To Europe and Beyond #1: The Crazy Beginning of the End – Europe

By: Ian Elliott

I would like, if I may, to tell you my story.

It is a good little story and one that you should enjoy.
Every tale has a beginning, and an end, but mine does not.
It starts in the middle, the middle contains a host of endings and beginnings and the end, well, the end is just the beginning of something entirely new. Life means many things to many people but to me, it means just one thing. For there is, and there shall only ever be from now on, the road. That is all that matters.

Consciousness is nothing but a constantly changing flux of pathways and doors. Life is about which paths and which doorways you choose. This is the story of my disassociation from the world I was living in at the moment when I came to realise that my particular reality was, in fact, a bit crap. So I decided that I would make a certain change to things and thus my tale begins.

Along the way we will meet a whole bunch of assorted lunatics, criminals, hippies, fellow travellers and various other colourful characters. We’ll see sights that you would not believe and have experiences, both poignant and ludicrous, that will tantalise, create laughter and should interest even the most jaded individual.

It starts in Calais, on a misty morning and from there, things get more than a little crazy. In Paris we will see the sights and meet up with ‘Technology Chris’ as we search for his missing girlfriend and the ultimate widescreen TV. From there we will head into Switzerland and steal a very nice cuckoo clock before nearly choking on some cheese.

Once we get a bit sick of Swiss chocolate we shall pop into Italy for some top class coffee and spend a little while in the Vatican City with perhaps the last vestige of the hallucinogenic-hippie era, or ‘Wool’ as he is known to his friends. We shall embark then on an espresso fuelled whistle stop tour of Rome before we swallow some LSD whilst searching for any sign of The Pope. In the company of Michelangelo’s finest work we find ourselves talking to God and subsequently apologise for consuming mind altering drugs in one of his favourite houses. (We had a brief chat and then came to a comfortable
agreement)

After this we wade through the litter and debris choked Venice before attempting to find the ‘real’ Mafia in the back streets of Sicily. Then, when we have had our fill of Italian fashion orientated swagger we head to the boot heel of Italy and hop onto the ferry to Greece. At this point we look for an old friend in Athens and eventually find him in a swank Athenian pad. His name is Andreas Dounias and he, taking advantage of the bank account of his multi-millionaire pipeline magnate father, leads us on a high class jaunt around the sights of that mad, mad place.

When we grow sick of drinking coffee with enough sugar in it to cause a hypoglycaemic rush in a stone gargoyle, we decided, on the spur of the moment, to take first class tickets to Istanbul. Now, I am not a man given to fear but you spend some time in the company of loud and vociferous, knife wielding Turkish lunatics in the craziest place I have ever known with a loud and vociferous, knife wielding Greek lunatic (with more money than sense) and you certainly come to appreciate the nature of fear.

Flee with us from a gang of crazed football fans and join us as we decided to take a brief holiday upon the sun-kissed beaches of Rhodes. Then, we get back on the road again and return to Athens where things take a decidedly weird turn.

Then I, accompanied by Andreas who has no wish to return home to a father who is desperately keen to find out just how and why his son and his odd English friend have managed to spend well over ï¿½15,000 in only seven days, journey into Eastern Europe.
Here we spend a moment or two looking for, as Andreas puts it, “spiritual enlightenment and girls so beautiful they make your balls weep” before Andreas mysteriously disappears during the night, leaving only US$10,000 worth of travellers cheques and a note saying ‘goodbye’.

This is not what you would call a poor transaction.

True, I had lost a very humourous friend (albeit one that would either have led me to insanity or an untimely death) but on the other hand I had gained enough money to make me appear as rich as the Sultan of Brunei, amidst the poverty of rural Romania. We shall then spend a little while in the company of real-life gypsies before we come face to face with an even more realistic looking wolf.

After we change our underwear we spend some time in awe of the architecture of Prague before we stupidly fall in love with a Czech girl. Eventually, in floods of tears, we leave her behind and find more tears and woe as we sneak, under the cover of darkness, into the site of a former concentration camp. Alone in the dark with our thoughts and a weeping heart we feel the pain and horror of the atrocities of WWII before we head into Russia in search of cheap Vodka.

Then we meet up with another peculiar acquaintance in the shape of ‘French Greg’, a man as beautiful as a painting and twelve times nuttier than a mountain of squirrel shit. Here, in the Austrian Tyrol, we find my good self attempting to prove that uncoordinated stick-insects can actually perform complex snowboarding stunts before I determinedly knock myself senseless and promptly wake up naked in bed with Greg.

After deciding that running like fuck was preferable to asking questions that we may not like the answers to we head for Cologne and meet up with Johannes Zieger (a further friend who suffers the same problem of a lot of my friends; clinical insanity). Here, we drink enough beer to actually believe that stealing horses and riding naked through the Black Forest is a really good idea before we head into Belgium.

From here we move into Holland and have absolutely nothing at all to do with the Dutch cannabis coffee shop culture (honestly) before we head up into the snowy wastes of Scandinavia. Here we build snowmen and get hypothermia whilst looking for mythical beasts before we drive back to Paris for a last knees-up with a group of my friends.

Then we find our tales and our travels coming to an end.

So please join me.
We’ll have some fun.
I assure you.

Inquiries or feedback, contact: ianjameselliott@hotmail.com