Thirty Days Across the Big Pond: Part One

By Mike Slickster

An extraordinary thirty-day grand tour of London and Europe sets the stage for a hilariously sexy, yet poignant illustrated adventure. This action-packed series features the hapless misadventures and unforeseen predicaments that befall Mike Slickster, a fun-loving screwball in the midst of a midlife crisis, looking for Nirvana. Notable stopovers in Paris, Nice, Rome, Florence and Venice will treat the engrossed reader to scrumptious cuisines, colorful local histories and quaint ambiances found in each of these ancient or medieval centers of civilization. Nine gorgeous women, an old friend in Paris, a smiling Algerian, a remarkable bartender, local police officers, and a villainous madman fill the main cast of zany characters, shuttling our hero to near death experiences, exorbitant excitement, extreme pandemonium, and ultimate fulfillment. Sex, food, fun, friends, booze, music, comedy, fine art, baseball; beautiful, supportive photographs and tongue-in-cheek eroticism are the tale's main ingredients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304261014

Book preview

Thirty Days Across the Big Pond: Part One

Thirty Days Across the Big Pond: Part One

An Illustrated Novel

by

Mike Slickster

Copyright

Copyright © 2018 by Paul Michael Bergeron

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Second Edition

ISBN: 978-1-304-26101-4

Mike Slickster Syndication

Andalusia, Pa. 19020

Preface

An extraordinary thirty-day grand tour of Great Britain and Europe sets the stage for this hilariously sexy, yet poignant three-part adventure.  Landing in London and leasing a standard British car, Mike Slickster toured England's capital city for a few days to garner up steam before crossing the English Channel on the ferryboat, for what turned into an exceptionally outrageous, unexpected turn of events to follow. 

Part One features notable stopovers in Paris, Nice, Rome, Florence and Venice, where the reader is treated lavishly to scrumptious, exotic, continental cuisines; colorful local histories, and quaint ambiances found in each of these ancient or medieval centers of civilization. 

Hapless misadventures and unforeseen, precarious predicaments befall our unsuspecting traveler, a fun-loving screwball in the midst of a mid-life crisis, looking for Nirvana. 

Nine gorgeous women, an old friend in Paris, a smiling Algerian, a remarkable bartender, local police officers, and a villainous madman fill the main cast of captivating characters, shuttling our hero to near death experiences, extreme pandemonium, and ultimate fulfillment.

This story is based on the author's personal experiences in the UK and Europe on his thirty-day excursion overseas.  Sex, food, fun, friends, booze, music, comedy, fine art, baseball and tongue-in-cheek eroticism are the tale's main ingredients. 

The sensational plot came from a strictly updated travel log, researched historical tidbits of the fascinating locales visited and illustrious cultures thereat, peppered with insane instances from a vivid and somewhat twisted imagination. 

Some names of the places and all those of the characters, aside from celebrities, public and well-known figures, were changed to protect the innocent.  Meet Mike Slickster, a modern-day road-trip warrior in Thirty Days Across the Big Pond: Part One.

Chapter One: The Suitcase from Hell

The cab to Philadelphia International Airport was on its way.  I checked in the meantime to make sure I had packed everything essential for the next thirty days: a month's supply of clean skivvies topped my list, for I hated to do the wash. 

Enough outerwear filled the case, along with various battery chargers, a tripod, and a kit with two of every electrical-adapter plug to fit into any European or British wall socket.  A box of one dozen prophylactics accompanied everything else in case I got lucky.

Dress shirts, a suit, tie, trousers, and a woolen jacket hung neatly in a clothes carrier.  Toiletries, dental-hygiene and shaving utensils filled a leather bag included within the black Pullman.  My trusty, pen-sized, laser-like flashlight with an adjustable Fresnel lens rested safely in its protective case, packed away to avoid damage.

I carried the light habitually on my person when traveling, but the curious accessory would have surely initiated suspicion while going through airport security.

A black, shoulder-draped camera case carried two digitals, a camcorder, a dozen blank videocassettes, two fully charged batteries for each camera, and sundry cords to connect the equipment to the laptop, also going on board the plane with me.

