Dishevelled Travels. Rome. Part One.

Standard

Day 11. Munich to Rome.

Time to leave The Tent. I’ve really enjoyed my stay. When booking it was a gamble. The prospect of one hundred humans, notoriously filthy and disgusting creatures, sharing sleeping space in a giant gazebo didn’t exactly sound tranquil but the concept really works. The communal atmosphere creates a sense of social collectiveness amongst the travellers who stay here. It’s how I imagine living on a hippy commune would be like, man. As I bed everyone farewell Medji asks to add me on Facebook. He suggests that we play chess online.
“Yeah sure”
I look forward to being tactically humiliated in cyberspace in the near future.

Time for a swift one (litre) before I leave. The Hofbraühaus is the drunkards Mecca. A giant Bavarian beer hall where you sit on long wooden benches to be waited on by no nonsense women clad in traditional liederhosen. The beer comes in heavy steins. It’s strong. I take a seat at a boozy pew and wait patiently to be served. This doesn’t work. I observe that to the rowdiest clientele are the ones getting the attention and there are plenty of rowdies despite it being the middle of a weekday afternoon. I flag down a waitress who brings me a frothy Weissebeer. The brass band pump out a jovial tune that I find myself involuntarily bobbing along with between sips. A woman walks past with a basket of large pretzels. This is how drinking should be done. Apparently Mozart came here to ignite his creative flair before writing the opera Idomenao. He was inspired during numerous steamy sessions on the sauce in this grand hall of piss-artistry. Never mind composing a classical masterpiece, I’ll be impressed if I manage to navigate my way to the airport after a skinful in here.

Munich Airport: As I sit, slightly tipsy, in the departure lounge I take a moment to appreciate my time in Germany. I think fondly of the boozing. Germans drink admirably. The beer is expertly brewed and delicious. You drink because the beer is so palatable. You don’t drink just to get wasted. Getting hammered is just a merry consequence of appreciating the exceptional lager. You don’t chug Weissebeer. You sup. You savour. You appreciate. You relish the flavour. It isn’t fraternal binge drinking. It’s collective appraisal. You’re a connoisseur. You will over indulge. Of course. And you’ll wake up with a Weisse hangover. But it’s worth it. It’s like when you wake up with sore muscles after a strenuous workout in the gym. Your body is aching now but it was beneficial. In the way exercise is good for your body a session in the Hofbruhaus is good for your soul. I’ll drink to that.

  
My flight to Rome is delayed. Due to the size of my bag, which is way over the cabin allowance, I’ve had to put on a thick leather jack as well as two t-shirts and trousers over my shorts. I’m also carrying three books, two diaries and an iPad. The pockets of my jacket are loaded with miniature toiletries, note pads, pens, a pocket chess set and tea bags. I look like an overdressed psychopath trying to smuggle items that aren’t actually illegal. An Italian couple argue loudly in the departure lounge. Thanks to an old colleague from Florence the limited Italian that I know is vulgar. I know what Vaffanculo means. It means fuck you. The woman shouts Vaffanculo. A lot.

Rome: Hostel Two Ducks is a stark reminder that, up until now, I’ve been very lucky with accommodation. If I were being polite I’d call it aged. If I were being accurate, which I am, I’d call it grotty. It’s located on the fifth floor of a crumbling apartment block on a dark backstreet in the dodgiest section of an already sinister looking part of town. I ascend to the top of the building in a jerky wooden lift which looks like it hasn’t been maintainence checked since it was installed sometime during the early reign of Mussolini. If Doctor Who fell on hard times this is the splintery replacement Tardis he would use. It’s antique. The cables strain and squeak as the box of death heaves up the elevator shaft. With every jerk I’m expecting the faltering cables to snap plummeting me to my doom Wile E Coyote style.

Survive the elevator of terror and meet a bored looking Indian chap at the check in desk who is totally uninterested in my arrival. The booking system is as antiquated as everything else in the desolate building. He blows the dust off of an old diary and checks for my name. I feel like I’m intruding as he begrudgingly leads me to dark room with four bunk beds pushed against the walls. The light remains off as my surly chaperone points to the top bunk closest to the door.
“You…here” he mumbles before wandering off.
I’m left standing in the dark, still sweating in my jacket, holding my bag feeling totally confused. Is he coming back? He’s gone for a good ten minutes before returning with a set of keys which he jangles in my face. He explains which one opens which door but they seem rather superfluous as I’ve just waltzed through every single one of the doors myself and none of them were locked including the main entrance.

