TRIGLAV - part 1

After the film fest, I blundered into the best experience of my whole trip. You remember that film I described, "The Sunny Side of the Alps"? I suppose it must have planted a seed in my mind, because when I later went to Slovenia, I climbed the same mountain that the father and son climb in that movie (sometimes life imitates art). It's called Triglav, and it's the highest peak in Slovenia, at 2864 metres (almost 10,000 feet), in the Julian Alps.

But I'll remain a slave to chronology, and fill you in on a few other interesting experiences I had before getting to the mountain.

I had a good last day of movies at the film fest, finding at least one romantic comedy to renew my faith in life: Un baiser, s'il vous plait, by "the French Woody Allan", one Emmanuel Mouret

Also saw a half-realized poetic doc called Peace with Seals, made by a Czech about the dying out of the Mediterranian harp seal (tourists are occupying all its beaches). It was ambitious but lacked any narrative arc. There was a scene in it where they're interviewing a white South African man who is a strong defender of the seals there. Then he suddenly breaks off from the interview and yells at someone offscreen, "We're trying to do something here, and you walk through like a bloody idiot!" The camera turns to reveal a black man, looking offended, his expression saying, "What's your fucking problem, jerk?" He wasn't interfering with the shot at all, and the seal defender just comes off looking like a prick. I have to wonder why the filmmaker put that in the film, because it harms the credibility of the save-the-seals message he's aiming at. Later on, the seal defender calls humans "the cancer of the world". It's too bad that most defenders of wildlife are so anti-human, although I understand where they're coming from - if you're a muslim living in Bosnia it's pretty hard not to be anti-Serb, for instance. But I think we have to rise above these group hatreds, whether they be based on ethnicity, or species, or even kayakers vrs. canoeists. I actually agree that taken together, humanity is the cancer of the world. I don't think you can look at the collective impact of us on the non-us world and come to any different conclusion; in almost every case we make life worse for other species (and the few exceptions - pidgeons, some viruses, blue-green algie - have usually succeeded despite our best efforts to control or eradicate them, not because of benevolence towards them). Climate change can easily be analogized to a planet fever, and we are the virus that the Earth is trying to rid itself of. I believe all this, but I still like most humans as individuals.

The final film of the fest was one of the best : Involuntary. It's a Swedish film about how people behave (badly) in groups (and as such has something to do with what I was just talking about). What's really interesting about it is how it was shot: each scene is done in one long take, the camera never moves, and it often doesn't even include everyone involved in the shot. For instance, the first shot of the film is just of people's feet as they arrive for a dinner party and are greeted by the hosts. The scenes switch back and forth between four seperate story lines, with completely separate characters (thankfully, none of the storylines or characters interweave - that's been done to death lately), each one illustrating in an almost clinical manner different examples of the mob mentality. Entertaining, and educational.

I can't wrap up my description of the film fest without mentioning one of the stars of the festival: the dude who came onstage at the end of the filmmakers' introductions before each film in the Grand Hall to lay the mic stands down on the floor so that they wouldn't block the screen. Every time he did so, the mostly young crowd, having recently discovered irony, gave him a rousing round of applause. But perhaps there was more to it than simple irony, because there was a certain decripid charisma to the man; his stooped walk, his wrinkled suit, his fraying hair. And he played his role well, drawing out his performance much longer than necessary, waiting for silence to fall, then murmuring a few well-chosen words into the mic and bowing to the crowd before shuffling offstage.

My favourite film of the fest was definately Tulpan; I noticed that it won a prize in its category. On the whole it was a very good fest. But I do have one beef: no popcorn. What a huge disappointment. When I brought this issue up with Eva, she had a strong reaction: thank god there's no popcorn. All that munching is distracting. Whatever. If your concentration is so compromised that you can't handle a little innocent mastication from the seat next to you, then wait for it to come out on DVD, when you can watch it at home, silent and friendless. Most cinema is not high art, and as such a perfect compliment to eating, drinking, whispering, snoozing, and/or making out.

The film fest over and the canoe mailed to its new owner, Christian, I set off for Prague to meet up with Christian and collect my money. We met up, he bought a couple of paddles and the wheels as well, then invited me to stay at his place just outside of Prague for the night. I had a train ticket to Slovenia leaving at 6 the next morning, and happily agreed to stay at his place. We spent the evening drinking Czech rum and talking about our lives and South American politics. He is Ecuadorian, and I spent 6 months teaching English there almost 10 years ago. He was one of the lucky ones to escape that country's grinding poverty, and had a job in Prague working for Monster.com. He had married and had a child with a Czech woman, but they had seperated, and now his son lives right across the Vlatava river from him - which is partly why he wanted a canoe, to make visits easier. He also wanted to take his son out canoeing.

