The Kids in the Upper Deck

I’m perched on a bar stool at El Parador Cervecería across from Vicente Calderon Stadium two hours before game time, nursing my cerveza grande in a giant plastic cup. The brunette next to me? Sipping an orange juice.  She’s decked out in the trademark red, white and blue jersey of Atlético Madrid; I have opted for a only-slightly-less-gaudy red warm-up jacket and matching team scarf. 

In many countries my outfit would be mercilessly mocked and ridiculed, but here? Muy, muy guapo.

The girl looks at my jacket out of the corner of her eye as she opens her mouth and bites her sandwich. I smile and nod at her jersey. Clearly we’ve bonded.

 Her name is Paula. She is a big Atlético fan. She’s six years old.

These European soccer hooligans are just adorable.

“Do you know what time they open the gates?” Dad asks me in Spanish, as he and his wife take turns steadying Paula on the barstool. Apparently I look like someone who knows. “Three thirty?”

Of course I have no idea but automatically assume my default mode of faking it with conviction. “No, at three, I think,” Complete guess but let the man dream. Mom gives me a worried-looking nod, calculating how they are going to entertain a six-year-old in a bar for another 45 minutes. Paula doesn’t seem particularly concerned.

They say that in Spain, soccer (or football, as anyone outside of North America calls it) is a religion.  If that’s the case, it looks like I just walked into the early service Sunday School.

In eight days, an early morning, pre-arranged rumble on a bridge outside Vicente Calderon stadium between radical Atlético and Deportivo supporters will leave a man dead, after he falls - or is thrown - into the river during the fight. Twenty fans will be arrested.

But today I'm seeing none of this.

Where are the screaming fanatics? Where are the drunken brawls? With multiple families and kids under twelve, El Parador looks less like a testosterone-infused sports bar than it does a tram stop at Disney World.

I’ve been hanging out here with Paula and her parents for the past half hour, waiting for the start of the Spanish La Liga matchup between hometown Atlético Madrid and the visitors from Malaga.  An Oscar Mayer hot dog cooker (“The Genuine Hot Dog of America!”) sits on the bar to the right of us, rotating a set of maroon-colored wieners. Fortunately no one appears to be eating them.

Dad asks me another question about the stadium that I can’t really understand and I probably couldn’t answer if I did. I decide to fess up. “Actually, this is my first game.”

“Ours, too,” Mom tells me.  She gestures toward Paula. “She really wanted to come. She loves football.”

Paula says nothing, but seems to be eying up the hot dogs. I nod and take another swallow of cerveza. Dad looks at his watch. 

At this point a drunken brawl looks extremely unlikely.

*          *          *

It is true that in Spain, Sports is essentially synonymous with Football. There is no other sport that really means anything.  Basketball occasionally gets a 30-second mention on the TV sports report, but I suspect only because the Spanish Gasol brothers (Pau and Marc) currently play in the NBA. After that, it’s ten seconds of tennis, ten seconds of Grand Prix auto racing, and the motocross results.

That’s not a joke; they actually give the motocross results.

No, if you’re a sports fan in Spain, it’s all about football.  And in Spanish football, it’s all about La Liga, the top 20-team division of professional football clubs. La Liga translates simply as “The League,” as in “What other league could you possibly be talking about?” 

However, “Competitive Balance” – something to which American professional sports leagues at least pay lip service – is not a concept that translates at all to La Liga, either in language or spirit. In the 83 seasons of La Liga (since 1929, with a couple years off for an ugly Civil War), the league has been won 54 times by two clubs: Real Madrid, and Barcelona.

 

In the past 10 years, either Real Madrid or Barcelona has been crowned the champion all but once.  The undisputed two best players in the world play for these two teams: Lionel Messi for Barcelona; Cristian Renaldo for Real Madrid. Both clubs have a worldwide fan base and by far have the most money of any team in the country.  It’s like Apple and Microsoft, Nadal and Djokovic, Presley and Sinatra. And then everybody else.

On the outside of this embarrassment of riches looking in is Madrid’s “other” football team: Club Atlético de Madrid, or more simply, Atlético. If Real Madrid are the Yankees and Barcelona are the Red Sox, then Atlético are the Spanish equivalent of the New York Mets.

Like the Mets of baseball, Atlético plays in the biggest market in the country.  But in comparison to their rich cousins Real Madrid, who play their home games in an historic, prestigious 81,000-seat stadium regally referred to as El Bernabéu,  Atlético plays in Estadio Vicente Calderon, a dowdy concrete stadium down by the river, on the working-class side of town.  It’s the only sports stadium I’ve ever seen that actually has a highway running underneath it.

It’s like old Shea Stadium in Queens. Minus a toxic waste dump or two.