I’m famished and sprint to the nearest pizzeria I can find. In a starved panic I point to a margarita and ask for lots. I get two big rectangles which are very cheesy and extremely greasy. I practically inhale them. It’s midnight by the time I return to the cauldron of a bedroom. Eight perspiring bodies roasting in the Mediterranean heat are comforted with with nothing more than two weak portable office fans. They distribute a breeze across the room agonisingly slowly. Every thirty seconds I get a soothing blast of cool air which lasts nowhere near long enough to reduce my body temperature. Lucky I’m so tired that none of the adverse conditions prevent me from drifting off into a sweaty slumber.

Day 12. Rome.

I don’t usually go to church but when in Rome….
On the way to the Vatican I pick up my first souvenir, a bottle opener featuring Pope Francis smiling benevolently. Future drinking sessions shall now commence with the divine blessing of the pontiff as his guiding hand assists with the removal of the cap of a freshly chilled beer. I’m no theologian but I’m certain that this negates whatever mortal or carnal sins I commit while under the influence. Amen

As an Englishman I should get giddy at the prospect of a long and orderly queue. The Vatican museum doesn’t disappoint but, rather fittingly, it requires the patience of a saint. I’m convinced that it’s an intentional test of virtue and commitment. The queue is long. Obviously. But a number of external irritants make it particularly unbearable. Self titled “tour guides” are indiscriminate in who they badger. They offer lucrative holy site packages which include queue jump. To me, it doesn’t seem particularly ascetic exchanging money to enter a Holy site at the expense of others in the line who will now have to wait longer due to your financed pushing in. There’s no point preaching ethics to the hawkers because they’re too busy verbally discharging whatever tosh they think will trick gullible tourists into handing over some dosh. I adopt a tactic of stoicism by putting on a stony poker face and ignoring whoever approaches. It works. For about fifty seconds. They are relentlessly persistent and I end up humouring a gentleman called Ali who identifies us as “brothers” and is willing to offer me his super-duper guided tour for the low, low price he usually reserves for children. It’s still more expensive than all the money I have in my pocket. His attempts to entice me backfire when he promises “three hour non-stop talking guide”. I’m already fed up of listening to his pleading voice after five minutes. Paying for three hours of this acoustic torture would be nothing less than perverse ear sodomy. It’s a polite no from me. Followed by a less polite no. Then an abrupt no. Finally he gets the message. He moves on to the person behind me. I end up hearing the same desperate script, verbatim, twice more. Then one more time, in Spanish. When the group of Californian girls ahead of me in the queue are confronted by Ali, who enquires:
“you speak English…French…Spanish?”
one of the girls, without a drip of sarcasm, replies,
“No, we don’t speak any of those”.
He smirks and begins his spiel.

  
After two hours in the queue of temptation (the temptation to strangle someone that is) I make it to the museum which is a sensational spectacle of ancient sculpture and fine art. But there is one one monumental problem; the visitors inside. Now I realise that I am a tourist myself. It’s not the presence of large numbers of people that I’m objecting to. It’s the lamentable behaviour I witness which is appallingly inconsiderate. I’m pushed, shoved and poked. People block passages by stopping to fiddle with their oversized cameras. Kids scream. They’re bored, obviously. I get hit in the face by blasted selfies sticks so many times that I don’t know how I don’t end up ramming one so far somebodies backside that their next Instagram post is a photo of the inside of their own colon. I really do hope that their actually is a God and he casts every single person who has ever used one of these narcissism poles into the fiery pits of hell where Satan subjects them to an endless slideshow of every selfie ever taken for enternity while their eyes are clamped open like the reconditioning scene from A Clockwork Orange.

Eventually I reach centrepiece of the museum: The Sistine Chapel. So was it worth it? Battling through the army of audio guide zombies to get here?
Honestly?
Yes.
While gazing up in awe into Michelangelo’s heaven the infuriating crowd swarming around me evaporate from consciousnesses. I’m not religiously inclined but I find it impossible not to be moved by a demonstration of such meticulous skill and immense ethereal beauty. I spent what feels like hours engrossed in celestial appreciation before my neck starts to ache and I’m forced to plunge my awareness back to temporality where I find myself squashed in the middle of a group of French tourists who desperately try to take photos on their phones while an angry guard screams
“NO PHOTO”.
He’s completely ignored. I fight my way out of God’s paradise into the scorching heat of hell outside. Rome, in the height of summer, is extremely hot. St Peter’s square feels like a giant frying pan. There’s no shade yet still I find more people selling selfie sticks than bottles of water. Says all you need to know about human egotism if you ask me. Jesus wouldn’t approve. 

