Here and There (15 page)

Ghanaians don't just wear their hearts on their sleeves but in repeat patterns all over their bodies. Clothes are made of bright fabrics that advertise everything from the national flag to a football team to your job. There's one that reads, ‘I'll never get over a close family member who's just died', complete with skulls and coffins. You can have an insistent, jolly, anti-AIDS, safe-sex message on your new jacket involving broken hearts, kissing couples and ethereal haloed condoms. When someone dies, families take out exuberant, tearful death announcements in the newspapers. They also have T-shirts printed with ‘Jojo, we'll never forget him; in our hearts forever', with a fetching picture of a beaming boy, himself in a T-shirt that says, ‘You're beautiful and I've got the munchies'.

Nowhere are earthly status, achievement and dreams more vaingloriously celebrated than in death. Ghana is a very religious country going through an exclamatory low-church renewal. Good, godly people get on. God looks after those who love him. Poverty has no part in piousness here. Being poor in Africa isn't a sign of anything except that you're a poor African. Poverty is the default setting. So when you die, to show how well you did, how much God loved you by piling his bounty into your pockets, you throw a big funeral party with a lot of stew, chips and plenty of beer and a band, and everybody gets well and truly overindulged and remembers what a wonderful, kind, generous person you were – or, usually, what wonderful, kind, generous people your kids are for forking out for the funeral. Which is much the same as everywhere else in the world. What isn't the same is how you actually depart. Most of us can expect, at best, a box that looks like the top of a Victorian sideboard, lined with ruched silk underwear, going out dressed in a suit we resented like hell for having to put on when we were living.

But Ghana's developed the aspirational coffin. If you spent your life working in an office, they can bury you in a six-foot, smart black brogue painted to a shiny polish. Or you could have a sportier Nike trainer. You could get interred in a mobile phone, a lion, a spaceship. A castle. There's a spiny lobster, a Coca-Cola bottle. A snail. An anti-aircraft gun.

The showroom looks like a carousel ride of death, the coffins so beautifully made, Western interior decorators collect them as furniture. A gallery in California is putting on an exhibition. Which all seems a little disrespectful of the dead. A Ghanaian coffin has its origins in West African tribal masks, the animism of inanimate objects. It also has a touching and profound amusement, a thumbing of the nose at the ravages of mortality.

I almost ordered one for myself. They're all bespoke, unless you've always wanted to go as a Coke bottle or a Holy Bible. But what would I want to go in? What are my aspirations to eternity? I'm not as comfortable with my consumerism as most Ghanaians. I've grown up with it, not grown into it, so I'm not proud of my desire for a new ice-cream maker or a microwave. Certainly not proud enough to be buried in one. I don't want my family and friends' last sight of me to be a giant wooden Rolex or an Alessi teapot. I thought my coffin ought to be something related to what I've done in life. I work on a laptop, but I don't want to go in a Mac with broadband, or a big biro.

Then I thought, I write about travel for a living, and death is the last great eternal journey, so why not go in a suitcase with a label addressed to heaven and my name and dates stencilled on the top? And I was about to ask the undertaker how much it would cost to make me a carved wooden suitcase, and then I thought, actually, why not just use a suitcase as a suitcase? I'll be buried in a steamer trunk, like the one I took to boarding school. It's solid, it's green, it doesn't plagiarise someone else's culture, and it's appropriate. In the end, if I do feel a bit aspirationally Ghanaian about it, well, I can always go out in a Louis Vuitton one.

The anti-travel awards

The secret to a memorable life is
judicious editing, and it's the same
with travelling. Sometimes it's
more important to know where
not to go and what not to do.

Whilst travel writing may well be the best job in the world, writing for travel is one of the worst. Touring through Andalusia, eating at little local tavernas, is a joy; having to eat in every taverna in Andalusia would be a Spanish Inquisition of rare cruelty. The secret to an exciting, accomplished and memorable life is judicious editing. It's essential when you're travelling. The most important decisions are what you choose not to do, not to see, not to eat, not to pack and not to get tattooed on your backside. The pitiful guidebook hack has to do it all. Every last slummy nightclub and sticky internet caff, every lodging house and campsite, and every bus terminal and puppet theatre, so that others who come after don't have to.

