Piran's rabbit warren of streets.
The town was full of little brown boys playing soccer.
Roofs of Piran. How about some rooftop gardens?
Piran, jutting out to sea.
Piran, with the Julian Alps in the background.
Vikki with her Guatamalan friend, Maura, in Bern, Switzerland.
The Reitschule squat in Bern.
After the emotional and altitudinal highs of climbing Triglav, a couple days of lazing on the beach was the perfect counterpoint. I don't usually enjoy beaches much, but I was tired enough after my climbing and hiking adventure that I didn't get bored of the beach until the second day. And the liberal Mediterranean attitude towards clothing helped too - though I did get a bit burnt in the nether regions.
I first arrived in Piran at around 8 in the evening. I located the hostel, but was determined to camp by the ocean, so set off, fully laden with gear, down the coast, in the direction someone told me there was a campground. The fact that it was back in the direction my bus had just come didn't help my moral. I walked for an hour and a half, the uncushioned straps of my malfunctioning hiking pack raising red marks on my shoulders, the tread of one of my shoes flapping half-off with every step - an incongruous sight shouldering through the relaxed, well-fed and tanned crowds strolling amongst the seaside touristic flotsam. But such was my determination to find a little piece of ocean breeze of which to breath deeply as I drifted into contented sleep, I carried on all the way to the campsite.
The first sight - and sound - that greeted me at the camp was of an accordion, and accompanying singing. A pleasant surprise. But it went steeply downhill from there. The campground was basically a long, thin strip of road and gravel, chain link fences on either side, packed with cars with doors open and radios blaring, and young, partying Slovenians, shouting and drinking. From nearby, the thumping of a dance club competed with the puttering and squealing of a go-kart track. A good time, no doubt, if one were in the mood. But I was not. Fortunately, some respite from the mayhem could be found on some none-too-level terraces of grass somewhat above the throng. I set up camp in the dark, content in the fact that at least this was a degree better than walking endlessly through a tourist wasteland, laden with absurd amounts of canoe camping gear - a portage without a boat.
The next day I checked out Piran. It doesn't take long - it's a small place: a rabbit warren of tiny streets all crowded together on a peninsula jutting out into the Adriatic, with a fortification protecting the old city from the inland side. The coast is an unbroken stretch of restaurants, with large boulders draped in sunbathing bodies, spilling into the calm, clear, warm water. After a few hours of soaking up this Mediterranean atmosphere, I felt more relaxed than I had in weeks. Something about the combination of perfect climate and a civilization that has had centuries to settle into its own rhythms, makes a perfect recipe for contentment.
Later that evening I went for a walk through the hilly suburbs, and passed many a yard from which I could hear the happy sounds of people dining outdoors.
My second day was spent much as the first, except that I considered it the official end of my trip, as tomorrow I would be starting to make my way back to Amsterdam and my flight home. I celebrated that evening with - what else - a plate of spaghetti carbonera, and a huge glass of wine (I found that here, on the Mediterranean coast, the central European fixation on beer gives way to wine, with correspondingly low prices).
A day of travel got me to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, where Vikki and Sergio had landed after they left me in Cheb. Vikki had a Guatemalan friend, named Maura, whom she was visiting there, and she was living in a squat (more on that later).
I tried to find Vikki at the squat, but it was all locked up, and the drug dealers and users outside were no help either, so I took a tram out to the suburbs and a campsite by the Aare river. I love public transit in Europe, and it's especially good in Bern. Electronic signs at stops countdown the minutes until the next tram (never more than 10 minutes), and LCD screens inside the tram display upcoming stops.
The next day I met up with Vikki and she showed me inside the squat. Outside it's covered with graffiti, but inside it has a courtyard covered in ivy, offices for non-profit groups, a gym space, a theatre, a cinema, a bar, and the apartments where Vikki and 13 others live, sharing common areas. It's like a community/cultural centre, where no one pays rent (although the city did recently get them to start paying for utilities). It even has a website (http://www.reitschule.ch/). Such well-organized, city council-recognized squats can be found throughout Europe.
Switzerland is known for its harm reduction programs and general tolerance for hard drug users, and it was in evidence outside the squat. The addicts actually had nothing to do with the squat, but were there because the city encouraged them to congregate in this area by operating a soup kitchen and giving out clean needles nearby. The coordinators of the squat weren't too happy about this, and had complained to city council, but understandably didn't have much leverage with which to bargain with.
So evenings outside the squat form an interesting tableau: over to one side, the junkies huddled over their tinfoil; centre stage, an outdoor bar; and on the other side, a game of ping-pong on an outdoor table. A graduated triptych of depravity. Not a bad place to bring a date.
