The Zen of Travel

Anyone who has met me for all of five seconds knows in an instant that I am a planner.  I am as enamored as a Swiss watchmaker with efficiency and order. Pretty much every moment of my life has some sort of prearranged structure, from exercise class to office hours to date night, and I really like - scratch that - love it that way. I pencil even my routine personal errands (grocery or pharmacy shopping) and self-care appointments (fitness and yoga classes) in my calendar as a sort of holding spot so that I don't blow myself off.  Also, being unproductive brings on an existential angst that I really just can't handle not one bit I mean what if life is totally meaningless and we really are all alone in an infinite universe and nothing matters oh my god somebody get me my iCalendar before I stroke out.

I can relax within the container of an organized life.  Social ambiguity and insufficient notice can leave me feeling frustrated and trapped rather than free and easy.  Not that I can't be spontaneous, but I've reserved my ambling and meandering for times that I've set aside for such dawdling.  Times like snowstorms and PMS Sundays.  Times like a three-month Eurorail backpacking trip along the northern Mediterranean coast from Spain to Israel (excepting the Balkan countries) in the fall of 2007.

After a solid decade of working and going to school for a 30-something career change, I found myself on the brink of delirium halfway through my master's degree.  I needed a break desperately and realized I couldn't wait until I collapsed from some absurdly preventable health crisis to take one.  My husband and I had just sold our home in South Florida at the peak of the mid-aughts real estate boom, and we were still renting in our new city.  For the first time, we had the resources to support ourselves in not only not working for a few months, but actually indulging ourselves a bit during that time.

A vision board (for those not in the New Age know, basically a collage of your dreams and intentions for the immediate or distant future) I'd created as part of my art therapy graduate training sealed the deal: luscious pictures of Aegean beaches and Provençal countryside, with magazine ad catch phrases like "Because you're worth it" and "La dolce vita" pasted between the beckoning images.  The fact that a two-dimensional assignment had organically morphed into a sculptural piece which ultimately evolved into my own personal Ark of the Covenant, parchment scrolls and all, instilled a sense of sacred obligation to follow this strange stirring.

This isn't something I would have even remotely entertained while still living on the East Coast.  I was raised with the unquestioned assumption that, if you wanted to travel for any extended period for no good occupational reason, you needed to be either: a) college student, b) a retiree, c) a billionaire or d) a fugitive.  Otherwise, you worked full-time and you were happy with your two measly weeks of vacation a year when I was your age we didn't even get Christmas off you insufferable crybaby.

In many ways, our Mediterranean odyssey was every bit like stepping right into those autumnal snapshots of grape harvests, azure coastlines, stuccoed trattorias, ancient marble ruins covering my vision board.  From the Iberian peninsula to the Holy Land, I was continually awed at the sheer fact that I could hike up the slopes of a seaside vineyard with no one in sight for ages, and then, whenever the spirit moved me, just glide on down to the next village for the most exquisite espresso in human history.  Welcome to my Eden.

But what doesn't sell splashy jet setter magazines and prearranged group tours are the contradictions and clusterfucks inherent in any region, even that after which the biblical Paradise itself was modeled.  The endless nagging of roadside litter, homicidal mopeds, chain-smoking, and a healthy dose of xenophobia are right here alongside all the beauty and charm. What the average Condé Nast travel writer also won't gush about in her next article under the Tuscan sun is the outright pettiness of some of those working in the travel business in oft-visited locations.  Italy, which boasts a 136-billion-Euro annual tourism industry thanks to being the home of more World Heritage Sites than any other country on the planet, is a fantastic place to visit.  If you speak Italian.  If you don't, well, just expect to be charged more, treated like less and generally ignored. As our hostel mates in Venice put it, they charge you to drink the water and then they charge you to piss it out.

