Itchy Feet Dreaming

By Alex Edwards

Come join my nomadic lifestyle based on freedom - not work.

I will take you around the world on a spiritual, geographical, linguistic and cultural journey down a road less travelled that includes amongst others: becoming multilingual, losing my virginity in Bhutan, building a house in Australian bush, hanging out in a Zen monastery in Japan, falling in love while learning Italian and, in the process, realizing all my childhood dreams.

Itchy Feet Dreaming is my lifestyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Edwards
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386291022

Alex Edwards

Born second of four boys in 1954 from English speaking parents in a small French town in central Quebec. Unhappy with formal education and dissatisfied with mainstream society's expectations for his future, he opted for an alternative lifestyle that took him around the world in a quest to realize his childhood dreams and freedom. He has a published article in The Owner Builder magazine. His design and building of his home was featured three times on various television programmes and twice in magazines. He was engaged in the Egyptian film industry where he performed in minor roles as an actor and extra.

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Itchy Feet Dreaming

Table of Contents

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Dedication

Itchy Feet Dreaming

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About the Author

To Ginette and Steve for their invaluable assistance without whom this book would not come to fruition.

INTRODUCTION

1954 - 1973

The Cosmic Lottery

Rite of Passage

Nine to Five Amongst the Inuit

1973 - 1974

Highs & Lows of the Road

1974 – 1976

Down Under

The Pacific

Back to Oz

Land of the Long White Cloud

Exploring Southern Australia

The Alice & Central Australia

1976 - 1977

Return to Asia

Bangkok and the Far East

こんにちは Konichiwa!

Am I Still a Canadian?

1978 - 1981

Coming Home to Oz

Building a House

1981 - 1988

Keep on Dreaming: Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish

Learning Italian

Tea with Edith

Learning German

Suisse Romande

Venezia, Glass Blowing in Murano

Learning to teach English in Hastings

The Middle East 1984

Greenpeace Leatherback Turtle Project 1986

Vamos para a América do Sul!

El Camino de Santiago 1988

The Trans-Siberian Railway

極東 The Far East

1989 - 1993

Sedentary life in Australia

More Dreaming: Down the Murray 1992

Extend the House or Go to Japan? That is the Question

1993 - 1998

日本Japan

Keiji

ごみの日 Gomi no hi

Bringing the Spirit of Japan to OZ 1996

1999 - 2001

العربية اللغة تعلم  Learning Arabic

Syria

Road to Yemen 2000

Yemen

Ethiopia

Al Qahira - Cairo

2001 - 2007

Australia – 2001

Broome

The Ghan

Longitude 131 atUluru (Ayers Rock) – 2005

Off to Africa

Refreshing Swaziland and Mozambique

Europe on the way to Talking Trees

2008 - 2014

Death Strikes

Edith’s Passing

Iceland

Bolzano Apartment 2014

Canary Islands 2014

Morocco

2014

Official Retirement

Travel Fatigue

2015

Selling my House

Keiji's Illness

Feet Keep Itching

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

I like to believe that we start out in life with a set of cards the cosmos has dealt us. We try to make the best of what we’ve been given. For most of us life is something we make up as we go along, often simply adapting to the parameters set up by the society around us. For many, life choices are determined by others. Few of us have strong, predetermined ideas and visions of how we want our future to unfold and even less are able to craft it to match.

Some are rebels who refuse to conform and set out to do it their own way. This requires following the road less travelled with a much greater danger of falling through the cracks. However, with success comes the sweetest of satisfaction that will keep you buoyant all through life. This way of living certainly has no blueprint to follow. However, the only requirement is to have dreams and general goals you really believe in, the blank spaces between them will fill themselves in, facilitating the opening of doors to realise one’s aspirations.

This book is an example of one of those lives guided by dreams and rebellion amongst the billions of lives lived at a particular time in history. In this case, a product of the 1950s onwards, with its tangle of twists and turns of events, ideas and paths that took me through 60 some years of living. Come, join me in the unfolding of a nomadic lifestyle that will take you around the world while I was reshaping my whole being in the process, learning Portuguese in Switzerland, losing my virginity in Bhutan, building a house in Australia, hanging out in a Zen monastery in Japan and falling in love learning Italian. Life is a journey let’s go.