I was hoping the suitcase weighed less than twenty-three kilograms, the fifty-pound limit imposed by the airline.  If not, an additional charge for as much as one hundred and fifty dollars for the excess weight could be levied.

Yo, what's that, a body bag you just threw in there?  The infernal luggage made quite a thud after landing the trunk.  The cabdriver was quite a joker and a lazy one indeed. He had been sitting in the car the whole time.  For the amount of money it was costing me for the ride to the airport, he should at least have gotten off of his fat rump to help me to load the deadweight into the boot. 

We made it to the departure terminal in about forty-five minutes. Checking in and placing each bag on the scale, I found the suitcase totaled 27.5 kilos, or 60 pounds.  Springing that bad boy open, I removed both my high-top sneakers and sandals, placing them into my clothes carrier to avoid the extra fee.  The nice airline lady was good enough to sit on the lid of my bulging portmanteau as I zipped it up. 

The official tally after reweighing was 24 kilos (almost 53 pounds), which was acceptable to them.  My flight left Philadelphia at nine thirty in the evening, and touched down in London on the following morning at nine o'clock, UK time. 

The plane had a great tail wind as we flew across the Atlantic Ocean. The flight took six and a half hours.  After retrieving my luggage from the baggage carousel and passing through customs, I dragged everything out to the car-rental agency's customer pick-up zone. 

Entirely out of breath and sweating profusely, I realized exactly how much out of shape my body really was.  The van arrived and took me to the rental car lot.  After completing the necessary paperwork, I left Heathrow Airport.

While becoming accustomed to shifting the five-speed manual transmission with my left hand, sitting on the right side of the vehicle and driving on the wrong side of the road—as far as I was concerned—I swiped a few curbs along the way, frightening a group of pedestrians in front of my Kensington hotel as the car's left front wheel hopped up onto the sidewalk ahead of the startled lot of them. 

One young girl screamed and an elderly man leaped over the hedgerow, a testament to the power of adrenaline. He waved his cane frantically at me from behind the bushes as I exited the automobile.  After apologizing to everyone and helping the old timer over the foliage, I went inside to register, subsequently garaging the Fiat for the remainder of my stay; parking was only allowed on the street there on weekends.

As a general rule of thumb, the duration of suffering from jet lag was proportionate in days, to the amount of time zones crossed.  With five of them between London and Philadelphia, I needed at least a couple of days to shake it.  Later that  afternoon, I slept for a few hours and awoke at four thirty, took a shower and went downstairs for dinner. 

The restaurant had a quaint, Victorian flair. The premises dated back to the late-nineteenth century.  My meal consisted of two gin martinis, a green salad, lamb steak broiled medium rare with cooked tomatoes, little round potatoes, asparagus, mint leaves mistaken for spinach, a cappuccino with cream, and a little chocolate bar on the side. 

The forkful of mint, eaten in error, made my eyes flood with tears and bulge as if they were going to pop out of their sockets.  I should have known better, for another golden rule stated prohibitively, Always sniff before eating.

Natural History Museum

Carousing about for the next couple of days, I visited a few pubs and restaurants while sightseeing London.  Monday was dedicated to the Natural History Museum.  I meandered through every exhibit and took massive quantities of photographs for as long as my aching feet allowed me.

Diplodocus

Ceratosaurus - Brontosaurus

Deinonychus – Velociraptor

Mastodon – Dodo Bird

Neanderthal Woman – Medusa

Charles Darwin

Hobbling back to my room when through, I considered myself fortunate.  The return trip was only a mile long, which included my stopping to grab a bite to eat.

Later that evening, a neighborhood blues bar with live entertainment, featuring local musicians, fit the bill.  Tuesday's trek was even longer: four miles were covered while I hiked to Harrods of London for doing a little Christmas shopping in between admiring the sights and sounds of the neighborhoods, sampling wonderful cuisines, various ales and cocktails of the area, in addition to taking several hundred additional photos.

I had visited many of the more typical attractions like Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, St. James and Green Parks, Westminster Abbey and the Tower of Big Ben, during my previous trip to the capital city.

After dinner at the hotel's splendid restaurant on the second day, I had a few drinks in the lounge before returning to my chamber and zipping everything back up in preparation for my leaving town on the following morning. 

