Neither Here Nor There - Travels In Europe Part 8

Bern is built on a bluff above a broad loop of the River Aare, and the views from the bridges and vantage points are quite splendid, especially back towards the old town a jumble of orangeish tiled roofs broken up with church spires and towers that look like mutant cuckoo clocks. Most of the streets are arcaded in a way I've never seen before: the ground floors are set back and the upper floors jut out over them, their heavy weight supported by thick arched b.u.t.tresses, creating a covered walkway over the pavements. The shops along them were infinitely more varied and interesting even more cla.s.sy than those in Geneva. There were antiquarian bookstores and art galleries and antique shops specializing in everything from wind-up toys to clocks and binoculars to Etruscan pottery.

Culturally, Bern is on the dividing line between French-speaking Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland, and there is a mildly exotic blending of the two. Waiters greet you with 'Bitte', for instance, but thank you with 'Merci'. Architecturally, it is stolidly Swiss-German, with severe (though not disagreeable) sandstone buildings that look as if they were built to withstand a thousand earthquakes. Bern has the air of a busy provincial market town. You would never guess that it is a national capital. This is partly because of the peculiar nature of Swiss politics. So many powers are devolved to the cantons and to national referenda that Switzerland doesn't even feel the need to have a prime minister, and the presidency is such a nominal and ceremonial position that it changes hands every year. They wouldn't have a president at all except that they need somebody to greet visiting heads of state at the airport. The Bundeshaus, the national parliament, looks like a provincial town hall, and nowhere in the city even in the bars on the nearby streets do you have a sense of being among bureaucrats and politicians.

I spent a day and a half wandering through the streets of the old town and across the high bridges to the more modern, but still handsome, residential streets on the far side of the Aare. It was a wonderful city for random walking. There were no freeways, no industry, no sterile office parks, just endless avenues of fine homes and small parks.

I attempted just two touristy diversions and failed at both. I crossed the high, arched Nydegg Bridge to see the famous bear pits the city name derives from the German word for bear, so they like to keep several bears as mascots but the pits were empty. There was no sign to explain why and locals who arrived with their children were clearly as surprised and perplexed as I was.

I tried also to go to the Albert Einstein museum, housed in his old flat on Kramga.s.se, one of the main arcaded streets. I walked up and down the street half a dozen times before I found the modest entrance to the building, tucked away between a restaurant and a boutique. The door was locked it was dusty and looked as if it hadn't been opened for weeks, perhaps years and no one answered the bell, though according to the tourist brochure it should have been open. It struck me as odd that nowhere in the town had I encountered any indication that Einstein had ever lived there: no statue in a park or square, no street named in his honour, not even his kindly face on postcards. There wasn't so much as a plaque on the wall to tell the world that in one year, 1905, while working as an obscure clerk in the Swiss patent office and living above this door, Einstein produced four papers that changed for ever the face of physics on the theory of Brownian motion, on the theory of relativity, on the photon theory of light and on the establishment of the ma.s.s-energy equivalence. I have no idea what any of that means, of course my grasp of science is such that I don't actually understand why electricity doesn't leak out of sockets but I would have liked to see where he lived.

In the evening I had a hearty meal, which is about as much as the visitor can aspire to in Switzerland, and went for another long walk down darkened streets and through empty squares. As I returned to the city centre along Marktga.s.se, one of the main pedestrian venues, I discovered that all the bars were shutting. Waiters were taking chairs and tables inside and lights were going out. It was nine-twenty in the evening. This gives you some idea of what a heady night-life Bern offers.

Quietly distraught, I wandered around and with relief found another bar still open a couple of blocks away on Kochega.s.se. It was crowded, but had an amiable, smoky air, and I was just settling in with a tall gla.s.s of golden Edelweiss and the closing chapters of The Black Death, The Black Death, when I heard a familiar voice behind me saying, 'D'ya remember that time Blane Brockhouse got the s.h.i.ts and went crazy with the Uzi in the West Gollagong Working Men's Club?' when I heard a familiar voice behind me saying, 'D'ya remember that time Blane Brockhouse got the s.h.i.ts and went crazy with the Uzi in the West Gollagong Working Men's Club?'

I turned around to find my two friends from the Geneva train sitting on booster seats behind frothy beers. 'Hey, how you guys doing?' I said before I could stop myself.

They looked at me as if I were potentially insane. 'Do we know you, mate?' said one of them.

I didn't know what to say. These guys had never seen me before in their lives. 'You're Australian, huh?' I burbled stupidly.

'Yeah. So?'

'I'm an American.' I was quiet for a bit. 'But I live in England.'

There was a long pause. 'Well, that's great,' said one of the Australians with a measured hint of sarcasm, then turned to his friend and said, 'D'ya remember the time Dung-Breath O'Leary hacked that waitress's forearms off with a machete because there was a fly in his beer?'

I felt like an a.s.shole, which of course is a pretty fair description of my condition. Something about their diminutive size and warped little minds heightened the sense of quiet humiliation. I turned back to my beer and my book, the tips of my ears warm to the touch, and took succour in the plight of the poor people of Bristol, where in 1349 the plague so raged through the city that 'the living were scarce able to bury the dead' and the gra.s.s grew calf-high in the city streets.

