Читать книгу The Happy Hypochondriac Survives World Travel - Kat Spitzer - Страница 15

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An Innocent Abroad

Considering I had fantasized about going to Europe my entire life, it was no surprise that when asked what I wanted for high school graduation, I shouted heavenward, “EUROPE.” My parents suggested a car, and I looked at them and shouted again, “EUROPE.” I have always had, and will always continue to have a massive desire to travel around Europe.

I had this monster-sized, yet whimsical, Coke bottle coin bank and I started collecting coins in that thing when I was very young so that one day I would have enough for Europe. Growing up, I periodically dumped it all out on my floor and put them in neat little dollar stacks to count my stash, like an old scrooge. I had a mission, and that mission was the Old Continent. The Mother countries. The ancestral realms. By the time I convinced my parents that I should go to Europe upon graduation, I had somehow saved over seven hundred dollars in coins. To be fair, sometimes my hoarding included loose change from their pocket, purse, car ashtray, etc. They never noticed or didn’t think anything of it. Meanwhile, I miser-ishly rubbed my hands together. Maniacal laugh ensued.

As luck would have it, a European adventure was planned for high school students in my county school district. Any student from the included high schools could take part in the three week adventure, visiting six different countries. We would meet monthly during the year beforehand to learn about the places we would see. As an Epcot-World Encyclopedia-international flag-loving person, this was a dream come true. I eagerly awaited each meeting. The other students looked bored or adopted poses of cool detachment, whereas I was sitting straight up, listening with every fiber of my being. I was NOT cool about the situation. I’m the kind of person who walked into travel agencies as a kid, by myself, to just pick up brochures that I could take home and daydream about. This group of kids did not understand the likes of me.

In the midst of my excitement, I’m sure you could guess I also encountered a building anxiety. Since the time I went to summer camp, I hadn’t flown a single other time. My mother still refused to fly, so we never went anywhere requiring a plane trip. Flying internationally therefore seemed awfully scary and daunting. We would have to cross the huge ocean to get to England, our first stop. What if terrorists hijacked or bombed our plane? This was 1993, and I had heard much about hijacking. I knew I would definitely not enjoy it. Once in Europe, I worried about transportation, getting lost, language barriers, scary foreign people. I think I was as equally afraid as I was mesmerized by the unknown. Even though I would be with thirty other high school kids and chaperones, I was still without my parents and that gave me a little pause. It didn’t stop me; just gave me pause.

Europe, or at least England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, was everything I hoped and more. It was old. It was pretty. The people looked slightly different and talked differently. This was before the Euro, so the money in each country was beautiful and unique and I admired it like I had found a treasure and not a few cents. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Then I got flashed.

We were in Heidelberg, Germany for the day, visiting the ancient, amazingly gorgeous town, learning about making wine in barrels. The surroundings looked exactly like a fairy tale. I expected some blonde, soft spoken princess to appear at any moment and make birds sing. I was in a fit of euphoria, pretty much my default state for those three weeks, and waiting in line for ice cream. A man was standing nearby in a brown trench coat, even though it was summer. He had mangy looking long hair, but to be fair, so did many other people there. Those crazy Europeans. He said something to me in what I assumed was German. I smiled, even though I didn’t understand. It’s what I do. I have trouble with even just accented English, much less an actual foreign language (with the partial exception of French), so I tend to just smile and nod. It keeps getting me into trouble.

At my nod, his grin grew wide and lascivious and he opened his coat, not shockingly fast, more casually, like we were continuing to have a normal, albeit one-sided conversation, to reveal a skinny, naked body with an impossibly long penis. I was equally repulsed and amazed. It was gross but also unbelievable, given his physique otherwise. I screamed. He looked at me like I had broken some contract between us; some code. His eyes showed hurt. “But you said you wanted to see it!,” they seemed to say. I guess that’s what he’d been muttering in German when I nodded and smiled.

I turned and ran back to my group, breathless and annoyed that I never got my ice cream. The image of the man’s bits and pieces was burned into my brain and making it difficult to enjoy the otherwise fantastic scenery. My friends laughed and said they wished they would have been standing there. No, you don’t- you can’t unsee that. I was worried that I had caught an STD from simple proximity or visual association. What if he was infested? His eye-contact made me feel like I needed a shower and a brain scrub. For a seventeen year old virgin this was a traumatic event. I survived, but EWW!

The adventures continued. We marveled and clapped for our coach driver who managed to squeeze into the tiniest winding streets in Paris and outpace other cars on the Autobahn. My group got a little lost in Paris while navigating the Metro and I had a mild panic attack from it. I never want to end up in the wrong part of town. Since I knew so little about the right vs. wrong parts of Paris, I worried. Given that we were on free time with no chaperones, I worried that extra little bit. We could be kidnapped, a long-standing fear due to repeated viewings of the six o’clock local news as a child. After stopping at a MacDonalds (seriously, someone needed to teach my travel companions some culture), eating fries with mayonnaise. and regrouping, we found our way to our desired location, Jim Morrison’s gravesite.

