On and Off the Rails

Italian Ways: on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo
by Tim Parks

"What a beautiful respite a train journey is and a good book, too, and best of all the book on the train, in life and out of it at the same time..."

On a recent trip to Italy, I visited a number of English language bookstores looking for books that weren't yet available in the US. In each one of them I encountered books by Tim Parks. Among other books, he has written several about his experience living in Italy as expat for more than 30 years.  This book, Italian Ways, is his most recent. It isn't a travel book exactly, but an examination of Italian culture through it's rail system. It is an examination that makes more sense than you might think. There are the odd inefficiencies, and the massive ones, the petty power displays by staff, the avoidance of rules by passengers, the lack of competition, the remodels and rebrandings of stations and trains that make little sense, the institutional racism and elitism.  In short it is Italy in a nutshell.

In reading the book, I found some excellent explanation of things that puzzled me while I was in Italy like the price differences between the slow and the fast trains, the lack of slow trains, the stamping of tickets for validation, the odd designs of rail stations and about Italo, the new train line. I also learned a great deal about the corruption that plagues the country and thus its rail system and the shocking disdain for the train in the South of Italy. But then given the inefficiencies, the lack of routes, and the conditions he describes, maybe it isn't so shocking after all. Reminiscent of the US, in fact.

But through it all Parks captures the possible pleasures of public transportation. I enjoyed his descriptions of his fellow travelers, of the quirks that you need to accept when at the mercy of public transport, of the ability to read and do work, the ability to gaze out a window. Traveling by plane is stressful and unpleasant and travel by car is demanding and stressful. Travel on a train, especially in another country, can be a true pleasure as you connect with the land you travel through and the culture of the country you are visiting. It can also, as Parks demonstrates, be truly revealing. It is one of the great travel adventures, an experience not to missed.

All the Ruined Places

Visit Sunny Chernobyl and Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places
by Andrew Blackwell

So Andrew Blackwell wants to start a new tourist trend; that of visiting the ruined places of the world.  He is only partly facetious with this suggestion.  Still, is it likely to catch on? Well, why not? There are tours of slums and other poverty stricken areas.  Sewers, chemical ponds and radioactive wastelands don't seem that far removed. You can, in fact, arrange to tour Chernobyl. Still, as Blackwell points out, most guidebooks do not mention these places.  They are mostly off the beaten path, hidden like something embarrassing and someplace to be ignored.  Blackwell instead sees in them a hidden beauty, saying we should appreciate these ruined places for all the ways in which they aren't ruined.

Chernobyl, the archetypical ruined place, is in our minds a wasteland of abandoned civilization. That may be true, but it is also now what is essentially a vast nature preserve. Plants and animals not seen in decades prior to the accident now flourish there.  In India, a river that is more sewage than water is worshiped.  In Port Arthur, Texas, land of oil refineries, a community of long term residents still strives to live and endeavors to improve conditions.  In China, which has horrific pollution on all levels as it develops rapidly, people go about their daily lives in a very ordinary way.  In Canada and Brazil, the economic results of the use of natural resources seemingly outweigh the costs to those who participate--meaning essentially the whole world. This is the world we live in.  We are all part of this environment and have all played a part in making it this way.  Acknowledging that is part of Blackwell's point. There are no environmental rants here, no manifestos.  Instead there is a powerful look at consequences without judgement. 

This to me is the power of travel--even travel to beautiful places. If you travel with eyes open and with acceptance you learn to understand. You come to see your place in the world.  You understand connections. You can see possibilities and positives. You also can see the beauty in a place where there seems to be none.  That is a wonderful thing.

Everything is Broken

Everything is Broken
by Emma Larkin

A while back I read Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin and found myself absolutely captivated by the country and people.  Despite one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world, Larkin captured a spirit among the people, an awareness that there was goodness in the world and it would one day come to Burma.  I found myself thinking often about the country after reading the book and avidly following the news of the apparent rise of democracy in the country.

The fact is that the struggle for democracy was a very long time in coming and in this book, a follow up to George Orwell, Larkin details the increasingly active protests against the ruling junta in the 2000's and the horrifying crackdown against the true heart of the country, the Monastery's. She frames this with the utter devastation of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 and the even more devastating aftermath.  The descriptions of how the government refused international aid but provided little of their own, stole money and supplies that were accepted, forced villagers to return to nonexistent villages...and then reported happy recovery stories in the official paper.  It simply defies understanding. Despite my awareness of what had happened, my horror grew as I turned each page. The spirit demonstrated by the Burmese people in the previous books was gone. They seemed truly defeated by the wrath of nature and of their own government. Never have I encountered a more perfectly titled book. It is an utterly absorbing and heartbreaking read.

