Odyssey - the journey to Greece (2011) - Part 1
My first day began at around 6am . . . but promptly ended in favour of a couple of hours more sleep. After all – it is the holidays.
When I finally roused myself I was full of very good intentions regarding breakfast.
The day before I had not eaten anything at all until the evening - whereupon I filled myself vigorously with lovely French sourdough bread, a deliciously fresh baked piece of Quiche Lorraine served with a spicy salad of mixed leaves and a mustardy vinaigrette and the added tang of julienned pieces of green apple – giving a contrasting crunch and slight acidity to cut through the warm, soft and unctuous quiche…
I followed this with a classic faux fillet, cooked “saignant” – although it came “bleu” (and all the better for it) with French fries (yes French Fries in France – who knew?) and another green salad . . . washed down with a pichet of rough-ish but pleasant local rose and buckets of San Pellegrino (by FAR my favourite sparkling mineral water, although I confess to warming more and more in my middle age to Badoit – a mineral water that I despised in my youth.)
I knew that a dessert was really totally unnecessary – despite my unwitting fast of the day – but I invoked “holiday logic” once more and dove into a delicious rhubarb “soup” with fresh strawberries and a sharp but tasty blueberry sorbet in the middle. It was slightly spoiled by a large piece of chocolate lattice balanced on the top.
I dismissed the chocolate lattice to the side of the plate, whereupon I felt instant remorse and woofed it down to get it out of the way. Coffee – the incredibly bitter and dark French kind – followed. The French really do food well. They’re famous for it of course, but nevertheless it is good to chow down on some good old fashioned French Provincial Cooking as Elizabeth David termed it. The addition of some chopped chives to a steak, or those apple slices to the salad are the touches that make the French both inventive and sensitive to the delights of the palate. Bravo!
Replete, I wandered out of the restaurant and took a very brief stroll before heading to bed in my not terribly inspiring Reims hotel room and read a little of the marvelous anthology of Seamus Heaney poems given to me just before my trip by my dear friend Steph. Heaney is a Nobel prize winner and this anthology begins with poems from his first publication “Death of a Naturalist” from 1966. Very good stuff.
Sleep followed and preceded my best laid morning plans of abstinence and purity . . .which is where I began this tale . . .
I went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I’d thought I would have a little fruit, a nice bucket of café au lait and call it quits. But I made the mistake of investigating the “hot section” of the buffet and stumbled upon half a pig’s worth of gorgeous looking bacon. I steeled myself with self discipline, only to see what looked like my spine and anything else that might keep me on the straight and narrow, disappear from the restaurant like a zephyr.
Bacon, baguette, café au lait. Oh yes. What finer breakfast to fuel up the journeying biker and prepare him for his day ahead. It was then I noticed the noise. The constant tapping sound on the roof and the windows. Rain. Lots of it. Bugger.
Rain is not the friend of any biker I know. And certainly not the friend of a biker from the Middle East who has cunningly brought only one item of “wet weather gear” – a pair of rather pathetic rain trousers that probably belong to the pre-fat bastard period (which in turn belongs to the pre-really fat bastard period and so on…). Bugger. Again.
I considered sitting it out for a while before heading to Luxembourg – and then considered that it might be better to just get wet, get to Luxembourg and then ask the hotel to make all my nice biker clothes warm and dry again. I returned to my room in the Two Seasons of Reims (not the hotel’s real name, and perhaps generous – maybe it should be referred to as the One Season . . .it’s a chain you know. I recently stayed at the No Seasons on the Egyptian North Coast and it was ghastly) and began to gather my things.
Bike travel is quite organized and quite complicated. Organised because one has to have things to hand - warm gloves, fleeces, headphones, wet weather gear, passport, driving licence and so on – and so it requires thought. Complicated because motorbikes don’t have a trunk or boot like a car – they have little bags and cases spread all over the machine, some of which are lockable, some of which are portable and all of which require careful planning and packing.
As I considered this task, the ceiling of my hotel room suddenly started pouring water onto the floor. I felt that this was a sign and decided to just set off in the rain outside and dry off in Luxembourg. I packed, paid (Christ – I know there’s a recession and all that, but when did rural France become so bloody expensive! 200 Euros for a night in a Half Season with a moderate meal and breakfast. Vive Le Euro . . .)
