One of the key elements in the adventure of travel must be the approaching and crossing of borders. In our present arrangements of nation states, the formalised power of uniformed (and armed) officials to man borders and to check on those seeking to cross them, points to something that has deep unease in it. Fear of the stranger, fear of chaos, fear of those with different ways of doing things.
Personally speaking, I am the least travelled person I know: no taking the trail east when I was twenty, no gap year; some family (as a father) camping holidays in France, short sorties to Germany and Spain, ermmm . . . that’s about it. Facing the train trip East to Istanbul was about facing and ultimately crossing borders in my mind, that were formed by our post-war history of a divided Europe. Identifying with the whole pan-European project of the EU, could I wait for this political endeavour to spread across the globe?
On the other hand I’ve long felt drawn to Middle and Eastern Europe through my reading of European novels in translation. I should also mention Patrick Leigh Fermor’s (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water) account of his little walk to Istanbul in the thirties which has enthralled me; so here I was on a train bound for Belgrade about to cross the border between Austria and Hungary. Hungary being a mysterious, exotic sort of place . . . I’m reminded of a Hungarian woman, is the name Klari the right one?, a Probation Officer (No! I swear I was running a workshop). She was certainly exotic and mysterious with her somewhat Mongolian features, that carved mouth with its full lips, direct eyes (were they really as green as my memory suggests?), and long straight hair way down her back . . . The question (which I always have the choice to explore) in relation to a woman is what is the nature of my sexual response to her–am I attracted, terrified, or coolly indifferent? In our language, to make love to a woman is to know her and as I approach the border between an Austria which ‘feels’ known, familiar, recognisable, and a Hungary which doesn’t, the excited anticipation asks, how much will I be able to ‘know’ her?
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