Jim Morrison’s grave is a tourist attraction unto itself. It sits in a lovely and famous cemetery full of raised sites and unparalleled statuary. When we arrived we were one group of many who had made the pilgrimage. People sat around singing, chatting with Jim (sure, that’s normal) and writing loving graffiti all over the site. It’s a whole thing and my group was eager to take part. Especially since there had recently been a bit of a Doors/Jim Morrison revival with the release of the biopic starring Val Kilmer. It was the highlight of the day as far as they were concerned. I like The Doors, sure, don’t get me wrong, and I wanted to see the site, too. But I didn’t want to stay there all day and take part in the singing ritual. I don’t respond well to prolonged thoughts of death and the guy sort of did it to himself with drugs, so could we just meditate a little less on the matter and instead head out to the next site? I was starting to get the heebie-jeebies being surrounded by dead people for so long; perhaps subconsciously worried that it was contagious. Plus, there was more to Paris that I wanted, nay, NEEDED, to see. My breathing started to constrict. Enough with the mini panic attacks! I contributed an “I love you, Jim” to the wall and appealed to the group to move on. It was hard, due to all the teen-aged emotions suddenly flowing for a guy who had his heyday before they were even born, but finally we left. It was time to celebrate life before I lost it.

Our visit to Switzerland offered visions I’d never imagined. When we drove into the country, all was fine and pretty and ordinary and then suddenly, like a backdrop direct from fantasy, the Alps appeared. They were not there, and then they were, in all their glorious majesty. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.. I felt cold and tingly from inside the bus, before I even stepped outside and into their presence. If you haven’t seen them, they are an awe-inspiring, overwhelming, visual perfection; a confection of snow-capped beauty. I kind of wanted to eat them. On the ground, however, it was early summer and a rich display of color trimmed each peak; a dazzling array of gorgeous flowers. Periodically we would spot a waterfall and in one area, rainbow-hued hang gliders dotted the landscape. I was scarily breathless, like I had jumped off a wall, forgot to bend my knees, and had the wind knocked out of me. I was frightened and stupefied and in love all at the same time.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to take a train up the Jungfrau to the ice palace at the top and try a little skiing for anyone who’s interested.” I almost fell off my seat. I want to ski! Wait, we’re going up one of those peaks? That’s a bit high, right? And steep. Hmm. Not so sure about that one. The whole group was going. I would go.

After a perfect evening and night’s sleep at an inn in Interlaken, filled with a down comforter-aided cloud-like sleep that continues to blow away every other night’s sleep I’ve ever had, we boarded a rickety-seeming train that took us slowly up the Jungfrau, one of the highest peaks in Europe. I had to keep myself from looking out of the window at the sheer drops along the side of the train cars. My hands started to sweat and I had trouble swallowing. I stared directly at my friends as they talked because if I focused hard enough on them, I might have a chance of not passing out. Up and up and up we climbed. I could no longer see the ground because of the winding of the train on the mountain. All that rose above us was a vast whiteness. Was this it? Was I going to heaven now? One of the chaperones came around to give us the lowdown once we got to the top. I wanted to tell him to sit down, and not stand up during the ride. Safety first, man.

“Once we get up there, we will walk through the ice palace and all its carvings. You are free to get a bite to eat at the café or you can go outside and try to ski a little. It’s just trying it out, as we don’t have the time to stay and ski for any period of time.” He cleared his throat. “Now, you all are from Florida, which is really flat, as you know. I don’t know how much experience you have with altitude…” He looked around and everyone shook their heads no. “Okay, well, this mountain is really high. Really high. When you get off the train, just take your time walking around. Don’t try to run around, as you will get really tired. Get some water and drink lots of it. You might feel dizzy. You might feel sick to your stomach. You might get a headache. The air is thinner, so it might be…different…to breathe.”

What?! He’s just telling us all this now? I was already struggling with breathing from my panic and now we were going to the top of a REALLY HIGH mountain in the Alps. As far as I knew, all Alps were really high, so to say it was really high meant this mother was REALLY HIGH! Dizzy and sick? Check. And I hadn’t even gotten out of the train yet. Oh boy. I wondered immediately if there was a medical station at the top. Or, if we stopped breathing, would we have to take the slow, rickety train ride all the way back down to the small village at the bottom for care? I was not liking this at all. Oh no, I just looked over the side. Must stop doing that.