Esteban 

Dishevelled Travels. Germany. Part 4.

Standard

Day 8. Munich.

On a crowded metro train with panelled wooden interior. An elderly nun stares at me disapprovingly. What does she know?
Unfortunately I arrive at the Olympic Park forty three years too late. As impressive a structure as it is a stadium is slightly boring when there’s nothing going on inside of it. Also it has been stripped of the track and the field. So, essentially, I’m looking a large collection of empty green seats. Decide to visit every single toilet block in the stadium to make the entrance fee worthwhile. I admire the graffiti left on the walls by visiting supporters from during the period when the stadium served as the home ground for Bayern Munich. My favourite reads Red Star Headbangers ’96 which sounds like the fan club of an Eastern European thrash metal band.

It’s more lovely over in the swimming hall where members of the public are able to take a dip in the same pool in which moustachioed chlorine hunk Mark Spitz won seven gold medals for the USA in 1972. I’ve forgotten my trunks and skinny dipping is against the rules, unfortunately, so instead I sit in the judges’ chair and watch a group of teenagers messing around on the diving boards. Lack of triple somersault and considerable splash on entry means that I can’t award any score higher than a 2.7. One of them does do a pretty devastating running bomb however which garners the attention of the vigilant lifeguard and her whistle. I give that one a 6.

  
On the beers again tonight (well I am in Germany after all). The good thing about the campsite is that it has a very sociable atmosphere. Get chatting to a trio of Irish girls who all have names which I can barely pronounce properly let alone spell correctly. Lots of Es and Os. They are primary school teachers from Kilkenny who work in Dublin. I love their accents. Also get chatting to a timid young lad from Loughton in Essex which isn’t too far from where I hail from. It transpires that it’s his 21st birthday. Well that’s it, time to celebrate. Like magic the girls produce a water bottle filled with vodka and lemonade (trust the Irish to come fully prepared) and we all decide that a night on the town is on the cards. After necking the mixer we head to the trams where we bump into some smartly dressed locals who are also up for a party. They share their white wine with us and lead us to a very dark and expensive bar in the city centre. By now we are all totally plastered and head to the nightclub across the road. We lose our local guides, or rather they, purposely, lose us. The club is immensely busy. I can barely wrestle my way to the bar. I remember why I don’t like nightclubs as I have to repeatedly bellow my order at the bar guy so he can hear me over the deafening Euro pop. Clubs are busy, loud, full of obnoxious jerks and there’s never anywhere to sit. I’m getting too old for this crap. I’ve also made the fatal error of splitting from the group. I have a better chance of finding a long lost evil twin on an isolated Polynesian Island than locating these Irish girls in this bustling crowd and I’m too drunk to really remember what any of them look like. Finish my beer, battle my way to the toilet, have a big wee then head outside to flag a cab home. I never saw birthday boy again but I hope he enjoyed his night. I wonder if my primary school teachers drunk so much? They had to put up with me as a pupil so I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

Day 9. Munich.

A new morning, a new hangover. It’s becoming a habit. The irony being that it’s when you drink so frequently that you stop noticing the acute adverse physiological symptoms that you’ve developed a serious problem. I take the pounding headache and Sahara throat as a sign that my body hasn’t given up all hope and still yearns to revert back to a state of reasonable health. Optimistic.

