Has it happened to you too?

residual travel fever - part III - One Night in Brugge

It was a 14th century townhouse converted into a cafe. The cobbled streets refused to reveal their ancient secrets. And under a dark sky, millennia old, I brought the mug to my mouth and sipped the cold beer slowly..

This was Bruge. Bruges to the English. Brugge to the defiant Dutch who were pained at the massacre of their pharyngeal grunts.
The Jupiler beer was only 1.90 - the cheapest I had in whole of Europe. B seemed very happy, giggling over a colourful cocktail. T had gone to escort G back to the hotel, because he was convinced he would be raped in Europe. I saw M poring over the menu, contemplating his next poison of choice. Friendship with him, here on a different continent, surprised me. He was wonderful company, especially drunk ;) !

I settled deeper into the cushioned settee, comfortable in the knowledge my packing was done. The Bell Tower glowed in the distance. Someone cursed in fluent french. The other responded, just as enthusiastically, in lusty Scotch broth. Aaah it was sweet!

I had done churches. Seen the only Michelangelo sculpture outside of Europe. Wept at the sight of Belgian chocolates, custom-made to titillate even the least decadent of us. Soaked up the sun in the square, watching students of architecture take notes...And kicked myself for not carrying more money.

Good trip. And this last bit sums it all up for me -

residual travel fever - part II - The Tube

The

London deflowered me. I lost myself in that city. It was all they had said it would be - noisy, gray, yellow teeth, bad breath, brown overtones to the essential ruddy heartiness. It was all that and more to someone who was so new to travelling alone. In that moment, when I took the first left to the Underground from Heathrow, I was, completely and absolutely, in love with myself!

The Tube. After changing trains so many times, befriending ticket-sellers at every imaginable stop,not only can i tell you about the unpredictable tantrums of the Victoria line, but I could teach you how to jostle your way to the best seats.
Fell in love with that crazy jazz they call the Tube, listened to buskers playing in the station all day long...even threw a precious pound to one of them who had the sexiest voice...befriended a Russian lesbian artist on my first night there, when I had yet to step out into the much-maligned London air...

I used to choose any station..on a whim!...step out of the Tube, run up the stairs (I hate taking the escalator..I am convinced it will eat my foot! You have a certain X-file episode to blame). Baker Street, to me, shall always be a lane of pigeons, postcards & endless charm. Oxford Street is for the warmest waffles and costa coffee. And oh Covent Garden! that quaint ancient vegetable mart, now with its immigrant punk attitude, crazy jugglers, jazz musicians, pashmina shawls next to pictures of a masturbating Christ. It was wild in there! Liecester Square with its falafel shops and the smoothest humus filling.
I spent a lifetime in the London Tube...once or twice over

(to be continued)

residual travel fever - part I

Quotes open. Enter obscure quote by famous author/feminist/poet/quirky film-maker on travel. dot.dot.dot. Quotes closed.

I realized I love to travel. In the middle of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, surrounded by gorgeous women peddling their stuff in neon-blue bikinis;inebriated Scot fans yelling "Amsterdam, Amsterdam! YAAAAY" and me, neatly stepping over dog poo, I had this brilliant moment of clarity. The kind that only strikes alcoholics.
I REALIZED.

with the smoke of dutch grass burning my urban angst...
In a coffee shop which was so freakingly sterotypical that I almost laughed! Faded graffiti on peeling yellow walls. Thick sweet fumes. Loud Russians, and Clapton coughing on an asthamatic telly.
First drag. A resounding disaster!!! Let no one fool you into thinking otherwise...Smoking is a science! People don't smoke because they are worried about their lungs, they don't because they don't know how to!
The owner of the coffee-shop...Sheeba...if i remember the name of the place correctly, smiled at us indulgently, teaching me to suck in the air the right way. Awww, he looked like such a proud papa when I took a successful drag!

S said it looked like I was making love to the joint, puffing it so languidly with my feet perched on the table and my head thrown back. Clapton wheezed on. It did feel like love...

Toothpaste hates math

X-files

ZeeCafe has introduced a lovely concept called Old School Classics. This is where I get to see all my childhood favourites like Different Strokes, Who's the Boss et al.
One incredible find has been the X-files. See, when it used to air on Star World, I was just a kid and was just intrigued by the weird things that kept happening on the show and thinking Agent Scully had such pretty hair! But now as I re-watch the episodes, I'm blown away by the awesomeness!!
Chris Carter, the show's creator, instead of tying each episode with a neat little bow in the end, deliberately left things unexplained. That there is no answer to alien abductions, that conspiracy theorists may not be wacked on weed, that maybe there is some truth behind all these lovely monster stories. It's like your mother telling you the Boogey man will come if you are naughty, you are scared...yet you almost want to see the boogeyman....a sense of disbelief mingled with a tiny voice telling you 'What If?'
And the show's writers played with those 'What Ifs?'
They did not deny that there needs to be a semblance of logic to explain something like Tooms - the mutant cannibal, but in the words of Mulder...the show encourages you to believe!! just open your mind to impossibilities....

I also love the use of symbolism in the show. Whenever you look up in the sky and you saw black helicopters, it's the government..hiding things, covering up the facts. Black oil on the ground...there is an alien nearby, probably bleeding and you are about to be infected with a deadly alien virus. I mean who thinks of such stuff!!! This is bloody brilliant!

....and Amen to that!