Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries

By Bill Arnott

Bestselling author Bill Arnott has done it again — he’s gone “viking”! — voyaging around the world by foot, bus, train, boat, and a couple of questionable planes.

Gone Viking II features a series of remarkable excursions occuring over a number of years — before, during, and after the voyages recounted in Gone Viking: A Travel Saga. All of these journeys are now reflected in a changed world in which travel restrictions have become our new normal and many adventurers find themselves retracing previous trips through the pages of their personal notebooks and travel diaries. From first-hand encounters, vividly shared experience, and well-worn personal journals, readers can travel alongside this fun-loving wanderer in the footsteps of history’s greatest explorers, make quirky new friends, find hidden treasures, and discover surprisingly familiar destinations from the comfort of their favourite armchair.

With an inquisitive eye, poetic prose, and a comedian’s take on nearly everything, Bill Arnott explores the world with insight and humour. Join this award-winning author for another travel saga, voyaging across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania by foot, bus, train, boat, and a couple of questionable planes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RMB Rocky Mountain Books
• Release date: Nov 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781771605441

Bill Arnott

Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of A Season on Vancouver Island, Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries, and Gone Viking III: The Holy Grail (Fall 2023). He’s been awarded by the Whistler Independent Book Awards, ABF International Book Awards, Firebird Book Awards, won The Miramichi Reader’s Very Best Book Award for nonfiction, and for his expeditions has been granted a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking the globe with a small pack, weatherproof journal and laughably outdated camera phone, or showing off cooking skills as a culinary school dropout, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends @billarnott_aps.

Book preview

PRAISE FOR GONE VIKING: A TRAVEL SAGA

"This is definitely one of the best reads of the year. Gone Viking: A Travel Saga is extremely entertaining, vibrant, and filled with vivid imagery you see and hear. Historical images weave in and out of the pages as the reader travels with Bill Arnott, the ‘Anthony Bourdain’ of these pages."

—Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita and author of Rithimus Aeternam

An extremely well-documented travelogue with beautiful imagery.

—The Ottawa Review of Books

Bill Arnott is an erudite and charming guide to the spaces and places of the Viking world.

—Canadian Authors Association

This is a writer who engages and entertains at every point along the way.

—Adrienne Drobnies, author of Salt and Ash

"More than a travel memoir, Gone Viking is a spectacular journey across the globe: fun, humorous, heartfelt, and an excellent read!"

—Michael Seidelman, author of the Garden of Syn Trilogy

"Gone Viking is a fascinating travelogue!"

—Annette LeBox, award-winning author of Peace is an Offering

"Gone Viking is a deeply, warmly human account of delightful peregrinations. You will enjoy it in the settled comfort of your armchair. But if you’re outward bound – to the UK, the Mediterranean, Scandinavia (of course) or even to Haida Gwaii – bring a copy along. It will teach you things; but more than that, it will make for wonderful company."

—P.W. Bridgman, author of A Lamb: Poems

"The writing in Gone Viking is a sensory delight, a stunning portrayal of unique experiences that gets right inside the reader."

—Cynthia Sharp, award-winning poet and author of How to Write Poetry

Bill Arnott has a natural gift of storytelling as epic and entertaining as the original Viking sagas. The narrative is infused with authentic voice and wonderful humour, layered with the echoes of other voices. Arnott compels the reader to join him in this must-read quest.

—Kerry Gilbert, award-winning author of Little Red and Tight Wire

"With humour and keen observation, Arnott takes us from one windswept landscape to the next. Gone Viking makes me want to lace up my boots and follow along in the footsteps of the author.

—Jeremy Kroeker, author of Through Dust and Darkness: A Motorcycle Journey of Fear and Faith in the Middle East

"In Gone Viking, Bill Arnott inspires intrepid adventurers and armchair travellers alike. Setting out to explore the reach and influence of the ancient Vikings, Arnott uncovers the essence of adventure that is at the heart of every great quest, which is a sense of discovery, felt viscerally."

—Jamey Glasnovic, author of Lost and Found and A Few Feet Short

PRAISE FOR GONE VIKING II: BEYOND BOUNDARIES

A perfect book for the armchair explorer. A true delight from a talented travel writer.

