How Long the Lonely Road

Most of my treasured memories of travel are recollections of sitting. —Robert Thomas Allen For me the Black Sea has always been the most remote, forbidding, and enchanted of seas, a fabled and unconquerable territory of Amazons, Argonauts, Scythian savages, sea monsters, and Tatar pirates, all around a moorland of pitch waves, black with sediments. After Hellenes colonized the barbaric shore the Greeks called her the Hospitable Sea, and Varna surely is: an easy and uneventful place, where the only culture is topless tanning, beach volleyball, and drinking to various electronic music. I received a long lecture on this subject from a dedicated English raver, and it is from that dreary island that 90% of dance music originates. From what I can remember, Trance is the most elemental electronic music, without a solid bass-line; House adds the bass, Techno adds more Pop-style composition, Electro adds strange sounds, and Drum and Bass reduces the genre to the most simple beats. Then there a...

So we will share this road we walk, And mind our mouths and beware our talk. 'Till peace we find tell you what I'll do, All the things I own I will share with you. If I feel tomorrow like I feel today, We'll take what we want and give the rest away. Strangers on this road we are on, We are not two, we are one. —The Kinks, “Strangers” The six hour bus ride to Sofia would have been restful if I had not been roused at the Bulgarian border to hand over my passport, and if I had not lost an hour due to time zones. Walking in the early morning, I found a hostel, dropped off my bag and began to wander the city. Perhaps because of its boring reputation, my own low expectations, or the little time I spent there, I really liked Sofia. It seemed a Western European city, something born between Germany and France which had immigrated to Thrace after the fall of the Soviets and mostly survived that leveling of culture and the ensuing meltdowns, so that Bulgaria is today a prosperous con...

Holy man and holy priest, This love of life makes me weak at my knees, And when we get there make your play, ’Cos soon I feel you’re gonna carry us away. In a promised lie you made us believe. For many men there is so much grief, And my mind is proud, but it aches with rage, And if I live too long I’m afraid I’ll die. —The Kinks Of the British in Arabia , T. E. Lawrence saw two types: “Class one; subtle and insinuating, caught the characteristics of the people about him, their speech, their conventions of thought, almost their manner. . . . In such a frictionless habit of influence his own nature lay hid, unnoticed.” “Class two,” he continues, “the John Bull of the books, became more rampantly English the longer he was away from England. He invented an Old Country for himself, a home of all remembered virtues, so splendid in the distance that , on return, he often found reality a sad falling off and withdrew his muddled self into fractious advocacy of the good old times. Abroad, through...

So where are you going to? I don’t mind. If I live too long I’m afraid I’ll die. So I will follow you wherever you go, If your offered hand is still open to me. Strangers on this road we are on, We are not two, we are one. —The Kinks The Greeks insist on calling their northern neighbor the Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia, or Fyrom, coveting the geographic name of their own province, the birthplace of Alexander the Great and a Byzantine fatherland.1 So jealous are they that they barred the Fyromites from entering NATO or the European Union, and from using the old sixteen-pointed star of the Argead Royal House on their national flag, which instead flies an Oriental sun with eight rays. To the east, the Bulgarians call the people here Bulgarians with accents; to the north, Serbia refers to this hilly land as Southern Serbia and refuses to recognize her Orthodox church; but the Macedonians, a poor but proud lot, erect statues of Alexander and refer to their country by the heroic...

Autobots, let's roll. —Optimus Prime After leaving Crete, I was sorely anxious to leave Greece entirely. I planned the following days  with selfish efficiency. For the Fourth of July, I went to the new Acropolis museum, got a newspaper, and feasted at the Amerikaniki Agora. The market hall's high roof echoed with chopping cleavers and the butchers' rabid peddling. On learning of his death, I mourned quietly David Carradine, who passed a month ago without fanfare, hung naked in a Bangkok wardrobe. At the hostel, I met two Americans from California: one an ROTC cadet from the University of San Francisco studying in Germany for two semesters (and refusing to shave for the eight-month duration, just to enrage his commander back home), and the other an Orange County stoner with a Jewish grandmother, who used that connection to move to Israel, near the Syrian border, four months ago. We talked about beer, and I realized how much I missed hops, for there is no pale ale on the Medi...

Anywhere I lay my head, that place I call my home. —Tom Waits The city of Rethymno strikes east from a triangular peninsula, which ends in the walls of the Fortrezza. Canopied restaurants encircle the old Venetian harbor on the peninsular flank, defined by a limestone jetty and lighthouse, which flashes green at night. There is little room to maneuver down this promenade, and the proselytizing maitre d's block the only route with desperate appeals to fill their empty tables. "You want rest and drink?" "Look at these fish. You can have any of them for eat." "You know Frommer's? Well, I have a Frommer's guide right here — and look, we are in it!" "Why are you wearing that Albania shirt? Don't you have any other shirts to wear? You wear it every day!" (I'd never worn it before!) The Greeks are incorrigible schemers, who are constantly and inexpertly considering possible enterprises, and who follow through with a single-minded det...