City Lights, Hellbillies, and one thousand pillows

I'm now home safely but for the sake of closure and because I had such a great time in San Francisco yesterday I'm going to post one final time. I had breakfast with one of my roommates, a jolly Californian drifter, before checking out of the hostel. I took a long walk through Chinatown to North Beach and the legendary City Lights bookstore. It wasn't open when I got there so I went into the cafe next door and ordered an orange juice while the old men at the bar were drinking spirits (at 10am). Obviously they were poets congregating for high-minded discourse. The woman at the bar told me "It's okay to just drink orange juice... You know you're in a strange place when orange juice is the odd thing to order for breakfast..." City Lights opened and I spent a good hour perusing the shelves. I had the poetry room to myself for a long time, and eventually bought a couple of small books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti - the beat poet, founder and owner of City Lights since 1954. The man himself walked in the front door as I was standing at the counter and gave me a short smile. I walked back into town and caught the half-hour train to Berkeley. It's home to the original University of California campus and the university pretty much still defines the small town. Down Telegraph Avenue there's a great string of bookstores as well as shops catering to fashion-conscious young socialists and any other subculture you can label. The sidewalk was teeming with students and stalls were set up selling stickers, incense, etc... I found a genuine weirdo shop on a quieter end of the street. It traded equally in pornography and second-hand comic books with a few additional shelves for random junk. There was a rack of DVDs with hand-drawn covers - live recordings of local punk and metal bands. I got talking to the guy who films the shows and draws the covers, and I eventually bought a Hellbillies DVD that came highly recommended (I haven't watched it yet). I also bought a t-shirt printed with one of his designs, and a pack of Garbage Pail Kids stickers from 1987, and I felt strangely comfortable in this shop. In the late afternoon I decided to check out the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) before heading to the airport. It's got a small but interesting collection, starting with modernist paintings on the first floor and getting more conceptual as you climb upwards. I got talking to a German girl while we were standing in front of a big collage made up of butterfly wings and anatomical photographs. We agreed it was disturbing, and walked around the next couple of floors together, talking loudly about the pieces and ignoring dirty glances from the more serious art connoisseurs. Then she said that she had to go downtown in order to join a big public pillow fight that was scheduled for 6pm (it's an annual event). She had her pillow checked in at the gallery cloakroom. I didn't have a pillow but I figured I had to see this, so I went with her. I lost her in the mayhem as soon as the clock struck six, but I stood watching for 20 minutes and it was a truly memorable spectacle. Great clouds of feathers were sent into the air as hundreds of people got stuck into each other - all in good fun - and it was showing no sign of slowing down when I eventually had to leave for the airport. I rode the train with feathers in my hair and was pleased that my trip around the world had been capped off in such a surreal and unexpected way. And so that's it! It's all over! It's been incredible.