Excess cash and coins in pound sterling sat in a pouch within the large suitcase for my return trip to England on the seventh of November.  Leftover euros from my last voyage to Europe would get me started on my way to the continent. 

The route was planned, which included a stopover at Dover Castle before my crossing on the ferry to Calais, France.  After a good night's sleep, a six-o'clock wake-up call, and an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast at the hotel bistro downstairs, I checked out and was on my way.

London was such a cool city.  During my sojourn, I learned a few things: The people walked so blisteringly fast, and one could get mowed down on the walkways when not keeping up with the flow. 

Only a very minute portion of the population was obese, probably due to the individuals' walking exceedingly quickly.  The women were particularly pretty and loved to wear boots, but more importantly, the inhabitants were generally kind and mostly friendly.

Driving to Dover took longer than I had anticipated, resulting from my taking the wrong turn at South Circular Road and heading north instead of southeast.  Operating a Fiat with a six-speed manual transmission opposite to what I was accustomed, following directions from Mapquat.com, an Internet-based mapping service; and while having to stay on the left side of the road, I was subjected to uncertain disaster.

The car didn't come equipped with a Global Positioning System, nor did I have a compass.  The sun wasn't any help for finding direction either, as it was mostly cloudy and raining. The blasted rotaries were driving me crazy, but at least I was left-handed.  From my experiences, it seemed like left-handed people always had the propensity for adapting to adversity.

The preceding diversion wasted a good hour and a half in morning traffic before I headed in the right direction.  The rain discouraged me from taking the ride up the cliffs to the castle. 

During the prior time going there, when I first visited London, it was also raining and my clothes got soaked.  I bought a ticket instead and boarded the ferry to Calais, thinking next time I'll bring an umbrella.

For a souvenir, I took a few photographs of the castle and the White Cliffs of Dover from the top deck of the ferryboat. The rain quit as we left the port and started sailing over the English Channel to France.

Dover Seaport - White Cliffs of Dover

Chapter Two: Tally Ho to France

Lounge on the Ferryboat

The twenty-eight-mile voyage, or forty-five kilometers across the waterway was a  relaxing break in my trip of two hundred and eighty-five miles from London to Paris—almost four hundred and sixty kilometers.  I was starved and grabbed a sandwich and beer at the bar.

Calais Lighthouse – Built in 1818

Once in France, I took a spin around Calais to take a few shots of this historic port, dating back to Roman times and Julius Caesar, who called the settlement Caletum.  He launched his campaign against Britannia from here, due to its close proximity to the British mainland.

Unfortunately, the seaport was virtually leveled by German bombardment during World War II, so not much antiquity from prior to then survived. Along with the lighthouse, the following are some that did.

Hôtel de Ville – Built Between 1911 and 1925

Calais Theatre – Built in 1903

Downtown

The trip to Paris went well with an occasional stopover to sightsee, my eating dinner at one of the aires (rest areas) on the Autoroute, and arriving in the French capital at around ten o'clock on Wednesday night.  The Fiat's left front wheel met a few more curbs on the way to finding my hotel, located somewhere in the middle of mainly one-way streets, mostly running opposite to where I needed to be going. 

The street signs were located on the corners of buildings with no illumination. Relying on Mapquat, with no sense of direction, I was totally lost to say the least.  A church bell clanged, signifying one o'clock; and all was not well.

After turning onto a narrow, single-lane street, I became aware immediately of my driving in the wrong direction. A taxicab had just barreled around the opposing corner and was heading my way.  Blinding high beams flashed, alerting me I had better get out of the way pronto.

Attempting to avoid a fatal collision, I made a violently quick right-hand turn, sending the Fiat cascading over an abutment, crash-landing into the bike lane.  Rumbling and a racket resounded in the dead of the night, sounding as if a plane had crash-landed.  The automobile shook violently as its undercarriage slammed into the divider and scraped over the concrete slab. 

Once my oncoming adversary had sped past, a significant amount of clatter erupted again while I attempted to maneuver the car back into the main roadway.  The engine roared like a lion while dragging the chassis over the hump, stalling many times before the vehicle faced the right way. 