Recently, I came across a saying by Mark Twain that encapsulates everything I believed and put into practice:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

1954 - 1973

The Cosmic Lottery

ONCE UPON A TIME IN the great cosmic lottery, my number came up. It was on a partly cloudy day of 17oC, precisely April 21, 1954, around midday in the small town of Victoriaville in the St Lawrence valley in Quebec, Canada.

For millennia these fertile, well-watered plains at the base of the Appalachian Mountains, then covered in hardwood boreal forest, was home to the Abenaki Amerindians. Two hundred years earlier, French-speaking, white settlers migrated to this area, displacing the local populous and confining them to reservations. Eventually, a prosperous town ensued with everyone engaged in the production of maple syrup, dairy, clothing, furniture, hockey sticks or coffins. The region suffers a typical continental climate of short, hot muggy summers and make-you-curl-up-and-die endless bitterly cold winters.

Until the late 60s, God and his church ruled every institution and its agents busied themselves, keeping people ignorant, women pregnant and instilling fear of hell in every soul. Sunday’s activities other than going to mass, visiting relatives or milking cows were very much frowned upon. Every night at 7 p.m. the whole province stopped for a 30-minute rosary prayer broadcasted on provincial radio. Road junctions were manned by crucifix shrines or statues of Mary for the protection of travellers. The approach to any town was beaconed by a church steeple on the horizon; actually, they still are. A quick glance at the name of places on a map of Quebec revealed the majority of the towns are named after saints. It was literally impossible to escape God and religion.

Beverly, my mother, a first generation Canadian and proud of her Scottish, Irish Celtic roots, came from a motherless household from the age of seven. She lived in a dirt floor basement apartment in Regina on Canada’s featureless prairies with an alcoholic father and eventually an unpleasant stepmother who wished Bev would just disappear. By the age of 13, during the war years, the trio ended up in Montreal and eventually in the small town of Victoriaville looking for work. This move sealed her lot for the rest of her life.

As for Melvin, my father, well it’s a bit of a mystery. No, nothing obscure and noir but an adopted child without any documented, ethnic history other than a Caucasian appearance. His sense of assumed rejection from his natural mother at birth was to have a strong grip on his personality regardless of the love and care he received from his Anglophone adoptive family in Victoriaville.

For Bev, the wish for a swift escape from the unpleasant stepmother at 19, hers and Melvin’s good looks, lack of reverence for religion and English as their mother tongue were the strings required to tie the knot into a we-made-the-wrong-choice marriage for 50 years. They both carried a lot of untidy baggage that never got sorted out but they both had the honesty to agree that they really were not made for such an institution. However, four boys came out of this union, I being number two. Both my parents grew up in one-child families resulting in an inadequate understanding of family dynamics and early care of children. Our grandparents died relatively young, which made for a family unit with no extended connections. This scenario put our family very much at odds in a French Canadian social environment. Indeed, the French families in the 60s still counted seven or eight children with oodles of cousins, uncles and aunts all living a stone’s throw from each other.

Mother was as gentle as a lamb and did her best to smooth over any rough patches but an underlying discontentment and tension permeated our family institution. This left an indelible imprint on me; I was determined never to reproduce such a scenario. Little did I know that this was going to have a major impact on the shaping of my future life. As far as I can remember, I never saw my future in a partnership. In spite of the tensions between my parents, my older brother and I remember our childhood as being pleasant enough. Our mother always went to great lengths to make all cultural events such as birthdays, Easter, Christmas and summer holidays as picture perfect as possible. Dad, as present as he was in being the perfect provider, was totally absent emotionally. We were told he cared but was incapable of showing it.

