Marsaille to Budapest Pt. 1

(the following posts will be directly from my daily journal. In the fast paced tracks of my own, often disorganized mind, the order of a typical book form, where form meets function and beginning middle and end colide into a safe linear order, I often find that task to be herculean in its demand on me. So as we move closer to the near east, I have kept track of my movements and my thoughts in this journal. To give you a basic outline I followed this line of cities from point A to Point B.

Marsaille to Nice
Nice to Ventimiglia
Ventimiglia to Genova
Genova to Milan
Milan to Verona
Verona to Vienna
Vienna to Munich
Munich to Budapest

this portion will cover the first leg of the trip to Milan (bolded). It is good to note that this trip was a consecutive movement from one city to the next. I had some layovers, and some troubles, but mostly I was on the steel lines that cross Europe. I hope that there won't be too much confusion, I tried to illuminate everything that I saw with the words I know. But unfortunately, I can't write smell, and I can't write as well I wish I could. I will paint the scenes I have seen, and I will cook what I have learned, but to be one with a journey means remembering more and writing less. Some of these stories I won't reveal and they will remain relics for my children to theirs someday. And so I give you leg 1 of a 41 hour journey to spend 24 with the woman I love. Some will be told, some will not, some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, but its what I saw, what I said, and what I lived. I will continue this form as it best describes what I see, and since I have already written it, it saves me the agrivation of trying to write the same feelings I felt after I have felt endless others. Enjoy.)


I had arrived in Marsaille after my experience in Lyon with the big B (Paul Bocuse) I found a bed and wonderful company, with Andre Benattar, the cousin of friends. I had spent only one day in Marsaille and felt somewhat snubbed for lack of a better word at the fact that the beauty and I woke up early after a nice evening with Andre and his friends Pierre and Sandrine. I had reviewed the hours for the train the night before and was well prepared to depart from the station Gare St Jean at 9:30 but when I finally arrived at the station there was no train. There are two major types of trains here in France as there are in the states, the TGV which would be something like the Accela and the TER which pulls a close second to the Metro North. So because Marsaille is a big port and hub in the south of France, the station houses both TER and TGV. I had checked the schedule but had failed to check the days for the departures and whether or not the same trains that depart on Fridays depart on Saturday. And so I had trouble figuring out what the best plan of action was. So I check the board and found that there was a TGV departing at 11 and though there was an additional 10 euro fee for the seat sans reservation, I decided that it was worth the 10 euros to get on board and make the trip to Nice sooner rather then later. I had originally found that all the first class seats taken, but luckily I found one and was comfortable in the quiet car and typing in no time.



But the train curves around the winding tracks carved directly through the soft limestone. Beyond the windows that only partially reflect the quiet passengers inside lies the Mediterranean sea. Its salinity and azure tone have long drawn the bronze skinned Europeans for sex and sun. The listen to the delicate sound of the water kiss the shore. Its lips are soft and supple as are those of the many supple bodies which frolic and float in it, and the kisses are more passionate then those of the burly and boistrous atlantic. The click of the tracks is almost inaudible from the cabin of the train. As the charger banks and rolls into each turn at high speed like a jet fighter, i can see out the window the many tile covered roofs of Mediterranean decor. At this first approach, I can see that the beauty of this part of the world is not that there is an individual culture but a melange of associated towns that share the same culture. Theirs is of the sea and nothing more. Marsaille has cliffs of bramble and limestone that shed the sea side towns from the heavy rains approaching from Lyon and the Alps. The tan faces of north africans speckle the sea shore and it becomes obvious that Africa is near. The worn faces of old fishermen impress upon me just how far away from home I am. I see their faces and want to paint them, immortalize them in some kind of golden frame in which each wrinkle of their dark faces can be analyzed and cherished for its history and nuances that reveal the age of a time now lost to capitalism and desires of the flesh. Passing vineyards long since passed their last harvest, rest and lie in wait for the next chance to grow and make the journey from vine to bottle. Red Poppy speckles the overgrown grass alongside the tracks like shining drops of blood on a canvas. Their color pure and filled with fresh passion. Their only crime is being to beautiful, they will be picked and discarded, but the great irony of nature will no doubt reveal a new flock of these fluttering pedals next summer. In other places, their color paints the patches of green with long and languid brush strokes. I can look out the window of this train and imagine that I am not here. That I am just going somewhere I know, to New Jersey to see Melinda, or to New Haven to visit with Nick. But no one would be home if I were to arrive. They are all gone, and then I remember that I have never seen anything before. I have never tasted life until now, and the satisfaction of this adventure reveals itself again. And yet, still yet, I have not found the thing that eludes me, freedom. I can smell it and listen to it whisper to me from dark corners of cobblestone streets. I chase the sound around every corner and hope to find it uncovered and waiting. But the reality is that I am free, my chase obliges my freedom. It is my mind that remains captive. I will attempt to find the key, and life, which has already begun to accelerate, will reveal the great truth to me very soon, and when it does I believe that I will be ready to receive the message. This crusade for truth in food will change the world for me, and hopefully in turn I may be able to shape the clay when I have the opportunity. I must begin however, with my own form, my own mental state of being. For without my confidence and a sense of altruistic sentimentality to surround my journey, the task will be difficult and such important descions I would otherwise instinctualy react to, would be besmirched unknowingly and could potentially deter me from what I believe to be a great opportunity. I speak only in generalities at this point, because the opportunity has not yet revealed itself. But I imagine then when my mind finds its freedom, then too will my momentum be great enough to break down the barriers that have held me captive. I have been learning through the windows of my mind. My eyes only partially open to the experiences because of my own familial dementia. The blinds were down but open to let in the light.



