A Restless Traveller: Reflections on my Eurail adventure in 1977

By Jose Marques, João Magro and Cathy Douzil

As a Portuguese-born but Australian-naturalised young man, I travelled during my university gap year of 1977 from Australia to Europe to revisit my country of birth and to tour western and northern Europe, mainly on the back of a pre-purchased second class Eurail pass. This is the account of that journey but not only. The central idea of the memoir is to relate a significant experience at the age of 23 and to reflect on that from the perspective of 45 years later, as well as to draw links to other events and preoccupations held during my life, such as important issues of love, identity and self-judgement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447711490

Book preview

Acknowledgements

We only have what we give.

(Isabel Allende)

Fiona Marques, for her undying love and for reminding me that it’s ok to be flawed.

Anton Donohoe-Marques, for forgiving my imperfections as a father and for his encouragement.

Isabel Marques, for her loving tenderness and for believing in me.

Álvaro Marques, for going before me and for his affection.

Mary Fowke, for valuing my work and helping me through the rough spots.

Sara Jones, for her comforting smile and sincere support.

Hjalmar Joffre-Eichhorn, for his friendship and for motivating me to address self-judgement.

Cathy Douzil, for her inspiring cover image.

João Magro, for the meticulous cover design, layout work and photo improvement.

Terri Blakley, for the all-important proofreading.

Virgínia Soares, for her friendship and for helping me to understand racism.

Fernando Ventura, for his life-long friendship and support.

All my friends, for their encouragement, including Isabel Fernandes, Fernanda Barão, António Vicente, Catarina Cabanelas, Mimi Amnell, João Ferreira, Tobias von Schulthess and Miguel Duarte.

Maria Dulce Palma Rosa, for permission to reprint the poem Memória by her late uncle, Luís Amaro.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Life before 1977

Living in the seventies

For my brother

Making preparations

Bangkok friendships

Grey skies, blue skies

Mona Lisa smile

Where are the damn toilets?!

A breath of fresh air

City of dreams and despair

The restless traveller

A thirst for intimacy

The long and winding road to Paris

A bourgeois romance

Paper aeroplanes at the Empire Pool

Beauty and breadth

All the world’s a stage

The Grand Place of Europe

Romancing the canals

The German Autumn

Chance encounters of a different kind

Warm snow and cosy Swedes

Breathtaking Norway

The Swedish affair

Finding Erica

In the wake of a love that was

A damp Christmas

The long dark night of the soul

Goodbye and all the rest

Not happy, new year

The long journey home

Epilogue

Author biography

Preface

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

(T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton)

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

(Confucius)

I put forward formless and unresolved notions … not to establish the truth but to seek it.

(Michel de Montaigne)1

The original idea was to write the story of my travels around Europe in 1977, based on the diary kept at the time. It was supposed to be a simple tale that told of the places and people I met, and that related my thoughts and feelings of those encounters, with some present-day reflection on those incidents. But in the writing and in the process of involving others (receiving and integrating their opinions), it has become a weightier, although hopefully also more interesting tale. For one, because it is not simply the account of four months of travel but in some way of my entire history, since my reflections illuminate not only that time but also other phases of my life, as I try to unravel lifelong themes such as identity, love, and self-judgement. For another, because feedback from others makes you question not only what’s important but at times also your own sanity, as you struggle to separate the constructive from the personal.

This memoir is for my family, my friends, and myself (as some kind of cleansing of the soul). It may also appeal to people who are interested in reflecting back on their twenties, or on past adventures and romances. Or to those who travelled around Europe on a Eurail pass,² or by other means, in the 1970s. Or to people who want to look back at their past in order to better understand their present.

My account may also interest readers who are curious about what it was like to travel around Europe in the 70s as a young brown skinned Portuguese Australian man. I have used this ridiculous expression because I don’t want to be identified by race or a simplistic political label, such as Caucasian or white privileged male. Some will accuse me of being in denial but I refuse to wear these labels. In my defence, I say that my skin is more brown than white and that my Portuguese lineage, dating back to the Lusitanians and Celts, has evolved through intermingling with Romans, Germanic peoples, Jews, and Moors. That lineage continued to diversify as the Portuguese took to the seas from the 16th century on, to create settlements and trading posts (colonies) in parts of South America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Oceania.³ During the 20th century, intermixing with people from those places also began to take place in Portugal, with migration in the opposite direction becoming more prevalent. Of note was the acceleration of this migration following the onset of the colonial wars in Africa in the 1960s⁴ and the subsequent independence of not only those colonies but of all other Portuguese colonies.⁵ My own family (specifically my cousin Marisa, the daughter of my aunt Dionísia) has racially mixed with an Angolan family who moved to Portugal during the colonial war. In short, in terms of race and colour, I am something of a mongrel and in my opinion, it is pointless to ascribe a racial label to my person. Although I understand that race can be a helpful descriptor for scientific purposes, I also do not believe that we should define (discriminate, separate, select, etc.) people by their race.