I then noticed that the rain had stopped and the grey clouds had been replaced by nice fluffy white ones in the now bright blue sky. This was indeed good news. A smile made it’s way to my chops and I loaded up the bike and hit the road.
BIKE NERD BIT (1): This trip I’m using my iPhone as both GPS navigator and sound system. I bought a great piece of software called “Navigon” which is a full GPS and navigation system and very sophisticated. Made by Germans, so it works. Efficiently.
It offers many route options, has full 3D views and lots of options in terms of settings for voice, volume, units and so on. I particularly like the route settings which allow you to choose between Fast, Short, Scenic or Optimum. It also has choices for motorways and tolls. “Allow”, “Avoid” or “Forbid”. As I say – very German. I quite liked the idea of Forbidding Motorways and Tolls – so that’s exactly what I did. Verboten in one tap of the screen.
It also allows me to play music and plugs into the 12volt socket on the dash of the KTM 990 R Adventure – making life very easy. When directions are required, it automatically lowers the volume of the music blasting out of the ear buds inside my helmet and tells me in a very posh British accent where to go. Marvellous.
It also alerts you to speed limits and other restrictions, which is helpful for licence retention, but bloody annoying after a while as the music stops and the voice comes on saying “Beware”. Obviously translated directly from the German “Achtung!”. I think I would pay more attention to speed limits if it was in German rather than Eton English which makes the instruction sound a little fainthearted . . . “I say old boy, would you mind terribly? Do slow down old bean – it’s a restricted area and all that . . .”
Top kit and highly recommended.
END OF BIKE NERD BIT (1)
So I set of from Reims (which the French insist on pronouncing “R-en-s” - which is just bizarre) and headed off on some beautiful little country roads towards Luxembourg. Of course there aren’t too many road side stops on little French rural country roads. And even fewer petrol stations. And it is Sunday. And I forgot to fill with gas before exiting the sprawling metropolis that is Reims / Rens . . . and after a little while the “you’ve got almost no fuel left idiot” light lit up on the dash of the bike. Bugger.
I did some sums in my head and worked out that if I rode very slowly and carefully I might completely run out only 20-30 kilometres from civilization and then probably get picked up by a mad French farmer on his tractor, leaving my bike to be stolen by neo Nazi skinheads lurking in the villages of northern France (oh yes, they are there. I saw them. And very odd they look too with no hair, big doctor Martens and living in 15th century farm cottages in the middle of nowhere).
I immediately reversed my ruling on motorways and tolls believing this would immediately allow the nice English voice to direct me to an enormous petrol station with special sections for bikers and a nice man to come and clean my visor and sunglasses (both covered in insect road kill). But amazingly – this didn’t happen.
Instead I seemed to carry on riding along almost single track country roads for miles and miles, with the “Petrol! You F@ckwit” light blinking at me furiously and with some obvious contempt.
As I was preparing my hitch-hiking strategy mentally (this is not an easy proposition when you are a six foot six, twenty stone English biker in the middle of rural northern France, I can assure you), fate delivered me to the fabulous spot of “Ville De Vouziers” where a petrol station was standing like a beacon just off a roundabout. I pulled in feeling quite relieved, but doing my best to look nonchalant and stopped next to the pump.
No attendants, as this is Sunday, but the pump took credit cards. So, no problem. Except it only seemed to like European credit cards and not Middle Eastern ones. I tried all of mine. Four times. Obviously the light tendency towards neo Nazism in rural France that I had observed passing through several villages filled with “yoof”, had spread to discriminating against cards from Arabia. I considered picking up the nozzle and just sucking really hard to see if petrol would come out, but then had a moderately more intelligent idea. I asked the bloke next to me if he could pay with his card and I would give him cash. Brilliant.
He was an elderly Dutch gentleman and at first I thought he simply hadn’t heard my proposal, so I repeated it. In response the expression on his face made me think that instead of asking him if he could pay with his card and I’d give him cash, I must have inadvertently proposed sleeping with his wife and torturing his grandchildren. He did not look happy nor willing.
So I simply repeated my very simple proposition again. It seems that the rule of “three” from ancient rhetoric does indeed work, especially with slightly deaf old Dutch people. He suddenly figured out I was ok and finished his rather juicy nectarine and leapt across to my aid. Obviously I use the word leap advisedly when referring to an octogenarian from the low countries. . .