But like the Mets, Atlético historically (if not currently) is not entirely hopeless. With less money and less prestige, they still try their best to keep up with the Big Boys. Every now and then – say, once every couple of decades – they actually go on an improbable run and win the whole thing, leaving the spoiled fans of Real and Barcelona fuming with rage.  One of those improbable runs happened last year, giving Atlético the championship for the first time since 1996.

When I moved to New York in the late Nineties, I turned my nose up at the dynasty-building Yankees and became a Mets fan, ushering in heartbreak for years to come. And of course when I came to Madrid - for reasons I will leave a psycho-analyst to determine - I knew immediately that, like the Mets, Atlético was the team for me.

*          *          *

I previously had been to one European football match, 17 or so years ago, in Belgium. But I’m not sure that really counts.

I was taken to my first match by Geert – a silver-haired Belgian banker by day who after hours transformed into a leather-clad, earring-wearing, beer-swilling, Iron Maiden-loving head banger.  Geert had invited me and my half-Irish friend Jim to a game featuring Geert’s favorite club, Anderlecht, which at the time apparently represented the best Belgian football had to offer.

While I’m sure he meant well, it was Geert who confirmed my suspicion that a soccer game – in Belgium, at least – was nothing more than an organized excuse to drink. As if they needed another one.

We spent the hour leading up to the Anderlecht game with Geert and his friends hitting as many bars around the stadium as possible, slamming down a Stella and quickly heading out to find the next round.  By kickoff time Jim and I - no strangers to beer consumption, trust me - were being ridiculed as lightweight Americans because we were unable to ingest a gallon of alcohol in 45 minutes or less. 

Predictably, the Anderlecht match ended in a 0-0 tie, confirming the worst American stereotypes about European soccer.  I may have napped through most of of the second half. The rest of the crowd, exclusively young men who looked as if they had hit twice as many bars as we had, seemed lobotomized, impassively staring down at the field waiting for the something to happen, knowing in their hearts it was probably wasn’t going to.

But comparing La Liga  – one of world’s richest and most prestigious professional sports leagues - to Belgian soccer circa 1997 is a little like comparing the Lord of the Rings trilogy to a community theater production of Godspell, performed free of charge in a church basement in Altoona.  In the world of soccer, La Liga is the big time. I knew that, even if I wasn’t watching Barcelona or Real Madrid, a football game in Spain was going to be different.

I had no idea the difference would involve kids, more kids, cigars, air horns, scarves, vomitoriums, and molestation by a security guard. Just did not see that coming.

*          *          *

I’m really not sure what’s up with the scarves. A ridiculous number of red, white and blue team scarves hang from dozens of identical souvenir stands lining the perimeter of Vicente Calderon Stadium, like ham hocks at the pork store. You can also buy an Atlético flag or maybe a cap, but it seems to be all the about the scarf. I stopped counting at a billion.

Yes, I bought a scarf, but I’m the American neophyte at his first Spanish soccer game. Who are the other 999,999 scarves for?  The stadium only holds 52,000; how many scarves can a person possibly wear? It’s not even cold.

Leave it to the Spanish to combine sports paraphernalia with male fashion accessories.  I look, but fail to find the matching Atlético cufflinks and cummerbund.

*          *          *

An hour before game time I spot a half dozen of powder-blue-and-white-clad Malaga supporters milling around one of the gates. Unlike the Atlético fans who all seem to have offspring in tow, the visitors from Malaga are all guys in their early 20s, showing their unease in enemy territory by talking a little too loudly and slapping each other on the back a little too often.

Nearby an Atlético Dad is buying a bag of something that looks like caramel corn for his three-year-old daughter, while her eight-year-old brother stands to the side, brandishing a rolled-up Atlético flag on a pointy poll.  Police cars – just slightly larger than those utilized by clowns at the circus – are deployed in the street. Tension hangs in the air; my finely honed journalistic instinct tells me this place is a powder keg ready to explode.

As if on cue, a battalion of police with batons and riot helmets hustle past me double time, as if they all just ate a plate of bad chorizo. They’re joined by two helmeted policemen on horseback, trotting around the end of the stadium toward the highway underpass beneath the stands.  This is it! I run after them with my camera, trying to listen for anyone yelling “DRUNKEN MELEE!!” in Spanish. Whatever that would be.

When I reach the underpass, lights are flashing in the tunnel and the police are shooing picture-snapping Atlético fans away from a red, white and blue bus parked under the stands. The Atlético team, apparently, has arrived at the stadium. 

Disappointingly, no one in the tunnel appears to be fighting, and/or drunk. Not even the players.

