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In the Summer of 1994 Sarge and Miller embarked on a European invasion of debauchery. These are the blurred memories of those five weeks...
Who the fuck are Sarge and Miller? I've been asking myself the same question. Sarge was a Milwaukee's Best drinker who liked to pick up chicks. Miller was a National Bohemian drinker who liked to pick up chicks. In the days leading up to the trip, I was drinking a lot of Mr. Pibb so Miller started calling me that. Miller puked the night before we left so he became "Mr. Vomit". Through the course of our trip we didn't bother to learn people’s names. We just called them Mr. Whatever. Why should I bother reading this? No reason really. It's just a chance to delve into an adventure involving drinking, girls, and scams. It's a chance to get away from the TPS reports stacked on your desk. The Adventure Begins Day One. Military Time 17:15. D-Day. We arrive at Baltimore's BWI Airport and get on board a fully loaded British Airways 747. We have heavily armed. With us are two fully laden backpacks (bergens), cards, dice, walkmans, books (Let's Go Europe, Sven Hassel's Blitzfreeze, Sven Hassel's Reign of Terror etc.), tapes, batteries, clothes, two packs of Camel's, a lighter, one pair of Air Jordan’s and a butterfly knife. 17:25 I’m on board the plane trying to hammer my pack into the overhead compartment while holding a few irate tourists up. It was like trying to get a square peg into a round hole. 17:33 - I am still trying to stuff my pack into the overhead compartment. The stewardess wants to check it. Bollocks to that. 17:35 - My pack is all sorted out so I put on some Pink Floyd (Animals) and grab Blitzfreeze by Sven Hassel and start reading. I can't remember if Miller and I were drinking by this point. I recall the flight back from Scotland on British Airways with my brother Keith. We were young then. We got into drunken stupors inside of 30 minutes. It all started with a few Carlsberg’s. I don't know how old Keith was, perhaps 16. No one hassled him about drinking. After a few pints of Carlsberg we moved on to liquor; this is where things turned to the dark side. After several SoCo's (Southern Comfort) we were getting out of control. Something started feeling unnatural about crossing the Atlantic at 35,000 feet in a metal cylinder. We started talking (shouting) at the passengers behind us...we were pretty ripped. We were laughing and spilling beers, good times. Then a classic moment occurred. I asked the stewardess for a few more SoCo's, she said she'd be right back. Another stewardess walks by and I ask him for a couple of SoCo's. So I'm sitting there when two stewardesses come running up from different ends of the plane, each with four mini Soco Bottles in their hands. They looked at each other as if to say "keep an eye on this guy". I grabbed all of them before they took them away. I don't remember much past that point...Pelican Brief came...we passed out. Anyway, back to this trip. Mill and I started drinking a few cans of Tetley Bitter. It was a long flight, so after some drinking I tried to take a nap but couldn't. I spent some time checking out the females on board but there wasn’t much talent. Finally we landed and grabbed our packs. As we were getting off the flight Miller said we should grab the BA blankets. They proved to be quite handy. We strolled through customs and met my cousin Geoff and his buddy Alex. Alex was wearing ManUre kit and said that despite the cold and damp, he knew we'd be wearing shorts. Geoff was driving a white Cavalier so we put our bergens in the boot and got in. Geoff takes off his stereo's detachable AM/FM radio face, starts blaring some acid house/techno stuff. Not the best music to hear when you’re jetlagged. So we're rolling thru London on a weekday, thru scenic Brixton and Croydon and then I started to feel pretty sick. We had the windows down, driving thru the morning rush-hour traffic and exhaust fumes started getting to me. There are no catalytic converters in the U.K. so that takes some getting used to. Miller was bullshitting with Geoff about the radio as I fell asleep. We get to Stevenage. We went straight to their house in Webb Rise and were welcomed by my aunt and uncle. My aunt put on the kettle and made us a cup of tea. We go to the guest room and put down our bergens on the beds...I think Miller took the air mattress. We shuffled around with our packs, washed up, and went back downstairs. More tea. I couldn’t focus on the TV because my eyes kept trying to close. Alex and Geoff asked us what we wanted to do because they had the day off work. I suggested going to downtown Stevenage to exchange some dollars into knicker, so we went into town. We went down to a shopping centre and changed money at usurious rates. The bird (a term Mill later masters) behind looks good. A redhead. We were making eyes then she ripped the shirt off my back, financially speaking. I left the bank feeling used. So we’re dead tired but still restless inside, itching to get down to the pub for a nibble and a pint of Tennent's. Alex said we should go to the chippies for fish n' chips. I was looking forward to it and went overboard. Alex, Mill and Geoff get the standard, I go full blown with two pieces of cod, chips, mushy peas, and a saveloy. Man it was good, especially when you're starving. So I'm pouring it down I looked over to see Miller examining his fish. I watched him for a while as he inspected the battered fish and tried to get the batter off of it. Then he started peeling off the batter, eating a few morsels of cod and a chip every now and then. Finally he had enough and tossed the rest into the bin. Americans don't like British food. I guess it's genetically predetermined. Sarge decides it's time for the pub. Geoff seemed a little hesitant to go down the pub, as it was 9:30 am on a Tuesday. Alex didn't seem to mind going for a pint and Miller...well he's always up for something. We walked down to an Elizabethan pub with burning logs in the fireplace. Alex gets the first round. We're sitting in the wooden dining room at a table and I'm drinking a pint of Tetley's Bitter, Mill and Alex were on Foster's and Geoff's got a Diet Coke. I realized at this point one of us was standing out. You figure it out. Geoff used to be a lush but that all ended the day he collapsed and stopped breathing. My dad, Geoff, Uncle Geoff and Auntie Cherry were in their kitchen the morning my dad was due to leave. Geoff had gotten pretty drunk the night before...and he's standing in the kitchen smoking, when BAM! He's passed out. He apparently stopped breathing for a while. Everyone panicked. No one knew how to do CPR. Anyway, Geoff sticks to Diet Coke and cigars these days. So we're sitting there, get another round then another, another, and then off we go again. I remember thinking it was strange that they don't tip the bartender...they seemed dumbfounded. I was thinking later that I should have told him to take the tip and get his teeth straightened, but then that wouldn't have been funny. We went back to Geoff and Cherry's and crashed. Early evening arrives. I wake up shower, shit, and shave. Uncle Geoff went out and got us the British equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was greasy, like all British food. Still half asleep we mustered up the energy to go on a pub-crawl. We met up with Geoff and Alex and one of their mates "Mr. Ceiling". He did the fancy plaster patterns on ceilings for a living. Apparently he was doing quite well. I noticed they were all wearing gold rings with a half sovereign set in them. Sovereigns were the old gold coins in Britain. So we're pouring down pints (Alex, Ceiling and Miller were all on lager, I was on bitter, Geoff on Diet Coke #4 while puffing on a cigar. We're having a few laughs, Mill and me are sort of listening and sponging up the slang we're hearing. Mr. Ceiling keeps calling girls "birds". It's not really a new slang term but I think Miller had never heard it. He asks Ceiling "did you say birds?" Ceiling's like "yeah...you know birds, tarts, skirt". Miller made a mental note of it and started using it. There weren't many birds in the pub, so we rolled down to another pub in the high street. We're there, curling pints, and it's really crowded. You can't help but spill on people. Everyone was smoking. Mill was talking to a dirty blonde party chick. I was chatting with the lads, trying to fill my hollow legs with bitter. Miller's thing seemed to fizzle, as he came back over to us and kept drinking. This place was driving me nuts...being claustrophobic and all. Eventually we left, it was pretty late, so we went to a Stevenage techno club that's open until the morning. We went in, pay the cover and they padded us down. I was wearing my Georgetown hat, as we'll see later. So we get drinks but they're served in small club-supplied Dixie cups. Moronic. Mill and me slipped away from the others and start drinking and dancing with the girls on the dance floor. This is where is starts to get blurred, but more fun nevertheless.... Miller starts dancing and I'm cruising around the floor, checking out the scenery. As the night goes on I meet some chick, she seems willing to party. She was medium height, had good teeth, freckles and had on too much make-up. Basically I’d found an old slapper who probably worked in a factory but there wasn’t much choice. Anyway I was drunk so my beer goggles were working perfectly. We started dancing. As I recall, this was the first chick I've ever bought a drink for. Not a proud milestone, but I always remember shit like that. Miller’s dancing with the nose-ring chick, who was rocking the heroin-chic look. She was pale, thin, and strangely alluring. We took a break to refill our tanks and wander over to these guys who were wearing baseball caps. One of the guys had an old mesh A's hat, another had a Chargers hat. We were staring at their hat brims, laughing at how straight they were. They didn't put that nice curve into the brim. So I start doing it for them...telling them that in America if you want to look cool you work the brim. They didn't seem to into the idea and as I can remember things got a little tense. Later Miller told me they were pissed that I fucked their hats up. Twats. So back on the dance floor and it's getting late. I started dancing with Miller's chick and we started kissing on the dance floor. This wasn't any form of accomplishment because I noticed later she was kissing other blokes. Miller, true to form, played his cards right that night and got to take her home. He went back to her place, or her parent's place, and took care of business. He had to leave at 7am because she had to go to school. He helped her finish her homework and left. He had a hard time trying to get home in the morning. Still, it was good work by Mr. Vomit. Ceiling and Geoff left the club early so Alex and I started walking back to Geoff's. I got a hamburger with an egg on it from an ice-cream van. We walked home a dawn, crossing over train tracks and thorn bushes. At one point we walked near some downed power lines. Is that a normal thing to see after a night of heavy drinking? I took it to be some kind of omen. The next morning we went to London. We got to the Stevenage train station and we each paid about nine quid (pounds) for a one-way train ticket to London...pretty steep. We decided we weren't going to do the typical London tourist thing so we just walked around looking to get into an adventure. I remember we were by the Thames so we did take some shots of Tower Bridge. Pretty soon we were bored so we decided to check out some offbeat landmarks. We went to the Monument for the Great Fire of London (1666). I'd been up before and couldn't be bothered with the stairs but Mill climbed up to the top. I took his pic from the bottom. London gets real confusing but I think we went near the Tower of London. We then headed down to Buckingham Palace. We saw the Changing of the Guard and the cavalcade parade. We had a few very expensive pints of Guinness at a pub and headed back to Stevenage. The next morning we did the same thing...paid for a train ticket and went to London. This time we dicked around all day taking pics of Trafalgar Square, cute girls and homeless people. The thing that sticks out is going to Tesco's. Tesco's is a British grocery store run by fascists. We went to Tesco's and were looking for the cheapest, but most powerful bottle of wine they had; trying to get more bang for the buck. We selected a 1993 Tesco's Mosel with a black cat on the label. Mosel is usually pretty good if there's a black cat on the label, although this could be bollocks. We took the bottle and sat outside at an empty cafe. We were taking turns chugging from the bottle. Back and forth the bottle went. It was warm and tasted pretty foul, but by the bottle's end we were feeling the effects. |
| Backpacking Thru Europe ~ A Travelogue
"Sarge and Miller Invade" |
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| Sarge |
| Miller |
| We went back to Tesco's and bought another bottle of the same wine. In the store we needed to use the bogs (bathroom). We asked them where it was, and this supply clerk led us to it. It was like an epic saga. Through the back, down the stairs, past the dockers, past the supply truck, thru another door, past security...we're thinking 'Where the fuck is this guy taking us?' Finally we went down a corridor to the bogs. We pissed and then followed the kid back to the front of the store. We paid for bottle #2 and left. This time we went back to the place we were sitting and they were closing for the night. It was dusk. We sat there anyway and shared the bottle. We were talking about the trip so far and how much we'd spent and we tried to play cards, but it was windy so they kept blowing away. We finished bottle #2 and we decided to go for bottle #3. So where did we go? Tesco's! We bought bottle # 3 and decided to stroll thru the surrounding streets...this is where we started taking frivolous pictures. Some of our most famous works of photographic art were "Sarge with a bag lady", the poignant "Miller with two bitches", "Sarge with two different bitches", "Miller with a hash pipe" and "Sarge telling the cameraman to fuck off". We also took some pictures of us with two Ethiopian models but they didn't develop. We were stumbling down the street when we saw a cop. Instinctively we almost started running but he told us it wasn't illegal to walk around drinking wine. He could tell we were piss drunk, especially when Miller offered him a swig and I told him to take the tit off his head. He declined and walked off.