San Francisco Blues

Ugh. So, it snowed for the whole time that I was in Chicago. It was indeed beautiful, but the cold was so oppressive that I only managed to see a few of the things I had planned to. On the first night I went to a local hotdog shop in Lincoln Park that is famous city-wide for the abuse that goes on there between the staff and customers. This may be due to the fact that it's frequented by drunken frat boys... So I entered and the big burly black guy behind the counter just said "Whatchoo want?" I got a hotdog with pickle and relish etc, and no ketchup (apparently ketchup on a hotdog is sacrilege in Chicago). It was alright. I was hoping to see a fight but I think I was there too early in the night. After the hotdog I went to a blues bar around the corner. It's been there since the '70s but it could only be an imitation of the original blues venues in the South Side. The band was impressive, playing the classic Chicago electric blues style (Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf...) but blending into funk on several occasions. The bar girl called me sweetheart so I called her darlin. Yesterday morning the snow was heavy everywhere and it was still falling. I made my way into the city and killed some time in one of Chicago's massive art supplies stores until the gallery was due to open. I asked a lady about cartooning inks and she spent about 20 minutes taking me around the store showing me every possible material. And we talked for ages. She teaches cartooning apparently. We were interrupted by an old lady looking for charcoal so I said goodbye and she hugged me before I left. It was strange - I've never been hugged by a salesperson before. Sadly a large part of the Art Institute of Chicago was closed (American paintings 1900-1950: the section I was most interested in). An Edward Hopper exhibition is opening on the 16th, so the famous "Nighthawks" painting had been put away in preparation. I was bummed about this. The gallery has an amazing collection of French impressionist works and some of the most iconic Van Gogh and Picasso paintings. I wasn't in the mood for more European art though. The American rooms were strange, mostly focused on decorative arts... grandfather clocks, tables and chairs, etc... making them look a bit like cluttered living rooms. "American Gothic" was the only item familiar to me. Oh yeah - ha ha - currently the main exhibition at the gallery is of Indonesian textiles. I didn't bother. I spent the afternoon basically trying to keep out of the cold. The snow got heavier, and the sidewalks were piled high with the stuff. I didn't make it to the South Side. I didn't make it to the Magnificent Mile, or the Museum of Contemporary Art. I had to shuffle past and take squinting glances at the great big Picasso sculpture in the middle of town (his gift to Chicago). I did have an enormous burrito though. And at night I went to an old pizza restaurant and had a deep dish pizza. It's like a pie without a top on it. It wasn't all that great. My roommate at the hostel turned out to be a nice guy, a former yuppie down on his luck and looking for work in Chicago. This morning I left him my box of Lucky Charms and he let me try some of his Cap'n Crunch. The snow had stopped and the sky over Chicago was blue but I had no more time. It took me over two hours to get to the airport this morning so I missed my flight by a few minutes. Fortunately they put me on the next flight for just a small booking fee and I got to sit around the airport for a bit, people-watching. The travelling is catching up with me. My body's acheing. My feet are raw. And every time I sit down I start to nod off. Nevertheless, as soon as I arrived back in Frisco I went out to the Mission District, perused the main street and had another massive ("Super") burrito. It's a colourful area - very Mexican - but everything in San Francisco seems to be amplified a little bit. I wanted to find some live music tonight. The best I could manage was a crappy dixieland band in a very touristy place... And I did a lot of walking following false leads. Despite the cranked up energy of the place, you just can't seem to find a rock band on a Wednesday night. I have a lot to do tomorrow before flying back to Sydney in the evening. Berkeley. City Lights Bookstore. Chinatown. No more burritos. I'm not sure my intestines could have taken more than four nights in America.

I ain't no Kid Chicago

From Liverpool I caught the train to London, then out again to Dover. We drove past some white cliffs, I saw Dover Castle from a distance, but most of the sightseeing was done through the bottom of a pint glass. I was staying with a friend out of town and we spent Friday night drinking with a very nice bunch of her mates. On Saturday afternoon we all had a drink beside a pebble beach, and then went into the nearby village of Deal to drink at a few of the pubs. I sampled various tepid and flat Kentish ales and the day was warm and sunny - perfect for sitting around in beer gardens. I didn't want to leave but had to be back in London for the night, so I caught a train around 7.30, and rode back in an empty carriage drunk on an empty stomach. I fell asleep and woke up dazed and confused at the end of the line, staggered out onto the platform and asked the information lady how I could get to Charing Cross Station. I was pleased to find that I was already at Charing Cross Station. I made it to the hostel at Earl's Court sometime before midnight, fell asleep, and was up again at 6am to catch my flight to San Francisco. Having let the weekend run away with me, I had no accommodation booked when I arrived in San Francisco in the late afternoon. So I bought a guidebook at the airport and made my way into the centre of town - the Union Square district. I came out of the BART station at the bottom of Powell Street, where they manually rotate the trams on a big wooden wheel before sending them back up the hill. Down the intersecting Mission Street were people selling all sorts of rubbish at stalls, and a fair spattering of street crazies and preachers on their various soapboxes. I walked up Powell Street and took a hotel on the first sidestreet that I came to and it happened to be pretty cheap. It was a big rambling place that looked like it was from the '20s. The door to my room had a suspicious two-way peephole, and the door to the shared bathroom was warped so that it wouldn't close. The bed was big and good though, which is what I needed (I don't mind if I was being watched). I went first to the Cartoon Art Museum. It was mostly concerned with single-panel cartoons of the New Yorker variety. You'd hear people laughing as they edged their way around the rooms. There was funny stuff. From there I walked to the Tenderloin, which is a big slum that stretches through the middle of San Francisco. I couldn't believe it. There were so many people on the sidewalk loitering, drinking, panhandling, and generally looking dangerous that I didn't feel safe there - and it's very rare that I feel that way anywhere during daylight hours. I had dinner at Lori's Fabulous '50s Diner (served with a dill pickle the size of a banana), then bought an American Mad Magazine and a can of Budweiser and had quiet one. I had to leave early this morning to fly to Chicago (I'll have some more time in San Francisco later this week). As the plane was landing the pilot announced that it was -13 degrees celsius on the ground. It started snowing as I was on the train from the airport into town, but the streets and buildings were already thickly blanketed. It's a beautiful sight, all of the bare trees and turn-of-the-century houses under snow look just like a Chris Ware drawing. I inadvertantly booked a hostel in Lincoln Park, the suburb where rich white folks live. The train here from the city was absolutely packed (being rush hour) and a local rich white guy befriended me... told me about the hotels his company owns in Sydney, and about his yachts (I don't know how we covered so much ground in such a short train journey). It was about a kilometre to walk from the station to the hostel, in falling snow, and on a sidewalk caked thick in ice. Lots of fun.
And it's an amusingly bad hostel. My mattress has spaceships on it, and my only roommate states he has "been here for a while" - it basically looks like his bedroom.