Onward to Slovenia. I enjoyed this train trip much more than the one to Prague from Amsterdam, because it was only about half the length, and went through some beautiful hills in Austria. When I got to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, I gave my coushsurfing host, Damjan, a call. "Are you the one with the canoe paddle?" he asked. As if he had to ask. He was already in the train station, looking for me.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do in Slovenia, but Damjan did. He quickly intuited my predilections and suggested I go to Bohinj lake, amidst the mountains 2 hours bus ride away, which I did the next day.

I hiked partly up one of the nearby mountains, lost my way on the poorly marked trails, and then walked to the Savica waterfall at the far end of the lake.

From the lake, I could see the Julian Alps to the north, topped by Triglav. The idea of climbing it first entered my mind as an idle fancy. I wanted to see Ljubjana, and the Mediterranian, and didn't have time for a mountain trek.

But pretty soon I started taking the idea seriously, and inquired at the tourist info about doing it. It sounded pretty doable; it's a Slovene national rite of passage to climb Triglav. Everyone here does it at least once in their life. The mountain is even on their flag. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So I decided to return the next day to climb Triglav.

Karlovy Vary Film Festival - Part II

The Grandhotel Pupp - home to the stars.

One of the theatres.

Sure is bright outside of the theatre.

The Prostitutes - a band a saw at the Rotes Berlin Club one night.

One of the grand prominades constructed around a mineral spring.

The Aeroport Club - a club set up just for the festival week in a derilict building.


I made it through another test of my stamina; it wasn't quite as gruelling as canoeing upriver for weeks, but 9 days of sitting on your ass does take a different sort of toll on the body. Fortunately there's easy access to spas for recouperation.

In all it's been great. I've really enjoyed my time here. Definately the best film fest I've been to. It seems to attract excellent people. But by the halfway point in the fest, my fortitude for films about harsh subjects was worn down to nothing. Wednesday was the day that broke my spirit: "Dead Hand Knocking" (child dies in motor scooter accident); "Karamozovi" (child dies after falling off bridge, then father shoots himself); and "Captive" (bond formed between opposing soldiers in Chechnya, but then Russian forced to suffocate Chechan prisoner to avoid being discovered by the enemy).

I think that the focus on tragedy I'm finding at this fest is not just that movies in general focus on it, nor just that I tend to gravitate towards tragidy in storytelling, but Eastern Europe in general - from which this fest draws a majority of its films - tends more towards the tragic in both storytelling and life. Many surveys on "subjective happiness" have found that Eastern Europeans are the least happy people on the planet, and they usually have the top suicide rates. Maybe it's a legacy of communism; but when I think about Russian literature that predates 1917, it seems similarly concerned with the dark side of the human spirit.

After that day, I decided to search out whatever light comedies I could find in the festival program. For the first time in my life, the words "romantic comedy" peaked my interest. I got off to a good start with "Tulpan", which is my favourite for the whole fest. It's set on the Kazakstani steppe - a perfectly flat moonscape of dust and scrub, where a few herders living in yurts make a bare-bones living. The protagonist returns from the navy and begins his search for a wife, for he needs a wife before the boss will give him a herd and allow him to fulfil his dream of creating a little rural paradise on the steppe, which in his eyes is the most beautiful place on earth. But, while there's thousands of sheep around, nubile women are few and far between. And the only one around has no interest in him, apparently because his ears stick out too much. It's a film of long, slow, wide shots, the camera left to roll while children scurry through the shot, playing games, livestock runs into the near distance, and dust devils spin across the plain. The director (who was in attendence) had the actors live together for a month in a yurt before beginning to shoot, so they come off authentically as a real family living in these conditions of no running water, no electricity - just a transitor radio that the son listens to, then recites the news to his father that evening as he straddles his back, picking blackheads off it. But the animals are the real stars of the film, in my opinion: donkeys comically mounting, a camel who chases her baby across the steppe, as it is strapped down in the motorcycle sidecar of the region's vet; a goat who licks the face of the protagonist after he bursts into her barn, thinking his love was in there. And thankfully the only death in it is a few stillborn lambs. It even has a fairly happy ending. A perfect film - everything a film should be. It certainly was no candy-coated version of reality, but it wasn't a total downer either. It just felt like real life, beautifully distilled.

The next film held great promise, based on its write up - playing frisbee on the beach in Goa, discussing philosophy - but took itself way too seriously. There was a ten-minute sequence, complete with "tragic" snyth music, of a woman crying, looking at photos of her dead husband, crying, splashing water on her face, crying - then finally writing her suicide note and heading off to Goa to walk into the ocean. Please. Who commits suicide like that? I should have walked out then, but stuck it out a bit longer, until a hippy on the beach drew a circle in the sand and started explaining how, if all the earth's history was in an hour, humanity would be the last millisecond - as if this was a huge revelation.

