west countries

yellow.

I made it back through the wilds of germany to the uk, but the reason my phone isn't yet connected (goddamn passwords) and I haven't rung you or written to you is cos of wild raging feverish shits.

Blimey but this country is clean, though. :)

so where've you been? 39 Germany: Hamburg and Luebeck

I'm doing my best, you know. I'm trying to speak German to everyone. Well, as much as I can.
I'm good enough to do a phone conversation. (It may be the worst phone conversation anyone ever had, but hey, that's a start.)

And I'm dodging into the bogs at Hamburg Altstadt hauptbahnhof, as an American teenager starts down the wrong steps. I'm helpful, I inform him in clear and confident german that he's heading into the Ladies' not the Gents.
I mean, I think the pointing helped, but the point is, I was trying.

And even when the fat rude frau pushed in front of me at the turnstile (dragging my case over my foot and ripping most of the flesh from my toes, and didn't respond even slightly at the fact I was screaming (in german!) and the blood was gushing everywhere, and the toilet attendant had to try to stem the gushing), I only voiced one single word that wasn't german*.

And I'm ordering a big piggy meat laden fruhstuck for me and an old friend on our last morning in Hamburg, and the counter staff at the backerei are pissing me off.
They serve people out of sequence, they wander off into a corner if you make eye contact, they refuse to serve a boiled egg in this queue - this is not the korrekt queue for the boiled egg you see - they are hot and sweating and pissed off and they hate all the customers.

And I've already shown my dark side to them.
It might have been the swearing.
Or slamming down a price list.
Perhaps when I put my head down against the glass counter top above the pflaume-thingies, and beat it quietly.

I guess it was always going to go wrong.

What I can't explain is my reaction.

The counter staff speak to me in rapid, brusque tones.
I explain to them that I am not too good at German (in german!).
I ask them very politely if they can repeat what they have just said (in german!).
I tell them which bit of the sentence I am having trouble with (in german!).
I ask if they can speak more slowly for me (in german!).

I don't say anything AT ALL about why the bloody hell won't you speak a word of any of the international languages of communication, none of the top ten of which are fucking german?

Honest.

I even tried to keep it out of my eyes, in case they could tell when I was thinking it.

And yet, when the fat bloody frau deliberately speeds up what she's saying, with an exasperatedly heavy eye-roll, and raises her voice LOUDER 'so that I will understand'**, I literally cannot believe it.

I throw my arms up, swear at her, and storm out of the backerei. Force Frank (who speaks no german) to deal with it***.

I just can't believe she spoke LOUDER, not slower or clearer.

I mean, I'm British. That's what we're supposed to do.

* or printable.

** she's going to do the coffee later
but she won't bring it to the table,
so I have to come back inside for it,
and they're totally out of orange juice.
Take that, fat bloody frau!
I looked it up.
Later. Secretly.
You stroppy cow.
I win.

*** Frank dealt with it. Perfectly.

so where've you been? 38 Isle of Skye, Scotland

I went with a friend on a hiking trip around two Skye peninsulas, and Raasay Island (the nearest approximation of Craggy Island I've ever seen in the real world).

There was tons of fabulous wildlife to spot - oystercatchers, eagles, hares, seals, stags, dolphins, wild otters. And being this close to the Outer Hebrides, to the great cold ocean that you rarely see in little Britain, is romantic and inspiring. And I loved being pretentious and middle aged in an assortment of youth hostels, and cooking something delicious and delicately spiced while everyone else huddled over a Pot Noodle.
But. My main memory is the weather.

(Sorry, Scotland.)

Skye's cold. And wet. And foggy.

No, I mean cold.

People on Skye realise this. Well, sort of. They still maintain they have a 'summer'.
My imagination isn't sufficiently cruel to imagine what a Skye winter could entail.

A particularly horrible Scots french teacher at school has left me with a lifelong mistrust of middle aged scotswomen who over-enunciate and take the piss outright till you do what they say, but people on Skye were pretty nice, really.

They flinched and gaped open-mouthed, though, whenever we wandered into some civilised township wearing shorts, though.
Admittedly, most people, tourist or local, were wearing fleeces, waterproof trousers, and thick mountain jackets. (There was a sale of Himalayan yak wool mountain gear in full swing in Portree.) But hell, it had been hot enough while packing, down south, not to be able to think yourself into the mindset where you'd be cold as a frozen herring next week.

Some lovely old chaps enquired good naturedly if we might be Australian? (I thought it was the shorts, but they said it was the accent .... ????)
One nice lady shivered when we mentioned it was currently 36 degrees in London. 'Too hot'. She shook herself and muttered that 20 degrees was hot enough for her, full stop.
On Raasay, we estimated the temperature at around 14-16 degrees, and managed to score double duvets before escaping at first light (my fault; Tibet's given me a particular horror of being dangerously under-insulated for temperatures below freezing). The hostel warden insisted we all sit in a tight circle around an oil heater, shivering.
Back in Portree, a local commented that it was 'uncomfortably hot and humid'. As a cold hail threatened to beat down.