—John MacFarlane, author of Around the World in a Dugout Canoe

"Gone Viking II is a tale so infused with adrenaline-charged exhilaration, it will leave the reader breathless. This book of travels is fuelled by action, humour and unbridled enthusiasm."

—Edythe Anstey Hanen, author of Nine Birds Singing

Bill is a first-rate storyteller, and supremely funny. You won’t want to travel with anyone else.

—Lorette C. Luzajic, editor of The Ekphrastic Review

An engaging, deliciously irreverent and encompassing read.

—Barbara Black, author of Music from a Strange Planet

A multisensory trip with laugh-aloud moments and the soulful variety of insights and observations gained only from the road. A wholehearted delight!

—Linda Quennec, author of ABF Winner Fishing for Birds

Arnott’s latest saga transports us to other worlds with typical finesse, blending the philosophical, historical and geological with healthy doses of humour.

—Patricia Sandberg, award-winning author of Sun Dogs and Yellowcake

Bill writes like a poet and dares like an adventurer: paddling white water, climbing mountains and enduring torrential rains and rough seas, and his ability to capture characters is uncanny.

—Jeanne Ainslie, author of Caribbean Moon

"In Gone Viking II, Bill Arnott takes the reader on an armchair odyssey literally across the map."

—Kate Bird, author of Vancouver in the Seventies

"Gone Viking II is brimming with spirited characters, salty air, tidbits of trivia and a dose of mischief. Packed with red sand, shark sightings, volcanic eruptions and pub recommendations, Arnott’s writing is so vivid you’ll feel like a stowaway in his backpack."

—Anna Byrne, author of Seven Year Summer

To our amazing #GoneVikingCommunity

And for my dad

CONTENTS

EPILOGUE TO GONE VIKING: A TRAVEL SAGA

GONE VIKING II: BEYOND BOUNDARIES MAP

INTRODUCTION

THE AMERICAS

By Rail

Pacific

Atlantic

Caribbean

UK AND EUROPE

British Isles

By Sea

By Land

ASIA

East Sea

Yellow Sea

OCEANIA

Australia

Indian Ocean

South Pacific

New Zealand

Tasman Sea

Southern Ocean

CONCLUSION

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EPILOGUE TO GONE VIKING: A TRAVEL SAGA

Back home. Following eight years of travel, exploration and research. Eight years of viking, or voyaging, the northern hemisphere in the wake of some of the world’s most adventurous explorers. I was enjoying a Vancouver view – water, mountains, the bustle of tugs, tankers and helijets, all plying sea and sky.

Hillside homes reflected sun in bursts of fiery gold and beyond the bay, where inlet sprawls into ocean, bulkers glowed in morning light. Moored sailboats pinged a rhythmic and nautical tintinnabulation, a toe-tapping score, as a solitary freighter slid west beneath the big green bridge, bound for who knows where. Maybe Avalon. Over the pole, Icelandic horses were changing colour with the season, akin to amber leaves now littering the city.

And I thought of a sign that resonated on Haida Gwaii, hidden in forest. Do not look back, it read. There is much more to see, feel and love. While a bench in a park near our home is embossed with a plaque that states, If you’re going to look back, laugh.

GONE VIKING II: BEYOND BOUNDARIES MAP

INTRODUCTION

I was coming up for air following the release of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, delighted and humbled by the connections with new friends and readers around the world. And while that odyssey took me across half the planet, the explorer in me, unsurprisingly, remained unsated.

Much of that journey’s appeal was those moments of mystery akin to the original Scandinavian Sagas, when there wasn’t always a conclusion. No answer, solution nor even a clearly marked finish line. Those dreamy expanses where horizon and cloud commingle in misty swirls. You convince yourself that where you are is real, and beyond that, perhaps, lies the magic that fuels everything. Meanwhile, tangible, imagined, physical, emotional, geographical and spiritual boundaries remain. At times by our own making, other times, imposed upon us.

While Gone Viking: A Travel Saga embraced the adventure, playfulness and discovery inherent in travel, it remained, I believe, within acceptable parameters. Now I’ve gone viking again, a series of voyages toward the unknown. Only this time I’m setting rule books aside. We’ll play fair, make no mistake, just not necessarily within guidelines. And I welcome you. There’s always room for another adventurous wanderer, another Viking. But this time our destination lies elsewhere.