Off to the English Garden which is the largest urban park in Europe. This time I do remember to take my swimming trunks as I’m told that there’s a waterfall and river to bask in. Pause for a quick power nap on a bench before heading to the source of the fast flowing stream which cuts through the park. It’s a wonderfully sunny day and the riverbank is filled with young attractive Germans as well as some not so young, and very much naked, older Germans. Why are nudists always shrivelled prunes? I dip my toe into the water. It’s freezing. Take a deep breath, and a small run up, then plunge myself the icy waters. That certainly woke me up. My hangover vanishes instantly. It’s startlingly refreshing and feels religiously purifying. I am being washed of alcoholic sins as well as beer sweats. However, redemption doesn’t come without punishment. The current is much stronger than I had anticipated and I’m dragged helplessly like a drowning cat downstream. There’s no point in fighting it. I relent and let the rapids drag me to what could be a watery doom. I’m whizzed under at least three bridges and past numerous bank side tree branches which are agonisingly out of reach. Faster and faster. I have no idea how deep it is but it doesn’t matter because I’m travelling too fast to stop and sink. I feel like one of those daredevils who throw themselves over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. Eventually I cling on for dear life to a purposely installed metal pole about a mile downstream from where I have safely deposited my clothes and valuables in a bush. It will be a soggy and indecent walk of shame through Munich if somebody has pinched them. I guess that the metal pole has been placed here because in the past idiots like myself have ended up drifting into Austria. I climb out of the river and tiptoe painfully over pebbles and dry twigs all the way back to the beginning. Check the bush. A tramp hasn’t nicked my stuff. Brilliant. Perch on the riverbank, take a another big deep breath, jump back in.

After three rounds in the rapids I’m cleansed cleansed both physically and spiritually. On my way home I stumble across a bizarre shrine to Michael Jackson at the foot of a statue of an old army general outside a hotel. Fans have delicately placed hundreds of photos, cards, bunches of flowers and handwritten letters to the deceased King of Pop. There are even celebratory posters to mark the day in which he was found innocent of charges of indecency. It really is rather peculiar and I simply cannot figure out why this alter of memorabilia is here in the middle of Bavaria. It isn’t even the hotel in which he chucked his kid, mattress or whatever it’s called, over a balcony because that was in Berlin. Very strange. Search in vain for a gold effigy of Elvis (if you’re going to have the King of Pop you have to have the King of Rock n Roll aswell) but no such luck.

  
There’s a load of French school kids running around and making an absolute racket at the camp tonight. I hate children. Especially noisy ones. Especially French ones. Especially noisey French ones. Merde.

Day 10. Munich.

Mingle around camp all day. Meet some interesting people and we spend the day chatting and swapping stories. Part of the joy of travelling isn’t just the places you go but the people you meet while you are there. As trite as that sounds it really is true. I notice that all conversations with fellow travellers follow the exact same script:
“Where are you from?”
“How long have you been travelling for?”
“Where have you been so far?”
“Where are you going next?”

The people I spend the day with are:

Phoebe. A cute girl from Liverpool. She insists that she actually lives on Penny Lane. She gets annoyed when I ask if she went to school in Strawberry Fields, if her nan is Eleanor Rigby and if she’s actually a walrus. She’s just finished her A-Levels and hasn’t even turned 18 yet. I feel old. The group of friends she’s with are flustered because one of them has lost her passport and they have to go to the embassy to sort it out. Phoebe stays at camp teaches me how to play a card game called Spit then proceeds to totally annihilate me at it. No mercy. I think she refuses to go easy on me as a beginner because of the sarcastic Beatles questions. This is begging of what becomes a dismal run of competitive pursuits today.

Alfredo. An Italian guy who makes me feel younger again as he’s in his 30’s. He hobbles around on crutches with his foot in a cast due to a football injury. It hasn’t deterred him from travelling though. We have a lengthy conversation about fascism and pilot suicide. We both have flights to catch tomorrow. To Italy.

Mejdi. A Kosovan with long black hair who is allergic to wearing a shirt. He invites me for a game of chess. I agree out of politeness knowing full well how awful I am at the game. I just don’t have the patience. Plus I’m a pacifist. He absolutely obliterates my helpless army. The pawns don’t stand a chance as he charges towards my back line aggressively. This bloody massacre takes place to the soundtrack of Mejdi’s favourite tunes playing from his phone. He’s got good taste. The playlist includes The Pixies, The Doors and The Rolling Stones. He tells me that he used to be a fan of Radiohead but had to stop listening to them because “they make my heart sad”. Considering how little English he understands this is testimony to precisely how depressing that bands’ lyrics are. Back in Kosovo he goes to karaoke every Wednesday night with his friends. His song of choice is Bone Machine by The Pixies. Consequently every Thursday morning he has a sore throat.