I'm in Liverpool. Go Figure.

I'm sitting in a shopping centre in Liverpool, England. My first night in Amsterdam I ate at one of the city's many Indonesian restaurants and then explored the red light district nearby. It's incredible the way the prostitutes solicit there. In rows of glass-fronted cubicles, backlit in red and ultraviolet lights, dressed in nothing much, they wave and blow kisses to passers by. It's like a big vending machine for sex. I didn't see many takers, but the district is such a tourist attraction. Respectable looking middle-aged couples, Asian tour groups, and lots of very average people of all ages. I went to the Museum of Erotica (I think it's different to the Sex Museum). Lots of vintage erotica from around the world, etc, and plenty of European sleaze. Wednesday morning I went to the Van Gogh Museum. The paintings are ordered chronologically and you're given the story of his life as you walk around the galleries. It was actually really touching without being too biographical, and there's so much texture to his paintings that you could only appreciate them fully in the flesh. I stumbled upon the Torture Museum. They have replicas of different torture devices and little blurbs about their use in a winding passageway through a dark damp building. It was worth the five euros. Amsterdam is full of such ad hoc little museums. I milled around in Lambiek for part of the afternoon. I bought a stack of Dutch and German independent (ie. poorly drawn, poorly printed) comics, thumbed through many more. I picked up a big creepy book by the American outsider artist Joe Coleman, and the guy behind the counter made the same observation that I was thinking - they look like Bosch paintings. Then I smoked half a joint of pre-rolled house blend at the Blues Brothers Coffee House and read comics. And it was good. Walking through Amsterdam at 6am yesterday on my way to the train station, it was how I wanted to remember the city. No people. Just the odd tram. The channel waters were still. Bent and mangled bicycles chained to every tree, fence and lamp-post. Despite the hedonism of the place it's got undeniable charm. I flew into Liverpool's John Lennon Airport. Unbeknownst to me until I was already on my way here, Liverpool is the official European Capital of Culture for 2008. Obviously this requires a lot of construction work during the Winter months (when no sensible tourist would come here), because half of the city is currently behind construction fences, and every second person on the street is wearing a yellow vest and a hardhat. So it's not a town that screams "culture" just yet. They have a lot of playhouses, and the Albert Dock area houses a swathe of museums. And of course nobody is going to let go the fact that the Beatles came from Liverpool. The city is saturated in memorabilia. The Beatles Story (a dedicated museum) is a lot of fun, and is more a testament to the great artists they worked with on their album covers and movies, etc. I wish I could have had a run around this museum as a kid 15 years ago. On the other side of Albert Dock is the completely unrelated International Slavery Museum (Liverpool was once the main European centre for slave-trading). It was sad but well-presented. Then there's the Liverpool Tate which I found to be just as interesting as the Tate Modern in London. If not a lot more accessible and less exhausting. I went to the famous Cavern Club last night, where the Beatles played a lot in the early days. There was a cover band playing, in suits and wigs, and genuine Liverpudlian accents, the whole deal. The announcer claimed they were the best the Beatles cover band in the UK, and I wouldn't argue. They were excellent, and from my vantage point behind a brick pillar it could have easily been 1962. The older patrons peeled away gradually and after midnight it was a very young and friendly crowd. Some guy with a Gallagher monobrow tried to sell me cocaine and it was like a real club. The band played until almost 2am and I walked back to the hostel whistling Penny Lane. Yeah, Liverpool has been fun. But I'm catching a train south this afternoon. I've got a ticket to ride.