This venture was unlike any I’ve experienced – the result of travel restrictions, yet through it all, the world opening anew – a depth and breadth of connectivity that simply wasn’t there before pandemic was our norm. This may also be the most ambitious expedition I’ve undertaken. As a recently appointed Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, I felt an obligation to do justice to what every traveller craves, the experiences we pursue – exploration no longer being merely shuttling one’s husk between locales accumulating passport stamps, but mental, emotional and tactile transport between places, times and sensory touchstones, occasionally glimpsing just what it is we’re doing here.

Gone Viking II takes place over a number of years – before, during and after the voyages of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga – what preceded the first epic trek, what else occurred at that time and what followed. All of this reflecting a changing world in which travel restrictions became our new normal.

Invariably these wanderings, recording the world around us, emerge as scribbles in journals, our present-day version of scribes putting quill ink to vellum. Once more I’ve done the same, with a weatherproof pack and blank notebooks. Again I’ve gone viking. Only now, it’s a journey beyond boundaries.

From what may be my favourite journal, dog-eared and embossed with a map of the world, frayed pages held in place by an elasticized band, while taped to the inside back cover is a photo of me and my dad:

Travel. The allure of escape, exoticism, and, yes, for some, bragging rights. For the rest of us it represents time-warp slivers of childhood – when this world remained a place of mystery, adventure. Where you can live, for a spell, a hero’s life – desert sand, high seas and buried treasure. X marks the spot to other worlds, imagination, moments when the universe is nothing more than pure potential.

I was on the sofa in our tiny high-rise apartment, the ambient score a rattle of shopping cart wheels on sidewalk, reminiscent of passenger trains slowing through town, crossing roadways. Clack-clack, clack-clack…clack-clack, clack-clack. Identical journeys in their way. Somehow synesthetic. The same familial line of sensory sounds associated with every peregrination – whirr of rubber on bitumen, rumble of engines asea and the wind-fuelled rustle and snap of mainsail and jib.

I remembered losing myself in the incubating whoosh of a bow-parting ocean in feathers of froth, a blend of cocooned isolation combined with utter connection. And the comforting, familiar yet foreign hum of coach tires speeding on sand – New Zealand highway where road was literally the coast, low tide sand that stretched for miles to the dunes at Te Paki. Speed limit on the beach: 100 km/ h. The light there at that time was the same as where I am now – flat, dampened sunshine, the kind that makes you squint, tear up and question your emotions. Every photo from that long, dreamy trip is over- or underexposed, muted in a way I now realize captures the experience precisely.

Back to the train, or more accurately, trains. We’d been living with COVID for what seemed a very long time – numbers spiking again at an alarming rate. And I was attending a lecture virtually. Propped up in a nest of plump pillows, feeling like a sultan, a steaming cup of coffee to hand. Travel author Monisha Rajesh spoke to us through laptop screens, as she was the presenter for London’s Royal Geographical Society lecture series. The subject? Her travels around the world on 80 trains, some of the world’s most scenic.

It had been a year since my own travel plans had been cancelled as a result of the pandemic – flights, accommodations, rental cars and commuter trains – refunds received, some forgone, airline points reinstated and turned into cash. From a traveller’s perspective, things looked dire, other than a pleasant but fleeting debit balance on the credit card. So, along with a stack of travel-lit, -logues and memoirs, I was doing my best to quell wanderlust as best I could. And for a jonesing dromomaniac, Monisha’s globe-spanning lecture was an ideal, albeit temporary, cure.

When we eventually swapped messages, I was pleased to learn one of her favourite experiences on that expansive journey had been her travels in western Canada, specifically through British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. Interestingly, the same pockets of planet a globetrotting friend from Greenland described as her favourites as well. When I rode a similar route aboard Via Rail, I felt much the same. Even as a local, I was awed, slicing through mountains of sandstone, limestone and shale, a route I’d bisected many times in a car, but somehow from the sliding perspective of a train the same land’s renewed. Invigorated. Old stone reborn.

Join me for that rail-bound journey across western Canada, skirting the American border with a northerly lilt, a sharp jog north, then a gentle traverse south, returning to the Pacific. If you’ve read my memoir Dromomania, some of this trek will be familiar. While the beauty of that ongoing journey, individuals met and those windows onto life’s meaning remain ajar, I believe this viking voyage, shared space and travel, resonates now more than ever.