Before long, with the aid of two more beers and 120,000 agonized deaths in the west country of England, my embarra.s.sment was past and I was feeling much better. As they say, time heals all wounds. Still, if you wake up with a bubo on your groin, better see a doctor all the same.

18. Liechtenstein

You know when you are entering the German-speaking part of Switzerland because all the towns have names that sound like someone talking with his mouth full of bread: Thun, Leuk, Bulach, Plaffeien, Flims, Gstaad, Pfaffikon, Linthal, Thusis, Fluelen, Thalwil.

According to my rail ticket I was headed for the last of these, which puzzled me a little, since Thalwil didn't appear on my much-trusted k.u.mmerly and Frey 'Alpenlander Stra.s.senkarte'. Where Thalwil should have been was given instead as Horgen. I couldn't conceive that the conscientious draughtspeople at k.u.mmerly and Frey could have made an error of this magnitude in their own country, but equally it was unthinkable that the conservative burghers of this corner of Switzerland would have elected at some time during the last eighteen years to change the name of one of their towns, so I put it down to an act of G.o.d and turned my attention instead to spreading out the map on my knees in its full crinkly glory, to the undisguised irritation of the old lady next to me, who hoomphed her bosom and made exasperated noises every time a corner of the paper waggled in her direction.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit, tracing the course of obscure rivers, checking elevations, consulting the marginal notes to see what a little circle with a flag on it signifies (a Burg or Schloss) and what's the difference between a pictogram of an airplane with a circle around it and one without (one is a Flughafen, the other a Flugplatz), issuing small profound 'Hmmmm's' and nodding my head gravely without having the faintest idea why.

I noticed now that I might alternatively have gone from Brig to Geneva on a more southerly route, by way of Aosta, Mont Blanc and Chamonix. It would almost certainly have been much more scenically exciting. What a fool I was to miss the chance to see Aosta and Mont Blanc. How could I have come this far and failed to travel through the heart of the Alps? What a mighty d.i.c.k-head I am. 'Hmmmm,' I said, nodding gravely and folding up the map.

We chuntered pleasantly through a landscape of small farms and steep wooded hills, beside a shallow river, stopping frequently at isolated villages where half a dozen people would climb aboard with empty shopping baskets. When the train was full, we would call at a busy little market town like Langnau or Zug and all the pa.s.sengers would pour off, leaving me all alone, and then the slow, steady refilling process would begin again. It was not a bad way to spend a day.

I left the train at Sargans, just short of Liechtenstein. The railway runs through Liechtenstein, but, in line with the national policy of being ridiculous in every possible way, it doesn't stop there. You must instead get off at Sargans or Buchs and transfer to Vaduz, the diminutive Liechtenstein capital, on a yellow post bus.

One was conveniently waiting at the station. I purchased a ticket and took a seat midway along, the only pa.s.senger not clutching bagloads of shopping, and sat high on the seat, eager to see the little country. It is only about seven miles from Sargans to Vaduz, but the journey takes an hour or so because the bus goes all over the place, darting down every side road and making cautious, circuitous detours around back lanes, as if trying to sneak into Vaduz. I watched carefully out of the window, but never did know at what point we entered Liechtenstein indeed wasn't certain that we were there at all until I saw the city-limit sign for Vaduz.

Everything about Liechtenstein is ridiculous. For a start it is ridiculously small: it is barely 1/250th the size of Switzerland, which of course is itself ridiculously small. It is the last remaining fragment of the Holy Roman Empire, and so obscure that its ruling family didn't even bother to come and see it for 150 years. It has two political parties, popularly known as the Reds and the Blacks, which have so few ideological differences that they share a motto: 'Faith in G.o.d, Prince and Fatherland'. Liechtenstein's last military engagement was in 1866, when it sent eighty men to fight against the Italians. n.o.body was killed. In fact you're going to like this they came back with eighty-one men, because they made a friend on the way. Two years later, realizing that the Liechtensteiners could beat no one, the Crown Prince disbanded the army.

More ridiculousness: it is the world's largest producer of sausage skins and false teeth. It is a notorious tax haven, the only country in the world with more registered companies than people (though most of these companies exist only as pieces of paper in someone's desk). It was the last country in Europe to give women suffrage (in 1984). Its single prison is so small that prisoners' meals are sent over from a nearby restaurant. To acquire citizenship, a referendum must be held in the applicant's village and, if that pa.s.ses, the Prime Minister and his cabinet must then vote on it. But this never happens, and hundreds of families who have lived in Liechtenstein for generations are still treated as foreigners.

Vaduz is not terribly picturesque, but the setting is arresting. The town nestles at the very foot of Mount Alpspitz, 6,700 feet high. On an outcrop directly above the town is the gloomy and fortress-like royal Schloss, looking uncannily like the Wicked Witch's castle in The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz. Every time I looked up at it I expected to see those winged monkeys flying in and out. Curiously, despite centuries as a backwater, Vaduz retains almost no sense of antiquity. The whole town looks as if it were built twenty years ago in a hurry not exactly ugly, but certainly undistinguished. Every time I looked up at it I expected to see those winged monkeys flying in and out. Curiously, despite centuries as a backwater, Vaduz retains almost no sense of antiquity. The whole town looks as if it were built twenty years ago in a hurry not exactly ugly, but certainly undistinguished.

