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2001: TRIPPING AROUND SCANDINAVIA
Not every day is a happy day, nor every night carries
a nice dream with it. Some years bring good news, the Iron Wall is fallen,
yeah; some years bring bad news, the Storm of the Desert is coming, fuck it;
but every year is worth living. If you were me, I’d be you, and that’s no good.
Train make noise, snow fall in silence, some people go to hell making noise,
some you don’t even notice their last breath. Who deserves to live, and who
deserves to die? Am I to blame for the genocides around the world? There was a
bad news, Patarroyo shut up by the Health World
Organization, because his line of investigation was revolutionary and could
save the lives of millions. The world is overpopulated, the HWO don’t means to
save the man, but the world. So? Go and get back to your laboratory and save
rats, fucking Indian!
I met her by the Danube, beautiful as an Hungarian M.
Monroe, twenty years old. She sat by me.
“American?” she asked me.
“No, from another galaxy?”
“What’s your name?”
“Starbook”
“Is that your real name?” she asked again.
“No, but I like it. Who’s that little girl?”
“My sister”
Budapest is a strange town. I had from the books an
idea in my head about the old imperial city. A treasure worth many wars. The
Hungarians, hordes of barbarian, bloody butchers massacring the Europeans
populations after the fall of the roman empire, in their age of re-edification
of our civilization, killing men, sacking the towns, raping the girls, selling
the children to the Turks for gold. It took a lot of time to cultivate the soul
of those hordes.
“Are you a real Hungarian woman?” I asked her.
She shone with a smile so bright that I understood at
the second why the Turks would sell their souls to the devil for an Hungarian
girl. Only one woman in Europe can match those Hungarian girls, the Finish
Woman, but they come from the same trunk, branches of the same tree, the Finish-Hungarian family.
“I see you’re playing guitar. Are you doing OK?” she
kept talking.
“ I don’t care”
“You have money?”
“No”
“And you don’t care?”
“Pretty much so”
“Where you from?”
“I told you, from another Galaxy. You mind if I buy an
ice cream to your little sister?”
She wouldn’t leave me anyway. The Moon was rising
high, the Danube was a mirror full of colors surfing the City beneath the
Bridge of the Iron Chains. On the top of the hill the imperial palace of the German Emperors watched
the city like an eagle with the power of a dragoon. At my back the Hungarian
Parliament defying the glory of the Gothic
Cathedrals of Italy, France and Germany, a magic building. I could not resist
its vision and went straight to pay a visit to the Lord. Two guardians stop me
right there before reaching the door.
“Where are you going, sir?”
“To visit your Cathedral, of course”
They smiled upon me.
“That’s the Parliament, sir”
I was astonished. As much as I was every time I looked
that girl, with her little sister playing around her legs. They remind me those
little sisters of Bougereau. I didn’t need to ask how
she made her living, I knew it by instinct. She would turn on the head of a
fucking tourist with the power in her face, and when he thought he bought a
cheap goddess she would disappear in the blue with his wallet. Well done, babe,
those motherfuckers buying women like cattle for a meal, take their wallets and
everything you can, love. She could read in my eyes that I knew she came to
see, and she knew in the instant what was all about me, and she was feeling
good, she wouldn’t go, she had done her day and she could be speaking to Starbook, from another Galaxy, all night long. We didn’t
mean at all sex, just the pleasure of both of us smiling to each other,
seducing each other with delights of the soul, like children in love, flying
through a unlimited skies and meeting for a minute around the shores of the
source of the universe.
“Where are you going after, Starbook?”
“Think going to Bratislava, heard saying is around the
corner”
Finally the Iron Wall fell. The Frontiers until those
days forbidden were open. It was absolutely disgusting the regime of the Reds.
They locked up half Europe for them to sack their treasures and fuck their
nations. Suckers! I would not miss visiting as far as I could those Lands whose
History I knew so well from the Books. Even so, everybody speaks of Prague,
nobody knows much about Bratislava.
The year 2000 was gone. John Paul II called all the
Christians to celebrate the Bimillenary of the Birth
of Christ. You think I was going to miss the party? I fell on the Bicentenary
of the French Revolution by hazard. In the 1999's Jubilee, too. The Fall of the
Iron Wall by the combined forces of the Withe House and the Vatican shot the
fame of John Paul II to the top of the world. John Paul II was himself a little
too much of a hard Priest, talking on the Theology of the Liberation. This is
what everybody said. I could not agree with the critics. I read the books of
the leaders of the Liberation Movement and their Humanism took them too far
away from Christ. They emptied Christ from God. You can’t do that. You got to
revolutionize the mind of the Church, so to speak, as much as the Bishops are
humans; but you can’t touch the Spirit of the Church, and in the name of the
poor to make of Christ another Guevara. No way. In this John Paul II was
absolutely right, and in commanding the Theologians to stop digging in that
soil, he did perfectly according to the Doctrine of the Spirit of God.