I'm glad I walked on that one because I was just in time to catch the last screening of "Be Kind, Rewind" - even though i didn't have a ticket. Though I love Michel Gondry's work, I'd missed this one when it played in N. America, so was glad to get in. It was a little more mainstream than his other films, but still very enjoyable. His characters are like innocent children. I've read that he directs with a very spontaneous, improvisational style, and it shows. This was just the antidote that i needed to the broodiness of many of the other films I've seen here.

This wasn't my first attempt to get into this film. I had gone to the Grand Hall - the premiere theatre here - at the appointed time, only to find no crowds waiting to get in. I waved my ticket at the guard, though, and he let me in. Pushed through the heavy doors; disoriented in the dark, i fumbled for an opening in the curtains. Finally I emerged near the front of the vast theatre, packed with people. I looked at the movie playing with confusion - judgingf from the faded colours, it seemed to be an older film. But maybe Gondry was just up to some of his tricks. No, this wasn't right: I fled the theatre. Back out in the light, I studied my ticket closely. Of course! I knew perfectly well that they use the 24 hour clock here. Why did I think that 11:30 meant 11:30pm? That would have been written as 23:30 here.

The next day's selection was a disappointment, unfortunately. They were all decent films - perhaps I've just reached that point of movie overload, where it takes a truly exceptional film for me to appreciate it. The film, "Mermaid", typified this day. It began well: the life story of a girl with supernatural powers. It was playful - sort of like "Amelie". But as the film went on (and it was on the long side, at 2 hours) is slowly deteriorated into a standard story of unrequited love, of the girl who tries to redeam the cynical older man. And then, just when things were moving towards a happy conclusion, the girl is run over and the guy chooses another woman. Maybe because it was a Russian film, it was as unable to finish happily as an American film is to finish unhappily.

Something else that this film did which really annoys me in movies: the build-up to an accident. I've seen many accidents - mostly involving cars - in these movies this week, and you can see almost all of them coming. Your fist tip off might be that, suddenly, the camera seems to suspiciously focuss a little too long on the simple act of driving. Why are we being shown all this driving, with no dialogue, you ask yourself. Because: something bad's about to happen. Then there's the cutting between the hero's car, and those unpleasant people in the red sports car, driving recklessly. Why do filmmakers feel it is necessary to warn viewers of an impending accident? Wouldn't it be better if on-screen accidents occured with the same unexpectedness as off-screen ones? Occasioanally I've seen a director confound this expectation - show all the lead-up to an accident, but then, at the last minute, it's avoided. But even this is just playing with the convention. I'd rather get rid of the convention all together.

I did see one good film that day, however - and it was the strangest film i've seen all festival. It's called "The Sunny Side of the Alps" and it's a Slovenian short film. It's a simple film with little dialogue, about a man who is jealous of his neighbour's new car, then takes his young son on a hike up to a nearby peak. The film ends with a song about the beauty of Slovenia, sung by a band in traditional dress in a bar, with a smiling, rocking back and forth crowd. So what's so wierd about that? All the characters are deepest Africa black. This is never explained - it's just taken to be normal. I loved it.

In non-film fest news, I've changed my return flight date to fast-approaching July 24. I alternate between thinking its too soon and too late - which i suppose means it's just about right. Based on a recommendation from Eva, I plan to do some couchsurfing in Slovenia for at least some of the remainder of my time here. And judging from that film, "The Sunny Side of the Alps", it is beautiful. And maybe they are all black there.

And I sold my canoe. 5000 Czech Crowns. I don't want to remind readers of how much I paid for it - it's in the archives somewhere. But I'm happy to get something for it, anyway. I said goodbye to Sarka yesterday, picked up by the courier, off to a town just outside Berlin. Sounds like she'll have a good home - father and son trips on the Vlatava. I have to meet him tomorrow in Prague to get the cash.

I went out again with Eva and her friends, this time to the Rotes Berlin Club, to see a band called the Prostitutes. There are apparently one of the most highly regarded bands in the Czech Republic. And I did really get into them. It's always nice to get a bit drunk and listen to ear-bleeding music once and a while. And a plus was that the lead singer was English, so I could understand most of the lyrics. Some memorable ones were, "Such a nice girl / Now she's dead!"

Another self-realization: My central dilema, or "why i love movies", is that I'm an introvert with a hunger for life. I don't know how to solve that one.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - part 1

Halfway through the 9 day fest now, and it's been pretty good times. This is a laid-back, casual film fest, with a lot of good films to offer. Its relaxed nature doesn't mean, however, that you don't need to fight a bit to get into your first choices of films. Practically every sceening is packed solid; if the tickets didn't sell out beforehand, it quickly fills up with ticketless but pass-holding fans who are let in 5 minutes before each showing.