When I was five, we moved to a new house on a two-acre field outside of town surrounded by dairy farms. My father, a very handy man, built our three bedroom house during the evenings and on weekends. He did it with much cursing, swearing and bouts of anger; pretty much a trademark of his existential frustration. He only seemed to be particularly happy when he was working in his garden which was an enviable patch; this is surely where I got my love for plants and dirt. Having a large parcel of land allowed us to have a menagerie of dogs, chickens, rabbits and various home animals like guinea pigs, a budgie and goldfish at various times. A creek at the back of the property provided me and my brothers with many happy years of bridge building, cubby house building and landscaping enjoyment. Owning a bike, albeit my older brother Steve’s hand-me-down, was also a great source of happiness and freedom.

During our teenage years, my brother and I were inducted into the work ethics through my father’s contacts. He worked as a millwright/sewing machine cum general handyman in a man’s clothing factory. During the two-week factory summer holidays, we would do cleaning jobs which could only be undertaken when production was at a standstill. This gave us good pocket money but more so, made us aware that we should aim for something more rewarding for our futures. These were summer activities.

Winter

MON PAYS CE N’EST PAS un pays, c’est l’hiver. My country is not a country, it’s winter. These are the lyrics to one of Quebec’s iconic songs by Gilles Vigneault. This song epitomises the never-ending months of cold, dark existence.

Regardless of how I look at it, winter was nothing more than a total misery to me. You can only stay indoors so long; so eventually you attempt to step outside. As kids, it always took hours to get ready for a playtime foray into the outer world. I remember lumbering into long johns, heavy wool over pants held up with safety pins that ended up jabbing you in the stomach as you bent down, jackets, mittens, wool hats and boots. They were the normal requirements to survive in this alien environment. No sooner would you step out there, you needed to pee and the ordeal would start in reverse.

Digging tunnels and rooms into enormous snow banks seemed to be our favourite activity. Clearly, the primeval instinct of survival by making shelters in such a hostile environment was driving our play. Tobogganing, skiing and such downhill pursuits were not attractive or really possible due to the lack of suitable terrain nearby. We had a few attempts at skating on a homemade rink but not much enjoyment ensued from that either. It was just so damn cold!

I remember my dad, who was a mad sportsman, bringing me skating on a Saturday morning at the local indoor rink. Maybe he was hoping to direct me towards figure skating seeing as hockey was never going to be an option. It had not been a particularly pleasurable activity and to make matters worse, to our dismay, when we came out from skating someone had stolen my newish shoes. That was the end of that.

The only real exciting events in winter had to do with snow. The first snowfall of the season often occurred when we were in class. A student would notice it and cry out, "Il neige", it’s snowing. Spontaneously, everyone would stand up, run to the classroom windows and marvel. The teachers just had to give in to such childlike excitement. Another good memory during mild weather was experiencing windless, heavy snowfall where all sounds were muffled and the world became fairytale-like, but the best had to be a blizzard. Total whiteout, like it or not the world had to stop. Normal everyday activities were cancelled. In particular, school, power would go off, tragic events would be reported on the news. The aftermath being a changed landscape of newly formed snow banks and depths of snow that had to be explored. In spite of these rare moments, winter was without a doubt a major factor that influenced my adult lifestyle choice.

As a youngster, I became aware of adults’ discussions with exclamations of chanceux",lucky you, directed to people who spent the winters in Les pays chauds, the hot countries. From the east coast, the majority of snowbirds, as they were known, went to Florida for half the year where whole colonies of voluntary, temporary Diaspora congregated. Some of the more adventurous snowbirds even went to Mexico. Now that was exotic and not for the faint-hearted. Around the age of ten, I clearly recall telling a classmate of mine that I was going to live in a hot country when I grew up. I probably remember the incident more so, due to her response which was: You can’t do that. Obviously, to her, that was a lifestyle reserved for the lucky ones, which we clearly were not it seemed.

I had little contact with the local neighbourhood kids as they were all living on farms and were allowed very little play time. As a young teenager, I was having less and less in common with my older brother, a rather introverted geek, who enjoyed Meccano blocks, ham radio, photography and electronics. I, on the other hand, was attracted to frivolous pastimes such as listening to music, watching soap operas, playing dress up and pretend afternoon tea with the girl next door, one of the few who did not live on a farm.