With Bottle #3 finished...Sarge and Miller started to get silly. We went back to Tesco's and needed to go to the bogs again. We decided we knew the way this time so we just started walking thru the 'Private' and 'Unauthorized Entry' doors. After pissing, we were surrounded by security guards and the kid (the guide from Tesco's Bottle #2). This is where the security turned into Mussolini's Black Shirts. They frog-marched us out to the front of the store, but allowed us, in a bizarre twist of fate, to purchase another bottle of Tesco's Mosel 1993. As I was leaving, I told the kid "What the fuck? We were just taking a piss" The kid said "Taking a piss or taking the piss". Twat. By this point we were on the verge of missing the last train, due to leave King's Cross at Midnight. We made a conscious, healthy and informed decision to say 'fuck it' and stay out in London all night long. We were starting to lose our buzz so we went to an Irish pub briefly to keep sane. Guinness for me, don't recall what Miller had. Things get hazy again, but I remember we were talking to two chicks that wanted to hang out in a gay club. Mill seemed assured he was going to hook up with the one, but the other was cat flaps so that wasn't going to work for me. I wasn't into it so we kept on walking. We stopped in Leicester Square and I started talking to a cute chick...17 years old. We were getting along well, perhaps too well because her boyfriend came over. I could tell he was pissed but I could also tell she didn't really like him. She actually gave me her phone number in front of him. Maybe he wasn't her boyfriend. I called her when I got back to London. We kept strolling along and arrived in Soho. Soho is a notoriously seedy red-light district. We didn't see many ho's, maybe the ho's were sleeping. We did however come across and nice African gentleman who was playing the bongos. Mill bought some of his wares for about ten knicker and off we went to smoke. |
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| Sarge and Miller with the Boo Yah Tribe |
| After hanging out with the Boo Yah's we went back to the Italians but they were mainlining heroin so we left them and just wandered around in a haze. We took a few pics at dawn and went back to Stevenage. We paid for the tickets.
The next morning we said our goodbyes to Geoff and Cherry, although we knew we'd see them once we got back from Europe. Uncle Geoff drove us down to the station in his Lada. Our bergens were filled to the brim. We should've packed lighter. We hopped on a train to London. By this point, we both decided we had had enough of paying nine pounds each to go to London. We had spent a ton of money already so we needed to start saving where we could. This involved taking risks. Basically we walked past the ticket counter and just got walked onto the train. We were a little nervous but the train conductor never came to check if we had tickets on our previous trips so we figured we were okay. It felt like the first time you cut school, hoping your parents wouldn't find out. That being said, it was an excellent rush. We made it to London without getting busted. We got off the train and started hiking to Notting Hill. Although the Let's Go Europe book suggested we stay away from Notting Hill...we knew the hostels were a lot cheaper. As we're hiking thru the rough part of London we start noticing people staring at us. I got the feeling we were about to get robbed. I kept my butterfly knife handy in case we needed it. Luckily we made it safely to the hostel. The place was a complete shithole that reeked of stale beer and vomit. We had to pay in advance but it was very cheap (ten quid a night). There was the usual crowd of backpackers there. Americans, Canadians, Australians and South Africans. We smoked up and passed out. Can't remember much of what we did for the rest of the day but we did go out to get dinner. I was on a mission to get some fish n' chips again. Mill was content with whatever was closer (KFC) so he went back to the hostel. I walked for what seemed miles to find a chippies but it wasn't to be. I gave up looking for a chippies when I ran into two girls and a guy drinking a fifth of Jim Beam. The guy was from the U.S., one girl was from Canada, the other girl was from Australia. Before I knew it I was swigging out of their fifth of Jim Beam. Of all the silly things...they were chasing Beam with Mr. Pibb. We kept taking turns pouring down the firewater. After about ten minutes the bottle was empty. That's when the guy said we should go across the street and jump the fence that surrounded a park. I had to admire his thinking, it reminded me of the kind of shit my friends would've done. The fence was a thick stonewall, about seven feet high with barbed wire on top. Me and him got up there, held the wire down, helped the girls up and over, then got ourselves down. The garden was huge and in the middle there was a large house with its lights off. It was midnight and the moon illuminated everything. We crept through a wooded area and came out at a magnificent lake. It was really cool. We walked near the house, which we thought was probably a museum. It was quiet and still that night. There was no wind and the only sounds we could hear were ducks quacking and flapping about. We were sitting with the girls and then they went for a walk. Me and the other guy were talking about our plans with the girls (he was staying with the Canadian girl so I figured I'd take the Australian). A minute later the girls came back to us looking shocked and scared. They told us that they had heard voices. We didn't think much of it until... "GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!". "DON'T FUCKING MOVE OR WE'LL SHOOT!' All of a sudden floodlights came on and we saw we were surrounded by about twenty soldiers pointing machine guns at us. I was too fucking scared to run. If we ran we would've been dead. They ordered us to lay flat on the ground with our hands on our heads. The girls were so scared they were crying and getting hysterical. I had no fucking idea what was going on so I just kept my mouth shut and did everything they told me to do very slowly. I was looking at the troops and they were all wearing black clothing. I couldn't tell if they were soldiers or armed police. They all had British accents so I was pretty sure they were police or military. The leader came over and stood by me. I was still laying flat on the ground with my hands on my head. I was looking at one of the soldiers who was pointing his machine gun at the American guy. With the floodlights on I could clearly see the soldier's finger on the trigger. We were in some real shit! While one soldier kept guard over me, another soldier padded me down for weapons. (Glad I didn't bring my knife). When they shouted at us the first time I could hear fear in his words. For some reason they were just as scared of us and we were of them. The officer came over to me and asked me some basic questions. He asked me 'What's your name? Where are you from? How did you get in here? I told him that we had all met that night and that we were drinking, then hopped over the barbed wire fence. I told him we were trying to hook up with the chicks. He didn't seem to give a shit...but he did seem more relaxed which made me relax a little. He asked me if I was British. I said yes. I also said that I was very sorry and I didn't know what was happening. They basically interrogated us one by one I guess to see if the stories matched. Finally they seemed to accept that we were some dumbasses from out of town who were drunk and very sorry. The officer in charge told us to go out the way we came in. As we were leaving I said sorry again and asked the officer what had happened. He was fairly calm by this point and told us that we had set off about thirty motion sensors. I asked him why the area was covered with motion sensors? That's when he said "Because you just broke into Princess Diana's property, this is Kensington Palace". This would explain their overreaction. I think they thought we were an IRA hit team. If I'd had an Irish accents I probably wouldn't be here today. As we walked back towards the fence armed soldiers were still following us. One of the soldiers told us that they had to wake up Princess Diana as a precaution. Oops... By this point I just wanted to go back to the hostel. Although I wasn't really into it I hung out with the Australian girl at her place and we hooked up a little bit. I said my goodbyes and double-timed it home. It was almost 3am by the time I got back to the hostel. Miller was still awake and he was shooting pool with a Canadian (Tori). He asked what the hell had happened to me, I told him a few words of it and then told him I'd tell him in the morning. I think I was still in shock so I made a beeline to my bed and went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and filled Miller in on the details. I think his night was more low key...he was hanging out with his chick. Tori was pretty cool, a hippy chick of sorts. I was chain-smoking again so Tori told me I should stop smoking. I told her I'm not a quitter. We checked out (fled) the hostel and double-timed it back to Paddington. We caught the first train to Dover. TRAIN TO DOVER We found out what platform we needed to get to Dover, skipped the ticket booth (a savings of about 25 quid each) and got on the train. This didn't work out as well as the other one. We had never traveled this route. It was a busy one. As the train left the station we could see the conductor in the next cabin. Shit...we didn't have tickets...this was going to be a problem. In the span of ten seconds we devised a cunning plan. I would wait in the bathroom, and when the conductor asked to see Miller's ticket, Miller would shuffle around, pretending to look for his ticket and then tell the conductor that his buddy had them and his buddy was in the bathroom. Hopefully he'd just move on and forget about us. Believe it or not this actually worked! The conductor believed the story and went to the next cabin. Although this worked we didn't know if he would come back again. We were pretty jumpy for the remainder of the trip. We kept changing sets in an effort to evade the conductor. It was a bit like being Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. We put on our walkmans and listened to the sounds of Floyd and Rage. DOVER After a brief stop in Canterbury we arrive in Dover early afternoon. We have the "Let's Go Europe" book but as usual it's fucking useless. Half the places it suggested were either full or gone. We cursed the editors and hiked uphill to the center of town. It was a tough hike with our heavy-ass packs digging in our backs. My packing skills were pathetic. I had the heavy stuff near the top so I was working a lot harder than I needed to. It was mid afternoon and we still couldn't find a place. We kept walking through residential areas, sometimes stopping to take pictures of gargoyles on the churches. Finally we see an old man gardening outside of a rundown boarding house. I walked up to the old man and the conversation went something like this: Is this a bed and breakfast? " Yep", he says. How much per night? "Well... errrr...six pounds each?", he replies. And what do we get for the six pounds? "Well, we could do you a breakfast, with toast.", he says. Ooooh. Toast! Wow! This sounds great! "And an egg....some egg...each", the old-timer says. Oooooh! Some egg too! Great!" Anyway, after this moronic exchange we decide to stay there for the night. The old-timer introduces himself as Peter, Miller introduces himself as Coach Eric and I introduce myself as Rico. We get up to the room, drop off our packs, change clothes and then go into town to buy some wine before the shops close. We buy a couple of bottles of white, open one, grab a snack, and start pouring it down. At half-bottle we come across a selection of old fashioned British bums. These filthy beggars were completely fucked up. These grimy, toothless mendicants would've beaten the living daylights out of us for our wine, but they didn't have the strength or energy. The funny thing was they were drinking the same brand of wine, although we were on red. Probably not vintage stuff then. Probably the lowest point of my life was actually drinking from their bottle. They seemed to like this gesture because they were cheering as I drank from it. I can't remember if Miller drank from their bottle...he probably did. In an incredible gesture of goodwill, we gave them what was left of our bottle. They cheered and we went on without them. Across the square we meet some teenage girls. They saw we were drinking and they liked the idea of going to a dark wooded area to drink. For all they knew we could've been Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez out for a night on the town. There was no moon out, so once we got