It works like this: each morning the box office opens at 8, when you can buy tickets for that day and the next. A festival pass entitles you to three free screenings a day. You can buy more tickets, if you like, or you can show up and hope there's still room. But personally, after overdoing it at some previous film festivals (a binge of something like 50 films in 12 days at the Vancouver film fest a decade ago comes to mind), i find that 3 a day is my limit anyway.

The first bus of the day from the stadium where i'm camped to the Thermal Hotel, where the box offices are located, is at 8am. So every morning - almost - i'm up in time to catch this bus, after usually staying up past midnight to catch some interesting late night film screening, to buy my tickets as early as possible. Even arriving at the box office that early, though, I'm still at the tail end of the morning rush. But, especially since the crowds diminished slightly after the weekend, I usually don't run into too many sold out shows. And there's so many films I'm interested in seeing, I've always got backup choices if my first ones aren't available.

So my days start early and end late - and my sleep is never great in a campground with hundreds of others, not all of whom are there to sleep - but my days leave plenty of time for eating, writing, cappaccino sipping, and people watching.

The eating is not great. By this time I'm sick (literally) of Czech food: greasy, meaty, bready. But there aren't a lot of other options. There's so-so pizza and pasta. There's questionable Chinese. There's expensive sandwiches. Last night I ate at a Lebonese place called Ali Baby's. In Canada, Lebonese food is synonymous with cheap fast food, so i was surprised by the prices (though it was fast). I paid twice what i'd normally pay for a meal, though it was twice as good, my first truly good restaurant meal in ages. And vegetarian! Despite the price, I think I'll have to go back.

The normally sleepy and geriatric town of Karlovy Vary is transformed this week into a youthful party town. Students from around the county who would never have anything to do with such a relaxing, boring place, descend on it for this one week a year. While the packed theatres and crowds of youth fighting - though ever so good-naturedly - for a free seat attest to the passion they have for the films, they are here equally for the partying. Czechs - in particular the youth - seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for partying. Beer is for sale, and consumed, everywhere. I read one British critic's comments, saying this was his favourite festival to come to, because of the enthusiasm of the crowds, the lack of pretentiousness - and i can say that's true from what i've seen. There's a bit of the high-class, ritzy thing going on - black audis chauffering people from the fancy hotels to the shiny clubs; security guards in black suits trying to look essential; crowds gathered around red carpets (only, they're green), waiting for a limo to disgorge some director they've never heard of - but for the most part this is a down-to-earth affair.

This fest has shown me a new side of the Czech people. Maybe spending so much time in the countryside, I saw mostly older people. Here, I'm seeing the younger generation, and I'm impressed. They seem of a different breed than their parents - understandably so, given the changes that have occurred here in the past 20 years. The older generation is great in its own way, but more impenitrable than the youth, at least for me (and not just because of the language barrier). I find the youth to be open, hopeful, happy, and fun-loving. A good balance between free-spirited and thoughtful. Always traveling in groups of college buddies. I don't want to overstate it, but you could say it's the first generation to grow up here in quite awhile free and prosperous, in an independent state. It shows. Much of the great atmosphere at the film fest owes itself to the youth who flock here once a year. I can say that this is best best film festival, on the whole, that i've been to.

Today I saw a film called "Rok 68", a poetic documentary about the time around the Prague Spring. I knew little of this history. The Czechs tried to take socialism in a different direction from the Warsaw Pact countries - put a "human face" on it, open it up to real democracy - and their "brother" states sent in the tanks. The Czechs have always lived on the edges of other great powers. As i know from permaculture, "edge" is where the action is. They receive multiple influences. They straddle the ethnic and cultural divide between eastern and western Europe. They've tried repeatedly to chart their own course, only to be thwarted, betrayed, time and again by the great powers in whose shadow they are forced to live. I see their position in the middle of Europe as the reason behind why they seem to have a particular talent for balance. During the Cold War, they were communist, but not part of the Warsaw Pact. They were inbetween. And they love peace. Maybe it was just that they saw that fighting was hopeless, when they were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, invaded by the Nazis, occupied by the Soviets and their allies, but I think they also genuinely hate violence. Many small nations, after all, have fought invaders to the last man - but the Czechs have taken a different course. It's not that they lack bravery: civilians risked their lives and died in the streets offering symbolic protest against the Soviet tanks; students immolated themselves in an effort to awaken their people to revolution. But they seem to have reached a common calculus that the costs of violent resistence were greater than a temporary aquiescence to the will of the powerful - even if that temporary retreat meant sacrificing another generation to the stagnacy of ideology. I respect this approach. I think that, in the end, it has paid off for the Czech people. They now have a culture that has passed through the worst horrors of the 20th century with its optimism, culture, and heritage intact.