Guidebook writing sounds like a blessing but is, in fact, a curse. The writing rarely rises above the level of an instruction manual. It's a constant headache of opening times, addresses and directions. The pay is negligible, the expenses frugal and you're not allowed to accept freebies or bribes. When I travel, the first thing I say is, ‘I'm the man from
Australian Gourmet Traveller
, bring on the dancing girls and the cornucopia of largesse.'

At last, a guidebook author named Thomas Kohnstamm has written a memoir called
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
about his days writing for Lonely Planet. He specialised in Latin America, apparently, and what with the lack of cash and the slimness of the deadlines and, presumably, the largeness of the countries and the shittiness of the roads, he apparently sold drugs, gave glowing reviews to restaurants whose waitresses slept with him, plagiarised other guides and, best of all, wrote part of one for Colombia without ever having gone to the country.

Now here's the thing: I'm immediately more interested in reading the imaginary tour of Colombia than I am in any actual plodding been-there-done-that guide. In fact, I'd rather read a magic-realism introduction to Latin America written by Finns who'd never left Scandinavia. There's definitely a niche market for fantasy tourism. They always say it is better to travel hopefully.

The other guide I'd really like to have is ‘100 Things You Thought You Wanted To Do But You Really Shouldn't Bother'. Travel writing always starts off with the tacitly agreed assumption that whatever place you're looking at is one of the best, friendliest, most exciting, rewarding, beautiful places on earth, with charmingly friendly people, memorably delicious food and indigenous handicrafts that will grace your home and body forever. And, of course, it can't be true of everywhere. Some places and things have to be disappointing. It would be really useful if someone would write and tell us where they are. So let me kick off with my ‘Top Nine':

1. The Silk Route.
Sounds like the most romantic destination in the world: the great trade route that stretches from China to Constantinople. In fact, Central Asia is a catastrophe of soil erosion, pollution, autocratic totalitarianism, police states, poverty, disease, growing Islamic militancy, and some of the most mistrustful, taciturn people you could hope to meet. Places like Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent have the ring of Arabian Nights romance about them, but actually they're decaying slums of Stalinist architecture built to intimidate subjugated people, with occasional stunning 10th-century buildings that just remind you how ghastly everything else is. And the food is inedible.

2. Gondola rides.
The minute you gingerly step into these gay canoes, you know it's a mistake. First, there's the unsmiling oarsman who looks like a cross between a pork butcher and a French mime and is, in fact, a member of one of the most vicious closed shops in Europe. He will precariously punt you up the narrow ditches that are Venice's canals. You will be serenaded by a stream of gothic curses and threats as he bellows at the other denizens pushing tourists up and down. Being so much closer to the water, you can get a much better smell of Venice's effluent and while you can't see anything, everyone on the bridges can see you. They'll stare and think, ‘Isn't that bloke too fat to be afloat?' It'll cost more than everything else you do in Venice put together, and all the above also applies to gondolas in Vegas.

3. All the rest of Las Vegas.
I'm not going to argue with you about this. Las Vegas is possibly the worst man-made thing in the world.

4. Camel rides.
Don't ride the camel anywhere, ever. If you do get bullied into sitting on one, resist the urge to shout: ‘Onward to Aqaba; no mercy, no mercy!' Every camel-owner has heard every single Lawrence of Arabia joke, and none of them have seen the film. There is one overwhelming reason why you should never ride a camel: they don't want you to. Camels hate you. Much the same goes for elephants. Once a year, an elephant goes mad, reaches back with his nose, grabs a pink tourist and throws him to the ground before stamping on him. Don't ride the donkeys down the Grand Canyon, or the horse-drawn carriages around Central Park.

5. Swedish massage in Sweden.
It's a huge disappointment. You imagine something Swedish, liberal and erotic performed by Anita Ekberg. In fact, it's a massage done by the woman from the kitchen appliance department of Ikea, and it really isn't site-specific. It's much the same as a Belgian massage.

