Date: Tuesday, 24 August 2004 10:37:15 +1:00 (BST)
Subject: Greetings from Vilnius
Dear Norman,
I’m using my Yahoo UK address since the Yahoo Japan site too often has the Japanese language encoding trouble overseas. I’ve finally reached my favourite destination, the Baltics, namely Vilnius, Lithuania. I’m a bit tired of (and from) rather oily Central European food and looking forward to the “Tobira” (The Door) Japanese restaurant here in the middle of the Old Town, which I visited twice already in the past twelve months. As for the Liechtenstein cuisine, I’m not in the position to answer your question, for all I ate there was sushi and a Japanese inspired fish soup in the arty cafe-bar occupying the sunny side of some boring comtemporary art museum (or “contemptible” even, as I hate that sort of “art”).
After sending a message to you from Vaduz Central Post Office (’Twas a rip-off place, for they charged me 48 Swiss francs for using their one and only customer PC for mere two hours!), I took a slow train to Feldkirch again and then the Intercity to Innsbruck to catch 2300hrs night train from München (Munich) to Roma (Rome) and Napoli (Naples). But the “Verspätung” of that particular train was repeatedly announced far into the night due to some unspecified trouble “auf Deutschgebiet” (Funny expression, though. It should be “im deutschen Gebiet”, à mon avis). And the train finally came to Innsbruck at 4.00am, with no fewer than 5 hours’ delay! I managed to get some sleep in the clean, non-smoking (though rather claustrophobic) Warteraum (waiting room), so I consider myself relatively lucky. By the time I reached Rome, it was already nearly late afternoon. Anyhow I’ll tell you my Italian travel account some time later.
I had quite an experience yesterday afternoon, for I didn’t manage to comprehend the Polish announcement when the train I took at Kraków (Cracow) was approaching Warsaw after almost three hours’ ride. The 1st Class compartment I was in (thanks to the rail pass, of course) was occupied by four French, one Polish and me. The Pole spoke busily on the mobile phone in the corridor so that it became a Francophone compartment en effet. The French were actually divided into two. One lone male traveller like me and a husband and wife with their adopted late teenage daughter of the Vietnamese or Cambodian origin, or so I presumed. Curiously father and daughter were reading different paperback novels by Amélie Notomb the Belgian. When the train reached Warszawa Gdanska station in the suburb, there was an announcement in Polish. All I could hear was Warszawa Centralna (Warsaw Central), which was the station the French and I were heading for. The Pole on the mobile got off there with a “French leave”.
The train started again but stopped in the middle of nowhere, far from the city centre, and we discovered that there was no one but us! Even the conductor was nowhere in sight. We finally understood to our horror that the Polish announcement had urged all passengers to change trains at Warszawa Gdanska to get to Centralna. As our one and only 1st Class carriage was in the far back of the train and the door to the front was locked, we had no means to contact the driver. Our quick decision was to open the door and get out of the train to walk the suburban bush beside the rail tracks to reach some civilisation. I was totally at a loss for words but managed to utter in desperation, “C’est la vie polonaise.” The Frenchwoman repeatedly said, “C’est pas gentil,” blaming the railway officials and Polish passengers.
That was only the first part, mind you. Just after the lone French traveller, the Frenchman and his Indochinese daughter got off, the train suddenly started without any warning, with the door shut again. It reminded me of my favourite war movie, The Great Escape, though our “enemy” this time wasn’t the Nazis but PKP, or the Polish National Rail. After a few minutes the train stopped again. All alone the late middle-aged Frenchwoman and I were trapped inside. She was almost in tears, as you could imagine. With my English-educated sang froid, I discussed the possible solutions to the problem with her in French as the lady spoke French only. I asked if she had a “portable” (mobile), to which she replied that she left it home in France. Then I asked her if her husband had one then. At this stage I learned it wasn’t her husband but her son and that the girl sitting next to him was his Japanese wife educated at some international school. Unfortunately her son and his wife also left their mobiles at home in France.
As the train didn’t seem to start again, we decided to get off by depending on the luck that the door might open with a touch of the button. Phew! It worked. Then we walked in the bush beside the rail tracks. The first French group (though one was a young Japanese woman) was nowhere in sight. The train must have proceeded quite a bit. Out came a small suburban town without any passenger rail connection. The French lady had a great problem: she had no idea about the name of the hotel her son, daughter-in-law and herself were going to put up at. All she remembered was that her son booked a room on the phone the day before and that it must be located near some park next to the street called Freta. We found just one taxi in the street and asked the driver if there was a hotel he knew in that particular area. He spoke no English but managed some German. So I had to act as an interpreter from French into German and v.v. (though broken, I must admit). The lady was naturally quite carried away, and it was hard for me to comprehend all of her talk in the first place. We asked the driver to stop at Ulica Freta (Fret Street) and started to look for the hotel on foot.
It dawned on her that she might be able to ask her travel agency in the Old Town Square just nearby. They would certainly speak English there and I’d be French-English interpreter this time. We reached there with ease, and thank goodness, the young brunette woman there spoke fluent French! And that even some simple Japanese words like “higashi” (east). I was happily discharged from the tortuous linguistic mission. Still the Frenchwoman’s clue was so little and so vague that even the polyglot agent couldn’t give a concrete solution. Then the moment the lady opened her bag, I noticed some white paperback guidebook inside. I insisted that she should consult the book, which turned out to be a bonanza since she had erroneously believed that her son carried it around in his bag.
There she found herself the name of the hotel: Hotel Mazowiecki on Ulica Mazowiecka, because her son had marked it with a pen. That was within the walking distance from the Old Town Square we were in, but she decided to take a taxi owing to the fatigue. We said good-bye there, and I walked to the modern city centre alone.
I’ll stop my travel accounts here. I’ll fly home from Helsinki on Monday next and reach Japan the next morning. Then I’ll stay only one night with my parents in Saitama and head for my daunting task of taking 31 late teenage Japanese girls from Narita airport to Showa Boston Institute for Language and Culture via New York JFK.
As ever,
Toshiaki
Date: Monday, 6 September 2004
Subject: Re: Greetings from Vilnius
Dear Toshiaki
This is only the briefest of replies to your epic message. I have just taken a deep breath and plunged into my final week in Bombay, which promises a frantic round of social activities. All my friends are saying “We must see you before you go” even though I murmur protestingly that I shall be back again in a mere seven weeks....
Your own itinerary is quite dizzying but it is good to know you finally reached the Shangri La or Valhalla of the Baltic states and I am sure you will have a good time there and in Finland. The region seems almost to have become your second home. Actually as far as my memories go there is something slightly unreal about them: I recall especially the old quarter of Tallinn, which struck me as like something that might have been imagined by the Brothers Grimm.
I leave here on Saturday and no doubt my next message will be from Oakham. My sojourn there will be rather brief as I am going to the USA at the beginning of October. When do you return to Japan and Duty?
Ever yours,
Norman