When puberty rolled around, I suppose a country environment was probably an advantage as the farm boys had had more exposure to the birds and the bees in an era where urban kids were possibly more naive. The barn with its hayloft was always a safe and comfortable place to play and experiment between boys. Strange that I always associate the smell of cow manure with sex.

We had a neighbour who was a postie, a bit of a wild card I was told later. In those days, postmen wore navy blue uniforms, peaked caps, boots and a large carry bag across the shoulder. He was tall, lean and wore his uniform with nonchalance. Of course, he smoked and drove a Studebaker. At times, I would get a lift back from school with him. He never showed any particular interest in me but looking back as an adult, I had a young teenage boy crush on him. Even more astounding to me, in later years, I realised that my ideal sexual fantasy and type is a tall, lean man in uniform. Never underestimate the influences from your childhood.

School

AGE FIVE TO SIX, I spent alone with my mother watching matinee movies on TV. I remember it as being quite a blissful period until the September of my sixth year when a school regime was thrust upon me. The local school house was a one teacher institution. An agricultural bridge over the creek behind our house provided a pleasant half kilometre shortcut through the fields to school. Hence all the local kids of our area would walk through our place to access the trail; big kids keeping an eye on us younger ones.

My first day of school was memorable. I was not particularly excited; unsure is probably an adequate description of my emotional state. I was made to sit next to my older brother. All went well till the midday bell rang. I thought the day was over, so I got up and went to the cupboard to retrieve my bag. The teacher kindly came over to inform me that it was not time to go home yet. Somehow, this large breasted woman towering over me freaked me out. As usual, the next morning all the kids had congregated behind our place to start the walk across the field and I decided I did not want to go. My dad, in his usual subtle fashion, decided to settle the situation with a kick in the pants. I suppose it solved the problem as I cannot remember ever missing a day of school regardless of my state of mind, but love of school I never had.

School as an institution and my dislike of it was going to have a decisive influence on my adult lifestyle choice. A sense of being trapped in a seemingly inescapable routine dashed all possible existential joy out of me. When my schoolmates were excited about their future lifestyle choices of being a truck driver, the world’s best lover or a lawyer, I just wanted to be free. I cannot recall if I actually voiced it in such terms, but certainly, that was the inner sentiment. The routine was bad enough but all the rituals and ordeals of simply being a kid in that period only served to amplify the trauma. Having to master the finer point of the French grammar, to singing an English Christmas song in front of the class every festive season (English being a complete novelty to everyone around) to study catechism for hours every day and constantly made to placate the gods with prayers before class, after recess and so on, was horrible for me.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my transition from boy to man with all the tribulations that it entails, took place in an all boys high school of 900 pupils. Now that was a scary prospect. During those years, the search for a male mentor or role model had sadly been a fruitless endeavour. There wasn’t one I would have even vaguely wanted to emulate. All the males around me seemed so unhappy and miserable with their lot. Then again, my mother and her female friends were soft, kind and much happier; at least they seemed to manage life better. I was not aware that subconsciously I was being affected by them.

It came as a shocking realisation at school one day when a couple of guys yelled out poofter to me. I recoiled inside. As my hero Kermit says: It’s not easy being green. Being gay was to be my green I had not consciously realised being gay was negative as the most cherished friends of my family were a gay couple, a lesbian couple as well as a prostitute. They were people who lived in the city, an hour away and who dropped in on us two or three times a year and turned the day into a riot. They had been part of our family since the 50s; clearly, there was no negative stereotyping from home. Ignorant of their diversity, I truly enjoyed these people’s company. They were just so different from all of the others who frequented our home.

Why didn’t my body tell me to act and move the way the other boys did? Rough and tumble play, mock punch-ups, desire to kick a ball around at any opportunity, sneaking off to the girls’ school down the street at lunchtime, stand with one’s legs unnaturally wide apart, get all the smoking mannerisms down pat, brag about getting drunk, rearrange one’s genital too frequently, swear too much, desperately await the day one could drive legally and even dare dabble in Marijuana. None of these activities or mannerisms solicited the least interest in me. I guess adults would have just put it down to being a slow starter or mommy’s boy at worst.