After humiliating me twice I begrudgingly accept a third and final scuffle. This time we have an attentive audience of his Kosovan friends who mutter and snigger to each other in Albanian. I’m convinced that they are mocking my lack of battlefield control and thus my virility. I approach this match with a new, and I think ingenious, tactic. I play the long game. My plan is to take so long to move my pieces that Mejdi finally succumbs to a fatal lung disease from all the cigarettes he chain smokes while waiting patiently for me to make a move which he already knows is going to be a dreadful decision. Like a form of board game based Chinese torture he watches me brood over possible moves yet consistently pick the worst possible advancement. I haven’t looked it up but I’m sure that the official rules of chess state that it’s a draw if your opponent dies from a chronic illness during a lengthy match. Alas my cunning plan fails. My queen is slaughtered and my desperate King flees for his life like a coward to the corner of the board where he is executed by a belligerent bishop.
“I think is finished” my victorious advisory announces. He’s right. As I surrender Jim Morrison sings “This is the end. My only friend, the end.”

Lick my wounds from the front line with a few beers with a girl from Texas who describes herself as an Asian American liberal molecular biologist lesbian. She’s called Joy. She must tick a lot of boxes on questionnaires. We are joined by the others and as the beers flow conversation gets deep. Existentially deep. The discussion of life, the universe and everything gets a bit animated. The camp manager isn’t interested in our philosophical musings and banishes us all to bed. In the tent myself and Joy, who is sleeping on the other side of the tent, attempt to continue the discussion via morse code using the torch on our phones. Obviously this fails as neither of us can actually understand morse code. Give up and fall asleep where I have a nightmare about Mejdi chasing me while riding a giant chess horse.

Esteban.

Disheveled Travels. Germany. Part Three.

Standard

Day 6. Frankfurt to Munich.

Restless night on the Megabus. Up on top deck I feel every sway as if I’m on a deep sea fishing trawler during a storm. Unable to contort myself into a position comfortable enough to dose off. On the few occasions I do flirt with the sandman a bump in the road jolts me awake and the process of attempting to mould my inflexible body into a bearable posture begins again. At 4am I try reading to take my mind off of how uncomfortable I am. Settle into Ernest Hemmingway’s To have and to have not which turns out to be very gripping as well as astonishingly politically incorrect. Enjoy a pleasant sunrise over the small Bavarian villages the Autobahn detour has sent us through.

Arrive in Munich just after 7am. Clean myself up in the station toilets (classy) and head for the tent. 

Not a tent. 

The tent.

The Tent is a huge marquee on a campsite just outside the city centre. I arrive ready to collapse just as everybody else is waking up. The tent resembles a refugee camp or one of those emergency shelters that they house victims of a major earthquake in that you see on the news. Fifty rickety bunk beds set in rows filled with fidgeting bodies. I pick a bottom bunk and pray that nobody climbs on top because the flimsy wire frame looks like it’ll cave in if any creature with a body mass greater than a poorly fed kitten lays on it. I’m worried I’ll become the filling in a mattress sandwich. The noise is a continuos cacophony. The pained echoes of the human condition: a cough, followed by a sneeze, followed by a snore, followed by a bed frame squeak, followed by a fart, followed by another cough, followed by another fart. Fortunately I’m so exhausted that the noise of bodily exhalations doesn’t bother me and I conk out fully clothed while everybody else is getting ready to brush their teeth and start the day.

Wake in the early afternoon when the tent reaches a temperature that disorientates me into thinking that I have passed out in somebodies greenhouse. If I stayed any longer I’d have marrows sprouting from my ears.
Pop into the city centre briefly and stumble across a gay pride parade. This is the second time that I’ve accidentally ended up in the middle of a gay pride celebration. I did the same thing in London last month. Is it a sign?

Back at the camp I hear Mozart’s Turkish March. Intrigued I follow the music, with a march of course, into the hut from where it is coming from. I discover that it’s not a recording. I find a girl playing a piano. She’s really good. I’m thoroughly impressed and slightly jealous that I do not possess the musical ability to casually key out pieces of classical music at a campsite.

Later on in the evening I enjoy a few bottles of beer with a group of young lads from Leicester. We are joined by a group of Danish travellers (3 girls and 1 guy) all of whom have immaculate bright blonde hair. Spend most of the night watching the drunkest of the lads, called Paddy, try hopelessly to chat up one of the Danish girls. He’s persistent if nothing. He goes on for a good couple of hours without success. Poor lad. We’ve all been there.