We reached the top and I walked out, taking steps in slow motion. The others looked at me.

“What? He said to take it slowly.”

“Yes, but not to be crazy about it,” said my friend. “You’re not re-enacting the moon landing. Let’s just get some water and you’ll be fine. Walk normally. Just don’t run right away. He said once we get used to it, we will be fine.” I picked up my pace, but only a little bit, so as not to attract attention, and judgment.

In the ice palace, I was fine. It was awesome actually. Ice sculptures in an ice building at the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. What could be cooler (no pun intended)? Plus, I couldn’t see the outside and thus didn’t have a constant reminder of just how high we were up in the sky. I drank more water. My dizziness, whether self-imposed or actually brought on by the altitude, started to subside. It was time to face the outdoors. I would not let my fear hold me back.

There was a large open area where they allowed people to strap on skis and give it a shot down a relatively flat hill. Once I could put them on and stand up without immediately falling, I held my breath, never the wisest choice, and pushed myself off my stationary spot with my ski poles. Within seconds, I was speeding way too fast down the hill into a white void. There was nothing to see but white and the silver jagged peaks of neighboring mountains covered in more white. Then I saw unexpected red. I had fallen, tangled up in the red plastic fence netting at the bottom of the hill used to mark the end point of the ski area, and I assume, catch wayward neophyte skiers like me. Go past that point and you would be lost into the snowy abyss and nobody would hear you land. I looked down and found my feet still attached to the skis but twisted in uncomfortable ways backward and to the side.

I tried to sit up, but the heavy breathing made me dizzy and I fought for each breath with difficulty. Once I finally found my way to an upright position on my rear end, I attempted to stand.

“Just walk your hands up your ski pole,” said my chaperone, who had come to a stop nearby and who had clearly skied before. I grunted and huffed and wheezed the thin air, but lacked any upper body strength whatsoever to complete the task. I gave up and instead found the ski binding releases and applied more strength than I thought I could feasibly muster to try to escape those death planks. I was now certain that I did not enjoy skiing. It would take me a number of years before I would try it again. But what could I expect? You strap skis onto a novice (from Florida no less!) at the top of the Alps and wait and see what happens. Does someone take to it that fast? If so, I was not one of those super skilled people.

Once I hiked my way back to the top of the hill under the burden of the equipment that had tried to kill me, I promptly dumped the skis and joined another group who had started sledding down the hill on sacks. That was much better. Now when I overexerted myself with laughter and excitement, I just laid my head down on the sack until the dizziness passed and I could hike back up again. I noticed some other people skiing, people with actual skills, in a winding fashion all around the mountain, even in places with no holy red plastic protective barrier. One misstep and they would have disappeared forever. I had to cover my eyes. I can tolerate that kind of thing in movies, maybe James Bond, but not in real life. I had vertigo just watching them and prayed that they stayed on whatever was considered the path.

Needless to say, since this account has now found its way to print, I survived. I felt my sanity and breath return, my dizziness subside and my blood pressure decrease with each click of the train back down the mountain. I sighed when we hit bottom, happy to be alive and exhilarated by just how alive I felt. I bought a Swiss watch to celebrate, and maybe a little Swiss chocolate. After that adventure, we walked through the fields at the base of the mountains and decorated our hair with wildflowers. Considering I was tethered to a large group, I’ve never felt such freedom. And now that my heart rate was back to normal, I could really let myself go and enjoy the beauty all around me. I savored a bite of Toblerone.

Yes, Europe gave me everything I asked for and more. In Amsterdam, I ate Gouda and wandered through tulip markets and saw windmills and tried on clogs. I also strolled by the windows in the Red Light District and saw all the ladies for sale, like moving mannequins, with actual red lights. I didn’t expect the literal red lights. I didn’t try any drugs, so I’ve been told I missed out in that regard. But that wasn’t really my thing. If you haven’t noticed, I was already high enough. The drugs would have made me intolerable.

Despite having an innate fear of London airports, I managed to make it without accusing multiple people of sheltering a bomb. I had my suspicions, but I realized I might be wrong about them, so didn’t voice them. I refused to embarrass the group. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I had no more fear whatsoever. I mean, I practically had to disrobe every time I bought something, which was frequently, because of my special travel wallets that I kept under my clothes, and had secret zippers and compartments. It was something special to watch me in a store. Thieves, perpetrators, small children and their pets knew what the girl with the strange bulge at the waist was hiding. I was thick around the middle with travelers’ checks and loose change from various countries. Very chic, and not subtle at all.

Despite the anxieties, and largely because of the adventures, I ended up leaving Europe just as I had arrived; elated, excited and ready to travel to Europe. Thank goodness it wouldn’t be the last time I would make the trip across the Pond, as we jet-setters like to say.