Even in Glasgow ... I don't think I've ever been in the position, before - as a preternaturally ashen toned individual who does not ever tan - of being the brownest person in the street.

Oh, Scotland. I feel like we should have bought you some proper heaters.

So Where've You Been? 37 Germany a-gain

In the middle of the World Cup, even bloody Frankfurt is a crowded place to be. I bought a stein full of flags, that would be worth something in the UK only if England win, and a badge that showed Brazil v Germany, which rather depends on both those teams getting to the final.

Which they didn't.

But they have funky automatic money changing machines, they were fun. Sort of.

So Where've You Been? 36 Mumbai (again)

[I am going to pretend I didn't have to go back through Delhi, because I hate the place.]

On the way back through Mumbai, things are surreally familiar. I spent hours in see-and-be-seen cafes (best line, from a waiter: Sir, your mother has telephoned. You may not smoke a hookah), or laughing my soaked head off at the oil slick seastorm between me and the temple causeway. I loafed at my favourite Mumbai hotel, like a prince, I ran around eating all the idlis sambhar I could lay my hands on.

But the most memorable moment was just before I left the city, at dusk. All packed, I walked back to my hotel, wondering where the monsoon had disappeared to, when a five year old flower seller accosts me ten feet away from my taxi to the airport.

I'm not good with the child labour thing. [Evidence. Evidence. Evidence.]

Little kid's selling bigwilting gerberas, big as her face. She's tugging insistently at my trousers, and I only have 8 rupees in my pocket. She doesn't speak much english, but life on the streets has taught her some.

"Twenty rupee!"

No. No. Sorry, darlin'. No.

"Fifteen rupee!" The automatic hard-heart, the necessary guard-against-it response to poverty kicks in as she does the automatic have-you-no-heart begging gesture - pinched fingers coming again and again to her mouth in supplication.
Hungry, it means. I'm no match for it.

I crouch down to her level. I haven't time or expertise enough to sign-language my way out of this, so I hope slow english and gestures will show her what I mean.
No. Don't need it. No money. No. See? No money. Only eight rupee. I would love to buy but no money. No.
I show her the coins. Only eight rupee, see? No money. She shakes her head.

Then takes the coins from my open hand.

Oh shit.

She stuffs the wilting gerbera in my hand. I try to pass it back to her. No. I don't need it. No take. She looks insulted. Turns her face away to indicate this is a sale, not a begging pitch. To maintain the fiction of self-respect, I have to collude, agree to take the wilting oversized flower from her.
She has me now; I feel like shit, and she knows it. The guilt transaction is successful. I've insulted her. I'd probably buy her half a store full of whatever she points at by now. Or a ticket to a country where she doesn't have to beg in the streets at age five.

She points at a paan seller, points to her mouth.

No fucking way! Chewing baccy?! That stuff's carcinogenic. I'm not buying paan tobacco for an infant. Not in any circumstances.

She starts to cry. There's nothing I can do to end this exchange but stand back up and walk briskly away.

Oh god. I just haggled a five year old down on a daisy.

So where've you been? 35 Rajasthan

I forgot to write about what Rajasthan was like: middle of the desert / middle of a heatwave - hot.



I went to Jaipur (pink city), Jaisalmer (golden fort), and Jodhpur (blue city). When your eyes are turned blue-squinty-green from overhead billion wattage sunstroke, all those colours fade to roughly similar sweat soaked bleachy white.

Glancing at my diary, I'm reminded of keeping a bucket of dirty water in my bedroom to tip over myself at intervals through the night. It was the only way to get cold water, too, as water in the bucket was chilled more efficiently than the water in the hot sun-baked pipes from the roof still.
Until I realised hot showers lessen the shock, and warm your body up to a temperature where the dry desert air starts to feel refreshing. For five minutes at least.



People sleep on rooftops to get cool - at night in Jodhpur, the temperature would drop to 38 degrees, and - praise to someone or something - there'd be a breeze. There you are, lying on hard mud ground in your PJs, trying to sleep on your elbow as a pillow, and you'd be slapped awake by a full bucket of sand gusting into your mouth.
My favourite windows were the diagonal cubby hole windows in thick fort walls in Jaisalmer. They'd be covered with a tiny, 3 by 10 inch glazed window in bright jewel colours, inside, set at random heights into cow dung baked mud walls. The light would flicker and spin slightly, as the birds nesting in the cubbies shifted, trying to escape the dry heat.



There's obviously a strong hippie tourist trail in Rajasthan in the summers, and budget hotels actually advertise themselves as making less insistent sales pitches on camel safaris than anyone else. In a heatwave, though, the place is empty, everything's shut, and you have the view to yourself. Like Varanasi, it was the sort of place locals drag you into their homes and beg you to stay for dinner. One family (who were feeding me for a day or two as they built a backpacker restaurant by throwing up cement illegally on top of the fort walls) pointed out that a safari in June would be "camel suicide".