Whether this analysis or the rest of my account is sufficiently politically aware or not is difficult for me to judge. I mention the issue because we live at a time when power dynamics are recognised as playing a crucial role in human interaction and relationship – with issues such as racial and gender identity and equality, racism, sexism and discrimination being at the forefront of news and cultural media. Judging myself, I would say that I have erred on the side of being too innocent, or even sometimes inept, in dealing with some of these issues, as may become apparent during the telling of my story. Hopefully, there have also been a few sprinkles of wisdom here and there. And humour!

The narrative is based on the diary in that it draws from its contents, sometimes directly in the form of extracts (shown in italicised quotes) and other times indirectly, when it was necessary to reconstruct the content, because the meaning was not clear or the language did not flow well, possibly as a result of the words having been written in a rush or when tired. It also relies on memories which had never been written down before, some of which were reawakened by reading the journal or by looking at photos taken at the time. As might be expected, some of these recollections were rebuilt in the present, for which I relied on inner contemplation and imagination. In some cases, these reconstructions may have strayed from the truth – with the London railway station goodbye being an example – but more importantly, they reveal something of the nature of my experience, at the time and as I see it now.

The diary itself covers the period from 1 September 1977 to 4 January 1978, as I travelled from Australia to Europe and then around the western and northern parts of the continent.

Keeping a diary is at once a creative and a communicative act, and it also serves as a memory tool: writing the self constructs continuity between past and present while keeping an eye on the future. Reading one’s own scribbles at a later moment understandably elicits a tendency to rework hindsight experiences into one’s personal reflection and to edit the original entries not only for grammar and punctuation, but also for content. The diary’s contents, when reread at a later stage in life, may either yield nostalgic yearning or retroactive embarrassment, in some cases even leading to a definitive destruction of the object.⁶

This quote is included because it reflects many of the processes that I underwent in writing my story. These will reveal themselves as the tale unfolds so I will not comment further on them here, with one exception: the issue of embarrassment, or in my own words, the feeling of awkwardness that I experienced in reading some of the passages from the journal that I chose to transcribe here. This feeling and my concern about how others might respond to those words became my biggest dilemma in writing this narrative.

The problematic extracts are mostly descriptions of my feelings and opinions of the people that I came across. For example, on my first crossing through Spain I say of the women that they’re a bit on the plump side, generally quite well endowed in the breast area and a bit sort of gross looking. As well, there is my use of language that may no longer be considered appropriate, such as the word negro which appears in two of the extracts I have included from the diary. Over the course of writing this book, I have continued to have mixed feelings about the inclusion of these passages.

On the one hand, they are nothing more than my thoughts at the age of 23, naïve or unkind as they seem to be. At that age, I was obviously less knowledgeable about other people, their culture and struggles and I allowed the tiredness and frustrations of travelling to affect my mood and how I looked at others. However, those thoughts were also an expression of health,⁷ as my younger self sought to let off steam about the people and situations that were irritating him, which is partly what diaries are for. They remained in my journal (until now) and as far as I am aware, did not turn into words or actions that caused harm to anyone, including myself. They reveal more about the person I was then and what I was experiencing than they do about the objects of my attention.

On the other hand, on first reading these extracts (and even now, although to a lesser extent because of the desensitising effect of repeated exposure), I felt somewhat taken aback by the rawness (or is it crudeness?) of the descriptions. This could be because the attitudes revealed by those words are no longer compatible with my self-image.⁸ In a way this is not a problem, as I accept that the person I was then is not the person I am now. The trouble is that moving those words from the diary to a published book makes them stand on top of a building and shout out their crude naivety (let us say) to anyone willing to hear. And some will take offence, in the way that I have felt awkwardness perhaps, or worse. One of the people who reviewed my first draft alerted me to this issue, saying that some of the language I had used could be construed as sexist, sexualised, racist and/or colonialist. This contrasted with the other two reviewers, who understood my words as the innocent ravings of a young man trying to make sense of the world and himself (my paraphrase of their combined opinion).