But today, perhaps, things are under repair in Burma? The continuing stories and new open borders seem to suggest that there is real change underway.  I find myself very much hoping Larkin will share her deep insight into this country and write another book telling the continuing story of Myanmar (Burma). If she does, I will most definitely read it.

The Cruelest Journey

The Cruelest Journey
by Kira Salak

No place is safe. Safety, itself, is an illusion.  And I wonder if it is my deep acceptance of this that makes it easier for me to do these trips. No place is safe. And while I don't advocate tempting fate, I guess I just don't worry much about it either.  p 33

 Kira Salak is an adventurer in all senses of the word.  She travels alone into the deepest, darkest places to challenge herself, to face her fears, to explore, to see.  I had previously read Four Corners Salak's tale of her solo journey into the heart of Papua New Guinea so I knew something of what I would find in The Cruelest Journey.  Still nothing prepared me for the true nature of her insane itinerary.  She paddled alone for 600 miles along the Niger river to trace the route of explorer Mungo Park.  Along the way she conquered injury, illness, weather, verbal abuse, constant demands, true physical danger, hippos, and so much more.  She willfully ignored every US State Department advisory on travel in Mali and she survived.  She made it to Timbuktu. 

     She did this alone.  I have already said that, but it bears repeating. This is an unfathomable accomplishment to many people she encounters along the way and it will be unfathomable to many people who pick up the book. Salak meditates on her solo travel as she paddles down the river. With no goals other than reaching her final destination, she simply paddles and thinks. She comes to understandings about herself and about the power of experiencing the world. 

     I travel alone. Not like Salak, but still, if I travel, I go alone. On a recent trip to Europe I happened to be with a group of sorts for the sake of convenience, but spent most of my time wandering on my own.  Each person in the group was traveling as part of a couple and each one of them approached me at one time or another and commented how brave they thought I was.  I can understand where they are coming from.  There is some danger in travel and safety in numbers. There is also the perception of women as more vulnerable. As Salak notes, however, no place is safe.  I can run into trouble here at home much the same way I could abroad.  I will not let fear hold me back as many think should happen. 

The truth: my gender will always make me appear more vulnerable. But to not travel anywhere out of fear, or to remain immobilized in a state of hyper-vigilance when I do, feels akin to psychological bondage. I do not want to give away that kind of power. p 90

I have confidence in my ability to deal with any situation where ever it happens to arise.  There is power in that confidence and there is freedom. It opens up great worlds--literally. That is what travel can do for your mind, body and spirit.

Parisian Getaway

Paris in Love
by Eloisa James

Paris I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
by Rosecrans Baldwin

     Sure you dream of traveling, but have you ever dreamed of living abroad?  It is one thing adapting for a few short weeks, another to do it permanently.  There is a whole new culture to learn, a language, details about daily life and so much more.  There is also the risk of having your dreams dashed.  The tourist facade sometimes hides a great many problems.  The phrase "I loved visiting, but I wouldn't want to live there." is around for a reason.

      In both of these books, the authors dreamed of living in Paris.  Both were devoted francophiles and had visited before.  Both intended to use the time they spent in the City of Light to work on a book and live the life they dreamed of.  For all of the similarities, there are differences.  James and her family moved to Paris after a major health scare.  She wanted to live the life she dreamed of while she still had a life to live.  Accordingly her book is a joyful tale--a collection of expanded communiques from the year.  She tells funny stories, anecdotes about the Parisian life and general pleasures of France. Little is shared about the true difficulties of living abroad except in a few of the stories relating to her children who initially struggle to fit into their Italian language school. This could be in part because James and her husband have lived abroad before (her husband is Italian).  Overall, it is a cheerful book that makes you want to have the same experience. 

     Baldwin, on the other hand, is not able to live a life of leisure during his time in Paris.  He has a job at a marketing firm and works on his novel late at night or early in the morning.  He is candid about his struggles with the language, with French bureaucracy, with the culture, and with many other small things such as the endless construction around their apartment.  At the same time he loves Paris and shares the joys when he finds them such as lunches in the park, frequent only in Paris moments, and the miracle of increasing fluency in a new language.  It isn't as cheerful as the James book, but it is incredibly refreshing in its honest portrayal of the realities of living in another country. It didn't bring me down in the slightest, but instead made me want to have the very same experience.  

     Reading these two books made me realize how much I would like the adventure and challenge of living abroad.  I did it for 8 weeks as a teenager, but I spent most of my time avoiding the experience.  My adult self looks back upon that with great regret.  I missed so much.  Now I can only manage a 2 week trip here, another there.  What I wouldn't do to be able to stay and truly immerse myself in a new place and culture.  Here is to my making that dream a reality one day.  If I ever do, however, I definitely won't be writing a book about it!