Visions of a cracked oil pan, spewing black gold, gushing out like a geyser; the exhaust system left dangling from underneath; and even worse yet, finding the transmission was destroyed all raced through my head as how I imagined one's life was said to flash by them when facing certain death. 

My lucky stars had guided me out of that situation with no apparent damage.  I found my lodging ultimately at two o'clock on Thursday morning. Leaving the Fiat parked in the street, one block away from my auberge off Rue Montmartre, this tired  traveler hauled the Pullman, laptop, camera case, and clothes carrier to the front of the inn, finding the entry locked and the lights were turned off in the lobby.

That sure did elicit a sinking feeling inside me while I rang the doorbell; but moments later, the obviously just-awakened concierge opened up the portal, registering me afterward and validating a room card.  The attendant said he had to show me to my chamber and started up the stairs.

Wait, don't you have an elevator?

"Oui, just a moment."  He came back down to point it out to me. 

My Hotel's Elevator

The lift was smaller than my bathroom's linen closet.  When I entered it with my luggage, my shoulders touched both sides of the car.  The clerk told me to press the button for the first floor.

But my room is on the fourth floor.  He told me the lift didn't go up to my room and closed the swinging door tight.  The elevator went up to the first floor and stopped, but the barrier didn't open, upon which I started pounding.

"Don't panic, Monsieur.  I've got to get the emergency key."

Don't panic?  You're lucky I don't suffer from claustrophobia.  Two or three minutes transpired before his return.  Once he had freed me from the elevator, my host said to follow him. 

We went down a long, musty corridor, making a left through an archway that looked like the entrance to an ancient, run-down mental institution, as usually portrayed in a low-budget horror flick.   The walls were painted off-white, on which the plaster had peeled away in spots.  An open set of Venetian blinds allowed a peek into a room with beds and uncovered mattresses piled up everywhere. 

While approaching a sinister-looking spiral staircase, the desk clerk pointed skyward and said my room was three flights up.  The grinning attendant appeared to be an Algerian, wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap on backward.

The Spiral Staircase from Hell

We climbed the exceptionally narrow, steep, winding stairwell. He pulled, and I pushed the suitcase from hell, the laptop, camera case, and clothes bag up every one of those fucking stairs. 

At least the hotel room turned out to be bigger than the one during my previous stay in Paris, coming complete with an actually enclosed shower stall. 

The last place provided an attachment at the end of a metal hose, used to bathe while one stood in the middle of the bathroom without a curtain, next to the toilet and wash basin; the water drained through a grate mounted over a hole in the tile floor.

Head from the Previous Trip to Paris

After thanking and tipping Smiley, I collapsed on what felt like a feather bed, and crashed soundly for the night.

Chapter Three:  Welcome to the City of Light

Mike Slickster

Having awoken shortly after sunrise, I showered, checked my e-mail and left for breakfast.  My descent, rounding the portentous spiral staircase, was a lot easier and quicker than my ascent had been.  The buffet tendered the regular fare of eggs, sausage, bacon, whole-wheat toast, jelly, coffee, and orange juice. 

While eating, I examined a tourist brochure to decide what attractions to see, when a suggestion for Montmartre, meaning Mountain of the Martyr, caught my eye.  One of my favorite painters, Vincent van Gogh, had spent a couple of years living with his brother there.  The artist had learned much of his craft in Paris. 

The popular site also played a pivotal part in French history, for the hilltop lay deep within the political instability prevalent back in the latter part of the nineteenth century.  It seemed like such a lovely locality and was not very far from my hotel. 

I proceeded to make the short journey after grabbing my coat and cameras from upstairs, thinking on the way up I should have brought them down with me to begin with.

The car had a parking ticket on the windshield already.  I was late in removing it from the metered spot before 8 a.m.  Meter maids must have started their day early on that street.  The fine was eleven euros, or sixteen dollars and fifty cents US—not bad for overnight parking in Paris. 

The auto started right up, offering me great relief, considering the bashing it took on the night before.

Montmartre

The Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, a basilica dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, was built on the butte: a French term for ridge. 

Butte Montmartre offered quite a panoramic view of the city, as it was at the highest point in Paris.