The fact that I had no close allies in the same predicament, plus my lack of confidence and inner security made me severely doubt myself. A particularly painful event was a school dance. One of the local girls had her eye on me and asked me to accompany her. To me, she was still just a friend like all girls were before puberty kicked in. I could not really understand why she saw me differently all of a sudden. I knew none of the social formalities of dance parties and being with a girl; paying for her entry, getting her drinks, make her feel desired, try to get intimate were all moves that were supposed to make me excited and give me status in the eyes of other guys I guess. It just did not work. That was the first and last dance I ever went to. I did not think I was gay, just different.

My older brother was much in the same boat as me but his inadequacies were due to shyness. I guess we were just a different kind of family. After all, we used English at home, did not follow any religious practice and had no extended family; now that made us different. The only request my parents made, was for us to finish high school. Twelve years of this stuff! As painful as the idea was, it did seem logical. Had I been a bright student, I guess the ordeal would not have been half as bad, but from year one I always made it to the next grade by the seat of my pants due to the kindness of the teachers. Either they felt sorry for me or they just did not want to be stuck with me for another year.

I wanted out of this system as soon as possible, so at the age of 17, I had to decide, either go to University or do vocational training with a choice between trades or commerce. Trades were not attractive to me, so the only alternative was commerce. In the two year program, it was either secretarial studies or sales. The later had not the least appeal, so all that was left was secretarial. Somehow, general office work, typing, filing, accounting satisfied me at this stage. This choice, I knew, would ostracise me from the male fraternity as all the guys chose sales; regardless, I was going to do what I wanted. Of course, I was the only male in a class of 15 girls. Oddly, this choice had the reverse effect; the guys envied me no end being surrounded by all these girls.

Rite of Passage

SOME SORT OF RITE OF passage for young Canadians, at least in the decades of my youth, was to cross the country from coast to coast, preferably hitchhiking. My older brother had done it the summer before and it seemed it was now my turn. Actually, I sort of cheated as a neighbour of ours was driving across to Vancouver and needed an interpreter due to her lack of English proficiency. So, I was to get a ride across the country; I had the whole winter to plan my summer trip. Once I had exhausted studying the Canadian route, my eyes strayed south on the west coast. California was not that far from Vancouver, I thought. During those years, it was the hot destination for hippiedom and counterculture which was appealing to me.

Disney dominated my childhood through TV and comic strips. Disneyland was in Los Angeles. Wow! We had friends in San Diego whom I could stay with and then there was Mexico, right there. Before I knew it, I had planned to go to Mexico City. That prompted me to learn Spanish. Using a cheap teach yourself book, I soon realised I really enjoyed learning the language and it came easily. This was an unimaginable adventure for an 18-year-old boy. Would I be able to pull it off? It would expose me to worlds I could not have imagined.

The first view of an ocean, the Pacific, hospitality in a Christian commune, sleeping in a homeless shelter in San Francisco, riding across the Golden Gate Bridge in the back of a pick-up truck, visiting Disneyland, seeing my first orange tree in fruit in a backyard, speaking a foreign language for real, seeing a desert with cacti, walking in Aztec civilisation, taking to the air in a plane for the first time, all this was like living a dream! Till then any world other than mine had been lived vicariously through TV or books. This had been a six-week adventure that no one could believe on my return. It was just unimaginable in my social milieu where everyone was so desperate to fit in and abide by the status quo. Now I knew the world out there was real and I wanted it, but that had been a holiday, an adventure not real life.