to the park it was pitch black. Mill and his girl went deeper into the woods and I think he got off with his bird. I was getting too far with my bird. She said she had a boyfriend and how bad she would feel if we kept going further. I wasn't too pressed about it so we spent the evening drinking and fumbling about. Mill returned after getting his leg over and we walked the girls back to town. We went back to our small room and went to sleep. Woke up relatively early and decided we were going to check out the castle in Dover, aptly named Dover Castle. It was apparently a communications bunker during the war. Before heading to the castle Mill went downstairs for some reason and saw that the old couple have laid out their table nicely for their breakfast. The next thing we know, they said it was all for us! Excellent. We were at the table eating scrambled eggs on toast with the old timer's wife standing in the room, endlessly filling our cups with tea. They even gave us the remote control to flip thru the channels. We were amazed they'd done all this for us...but then the British are good people. After this I tried to take a shower. I had just finished shaving and there was this contraption in the tub that had two hoses connecting to one with a rickety showerhead. It didn't work very well and the water by the time I used it was cold. Dover Castle Went to the castle. We'd spent a whole shitpot full of money in London so we were trying to save where we could. We didn't pay the fifteen pounds to go in so we walked around the outsides of the castle. We found an area that was fenced off which had signs saying..DANGER - KEEP OUT etc. That sounded exciting so we went into the danger area. The castle is on top of the cliffs of Dover and I remember we went to the edge. There was a two-foot high stone wall (like that'll keep you from falling?) and one hell of a drop to the bottom. We threw various sized rocks off the cliffs and then decided it was time for a smoke. Early Afternoon: We didn't have a bowl so Mill found a coke can. After a minor surgical procedure (poking a few small holes in an aluminum can) we smoked up. We smoked a couple of cigarettes and then went back on the other side of the chain link fence. Suddenly, like in a bad Hollywood movie, an Army helicopter swoops down and starts hovering above us. Paranoia set in. It kept hovering above as if they saw us cross the fence or something. It was really strange. Finally it fucked off and we could relax again. We took a few picks here and there. As we walked around the castle we found an opening that was loosely boarded up. We shifted the boards and started walking down a deep tunnel underneath the castle. Very interesting. It had obviously been closed off for some time. I couldn't see anything so every now and then we took photos so the flash would show us the way. The tunnel ended with a bricked up wall so we could go no further. We took a few pics then scurried out. We took a few more pics of the castle walls, then we headed back to Peter's. Afternoon: We got our gear together then yomped down to the P&O ferry terminal. The hovercraft looked really cool, but it was expensive and hard to sneak onto. Then we were really slick. Tickets to go to France were twenty quid each for a one-way ticket. All the tourists were dropping twenty pound notes like they were going out of style, but not us. If you tell them you want a same day round-trip they only charge you a pound. We told them we would be back the next morning and paid the two quid for the both of us. That was cool and saved us a shitload of money. As a kid I used to puke on ferries but I guess that's behind me. The English Channel was unusually calm that day. In a way I wish it were foggy and rainy. It would've felt more like D-Day. We played cards on the deck, and then took naps. I liked the sting of the sea breeze. We arrived in France in the early evening. We walked several miles from the port to the town of Calais. We walked so we could find a bank to exchange pounds into francs. I used my French a little and was able to ask a passerby where the bank was. I asked an old woman where the closest pub was but she acted like she didn't understand. I think she was just fucking with us. This seems to be a French tradition. No matter how well you speak the language, if you're a tourist, they'll treat you like an invading German from the Summer of 1940. We got to the bank and exchanged money at shitty rates. We kept hiking but it was getting late so we got a taxi to the train station. I think he hooked us up. We got on the train and didn't have to pay because Eurail covered France, Germany and Italy. We lazed until we got to Lille. Although Eurail didn't cover the French high-speed train (TGV) we snuck on board and waited to leave Lille for Paris. The conductor came by and despite our arguments he kicked us off the train. We were pretty pissed off by this point. We had no idea where to go or what to do. We hiked from the train station to downtown Lille. It was getting dark. We're marching thru the town square and all these strange looking French bikers, pickpockets and smackheads are staring at us. We needed to find a place quick before we got jabbed with a dirty needle and robbed. We went to a number of places looking for a room for the night. It was the same story everyplace we went. We'd ask for a room and the nightwatchman would say "Nooooh!" and "Complete!". Do you know what "complete" means? It means the hotel is full. A typical conversation went like this: Mill: Can we get a room for the night? Nightwatchman at Hotel: Nooo! Nooooo! Complete! (Another 1 Star Hotel) Mill: Hey, can we get a room for the night? Nightwatchman at Hotel: NOO! COMPLETE!! NOOH! They just looked at us like we were smacked out heroin addicts or something. The more I heard the word complete, the more I wanted to stab somebody. A bizarre mental note I made: All French night clerks seem to be missing appendages. Many were missing fingers. The place is worth staying away from...something is severely fucked up in Lille... Finally we found a one star hotel. It was a lot more money than we wanted to spend, but we had to bite the bullet. The owner of this hotel was actually pretty cool. We were in the lobby and there were a lot of Casablanca posters around. The owner was obviously into American pop culture and he seemed like a good fella. He told us how much the room was and made us hand over our passports so we couldn't pull a runner. The funny thing was that he kept referring to Eric as 'Monsieur Miller'. Miller seemed to like this. So then (and this is what made the guy pretty cool) he motioned over to these two girls sitting in the dining room, as if to say, can these gentleman join you. It was money because the girls were cute and from California. This French bloke basically set us up for the evening. We slid over to their table and started making small talk like what were their names and where they were from. We introduced ourselves and sat down with them. We ordered a bottle of red and we split a pizza. Somehow we could just sense that this was going to turn into a wild evening. I guess you can sometimes tell with chicks, whether they want to party. We paid up and bought a few extra bottles of red wine from the restaurant and went back to their hotel room for a nightcap. They had dice (what kind of chicks travel with dice?) so we started getting completely fucked up playing Three Man. Mill seemed to be doing well with his girl and mine was digging me. Mill and his girl were on the floor wrestling and me and the other girl were on the bed making out. I took my chick back to our room in the hotel across the street. When we got there I realized Miller had the key. I rang the bell and our buddy (the French Humphrey Bogart) came down in his pajamas and smoking jacket and let us in. He looked a little pissed like he'd just woken up but he was cool and let us in. We went up to my room and things went very smoothly from this point. We had a good night together but by the morning the honeymoon was over. I pretended that I still liked her but that wasn't going to last for long. Mill came back to the room in the morning and said things had gone well with his girl. Apparently the girls were heading to Amsterdam and instead of going to Rome, Miller now wanted to go to Amsterdam with them. I kind of went along with it although I wasn't really into hanging out with these girls for much longer. My idea would've meant losing them and trying to find two new girls... We all left Lille together and got on the train. The girls had Eurail passes for the whole of Europe. We could only travel thru France, Germany and Italy. We were potting along thru Belgium, past rows of gingerbread Hansel und Gretel houses when our plan to 'sneak' thru Belgium was derailed. The most foul smelling French train conductor on the planet started to fuck with us. He smelled so fucking bad, like he shit his pants. What made it worse was that it was a hot and humid day and we were still hungover. The girls were so sick they were turning green. I feel sick discussing it. "Mr. Stink" as we'll now refer to him, asked to see our tickets. The girls (I have no idea what their names were) handed Eurail passes over. We were fucked. We started shuffling around pretending to look for our 'tickets'. Mr. Stink wasn't leaving; he just waited to bust us. We should've hid in the bathroom. Finally we handed over our Eurail passes (they didn't cover Belgium let alone Holland) and he started going apeshit. Everything was in French so we had no idea what he was going on about. Another conductor came over to us and told us we were getting kicked off the train at the next stop. We got off the train at the next stop, paid for a ticket from Antwerp to Amsterdam and amazingly got back on the same train. Mr. Stink was still pissed but he couldn't do shit now. I went off to sit by myself to read Court Martial by Sven Hassel in peace, leaving Miller with the two girls. Apparently 'my girl' kept asking Miller what's wrong with Dave? I guess the simple answer to that was I wish to be rid off you. Poor old Miller liked his girl and my lack of interaction with mine was probably not helping him out any, but then how else do you treat a scheme? After a few hours on the train I went back over to our group and that's when we met "Hike". Hike was a 15-year-old Dutch kid who loved to smoke weed. He kept talking and talking about different kinds of herb, where to get it, what to pay for different types etc. Hike was 15 and already he was a complete stoner. He was in Belgium smoking weed with his friends but now he was on his way back to Holland. He insisted that we go with him to a bar when we got to Holland. The train stopped at the Dutch border early in the evening. We waited for the train to leave the station and continue to Amsterdam but it never left the station. After an hour or so they announced that the Dutch trains were on strike so we couldn't travel thru Holland. Fuck! Now we were stuck in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. Funnily enough it was one of the most fun places to hang out. Hike, the chipper Dutch pothead, told us that he knew the town well and could help us find a place for the night. What the hell did we have to lose? We were stuck in Roosendaal for God knows how long. The fact that we were there with someone who could speak Dutch seemed like a good idea. After a short walk into town Hike found a cool bar. We shed our packs and Miller and I headed towards the back of the bar to buy some gear. In a dark room in the back there was a fat woman with tons of make up on, standing next to a safe. There was a menu on the wall, but instead of listing foods or drinks it said things like "Super Afghan, Thai, Northern Lights, Haze". |
| Mill selected one of the items on the menu and guilders were exchanged. We went back to the table where the girls and Hike were sitting and Mill pulled out his bag and began to roll a skinny blunt. Hike thought it was too small; so he stuffed more herb in it and rolled the biggest blunt we'd ever seen. Hike took great pride in showing us how the Dutch roll them. It was like watching a master craftsman. By the time he was done rolling it, it looked like a fucking ice cream cone. A lot of the people in the bar looked like this. |
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| We were sitting around smoking and decided it was time to get some beers. Everyone in the bar was drinking Oranjeboom so we ordered five of them. The bartender would only give us three beers because he thought the girls were going to puke. We assured him that they wouldn't and he gave us all five beers. We took a bunch of photos and at one point we couldn't stop laughing. We were baked. It was a pretty phat moment. Hike left and we went off to find lodgings. Roosendaal was turning out to be pretty cool.