This historic vantage point played host to a party of socialists, the Paris Commune, during the spawn of their insurrection after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, at the late-nineteenth century. 

The provisional French government, and the Paris Commune—comprised of the working class—battled for power over the reins of the city government while Paris was under siege by the newly formed German Empire. 

The recently elected National Assembly and the military moved to Versailles, as Paris had become too turbulent for the officials to remain.  Many of the hard-core communards were responsible for the commune's insurgency, and were entombed by explosives detonated by the returning Army of Versailles, in full force, at the entrances to the closed Montmartre gypsum mines, where the insurrectionists had retreated deep into its subterranean galleries.

Meanwhile, once the communards were quelled, citizens of Paris became defiant in the face of defeat from the approaching Germans and formed an armed militia, hundreds of thousands of troops strong.  These Parisians were prepared to fight the enemy army if the latter were to enter the city to create havoc and pillage.

Ordinary citizens, woman and children, helped to move large numbers of cannons, belonging to the city, away from the path of the Germans and stored a good portion of them on the Butte Montmartre. 

The invaders did enter the city in a brief ceremonial occupation that was part of the peace terms with France and left completely shortly thereafter.

The grounds surrounding the basilica had attracted a great number of tourists, locals, artists, musicians, vendors, a food stand and street performers, creating a carnival-like atmosphere. 

Scores of people were hanging out and seated on the steps leading up to the basilica, watching an avant-garde, fashion photo-shoot that was taking place in the church square.

I photographed the sensational vistas of Paris, the exterior of the basilica with its many fascinating and unique gargoyles, hanging from every nook and cranny of the building; the festivities afforded by the area, and the immediate neighborhoods surrounding the butte.

While descending the ridge, I stopped at a little restaurant, ate dinner, enjoyed a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir, and planned for my next stop.

The Eiffel Tower

On another page in my tourist brochure, I spotted a beautiful picture of my favorite French monument, the Eiffel Tower, and imagined it must have looked spectacular at night; for I had only seen the tower during the daytime.

Deciding to find the Champ de Mars, the site of the landmark, I asked the waitress for directions.  She instructed me to go past the Arc de Triomphe, for which I did and was able to capture the arch on video by holding my camera outside of the window, leaning it against the roof of the car. 

Circling around the monument several times while trying to determine on what street I was supposed to turn—ten of them surrounded the roundabout and radiated like spokes from the center of a wheel—I caught a glimpse of my destination off in the distance and headed in that direction.

The closer I got, the more brilliant the illuminations became.  My hand had become numb from the cold, holding the video camera onto the roof of the Fiat; but I didn't care.  The excitement of seeing the Eiffel Tower up close when crossing over the Seine River was overwhelming, and I was capturing the moment.

Not having been paying much attention to the road, I ended up alongside of the monument.  A police officer mounted on a motor scooter approached the car.

"Monsieur, he said. Please follow me immediately." 

I obeyed his order and traveled behind him.  In back of me were two other scooter-mounted policemen with their lights flashing.  We had driven several blocks away before I was instructed to pull over at a non-congested corner.  It suddenly occurred to me that I was in deep doo-doo. 

"Your credentials, please.  I handed him my license, the car-rental agreement, and my passport.  You made an illegal right turn through a red light when coming over the bridge, he said.  Telling the cop about my being very excited while seeing the Eiffel Tower all lit up for the first time ever, I admitted to making a mistake.  A very big mistake.  What were you doing filming with a video camera while you were driving?  In France, we keep both hands on the steering wheel."

I'm sorry. I won't do it again.

When I visited your country, I went to Miami and drove through a red light too.  The policeman who pulled me over let me go without a ticket.  I now do the same for you.  He handed me back my documents.  "This is your lucky night, Monsieur.  Be careful in Paris."  He pulled away with the others.

Very seldom did I step in crap and come out smelling like a rose.  I relished the thought of not having to spend the night in a Parisian jail.  Perhaps he let me go because of my French nose.  Upon arriving at the inn, I found the same parking space in which I had left the car previously.  It certainly was my lucky night.

Smiley sat behind the front desk and was still wearing his Yankees cap backward when I entered the lobby.  "Bonsoir, I hope you slept well