This taste of adventure and above all, the sense of physical freedom rattled my whole being making settling back into the last year of school routine excruciating. I was excited at the prospect of my school life coming to an end but I knew what awaited me afterwards was to be more daunting than anything I had lived till now. I admired the counterculture; people who dared to be different. Indeed, I remember the daughter of a friend of the family who got pregnant out of wedlock in 1967 and decided to keep her baby rather than give it up for adoption. Even more, she walked head high pushing her pram through town. I also remember Greenpeace activists who dared to spray green paint on baby seals in Newfoundland to render their pelts valueless and stop their slaughter, but I wasn’t one of them. My world was to be a nine to five for the next forty years; I saw my father come home from work drained and sad every night. Career, mortgage, family, social position was what society expected. A career meant: specialising in one single thing and do it till the end, spending twenty or thirty years paying off a mortgage for a shelter with endless upkeep and having a family. From day one I could never remember seeing my future in a partnership, let alone a family. Maybe I suffered the influence of a negative imprint from our somewhat dysfunctional family; mind you both my brothers went on to create loving families. Maybe I was not cut out for family life, just one of those people who would have ended up in a monastery which, till the late 20th century, was really the only place for us misfits. Have a social position; no way was I going to put on a facade and behave in a way to have standing in a society I did not particularly believe in.

Although the lure of money was tantalising, it came at such a high cost to me; I saw it as selling my existence. Sure money gave you freedom but it took so much away. Everyone around me was doing it and it was so uninspiring. I had no desire to reproduce these patterns but what in the world was I to do for the next 60 years?

Quebec had always been a society with high unemployment, so the hope of finding a job was an ever-present topic of conversation. Being bilingual was a huge asset over the majority of the population. Therefore, my prospects for employment were good. During high school, I worked weekends in a restaurant washing dishes for two years in order to save money to eventually travel again. I soldiered on through the last year of school, questioning everything. Finally, by May, I graduated by the seat of my pants as usual. I was finally free from the 13 years of confinement the school system demanded. Somehow, it was not a moment of elation or euphoria but rather just relief.

Nine to Five Amongst the Inuit

SHORTLY AFTER GRADUATION, I got a phone call from my brother, who had been working in the Arctic, offering me a four months temporary position working as a radio/telephone operator. This was in the days before satellite communication. I jumped at the opportunity to live amidst Inuit in an alien environment like the Arctic. Literally, a couple of hours later a factory called to say I had been successful in my application for an office clerk position. I declined their offer gracefully. One of those twists of fate had just taken place; I had not fallen into a local dead-end job. It all happened so fast and effortlessly. I had hardly realised that I had gone from the social structure of school to the one of work. But it was temporary which was reassuring.

The new reality of the Arctic and a serious nine to five well-paid job was all very exciting and exotic but the truth was it was a traditional lifestyle just doing a repetitive job. My employer was pleased with my performance so I could have kept doing it till I was 65. Those four months brought home the reality that I was so desperate to avoid. I had to find an alternative. Life from childbirth is planned; you are hungry you get the breast, after you eat you sit on the potty, when you turn five you go to school, you finish school, you get a job. I wanted the security of a planned life, as that was all I knew, but at the same time, the thought of it suffocated me.

After my stint in the Arctic, I was now completely free. I had lived the real nine to five and it was just as I imagined it. There was no turning back; no doubt, I had to escape this prison and its trappings. I would have to freelance my life, find an alternative or suicide. I doubt I would have done it but the idea arose, so deep was my sense of desperation with my future. All through my childhood, a globe lamp lit up our living room. I perused it for hours. Of course, our world was North and South America and Europe. The rest of the world was far too distant and exotic to even imagine. Through our study of Oceania in school, I started to focus my interest on Australia. I loved the shape of the continent and its position on the planet, and it was hot country. Distance has a lot to do with exoticism; with that criterion, you could not get anything more exotic than Australia. That was it, I had made up my mind; I was going to Australia. Finally, I had a direction, a purpose. I called Qantas Airways. When the attendant told me the price of a return airfare from Montreal, my hopes were instantly dashed. It was an astronomical sum of money at the time. Crestfallen, I doubted everything. Had I bitten off more than I could chew? Had I aimed too high? Didn’t I know my station in life? Remember Alex, people do what they dream about when they retire. All right I would retire in Australia!