*          *          *

As I enter the stadium, the security guards give me renewed hope that the authorities at least believe chaos is just a smuggled-in smoke bomb away.  This is a far cry from the half-hearted bag check at American sporting events, where they seem most concerned about unauthorized umbrellas or a contraband bag of Dorito’s.

I’m not carrying a bag, purse or backpack, so instead I get a full-body pat down.  Not the perfunctory pat down you get at the airport if you set off the metal detector; I suspect this is closer to what you experience when you check in for your first day at prison. Another couple inches further up my leg and I’m going to ask the guard if he plans to buy me dinner.

Yes, that is a cell phone in my pocket. And no, I’m not just happy to see you.

*          *          *

I look at my ticket to figure out where I'm sitting. I see that my seat, apparently, is located in Vomitorio 34.  Which means there are at least 33 more vomitorios. Should I be concerned that my seat is located in a vomitorium? Is this somehow connected to the Oscar Mayer hot dogs they are selling across the street? Did I pay extra for this?

My seat, it turns out, is almost as far away from the field as it can possibly be without actually being located outside of the stadium. When I enter Vomitorio 34 and show the usher my ticket, she just laughs and points up the concrete stairs. As in “WAY the hell up there, Pal. Just keep climbing.”

Vomitorio 34, Section 519, Row 16, is in the second-to-last in the stadium, just under the press box. It might be in the shade, on some other day. But with the 4:00 p.m. start time I will be staring into a blinding sun for at least the first half of the game. I am baking in my warm up jacket and my scarf.

But by American standards, the seat is … not really that bad.  I paid 40 Euro for the ticket, about 50 bucks. At an American football game, I’d be sitting at about the 40-yard line, and paying what? Three or four times this price? And vomiting probably wouldn’t even be allowed, let alone encouraged.

I lean back, drape my arms over the adjoining chairs, and prop up my feet in the still-empty row in front of me. I feel like I’m living large, soaking in the sun and the scene through my Ray-bans in the vomitorio under the press box of Vicente Calderon Stadium. 

That is until the kids arrive.

*          *          *

Three things of note that have not yet been banned in Spanish football stadiums: cigars, children under the age of 12, and air horns. Thankfully they have not yet imported the vuvuzela.

It’s an odd sensation, having cigar smoke blown in your face. Kind of like being stuck on a motorcycle in the Holland tunnel in the middle of summer, behind a diesel tractor-trailer with a bad muffler.  I feel like I’m at a poker game, taking place in 1958.

The cigar smoke in this case comes from three seats down, billowing out of an 80-year-old man who apparently decided to treat his 27 grandchildren to a Saturday afternoon soccer game. Two of the kids – Kike and Pepe, I learn – are in the seats to the left of me.  Honestly I have no idea whether Kike and Pepe have any connection to the cigar-puffing, Fidel Castro impersonator. All I know is there otherwise seems to be a dearth of supervising adults in the general vicinity.

Kike and Pepe are at that age – I don’t know, 5? 6? – where they don’t really give a crap about the actual sporting event taking place on the field. Yeah there are a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball yadda yadda yadda okay we got it whatever. It’s much, much more fun for a boy at that age to throw peanut shells in the hair of the people in front of them, giggle and hide, and then puncture an eardrum by blowing an air horn.

Paula would never do this.

“Hey!”

Kike and Pepe have just blown their air horn into the ear of a visibly pissed Russian with a crewcut in the row in front of us.  The Russian kid apparently speaks no Spanish, so he begins yelling in broken English. To the delight of Kike and Pepe, who know just enough English to giggle and hurl back the insults of a six year old that transcend all cultural divides.

“What is your name?” Kiki asks the Russian slowly in English.

“Me, I am Nikolai.”

Kiki and and Pepe both laugh. “You’re stupid.”

Nikolai’s eyes bulge to the size of pies. For a moment I believe his head might actually explode. “I STUPID??? I STUPID?? YOU STUPID!! YOU!!”

The kids love this. They laugh and laugh and laugh. Meanwhile on the field, Atlético has scored its first goal. Kiki and Pepe could not possibly care less.

*          *          *

While the game so far may not have quite reached the level of a religious experience, I do notice about halfway through the first half that Jesus is sitting in front of me.

Turns out he’s an Atlético fan. I wonder how that is going to go over in Barcelona, and at the stadium across town.

*          *          *

Like the denizens of the Dawg Pound in Cleveland or the Cheeseheads in the end zone of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, the serious fans – the inebriated ones with painted faces and life-long season tickets - sit at each end of the field behind the goal posts, with arguably the worst view in the stadium. 

Regardless of whatever is happening on the field, it appears that the primary activity behind the goal posts is to sing and chant in unison.  All kinds of chants, all kinds of songs. I can’t decipher a single lyric, but so far I have heard chants sung (or, perhaps, songs chanted) to the tune of “My Darling Clementine,” Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer, and “Da Doo Ron Ron” by The Crystals.