It was a Sat.u.r.day and the main road through the town was backed up with big Mercedes from Switzerland and Germany. The rich must come at the weekends to visit their money. There were only four hotels in the central area. Two were full and one was closed, but I managed to get a room at the fourth, the Engel. It was friendly but outrageously expensive for what it offered, which wasn't much a lumpy bed, a reading light with a twenty-watt bulb, no TV, and a radio so old that I half expected to hear Edward R. Murrow broadcasting details of the Battle of Monte Ca.s.sino. Instead, all I could get was polka music, mercifully interrupted at frequent intervals by a German-speaking disc jockey who had evidently overdosed on sleeping pills (or possibly on polka music), judging by the snappiness of his delivery. He ... talked ... like ... this, like someone trapped in a terrible dream, which I suppose in a sense he was.

The sole virtue of the room was that it had a balcony with a view over the main church and town square (really just a strip of lawn with a car park) and beyond that a handsome prospect of mountains. By leaning perilously out over the street and craning my neck at a peculiar angle, I could just see the Schloss high above me. It is still the home of the Crown Prince, one of the richest men in Europe and possessor of the second-finest private collection of paintings in the world, outdone only by the Queen of England. He has the only Leonardo in private hands and the largest collection of Rubenses, but a fat lot of good that does the eager visitor, because the castle is completely off limits, and plans to build a modest national gallery to house a few of the paintings have yet to get off the ground. Parliament has been debating the matter for almost twenty years, but the thought of parting with the necessary funds has proved too painful so far and evidently no one would dare to ask the royal family (worth an estimated $1.3 billion) to dip into their treasure chest and pa.s.s down some bauble to get the ball rolling.

I went out for a walk and to check out the possibilities for dinner, which were not abundant. The business district was only a couple of blocks square and the shops were so pedestrian and small-town a newsagent's, a chemist's, a gift shop selling the sort of gifts that you dread receiving at Christmas from your in-laws that it was impossible to linger. Restaurants were thin on the ground and either very expensive or discouragingly empty. Vaduz is so small that if you walk for fifteen minutes in any direction you are deep in the country. It occurred to me that there is no reason to go to Liechtenstein except to say that you have been there. If it were simply part of Switzerland (which in fact it is in all but name and postage stamps and even then it uses the Swiss postal service) n.o.body would ever dream of visiting it.

I wandered down a pleasant but anonymous residential street where the picture windows of every living-room offered a ghostly glow of television, and then found myself on a straight, unpaved and unlit road through flat, still-fallow fields. The view back to Vaduz was unexpectedly lovely. Darkness had fallen with that suddenness you find in the mountains and a pale moon with a chunk bitten out of it hung in the sky. The Schloss, bathed in yellow floodlights, stood commandingly above the town looking impregnable and draughty.

The road ended in a T-junction to nowhere and I turned back for another look around the town. I settled for dinner in the dining-room of the Vaduzerhof Hotel. Two hours earlier I had been solemnly a.s.sured that the hotel was closed, but the dining-room was certainly open, if not exactly overwhelmed with customers, and people also seemed to be coming in through the front door, taking keys off hooks in the hallway and going upstairs to bedrooms. Perhaps the people at the hotel just didn't like the look of me, or maybe they correctly suspected that I was a travel writer and would reveal to the world the secret that the food at the Vaduzerhof Hotel at No. 3 Stadtlestra.s.se in Vaduz is Not Very Good. Who can say?

In the morning I presented myself in the dining-room of the Engel for breakfast. It was the usual continental breakfast of bread and b.u.t.ter and cold cuts and cheese, which I didn't really want, but it was included in the room charge and with what they were charging me I felt bound to empty a couple of little tubs of b.u.t.ter and waste some cheese, if nothing else. The waiter brought me coffee and asked if I wanted orange juice.

'Yes, please,' I said.

It was the strangest orange juice I've ever seen. It was a peachy colour and had red stringy bits suspended in it like ganglia. They looked unnervingly like those deeply off-putting red squiggles you sometimes find in the yolks of eggs. It didn't even taste like orange juice and after two polite sips I pushed it to one side and concentrated on my coffee and cutting slices of ham into small, unreusable pieces.

Twenty minutes later I presented myself at the checkout desk and the pleasant lady there handed me my bill to review while she did brusque things with my credit card in a flattening machine. I was surprised to see that there was a charge of four francs for orange juice. Four francs is a lot of money.

'Excuse me, but I've been charged four francs for orange juice.'

'Did you not have orange juice?'

'Yes, but the waiter never said I'd be charged for it. I thought it was part of the breakfast.'

'Oh no, our orange juice is very special. Fresh-squeezed. It is-' she said some German word which I a.s.sume translates as 'full of stringy red bits' then added 'and as it is razzer razzer special we charge four francs for it.' special we charge four francs for it.'

