 'Forgive me, but would it be all right if I sat on your face for a while?' In the event, my seatmate turned out to be an acned stringbean with Buddy Holly gla.s.ses and a line-up of ball-point pens clipped into a protective plastic case in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. The plastic case said GRUBER'S TRU-VALU HARDWARE, FLAGELLATION, OKLAHOMA. IF WE DON'T GOT IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT, GRUBER'S TRU-VALU HARDWARE, FLAGELLATION, OKLAHOMA. IF WE DON'T GOT IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT, or something like that. He had boils on his neck which looked like bullet wounds that had never quite healed and smelled oppressively of Vicks VapoRub. or something like that. He had boils on his neck which looked like bullet wounds that had never quite healed and smelled oppressively of Vicks VapoRub.

He spent most of the flight reading holy scripture, moving both sets of fingertips across each line of text as he read and voicing the words just loud enough for me to hear them as a fervid whisper in my right ear. I feared the worst. I don't know why religious zealots have this compulsion to try to convert everyone who pa.s.ses before them I don't go around trying to make them into St Louis Cardinals fans, for Christ's sake and yet they never fail to try.

Nowadays when accosted I explain to them that anyone wearing white socks with Hush Puppies and a badge saying HI! I'M GUS! HI! I'M GUS! probably couldn't talk me into getting out of a burning car, much less into making a lifelong commitment to a deity, and ask them to send someone more intelligent and with a better dress sense next time, but back then I was too meek to do anything but listen politely and utter non-committal 'Hmmmm's' to their suggestions that Jesus could turn my life around. Somewhere over the Atlantic, as I was sitting taking stock of my 200 cubic centimetres of personal s.p.a.ce, as one does on a long plane flight, I spied a coin under the seat in front of me, and with protracted difficulty leaned forward and snagged it. When I sat up, I saw my seatmate was at last looking at me with that ominous glow. probably couldn't talk me into getting out of a burning car, much less into making a lifelong commitment to a deity, and ask them to send someone more intelligent and with a better dress sense next time, but back then I was too meek to do anything but listen politely and utter non-committal 'Hmmmm's' to their suggestions that Jesus could turn my life around. Somewhere over the Atlantic, as I was sitting taking stock of my 200 cubic centimetres of personal s.p.a.ce, as one does on a long plane flight, I spied a coin under the seat in front of me, and with protracted difficulty leaned forward and snagged it. When I sat up, I saw my seatmate was at last looking at me with that ominous glow.

'Have you found Jesus?' he said suddenly.

'Uh, no, it's a quarter,' I answered and quickly settled down and pretended for the next six hours to be asleep, ignoring his whispered entreaties to let Christ build a bunkhouse in my heart.

In fact, I was secretly watching out of the window for Europe. I still remember that first sight. The plane dropped out of the clouds and there below me was this sudden magical tableau of small green fields and steepled villages spread across an undulating landscape, like a shaken-out quilt just settling back onto a bed. I had flown a lot in America and had never seen much of anything from an aeroplane window but endless golden fields on farms the size of Belgium, meandering rivers and pencil lines of black highway as straight as taut wire. It always looked vast and mostly empty. You felt that if you squinted hard enough you could see all the way to Los Angeles, even when you were over Kansas. But here the landscape had the ordered perfection of a model-railway layout. It was all so green and minutely cultivated, so compact, so tidy, so fetching, so ... European. I was smitten. I still am.

I had brought with me a yellow backpack so enormous that when I went through customs I half expected to be asked, 'Anything to declare? Cigarettes? Alcohol? Dead horse?', and spent the day teetering beneath it through the ancient streets of Luxembourg City in a kind of vivid daze an unfamiliar mixture of excitement and exhaustion and intense optical stimulation. Everything seemed so vivid and acutely focused and new. I felt like someone stepping out of doors for the first time. It was all so different: the language, the money, the cars, the number plates on the cars, the bread, the food, the newspapers, the parks, the people. I had never seen a zebra-crossing before, never seen a tram, never seen an unsliced loaf of bread (never even considered it an option), never seen anyone wearing a beret who expected to be taken seriously, never seen people go to a different shop for each item of dinner or provide their own shopping bags, never seen feathered pheasants and unskinned rabbits hanging in a butcher's window or a pig's head smiling on a platter, never seen a packet of Gitanes or the Michelin man. And the people why, they were Luxembourgers. I don't know why this amazed me so, but it did. I kept thinking, That man over there, he's a Luxembourger. And so is that girl. They don't know anything about the New York Yankees, they don't know the theme tune to The Mickey Mouse Club, The Mickey Mouse Club, they are from another world. It was just wonderful. they are from another world. It was just wonderful.

In the afternoon, I b.u.mped into my acned seatmate on the Pont Adolphe, high above the gorge that cuts through the city. He was trudging back towards the centre beneath an outsized backpack of his own. I greeted him as a friend after all, of the 300 million people in Europe he was the only one I knew but he had none of my fevered excitement.

'Have you got a room?' he asked gloomily.

'No.'

'Well, I can't find one anywhere. I've been looking all over. Every place is full.'

'Really?' I said, worry stealing over me like a shadow. This was potentially serious. I had never been in a position where I had to arrange for my own bed for the night I had a.s.sumed that I would present myself at a small hotel when it suited me and that everything would be all right after that.

'f.u.c.king city, f.u.c.king Luxembourg,' my friend said, with unexpected forthrightness, and trudged off.

I presented myself at a series of semi-squalid hotels around the central station, but they were all full. I wandered further afield, trying other hotels along the way, but without success, and in a not very long time for Luxembourg City is as compact as it is charming found myself on a highway out of town. Not sure how to deal with this unfolding crisis, I decided on an impulse to hitchhike into Belgium. It was a bigger country; things might be better there. I stood for an hour and forty minutes beside the highway with my thumb out, watching with little stabs of despair as cars shot past and the sun tracked its way to the horizon. I was about to abandon this plan as well and do what? I didn't know when a battered Citroen 2CV pulled over.

I lugged my rucksack over to find a young couple arguing in the front seat. For a moment I thought they weren't stopping for me at all, that the man was just pulling over to slap the woman around, as I knew Europeans were wont to do from watching Jean-Paul Belmondo movies on public television, but then the woman got out, fixed me with a fiery look and allowed me to clamber into the back, where I sat with my knees around my ears amid stacks of s...o...b..xes.

The driver was very friendly. He spoke good English and shouted at me over the lawnmower roar of the engine that he worked as a travelling shoe salesman and his wife was a clerk in a Luxembourg bank and that they lived just over the border in Arlon. He kept turning round to rearrange things on the back seat to give me more s.p.a.ce, throwing s...o...b..xes at the back windowsill, which I would have preferred him not to do because more often than not they clonked me on the head, and at the same time he was driving with one hand at seventy miles an hour in heavy traffic.