Evidently the playlist at Vicente Calderon has not been updated since a decade or so before Franco died.

A few minutes before the end of the half, Atlético scores its second goal, further depressing the contingent of Malaga supporters relegated to the ghetto of a single section in the far corner of the stadium.  The Atlético fans stand and wave their scarves, as the end zone chants something to the tune of the Polovetzian Dance No. 2 by Borodin.

Back in Vomitorio 34, Nikolai continues his debate with Kike and Pepe.

“You stupid!!”

“No, you are.”

“No, you!”

 Jesus looks on impassively, and opens a bag of peanuts.

*          *          *

Midway through the second half. The Atlético fans are growing nervous, as Malaga kicks in a goal almost as if by accident, narrowing the score to 2-1.

It’s as if everyone is just waiting for a tie to ruin their afternoon.  Who wants to leave the stadium chanting “Yay! We didn’t lose to each other!”  What are the drunken-brawl chances in that?

Here under the press box, the niños are also antsy, but it has nothing to do with the game score.  There are, after all, only so many peanut shells you can throw and Russians you can annoy before boredom sets in.

Kike’s Dad finally makes himself known from the row behind us and steps in to try to put an end to the tormenting of Nikolai. My personal opinion is that anyone who argues with a six year old at a football game for 45 minutes pretty much gets what he deserves, but I’m also ready for the exercise of a little parental control.

“Kike,” Dad says, confiscating the air horn, “mira el partido.”  Watch the game.

The look on Kike’s face switches from unbridled joy to the grimace of a crushed soul, as if Dad just announced that there is no Santa Claus. Or whoever it is that delivers Christmas presents in Spain.

Watch the game? Am I being punished for a war crime? Why do you hate me?

After being prohibited from torturing foreign nationals, Kike initiates the sporting event version of Are We There, Yet?,  swiveling around every five minutes to ask Dad when the game will be over so they can get the hell out of there.

“Veinte minutos, Kike.”

“Quince minutos, Kike.”

“Diez minutos, Kike.”

Pepe on the sly tries to coax his friend into re-instigating hostilities with Nikolai, but Kike’s heart is just not in it anymore.  If you can’t deafen an innocent stranger with an air horn what’s the point, really?

With six minutes left to go Atlético scores another goal, making the game 3-1, the soccer equivalent of an emphatic beat down.

Scarves are waved. The end zone chants. Kike asks Dad how much time is left. Jesus sits quietly, eating his peanuts.

*          *          *

When the final whistle blows, Atlético walks away with a tidy victory, keeping them within striking distance of Real and Barcelona in La Liga standings. In all likelihood they won’t pass either of those teams, but stranger things have happened. Hell, they happened last year.

With the 3-1 route I hold out hope that humiliated Malaga fans will charge the field or set off a smoke bomb, something to provoke the riot police with the horses and clown cars. But defeat is accepted in a disappointingly civilized manner, as the boys in their blue and white jerseys obediently file from their segregated upper deck corner and out of the stadium.

The riot police look bored. The horses the police are riding look bored. The kids being dragged home may not necessarily be bored, but most of them clearly need a nap.

A fine Saturday afternoon in Madrid, unless you’re a Malaga fan.  The drunken brawl is still a week away.

The Littlest Hobo

The man at the passport control window at Gatwick Airport does not want to let me into the country. Really does not want to let me in.  The questioning astoundingly has been going on for a full fifteen minutes. Can facial hair and the lack of a real job be that grave of a threat to national security?

“What is the purpose of your visit to the United Kingdom?”

I smile innocuously as possible. “Just passing through.”

I can tell instantly this not an acceptable answer.

“Business or pleasure.”

“Pleasure.”

Somehow this comes out sounding dirty, confirming his suspicion that I might be a deviant, or some kind of free-lance pornographer.

“What is your … occupation, exactly?”

Tough one. I think oh, what the hell, and tell him I’m a writer.

“A writer,” he repeats.

I see the look on his face. I might as well have told him I was a free-lance pornographer.

*          *          *

The European Tour began in Madrid, but has since on moved to Barcelona, Lyon, Munich, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden.  Fueled by offers of free accommodations from Malmo to London, the trip has metastasized into a full-fledged tour of the continent, like a third-rate rock band perpetually searching for its next paying gig.

It’s good to have friends. It’s even better to have tolerant friends who will put up with an American ne’er-do-well flopping on their couch for a few days.

The old town of Lyon, France is surprisingly charming, being in a city best known for a variety of potatoes and sauce you pour over steak. There’s nothing here to see, necessarily, in the tourist collector-card sense (“I got Pompeii and The Leaning Tower of Pisa!” “The Eiffel Tower? Oh man, I have doubles of that!”), but that’s fine with me.