'Fine, splendid, but I really feel you should have told me.'

'But, sir, you ordered it and you drank it.'

'I didn't drink it it tasted like duck's urine and besides I thought it was free.'

We were at an impa.s.se. I don't usually make a scene in these circ.u.mstances I just come back at night and throw a brick through the window but this time I was determined to take a stand and refused to sign the bill until the four-franc charge was removed. I was even prepared to be arrested over it, though for one unsettling moment I confess I had a picture of me being brought my dinner in jail and taking a linen cloth off the tray to find a gla.s.s of peach-coloured orange juice and a single slice of ham cut into tiny pieces.

Eventually she relented, with more grace than I probably deserved, but it was clear from the rigid all-is-forgiven smile she gave me as she handed me back my card that there will never be a room for me at the Hotel Engel in Vaduz, and with the Vaduzerhof also evidently barred to me for life, it was obvious that I had spent my last night in Liechtenstein.

As it was a Sunday, there was no sign of any buses running, so I had no choice but to walk to Buchs, half a dozen miles to the north, but I didn't mind. It was a flawless spring morning. Church bells rang out all over the valley, as if a war had just ended. I followed the road to the nearby village of Schaan, successfully gambled that a side lane would lead me to the Rhine, and there found a gravel footpath waiting to conduct me the last half-mile to the bridge to Switzerland. I had never crossed a border by foot before and felt rather pleased with myself. There was no border post of any kind, just a plaque in the centre of the bridge showing the formal dividing line between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. No one was around, so I stepped back and forth over the line three or four times just for the novelty of it.

Buchs, on the opposite bank of the river, wasn't so much sleepy as comatose. I had two hours to kill before my train, so I had a good look around the town. This took four minutes, including rest stops. Everything was geschlossen.

I went to the station and bought a ticket to Innsbruck, then went and looked for the station buffet. It was shut, but a news-stand was open and I had a look at it. I was ready for something to read Ziegler's relentless body-count of fourteenth-century European peasants was beginning to lose its sparkle but the only thing they had in English was the weekend edition of USA Today, USA Today, a publication that always puts me in mind of a newspaper we used to get in primary school called a publication that always puts me in mind of a newspaper we used to get in primary school called My Weekly Reader. My Weekly Reader. I am amazed enough that they can find buyers for I am amazed enough that they can find buyers for USA Today USA Today in the USA, but the possibility that anyone would ever present himself at the station kiosk in Buchs, Switzerland, and ask for it seemed to me to set a serious challenge to the laws of probability. I thought about stealing a look at the paper, just to check the Major League baseball standings, but the kiosk lady was watching me with a look that suggested this could be a punishable offence in Switzerland. in the USA, but the possibility that anyone would ever present himself at the station kiosk in Buchs, Switzerland, and ask for it seemed to me to set a serious challenge to the laws of probability. I thought about stealing a look at the paper, just to check the Major League baseball standings, but the kiosk lady was watching me with a look that suggested this could be a punishable offence in Switzerland.

Instead I found the way to my platform, unburdened myself of my rucksack and took a seat on a bench. I allowed my eyelids to droop and pa.s.sed the time by composing Swiss riddles.

Q. What is the best way to make a Swiss roll?A. Take him to a mountaintop and give him a push.Q. How do you make a Swiss person laugh?A. Hold a gun to his head and say, 'Laugh.'Q. What do you call a great lover in Switzerland?A. An immigrant.Q. How can you spot a Swiss anarchist?A. He doesn't use the post code.Q. What do you call a gathering of boring people in Switzerland?A. Zurich.

Tiring of this, I switched, for no explainable reason, to multiple-choice Adolf Hitler-Eva Braun jokes, but I had only completed one- Q. What were Adolf Hitler's last words to Eva Braun?a. Did you remember to cancel the milk?b. Bang! OK, it's your turn.c. All right, all right, I'll see to it that they name a range of small electrical appliances after you.

-when the train pulled in. With more than a little relief, I boarded it, pleased to be heading for yet another new country.

19. Austria

I walked through the station at Innsbruck with an almost eerie sense of familiarity, a sensation half-way between deja vu and actual memory. I hadn't been to Innsbruck for eighteen years and hadn't thought about it more than once or twice in that time, but finding myself there now it was as if it had been no more than a day or two and the years in between had never happened. The station appeared not to have changed at all. The buffet was where I remembered it and still serving goulash with dumplings, a meal that I ate four times in three days because it was the cheapest and most substantial food in town. The dumplings were the size of cannonb.a.l.l.s and just as filling. About as tasty as well.

I took a room in a small hotel in the centre, the Goldene Krone, and spent the dying hours of the afternoon walking through slanting sunshine that bathed the town in golden light. Innsbruck really is an ideal little city, with solid baroque buildings and a roofscape of bulbous towers. It is carefully preserved without having the managed feel of an open-air museum, and its setting is as near to perfection as could be imagined. At the end of every street you are confronted by a towering backdrop of mountains, muscular and snow-peaked beneath intensely clear skies.