In the face of this paradox of feelings, how could I now respond to the awkward passages or to the outdated language from the journal? Should I simply remove the offending excerpts? And if I kept them, should there be a mea culpa? Or at least a simple acknowledgment of the embarrassment and (now) inappropriateness of the language? And would either of these responses protect me from possible attacks by the woke and cancel culture?

Destroying the offending extracts – by not including them in the story – would have saved me from criticism (in relation to those passages) but would have weakened the story. In addition, it was only natural to me that I should include them for the sake of completeness and honesty. Like Michel Montaigne, I was intent on presenting One man’s honest, unguarded portrait of himself …⁹ I also derived some comfort from my 12-year-old daughter’s exhortation, on hearing my lament over the criticism already received: People don’t want to read a book about a goodie-two-shoes. It’s a biography not a fantasy!

In trying to answer the remaining questions, I came to realise that the main issue was my sensitivity to criticism and capacity to handle it. One of my reviewers, while appreciating my honesty, reproved me for sometimes being hypocritical, contradictory and superficial. This caused me considerable angst for a time but after sifting through some of the hurt, I decided to embark upon an exploration of their observations. This was done in good faith and as a show of respect for my colleague – and in the end, for my work as a writer.

As I grappled with each of the specific criticisms, I also grappled with the issue of criticism generally, how it had affected me at other times in my life and how it was affecting me now. When hurt by negative feedback, I often look for solace in Oscar Wilde’s witticism: Criticism is the only reliable form of autobiography.¹⁰ In other words, it says more about the critic than the person being criticised. However, when you are on the receiving end, the negativity can dig deep into your psyche, especially if you are struggling with your sense of self-worth. I believe this has been true of me at different times of my life. What saved me in this particular case was the overwhelming appreciation and encouragement that I received from the other two reviewers.

As to appreciation, I mean being appreciated not only for your qualities but also in some way for your flaws. Feeling appreciated and relaxed about our flaws might help us all to change ourselves for the better. A case in point was my wife’s reaction to my struggle with the accusation of hypocrisy: Yes you are a hypocrite, but that’s ok. With this loving statement, the spell of the accusation was broken. Saying this is not an avoidance of responsibility but a recognition that few, if any of us, are perfect. In the human mould, I am flawed. So yes, I am sometimes a hypocrite, sometimes contradictory, sometimes superficial. And no, this doesn’t sit well with my self-image. It’s another paradox that I have to live with. Like the paradox of being half-wise, half-blockhead to use Alain de Botton’s explanation of Montaigne’s redemptive philosophy:

And yet if we accepted our frailties, and ceased claiming a mastery we did not have, we stood to find – in Montaigne’s generous, redemptive philosophy – that we were ultimately still adequate in our own distinctive half-wise, half-blockheadish way.¹¹

So now, I simply aspire to adequateness.

And in this verging on adequateness, how shall I respond to the possibly offending passages?

Part of me wants to refrain from responding at all, leaving it to the reader to draw their own conclusions, which they will do anyway. But having received the above criticisms, it is now impossible to deny their impact and offering my own comment, or self-reflection, seems inevitable. What became important in this process, however, was not so much whether I agreed or disagreed with the reprovals but rather the opportunity that they gave me to look deeper into my attitudes and feelings as a young man. Doing that led me to a better understanding of the person I was then and the person I would become in the future, including the person I am now. And it has hopefully also led to a more absorbing text for the reader.

In responding, not only to those passages but also to all of my experiences in that journey, I have also come to turn towards the idea of kindness as a possible route through all of these paradoxes.¹² Kindness towards those who may have been (or are still) the object of my rawness but also towards myself, as an imperfect human being.

Before moving on to the story proper, I would like to say something about my writing history and how the idea for this book came about.

For me, writing is driven by a need: the need to unburden the heart and mind, to express joy and suffering, to hopefully connect with others, and inspire them to tell their own stories, even if only to themselves, or to their friends and family – as I have been inspired by others, people I have personally known and those I have encountered through print or in artistic expression. I believe that telling our stories draws us together, in our similarities and differences, in which we hopefully recognise our humanness and move forward together. This is one of the premises of Playback Theatre, a form of theatre which was born in the United States in the mid-1970s, and which I have been practising since 2005.¹³

One of my first attempts at writing was a short story, penned in the years of early adolescence, about three teenagers marooned on a deserted island. It tells of the deep sadness of one of the two boys, on seeing the girl¹⁴ attach herself to the other boy, but also of his feeling of hope that one day he would find love. This book is in part a retelling of that story.