I actually stopped collecting cards a while ago. This is not my first European rodeo.

I came to Lyon because it’s on the way to Munich from Barcelona and Madrid.  Which is on the way to Brussels, which is on the way to Copenhagen, which is on the way to Malmo. Sort of.  Anyway, I wanted to be able to tell people at cocktail parties for the rest of my life that I once drank a Cote du Rhone while sitting on the Cote du Rhone.

Pretty much shows you where my shallow priorities lie.

“Would you like to try some of our regional specialties, monsieur?”

The waitress at the outdoor cafe says this to me in French, followed by litany of food dishes I’ve never heard of. Or at least I think this is what she says to me. Honestly my French is so bad these days she just as likely could have been complimenting my sweater.

“Oui, bien sur.”

This is my usual answer in French, because it serves as a coherent response to both food order questions and sweater compliments.  My goal, as always, is to pretend like I know what I’m doing and hope that others believe it. The waitress smiles and nods as she walks away. Mission temporarily accomplished.

The downside to perpetually faking it is that  - here, for example - I have absolutely no idea what I’ll be having for dinner. But how bad can it be, right? I’m in France, for God’s sake. It’s the Culinary Capital of the World. I sip my wine, impressed with my growing skills as an International Bon Vivant.

No one told me, however, that in addition to the Lyonnais aptitude for potatoes and steak sauce, they are also apparently quite fond of their organ meats. Ah, I see. The regional specialty.

The chicken liver salad that arrives first is doable. Yes, the livers are whole and yes, the taste is overpoweringly pungent and yes, I have trouble not counting the obscene number of chickens who had to surrender their livers to make this one single appetizer, but I can do it.  Not my favorite, won’t willingly order it again, but I’ve eaten worse.  Speaking of which, here comes the main course …

I’ve eaten tripe once before in my life, also (not coincidentally) in southern France. But the tripe I had before was stuffed into a sausage and deep fried and otherwise unrecognizable as an animal digestive tract. (As some connoisseur of fine dining once said, you can deep fry an old shoe and it would taste pretty good). The regional specialty of Lyon, on the other hand, is tripe in a tomato-based stew. With each chewy bite, you are keenly aware of exactly what you are eating.

You know how they say every weird food “tastes just like chicken?”  Frog legs? Tastes just like chicken. Iguana? Tastes just like chicken.

This doesn’t taste just like chicken. Well, maybe rubber chicken.

I call the waitress. I’m going to need another bottle of Cote du Rhone to choke this down.

*          *          *

"Where will you staying while you're visiting the UK?"

"Tonight I'm staying with my friends Lynda and John."

"Your friends ‘Lynda and John.’” Made-up names if he ever heard them.  If only I had friends with exciting, exotic, believable names like Sapphire and Trevor. “And what is the home address of ‘Lynda and John?’"

My inquisitor is a fat-faced man in wire-rimmed glasses, who, I suspect, may have ended up at the passport window as punishment for being an incompetent weasel in some other department.  Still, I just don’t get it.  Are they on some heightened state of alert? Has there been a recent rash of middle-aged American men sneaking into the country via Scandinavia, to live as squatters and suckle illegally from the teat of the British welfare state?

"I have no idea. Somewhere in North London."

"You have no idea.” He smirks at me. “How are you going to get there?"

The look on his face tells me he thinks he is about to catch me in my own web of deadbeat/terrorist lies. I blink twice.  


"I'm going to call John and meet him in the city,” I say slowly,  “and he’s going to take me to his house."

"You're going to call ‘John’ and meet him in the city,” he repeats, “and he’s going to take you to his house.”

This is the tone of voice a person uses if the next words out of their mouth are “Oh this is rich! Rich, I say!”  All I want to do is get my passport stamped. Instead I’m trapped in a bad Noel Coward play.

*          *          *

It’s not something I’m proud of, but I admit that every time I travel into Germany, I subconsciously begin to whistle the theme song to “Hogan’s Heroes.”

The German businessman in the dining car on the train from Strasbourg is not amused. I have to turn to the window and pretend like I’m choking on my spaetzle.

The next day I’m wandering the streets of Munich when I come across a Mexican wedding on the steps of the National Theater. A four-piece mariachi band is playing “La Bomba.” To the best of my knowledge, I am not psychotic or under the influence hallucinogenic mushrooms.

I guess times have changed. At least the band has temporarily driven “Hogan’s Heroes” from my brain.

*          *          *

“What, are you touring like the Japanese now?”