I walked the paved footpath along the River Inn, swift and shallow and clear as polished gla.s.s, pa.s.sed through a small park called the Hofgarten and drifted out into the residential avenues beyond: long, straight, shaded streets lined with stolid three-storey houses that disappeared in the treetops. Many of them too many surely for such a small city contained doctors' surgeries and had shiny bra.s.s plates on the walls or gates announcing DR G. MUNSTER/ZAHNARZT OR DR ROBERT SCHLUGEL/PLASTISCHE CHIRURGIE DR G. MUNSTER/ZAHNARZT OR DR ROBERT SCHLUGEL/PLASTISCHE CHIRURGIE the sort of offices where you know that you would be ordered, whatever the complaint, to undress, climb onto the table and put your feet in the stirrups. Bright trams, empty but for the driver, trundled heavily past from time to time, but all the rest was silence. the sort of offices where you know that you would be ordered, whatever the complaint, to undress, climb onto the table and put your feet in the stirrups. Bright trams, empty but for the driver, trundled heavily past from time to time, but all the rest was silence.

It occurred to me that one of my first vivid impressions of Europe was a Walt Disney movie I saw as a boy. I believe it was called The Trouble With Angels. The Trouble With Angels. It was a hopelessly sentimental and naff fictionalized account of how a group of cherry-cheeked boys with impish instincts and voices like angels made their way into the Vienna Boys' Choir. I enjoyed the film hugely, being hopelessly sentimental and naff myself, but what made a lasting indent on me was the Europeanness of the background the cobbled streets, the toytown cars, the corner shops with a tinkling bell above the door, the modest, lived-in homyness of each boy's familial flat. It all seemed so engaging and agreeably old-fashioned compared with the sleek and modern world I knew, and it left me with the unshakeable impression that Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe. And so again it seemed to me here in Innsbruck. For the first time in a long while, certainly for the first time on this trip, I felt a palpable sense of wonder to find myself here, on these streets, in this body, at this time. I was in Europe now. It seemed an oddly profound notion. It was a hopelessly sentimental and naff fictionalized account of how a group of cherry-cheeked boys with impish instincts and voices like angels made their way into the Vienna Boys' Choir. I enjoyed the film hugely, being hopelessly sentimental and naff myself, but what made a lasting indent on me was the Europeanness of the background the cobbled streets, the toytown cars, the corner shops with a tinkling bell above the door, the modest, lived-in homyness of each boy's familial flat. It all seemed so engaging and agreeably old-fashioned compared with the sleek and modern world I knew, and it left me with the unshakeable impression that Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe. And so again it seemed to me here in Innsbruck. For the first time in a long while, certainly for the first time on this trip, I felt a palpable sense of wonder to find myself here, on these streets, in this body, at this time. I was in Europe now. It seemed an oddly profound notion.

I found my way back to my hotel along the city's main street, Maria-Theresien-Stra.s.se. It is a handsome thoroughfare and well worth an amble, so long as you don't let your gaze pause for one second on any of the scores of shop windows displaying dirndls and lederhosen, beer mugs with pewter lids, peaked caps with a feather in the brim, long-stemmed pipes and hand-carved religious curios. I don't suppose any small area of the world has as much to answer for in the way of c.r.a.ppy keepsakes as the Tyrol, and the sight of so much of it brings a depressing reminder that you are among a nation of people who like this sort of thing.

This is the down-side of Austria. The same impulse that leads people to preserve the past in their cities leads them also to preserve it in their hearts. No one clings to former glories as the Austrians do, and since these former glories include one of the most distasteful interludes in history, this is not their most attractive feature.

They are notoriously red-necked. I remember that Katz and I, while hitch-hiking through Austria, made friends with two Germans of a similar age, Thomas and Gerhard, who were making their way by thumb from Berlin to India with a view to finding spiritual enlightenment and good drugs. We camped together in a high Alpine pa.s.s, somewhere along the road between Salzburg and Klagenfurt, and in the evening walked into the nearest village, where we found awaiting us a perfect inn, full of black panelled wood and a log fire with a sleeping dog before it and ruddy-faced yeoman customers swinging steins of beer. We ate sausages with dabs of mustard and drank many beers. It was all most convivial.

I remember sitting there late in the evening, glowing with drink and thinking what a fine place this was and what good, welcoming people the Austrians were they were smiling warmly at us and occasionally raising gla.s.ses to us in a toast when the Germans leaned forward and told us in low voices that we were in danger. The Austrians, it seemed, were mocking us. Unaware that two of our party could understand every word they said, they were talking freely every one of them: the men, the women, the landlord, the landlord's wife, the whole f.u.c.king village about taking us out back and, as Gerhard translated, 'of giving us a hair-cut and running us through with zer pitchforks'.

A roar of laughter pa.s.sed across the room. Gerhard showed a flicker of a smile. 'Zey say zat perhaps zey should also make us to eat of zer horse dung.'

'Oh, swell,' said Katz. 'As if I haven't eaten enough s.h.i.t on this trip already.'

My head swivelled like a periscope. Those cheery smiles had become demonic leers. A man opposite toasted me again and gave me a wink that said, Hope you like horse s.h.i.t, kid.