1973 - 1974

Highs & Lows of the Road

VISIBLY, THINGS WEREN’T working out the way I hoped. I had finished school, that meant I was supposed to leave the paternal home, didn’t it? The relationship with my dad had always been tense, competitive, maybe even of jealousy as my mother and I were very close. Regardless, even if it had been good, I was nineteen; it was time to fly the nest much to my mother’s chagrin. I knew all that, but there was no blueprint for just flying off into the wild blue yonder without a real plan and the security of the traditional life path. For years I had wanted to leave home, escape from the boredom of that town where driving up and down the kilometre long main street with a bunch of mates on a Friday night was the highlight of the week. I decided to create a plan B. I was going to go to Europe instead.

It was October, not a good time of year to just be. I was unemployed by choice, had money in the bank and essentially free. There was no reason not do it. Now the day had come and I was well prepared but it was scary nonetheless. There wasn’t a minute of hesitation, no turning back. After lunch dad drove me to the local highway junction just out of town so that I could hitchhike a ride to Montreal a couple of hours away. Waiting at the airport for my evening flight to Glasgow was exciting. I had no idea what would actually happen tomorrow. For some reason, I had chosen Glasgow over London; probably due to my mother’s Scottish roots, as if that should mean anything. Upon arrival, I took the airport bus which travelled under hazy yellow street lights in cold wet weather to the central bus station. There I sat, dead tired, head in hands, wondering what I had just done with my life. Sitting across from me, in the waiting room, was an older, well-seasoned traveller who clearly saw my despair. Our eyes met. He said, Get a bus to Edinburg, it’s sunny there. Like a zombie, I followed his advice and yes the sun was shining there and it all seemed better. The tourist office told me about the Youth Hostel Association. I had a destination, a place to sleep; the hostel was full of people like me. Suddenly, I had transitioned into the world of travel, the world of a seasonal nomad. I was a traveller, hitchhiking around the countryside, sightseeing, and people were kind to me.

Travelling around Scandinavia was emotionally comfortable, probably because the mentality, the looks and behaviour of the people as well as the landscape was so similar to North America. It was exotic but only because of the names. In fact, it was too similar to sustain any real interest, plus the weather by November was making travel really unpleasant. It was logical to head south.

All these places were so exotic and exciting, this was great! I had to pinch myself repeatedly. There, in front of me, were all the iconic buildings I had seen for years on brochures and in my textbooks: the chateaux of the Loire, Big Ben, the Colosseum, Venice, etc. However, at times, when the weather was foul, standing along a highway in the rain made me question what I was doing. When you are used to a reality of a mother who knows exactly how much butter you like on your toast, a mother who tells you what you need to hear, the reality of being in a foreign place where no one gives a damn whether you are dead or alive is a shock to your emotional world. There were days where the solitude, the unknown, the lack of familiarity, the challenges were just too much. I wanted to return home and make it all go away. A quick flashback to the reasons I had left was enough to get back some strength and the courage to carry on. There was no turning back. Not speaking the language or understanding the mores of the country you are in put you in a position and mental state you would never experience in your own culture. You become a spectator to the world around you. When you are forced into this position for months and years, it becomes a natural state of being; eventually, you also start to look at yourself, your behaviour, your principles and values like a spectator within yourself.

A mental examination of myself as a teenager revealed a lot of things I did not like about myself. The usual things like my hair; too wavy, my height; not tall enough, my teeth; not white enough. Sadly there were also inner things about my personality I disliked, such as my lack of confidence, my impatience and sadness. Living all sorts of new experiences and observing my life and the world around me ignited an unconscious introspection process that started chipping away at my lack of confidence and a rebuilding of my inner self and personality.

When I was in France and Italy, I noticed the men moved differently. I realised that they did not have the same stance as the young men in North America. The doubts I had about myself because I did not move or have the same male stance and mannerism as the other 15-year-old boys disappeared; I was proven right. The other school boys’ behaviour was an affectation, learnt mannerisms, it was not nature. I was fine; there was nothing wrong with me. I moved naturally like these Italian boys and men.