This insult regarding my current travel practices is casually tossed at me at a restaurant in Brussels’ Place Flagey, a few blocks from where a decade and a half earlier I lived in an a one-room, tree-house apartment as a cheap, lazy graduate student. The more things change, right?

Of course at least then I had an apartment.

My caustic dinner companion is a short, dark-haired woman from Barcelona now living in Belgium, who once played a role in my life more pronounced than anyone in my direct acquaintance could reasonably fathom. To protect identities, I will refer her simply as Crazy Maria.

I was never able to ascertain if Crazy Maria was certifiably crazy, or simply just Spanish.  In the end, I found this to be a distinction without a difference.  After the countless emotionally overwrought, insane conversations with Crazy Maria, I was always left closing my eyes and rubbing my temples, as if trying to ward off a massive migraine, or head-bursting aneurism.

Tonight would be no different.  As I should have expected, the emotional ammunition is being fired across the table with no regard for the safety of innocent bystanders. Some things never change.

“You are always the one who leaves. Aren’t you, Dave? I knew you would leave me, Dave; I knew it! So yes, I was forced to leave you first.”

I last spoke to Crazy Maria four years ago, after she stood me up on a long-planned trip to Ireland less than a week before departure. I went to Ireland anyway and had a great time. Trust me, if there’s any place to tour alone without a crazy Spanish girlfriend in tow, Ireland is place to do it.

“You were so cold to me, Dave. So cold.”

Yes, how dare I get on with my life after you dumped me.  I feel the vein in the side of my head beginning to throb. I decide to change the subject.

“So tell me about your trip to America. You said you went there last summer with your boyfriend?”

Crazy Maria begins the account of her recent trip to the U.S. by telling me of the beautiful vistas of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The majesty of the drive down Highway 1 through Big Sur. The excitement  and glamor of Los Angeles. The spectacular lights of Las Vegas rising out the night desert. The awe-inspiring, natural wonder of the Grand and Bryce canyons.

She follows this 45 seconds of praise with a twenty minute diatribe of how the country I come from is a sick, cruel, twisted, “uncivilized” society, where homeless people clog the sidewalk, private individuals are allowed to own beachfront property, grandmothers in pickup trucks carry Kalishnikovs, and employees at a Wendy’s in some unnamed town in Arizona “looked at us as if we. Were. From. Mars! From Mars, Dave!”

I close my eyes and rub my temples, waiting for my head to explode. “Maria …”

“Do you deny it, Dave? Do you deny that you live in a Darwinian society?”

What country am I in again? That’s right; Belgium.  We speak French here. At least some of us do. I look around and signal to the waitress, wondering when the next plane leaves for Copenhagen.

“L’addition, s’il vous plait.”

*          *          *

"How much Pound Sterling are you carrying?"

"I'm not carrying any Pound Sterling."

"You're not carrying any cash? How do you plan to support yourself while in the UK?"

I blink at the passport inspector again. "I'm going to go to an ATM machine, and take money out of my bank account."

Another likely story. He looks suspiciously at my ATM card.

"Do you have any proof of how much money is in your bank account?"

I look at a sign above the booth of the passport control window. "WE WILL TOLERATE NO ABUSE! VERBAL ABUSE OF EMPLOYEES WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW!" I suddenly wonder what conditions are like in the British prison system. Food may not be as good as the Italian or the French. Probably don’t serve tripe, though …


"You mean am I traveling internationally, carrying copies of my bank statements?"

"Yes."

I bite my lip. "No."

"No?"

"No."


He peers at me with little piggy eyes over his glasses and makes a note of this on the List of Grievances he is compiling, apparently containing my qualities as an Undesirable. I try to read upside down. No … Proof … Of … Assets …

“Do you have any credit cards?”

“Yes. I do have credit cards.”

“May I see them, please?”

I pull out and hand him Visa and American Express.

“What is the credit limit on these cards?”

Don’t be a smart ass … don’t be a smart ass … “Thirty thousand dollars, and unlimited.”  You would think that would last me for a week in the UK, but hey, I may start buying people drinks.

He looks at me sideways as he rubs his chin. “Do you have any proof of those credit limits?”

*          *          *

I’ve never been attacked before by a tree, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. Makes sense it would be a beautiful, stately, harmless-looking shade tree in the middle of Hyde Park.

What’s up with all this British hostility?

I’m sitting in the park on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon (“Don’t get the idea that London weather always like this,” John tells me) with John, Lynda and Vicky, as Vicky’s two kids alternate between playing games and proclaiming their boredom. My English friends mention offhand that we’re currently camped under something they call a “conker tree.”

“A conker tree?” I say. “That’s a bizarre name. Why do they call it a conker tr …

As if on cue, a round, green, spiked projectile the size and weight of a billiard ball drops out of the sky and bashes me on the shoulder. Another six inches to the left and my head would have exploded like a watermelon.