Fuelled up, I thanked him profusely in five languages including Dutch (danke well) to which he immediately asked if I spoke Dutch. If I hadn’t been so obliged to this nice old boy, I might have been naughty and pointed out that if I spoke Dutch I would have asked him in Dutch for the card in exchange for money proposal instead of allowing him to think that I might be about to jump his wife and have his grand kids beaten with a rubber hose . . . anyway!
I put on Mick & Keef on the sound system and disappeared down the road passing through lovely fields and villages – only some of them populated by skinheads.
After a burst of the greatest rock and roll band in the world. Ever. No discussion. I went back to another playlist and enjoyed some Floyd, Clapton, Cream, Petty, Mac (as in Fleetwood) and some JJ Cale.
I have a massive soft spot for JJ. He is the man who wrote some of Clapton’s most famous hits (Cocaine, After Midnight, Promises and so on) and is a major influence on my own guitar playing and songwriting.
As I reflected on JJ, I came to the conclusion that he is laconic, sometimes melancholic, dry, concise and mellow. He eschews the rock n roll lifestyle and lives on a ranch in the middle of nowhere in America (where there are no skinheads or neo Nazis) with his wife and writes songs on his porch in a rocking chair. Economical with words and notes, JJ is a man who you can hear in Clapton, in Knopfler, in Waits and in many other troubadours and observational song writers.
I give you the lyrics to one of my favourite road songs ever – which was covered later by Lynyrd Skynyrd – and is a song that gets me tapping my feet and singing along every time. Which is weird and moderately dangerous while riding a motorcycle:
Call Me The Breeze – JJ Cale
They call me the breeze, I keep blowin' down the road
Well now, they call me the breeze, I keep blowin' down the road
I ain't got me nobody, I don't carry me no load
Ain't no change in the weather, ain't no changes in me
Well, there ain't no change in the weather, ain't no changes in me
And I ain't hidin' from nobody, nobody's hidin' from me
Well I got that green light, baby, I got to keep movin' on
Well I got that green light, baby, I got to keep movin' on
Well, I might go out to California, might go down to Georgia, I don't know
Well, I dig you Georgia peaches, makes me feel right at home
Now well, I dig you Georgia peaches, makes me feel right at home
But I don't love me no one woman so I can't stay in Georgia long
Here is the album version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlppIdtLw5A
And here is a great live version on Jules Holland's show. This man is mellow! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21PHsqnG-qI
Magic stuff and such a good road song as it describes the delights of being itinerant and nomadic – freedom, no ties, and easy choices. An existential country blues song. J P Sartre would have been proud of JJ Cale. Probably.
Having left Britain yesterday and got to France, today I nipped through a corner of Belgium before arriving in Luxembourg in the early afternoon.
Here I found a fault with Fritz the GPS – he can’t do pedestrian zones – and my hotel – the magnificent Le Place D’Armes is in the Place D’Armes which is very much a pedestrian area.
Fritz faffed, Fritz fumed, Fritz f@cked up. Repeatedly. And I, moron that I am, followed his every direction, round and round Luxembourg until not only was I dizzy but so were some of the people sitting around watching this giant on top of a big black and orange motorcycle repeatedly ride down one way streets the wrong way and across pedestrian areas.
Eventually I switch Fritz off – before he blew a fuse completely – and stopped the bike, walked to the square, checked in and found out where I could park the bike for the night.
The hotel loves bikers. I could tell this immediately by the look on the receptionist’s face as I walked in. She took one look at a six foot six, twenty stone biker with a face covered in exploded insects, sweaty as hell, carrying helmets, jackets, bags and so on and beamed a welcoming smile that clearly showed the hotel’s love for bikers.
Actually she didn’t do that. Instead she half scowled and half wet herself.
I patiently explained that “I have a reservation” – watching her face as I said it. I am convinced that she heard “I have a criminal record” as she looked around nervously for other colleagues in the hotel.
I showed her my booking reference and got out my credit card. I wasn’t a nightmare that was going to disappear quickly.
She said something about how my card number from the online booking had not worked, a last attempt to see if I would suddenly auto-combust and leave her in peace, but instead I handed over all my cards and told her to try one until it worked. Then she took my passport and opened it a Saudi Visa page. She paled again. I asked her where the hotel’s garage was and she said I could put my CAR in a garage around the corner. Clearly trying to block out the idea of biker from her mind while my big black helmet sat on the counter of her reception area.