I turned to Gerhard. 'Should we call the police?'

'I sink zat man over zere is is zer police.' zer police.'

'Oh, swell,' said Katz again.

'I sink maybe we should just go to zer door as quietly quietly as we can and zen run like, how you say, zer clappers.' as we can and zen run like, how you say, zer clappers.'

We rose, leaving behind unfinished beers, strolled casually to the door, nodding to our would-be a.s.sailants as we pa.s.sed, and ran like h.e.l.l. We could hear a fresh roar of laughter lift the inn roof off its moorings, but no one followed us and the soft squish of horse s.h.i.t between the teeth remains for me thank you, G.o.d, thank you, thank you, thank you for ever in the realms of the imagined.

As we lay in our sleeping bags in a dewy meadow beneath a thousand stars, with the jagged mountains outlined against a fractionally less black sky and the smell of mown hay hanging on the still night air, I remarked to no one in particular that I had never seen such a beautiful place as this.

'Zat's zer whole trouble wiz Austria,' said Thomas with sudden pa.s.sion, in one of the few times I actually heard him speak. 'It's such a lovely country, but it's full of f.u.c.king Austrians.'

I travelled the next day to Salzburg. I found it hard to warm to, which surprised me because I had fond, if somewhat hazy, memories of the place. It was full of tourists and, worse still, full of shops selling things that only a tourist could want: Tyrolean c.r.a.p and Alpine c.r.a.p and c.r.a.p c.r.a.p and, above all, Mozart c.r.a.p Mozart chocolates, Mozart marzipan, Mozart busts, Mozart playing-cards, Mozart ashtrays, Mozart liqueurs. Building and roadworks seemed to be in progress everywhere, filling the town with dust and noise. I seemed to be forever walking on planks over temporary ditches.

The streets of the old town, crammed into a compact s.p.a.ce between the River Salzach and the perpendicular walls of the Monchsberg mountain, are undeniably quaint and attractive, but so overbearingly twee as to bring on frequent bouts of dry heaving. Along Getreidega.s.se, the site of Mozart's birthplace, every shop had one of those hanging pretzel signs above the door, including, G.o.d help us, the local McDonald's (the sign had a golden-arches M worked into its filigree), as if we were supposed to think that they have been dispensing hamburgers there since the Middle Ages. I sank to my knees and beat my poor head on the cobbled pavement.

I'm all for McDonald's in European cities, I truly am, but we should never forget that any company that chooses a half-witted clown named Ronald McDonald as its official public face cannot be relied on to exercise the best judgement in matters of corporate presentation.

The people of McDonald's need guidance. They need to be told that Europe is not Disneyland. They need to be instructed to take suitable premises on a side street and given, without option, a shop design that is recognizable, appropriate to its function and yet reasonably subdued. It should look like a normal European bistro, with perhaps little red curtains and a decorative aquarium and nothing to tell you from the outside that this is a McDonald's except for a discreet golden-arches transfer on each window and a steady stream of people with enormous a.s.ses going in and out of the door. While we're at it, they should be told that they will no longer be allowed to provide each customer with his own weight in styrofoam boxes and waste paper. And finally they have to promise to shoot Ronald. When these conditions are met, McDonald's should be allowed to operate in Europe, but not until.

The main square in Salzburg, the Mozartplatz, was quite astonishingly ugly for a city that prides itself on its beauty a big expanse of asphalt, as charming as a Tesco car park, one extraordinarily begrimed statue of the great man, and a few half-broken benches, around every one of which was crowded a noisy cl.u.s.ter of thirteen-year-old Italians in whom the hormonal imbalances of adolescence were clearly having a deleterious effect. It was awful.

What surprised me was that I remembered Salzburg as being a beautiful place. It was in Salzburg that Katz and I met Gerhard and Thomas, in a bar around the corner from the Mozartplatz, and it was such a thrill to have someone to dilute Katz's company that I think my enthusiasm may have coloured my memory of the city. In any case, I could find nothing now in the old town but these wretched souvenir shops and restaurants and bars whose trade was overwhelmingly non-local and thus offered about as much charm and local colour as a Pizza Hut on Carnaby Street.

When I crossed the river to the more modern right bank, I found I liked Salzburg much better. A long, quiet street of big houses stood overlooking the Salzach and the views across to the old town were splendid: the ancient roofs, the three domed spires of the cathedral and the vast, immensely heavy-looking Hohensalzburg fortress sinking into the low mountain-top at its back. The shopping streets of the modern town were to my mind much more interesting and appealing and certainly more real than their historic counterparts across the river. I had a coffee in a Konditorei on Linzer Ga.s.se, where every entering customer got a hearty 'Gruss Gott!' from every member of the staff. It was like on Cheers Cheers when Norm comes in, only they did it for everybody, including me, which I thought was wonderful. Afterwards I had a good dinner, a couple of beers and a long evening walk along the river and felt that Salzburg wasn't such a bad place at all. But it wasn't the Salzburg that most people come to see. when Norm comes in, only they did it for everybody, including me, which I thought was wonderful. Afterwards I had a good dinner, a couple of beers and a long evening walk along the river and felt that Salzburg wasn't such a bad place at all. But it wasn't the Salzburg that most people come to see.