“JESUS HOLY F …!”  I manage to bite off my expletive as I look to see eight-year-old Sasha looking down at me. “What the hell … I mean, what the heck was that?”

“That’s a conker,” Sasha informs me matter of factly, as if I am an amazingly slow-witted foreigner who needs to have the obvious repeatedly explained. The kid immediately loses interest and turns away as I message the bruise on my shoulder.

“Mummy,” Sasha whines, “I’m so bored!”  Apparently killer trees are no cause for alarm or even mild interest among the young here in Britannia.

“So tell me again,” Vicky asks after handing out Chinese paper kites to distract the kids for a few minutes, “what is it you’re doing, now?”

“You mean in addition to recovering from my recent near-death experience?”

She ignores the smart-ass answer. “You were in Brussels staying with Porter, right? Then Peter and Kamilla in Copenhagen and Ola in, where, Malmo? And now you’re here in London with John and Lynda. Where to, next?”

 “Edinburgh, I think. Then back to Madrid to live for a while.”

“You’re going to live in Madrid?”

“Yes.”

“Why Madrid?”

I shrug. “I like the tapas?”

Vicky was tops in our grad-school class back in Brussels, and she’s way too smart to let me weasel my way out an actual answer.  Still, she’s looking for an explanation that I have no real ability to provide.

“Yes but, what is it exactly that you’re doing?”

Lynda leans toward Vicky and points at me.

“He’s The Littlest Hobo!”

John and Vicky laugh and Vicky nods, as if it all makes sense now.

“You’re right. He is The Littlest Hobo.”

I look around in confusion. Everybody gets it but me. “I’m the littlest what?”

I subsequently learn that a certain generation of British kids in the 70s and 80s were entertained on Saturday mornings by a TV show called The Littlest Hobo. Hobo, it turns out, is not an under-sized homeless person as the name suggests, but a stray German Shepherd “who wanders from town to town, helping people in need.”

“Despite the attempts of many people whom he helped to adopt him,” Wikipedia tells us, “[Hobo] appeared to prefer to be on his own, and would head off by himself at the end of each episode.”

I am neither little, nor a German Shepherd. And I can’t say I remember ever actually helping anyone in any town, outside of passing a bowl of pretzels down the bar. But otherwise, if the collar fits …

“Wait,” Vicky says. “How does it go? How does it go?”

Oh, good. They remember The Littlest Hobo theme song.

“Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down!

Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on …!”

*          *          *         

“Do you have a return plane ticket out of the UK?”

“No.”

“Train ticket?”

“No.”

“Address of hotels you will be staying in Edinburgh?”

“No.”

“Proof of regular income?”

“No.”

“Proof of Insurance?”

“No …”

*          *          *

I’m on the world’s slowest train returning to London from Edinburgh on a Saturday afternoon, somewhere west of Newcastle.  The train moves thirty feet, then stops for thirty minutes. Thirty feet; thirty minutes.  All morning like this.

 Occasionally a semi-audible explanation/apology is mumbled over the loudspeaker, something about “switching problems” due to “water on the tracks.” It’s true; it had rained the night before. Apparently water falling out of the sky is a contingency East Coast Rail was not prepared for.

Two coaches away is a large pack of beer-guzzling football fans, traveling from Scotland to a 1 p.m. match in Newcastle. They’re not going to make it. When I walk through the car to get some food a couple of hours before it looks like a frat-party kegger on steroids, empty tall-boy cans multiplying like tribbles. Everyone is trashed, and it’s just shy of ten in the morning.  I suspect the drinking started sometime before dawn.

I keep looking at my watch, which is moving much, much faster than the train. I’m counting down to one o’clock, waiting for the drunken melee to begin.

*          *          *

Scotland is beautiful, cold, windy, and wet.  You quickly understand the appeal of hunkering down in a pub and drinking until the rain lets up. Except that it doesn’t let up. Hence, lots of drinking in the pub. Until you no longer care that it’s raining.

On one such rainy evening I’m in a pub on Edinburgh’s Rose Street called Dirty Dick’s (a historical name from the 18^th Century, they insist) when I feel compelled to order the haggis, tatties, and neepes. The fact that this compulsion arises within living memory of the Lyonnais tripe incident is a testament to the power and influence of cheap and plentiful Scotch whiskey.

I have only a vague idea of how they make haggis, although I believe it involves sheep, and internal organs. I can’t even venture a guess on tatties or neepes, which turn out to be innocuous potatoes (tatties) and turnips (tur-neepes).  I’m ready to choke down whatever comes my way for the sake of a good story. Yet when my order comes out from Dirty Dick’s kitchen, the food on my plate looks … surprisingly not awful. And I swear it actually tastes pretty damn good.