John Paul II’s partner, Ronal Reagan, wow, man, he
showed to the world what the Civil Power and the Holy Power can do when working
together without mingling together, keeping each in its own sphere. There was Mijail Gorbachev too. But this man dealt with the facts of
a system corrupted to the bones, disintegrating all by itself after it had sown
the planet with dictatorships, and tyrants, and threatening with a Third World
War if it was left alone to its ruin. The work of Gorbachev was to convince the
West that it was in everybody’s interest to create a pillow which would soften
the Fall of the Empire of the Soviets. And we, the idiots, the Europeans, paid
the bill.
Beyond these facts, Freedom was our conquest. And
there was me, a poor man, visiting a country until few years before forbidden
and only open to the those motherfuckers coming into the East to buy a girl for
a meal.
“When are you leaving, Starbook?”
She was curious that girl, but for that matter she
could ask me anything while sieging my eyes with that face of hers.
Rome was crazy that Jubilee of the 2000. The Gods in
Heaven were staring at Earth and counting their people in this world, all that
month long. The rest, all that thing of entering the door of the Vatican and
get the sins washed out, children staff. It was good to see that we are many,
it was good to meet that many, it was good to know that we are not alone. I
never saw John Paul II for that matter. I fell on him couple of times, by
hazard, while he was visiting Madrid. A good servant of Christ, but as I said,
I am a son of God. Every one of us got his place on the board. The problem is
not to be a pawn in a divine board, but to know to be there. By inertia the
pawn wants to move on, and even suggest the plan of the battle to its fellow
pawns. That’s a pawn which got mad, you see. God is the Player, who leads the
entire universal field. While your time is not come yet, you got to do what I
do, enjoy your life. The time for Death to break through your house and try to
take you out of the board, will come also. Did Death made it in my case? Not at
all. The battle, yet, was on. When my time came, I would know it.
It was time to go to Bratislava. Time to earn the money in Vienna.
In Budapest I survived, and that was all. Vienna would fill my pocket to make
it to Bratislava and Prague. It is just a simple operation of mathematics, the
rich places are filled with rich people, and rich tourist are enchanted to have
a guitar man singing a song for them at the time when the Moon reigns, and they
come flirting and seducing each other and happy as a lily in love with a rose.
My guitar never missed the target at that time. And then is Vienna. As with the
Sphinx, you don’t know the magnificence of Saint Stephen Cathedral until you sit in the Square and rise your head. Also, the
architecture of the city is perfect, as you walk the avenues, they move. The
fact of being created on a line going around creates the sensation of the
station moving while you’re sitting waiting for the train to go. It’s so funny.
And the Danube passing through Vienna, so large. There was some kind of Fête
going on, and got me in the midst of a Homo parade filling the avenues with porno
shit. Beers were for free and sandwich too. To sleep in Vienna the best place
is the Arch of the Old Imperial Palace, by the garden downtown. No one expect
you to crash there and is the most secure spot. Where can you be most secured
in a big city than round the police station? They check your passport, it’s all
right, they keep your sleep safe. You don’t do that, never ever, by a
Politician place, tyrants don’t like free people, you see.
As in all lands where the northerners made their abode
the beer in Vienna is crazy. Don’t drink much boy, just a sip to fight back the
chill of the night, drunkards make no good music, laugh like a stupid and go to
bed with an empty pocket. You don’t need to be in Vienna to drink. I was in my
forty five years old, anyway, strong as a lion, in the last days of my youth. I
knew that was meant to be my last trip with a guitar in my hand, and my Spanish
leather boots, and my cow boy hat, my Canadian shirts, and my Yamaha acoustic
guitar, walking my heart and my soul along the nations. Thanks to God I had,
never ever, yet, fallen sick. My long hair had gone through a strange changing;
my natural Mediterranean brown color had given way to gold stripes, form the
burning days of Crete, and soon to displaying silver colors. Quite funny guy to
see me in your street, with his road sack and his clean jeans, his perfect
teeth and his healthy voice singing poems written around a lake nobody knew
where on earth was that place, a poet tuning strange tales about dreams without
end. People could not master the temptation to ask me where I was from? When I
told them that I am a born Spaniard some could not believe it, some would stop
my playing and chat with me about their trips to Ibiza, Barcelona, Canary
islands, some would take their girls away from me. I was in that age when a man
like me was attractive to all kind of women. I kept myself cool. Till I reached Bratislava and I
could not hold my defenses before the charm of Miroslava.