We found a place to stay above a Dutch biker bar. The rent was very cheap and the bartender was a former Hell's Angel who seemed like a nice enough bloke. We met up with the girls and went out to eat. We ordered fries and before we could stop them, the cook covered them in mayonnaise. We tried scraping the mayo off but it didn't really work so we covered them in tons of ketchup. The table was a fucking mess by the time we finished eating them. Later that night we went out with the girls and ended up smoking and drinking champagne in a park. After the park, we walked past the train station and Miller and his girl were walking in front of my chick and I. Miller's girl wanted to hold hands with him...it was funny to watch Miller trying to get out of it. It was a classic moment. Miller isn't really the hand holding type so I broke his balls about it for a few days. When we got back to the biker bar Miller said he was getting sick. The next day Millhouse aka Mr. Vomit was very ill. He stayed in bed the whole day and probably had strep throat. I went out wearing my Alonzo Mourning jersey and went down to the market. The Dutch girls were very good looking. The thing I liked the most about them was that they were intelligent, friendly and happy to flirt. I really had fun taking in the sights. I went to the supermarket and bought beer, French bread and a block of butter. The cash register girl was flirtatious but I didn't get her number. Went back to the room. We ate. Showered and we started drinking more Oranjeboom. Miller felt like shit but he toughed it out and kept drinking. We went downstairs to the biker bar for a few drinks. We shot the shit with the bartender about were to go that night. He gave us two free beers and told us to go to the American style bar in town. We paid up and went to the American bar; figuring we had good chances of getting laid. The American Bar in Roosendaal It had a jukebox and a bar. That was about the extent of it being American. The people there were pretty trendy and there were a few cute blondes. We ordered two Amstel’s and the bartender hands us half full brandy glasses with a lot of foam. I told him to pour out the foam and fill them to the top, but he said he couldn't. It wasn't cheap either. After a few Amstel’s we're both pretty buzzed. We were talking to two cute blondes; I'm working the short one; Miller's working the tall one. They turn out to be cops. That was odd. The drunker we got the crazier we acted, they started to look nervous. We're drunk but the girls aren't so they regard us with suspicion. Miller was trying to get the tall one to put handcuffs on him to see if he could get loose. We were in rare form, making ourselves laugh; they seemed less and less interested in us. At some point I took one of the shorter cops cigarettes and jocked the pack. We were ripped by this point and the shorter blond cop goes to get a cigarette and they're missing. They start going crazy, but we swear we haven't taken them. As we're leaving, they wait for us to get outside and then they frisked us! Excellent! They didn't check my naughty bits so they didn't find their smokes. The moral to this story is jock the smokes. We left the bar smoking their cigarettes and went into another bar. That's where we meet a cool Dutch couple with the ridiculous names of Ton and Tosh. Tosh was the woman. And what a woman she was...she looked like a docker. She was about 6 foot, 220 pounds with bushy hair. Ton was a small fella and looked like a dirty old man. He was cool though, he bought us beers and wanted us to tell them all about America. We tried to leave but they wanted to buy us dinner. We went to a butchers shops and he ordered us deep-fried sausages. The girl behind the counter was the big blonde you'll hear about later. We were eating the sausages, but he wouldn't tell us what we were really eating. He said he'd tell us when we were done. We didn't want to insult the guy so we ate them up. Miller asked him what we had just eaten. Ton begins motioning like he's milking a cow. Light bulb goes off. Fuck, we just ate fried cow udders. Remarkably, they seemed to give us a new strength and vigor so we thanked the bastard and went to the next bar. The next bar was rocking. For me, this was the most fun night of the trip, and we were still in Roosendaal. The atmosphere was conducive for heavy drinking. The bar was filled with smoke and karaoke singers were screeching off-key Beatles songs. The coolest part was that there was a bar gimp. The bar gimp walks around the bar with a thick leather strap around his neck holding up a long block of wood containing ten beers. Fucking fantastic. Even better, some girl was having a birthday party so all the beer was free. Inside of an hour I was obliterated. I started talking to this cute Dutch chick with long hair in a French braid. It was her birthday party and we were sitting in front of her parents making out. Her parents were drunk and very cool, they didn't seem to mind. All her friends were piss drunk. Her girlfriends were pretty far-gone and all the lads in the bar were hammered. I'd never seen anything quite like it. It was fucking insane. Somehow Mill and me staggered up to the karaoke machine and started singing "I want to hold your hand". I don't know how we picked that. We thought we were the shit but when I looked at the crowd people had confused looks on their faces and were covering their ears. We left the bar and Kristen agreed to come back to my place. Miller was bringing back the big blonde chick from the butcher's shop where we ate cow udders. As we were stumbling along the street Miller came riding past us on a bicycle (where the hell did that come from?) Even though it was late the Dutch were out, riding their bicycles, and they would stop for red lights when there was no one coming. It was odd. They all seem into obeying the few laws they have in Holland. Kristen and I got back to my room and left the lights off. Miller was in the hallway trying to hook up with his bird. Mr. Smooth This girl was cool. We were kissing and I kept trying to get her clothes off. As I was taking her jeans off she said "Oh, trying to take my pants off? Very smooth..." After that, while we were hooking up, she kept calling me Mr. Smooth. Excellent. I loved this chick. I hope to go back there one day and do it all over again. We spent the night together and she left in the morning. We said our goodbyes, knowing we'd probably never see each other again. She was a very cool chick. That morning Miller said that he hadn't had much success with his girl. He said that at one point she told him, in broken English, "you are scaring me." We were leaving that morning so we packed up our shit and settled the rent with the bartender. We headed down to the station and caught the train (Zug) to Amsterdam. Amsterdam We arrived in Amsterdam as it was raining. We consulted the yellow rag and went to the closest hostel. When we got to the hostel there were lots of prostitutes outside the place. Most had good figures but bad skin and they were all wearing tons of makeup. The reception area of the hostel was a bar so we figured it'd be a good place to stay. We went up to our room and it was about the size of a kitchen, packed with bunk beds. There were some real freaks in this place, including a Pat. We put our packs in a locker and headed out to enjoy the city life. It was still drizzling as we were walking around Amsterdam. We were starving so we got a pizza at an outside cafe that was run by Italians. They had lots of Italian World Cup banners and like most Italians they thought they'd go on to win the World Cup. Everything in and outside of their bar was Italian Azzurri Blue. They stood out like a sore thumb because everywhere else in Amsterdam was covered in orange. Orange is the color of the Dutch National Team. It was a cool time to be there, but we'd leave Holland just before the World Cup would begin. We talked to some girl cops but they weren't the ones from Roosendaal so we were in the clear. It seemed that all Dutch cops were blonde women. Very strange. As we're walking through the suspect parts of the city every Middle-Eastern pimp and pusher was hitting us up. Moroccan pimps were everywhere competing with Afghani dealers. Not a good place to bring the kids then? Everyone was trying to sell us hash, which was more tobacco than hash. Everything sold on the street had been stepped on a million times. We weren't down with that crap. If you want the bubonic, get bucolic. If you want to try the vices go to a clean coffee shop and go from there. We stopped in one coffee shop called "The Gol" and I bought five copies of the same postcard. Sooner or later Amsterdam will catch up with you. Amsterdam is interesting but you're better off in the smaller towns where everything's cleaner... As we're walking down the quaint streets next to river with riverboat tours on your left and to your right; there are woman in the shop windows. They looked so sad, or drugged out. Most were quite large and not very attractive. It was a bit like shopping for a dog in a pet store...it's the same idea. I felt sorry for them. The barkers are all trying to lure you into their establishments to enjoy forbidden pleasures, but we weren't interested in paying for something that's free with a little bit off work. This one guy said "Hey Americans....come in here for fun!" We kept walking and he said "Hey Americans! You don't like sex?". I said, "No son, we don't like paying for it." Walking the streets of Amsterdam gets old after a while. Everyone is in your face trying to sell one thing or another. We went back to the hostel and sat at the bar to mellow out. I ordered a pint of orange juice and watched them squeeze the oranges...damn it was good. It was expensive but I needed some Vitamin C bad, I felt like I had rickets. I don't think we went out again that night. Mill was still sick with strep throat and I was starting to get sick. We’d been drinking from the same water bottles so it didn’t take long for me to get what he had. We’d been out all day so we thought spend the night at the hostel and smoke all evening. We repeated the ritual of poking holes in a Coke can and started to smoke. We were sitting on the stairs smoking and coughing. Puff, puff, give; you know the routine. People would come up the stairs and just smile. It seemed like everyone we met was in an altered state. After goofing around the hostel looking for things to do, we went back to our room and met two lovely American girls. Wendy and Lisa. No, not the pop band. They were from the west coast and were on their way back from Greece and were about to fly back to the USA. We played cards with them and drank together for the remainder of the night. They were both pretty cute but we played it low key. I think we were too worn out to put in the effort. They wrote down a bunch of places to go to in Greece and gave us their leftover tickets and passes for ferries. We had a good time just chatting with them. Then we all went to bed. Mill took the top bunk; I had the bottom bunk. The next morning Miller asked me if I hooked up with Wendy. I said no and asked him why he thought so. He said I was tossing and turning so much that he thought I had her in my bunk. I wish I had her in my bunk. Heading to Deutschland: Now what? We bought train tickets to the closest German city, Köln (Cologne). Once we got to Germany the train would be free. I wrote some postcards from Holland to a few friends and just checked out the scenery on the way to Köln. We arrived but there was a two-hour layover before we could board the next train to Heidelberg. We wandered around the city and checked out Köln Cathedral. The cathedral was an impressive piece of gothic architecture but sadly it was covered in grime. We went inside and checked out the stained glass windows. We changed a few bucks into Deutsch Marks and got some weird food at a kiosk. It was some type of deep-fried potato and onion cake. Thoroughly disgusting, but Miller seemed to like it, so he ate mine. I guess it was the opposite of the fish n' chips story in Stevenage. The girls behind the counter were beautiful, all blondes. We got back on the train and traveled a few hours to Heidelberg. We arrived in the early evening, which coincided with the opening World Cup match Germany vs. Bolivia. It was still light out and the game hadn’t started so Mr. Vomit and the newly christened Mr. Smooth checked the "Let's Go Nowhere" book and double-timed with packs to each hostel mentioned. The first one was full; the second one was a convent. The Mother Superior answered the door and politely told us ‘you no stay here'. That wasn’t very Christian. I guess she didn’t want two players corrupting the nuns. I told her to hate the game, not the player, but she didn’t understand. As we left, my mind wandered as to what might've been. Staying at the convent and getting the young nuns drunk would have topped Roosendaal for me. I guess that’s why they call them nuns. Back to matters at hand, we weren’t having any luck finding lodgings so we gave up. I was more interested in seeing the opening World Cup match. It was a cool night so I figured we could sleep outside. We hiked down the main street, passing loads of swank shops. We finally got a seat outside of the Hard Rock Cafe - Heidelberg. We put the bergens down and started ordering beer steins full of Dortmunder and Warsteiner. The game finally came on so naturally we supported Bolivia. They say when in Rome, do as the Romans do, but I can’t support the Germans. Especially after losing on penalties in 1990 and 1996. I just found myself singing Two World Wars and one World Cup doo-dah doo-dah. This didn't make us too popular. So we're pulling for the Bolivians and they’re playing well until the 61st minute when the inevitable happens. Klinsmann scored and the Germans won the match 1-0. The place erupted. We left the bar and needed to find a place to sleep. We stopped by a bus stop and there were wanted posters everywhere. This middle-aged German bloke decided to rob a local bank with a pistol. They had