    

Travel Inspires

To Timbuktu
by Casey Scieszka
with art by Steven Weinberg

Timbuktu is more or less best known as slang for the most remote place you can visit, even though it isn't.  Granted, it is a city in the middle of a forbidding desert, but so are other places.  It is also accessible by a variety of forms of transportation.  It just so happens that one of them is camels.  It makes a great hook for travel literature though, no matter the reality, and it was in fact the reason I picked up To Timbuktu while browsing. 

Timbuktu the place isn't the heart of this story, however.  The book is more or less a straight forward narration of an extended period of travel and study abroad immediately following college graduation.  The author and her artist boyfriend (and fellow wanderer) teach english in China, travel through Southeast Asia and then end up in Mali where Scieszka works on a Fulbright grant project while Weinberg focuses on his art. The text is accompanied by Weinberg's illustrations making the book a graphic novel of sorts.  I liked the art and the way it conveyed the emotions of the words, but at the same time I desperately wanted pictures.  Luckily I have discovered the authors have a book blog which does have pictures and I can finally put a face to the place as it were.

It is usually the sense of place that I am interested in when reading travel literature but here it was the reality of travel and living abroad. You have great experiences, you see amazing things, you get terribly sick, you get scammed, you meet new friends, you get lonely, you miss the comforts of home, you get culture shock...all of these things all at the same time plus many, many others.  Traveling is the dream of many but it can be hard.  The cultures and environments the authors visit are very different from Western culture, but they do their very best to adapt.  They take language classes, observe and follow social customs, they interact with local residents as much as possible.  At the same time the two are just learning to live together so they must adapt to each other as well as a new culture.  Scieszka is very honest about some of the difficulties they experienced using them as a contrast between the great highs of travel--usually the only things we read about.  She talks of their fears, of their fights, the frustration and fright of not knowing exactly what the correct social response is, the depressing realities of the 3rd world, and of the need to depend on the kindness of strangers from time to time.  It's a jet propelled narrative at times, leaving out big chunks of time and hitting the highlights, but at the same time it is an engaging memoir of travel and discovery.

Aimed at a teens aged 14 and up,  To Timbuktu glosses over some things and contains little deep reflection or analysis.  It is more about living in the moment and I could appreciate that for a younger audience, even if it frustrated me at times as an adult.  The experiences are thought provoking and could lead to some self reflection on the part of the reader.  One also hopes it might also stimulate some into reading more travel literature or hitting the road themselves.  The world could definitely benefit from more global citizens like Scieszka and Weinberg who have gone on to create a nonprofit, Local Language Literacy to create and distribute books for students in the local languages. 

It's a clear lesson:  Reading inspires. Doing inspires. Travel inspires. 

Everywhere you go...

Finding George Orwell in Burma
by Emma Larkin

Burma.

It is now known as Myanmar, but calling it Burma seems to fit better for this walk through both the history and the present of the country.  It was a place that I knew nothing about, but by the end I found myself both enchanted and haunted by what I had learned.  I found myself wanting to know more.

Sadly, most of what we know about Burma stems from reports of the brutal repression of the people by the military dictatorship.  As a result, as I opened this book, I was already comparing it to Nothing to Envy, the story of life in North Korea I had read not so long ago. But by the very first page I knew things were very, very different. "Everywhere you go you see someone reading." wrote Larkin.  Books and literature are treasured in Burma, and though many are banned by the government, mildewed and ant chewed copies can still be found with some effort.  Many of the greatest names in Western Literature are well known in certain Burmese circles and are discussed at tea houses. 

It is appropriate then that Larkin is taking a literary journey through Burma, following in the footsteps of George Orwell whose mother was born in Burma and who served there as an officer in the British Imperial Police.  She travels through the country looking for signs of Burma's colonial past and speaking with a few who remember it. Along the way she is followed, eavesdropped on, forced to report in to the police and then forced to leave places early.  She must hide her notebooks, refrain from asking questions or visiting people more than once.  She cannot use the names of the people she spoke with in the book nor is she able to use her real name on the cover for fear of never being able to enter the country again.  It is George Orwell's Big Brother come to life and therein lies the story.

 As demonstrated by Larkin, there is an awareness in Burma of the profound lack of freedom. There is a dissident movement and there are small rebellions in the everyday life of the people.  I thought back to Nothing to Envy  and North Korea where the pervasiveness of the government entered every facet of daily life and the populace seemed to be truly unaware of the possibility of choice--or at least in extreme denial about it.  I found myself turning this difference over and over in my head wondering if books and literature were part of the difference. Their presence and status in Burma mean that many escape beyond their borders into the world of possibilities each and every day with the simple turn of a page.

Probably it is much more complicated than that.  Still, we can all hope that those possibilities will become reality for the people of Burma someday soon.