She was in her twenties, and her body was soft as a cloud pregnant with a
spring rain. I met her in Main Street; I just finished to make my money by the
corner. The guys came, sat and began playing their tam-tams and flutes and
things. I stopped my music. I was passing by when they call the guitar man and
asked me to play together, after all they had kicked me out of my pitch, right?
“No offense, guys,” said I, “I made my money. I was
packing anyway”.
“Sit” they said with a smile in their faces. Then I
saw her. She was marvelous. I sat by her side, of course, meaning no sex, just
admiration. She began to look at me wondering where I was from, my age, where I
was going. I broke the ice.
“How you’re doing?”
And that was, we went to her place, slept together, be
the week together. She showed me the place. A tiny town that Bratislava, with
mafia too, people shooting each other in the restaurant’s terraces, the
students living in building full of them, packed in small rooms without
kitchen, nor shower. Even so, they were all hilarious, they were free. The
Russian bastards were gone. They hadn’t discover Europe yet. They were
discovering it. They were still stuck in the Red’s mentality, you need to work
to be a man, you need money to be free. I was beyond all that shit. Miroslava could not help staring at me and kissing me. Most
strange beauty that of the Slav woman. Pretty much like the Hungarian woman’s,
but somehow totally different. Their drinks are also so strong. I had it one
night and didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol anymore for the rest of my
journey.
Time was clicking. I got my train to Prague. I had the money, but I wanted to save
it, I took the chance to fool the ticket man. What? If I had to pay it, I
would, but I could save it, why not? Got lucky and made it through the night.
There she was, Prague, the City were you find the highest number of beautiful
girls packed up by square meter. The Old Town of Huss, where they used to throw the enemy through
the window. Bridges as old as the Europe and streets so magic as an Edgar Allan
Poe’s poem. With the pubs in caves underground, and the hotter beer in the
world. Too many storms breaking suddenly without any “am coming”. Crazy! Plenty
streets to sing a song, I give them that. All night long people walking up and
down. You get no bored in Prague; girls give you no money but lots of smiles
and flying kisses. I promised myself I had to come back, with some money in my
pocket to pay me a room and spend couple of months. Until then, Berlin was
round the corner. And you know Germans, they have pretty highways and fast
cars, they give you a ride anytime. And that’s all you can get from them, and
you know it, don’t break your head against the wall, say hello ad bye bye and head North, to the Land of the Midnight Sun,
because if you want to make some money in Germany you got to hit the small
towns, big cities have plenty junkies and drunkards and all kind of fallen
guys, or you got to surprise them playing on a bridge over the River Rhine,
that always work, late in the summer night, beneath the Frankfort’s sky, you
come out a victor.
Copenhagen is a robot town. To play in the
street you got a certain schedule. I could not believe it. Play just from five
to seven, and from 10 to 12. And that’s it. Well that’s not all. There is Christiania. O fantasy town in the middle of the city where the
hippies from the sixties are free to deal marihuana. It is like a fortress
sieged by a city where robots control the entire motion of the living things,
from a mouse to a human, all got to follow the rules. So funny!
I kept going, I cross the sea and made it to Goteborg. That was
a city to enjoy. But before I made it to Goteborg I stopped in a lake by the
road, with plenty bread and milk to hold on a couple of days under the Midnight
Sun. Battery charging time, you could say.
Summertime, year 2001, Scandinavia, sunny every single
day, people in paradise could no feel better, those guys live in the shadows of
the night during nine months. When the summer comes around it is for them like
the bear getting out of its winter sleep, they feel crazy, they want to live
every single hour of the day, they walk with a true smile in their faces, sing
me a son Mister Tambourine Man. I could sing for them a hundred. They pay well.
And their roads through the country are a most enchanted paysages.
Big lakes, here and there, where to get off the car, and swim like a southern
fish by hazard transported to these cold waters of the northern lakes. Slowly,
always moving, I made it to the Stockholm. Don’t know how but somehow I found me sitting by a building
in the Old Town, and everybody was shooting a photo. I was eating my big
sandwich, and I thought something was wrong with my meal. I looked around me
and read the letters, Academy of the Nobel Prize. Very touristic the Old Town
of Gustavus Adolphus. Main
Street was busy with Russians playing violins and girls dancing like a
ballerina from the Bolshoi Ballet. Night was good, but the girls drank their
beauty to hell. English girls drink like men, Swedish girls drink more than
men. It was kinda funny to see them sitting by me
with their eyes crossed by the buzz.
“You’re Spanish? And what the hell you’re doing here?
You’re lost in the map, don’t you?”
I felt like jumping on the Ferry to Finland instead of
doing all the round. A colleague told me to pay the ticked to an island, Marianhamina, in the middle of the trip. They would not
control the ticket after. Half ticked saved. Good!