a picture of him leaving the bank, a composite of his face and a dummy wearing similar clothes. It was retarded. This guy must've got busted. There was so much effort to catch him. I took a poster as a memory. I carried around his picture in my wallet and told people it was a photo of my father. Yeah, I’m strange. We're completely fucked for a room to stay in. We hovered around the train depot and Miller, in typical fashion, tried to procure a means of free travel. In short, he was trying to borrow two bicycles so we wouldn't have to hump all the gear up to the castle. He must've checked 200+ bikes and every single one was locked down. The Germans are so responsible and methodical. It's a wonder that there’s any crime in Germany. The attempt to procure transport failed, so we hiked up towards the castle. The castle was perched on top of a large hill, overlooking the town, and it looked like a daunting task. It was a long hike, probably he longest of the trip. We made it up three quarters of the way and then by chance a car stopped and offered us a ride to the top. The driver was in his twenties so we asked him if he knew Tina. He said he did and went on to describe her. The fucked up thing was that Tina was in the U.S. while we were in Germany so obviously we couldn't stay with her. We got to the top and we get out in a parking lot. That’s when we see some German thugs drinking tallboys, standing menacingly in the parking lot. We walked passed them and continued on down into the castle grounds. We found a flat, grassy area and decided to crash there. We used our packs as pillows and wrapped ourselves in our British Airways blankets. As I was laying there in the dark with my blanket wrapped around me listening to Miller snoring, I wondered if we were going to get rolled. I wasn’t sure what could happen so I grabbed my butterfly knife and kept a close hold of it. This way if they came down to fuck with us, one of them was going to get perforated like a tea bag. Nothing happened and I woke up with the knife in my hand. I was glad I didn't have the "stab Miller and blame it on the Germans" dream. We woke up at 6am because an old man was walking his dog and the dog came by to sniff us. We got up (lots of aches and pains) and ventured down to the town. Hiking downhill is a breeze. We went into a coffee shop for Miller to get a coffee and there were a few old timers drinking beer. It was 7 o’clock in the morning! We caught a bus down to the station hoping to find a train to Milan. SWITZERLAND We were riding on the train cooling out and, although our Eurail covered Germany, it didn’t cover Switzerland. Once we got through Switzerland and into Italy we’d be okay again, but it was getting through Switzerland without getting busted that was the hard part. Heidelberg is in southern Germany so it didn’t take long to reach the Swiss border. No one came on board to check our tickets or passports so we looked to be in the clear. The train set off again and soon we were in the middle of the Alps. It was the most amazing scenery I’ve ever seen in my life. Absolutely breathtaking. We were in a constant state of awe, weaving through the mountains, past the majestic Alps, the high alpine pastures, the chalets and rushing rivers. Completely badass. The train again stopped in Zurich but we didn't go off the train. The bathrooms on the train were also pretty cool; there’s nothing like taking a digger while watching snow capped mountains whiz by. The tunnels were insane too. We went through a lot of tunnels, which bored into the mountainside. Once we entered the tunnel everything went pitch black. They didn’t bother to turn on the lights so it was dark and noisy. Excellent! We were now sharing our compartment with an old Italian lady who got on in Zurich. I don't think she liked sitting with us and she didn’t look like she trusted us. She didn't smile, she just sat there staring at us and when we looked at her, she looked away. But the best part was every time we’d enter a tunnel. As soon as the darkness from the tunnel enveloped us…she grabbed her purse! It was fucking hilarious because it just kept happening. It got funnier and funnier. I’d wait for her to grab her purse and as soon as she grab it with that funny look of shock on her face, I’d start laughing to the point tears were coming out. When we got out of each tunnel she had this terrified look on her face. After a few tunnels she went to another cabin. CARBONARI! Finally we reached the Italian border. We were asleep in the compartment and it was dark out. The Italian Carbonari (a cross between the police and the SS) didn’t gently open the compartment door and ask politely for our passports. No. They nearly booted the door off the hinges, burst into our cabin with machine guns cocked and started shouting "PASSAPORTA!, PASSAPORTA!". Fuck. What a terrible way to wake up. It was a bit like 19030’s Italy under Il Duce. Mill and me shuffled through our packs at light speed trying to find our Eurail passes and passports. Thank fuck we found them. They stared at them, then us, then threw them back at us. I heard them move to the next compartment and do the same thing. I guess they like fucking with backpackers. I think Mill was worried that they’d search his pack... Moral: When entering Italy, keep Eurail and Passports handy. MILAN Thankful to still be alive, we arrived in Milan. We get out of the station and walk across a small park filled with skinny heroin addicts. We look down and there are syringes everywhere. Shit. Somehow we were standing in the middle of Milan's 'Junkie Park'. I started wondering whether God wanted me to leave Italy. It would’ve been nice if "Let's Go Europe" could’ve pointed that one out. I guess a Nebraskan farm boy who’s never been to Europe wrote the section on Milan. We get out of the park and check our shoes for syringes. We trade in some checks for some Italian lira and make our first purchase…a bottle of red. For some reason we stash it in a tree. I don't know why we did this. We walked aimlessly for a few hours and then went back to the tree to grab the bottle. We wondered if it’d still be there and it was so we started drinking while looking for a place to stay. On our travels we stopped by the AC Milan store but didn’t buy anything because it was extremely expensive. They wanted $100 for a Maldini jersey, fuck that. Although we usually kept away from the tourist traps, we did try to see "The Last Supper". When we finally got there it was closed. I guess we weren’t meant to see it. Buzzed and dejected we make the long trek towards the train station. ROME We took the train to Rome and arrived first thing in the morning. Sick of walking aimlessly for miles, we took a cab to the pension. We got there and gave up our passports and we had to pay in advance (clever). The building looked abandoned when we got there but the room was spacious and had marble floors so we couldn’t complain. TIP: Be a European when you're there- don't shower. It's a headache. We exchanged travel tips with an American chain smoker and decided against doing the typical tourist thing. When we got to these cities we wanted to know the real city. We went to the bars and the shitty parts of town. That was the real Rome. Anyway, we’d seen the Coliseum from the cab. There were no showers at the pension so I washed my hair in the sink and shaved using soap. We were going to Pompeii so it was a special occasion. After we checked out, we took a small train to Pompeii. That’s where we met our new backpacking buddies. These three guys, forgotten all their real names, had just graduated from Illinois and were on their last hurrah before getting jobs in the real world. They all ended up with nicknames. The tall guy seemed like their leader. He was a strange cat, always writing down notes about everything he saw. Since he was always writing, we named him Mr. Bic. One of them could speak some Italian and he had recently puked so he became Mr. Hurl. The last guy was the strangest of the group. He was just odd so we called him Mr. Hoop. I have no idea why we called him that, Miller must’ve thought of it. As the train passed Mount Vesuvius on its way to Pompeii, we swapped stories about our adventures, chicks and pubs. We hung out with them on the ferry to Greece and at the Pink Palace. POMPEII Pompeii was fucking excellent. Man, it was cool and well worth the visit. I guess we were mostly attracted to the place because of the Pink Floyd connection. The Floyd had played and made a film at the Roman Amphitheatre at Pompeii. We were excited to check out the ruins so we locked up our packs at the station and exchanged some money with the old men sitting outside of a restaurant. They were probably members of the Cimino crime family because the rates were fantastic. Why get ripped off at a bank when you can get better rates from aging mobsters? Another tip is to buy cigarettes on the street. There’s no tax and they’re a lot cheaper than in the shops. The mob is big in southern Italy. So after doing some business with the mob, we went to the gate to enter the ancient town of Pompeii (it was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius on August 23, 79 AD). It was about 5000 liras to get in which was great because that equaled $4. So, with cameras in hand, we started the tour following the tour guide but he was just showing us the same old tourist bullshit. Our new buddies were a lot like us and they quickly tired of the guided tour so we came up with a plan. It was like a military operation. One by one, we would run, duck, leap over a few walls then hide in the Roman house until we were all together. Because we’d been at the back of the group, no one noticed that we had infiltrated the real Pompeii. Part of the thrill was that we were checking out the places that were strictly off limits. We started exploring the town our own way and discovered murals on the inside walls of houses that were still colorfully vibrant 2000 years later. The mosaics were also amazing. The depictions of the Roman Gods and people, tiled on the floors, showed the culture of Rome. We roamed the Roman ruins and came across a guard. We thought he’d bust us but I said to him “Forza Azzurri” and he became friendly and unlocked one of the houses and showed us into what would've been the bedroom. That's where he showed us a filthy fresco. The Roman Amphitheatre was mind-blowing. We knew that that was where Pink Floyd filmed Live in Pompeii so for us it was like reaching the end of a religious pilgrimage. We took tons of photos from all kinds of angles and then went down from the seats into the arena itself. It was crazy to think that 2000 years ago gladiators were fighting to the death in front of the general public. At its peak the Pompeii Amphitheatre hosted gladiatorial combat, chariot races and religious zealots being thrown to the lions. To lighten the mood we threw the football and played a quick game of 500. We went inside a dungeon but it was too small to stand up in. I guess we were in the lion’s den. We walked down the main street in Pompeii and there were ruts in the road caused by Roman chariots and horse drawn carts. We saw a few of the bodies in glass coffins encased in plaster. Most of them had died from the poisonous gases from the eruption. A lot of the dead were clutching around their throats. When thousands of tons of ash came down they were trapped in those poses for the rest of eternity. They found the body of the baker dead outside of his bakery and found burnt loaves of bread in his oven. Another guy was sitting with a group of men and had his arm back about to throw dice. When they cracked open his hand they found the dice. Loaded dice. Busted… NAPLES We were now heading to Greece so we needed to get to southwestern port city of Brindisi. Brindisi was quite a distance from Rome so we figured we’d take the train to Naples, and then head to Brindisi. We got to Naples but there was about a four-hour layover until we could catch the right train. Napoli was real cool. First thing we did is go to a bodega to buy wine. For about one dollar (1500 liras) we each bought a gallon of wine. You'd think they'd be more winos there. I was on red; there others were on white. We walked through the shittier sides of Naples and met a lot of poor street kids playing soccer and acting crazy. We sort of adopted them for a couple of hours. I felt like their rich older brother. These kids had it rough, but they were happy. They wanted something from us; they wanted to trade their shirts for my Mourning jersey. I didn't like that trade. Then they wanted my Georgetown hat so I gave it up. These kids really looked up to us. When we whistled at two cute chicks on a moped, the kids ran over to them, swarmed their moped and wouldn't let them leave. The girls were shouting at the kids…I think they thought they were about to get robbed. We ordered our loyal legionnaires to let the prisoners go. It was a bit like being a Roman Emperor commanding a crack Roman legion. We hooked them up with some liras and dollars and they wanted to hit our wine and smoke our cigarettes. The new guys took a group photo of us with the kids but they never sent it to us. A few hours and a few empty wine bottles later, we said goodbye to our praetorian street gang and headed for the train. TRAIN TO BRINDISI We took the night train to Brindisi. It felt so fucking good to be off my feet. The night trains were the best. Mill and me had the basic Eurail passes so we couldn’t get a couchette to sleep in. We had to make do with our own small train compartment. We spread all of our clothes and packs over the seats so hopefully we wouldn’t have to share the compartment with other travelers. I stretched out on the seats, used my pack as a pillow and covered myself in my British Airways blanket. We had the windows open so there was a constant breeze of fresh air. It was excellent. It was strangely calming to drift off to sleep on the night train, the screeching of the metal wheels on the metal rails, the howl of the wind. Soon I was asleep. Several hours had passed when we woke up in