Invading Europe

So our ship docked in Barcelona. Nu ? What to do ? Um, lets have a beer and think about it. REMEMBER ONE THING. At the time the Poms were hated all over Europe. I think it's still so, to an extent. So we spoke Afrikaans and were welcome anywhere. Anycase, I walked into a pub and asked for four beers. "No spikka Engleesh" came the reply. My three mates were dumfounded, so I help up my hands, said "wag 'n bietjie, omie" and walked behind his bar and picked out our 4 beers from the fridge. BEER I said. CERVEZA he said. (The Z pronounced TH). BEER I said, CERVEZA he agreed. Lesson number one learnt very quickly, you just gotta think fast and be resourceful.

Huh...with every beer we were given a snack - called tapas in a saucer. Chopped octopus, squiddles with eyes and legs, a bowl of olives, or, once in Fuengirola, two fat prawns with every beer. We drank, we ate, we laughed and generally got nowhere. This was quite a common feature.

REMEMBER A RAND WAS WORTH 100 PESETAS THEN. A BEER COST 7 CENTS. A PACKET OF SMOKES 4.5 CENTS - IN SPAIN.
EUROPE AND THE UK WAS 850 PERCENT MORE. BEER - 60 CENTS. SMOKES 60 CENTS.

Eventually we boarded the train to London. (Renfe). Long, boring trip. Spent a week sightseeing in London, worked for two weeks as an assistant accountant, then declared I'm going to see Rolf (die wolf) from the ship, whose home was near Stuttgart, 'cos I was totally gatefull of London, it's pretences and cold weather. Wes Sparks - now of Sedgefield, threw his lot in with me and off we set.
 
It took every ounce of our intelligence to find this long-haired wanderer deciphering his writing on a grubby scrap of paper. You know, we sort of thought like Grahamstown leads to Kowie then to Kenton. NEIN - DIS BIS NOT ZO. First Stuttgart leads to Boblingen, which is slightly smaller by maybe a million people. Then Boblingen leads to the little village called....Schonaich - where Rolf's parents lived. Luckily he was there and they allowed us to sleep in the loft of their house on the floor. It was hot. Across the road was De Rode Engel - The red eagle, I think - where folks would gather for a drink around five-ish - or before and after, as in Kowie. Close to the Black Forest cake area.

CULTURE TRIP - PEOPLE AND THEIR MANNERISMS. When the folks came in for a beer and sat at a table, nobody greeted verbally. Each one knocked on the table TWICE with their knuckles - and everybody already present knocked once. The serving lady was called Heidi. Not an uncommon name I guess. Apart from Rolf, nobody spoke English. Kein probleem. Another thing, you never paid till you left. Every time you ordered a beer, or a round, the serving wench would make little tick marks on your beer coaster. Then when you left you paid according to the amount of tick marks on your coaster. Nice trust system. Hey, give us credit (pun) we tried...we ate the coasters, we dropped them on the floor, we dipped them in beer. She'd just smile, wag a disapproving finger and charge us the correct amount EVERY time. Silly bag, must have had a double-check system behind the counter - never occurred to us to think that then, we trusted her after all.
 
Then Wes and I clubbed in and bought a white Opel Kadett station wagon, thanked Rolf and his family and hit the road.
 
Driving a left hand drive vehicle, on the wrong side of the road - aish, it's just a game. We drove along the Rapperzee to Zurich. Now we did not want to waste money on accommodation, so the Kadett was our hotel. We stopped at Zurich railway station which THEN was the size of a massive shopping mall - and bought a litre of vodka, and a litre of coke. Drove to just outside town, pulled into an offroad area, took out our beer mugs borrowed from somewhere, each had two dops, which polished off the supply and went to sleep.
 
Woke up in the morning - bitterly cold. I needed to have a piddle so got out of the car, slipped on a pair of clogs (I still wear clogs these days sometimes) and stood in front of a wall of snow, probably twelve foot high and watched entranced how this little South African yellow stream melted the snow in varying guided paths.
 
And thus we drove to Innsbruck in Austria where my cousin Cathy lived. We stayed for two days, were hosted like family - which I was and then continued out path to Spain where the livin' is easy. Massive mielie fields in Austria - I'm sure they never missed the 10 or so that we borrowed to boost our daily diet of bread and beer. Then through frog country and down to the Spanish Border.

DRAMA. They found a Playboy in the car. The Guardia Civil. We were criminals. They phoned head office in Madrid. They made us wait about five hours until they cleared us. We spoke to them in English, they hated us. I tried Xhosa - they warmed a little. Then we stuck to Afrikaans. The only common ground we found was Christiaan Barnard. Now they knew where we came from. We'd say Sud-Africa - they'd say....aaaaah, Brazil. Ag man, turn away in disgust.

Eventually we got away, found the nearest little Bodega and cheap pension (sortof guest house in those days - they kept your passport till you paid - good idea, ne) and paid homage to the fine Spanish beers, wines, Sherries, food and live. Sol y Sombra.

This was the start of a long journey throughout Spain. A wonderful country then. Where a barefooted boy identified with short little men wearing black, spitting cracks in the pavement with their hacking coughing. Where music invaded your life, with it's intense rhythms and chicks, unavailable, walked around hanging on their Mother's arms.

Where you learnt words totally foreign previously, until they began to make logical sense, all deriving a pattern back to Latin which I had never learnt at school. Vino - it's GOTTA be wine, huh. Pan - it's GOTTA be bread when you think "bun".
Una, Dos, Tres, Quattro, Chinque, Seis, Siete, Octo, Nova, Diez. - Look at the last four, then think of the last four months of the year.
Days: Lunes - Monday (Moon, lunar eclipse, yeah...that's good). Saturday - Sabado. (Sabbath) Sunday - Domingo (Dios means God).

Learning without knowing you're learning. Great laughter when a guy and I battled along in Spanish to find a certain road until we realised that we were both foreigners. He from Scotland and I from ZA.

Thus, we decided to travel down the Costa Del Sol then find a place to hang around for three months while we awaited money. During this I met Clint Eastwood on the beach near Marbella. We stopped and chatted a while and he was very interested to find this barefoot boy from Port Alfred at a place which he considered his private hideout. It's OK Clint, you're secret's safe with me.
 
That's enough for now. Adios - will be continued on a new page.                           2006.10.03