THE AMERICAS

BY RAIL

From the same weathered journal, buckled from sweat and from rain, stitching frayed to the point where pages had been lost, the book’s profile a wedge:

Fellow travellers were going through pre-overnight rituals; sleep aids and noise-cancelling headphones, while I opted for another large serving of care-cancelling liquor.

Ahhhhh-board! a conductor hollered from the platform, walking the length of our passenger train. As he climbed three metal steps we began to roll, shimmying from Winnipeg Station along the Assiniboine, rattling west.

A woman named Claire (shoulder-length brown hair, tortoiseshell glasses and neckerchief knotted to the left) introduced herself and passed me sparkling wine, the bubbles served with hardening cold cuts, stiff from handling and age – Via Rail’s interpretation of canapés. Claire would be my coach porter for the trip, she said, and told me to let her know if I needed anything. There weren’t many passengers, she explained, so I’d be seeing her a lot. It was the last time I saw her. How someone manages to vanish in a thin tube with a single corridor remains a mystery.

I was riding in Silver and Blue Class, suspecting, at a glance, that denoted passenger hair colour. Even in middle age I was the youngest passenger by 30 years. I staggered my way through the long, tight passageway, jostled by the shimmy of the train as though in a Metallica concert pit. I’d had the same vibrating experience at a St. Paddy’s Day show at the Commodore Ballroom with Spirit of the West, perpetually body-slammed by an aggressively affectionate woman whose name I never did learn.

As I eventually reached the Pullman car, I was nearly starving, ready for a big, sit-down dinner. I’d been given a chit with a three on it.

What’s this mean? I asked a dining car attendant, having to raise my voice over the rumble of my stomach.

That means you’re in the third seating for dinner; at 9 p.m., she said.

It was 5 p.m. "So, in four hours from now?" I asked, punctuated with another stomach growl.

Oh, no, she replied. "9 p.m. new time: five hours from now."

I sighed heavily and bumped my way to the bar car to fill up on booze and see if I couldn’t rustle up more fossilized cold cuts.

Of the 120 passengers on board, 40 were a tour group from England. I was convinced it was a 50-year cast reunion of Coronation Street. When I was finally seated for dinner, I sat with Ken and Deirdre Barlow and Norris, I believe, although they used different names. They all looked to be 60, although they were probably in their 70s.

Norris, who went by Louis, said he’d just gotten a call from his son, who’d told him he was going to start an MBA.

Good for him, I said.

Yes, Norris/ Louis replied. He told me his books will be free now that he’s 65.

Ken, Deirdre and I stared, somewhat dumbfounded.

I’m sorry, I said. "Did you say your son is 65?"

That’s right, he replied.

Cor! Deirdre said. "You look 60!"

Oh, well, we’re just friends now, he said, as though that explained everything.

It turned out he was 85, and the four of us visited and laughed as though we’d been friends for years. We ate pickerel in white sauce, discussing travel, politics and, naturally, fish.

It was nearly midnight when we made our way from the dining car, but Norris/ Louis, Ken and Deirdre stopped in the bar car where most of their tour group were having boisterous fun and playing cards. There was no sign of the party letting up. I was exhausted and headed straight to my sleeper cabin, where I’d fold in sink, toilet, slide out the narrow little bed (disturbingly known as a coffin) and, ironically, sleep like the dead.

Passing through the bar car filled with partying septuagenarians (plus Norris/ Lewis), I gave a wave and said good night to all.

GOOD NIGHT!!! the car chorused, and I went to bed with a smile.

Tucked in my coffin, I pondered mortality. Through drifting thoughts, I recounted time spent in Canada’s midriff, in Winnipeg. Much of it was spent around the Forks, the historically significant confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, where I’d jogged along the water while seagulls cried and fish splashed loudly. A guy rode past on a bike with a fishing rod poking from a backpack, making me envious and vowing to never travel without a collapsible rod and some tackle, a vow I forgot almost immediately. My route took me past the provincial Parliament and outsized sculptures where a statue of parliamentarian/ traitor Louis Riel stood (at the time), resembling Burton Cummings when he was with The Guess Who. I passed the Nutty Club and wondered how they chose members, expecting it should be closer to the legislature, then carried on to the Salisbury House restaurant, a local diner featuring small, tasty burgers called Nips. They were the daily special. I ate heartily and got change from a five-dollar bill.