Brindisi. What a shithole. The place was a real seedy dump. With our new amigos, Mr. Bic, Mr. Hoop, and Mr. Hurl, we set off to the port to buy ferry tickets to Greece. We bought ferry tickets to get us to the first stop, Corfu. Corfu is an island in the Adriatic Sea, slightly off mainland Greece. The Ferry We got onboard and headed up to the main deck. It was a wonderfully sunny day and of course all the chicks were lying out in bikinis catching some rays. Most of the girls were American so we sat with them and sunbathed. After a while we all started chatting. Mr. Bic and Mr. Hoop were trying to chat up a fat girl. Miller was talking to a blonde and I ended up chatting up a German girl who was in the proximity. The bar opened on the top deck so we started drinking heavily. The beer was pretty cheap so we consumed large quantities. After four or five beers everyone was starting to get a little wild. My German ‘girlfriend’ was on a trip with a girlfriend of hers. They had a cabin on the ferry. I tried to get her to ditch the friend but she wouldn’t. I don’t think she trusted me. She wasn’t drinking either so this was getting to be a problem. She loosened up a little but there was no way she was going to take me back to her cabin (a real shame). I basically struck out and decided that this was going nowhere. She said she wanted to (go back to the cabin) but couldn’t. I didn’t bother pushing the point, I just bailed out. I left her and went back to the American girls. We were all getting drunk and getting sunburned. No one was hooking up but we certainly laid some groundwork. The girls told us that they had reservations on Corfu to stay at the Pink Palace. They told us it was a great place to drink and party. As we had no idea where we were even going, we decided that would be a good place for us. As Corfu neared, I started talking to the German girl again. She was very good looking. A nicely tanned, thin brunette. It was then that she told me her parents we in the cabin. I can see why she didn’t want to go back there. Then she told me her and her friend were fifteen. I’m glad nothing happened…I didn’t want to go to Greek jail. Like they say “In Greece, how do you separate the men from the boys?…..With a crowbar.” Corfu We had a sizable group by this point; besides the five of us (Sarge, Miller, Bic, Hoop & Hurl) we were tagging along with five girls. We got on the shuttle bus for a long ride to the Pink Palace. I remember the bus fighting its way up mountain roads. There were lots of roadside memorials. Presumably, people had crashed and gone off the cliffs. I kept an eye on the driver. Beautiful scenery; lots of spectacular views of beaches and oceans. I remember there were lots of wild looking trees and flowers. The Pink Palace Finally we arrived at the Pink Palace. We were dropped off on the road and had to walk down a long steep stone stairway to get to the lobby. The rooms were further down the stairway, overlooking the beach. We went into reception and the girls, who had reservations, checked right in. We had to hope there were rooms available. As we waited in line, a thin British girl walked up to us with a large bowl filled with pink Ouzo and a glass floating in the bowl. She asked if we wanted a shot. I didn’t need a second invitation and drank two of them; the others also drank several shots so the bowl was virtually empty after the five of us. The shots were free to guests so we loved the place already. They held onto our passports, which was a drag. This basically assured the Pink Palace that we couldn’t dine n’ dash (stay and take off without paying) which in our ‘scam’ we would’ve done. We accepted it. The good thing, besides the Ouzo, was that dinner was included. We headed down the stairway to our room. The Room The Pink Palace looked nice enough from the outside. The free shots, the hot chicks, the pool and close access to the beach were all big pluses. The only downside was that the room was dirty and filled with mosquitoes. I don’t mix well with mosquitoes so I was already dreading the outcome. They don’t sell OFF! in Corfu either…not that I had any money for it anyway. Money Problems We changed some traveler’s checks and were given some funky Greek money. It was early evening and we went down to the beach to check it out. It was pretty empty. We sat in the sand drinking 22 oz. Heinekens. Miller broke out his money and asked what it was called. I told him ‘Shekels’, even though they were Drachmas. This was to get funnier and funnier during our stay in Corfu. Every time Miller wanted to buy something…he kept saying to confused Greek shopkeepers “How many shekels for this?” I just got funnier and funnier. By this point we were almost out of traveler’s checks and our cash reserves were depleted. We still had some Lira but that wasn’t going to last long. We were getting dangerously short on cash. This was going to become a big problem. The first few nights at the Pink Palace were all a blur. The memories all seem to blend into each other. I do remember a few facts about Night #1. We bought two big bottles of Heineken and bought a bottle of this Greek wine/liquor called Metaxa. Everyone told us this was really good so we had to try it. As we walked down the stone stairs from the street to our room, Mill dropped the bag. He was really pissed off with himself. I think we were so low on money the thought of Heineken going to waste was tough to deal with. Although we had no Heinekens we still had this bottle of Metaxa. We got to the room, opened the bottle and each took a sip. Horrible. It tasted fucking terrible. It was really, really bad. Avoid it. Now we were fucked because we both hated the taste of it but it was the only alcohol we had. We had to drink it because it was getting late and we were going to the Pink Palace club to try and get laid. Remarkably we finished the bottle and were pretty drunk. I don’t know what’s in it but it lights a fire under your ass. At the club, we told people about what we were drinking…they told us you’re supposed to mix it with orange juice. Orange juice? It didn’t say that on the label. Night #1 We walk up the stairs to the lobby and go into the club. It was partially filled but would be packed by midnight. We drank a few shots of Ouzo and then started buying Henninger, which was the cheapest beer they had. Henninger was a pilsner with a metallic after taste but after the first one you got used to it. We were such bums…drinking Henninger…when everyone else was drinking Heineken. After several shots of Ouzo, endless Henninger’s and a couple of hours later, we were going our separate ways to meet chicks. I think Miller was with the girls from the ferry…I was out on a recon patrol for European girls. It was the late evening and suddenly the techno stopped and everyone sat down. We had no idea what was going on. All of a sudden, traditional Greek music comes on and these two Greek blokes, dressed in all black, start dancing. They were doing some crazy traditional Greek dance. I was sitting on the floor watching everyone cheering then I saw other Greeks come running onto the dance floor with full bowls of free Ouzo. Fucking excellent! Then they broke out the plates and these two strange Greeks starting smashing plates over people’s heads. They came over to me, I shut my eyes and they smashed a plate over my head…I didn’t feel a thing. Then they let me hit the free Ouzo. I was fucking hammered. Everything was becoming a blur. I looked at the dance floor and all these chicks were going wild, plates were being smashed over their heads, tons of Ouzo was being consumed. Madness! The dance floor was fucking covered in broken crockery. I remember kissing some chick on the dance floor…I don’t remember anything else. I guess we both made it home okay. Hungover Obviously we were hung over. We cruised into town to check it out. It was a typical seaside town, most of the shops catered to tourists. We laid out on the beach and read our books. Miller was reading a Tom Clancy novel. I was reading Court Martial by Sven Hassel. I ventured into the sea and it was cold. I was swimming in the surf and started moving my way closer and closer to this hot chick. We started talking and I found out she was Swedish. Jackpot! Strangely she was a brunette. She was very attractive, model-esque so to speak. We talked about Sweden, Abba, Henrick Larsson, then she said goodbye. I’d like to have that conversation back again. We both went swimming then went in the ocean to swim out to a platform. I was pretty out of shape and halfway to the platform my foot started cramping up. I started to panic. Miller looked over…I think he thought I was drowning. I swam on my back and finally reached it. We sat on the platform and tried to smoke a pack of wet cigarettes. After a half hour we swam back. Night #2 We were getting dangerously low in the cash department. I adopted a new strategy. When I was in college, my buddy Roach used to come out to the bars with us. He didn’t have any money for beer so he just used to walk around the bar looking for floaters. Floaters are nearly full or half full beers that are ideally still cold. He’d hold it up to the light and check for cigarette butts. If it passed that test then he’d start drinking it. Once you’re already drunk you really don’t give a shit about it. Beer is beer. I didn’t even think that someone could’ve spit in it. So there I was on the dance floor drinking floaters. Dancing to techno with two beers in your hand was tricky. They started playing Nirvana and Chili Peppers and we formed a mosh pit. All very fun until some fat guy ran into me and knocked me down. A bunch of people helped me up, which was cool. The Greeks came out with the Ouzo and plates…we knew the routine so the new chicks thought we were cool. I ended up outside the club with a girl from the ferry. Mr. Hoop was with her friend. I went home and crashed, Miller hooked up with another of the ferry girls. Day Whatever We went down to the pool and then down to the beach. There was a shack on the beach with a small store in it. We went there and started talking to the Greek girl behind the counter. She was cute but had hairy armpits. I bought a Greek flag and we got the fuck out of there. We had breakfast at a local restaurant and thought about a dine n’ dash. We didn’t because we knew we would probably go back there. We spent the rest of the day reading and playing cards. In the evening we went into town to try and rent an apartment. The daily rate for a place in town was a lot cheaper than the Pink Palace. We found a small apartment on the second floor above a leather shop. The landlords were a middle aged Greek couple who owned the leather store. They were bastards. The new place was pretty nice. It had a cool deck that looked out over the street. I have some memories of that place. We used to sit up there and drink, smoke, play Crazy Eights, and shout down to passing chicks. It was a mellow hang out, a good place to drink before going back to the Pink Palace nightclub. We spent a big chunk of our remaining funds to rent the place for a few days. We checked on our cash reserves and they were very low. Like Bolivian Finance Ministers we enacted some draconian austerity measures. To survive we could only spend the equivalent of three dollars a day on food. If we were going to survive we had to find ways of supplementing our income. We came up with the idea of recycling. Basically, under cover of nightfall, we would go out and grab other people’s recycling (glass bottles mostly) and return them to shops for a few drachmas, or in Miller’s case, shekels. We didn’t make much money the first night so we stopped going to the trouble. We needed to live lean but we also needed to survive and dedicate the majority of our money to drinking. For breakfast we would each have a bag of chips. For lunch we would each have a bag of chips. By dinner we were starving. I think Miller came up with the following plan. We were no longer guests of the Pink Palace so we weren’t entitled to free dinner. This wasn’t going to stop two hunger-crazed wild men. We remembered that no one checked to see any ID for dinner so we just followed the crowd, sat down at a table in the back corner and started eating as much stuff as we could get our hands on. It was pretty funny. We would take other people’s bread and finish their soup. We must’ve looked homeless to them. I think we were both nervous about getting caught but we were so hungry. When dinner was served, I remember eating spinach for the first time. I was so hungry I just didn’t give a shit anymore. Ever since then I‘ve liked spinach. As dinner wore down we walked towards the bathrooms and then took off. Excellent! Success. Now we could party on a full stomach. The next night it all went fantastically wrong. We knew how to pull the scam. We just showed up, grabbed a plate, sat at a table and waited for the food. I noticed one of the waiters staring at us but he didn’t say anything. Then we saw the owner (A Greek bloke called Doctor George) walking towards us. His security people were following him. Oh shit. We tried to hide our faces but he knew. We had met him days before and he knew we weren’t staying at the Pink Palace anymore. He was about to fucking derail our meal ticket. In front of everyone they asked us to follow them to the office. We knew they were probably going to call the cops. As we were walking with them, Miller took off! He fucking ran for it! Fuck! I had a split second to think…I ran after him. They chased us some of the way and the guy got close to me, but my adrenalin was pumping and there was no way he was going to catch me. We flew up the stairs and ran down the street back to our hideout. No more free dinner. At least we had some free soup. We steered clear of the Pink Palace the next few nights. We still got drunk and went to some other lame clubs in town. To make matters worse we got kicked out of our place. The Greek bloke who owned the place couldn’t speak English so his wife (who couldn’t speak it either) was telling us we had to leave because we were shouting at chicks from