6. Whale-watching.
Smelly, noisy boats with a constant tannoy, chugging about trying to find immensely boring fish that look like badly folded mattresses. All they do is swim aimlessly. Worse than the whales are the other people on the boat with you. A pitiful collection of homespun hobbits who will bellow tearfully at the water and be moved to ecstasy, and you're going to be stuck with them for four hours.

7. Turkish massage in Turkey.
If you want to know what it's like to be covered in soap suds and become the sexual kebab play thing of a 16-stone man with a back that's hairier than a Polish folk festival then, by all means, give it a go.

8. Railway journeys that take longer than one night or
two meals.
Yes, it sounds romantic and authentic. In reality, it's like being trapped in a horizontal lift with 15 consumptives and an open sewer. Ask yourself: which long-distance train journey would you make in your own country for fun? So why do you think it's going to be that much better in someone else's?

9. Greece.

Entry denied

After years of persecution, the
Roma – or Gypsies – are still
here and still suffering the
implacable racism of
middle Europe.

I'm back in France and this column's very late. Very, very late. If you're reading this, it's a small miracle of speed, typing and the printer's inky art. I forgot I was supposed to be in France again this summer, and then the bags appeared in the bedroom and I said, ‘Hey, where are you going?' and she said, ‘We're going to France on Monday.'

‘I've got a lot of writing to do.'

‘Well, you can do it there.'

So I felt a little lighter, a little jollier, for the rest of the day because that's what France does to you. The happy surprise that in two days I'd be in Provence played a petite accordion in my soul. All over the world it's the same. Statements that you're going to France on Monday turn the brain to croque monsieur. And the odd thing is that the pleasure of knowing you'll be in France is in no way mitigated or spoilt by the knowledge that you'll be surrounded by French people.

So here I am. I'm not going to bore you again with a middle-aged Englishman's maunderings at the joys of the
vie artisanal
. I'm sitting in the sun by the pool, smelling like an abused coconut, my cheeks sticky with warm fig seeds. I'm not actually thinking I'm here. I'm somewhere further north and east.

A couple of years ago I made a journey along the Danube, starting in the Black Forest and ending at the Black Sea. I must have mentioned it – it was a memorable and resonant trip. I loved it as much as I've loved anywhere I've been. It was the story of Mitteleuropa, the heart of Europe, written in water. I finished with a sob of violins.

When I got to Constanta in Romania on the Black Sea coast there was a ruined and abandoned synagogue, and I realised that all the way down the river there had been synagogues that were now cultural centres or Jewish museums. There were Jüdenstrasses and the distinctive spices and baking of Jewish cuisine. There was plenty of evidence of Jews and Jewishness. There just weren't any people – not the Jewish people. The Danube had been their river; the river of Jews. They had traded up and down it, and every city on its banks had had large Jewish populations. But no more; they had been wiped away. The Jews of the Danube were dust and ashes, or they lived as the Jews of Tel Aviv, the Jews of New York and London, Buenos Aires and Melbourne. But here they were ghosts, ripples on the water, a sigh in the lapping of an ancient dock.

I filed the piece and it went to press. It was okay, but I realised there was another story I hadn't told because I hadn't had the space. If I'd started, it would have been another 1000 words, and it was contentious, current and political. The other story of the Danube is the story of the Roma – the Gypsies. They shared the same unthinkable persecution as the Jews, died alongside them in the same camps, were exterminated and displaced. But they didn't disappear – they're still here and they're still suffering the implacable racism of middle Europe.

The greatest number of Romanies are in Romania, and they live a separate, apartheid life. They have their own language and food and the women dress differently. And the Romanians talk openly and easily about how dreadful they are; they vilify them with a comforting familiarity. The racism, the distaste, the disgust at Gypsies floats through Europe like a secret, intimate sexual infection; everyone has it but no one talks about it to strangers. In Hungary, Gypsies are beaten and burnt out of their homes. When Czechoslovakia split amicably in the Velvet Revolution between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, they divided the army, the gas board, the post office and the ornithology club, but neither nation wanted to take responsibility for their Gypsies. In Vienna, the Austrians add Gypsies to the already overcrowded list of their prejudices.