Vienna is a little under 200 miles east of Salzburg and it took all morning and half the afternoon to get there. There is this curiously durable myth that European trains are wonderfully swift and smooth and a dream to travel on. The trains in Europe are in fact often tediously slow and for the most part the railways persist in the antiquated system of dividing the carriages into compartments. I used to think this was rather jolly and friendly, but you soon discover that it is like spending seven hours in a waiting-room waiting for a doctor who never arrives. You are forced into an awkward intimacy with strangers, which I always find unsettling. If you do anything at all take something from your pocket, stifle a yawn, rummage in your rucksack everyone looks over to see what you're up to. There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those una.s.suageable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer short that have somehow become concertinaed between your b.u.t.tocks, the Kellogg's cornflake that is teasingly and unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril. It was the cornflake that I ached to get at. The itch was all-consuming. I longed to thrust a finger so far up my nose that it would look as if I were scratching the top of my head from the inside, but of course I was as powerless to deal with it as a man with no arms.

You even have to watch your thoughts. For no reason I can explain, except perhaps that I was inordinately preoccupied with bodily matters, I began to think of a sub-editor I used to work with on the business section of The Times. The Times. I shall call him Edward, since that was his name. Edward was crazy as f.u.c.k, which in those palmy pre-Murdoch days was no impediment to employment, or even promotion to high office, on the paper, and he had a number of striking peculiarities, but the one I particularly remember was that late at night, after the New York markets had shut and there was nothing much to do, he would straighten out half a dozen paper clips and probe his ears with them. And I don't mean delicate little scratchings. He would really jam those paper clips home and then twirl them between two fingers, as if tuning in a radio station. It looked excruciating, but Edward seemed to derive immense satisfaction from it. Sometimes his eyes would roll up into his head and he would make ecstatic little gurgling noises. I suppose he thought no one was watching, but we all sat there fascinated. Once, during a particularly intensive session, when the paper clip went deeper and deeper and looked as if it might be stuck, John Price, the chief sub-editor, called out, 'Would it help, Edward, if one of us pulled from the other side?' I shall call him Edward, since that was his name. Edward was crazy as f.u.c.k, which in those palmy pre-Murdoch days was no impediment to employment, or even promotion to high office, on the paper, and he had a number of striking peculiarities, but the one I particularly remember was that late at night, after the New York markets had shut and there was nothing much to do, he would straighten out half a dozen paper clips and probe his ears with them. And I don't mean delicate little scratchings. He would really jam those paper clips home and then twirl them between two fingers, as if tuning in a radio station. It looked excruciating, but Edward seemed to derive immense satisfaction from it. Sometimes his eyes would roll up into his head and he would make ecstatic little gurgling noises. I suppose he thought no one was watching, but we all sat there fascinated. Once, during a particularly intensive session, when the paper clip went deeper and deeper and looked as if it might be stuck, John Price, the chief sub-editor, called out, 'Would it help, Edward, if one of us pulled from the other side?'

I thought of this as we went tracketa-tracketa tracketa-tracketa across the endless Austrian countryside and I laughed out loud a sudden lunatic guffaw that startled me as much as my three companions. I covered my mouth with my hand, but more laughter embarra.s.sed, helpless came leaking out. The other pa.s.sengers looked at me as if I had just been sick down my shirt. It was only by staring out of the window and concentrating very hard for twenty minutes that I was able to compose myself and return once again to the more serious torments of the cornflake in my nostril. across the endless Austrian countryside and I laughed out loud a sudden lunatic guffaw that startled me as much as my three companions. I covered my mouth with my hand, but more laughter embarra.s.sed, helpless came leaking out. The other pa.s.sengers looked at me as if I had just been sick down my shirt. It was only by staring out of the window and concentrating very hard for twenty minutes that I was able to compose myself and return once again to the more serious torments of the cornflake in my nostril.

At Vienna's huge Westbahnhof I paid to have a room found for me, then walked to the city centre along the long and ugly Mariahilfer Stra.s.se, wondering if I had been misled about the glories of Vienna. For a mile and a half, from the station to the Ringstra.s.se, the street was lined with seedy-looking discount stores the sort of places that sell goods straight out of their cardboard boxes and customers to match. It was awful, but then near the Hofburg palace I pa.s.sed into the charmed circle of the Ringstra.s.se and it was like the sun breaking out from behind clouds. Everything was lovely and golden.

My hotel, the Wandl, was not particularly charming or friendly, but it was reasonably cheap and quiet and it had the estimable bonus of being in almost the precise geographical centre of the city, just behind the baroque Schottenkirche and only half a block from Graben, one of the two s.p.a.cious pedestrian shopping streets that dominate the heart of Vienna. The other is Karntnerstra.s.se, which joins Graben at a right angle by the cathedral square. Between them, they provide Vienna with the finest pedestrian thoroughfare in Europe. Strget may be a hair longer, others may have slightly more interesting buildings, and a few may be fractionally more elegant, but none is all of these things. I knew within minutes that I was going to like Vienna.