Let’s put it this way: in the Organ Meat Olympics, Scottish Haggis completely kicks the ass of Lyonnais Tripe.  I realize it’s not a particularly high honor, but at least let’s give the Scots credit for knowing how to serve up a sheep lung.

*          *          *

Back on the train, during the past hour we have managed to move another 90 feet or so and crawl into a town somewhere on the outskirts of Newcastle.  It’s past 1:30; the soccer game in Newcastle is well underway. I watch with absolutely no surprise as a half-dozen police in yellow vests board the train and jog down the isle past me toward the Car of Drunken Discontent. Let the melee begin.

*          *          *

The fat-faced, little weasel at the passport window is just about out of questions. He’s pursued every conceivable line of inquiry to expose me as the free-loading/terrorist scum he knows me to be, outside of asking how many pair of underwear I’m carrying.

Eight? How do you expect to live for a week in the UK with only eight pair of underwear?

Unable to come up with any more questions, Weasel Man grudgingly takes my passport and slides it under some kind of electronic scanner. Of course it doesn’t scan. Or beep, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to do. He slides it a second time, then a third.  He looks down at the passport, then up at me.

“Where did you get this passport?” he asks me.

“Where did I get it?”

“Yes. Where was it issued?”

Unbelievable. “It was issued in San Francisco, California.”

“Where in San Francisco?”

“Where in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“Are you asking me if I know the street address of the passport office in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Like the worst and least-funny Abbott and Costello routine ever performed, this has gone on for so long that a backup of hopeful émigrés has developed at the passport window and attracted the attention of the apparent supervisor of my pig-faced friend. She comes to the booth and discreetly inquires about the holdup. Weasel Man shows her his List of Grievances, along with my obviously forged passport that doesn’t scan in the machine like it’s supposed to.

The supervisor closes her eyes and nods, as if she’s been through this many before and is trying her best to be patient with an autistic child.

“Remember it’s only a problem if the name has been changed, or does not match the other forms of identification,” she tells him.

“Yes, but …”

“It’s fine.”

“But …”

“It’s fine.”

Weasel Man looks up at me and sneers as he flips through the passport for an empty page to stamp.

You got through this time, Hobo. But I’m on to you. Don’t think you can just come into my country and sit under a conker tree and ride trains and buy beer and haggis without a real job or return ticket and get away with it. We don’t want your kind here!

“… So if you want to join me for a while

Just grab your hat, come travel light

That’s hobo style! …”

*          *          *

By the time the World’s Slowest Train reaches London it’s too late to do much of anything other than forage for food.  John and Lynda are out of town but have graciously given me the keys to their house to spend one more night in the guest bedroom, also known as the Finding Nemo Room (due to the cozy, anemone-like twin beds and leaping cartoon fish pasted on the walls by a previous owner).

Too tired and/or lazy to go very far, I walk along the main drag near their house in Stoke Newington, looking for a late dinner.  Because it’s Saturday night most places are packed with drinkers who moved past dinner several drinks ago. The restaurants that aren’t packed with drinkers are mostly Turkish, as Stoke Newington apparently has evolved into the UK’s own Little Istanbul.  But having spent a year and a half in the real Istanbul, I just can’t bring myself to eat shish kabab or et doner on a street in North London. Been there, ate that.

I walk a bit further and see a non-Turkish possibility. I look at the menu posted at the door. They serve tapas. As I’m headed off the following day for an extended stay in Madrid, I can’t really see eating tapas in North London, either.

I finally come across a small, dimly-lit place still serving food. It is not quite enough of a bar to be packed, and is neither Turkish nor Spanish.  The menu is not extensive or particularly exciting, but also does not appear to involve organ meat.  It will do just fine.

I place my food order with an earnest-looking waiter with a wispy mustache who may not be as old as the socks I’m wearing, and ask if they have a beer list.

“Actually, we only have one beer at the moment,” the young man says apologetically.  I find it astounding that any restaurant in the world (let alone in the UK) is serving only one kind of beer, but I guess stranger things have happened.

“And what would that be?” I ask.

“It’s an import called Anchor Steam. Ever heard of it?”

Little Skippy apparently is unaware that I honed my drinking skills while perched on a barstool as a regular at Kezar’s at the corner of Cole and Carl streets in San Francisco. Have I ever heard of it.

 

“Yes,” I assure my waiter. “I am familiar with that product.”

Oh, the irony. You can run, Little Hobo, but you can’t hide from the past, can you? It always knows where you are, whether you like it or not. 

I order the Anchor Steam, and contemplate the next town I will head to at the end of this particular episode.

“Maybe tomorrow, I’ll find what I call home

Until tomorrow, you know I’m free to roam!”