The traveler sees the world before him and jumps into the unknown fully. I think that french enabled me to a certain extent. Because of my ability to describe the feelings in my head, albeit, infantile and crude, I felt that I had a place in France, but now for the first time, I am alone without a language to communicate and its a fierce feeling. The feeling is so different now, I am in another country, the coast I leave behind and its suntanned flesh for the prada covered bodies of Milan.

Passing the mountain villages on the way to Milan, I see the greenhouses stacked upon one another, built to take full advantage of the terroir and precious sunlight.
loano really pretty. Half asleep and speeding pass rice and wheat fields open to the suns last winks of light for the day. The poppy’s still speckle the landscape and somewhere france is still with me. But I arrived in Milan late, and thus felt the wrath of full italian brutality. Its not that I don’t appreciate the work of state workers, but seriously, I was standing at the window speaking to the woman at the ticket desk. With a semi-pathetic tone in my voice (might explain her response) she never made eye contact with me and proceeded to flick the switch or release the lever that slowly closed the blind in the window. It was like the curtain at a peep show, sorry no hard feelings but the day is over and its time to go. So standing a little flabbergasted, having already waited in an entirely different line for 20 minutes I was not sure what to do. I did a little head bang on the ticket window, and decided it was time to move on. So I found the man who had shooed me away only moments earlier at the former window, and said, “Sir, the window is closed, I need to get to Vienna.” To which he replied in what must have been the first english phrase he was taught, “Vienna close(d), no ticket, go somewhere else.” A little shocked I tried logic, after all it was an Italian age of Enlightenment, “Where is the closest station to Vienna in Italy, Tell me how to get there, anywhere closer to the Austrian boarder is fine. Tell me anything that gets me out of this station, por favore.” To which he looked at me over his half moon glasses perched on the tip of his sun stained nose, “Line 22 upstairs, they help you.” The lesson here, when an Italian is screaming at you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being yelled at. The language is latin, it has machismo, and more then that, and this is entirely personal, I don’t understand the language. And with that experience, I found the first moment of insight into the world that is Europe. The French, though arrogant have a method. Maybe they learned it from the Germans, but I have taken over 20 trains in the past month, and each one left either precisely on time, of a minute early. My train to Milan arrived 20 minutes late and I missed the last high-speed sleeper out of Milan. This is an adventure and tonight, I am sure will prove interesting. I am sitting on a regional train heading to Verona where I will pick up another train to Vienna. I don’t really know when I will arrive in Austria, but I can be sure that I will be tired and worn out. But now sitting in a comfortable chair next to a window open half way blazing through the hot italian night towards a city I have never visited. The tension is unbelievable. A blast of air screams through the car as the high speed train on the next track runs its fingers across the window. It momentum pushing the air ahead of it to thrust the windows back against the interior of their guides. The power is palpable the excitement builds. LIke standing on the top of a mountain in the dark of a moonless night, the breeze hits you from the unseeable and you can’t help but wonder if the next gust will toss you off your feet, though you are sure you are safe. Ibrahim Ferrer chanting spanish in my ears, Marieta, a woman he begs to for love, and the latin beat pulses through the nerves and pushes me further on down these Milano tracks to the city I don’t know.