I went first to the cathedral. It is very grand and Gothic outside, but inside I found it oddly lifeless the sort of place that gives you a cold shiver and rather neglected as well. The bra.s.s was dull and unpolished, the pews were worn, the marble seemed heavy and dead, as if all the natural luminescence had been drained from it. It was a relief to step back outside.

I went to a nearby Konditorei for coffee and a 15,000-calorie slice of cake and planned my a.s.sault on the city. I had with me the Observer Guide to Vienna, Observer Guide to Vienna, which included this piece of advice: 'In Vienna, it is best to tackle the museums one at a time.' Well, which included this piece of advice: 'In Vienna, it is best to tackle the museums one at a time.' Well, thank thank you, I thought. All these years I've been going to museums two at a time and I couldn't figure out why I kept getting depressed. you, I thought. All these years I've been going to museums two at a time and I couldn't figure out why I kept getting depressed.

I decided to start at the top with the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was fabulous vast, grand, full of great paintings. They employ a commendable system there. In every room is a rack of cards giving histories of the paintings in that room in a choice of four languages. You wander around with a card looking at the paintings and reading the notes and then replace it in the rack before pa.s.sing on to the next room where you collect another. I thought it was a great idea.

The only problem with the Kunstmuseum is that it is so enormous. Its lofty halls just run on and on, and before I was a third of the way through it I was suffering museum fatigue. In these circ.u.mstances, especially when I have paid a fortune to get in and feel that there are still a couple of hours standing between me and my money's worth, I find myself involuntarily supplying captions to the pictures: Salome, on being presented the head of John the Baptist on a salver, saying, 'No, I ordered a double cheeseburger,' and an exasperated St Sebastian whining, 'I'm warning you guys, the next person who shoots an arrow is going to get reported.' But this time I did something that astonished even me. I left, deciding that I would come back for a second sweep later in the week, in spite of the cost.

Instead, for a change of pace, I went to the Tobacco Museum, not far away behind the Messepalast. This was expensive too. Most things in Vienna are. The entrance charge was twenty schillings, two-thirds as much as the Kunstmuseum, but it was hardly two-thirds as good. In two not-very-large rooms I was treated to a couple of dozen display cases packed with old pipes (including a few grotesquely anti-Semitic ones), cigars, matches, cigarettes and cigarette boxes. Around the larger of the two rooms was an elevated gallery of paintings with little artistic merit and nothing in common except that one or more of the people portrayed was smoking. Not recommended.

Nor, I have to say, is the Albertina. This was even more expensive forty-five schillings. For that kind of money, I would expect to be allowed to take one of the drawings away with me. But I paid without a whimper because I had read that the Albertina has one of the world's great collections of graphic art, which I just happen to like a lot, but in fact there was hardly anything on show. It was a huge building, but the public gallery was confined to eight small rooms at the back, all with creaking floors and sketching students and unmemorable drawings by mostly obscure artists.

The postcard-stand outside was full of drawings 'from the Albertina collection' by artists like Rubens and Durer, but I had seen none of these. The woman running the stall didn't speak English and when I held up a Durer postcard and asked her where the original was, she just kept saying, with that irritableness for which the Viennese are noted, 'Ja, ja, das ist ein postcard postcard,' as if I had said, 'Pardon me, is this a postcard or is it a snack food?' and refused to try to grasp my question until finally I had no choice but to slap her to the ground and leave.

Apart from her, however, I didn't find the Viennese especially rude and pushy, which rather disappointed me, because I had heard many times that they are the most disagreeable people in Europe. In The Double Eagle, The Double Eagle, Stephen Brook's excellent account of Vienna, Budapest and Prague, he notes that he met many foreign residents of the city who reported being stopped on the streets by strangers and rebuked for crossing against the lights or letting their children walk with their coats unb.u.t.toned. Stephen Brook's excellent account of Vienna, Budapest and Prague, he notes that he met many foreign residents of the city who reported being stopped on the streets by strangers and rebuked for crossing against the lights or letting their children walk with their coats unb.u.t.toned.

Brook also promised that at the famous Cafe Landtmann, on the Ringstra.s.se next to the Burgtheater, 'the waiters and cloak-room attendants treat you like s.h.i.t' and in this he was certainly closer to my experience. I didn't feel precisely precisely like excrement, but the waiters certainly did have that studied air of superiority that you find among a certain cla.s.s of European waiter. When I was younger this always cowed me, but now I just think, Well, if you're so hot how come I'm sitting down and you're doing the fetching? Let's be honest, if your career consists of nothing more demanding than conveying trays of food back and forth between a kitchen and a dining-room all day, there's not really much of anyone you are superior to, is there? Except perhaps estate agents. like excrement, but the waiters certainly did have that studied air of superiority that you find among a certain cla.s.s of European waiter. When I was younger this always cowed me, but now I just think, Well, if you're so hot how come I'm sitting down and you're doing the fetching? Let's be honest, if your career consists of nothing more demanding than conveying trays of food back and forth between a kitchen and a dining-room all day, there's not really much of anyone you are superior to, is there? Except perhaps estate agents.