I’d been told not to walk to or from my downtown hotel after dark, so I was in a taxi, being driven a short distance by a lean Ethiopian. It was in the midst of the US financial bailout.

Seven-hundred billion! he wailed. SEVEN-HUNDRED BILLION!!! That’s enough to fix everything in my country. EVERYTHING! Do you know how many HOMES that could build?!

I had no idea what a house went for in Addis Ababa, but his point was made just the same. I was sickened by it too, of course, like watching an accident happen, unable to stop it. And sitting in the back of the cab, in a business suit at the time, I felt part of the establishment, guilty by association. Everything the cabbie said was true. I just nodded, then shook my head. What could I possibly say?

On another occasion, making my way (daytime, on foot) to Winnipeg’s train station, I met Mohammed. He asked directions and I did my best in a city I knew somewhat. We visited a short while. He introduced himself as a Somalian, so I asked him if chardonnay went with salmon. He explained Somalia is a country in Africa, and that sauvignon blanc would be better.

We walked together, headed in roughly the same direction. He was going to a town hall meeting where a Member of Parliament would discuss current issues. Mohammed said he felt it was important to hear what the politicians had to say, leaving me somewhat ashamed for my apathy.

Some time later, I was again in a cab, disliking the city, its perpetual filth from floods and long winters – salt, sand and grime coating the streets year-round. People bundled in the cold – angered with crime, addiction, directionless youth, surviving bitter weather ten months of the year, the remaining few weeks given over to insatiable insects. This was what I thought, slumped in the cab, eager to leave.

The driver was a huge smile atop a lean frame. He was keen to talk and told me of how he came to Winnipeg from Africa.

Friendly Manitoba! he said. I learned this. It’s the provincial slogan, you know? Friendly Manitoba. He made eye contact in the rear-view mirror, his smile widening. It’s written on the licence plates – Friendly Manitoba. I dreamed of coming to this place, to Friendly Manitoba. I left my country and had nothing. I have been here for many years now, and I am happy, very happy. It is cold, yes, but I have a family now – a wife and children, and we are here and we are happy.

We turned a corner.

I was on my own flying here, he explained. And when the plane touched down, we were still taxiing, and I got out of my seat and dropped to the floor and I kissed it, I did. I was crying, ‘Friendly Manitoba! I am here, in Friendly Manitoba!’ I have never been so happy!

And here I’d thought this poor bastard lived in the worst place possible, when, in fact, this lucky bastard lived in the best place imaginable. As he delivered me I thanked him, a bit excessively, for more than was apparent.

Back aboard the train, from southern Manitoba we veered north as we continued westward. Trains do not depart, novelist William Gaddis wrote. They set out, and move at a pace to enhance the landscape, and aggrandize the land they traverse. Which is exactly what happened as we crossed the South and North Saskatchewan rivers, landscape and water in emerald hues reminiscent of a serpentine carving I bought at Vancouver’s English Bay from a Manitoban artisan.

He’d gathered the stone from the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg – the edge of the Canadian Shield and geographical centre of the country. I enjoyed visiting with him, his lineage Cree, Scottish and French-Canadian, a cross-section of national history, his personal pilgrimage akin to that of explorers and settlers. And he travelled west, with this small chunk of greenstone, its provenance his own – an artistic composite of land and people, captured in time, carved and polished into permanence.

Rattling west from the midst of the country, I thought of Dad, who hailed from Winnipeg. And I remembered writing this out (for the first time) in a binder of three-hole-punched loose-leaf, a memory that made us laugh.

It was nearing Christmas. There was a decorative bowl of assorted nuts on the coffee table with a cracker: oddly shaped Brazil nuts, filberts, walnuts, pecans and almonds, none of which appealed to me as a kid as they all seemed to involve a great deal of effort and mess to consume. I was more interested in the Pot of Gold milk chocolates. There was also a dish of mandarin oranges, the little cardboard box they arrived in a perforated window onto the world.

Dad was in his comfy chair, facing the TV from across the room, and asked me to toss him an orange. I knew it must be the holiday season for me to be granted permission to throw fruit in the living room. I picked a good plump one from the bowl, removed the crinkly green tissue paper and hurled it toward him like we did when playing slow-pitch. At that precise moment, however, something on TV caught his attention (probably Anne Murray on Wayne and Shuster’s Christmas special), and he was focused on the set rather than the orange missile sailing toward him. I had time to holler, Dad! I believe, or maybe that was just in my head, but all I know was the big juicy orange dropped squarely into his crotch with a fleshy thud.