He was right. That trip under the long Sunset is still
in my mind. The red curtain falls on the sea and keeps there hours and hours
and hours, and then, Sunrise. The ferry parking port on this side of Finland was called Turku. I was lucky because
they had a Middle Ages Party that week and playing by the Aura riverside was a mine of gold. However, I was the only
street artist in town, my Spanish leather boots, my cow boy hat, a gift from a
good friend of mine, and my singing was like a landing from Saturn in the
middle of a people celebrating their a lottery. But If I thought that the party
was here, when I moved to Helsinki they got me
really out my mind. The entire city was on party, and the party began late in
the evening, went on all night, and the guys and the girls simply crashed in
the street, totally drunk, late in the morn. Again, the Russians, coming from
Saint Petersburg, around the corner, came to play some days in Helsinki, got
their money and back to Russia. Made friends with some young guys from Saint
Petersburg, heard from them how it was their living back there. Pretty shit,
they said, free but no money. Wow, lucky me, jumping from Sweden to Finland. To
tell the truth my original plan was to hit Sweden to the very North, where I
thought I could catch some Northern Lights; hit Finland to Helsinki and then
jump to Saint Petersburg, then follow the coast to Poland. They told me that
the Visado to enter in Russia amounted to 500
dollars. Fuck it! I changed the plan; from Finland to the Lapland, then Sweden
and Norway. Denmark, and so on.
I left Helsinki heading to Tampere, crossing for a while the Lakes. Most
beautiful place. Met a woman who invite me to a Sauna by a house in the lake.
Serious experience, to get hot at the point of burning and then jumping
straight into the ice cold water of the lake. I made my day in Tampere, kept
going to Vaasa. I followed the coast and stopped here and there for a swim. It
surprised me the color of the water of that sea. It is brown. I asked to the
people why was that. Some kind of microscopic life plant, they said. Ok! Halted
in Oulu to play, and straight to Rovaniemi. I was the bird of the day, probably they see a
bird of my kind once in a decade, if they see any at all. They fed me with
smiles and big coins. But that was, to keep going north was no good idea.
Lapland is flat and no people ride that road. I could get a lift, but when?
After all the season of the Northern Lights was Spring. When I asked why, they
laughed at me. Well, how would I know?
I entered Sweden and hit the road from Lulea to Umea
till Sundsvall. Here I stopped for a couple of days, it was easy to earn a
living and it is a beautiful small-big city. It was there that I made friend
with a guy around a beer and when parting he gave me his e-mail.
“You what?” said I.
I had never heard of such a thing. He tried to explain
me what it was.
“Internet. You never heard of the WWW?” said he with a
smile half of incredulity half amusing.
“No”, said I, slowly.
Well, I had more important things in my mind by then;
I had to make a choice. Keep going down south to Upsala,
or turning right to Ostersund till Trondheim, in
Norway.
Sun was on my side, and the Mountains were not that high, few cars, if
I had to walk for a time it will be my pleasure. Lucky me I did not to walk too
much, a guy picked me up and left me in Trondheim, the capital of the Northmen,
those terrible suckers plundering Europe during the Middle Ages. They still
preserved the wooden houses on the river side, with their Viking foundations, a
majestic view. The rest, a very modern town, an adorable sunset and a green
country everywhere you set your eyes. No much money for what it matters to the
pocket of a street guitar player. To hold on is one of the virtues to cultivate
when you’re out there. Sometimes is good, sometimes is really god, sometimes is
no good. Never is bad. A bottle of milk, a big piece of bread and a tablet of
chocolate is always waiting for you if you cannot make it to the restaurant.
And the pleasure of sitting by a fiord watching the sun kissing the ocean, how
much for that? And there is no schedule to follow, lay there as long as you
love it. Birds in the sky, anyway, I did not see many.
I made it to Oslo by roads where I could not know where I was. Norwegians
utter few English words in the country. By the time I reached Oslo the summer
was leaving and the Night was coming. It was kind of scary. The day were
getting shorter and the night longer. My trip was coming to an end. My intention
was to get back to Sweden but the guy who picked me up out of Oslo was in fact
going to Denmark and he could get a person in his truck without paying an extra
ticket; if I wanted it, I could be in Frederickshawn in
a matter of hours. If I wanted it? And to complete the affair he could drive me
to Randers, his destination. From Randers to Flensburg it was just a promenade.
Then Kiel and Hamburg.
The girl who picked me up out of Flensburg took me
home, in Hamburg, spent few days there and from there on I left my boots take
me wherever they like it. The olive picking will start late in November.
By that time the New Century began: September the
eleventh, year 2001 A.D.
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