But back to the film fest. A series of shorts are screened before each film. Each one depicts a past winner of the Crystal Globe, the KVIFF's award for contribution to world cinema - Milos Forman, Danny De Vito, Harvey Keitel - and what they're using their little statuette holding a crystal ball aloft for. Harvey Keitel, for instance, tells a bartender in a Brooklyn dive about how "some asshole" dropped the award on his foot, thus accounting for its bandaged condition; Milos Forman uses his to crush his pills; a slumbering De Vito to knock over a ringing bedside phone he doesn't want to answer. They're very well done. But they also show how this festival doesn't take itself too seriously. And the fans clearly support this sentiment, because they always appaud these shorts, even though they must have seen them many times by now.

A few years ago Prague tried to start up its own film festival, and essentially replace KV as the premiere award giving festival in the Czech Republic. But KV's fans rallied behind the older film fest (this is its 43rd year) and turned out in large numbers to show their preference for it. After a few years, the Prague fest folded.

I must have been here for awhile now, because I'm starting to run into people I've met on a regular basis. It began with small incidents back in Cheb, like seeing that same thick-eyeglassed fisherman who was fishing beside our campsite one morning, then fishing in the river in the middle of town the next. Or exchanging a few words with some German tourists sitting across from me in the internet cafe, then seeing them the next day biking on a path along the river, as I paddled downstream. Here in Karlovy Vary, i ran into a couple of girlfriends of Lucie's who I'd met when i was here before. Then a few minutes later, i bumped into a woman i'd last seen in Cheb, and hoped to never see again. With a sinking heart, she told me that she lived in KV. She comes off as a little insane. My first tip-off was when, after she'd struck up a conversation with Viktoria, Sergio and I, she didn't let me get off the bus at our stop with the others, because she was writing her address on a piece of paper on my lap. I told her this was my stop, that i had to get off, that my friends were getting off as i speak, but she just said, "you can get off at the next one," and i watched helplessly as the doors closed between my travel buddies and I, and the bus pulled away. They caught up with me at the next stop, me still in the clutches of this woman. She seemed very keen on speaking Spanish with us, and getting us to stay at her parents' pension. All the while her face was flushed with a gaping smile and wide eyes. When we finally escaped i said to Viktoria, "Now i know what's it's like to be a celebrity stalked by fans." That is what it had felt like.

On this second encounter, she dragged me downstairs to meet her friends. But they had already gone into the movie theatre, and I didn't have a ticket. Then she made a brief but unsuccessful attempt to persuade the usher to let me in anyway. Then she bent over and started rifling through her bag, looking for her ticket, and blocking the flow of incoming movie-watchers. The usher had to ask her to move aside. Then one of her friends did arrive, and looked at her like she was crazy for trying to arrange some sort of meeting with me minutes before they were supposed to go into the theatre. I finally escaped when she went into the theatre, me saying i'd call her tomorrow. i don't know which I'm more afraid of: calling her and getting together, or not calling her and running into her and facing - what reaction? Her smile is the sort that i worry can turn to rage on a dime. I haven't called her yet, nor run into her again. But chances are high I will run into her, KV being as intimate as it is.

A more welcome encounter was with Eva and several of her friends. As I mentioned, she's a couchsurfer from KV (though, like almost all young people, she goes to school somewhere else, and is moving soon to Prague). She's a language student (Spanish) and many of her friends are language teachers. So i got another opportunity to speak Spanish, while we ate some pretty good Mexican food. After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon on the patio of the Thermal Hotel, drinking beer and talking, while more of her friends (who were all crashing at her parents' house in the suburbs - there were about 6 of them there i think) dropped in. The fact that everyone has a cellphone - or "mobile", as they call them here - greatly facilitates the kind of spontaneous meeting up for drinks that is a staple of social life for young people here. Every time I've called someone here, they always say, "I'm at such-and-such a bar, with some friends, come join us," or "i'm at such-and-such place, waiting for some friends to meet me here, then we're going to the bar. come meet me." this goes on all day, it seems.

Eva had a really smart, interesting, funny group of friends - which didn't surprise me considering the high quality of people I've met so far through couchsurfing - and I enjoyed hanging out with them for an afternoon. I can get quite talkative when I've been deprived of conversation for awhile. I had to hold myself back so i didn't monopolize things, especially in a foreign language (though they all spoke English well). Later that night, I met up with several of them again at a screening of Nicholas Roeg's (for whom there is a retrospective here) "Two Deaths" (which, despite its dark theme of the triumph of sexual obsession over morality, set during the Romanian revolution of 1989, I greatly enjoyed), and could have gone out to a club after that, but choose sleep instead. (Which i didn't get much of, since at 5am a group of people right next to me seemed to be either taking down or setting up a tent, talking and laughing loudly all the while. "I hate people," I grumbled into my pillow.) But I will go to a club tonight, as Eva recommends the band (something about the "chorus of the prostitutes"?), and i should go clubbing at least once while i'm here. It's at a place called Propaganda, which is KV's only year-round club (though a number of other ad-hoc ones pop up for the festival).