the balcony. Dickheads! We moved out. I took a digger and didn’t flush. So now we were banned from the Pink Palace and we got kicked out of our apartment. We went up the street and rented a better place. Although we had no view it was secluded, it was spacious, it had a cool porch and we could hear the girls upstairs doing it each day. We used to get up and have our first smoke of the morning on the porch and the girl above us would always have her window open, then we would hear her moan. It was excellent. Later we found out it was the lady who owned the place. She was in her 30’s, cute and she used to clean our apartment everyday. I used to lay on the bed and stare at her while she cleaned. I think she thought I was like Ted Bundy. Or for you Greeks out there “Teddius Bundopolis”. The strange thing about her was she told us not to flush toilet paper because the sewer system is weak. Apparently this is a strange Greek custom. They put it in the trash. This would explain the flies then. Disgusting concept. We didn’t follow that custom either. We were down to our last drachmas. Things were getting bad. We thought about ways to get money. My parents wouldn’t give me any money for the trip and Miller’s dad wasn’t going to give him any either. Although I had no job and no way to pay for anything in the States, I decided we’d have to use my credit card from here on out. Once I got over the concept of debt I felt relieved. At least we were going to eat. The way we had been doing things was crazy. The credit card became our personal Lord and Saviour…until I lost it. June 18, 1994 The World Cup was going on and it was funny to watch the Greeks get trounced. I started going to the pubs to watch the matches. I was watching the Ireland vs. Italy match and getting pretty drunk. I was the only one supporting Ireland and most people in the bar wanted the Italians. The drunker I got the more these two chicks in front of me started talking to me. They were from Norway. They were both married and were there for a holiday. The blonde was beautiful. She looked good, wholesome. Miller got to hook up with her and I ended up with her friend. The friend was decent looking. She was thin, had long hair, nice legs, and had big tits but that fucker Miller got the hot blonde. She must’ve made an impression on him because he still fucking talks about her. I should’ve killed him and tagged them bot. Ireland beat Italy 1-0 with Liverpool player Ray Houghton scoring in the 11th minute so we left the bar with the girls and went to an outdoor restaurant. We had a birthday party for them and ordered beers and food. The blonde started ordering us ‘Hot Shots’. Basically, it was a Galliano base, with a drop of coffee and whipped cream on top. We were drinking these things all night. I was fucking hammered, Miller appeared less hammered and the girls were trashed. We were so drunk we were buying other people in the bar Hot Shots. The waiter came over and started drinking them with us. Insanity. I really don’t know how I remember all this. I guess I didn’t black out. When the bill came it was huge. The girls started fighting with the waiter. They were so drunk they couldn’t remember how to speak English. It was crazy. Finally, we split the bill and left. Miller and his girl disappeared; I think he said they went to the beach. My girl and I went back to her room. Later that night I went back to my place to sleep in my bed. I came in and Miller was poking his chick in the bathroom…or at least that’s how it sounded. The next day we woke up with hangovers and watched the lady from upstairs change the sheets... We were settling in nicely. At the entrance to our apartment, an old man sat on a chair. He couldn’t speak a word of English so we used crude sign language to communicate with him. Apparently he was from Albania and he used to be a soldier. I have no idea how we figured this out. I went to pay for something on my credit card and discovered it was missing. Now, as the gypsies say, we were proper fucked. With no cash, no travelers checks and no credit card we were essentially stuck in Greece. We took the bus and went into the capital of Corfu to find a bank. No one spoke English so it was frustrating trying to explain that I needed to cancel a credit card. They weren’t able to help me so we turned to leave. That’s when we saw “Doctor George”, the owner of the Pink Palace. He saw us but he didn’t seem to care that we’d had free dinners at his place. Then we saw why he didn’t care about us. He opened a large suitcase filled with fucking cash. Shame we didn’t run into him before he got to the bus. He would’ve had a nasty bump on his head and Miller would be leading the “High Life”. There were shitloads of banknotes in that suitcase and he was handing them over to the bank manager by the fistful. We went back to our town and tried to remember the last place I used it. We went back to the restaurant where we were with the Norwegian girls and I asked the bartender about it. He went into the back and came out with my credit card. Relief. When I got home I noticed a few strange charges on it. Still, I was glad to have it back. During our time in the town of Agios Gordios we started to make a few acquaintances. Miller was hanging out with Tori. She was mellow so it wasn’t a pain having her around. When he got back to the US, Mill went to see her in Tennessee. I was trying to chat up the Greek girl at the gyro restaurant but nothing ever came of it, accept her address, I didn’t write. We started seeing the same backpackers at the local bars. I was having a conversation with a British Arabic guy for a while at the Pink Palace outdoor bar. He was telling me that he owned an import/export business and that he shipped storage containers to Lebanon. I took that to mean he was probably shipping night-vision goggles to Hezbollah. I got the fuck away from him. For all I knew his backpack probably wasn’t full of dirty clothes. We met a lot of freaks backpacking. Conquering the Mountain Probably the most fun we had was the day we rented mopeds. We took off at high speed on our weed whackers with wheels and cruised through the sparse and arid scrublands going from village to village. The funniest part was seeing wrecked mopeds. We kept seeing ambulances picking up blonde girls with broken arms and bleeding knees. I know this is bad to say but when I saw them I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t know what was funny about it but that shit was fucking funny. We filled up with petrol and started cruising into a large town. I remember a Greek cop pointing at us; we just sped up and got the hell away from him. He was on foot so he wasn’t going to catch us. We were having lots of fun. We took our shirts off and started cruising through the desert towards the mountains. We went through a mountain village and found a dirt road that started heading up a mountain. Our Honda engines were low on torque but the fight in them impressed me. As we got halfway up, the dirt road ended. There was just a rocky dirt trail. It was full of potholes, dead tree roots and ruts. We decided to press on and slowly but surely we started heading closer and closer to the summit. My arms were burning from grasping the handlebars tightly. My back was being jarred by every large rock and hole we hit. It was quite a task getting up there. We would take breaks every now and then to recuperate before pressing on. These mopeds were tough. They fought there way up and up. Finally we approached the top. We were way up there. We could see most of the island. We could see the Pink Palace. It was a fantastic view. We posed on our bikes and took some excellent pictures. I smoked a pack of Rothmans and looked out over the sea. We packed up our kit, got back on the bikes and headed down the mountain. Heading down was probably more dangerous. We would build up speed and suddenly the bike would be out of control. If we’d gone of the road, we’d have gone off the cliff. I felt like I was racing towards an early grave but we finally made it down to the bottom and sped back to the rental shop to return the bikes. We were finished with Corfu. We didn’t have the money to go to the other Greek islands so we caught the ferry back to Italy. I slept on one of the lower decks in the shade and didn’t wake up until we reached Brindisi. Brindisi (Again) – July 3, 1994 Brindisi is a shithole. It is a dirty crime-ridden port city on the southeastern coast of Italy. For all its faults, it was good to be back in Italia. One change I noticed instantly was how much more better looking the girls were. The Greek girls were very plain looking but the majority of the Italian girls were very good looking. Everything about them was a turn on. Italian girls dressed well and had style. It was nice to be back. We didn’t stay in Brindisi; we hopped on the first train to Florence. We were cruising on the train and I noticed a bunch of Italians all crowded around one of the passengers. As I went up to see what was going on, I saw the passenger had a portable television and he was watching a world cup match. Excellent! I joined the crowd and we all watched a thriller with Romania beating Argentina 3-2. I’m only able to figure out the dates if I remember what world cup match I was watching. This meant that it was about 9:30pm on July 3, 1994. After the match I went back to our compartment for a sleep. The night trains were the best because they weren’t hot and humid. You could just shut the compartment door, crack the sliding window and lay back on the bench seats catching the breeze. It was an excellent way to fall asleep… Florence - July 4, 1994 We arrived in Florence early on Independence Day. There’s a lot to see and do but we didn’t do any of it. The only thing that stands out in my mind about Florence was that every street looked the same so it was easy to get lost. That’s when fate arrived. I saw a pretty chick I had hooked up with at the Pink Palace. She looked really good and her hair was still completely braided. I was digging it. She told me to stay at her pension. We followed her to her place, handed over our passports (fuck) and went to our room. I had a wash but there were no showers so I just dipped my head in the sink. I met a French backpacker and asked him what derogatory terms the French used for the British. He said ‘Roast Beef’. I said we called them “Frogs”. He didn’t seem to like hearing this so he left. July 5, 1994 We woke up late the next day. Our room had a balcony, which was shared, by other rooms. We sat outside on the cool marble balcony and started talking to a mellow Italian guy in his early 20’s. He had some hash so we smoked and got completely fucked up. I blacked out and eventually made my way back to bed. We went out (still in a fog) and we tried to exchange money at a bank. That’s when we saw two girls we had met before somewhere along the line. They were pissed at me because I told them that Charlie Sheen had died in an avalanche in Switzerland. They weren’t as worried about the “Pauly Shore died from a drug overdose” story. The short butterface chick was really mad about it. She called the US long distance to see if it was true. Dumbass. I guess they forgave me because we all went to a bar together. We got to the bar and started drinking Heinekens. The place was packed with Italians in soccer jerseys. Italy was playing Nigeria and they were losing. The Italians, who are huge soccer fans, were getting really pissed. Miller and I were rooting for the Nigerians so they started getting pissed at us. The smart thing would’ve been for us to root for the Italians, and then we might have gotten off with some Italian birds. Anyway, Nigeria was winning 1-0 and the Italians substituted Giuseppe Signori for Gianfranco Zola in the 65th minute. Ten minutes later Zola got sent off! He was only on the pitch for ten minutes. The Italian fans went berserk. They were really fucking pissed about it. They were losing 1-0, there was 15 minutes left and now they were down to ten men. It was then that I had a brief thought of us getting lynched by an Italian mob Mussolini-style. Then, in the 88th minute Roberto Baggio scored and the place went mad. Beer was pouring all over the place and people were kissing and singing. I felt happy for them. The game went into extra time and the Italians were awarded a penalty! Baggio stepped up and scored! The match was over. The Italians were overjoyed. Some people were crying; I guess they had been on an emotional roller coaster. The match ended and Miller said he was leaving with the girls. He was obviously going to try and hook up with the pretty one and try to ditch her friend. I wished him luck and said I’d see him back at the place. I stuck around to watch the Mexico - Bulgaria match. Most of the Italians stayed and I managed to get a seat at a table full of Italian girls. The game finished 1-1 so it went to penalties. Everyone in the bar wanted Mexico to win. They had a crazy goalkeeper, Jorge Campos. The Mexican penalty takers were horrible so Bulgaria won 3-1 on penalties. I was drunk and tired so I headed back to the pension. Later that night I went out with my girl and her friends and walked around Florence. We were drinking on the streets and smoking. We stayed for a while at a park and then headed back to our place. Meanwhile, Miller was hanging out in another public square with his girl and her tag along friend. I think he was able to ditch the friend but an Italian bloke kept hitting on his girl. Somehow Miller convinced the Italian guy to let him ride around the square on his moped. The Italian agreed and Miller’s girl hopped on the back and they took off! The worst part is…they didn’t go back. Miller was now cruising around on a stolen moped. He’s a fucking nutcase. To make matters worse, Miller was caught for speeding and pulled over by armed Italian police. Somehow Miller wriggled his way out of the situation and he and his girl headed for the train station. I think he told me he hooked up with her in a park outside the station. They left the moped on a side street. Miller was up all night