Amsterdam

Writing you from Amsterdam. My few days in Brussells were great despite consistent rain. On Sunday I made my way out to the local comic museum. It was in a deserted part of town, amongst an odd mix of very big shiny government skyscrapers and dilapidated brick buildings. I didn't have high expections. But it was actually fantastic, particularly for a Tintin fan (he is worshipped as a God in Belgium). There were lots of other typically bizarre European comics, hundreds of pages of original artwork from 1960s adventure comics, and a whole floor dedicated to adult material. The kids loved it. From the comic museum I went to the fine art museum, which was also surprisingly fun. There's a comic quality to a lot of the old Flemish art and I've discovered a love for the Flemish Primitives. That evening I stopped at the Delirium Taphouse, home to the very nice musky blonde Delirium Tremens, which I only bought because it has a funny name and a pink elephant as its logo. They had 19 other beers on tap and the beerguide gave a detailed blurb for each of them (my new favourite term is mouthfeel). I only had two standard glasses but Belgian beers are damn strong (up to 9.5%). I made my merry way back to the hostel. Yesterday I caught the train out to Antwerp, Belgium's second biggest city. Whereas Brussells is determinedly diplomatic (every street has a Flemish and a French name - although most of the people seem to speak French), Antwerp is a thoroughly Flemish city. I had the most excellent lunch. A Belgian speciality that wasn't on the menu - beef simmered for hours in (obviously) beer. Otherwise Anwerp is very picturesque... it has great museums apparently but they're all closed on Mondays. I was there for a couple of hours and then headed back to Brussells and back to the Taphouse. I could live in Brussells despite its flaws. It's frustratingly inefficient. They have a small but strangely confusing public transport system. Their public spaces are unfriendly, no seating, no toilets. Grey. They have two languages that they can't decide between. But I think they have their priorities in the right place, and it's got a lovable loser kind of appeal. Feeling pale and humourless after three weeks travelling through a European Winter, I decided to go to Germany. Alas, Easyjet only runs extremely inconvenient services as a rule, so I came to Amsterdam and I'll probably be heading to the UK after this. By pure coincidence my hostel is right next door to what is surely the greatest comic shop in Europe, Lambiek. I walked all over the city this afternoon and I'm thinking I might hire a bike tomorrow. I visited the Rijks Museum which has some amazing Rembrandts but is otherwise full of typical aristocratic, imperialist art (lots of paintings of boats and guns, etc). It's funny to see the other side of the story after seeing all the evidence of Dutch activity in Indonesia (they were basically well-organised pirates). Right now I'm inside a "coffee shop". Many of them have internet access. They're all so dark and this particular one is deliberately made out to look like an opium den. I'm not buying anything but there's enough ambient smoke in here to slow me down a bit... I should leave while it's not raining.

Tim in Bruxelles

If there were a capital city for comics then Brussells, Bruxelles, would have to be it. But I'll get to that shortly. Yesterday in Paris I caught the metro out to Montmarte and got lost wandering the streets there. Climbed those stairs above the carousel from Amelie and payed a euro to look through the binoculars at the Paris skyline. The Eiffel Tower is hidden from that vantage point, but you can discern a few landmarks - Notre Dame and the Pantheon... - amidst the sprawl. There was a permanent grey mist above Paris for the whole time that I was there though and the rain never really went away. Moulin Rouge is in the red-light district of Pigalle next to Montmarte. I had vague plans to see a show there last night, but didn't want to commit to the 100 euros yet. So last night I went back to Pigalle. There was a queue about a block long two hours before the 9 o'clock showtime - the dinner-and-a-show crowd I guess. So I sat in a swanky Montmarte bar, had a AU$15 pint of Guinness... and decided against Moulin Rouge anyway. So after running a gauntlet of stripclub spruikers and cocaine dealers I went back to St Michel, to a legendary Paris jazz club (the name escapes me) that's housed in a cellar. A small band was playing, headed by a singer who had the face of a late Charles Bukowski but the voice of an early Frank Sinatra. They were serious jazz musicians, working up a lather of sweat in even the slowest songs. During the break I think the singer must have had a few drinks or something, because he spent a large part of the second set biting his fingernails and staring at the back wall. The crowd was mostly middle-aged, mostly French, jazz-dance hobbyists and the like, but there was no shortage of beautiful young people. I befriended an eager young American law student and had a great night soaking up all of the energy in this tiny jazz club. I left after 1 and took an indirect route back to the hostel. Smoked my last cigarette on the Pont Des Arts above the Seine... and it was just me and a homeless guy who was yelping and maniacally slapping himself in the lips as if they were on fire (I'm going into meaningless details here because the internet access is free and unlimited at this hostel, and I've been reading Richard Brautigan). I had a rough night's sleep, because my roomie - Alfonso - was the worst snorer I've ever encountered... I left pretty early for Brussells this morning. I've heard Belgium described as the Canberra of Europe. At least from a bureaucratic point of view it is - being the headquarters of the European Union. But it's also got an ugly utilitarian kind of aesthetic to it. And the people are definitely not the glamourous types you see in Paris. So, Brussells is like the ugly cousin of Paris. The main town square is attractive though, and Mannekin Pis - the foot-high statue of a little boy urinating - is an amusing attraction that draws huge crowds. I've spent a large part of this afternoon sifting through the enormous comic shops in the centre of town. Belgium is very proud of its comics. It is afterall the birthplace of Tintin. And Tintin is everywhere - even this hostel has a cabinet full of Tintin figurines in the foyer. I gather that there's still a thriving community of comic creators. The stores had shelves full of independent comics by Belgian artists, some very unique creative stuff. I could have easily emptied my wallet there, but I've got a couple of days here to decide what I want to take home with me. I'm not sure what else I'm going to do with three nights in Brussells.