And what about the films, you ask? They've all been good, except for a couple of duds, and several exceptional ones. The only one I had to walk out on, was a documentary called "Christopher Colombus: The Enigma", by renouned Portuegese director Manoel de Oliveira - who, i believe, recently turned 100. I had a vague recollection of seeing something else of his, and liking it. But this film was just a humourless guy in different stages of his life, dragging his wife around to every historical monument or ruin that had anything to do with Colombus - who, he was out to prove, was born in Portugal. They would walk up to some statue, and the guy would spout off for several minutes about the significance of it. I don't even find this form of tourism interesting to do, let alone watching someone else go through it. Manoel, what were you thinking?

The highlight of the fest so far for me was, to my surprise, a Canadian film. I don't usually like Canadian films, but Guy Maddin is definately a category to himself. Although I don't usually like his films that much either, i like what he seems to be trying to do. i like his style a lot, just not the execution. But this film, called "My Winnipeg" - a poetic rumination on his love/hate relationship with the city he's lived his whole life in - I liked better than his other work. It's got some moments that drag, but there are also some inspired sequences. I'm not sure the Czech audience liked it much, though. There were a number of walkouts, and it only received tepid applause afterwards. I don't blame them; Maddin doesn't make it easy for people to like his films - often blurry, black and white, badly acted. If you can see through the warts, though, there's treasure.

The first film I saw was "In the City of Sylvia". I was attracted to the screening because it was advertised as having little dialogue, and i often like films that emphasize their power as a visual medium over a literary one. It wasn't great - not enough happened for my tastes - but i did enjoy it because it so closely mirrored aspects of my own life right now. It featured a guy wandering around a city in France, travelling alone, sitting in cafes and looking intently at the people around him, all talking. The envelope of silence that he moved within, amidst the chattering of the world around him, felt very much like my reality of late.

There has also been a midnight series of English horror films from the 1930s - 1950s. I've seen a couple of these: "The Man Who Changed His Mind" about a brain surgeon who discoveres how to implant the mind of one in another's body; and "Peeping Tom", the controversial film about the maker of snuff films that apparently destroyed director Michael Powell's long and illustrious career.

One of the best, and the most brutal, films I've seen is the Russian tale "Gruz 200". It depicts a 1984 USSR so dark, evil, and corrupt as to be unimaginable to someone with my background. There are scenes in it i hope to soon forget, but never will. This film totally obliterated the feeling of tranquility I had been floating on after having a sauna that afternoon.

I don't know if it's just this festival, or that, since reading "Haunted" I'm noticing it more, but the great majority of the films here are dark. Drug addicts, war, rape, murder, adultery - you name it, it's dark subjects that seem to constitute most of the films. i used to have more tolerance for this fair, but find I'm growing more desperate for any films that offer light, joy, happiness. Why is it that people like to be told stories about all the worse stuff that can happen to people? I'm not looking for total cotton-candy fluff; i just like films that balance the light and the dark. Two perfect examples of films with this sort of balance are "Burnt by the Sun" and "Heavenly Creature" - both films on my top ten list. That's what I like. Show me the lows, but show me the heights too. And it doesn't have to end on a high either. Both those films i mentioned start high and end tragically. But i find that way too many films just concentrate on the darkness, to the almost total exclusion of the light. And i don't want to see that anymore.

I realized recently that my history is repeating itself in strange and incomprehensible ways. After the canoe trip 11 years ago that inspired the idea for this trip, I went to the Vancouver Film Festival and engaged in the legendary spree of cinematic gluttony mentioned before. Now i find myself at another film fest after another canoe trip. What can it all mean?

A Slight Change of Pace

Just another beautiful street in Cheb.

A typical riverside hospoda, or bar, where I stopped in for sausage and beer on both the way up and way down.

Sunset on the river Ohre - which I am no longer padlling into.

Cheb again.

The throngs gathered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Fest, waiting for someone - anyone - famous to walk down the green carpet.

The most ornate place I've seen a film in yet. I was way up in the highest balcony; first time I've had too look down to watch a film.

A selection of movie posters.

The coveted...naked...luminescent...beachball playing...award.
.
Where I'm camped, with several hundred others.

More throngs gathered to watch the opening night fireworks. They were my Canada Day substitute.

Watching the movie from way, way up.



So it's official - I've called it quits on my European canoe adventure. I always intended to wrap it up if it was no longer fun - fun being the main purpose of this trip. Not: "Get 'er done", as I may have misled. I'm not into reaching goals just for the sake of reaching them - there has to be a point to it all. I suppose I might experience a sense of pride if I made it all the way to Amsterdam, but - screw that, i'd rather enjoy myself. I feel pride enough in myself for making it this far. Hell, I could have stopped after the experience of buying the canoe and still felt proud enough.