Poor Dad folded neatly in half, inadvertently doing an elevated ab-crunch, his head tucking between his knees as he let out a squeaky yip like the time the neighbour’s dog Loogie (yeah, I know, but I didn’t name it) caught its tail in the trunk of the car.

Ouch, my sister said, looking at Dad still folded in half.

Oh, my, Mom added, with genuine concern.

Sorry, Dad, was all I could muster.

He took a great deal of time to catch his breath, then wheezed, Oh, son, you got me right in the… and he said a word I’d never heard before.

Next day at school, I was discussing it with the boys on the playground.

You know what my dad calls them? I asked. The boys shook their heads, leaning in, eager to acquire worldly knowledge. I puffed my chest, delighted to be the one in the know.

Tentacles! I said, loud and proud. Everyone seemed impressed. We’d all learned a new term for nuts, not to be confused with the festive ones left untouched in the decorative Christmas bowl.

Say, a boy named Scott piped up. Isn’t that what octopuses have?

Uh, yeah, I said, uncertain, but soldiering on. All I know is it’s another name for balls too. My dad said so.

The rest of the gang nodded slowly, realizing they’d learned something new and valuable. We all knew if it came from someone’s dad, it had to be true. It was a very long time before it occurred to me I might have misheard dad. But I’m still not convinced I did.

Later Dad fully recovered, tentacles having dropped for a second time, we were on a viking quest, in a manner, travelling not with the tide but in tidy straight lines within our country, outs and backs, each subsequent departure extending our distance from home.

On our first adventure together we went by plane to see an NHL hockey game, flying from Kelowna to Vancouver. I was 6. Mom had packed for the two of us. Three large suitcases. (We would be away for 40 hours.) The flight was late taking off due to fog and we went directly from YVR to the game, arriving at the end of the first period, Dad humping our three outsized suitcases with us to our seats at the arena. We were in row 45, the top row of the Pacific Coliseum, tucked between rafters and a lone, disoriented sparrow.

Perhaps my favourite memory-lane example of Dad and I actually viking was when we embarked on a cross-country road trip in Dad’s little Mazda pickup truck. I was off to university and we were moving me to the pleasant, green, slightly haunted town of London, Ontario, a community of schools, hospitals and golf courses populated by students, professors, retired professors, doctors and alcoholics. There was overlap to be sure.

Past birch and maple forests, grain fields and lakes, we drove through Canadiana landscapes, the look of oils on canvas by the Group of Seven. We swapped bad jokes, ate at truck-stop diners, endured tumultuous thunder and lightning on the prairies and crossed Lake Huron on a ferry.

Dad arranged the music for our 8000-kilometre odyssey. Four Sinatra cassettes. That’s it. Some of the content being the same songs recorded under different labels. Despite a limited playlist, it was an extraordinary journey. But to this day, with the opening note of a Sinatra song, I sing it from start to finish. Whether I want to or not. Occasionally, when I’m in a rush, I’d rather not have to do the full version of Summer Wind, but again it’s never really been up to me.

From a claret journal with gold leaf and heavy cover that snapped shut with a magnet; a gift I felt obliged to use, a bit clunky, a bit frilly and I’m pretty sure it demagnetized my bank card:

Waking in my little sleeper, the feeling somewhat luxurious and somewhat grungy, like camping. New deodorant on old, recycled clothes, and my day’s begun.

Following a jostling night in my Via Rail coffin, my three new dining car companions ordered The Canadian Breakfast: Pancakes with Real Maple Syrup! (The capitalization and exclamation point assuring authenticity.) I had fried Mennonite sausage, with eggs cooked to someone else’s liking.

A petite old Brit, part of the Corrie cast reunion, led conversation at our table; holding court, really. A funny, animated racist. Oddly fair, mind you, as she managed to disparage every European nation equally.

On a booze cruise, we were, she explained. "To Calais. And the woman there, at the duty free shop, she were so rude to me. Like I was nothing. So I says to her, I says, ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ And she says, all snooty like, ‘Mais, non.’ To which I say, ‘You’re welcome!’ Well, the look on