At 1am it’s lights out but myself, the Danish guy and the girl who has finally worn Paddy down (he stormed off to bed in a dejected sulk) sneak off to the far end of the campsite to continue drinking and conversing in hushed voices. We are soon joined by another of the Danish girls who had mysteriously vanished about an hour ago. She shows up with a smug grin on her face. The two girls start talking in Danish while I sit there idly not even bothering to try and work out what they are saying. She then skips off towards the toilet block.
“What did she say?” I ask.
It turns out that she had been getting acquainted, intimately, with a gentleman in the toilets.
“Paddy?”
“No”
“Oh right. So why were you sniggering?”
“Because my friend…she said that the guy…he’s very big”.
That explains that grin .
At this point I notice that the two I’m sitting with are also getting a bit close and I begin to feel a like a spare part. Not wanting to get involved in any sordid Scandinavian shenanigans in a field I leave them to it and trot off to bed. I walk past Paddy asleep in his bunk. He looks upset.

  

Day 7. Munich.

Wake up with slight hangover. It’s exacerbated by the heat of the tent which becomes a giant human oven after sunrise. Couple of eggs for breakfast then off to the city to soak up a bit of culture. Decide that the teddy museum is too expensive and mosey around some churches instead. They’re free.

St Michael’s church features an exhibition called Clouds by an artist named Michael Pendry. It is comprised of hundreds of little white pieces of rope dangling from a fence. Visitors are encouraged to tie a knot in one of the strings to represent whatever is troubling them. Evidently there’s a lot of things on peoples’ minds in Munich as I could barely find a spare piece to tie a tight double knot of my own.

Near the main square is St Peter’s church which is home to a rather macabre crowd puller. She’s called St Mundita and she’s a human skeleton dressed in luxurious royal robes and draped in jewels while holding a ornate cup. She’s propped up awkwardly on her side in a glass display cabinet like an distasteful exhibit from Ripley’s believe it or not. She really is deeply disturbing to gaze at. The glass eyes slid into her sockets don’t help with the general feeling of eeriness. She’s actually Roman and how she ended up here is the result of a gruesome Baroque era fashion whereby the remains of unknown Roman citizens were removed from catacombs and venerated as saints. Ultimately she’s a random woman pulled from her tomb and worshiped by members of the Roman Catholic Church. In what must be a bit of an insult she has been afforded the title of patron saint of unmarried women. She’s reppin’ all the single ladies. I guess nobody liked her enough to put a ring on it. But they had no problem stuffing her skull with gems.

 

All the single ladies…

 
The church has an ninety two metre high meter steeple tower which visitors can climb. I tackle the strenuous calf busting stairway but soon live (just about) to regret it. It’s important to note here that I’m a wuss. And when you’re a wuss ninety two meters in the sky is high. Really high. At the top of the steeple is narrow balcony leading around edge of the tower. It’s barely wide enough for single file and you have to walk around clockwise. Once you leave the relative safety of the tower building and commit to walking around it there’s no turning back. It’s one way only. A deep breath and I pluck up the courage to go for it. About five steps in my confidence begins to wane and I start to seriously regret my decision. On a clear day the view extends as far as the alps. It’s breathtaking. Probably. I’m too busy readjusting my vice like grip on the railing and looking down at the floor while shuffling along like a whimpering ninny. I managed to convince myself myself that the thin wire cage covering the walkway, which is shaking in the breeze, definitely is safe. I’m sure nobody has ever fallen off of this tower. But there’s a first time for everything. Absolute no chance of stopping for a photo. My hands are shaking and I have vivid images of my phone tumbling through the fence to the pavement below with me flailing behind it after leaning too hard on the mesh which gives way, my body splatting on the pavement in a red squishy mess putting diners off of their lunch in the restaurant below. Halfway around and my state of psychological discomfort elevates from manageable worry to frenzied panic. “I NEED TO GET DOWN”, the irrational voice in my head screams. The problem is that less cowardly visitors block the walkway by taking photos and admiring the view. A rapid scurry to safety is not possible unless I bundle past the ditherers which actually would be dangerous. Plus if they did fall they’d probably clamp on to my arm as they went over the ledge to drag me down with them. With a sigh of immeasurable relief I finally make it all the way around. I practically run down the stairs to get my feet back to precious earth. The look of terror on my face as I sprint down the stairway must have been slightly concerning for those of whom I pass making their way up. I comfort myself with a salted pretzel which is deliciously buttery and restores calm. To add insult to injury the clouds, which have been aching to burst all day, finally gave way as I sheepishly walk back to the tent. I return soaked in rainwater and shame. Nobody must ever know about my little episode up the tower. Oh wait…

Esteban.