After dumping the bike in the garage with the help of a nice Tunisian guy from the hotel (he said he was French, but with dark skin and a name like Saeed, I figured he was probably from just South of France and to the right – and I was on the money. We talked about Dubai which he thought was much better than Luxembourg, while I argued for the Luxembourg defence . . .) - I went to my absolutely lovely room, unpacked and showered. I then went through the bikers ritual of preparing the next days kit – washing visors, cleaning glasses, airing out gloves, hanging jacket etc.
I put on some nice unthreatening clothes as worn by civilians who have nothing to do with motorbikes, put on a cap (sunny outside, bald on top, hat is good) and went downstairs to go and sit in the pavement café outside the hotel. The receptionist smiled sweetly and greeted me as I went past then enquiring if I wanted a dinner reservation this evening. Clearly I was unrecognizable as the same man who had arrived an hour earlier looking like an extra from Mad Max.
I went at least 47 feet from the front door of the hotel and parked up in the café which was fairly busy with lots of Luxemburgers enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon.
I committed myself to following the wise words of the great guru Ray Davies, who penned the magnificent song “Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon” when leading his slightly dysfunctional band The Kinks. (Waterloo Sunset remains one of the greatest songs written and is a beautiful poem to London).
My lazy afternoon required beer, and possibly some food. My bacon and bread levels had dropped substantially and I didn’t think it wise to wait until dinner to eat or terrible things might happen in the dining room of the hotel . . . so I ordered what turned out to be an utterly delicious Caesar Salad. The common or garden staple of international hotel cuisine the world wide, this one actually tasted incredibly fresh, beautifully balancing the flavours with a just hard boiled egg and some lovely spicy marinated chicken meat. Not orthodox, but nevertheless very good.
Beer number one must have evaporated as I barely recall it. Beer number two didn’t hang around. And beer three while enjoyable, seemed also to be in a hurry. It wasn’t until beer four that I really felt respected by my dear golden coloured companion.
I spent a couple of hours watching the world go by, noting the delightful character of Europe with its dedication to eating, drinking, smoking and what the blues men of the Mississippi would have probably called “rambling” . . . and of course Sunday in Europe is very much a “rambling” kind of day – at least once the trivialities of morning religious rituals have been gone through or even enjoyed.
Walking, chatting, a quick pastry, maybe a coffee? Or a beer, or perhaps champagne as it is 4.45pm and that is as fine a time to drink champagne as any other.
Indeed, I noticed several LOLs (Little Old Ladies) parking up and ordering a glass of bubbly to enjoy for 15 minutes while taking a load off the old feet beneath them, as well as lots of fabulously pretty women in white summer dresses and dramatic sunglasses all sitting around talking about sex, plotting affairs and sipping cappuccinos. (Actually they were just as likely to be talking about tax returns, the cost of school fees and what to feed their husbands that evening – but as they were speaking mainly French my imagination immediately turned to sex. Obviously.)
With the afternoon sun beating down on my neck I pondered at length on another beer or not. To beer or not to beer – that is the question. Indeed I posted this question on Facebook, safe in the knowledge that advice would be quickly forthcoming. And indeed it was from my dear and sometime London based drinking companion Mr. Schroeder (no relation of my GPS, and only German by origin and not demeanour.)
Another beer was consumed and I returned to my room – passing the beaming receptionist who hates bikers – to sit down and write this.
I am now late for my dinner reservation – but I will be forgiven by the receptionist because I am not a biker now – so I will go in five minutes or so. . .
Until then I will conclude with the fact that it is great to be back in Europe, back on an Odyssey to my beloved Greece - the long way down – and wonderful to enjoy the culture into which I was born – or at least born adjacent to and grew up with.
Beer at 3.30pm. Quiche Lorraine. Real croissant.
The inability of all of continental Europe to do anything productive AT ALL before consuming a cup of tar-like thick black coffee (except for the Germans).
The inability of all of continental Europe to do anything productive or efficient once the cork is out of the bottle and the food is on the table – and to devote themselves instead to enjoying life, enjoying living and enjoying their friends and loved ones while breaking bread.
Except for the Germans, they break dumplings I think, and are always efficient no matter what. Except when faced with a pedestrian zone and the need to give directions to prohibited vehicles.
It should be Forbidden!
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