on an adventure so I didn’t see him until the next morning. July 6, 1994 In the late afternoon, we packed up and decided to try and leave the bill behind. Between the both of us, we came up with an elaborate scheme that involved dropping our backpacks out of a 5th story window into the street near the exit. I would go downstairs, grab the packs, hail a cab and wait for Miller. I think Miller was supposed to open the drawer that had our passports in it and run down to the cab. It didn’t work. It wasn’t even close. The old lady was sitting at the table guarding the passports so we had to do the right thing (which was pay, as opposed to knocking her out, grabbing the passports and fleeing the country). We gave up on the cab idea (to save money) and hiked back to the train station. Our flight back to America was leaving Gatwick in a few days time so we had to start heading back to England. We got to the train station and waited around a few hours for a train direct to Paris. I was getting sick by this point and I think we both had strep throat. I had a sore throat and felt like shit. Miller was feeling the same way. We were sick and dirty so we couldn’t wait to get back to my aunt and uncle's. Finally, the train showed up and we searched for an empty compartment. We couldn’t find an empty one so we joined two teenage Italian girls. They were both cute. They were both dark haired, nicely tanned and I guessed they were best friends. I sat on one side of the compartment with my girl, Miller sat on his side with his girl. The girls didn’t speak any English, which was a plus because I didn’t feel like talking. It was night and we were tired. We made some small talk with the girls using sign language telling them we should all go to sleep. I grabbed my blanket and put it over my girl and me and we started kissing etc. I woke up during the night and I still had my arm around her. She was pretty cool. She was just quiet. I didn’t know her name, she didn’t know mine. We knew nothing about each other and couldn’t communicate other than using sign language. I smiled at the situation and went back to sleep. We were sick so we slept most of the morning until we got to Paris. We all woke up and started to pack up our stuff as we approached Paris. As we got off the train the girls just instinctively followed us. I was walking beside Miller and they were a few steps behind. That’s when he decided he wanted to ditch them. I didn’t really want to. I guess it was the opposite of what happened in Holland. Still, what could I do? We needed to get back to England to catch a flight so the last thing we needed was to spend the night in Paris. It would’ve been cool though. I liked my chick and it would’ve been a good night to spend showing her around Paris but we had to get out of there. Miller said we should run for it, so we did. We ran to the other end of the station and went down the stairs. I felt kind of guilty but I guess I got over it. The sad thing is I could imagine two Italian girls walking around Paris with strep. We were now in the zone. We got on board the next train for Calais and sat and listened to our walkmans. We arrived in Calais but it was a long ride to the port. We stopped by an auto repair shop and somehow convinced one of the mechanics to drive us to the port. Thanks to that guy whoever he is. We were cruising. We took the ferry and got to Dover. We didn’t stop, we were like machines. We got on the train at Dover and went through Canterbury and arrived in London. From London we took the train up to Stevenage. We were non-stop. We kept moving; we were on a mission to take a fucking shower. We got to Stevenage late at night and I called my uncle from the station. My aunt and uncle are very cool so we knew they’d take care of us. Uncle Geoff arrived in his Russian made car and drove us back to his house. We spent that night getting clean and doing laundry. One of my socks tried to escape from the laundry bag…I stabbed it and threw it in the wash. The next day Uncle Geoff drove us over to Leighton Buzzard. It was a scenic drive from Hertfordshire to Bedfordshire. We drove through the Dunstable Downs, past the huge chalk White Lion of Bedfordshire. Geoff dropped us off and we stayed with Uncle Don and Auntie Barbara. They both had gone shopping and bought tons of food for us. Don was the man. He went out and bought tons of cans of Tetley Bitter, McEwen’s, Tennant’s Bitter and tall cans of lager. He had a separate fridge completely stock with beer. What a good guy. I called my buddies from school that lived in town and we met up with them at the high school. It was a sunny day so we played a pickup game of soccer. Miller hadn’t played much before but he was into it. It was good to see my old English school friends. Joseph Feeley was a good friend of mine and over the years somehow we were able to keep in touch. Nicky Smith aka Deano was there along with Gareth Short and his girlfriend and my one-time love Alexandra Crisp. After the football, the lads dropped us off at Don’s house. Joe called later that night to see if we wanted to go to a party. We said yes and he told us how to get there. The party was in a house near the town centre so since it wasn’t too far we decided to walk. Prior to leaving, we washed up, ate and then drank a bunch of beer. We took a few cans along for the two-mile walk. We walked down Stanbridge Road until we got to the Lake Street. At the intersection we walked over the bridge that crosses the River Ouzel. Just like my childhood memories, there was a shopping cart stuck in the middle of the river. This was to prove important later. We arrived at the party and drank and smoked ‘til the wheels fell off. I was sitting with this one chick that kept asking me if I remembered her. I lied and said I did but had no fucking idea who she was. The lie worked but it didn’t get me anywhere because she was there with Jason Kinsella who was a boxer. We were hanging out with my old friends, especially Joe and talking to all the girls at the party. We smoked some skinny blunts that had tobacco in them and then it was 2am. Jumped by Skinheads We were walking near the town square and I was a few yards ahead of Miller. We were drunk and I remember us doing Beavis and Butthead impressions. I saw two big guys walking towards me. Both of them had shaved heads. They were just minding their own business as we were. The second the bigger of the two was right next to me he fucking head butted me in the temple. All I remember seeing was for a split second his forehead rapidly approaching the side of my head. I don’t remember anything because I was out cold. Miller said they picked me up while I was unconscious and started banging my head against a brick wall. It's the brick building on the right. I’m glad I was out or that would’ve sucked. When Miller saw what had happened he ran over and punched the big guy in the head. Miller said he knocked the guy down but he jumped back up and gave him a look like he was going to kill him. Miller ran and they chased him. They couldn’t catch his skinny ass. Meanwhile, I came to and Miller was gone. I figured I got jumped or stabbed because there was a lot of blood on the concrete. When I got to my feet my head was spinning and my vision was distorted. I couldn’t figure out where Miller was then I thought maybe he got jumped. I walked around the square and didn’t see him. Then I figured I should get out of there before these fuckers came back. I picked up a half brick and started walking home. I was pretty fucked up by this point. I was still somewhat drunk but the head on the brick wall really fucked me up. I couldn’t see properly…everything was blurred. Was scared and alone so I walked to a house with a light on and knocked at the door. It was probably 3am but a young guy and his wife opened the door and let me in. My nose and upper lip were still bleeding and the right side of my jaw hurt like fuck. I asked for some scissors so I could cut off the piece of my upped lip that was hanging down inside my mouth. The guy told me not to and told me to sit down. An ambulance came and I was still in a haze. I wondered what had happened to Miller. The ambulance took me to the hospital for x-rays and they said I had a concussion. Don arrived and took me home. I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep that night because of the concussion so Barbara kept an eye on me. Don and Barbara were getting worried about Miller. I was just hoping he didn’t get jumped because these fuckers were crazy. Attacking people for no reason is a brutal thing. Luckily, Miller knocked on the door. After he hit the guy, he went back to find me but I was gone. He walked for hours but couldn’t remember how to get home. It was his first time in the town. He walked to the next village several miles away and asked a guy who was walking a dog if he knew how to get to a river with a shopping cart in it. The guy and his dog walked Miller several miles to the bridge overlooking the river with the shopping cart in it. What a good guy. Miller said thanks and made his way home from there. It was a rough night, so we both slept until the afternoon. I took a shower and cleaned myself up as best I could. My upper lip was still a mess and the right side of my jaw swelled up so it looked like I had half a grapefruit under my skin. Still, it wasn’t too bad. I felt okay overall but my jaw was constantly aching. This was made worse when Barbara cooked well-done steaks for dinner. We drank a few more pints of bitter and then the lads came and picked us up. The Three Locks We were going to meet some other friends at “The Three Locks” pub in Stoke Hammond. It’s a cool pub situated by three canal locks (hence the name). We used to go kayaking there when I was in the Boy Scouts. The canal was still dirty as ever, the water was still brown. Still, it was a nice cool summer evening. We were all sitting on the grass drinking pints of bitter because the outdoor picnic tables were all taken. Finally, a group left the table and I rushed towards it. Three girls from the other side also rushed to it and we all sat down facing each other. We introduced ourselves and I started chatting them up. Miller must’ve seen the potential in the situation and he came over to join us. The girls were seventeen and were drinking pints of lager. We all started getting drunk and the conversation kept going. At one point Girl #3 (the least attractive of them) said that she knew what was going to happen. She said I was going to hookup with the blonde and Miller was going to hookup with the brunette and she’d be left out. Uncanny, because that’s what ended up happening. A few minutes after her prediction, she said she was leaving. The girls didn’t seem to mind even though she was the driver. My friends said they would drive them home later. We were in good shape. The girls were just laughing and grinning. I could tell my chick was into me so I was well happy. We had another pint and another. While we were drinking and talking it started to get dark out. My friends were sitting on the grass getting drunk talking to a group of girls. My friends were friends with another guy I had never met before. He was a good guy but crazy and unpredictable. I think he was trying to impress the girls he met because the next time I saw him he was half-naked and shouting. When everyone at the pub stared at him, we ran full speed across the lawn and jumped into the canal! Lunacy. That was probably the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. People were laughing but most of us were just stunned. The canal is filthy and pretty dangerous; so let’s just say he’s mad. We decided to leave the pub and keep drinking outside. We all crammed into the car and I told the lads to drive by Don’s and I’d grab some cans of beer. Miller and I grabbed about twenty tall boys and jumped back into the car. In the car was the crazy guy, Joe, Deano, another guy, my girl, Miller, his girl and me. We were packed in like sardines. We went to Pages Park on Billington Road and started drinking. My girl and I were on the roundabout making out. Miller was hanging out with his girl and the crazy guy was pounding beers and keeping the others entertained. My girl and I walked back to Don’s and went up to my room. That was one of my favorite memories of the trip. Later, we walked back to the park to meet up with the others. That’s when Miller and his girl emerged from the darkness. They had been hooking up in the grass. I told Miller that we had gone back to Don’s. We said goodbye to the girls and I told mine that I was flying out the next day. The lads drove them home. The following Christmas I got a card from Don & Barbara saying that the girls came by their house every now and then to see if we were there. Looking back on it all, I’ll probably never see my girl again but I liked her. She was sweet, cute, blonde and innocent. I have fond memories of her. So that was one of the last memories. We had to catch a flight out of Gatwick the next day so we woke up early and went to the train station. After a long ride we got to Gatwick and caught our flight back home. We slept on the flight. I think we were both exhausted. It was a remarkable trip, we had had a lot of fun but now I needed a shot of Demerol and some clean sheets. This page is dedicated to the lads of Bravo Two Zero |
| After smoking thru an empty Coke can we went back to Leicester Square to sit down and mellow out. Somehow we were talking to these Italians...the girls were nice and hot so we started trying to pick them up. This crazy Italian bloke who was about our age rolled a blunt and we sat there zoned out for about an hour. The girls got better looking by the minute.
All of a sudden, this drunk American chick starts shouting at us "The Boo Yaa Tribe are here!". We knew the Boo Yah Tribe from the Judgment Night soundtrack so we started bullshitting with them. It was cool meeting them. We exchanged drug stories and where to hang out etc. We made one of the Italian girls take some pics of us with them. |
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