That afternoon, we made a stab at the H.R. Giger museum (he's the amazing artist, best known for designing the aliens in the the movie, Aliens), in a nearby town. It wasn't quite nearby enough, though, as we failed to make it before closing time. But we did get as far as the town of Fribourg, a 20 minute train ride from Bern. We wandered around the town a bit before heading back; it was French speaking (while Bern is predominantly Swiss-German), and I discovered that, unlike Quebec French, I actually enjoy trying to speak European French. Je m'excuse to mes freres in Quebec, but French on the continent just sounds way nicer to me.
That night, back in Bern, I was treated to a walking tour of the old city - which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site - by Pan: a Swiss friend of Vikki's who used to live in Guatemala. I had an image of the Swiss as a reasonable, quite, unremarkable people, but that was altered significantly by Pan's tour. He showed me fountains topped with colourful statues of people eating live children, huge clocks with figures that become animated when the hour strikes, and Bern's famous bear pit, which has been around since the 16th century (the city is named after the German word for "bear"). But the pit was set to undergo a major transformation: after years of protests from people concerned about the welfare of the bears, a new enclosure is finally being build for them, where they will have access to the river and, presumably, an escape from the rain of debris that tourists and locals could inflict on them at will in the past.
Pan also showed me the Munster, a towering Gothic cathedral, with a scene carved over its main portal depicting the Last Judgement, with the righteous in heaven on the left and the damned in hell on the right. (If ever this scene is updated for modern times, I might suggest using the one outside the squat, with the ping-pong players in heaven, the addicts in hell, and the bar representing the real world.) The hell scene (obviously the one to which I gave most of my attention) was something straight out of Hieronymus Bosch. You can look straight up through the open mouth of one screaming sculpture to the sky above.
We ducked down for a quick look at the ornate dining room in the Kornhaus, a building that used to be a storehouse for wheat and wine and was now a cultural centre. The huge underground space looked like an expensive place to eat, but would probably be worth it for the ambiance alone: thick pillars and arches, dimly and warmly lit, gave a unique sort of bunker/cathedral feel to the space.
Bern is a natural fortress, built in a loop in the river, with high cliffs sealing it off. Looking down vertiginiously from one such cliff, I noticed a net maybe 50 feet below. "Is that to catch people who fall?" I asked Pan.
"There's signs over there," he pointed, "asking people to please not commit suicide here."
Too bad - it's a beautiful place to die.
Walking the streets with Pan, delicious local beers in hand (street drinking is allowed here - in fact, Pan couldn't even comprehend why it would be illegal), I had a hard time seeing why anyone who lived here would want to kill themselves. Indeed, I was struck by how happy and contented most of the people I saw appeared to be. The cost of living is high, but so are wages. Bern reminded me somewhat of Ottawa. And like Amsterdam, it manages to combine Germanic efficiency with a laid-back joi de vive - in other words, the best of both worlds. Also like Amsterdam, there are many bikes and mopeds instead of cars (although no where near the scale of Amsterdam). The city even lends bikes for free by the day.
I had expected a more rigid, conservative Switzerland, but instead found a cosmopolitan place full of strangers who actually talk to each other on the street. Little scenes in Bern - scenes you would never see in Canada - such as a grandfather riding on a push scooter with his grandson, or a family with backpacks departing for a camping trip at the train station, left me with a warm feeling for the place. Although my visit here was brief, I think that Switzerland was my favourite country I visited, and I'd like to go back to see much more of it.
And the surreal thing that happened on my way back to my campsite on my last night there did nothing to diminish my feelings for the place. Pan had ended his nighttime tour at the Rose Garden - a park high up on a hilltop, overlooking the old city and river below. The last tram had left at midnight, so I began the half hour walk along the river to the camp. The streets were deserted. On the second story of a building across the street, my eye caught an open, lighted window. Then I saw the huge black woman in it, cleavage everywhere, holding her breasts up in a clearly propositional manner, eyes imploring: come up. In true Canadian fashion, I smiled a half-smile meant to convey, thanks for the offer, but I'll pass tonight, and quickened my pace from the scene.
And that's pretty much it. Took the train to Amsterdam the next day, sat in a cafe and enjoyed the street life one last time, splurged on a 2-star hotel, and flew home the next day, bumping into a couple of people on the plane I know from Wakefield (one of which I couldn't quite place, until I asked where I knew her from and she said we met skinny dipping at Brown's Lake. Oh yeah...guess I didn't recognize her with her clothes on).
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