One of the people who first inspired me to write was Mrs Hall, the mother of a high school friend, Lincoln Hall.¹⁵ She was a published writer and took an interest in my development. Our relationship was somewhat like that of Mrs Robinson and Benjamin in The Graduate¹⁶ – but without the sex. It ended with my banishment from her house, shortly after I had made a clumsy remark about her young daughter whom, incidentally, I was romantically interested in, not dissimilar to Benjamin’s interest in both mother and daughter. The event inspired a poem which expressed my feelings of injustice on being cast aside.

During my university years (1974-1979),¹⁷ I was stimulated by D.H. Lawrence to delve into emotion, by André Gide to value sensitivity and authenticity and by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre to come to terms with feelings of hopelessness. Later in life, I relished in the heightened language of William Shakespeare and drew courage and integrity from the writing and deeds of Che Guevara.

Although I have written poems at different periods of my life, most of the creative writing occurred after studying theatre in Australia in the late 1980s.¹⁸ This delving into character and how my own personality interacted with it, or not, led me to writing a number of plays, some of which I produced myself, but none of which have been published or gained a wide audience. And after returning to Portugal in 2006, the idea of writing an autobiography began to take shape. But this was put on hold while my partner, Fiona McGlynn, and I focused on establishing ourselves in the country where my family had its roots. Fiona was born in Canberra, Australia, of English parents and grew up there. We met over the phone in 1989 and began a relationship in 1993. We have been together ever since and eventually married in 2018.

In the year 2020, the first Covid-19 year but also a year in which I experienced increased anxiety for other reasons – the move towards retirement, health challenges and my younger brother’s unexpected death, I felt a sudden urgency to share my personal history, with family in particular. This was partly borne of a realisation that my father had shared very little of his life before my brothers and I were born, or even of the time we lived in Portugal, before leaving for France in 1966. Of course, I have my own memories of that time as well as some sketchy details of my father’s youth – such as his stint in the merchant navy during World War II and his involvement with the underground Communist Party during the late 1940s. However, until his death in 1980, when we were already living in Australia, I never sought him out to learn more about his life. And he never sought me out to share it with me. I believe the same is true of my brothers. My mother was a different case; she liked to share stories of her youth and escapades. She told us of illegally crossing the border into Spain and returning with numerous pieces of clothing, worn in layers on her body, and of being left alone with two toddlers after my father had been taken by the police. These stories really marked her and she shared them with us several times during her life.

It is unfortunate that our father did not share his history with us. It may not be because he didn’t want to, or because we weren’t interested. It may have been simply a question of timing – reaching a time when my father was less burdened by responsibilities and we were less burdened by personal commitments to study, career, friends and romances. And now, as I look at my own children, I feel glad that they have both taken an interest in my history: my daughter Isabel has been very supportive of my autobiographical writing and my son Anton has read an early draft of this narrative and provided helpful comments.

The idea of this memoir surfaced while I was working on the autobiography (as yet unfinished). As I reflected on my life in the 1970s, I turned to the detailed account in the diary. How would I incorporate so much material into my life story? I couldn’t really, so the idea to write a separate book emerged. This would have the advantage of being a shorter project and one which would give me the experience of publishing, in preparation for the autobiography. In the same way as for the longer work, I started out writing the memoir for family and friends but soon into the process, and in part inspired by a reading of Nancy Smith’s Writing Your Life Story,¹⁹ I became excited about the idea of writing for a wider audience. Opening up the text in this manner led me to writing in a different way: adding context, and detail – such as descriptions of people and places – and heightening drama and humour, where those elements could be found. This was similar to writing fiction and much more compelling for me, and hopefully for the reader, including for people who don’t know me.

The work possibly fits into the genre of travel memoir or travelogue, or both – although the more I worked on the text, the more it became like the first. It is also part essay, in my attempt to provide context to something that happened 45 years ago. And it serves as a historical record of Europe in 1977, on the cost and means of travel, and on the places where you could stay and eat. Other factual details, such as train arrival and departure times or the cost and elements of a meal, are important to me because they help to ground me in the story. The narrative also speaks of the culture and social norms of different places and different peoples. I say this with the proviso that none of it is explained in a structured way but only incidentally, as the story unfolds.

In the first two chapters, I draw a brief history of my life before the European journey and give a short description of living in the 1970s, with the aim of providing context for the story. This is followed by a small tribute to my brother António who passed away in 2020. The story proper begins with the chapter Making preparations and ends with The long journey home. The