And don't even think, particularly with people who work in the mainstream hospitality industry there, that you can eek by with some pathetic hybrid of your high school French and restaurant Spanish, because people who work in Italian tourism seem to hate... wait for it... tourists.  What they despise even more than tourists is tourists who ask questions. In place of the American childrearing cliché,   "There's no such thing as a stupid question," Italian parents and teachers terrorize their children with, "Who asks questions? No one! What are you, a fuckin' idiot?!" while beating them mercilessly with a freshly-picked tendril of seaside grapevine.  If you can look past that, which I highly recommend doing if you want to have any fun at all, Italy is completely all it's cracked up to be, worth every single brush-off and missed bus and government worker strike that comprises the disjointed choreography that is Italian transportation.

It turns out that, upon further research, it is not unusual at all for things to get mired in bureaucracy in La Bella Italia. After all, since the fall of Mussolini's regime following WW II, there have been more than 60 governments here. Sixty! That's approximately one a year, a veritable coup every single year, which explains why I haven't yet heard back from the American Consulate regarding my 105-euro fine for not signing and dating my Eurorail Pass before boarding my first Italian train (a complete about-face from Eurorail protocol in France and Spain, where conductors have you sign in front of them after boarding). There's this sort of "tough shit, figure it out for yourself, we've got more important things to deal with" ethos. Important things like looking stunningly fabulous in the latest in Milanese footwear, or taking days to cook up the most ecstatically sublime sauce the world has ever known, or painting epic biblical frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

But let's not single out Italy as the gold medalist in Olympic attitude-throwing. There was similar drama in Paris having to do with metro tickets. I'd been tossing my validated tickets so I wouldn't get them confused with the good tickets, but on one particular day the metro authorities happened to be doing a random check to see if people's tickets were validated. They just happened to pull me aside when I exited the metro, already late for my train to Biarritz, and demanded a validated ticket or 25 euros (about $45 dollars), half of which they pocket for Thursday poker night. The brusque guard first interrogated me mercilessly, then settled for writing all over an unused metro ticket so I couldn't actually use it. Rumor has it the last dictators in Europe deeply resent their demotion to menial jobs in public transportation and relish their absolute power over who shall wait and who shall ride like Caesar at the Coliseum.

Conditions weren't considerably different in Spain, where a generally straight shot from San Sebastián to Madrid was Project Mayhem. Apparently, early that morning, suspected Basque separatists sabotaged the rail lines from the north and we had to take buses all the way to the capital - eight hours on a bus with no bathroom, just at the moment that I started my period. That's the day I learned about a special brand of misogyny that herds women onto vehicles of public transport with no potty.  Upon arrival in Madrid, and unbeknownst to me, it is a national holiday, so the Atocha train station is pandemonium with the whole country getting off work early for a long weekend and scrambling to get out of the city. I waited two hours in lines I didn't even need to be in, because no one in authority was patient enough to offer the proper information in its entirety. It's just not in their sphere, even if that sphere is in another ticket sales office downstairs in the very same building. Needless to say, I was a hot mess by the time I staggered off the platform in Toledo close to 10pm with no dinner, no hotel room and no cash.

Yet amid all of these tiny hassles dwells a parallel universe where a stranger, an angel of sorts (usually a kind civilian, often a fellow traveler or an older person moving at a slower pace), takes me under his or her wing and points the way. Just as I am about to have a complete meltdown and curl up in a ball in the squalor of a train station bathroom - which I am reluctant to leave on account of its modern miracle of indoor plumbing at the ready - kindness taps me on the shoulder to show me the way out.

It is then that I realize that I myself have been shamelessly committing my least favorite of sins: judging a people by their government.  Me, of all people. The one who goes out of her way in her travels to point out to locals that, surely, I am no fan of the Bush dynasty (remember this was 2007), and then is delighted and relieved to find that most Europeans I've encountered have the good sense to separate the U.S. government from the American citizenry. Yet, here I am confusing a country's people with its government, as little did I realize that many of the businesses in the E.U. tourism sector are in fact government agencies - the rail lines, the museums, the ferries. They are not, as is often the case in the U.S., in the private sector, and with the amount of routine striking their workers seem to do, there is unshakable job security. Basically, they could whip you senseless with a seaside grapevine tendril for asking a stupid question with nary a raised eyebrow from their supervisor, who is too busy playing poker with the bribe money from your bogus Eurorail violation to notice.