Next to the geographical grandeur of the Alps, being in Italy started stirring my emotions more than anything so far. It was an exotic place I really loved. I felt better here than I had ever felt even in my homeland. Something about the vibe of the place sparked something inside of me. Venice blew me away. I could not have imagined such a beautiful, unique man-made environment. I swore I would come back and live here. The innate sense of elegance in the way the Italians moved, dressed, built their cities and spoke, I wanted it. I wanted to be Italian.

Eventually, my trip took me across to Greece and its islands. The Mediterranean world had the same fascination today for me as it always had for people from the north of the world. It was now getting very close to Christmas. This holiday makes Westerners very sentimental about family, culture and home. This event had always been a highlight on our family calendar. It was to be my first Christmas away from home. I ended up on the island of Crete, in the small southern town of Paleohora. To my surprise, about seventy other travellers ended up congregating there for the event. Some people took it upon themselves to organise Christmas Eve dinner. The participants all pitched in one dollar and food was prepared. Cakes and pies baked in the bakery’s oven after the daily bread bake. Come evening, the local Greek people came down to the beach and celebrated with us, dancing and playing music. Ouzo and Retsina flowed into a night of merriment. The atmosphere was incredibly joyous. Few people would have passed it up to be with their families. A Christmas day swim in the bay was de rigueur for people of northern climes. The water was cold, but for the bathers, it was now possible for them to say they had swum in the Mediterranean on Christmas day. For novice travellers, these experiences were feathers in their caps.

Greece, more than Mexico, had shaken so much of my cultural conditioning and human experience. This was the first time I had been in an environment where I could not read, speak or understand my way around. Suddenly, I became aware of the other levels of communication that exist between humans. We unconsciously use these skills with the animal and plant world, but this was a very new experience with humans. Eyes, smiles, hands, body language without verbal language still made it possible to communicate adequately. The universality of humanity comes through. On one occasion, I was standing under a tree on the side of a country road; an elderly lady dressed in black was sweeping her front yard. She disappears into her house and came back with a glass of water for me without my asking. Another day in Crete, I was waiting for a ride at a road junction around lunch time. From a simple farmhouse nearby, I saw a tall man dressed in black with a weathered face standing on his porch, waving at me to come over saying the word: Essen, eat; probably the only German word I knew at the time. I wandered over. With warm eyes and smile, he invited me in to partake of lunch with his family. He, his wife, two giggly young girls and I shared the simple fare of fried eggs, oil, olives and bread. These two random acts of kindness shook my conditioning to the core. I had grown up in rural Quebec where the housewives would phone their neighbours urging them to lock their doors when there was a stranger in the neighbourhood. I did not want to be the man I had been conditioned to be through that society. There were better ways to be. Not that we, as a family, subscribed to such paranoia but it was clearly part of my world judging by my reaction of disbelief at such kindness.

Geographically Greece lay at the end of the usual summer traveller’s circuits. It was now January, the people on the road were not your two months-around-Europe travellers; they had all gone back to their customary activities in early September. Most of my cohorts were either older, long-term travellers or people experimenting with life outside the box, people out on an adventure. Clearly, I was also one of them now with an open-ended life of travel and adventure.

From North America, Turkey was an incredibly exotic and distant destination, but from Greece, it was just around the corner, accessible and the next logical destination. All I had to do was stick my thumb in the air and I could be there. So I did. The closer I got to the Turkish border the slower travelling became. Rides were on donkey carts and the back of tractors going from one field to the next. The human interaction was warm-hearted and helpful. I finally made it to the last Greek town. It was an uninspiring place with a large flour mill at the centre of town and I soon was to discover that it was a military outpost. I was walking around town trying to sort out a place to sleep for the night when a military man came towards me asking what I was doing here. Trying to reach the Turkish border I replied. You cannot stay here, it’s a military town. You must leave. There is a bus back to the last town departing at 8 p.m. The idea of retracing my tracks after such a long and slow journey was preposterous, but I had no choice. Eight o’clock came and went; still no bus. There were a few trucks parked outside the mill. I attracted the attention of someone through the window and explained my predicament. He waved his hand in a dismissive manner at my concern and invited me to sleep