I regret ever characterizing this trip as being from point A to point B. i realized this towards the end of my planning process, and began telling people i was going to start to canoe in Amsterdam and head east, until I felt like stopping. But then, at the last minute, I did an about face in the direction of my trip (just to confuse the assassins), after which it made slightly more sense to begin referring to this as a Prague to Amsterdam trip, because, to benefit from going in this direction, I'd have to get through all the middle-Europe ups and downs before I could start on the long downriver stretch through western Europe. In a moment of imprudent exuberence, I even wrote in indelible marker "Praha" at the back of my canoe, and "Amsterdam" at the front, with corresponding arrows pointing in the appropriate directions...which, now that I'm trying to sell the canoe, I'm rubbing with gasoline, baking soda toothpaste, and any other substance that some website claims will remove permanent marker.

Actually, you know where I can find some pride in this situation? I take pride in the fact that I know when to quit. And that I'm good at finding pride in the most scarce of circumstances. And that I'm good at rationalizing.

So anyway, I was wandering around Cheb, not really making much progess with selling the kanoe, and wondering what to do. I was thinking i might wait one more day for answers to some emails, and then continue upriver into Germany. It would be another week until i was in another town large enough to offer any hope of selling the canoe. But I'd had a few days rest - enough time for partial amnesia to set in about the agony of upriver travel - and was getting little nudges from that 'ol, "I wonder what's around the next corner," feeling.

But then I saw a poster for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. I'd seen preparations for it when I was with Lucie in KV a couple of weeks ago, and she'd had good things to say about it. I returned to the internet cafe and checked it out. It actually looked pretty good: it had a reputation, at least, as the premiere film fest for eastern Europe; one of my favourite directors, Nikita Mikhalkov, was going to be there, presenting his new film; they'd also lured Robert De Niro in with an award for lifetime contribution, etc, and some screenings of his earlier films; all the films had English subtitles; and it was cheap - $70 for the full 9 day pass, and camping available in a stadium at the edge of town for less than $5 a night.

It didn't take me long to realize how much sense this made; i had to return to KV anyway at some point to pick up the GPS (if it was ever delivered), and the film fest would give me something fun to do while i figured out how to get my canoe sold. It would also give me time to prepare for the next leg of my trip: couchsurfing through the Mediterranian region. And, perhaps best of all, it was down river. I hopped in Sarka that afternoon and headed back down the Ohre towards Karlovy Vary. One last ride in my faithul companion!

I figure going downriver was about three times as fast for a third of the effort. It was 70km to KV; i did 20 of them the first day, and mopped up the remaining 50 the next day without too much trouble. It was a good way to end the trip - a little payback for all my effort. During the fastest stretch - the one Viktoria and Sergio and I had sweated and groaned and cursed our way up a week previous - i lay back and watched the trees glide by on either side and laughed.

My ill-advised directional markers in permanent ink on the side of the canoe at least earned me a free beer at one of the riverside bars i stopped at. After my first beer, I had my usual debate about ordering a second. One is never enough, but then two, I find, makes me sleepy midday, and is not very condusive to canoeing. I could always order a half beer, of course, but then it's not as good value, and i rarely seem to take this option. Nope, as usual, the second beer won out. As I was nearing the end of that one, however, another one suddenly appeared on the table in front of me; connected to it was the hand, arm, and body of a man smiling approvingly at me and saying, "Amsterdam." He must have seen my canoe pulled up on the shore - luckily, because i paddle it backwards when solo, the Praha and Amsterdam arrows were still pointing in the right directions. He didn't speak English, but his wife, miraculously, did. Actually, it was unfortunate, in this instance, that she did speak English, because it meant that, upon interrogation from her, i had to admit that i hadn't come all the way from Amsterdam. But they still seemed suitably impressed with what I had actually acheived. The man didn't take his beer back, anyway, and he even patted me on the back as he left.

Needless to say, I was excessively drunk when i got back onto the water for the last 15k to KV. I probably hit a few more rocks that I would sober, but otherwise came out okay. The rapids are easy enough that you can navigate them drunk - i don't think most Czechs would even consider doing them sober anyway.

I wasn't sure where in KV the stadium i could camp in was, but on my canoeing map there was on oval labeled "STAD" - near the river too - so i pulled over by that. It was a short but near vertical bank to get up - with a railing at the top - but somehow i got Sarka over it. The stadium, already with a few dozen tents in it, was right there, maybe 100 metres away. I couldn't have pulled over in a better place. I got my tent set up just in time for the rain that had been threatening all day to come thundering down.

The End.

But wait: there will be a lengthy postscript, in coming updates, to this trip. The first ones, of course, will be all about the film fest. After that, hopefully some adventures in the Mediterranian, until my planned return to Canada around the end of July. So stay tuned.