Now it makes perfect sense that guy at the information counter at the train station wants to do anything else but answer my questions, and that the lady selling tickets to the Accademia (home of Michaelangelo's David) rips me a new one because I said "veinte," the Spanish word for 20, rather than "venti," the Italian word for 20 (puta, puleeeese).  Truth be told, I have come across only a minority of officials who were so rigid and aggressive in their enforcement of the rules that I was reduced to a blubbering pulp in my vivid imaginings of being deported on the spot, or sent to some Guantanamesque prison of torture for Eurorail Pass offenders, sugar substitute requesters and other wayward tourists. Truly, when you don't know your rights in a country, it can be extremely unsettling to be accosted in such a way. But, really, it happened only twice in more than a month - a month of two-dozen destinations and countless interactions in three completely different countries. Amazing how stress and anxiety escalate perception.

So, let me reframe my ridiculously generalized comments about asking questions in Italy. It's fine to ask questions. It's fine to stumble over your Italian like a monolinguistic dope. It's fine to ask for directions to a train station that is right in front of your nose. As long as you're talking to everyday, ordinary folks. In fact, we had more than our share of go-that-extra-mile generosity from everyone from trattoria waitresses, to hostel owners, to scrappy hillside hunters, to mom-and-pop shopkeepers. Everyone except the people whose job it is to give you information. And once you know your sources, you can get any information you need. And sometimes even get invited over for dinner.

Seasoned travelers will know that most of these inconvenient delays and near-misses ultimately led us to synchronistic experiences we could never have planned.  Like a detour through the Tuscan countryside and an unexpected stop in Pisa, home of what one guidebook cheekily referred to as "the world's biggest architectural disaster." Or a spontaneous side trip to the southern French town of St. Paul de Vence, a reverse red velvet layer cake of stone houses with terracotta-tiled roofs perched perfectly on a high hilltop like a fairytale village, where locals engage in lively matches of pétanque (pretty much French bocce) under the plane trees on a late autumn afternoon, all cigars and sweaters and lively arguments over each and every toss. 

I happened across this quintessential southern French phenomenon just as I accidentally rounded an unintended corner, when I was admittedly a bit lost and had to pee really badly and just couldn't see what all the fuss about the French Riviera was anyway because - and this is my bladder talking - "to hell with the South of France it's way overrated go to California you can find all the same shit there but cheaper and with nicer people." As they say, don't give up five minutes before the miracle, for in that very moment, in the raucous joy of pétanque, I settled into myself, into the present moment, and fell into deep appreciation and gratitude - which is, as it were, the only place to find fulfillment, provided you have relieved yourself.

Next, on the way to the bus stop, I found myself on a magical stroll along the town's chemins piétons (footpaths) perched on the terraced hillsides overlooking the coppery patina of an early November countryside. And stumbled upon tiny stuccoed chapels filled with ancient frescoes and local artwork. And tasted for the first time the heavenly experience of a ripe fig fresh off a tree, green as spring, yet subtly sweet and with the slightest hint of musk. 

On a dime, it all changed. But actually nothing had changed. Only my perception. Such is the zen of travel. Such is surrendering my agenda, my expectations, my standards of perfection and excellence. Such is the humility born of being in another country and allowing there to be more than one right way of doing things.  Which hasn't necessarily translated into more scheduling flexibility in my everyday life back home, but at least informs me that I am theoretically capable of changing plans when fascist train conductors force the issue with grapevine intimidation and heavily-accented blackmail.