merrily merrily merrily merrily

When you step into an art nouveau painting, anything can happen. Life size puppets can come alive making you jump and your heart skip a beat as you walk down the steps that lead to Prague Castle. When you are in this painting you look around and everything is so beautiful you could almost cry. The sea of red tiled roofs, the trees with branches filled with pink blossoms that sing in the first true days of spring. In the painting there are no tourists or the multitudes of marionette shops or the cheap miniature astronomical clocks in the windows. Instead there is a glass of wine at the castle vineyards overlooking the city as the sun goes down.

With one foot out of the painting I can see wide blue skies, sunrises over the sea and familiar faces on the other side. But first a dash to Koln, a day trip to visit an alternative art gallery. Who would have thought it would be so interesting. Who would have thought the sun would be shining and the air filled with such a warm summeresque breeze that hundreds would lounge near the River Rhine from morning till night, when the groups of teenagers would then make bonfires on the beach and start to drink their cheap wine. It seems that one minute I am in the art nouveau painting, swanning around in a magic peaceful land, and the next minute I am swanning around naked in a luxurious German spa, sweating it out in the scented spas and bathing in the private lawns, the Rhine just over the hedge and beyond the public park. Bizarre is backpacking.

There was chocolate hail on bread and real hail in the streets and in my hair; snow and sangria; kids who had swapped mundane life to be balls in a pinball machine; goblin rock in basements in Prague and crazy New Orleans musicians who call themselves Sick and work for the freak show; stroop waffles and crepes and pizza and an extra five kilos to join me home; Americans, Argentineans, Germans, Slovenians, control freaks, obnoxious teenagers, spaced out potheads, daydreamers and gypsies. We are tourists and backpackers and visitors and travelers and guests and sometimes we finally feel like locals. We are all a little bit strange and we are all a little bit the same.

I find inspiration in a peeling burgundy wall in Budapest and then in a plastic bag blowing on the tram tracks in Prague and then, of course, in the art galleries that are hidden down side alleys in every city and in the people on the streets singing or the squatters selling their wares with the Alhambra standing grand behind them.

Days on trains with the world passing by. Nights in hostels playing obscure card games, let's make up the rules as we go along. Worm - Shoe – Milky Way – Parade… "Parade??" they ask. "The worm, in the shoe, in the milky way; you, me, the stars, the planets, we're all in one big cosmic parade dude." "Anyone that says anything that hippy has to win the point." Perhaps I really did get lost in the depths of Bohemia!

Three months is filled with friends and solitude and wonder. I want more. It is a lucky thing now, that my wing fell off in Barcelona.

xxx