On Shore Leave in Cheb

After sharing a 40 of fake Tequila (but Real Tequila Taste!), I needed a little sleep. With sunglasses.

My co-conspirators.

Yes, the going was hard, especially when the Mayan slaves revolted. (This and some of the following pictures look bad because I photographed them off of Viktoria's camera. You can see the reflection of my camera in them.)

Setting out from Lucie's house. Note Sergio's tin whistle, ready to pipe us towards glory.


Fuck paddling, let's walk and listen to tunes.

Those lazy slaves needed a firm hand.

See how happy coffee makes you. Improves race relations too.

On the road again.

An idyllic scene of fellow canoeists at a bar on the Ohre.

Sergio pretending to paddle while Viktoria pulls.

No, I'm not actually still in Canada - they just have stop signs here for some reason.

My new shades.

Yes, I even had to put up with people in love.

Loket: a lovely little place. We razed it to the ground, of course.

I don't know what the fuck this is, but it has the sign of the eye in the pyramid on top. Those Illuminati - they're everywhere.

Viktoria lurking in the Water Closet.

Loket's castle.

Enjoying some well deserved fried cheese and beer in Loket.

Viktoria Mara, woman of adventure and mystery.



Cheb - last stop in the Czech Republic. Perhaps the last stop in the Great 2008 European Canoe Adventure. Yes, I am beginning to feel like gracefully bowing out of this performance. I think it was the recalculation of my schedule - based on my careful observations of how many kilometres I was actually able to paddle upriver per diem. I had hoped for 20, but it's turned out to be more like 15. And then I recalculated the distance, baring in mind that my 1:500,000 scale map of Germany doesn't show all the torturous twists and turns of the actual river, and increasing my estimates by 15%, and came naturally to a longer distance. My new estimate would have me arriving in Amsterdam not by the end of July, as I'd hoped, but on August 26. It's a case of theory crashing headlong into actuality. The impossibility of reaching this distant objective in the two months maximum I'd like to spend canoeing, has led me to conclude that I'd like to wrap up the trip soon - as soon as I can sell the canoe for a reasonable price. I have really enjoyed my three couchsurfing experiences so far, and would like to spend my remaining month in Europe doing that - preferably in the Mediterrainian region.

Voicing these thoughts, Viktoria and Sergio were quick to jump ship. They were willing to stick it out for another couple of weeks - after which they had to be in Switzerland - and help me get up this last stretch of upriver. But I felt that the trip was probably winding down and that they should go and do what they wanted. An honourable discharge.

They performed valiantly. I wouldn't have been able to paddle up some of the stretches of river that awaited us if not for the combined effort of three paddlers. During one interminable stretch, where the river turned into a concrete encased chute, too deep to get out and pull, and with no paths alongside to escape to, the three of us paddling full tilt were just barely able to make headway. I was afraid that I might have a mutiny on the Sarka, but fortunately my crew was made of stronger stuff than that.

And this despite their woefully inadaquate outfitting: tissue paper thin garbage bags for dry sacks, all-cotton clothing, and a tent from Wal-Mart that was designed for a planet where it never rains. I tried to help out from with loans from my high-performance MEC gear whenever possible, but they still never slept as well or were as comfortable, relatively speaking, as I.

This river was supposed to get easier after Karlovy Vary, but it was a cruel lie. Yes, perhaps there were less rapids, but the current was often stronger than ever. I've found that paddlers who have only ever paddled down a river really have no conception of the current. You have to go up it to really get to know it intimately. I felt a constant sense of guilt for inflicting this wierd form of punishment on unsuspecting Sergio and agreable Viktoria. This is my pennance - for a life of excessive ease and comfort - how did I ever get my friends mixed up in this?!

It took us four days to reach the outskirts of Cheb. After three days, we were happy to get off the river and walk the rest of the way. Cheb itself is a bit of a letdown. The goonish security guards in the the grociery stores and the 'no guns' signs in many store windows (alongside 'no ice cream' signs - the noxious mix of tourist and crime) alerted us the to prevalence of crime here. When Viktoria tried to set up her display of Guatamalan crafts for sale, she wasn't harrassed by the police, but by about 30 Gypsy kids who swarmed her from a nearby apartment building. We are told that Cheb is known for its thriving prostitution industry; it's cheaper for Germans to come here and hire them. I suppose it's the kind of seediness common with many border towns.

This is my fourth day now in Cheb, and my current mission is to try to find a buyer for Sarka. Thanks again to my guardian angel in Prague, Stan, I've got a list of possibilities, including a scout camp, and three rental companies. But the big question before negotiations can even begin is, "Does anyone speak English at any of these places?" If not, I've got a couple of other options: maybe the shop that sold me the canoe would like to buy it back, in which case i could courier it to them. Or, if all else fails, I'll push on and head into Germany, continuing the trip while looking for someone to buy my canoe and release me from its terrible bondage.