Poitiers and Paris

I'm in Paris. On my last night in Bayonne I had a Basque dinner at Le Cafe Victor Hugo (not a very Basque name). It was rustic (i.e., bland). I liked Bayonne though and was nervous about heading back to bigger cities. I stopped for a night in Poitiers, roughly half way between Bayonne and Paris. It's a town of some historic significance apparently, although I've lost interest in the guidebook lately. To get into the town you had to climb an enormous staircase from the train station. Poitiers was the coldest place I've been so far. The cold was painful and literally felt like a perpetual slap in the face. And yet I seemed to be the only person there billowing steam from my nostrils - I don't think I'm physiologically adapted to this climate. I had steamed mussells in a restaurant and didn't do much else during my few hours in Poitiers... It was raining when I arrived in Paris yesterday. So I did some much needed laundry in a complicated Parisian laundromat and the sky was blue by the time that ordeal was over. I'm staying in the Latin Quarter although it doesn't seem very latin. It's only a block or two from the Left Bank. I walked to the spot where the protagonist from Albert Camus' The Fall hears mocking laughter from the Seine. I stumbled upon the bookshop that Hemingway used to frequent (I've been reading Hemingway's recollections of 1920s Paris). Of course, Shakespeare & Company was a rental library then. These days it's a standard English-language bookshop. And it's staffed by travelling students, thin sensitive literary types. Apparently the management offers short-term accommodation in return for work in the store, with the added condition that you have to read a book a day. That wouldn't leave much time for anything else I should think, but it's good for some. There were Asian tourists in the store taking photos of the bookshelves. It was odd. Last night I walked around some more - the nights actually seem warmer than the days in France. I had a look inside Notre Dame which was nice. I walked all over the Left and Right Banks and generally soaked it all up. I went to a cafe that Camus and Sartre used to argue in, and I paid eight Australian dollars for a shot of espresso. Later I sat in a bar and watched a jazz band while I drank from a ridiculous German beer glass that looked like a fruit bowl on a stem. Today I've performed the duties of a tourist in Paris. I went to the Louvre. The place is just too big. I skipped everything but the paintings and the Egyption artefacts. There was no queue when I arrived but inside it was hectic. Tour groups just swarming from room to room, taking flash photos incessantly. It all seemed a little absurd - particularly the Mona Lisa room (such a big fuss over such a little painting). I caught the train to the Eiffel Tower, which was more hassle than it should have been. It was too cold to sit and admire the thing, and I couldn't be arsed climbing any more stairs, so I walked under it and then headed straight back to the train. It was pretty good as far as towers go. Afterwards I found an unpopular restaurant in a narrow alley near Boulevard St Michel, and I ate escargot for lunch. That is, snails. I had to pick them out of their shells with a toothpick. A bit chewy for my liking, but they were so drenched in garlic sauce that they could have been chicken giblets for all I knew. I had ordered cognac as well, only realising that I wasn't sure what cognac was when I was served a cup full of something like O.P. rum. All part of the tourist's duty though. I walked off my snails in Luxembourg Garden, where Hemingway used to walk off his hunger pangs as a starving writer. I'm here for another two nights at least, and then it's off to Brussells!