Off into the Blue, A Forgotten Joy

The world is vomiting on climate change and geopolitical tensions. Everything is caught in a harsh trauma of half-truths. I break into the future damaged, more mistrustful and less free in spirit than before. Where are the swans of frivolity when you need them? I borrow a larger backpack and despair at the train times between Genoa and Gibraltar. No matter. The dust of the road, the honor of the nomad, has me back. Interrail as retirement insurance included.

A torn muscle fibre as a travel companion

The pain that has been with me since Leoben reminds me of my fateless, dissolute life. Suspecting a cramp, I hobble onto the night train to Milan. A girl offers to help, I curse and can't even get my backpack onto the top luggage rack by myself. This little gift from the free world will torment me through the summer. I eat Seractil like gummy bears and drag what needs to be stored up high and cooled back to bed.

At this point I was still almost noble-minded, but I only started to cry in a different context, back in Graz. But it shattered all my plans and at the same time the Interrail pass was activated - there was no Zurich Cosmos and I had to go back to the start.

Night train to Milan: Encounters in the compartment

ÖBB and an Arab Italian. The girl in the compartment only goes as far as Udine. The sweaty beard of my night train companion, the slightly too loud conversation with his boyfriend on the cell phone. I tell him about my mishap, he shows sympathy as if he were a FPÖ member with the Ukraine. Some people can't even feign empathy. At some point, in his quarter-sleep, rattling, he has to close the door to the compartment because I'm pretending to be lazy. He leans in close, so close, his body touches mine. He stays stuck on my squinting porn godliness for seconds longer than necessary - none of that has to happen.

Genoa: bubble dreams and reality

Genoa is proof of how desire and reality can often very quickly turn into soap bubble happiness. Genoa was a key to my plans all spring long, even before the flash sale in a casually lucid Italy by bus and country pass To Do. Cinque Terre, for example, is now so easy to achieve, but now the train times and the twitching calf don't fit into the program. The mockery instead of reward only becomes evident much later. Also the desire to stroll along basically meaningless rocks without being a drone and hope for space for photos, of which there are millions online in top quality.

And the view of Genoa itself is, to be honest, hardly worth a tired smile. Four hours of waiting time prove to be enough for a sea. Yes, it feels energetic for a short time to finally be back at the holy Thalasso, at least close to delightfully rewarding maritime needs. It will by no means be the last port city - these prove to be the central theme of the trip.

But Genoa is not just this touristy, but loveless-looking port.

Genoa is the dust and dirt of its squalid suburbs and the drifting mediocrity of its exterior, wrapped in dry, parched heat. I dissolve an Isostar tablet in my Aqua Minerale and, camera at the ready, explore the Porto Antico and this impressive but now lifeless old town beneath the cathedral.

Interrail: A new perspective on travel

Even beyond the continuous use of such a pass, Interrail is an intelligent and unbeatably cheap form of transport. At the end I will have covered around 9000 kilometers, visited 35 cities at least briefly and paid around 370 euros for it. There are so many little things piling up inside me, waiting to be recalled - no highlights, but details and superficial depth without end. A pearl necklace of coincidence, because let's say in advance that not only a little happened, but a lot did. Some dreams could not be realized and need a sequel to follow.

Butterflies of Freedom

Because it is hardly possible anymore to stroll like in Chatwin's time, I want to and will make a clear distinction between the different possibilities and forms, but perhaps something fundamental can be broken out of this degenerate tourism, something that, while different from the monotony, still feels like a modernized quantum leap in nomadism.

Of course, even among the new and modern nomads, some mistakes are becoming a trend. Mindful behavior is rather rare.

I am also a seeker, for words and deeds, for beauty and horror, neither concealing either, not inclined towards satisfaction or eternal novelty, perhaps still a child of restless momentum, paragraph by paragraph, but thankfully slow in the head, so as not to attach meaning to every kick.

It is time for the next train, I cannot take my eyes off the traveler gymnastics of a French backpacker on the same platform. She is the young ideal of

Like Maggie and Shawn, two Welsh girls who have just finished school, who I find sleeping on this bench in the basement of Zurich train station, until we, the expelled, spend the night on another, less comfortable bench provided by the city's public transport company. They are also doing Interrail and are trying to save on hostel costs by only taking night trains across Europe. Totally old school, that was the first thought that came to mind back then.

Maggie and I both Tinder before we talk to each other out of boredom. Shawn sleeps like a kitten. Girls and women can basically sleep like kittens, men seem more like drunken monkeys. Observe the difference in buses and trains. The beautiful flexibility of the female body, the matching aesthetic is present in all countries and cultures, as long as they are not sawed apart by lifestyle and drill.

The two of them are funny, Shawn doesn't talk much, but when she likes something she laughs loudly and abruptly. They then fly on to Vienna, I'm involved in other railroad affairs.

Like Aden, the Indian working in Florence, a roommate in Marseille. He's cycling from Rome to Barcelona, this time treating himself to more than just his tent. He also has a greasy beard, maybe that's in, maybe people really do oil it. I've heard of this custom before, but it's much friendlier and I like that we've worked out a very similar route. He messes up the shower, but that's a general problem in any hostel room you share with the male gender. My gender showers like it sleeps on buses and trains. And I'm only not trans because it seemed too much effort.

Like Martin, the young Brazilian with the German name from Blumenthal, with whom I exchange phone numbers. He is handsome, smart and classy, maybe my daughter likes him, and he is going to a techno festival before he leaves Amsterdam for Carinthia to do volunteer work with children. The perfect son-in-law.

Maybe even like this strange, trashy giant with no name, with whom I share the four-seater seat on the packed regional train to Cannes. At first I don't like him and he's so disgustingly loud, and he's the only one who barely follows social rules - the typical Algiers Frenchman with a lot of space, here I come attitude. A baby at two meters.

But here he is rapping into his smartphone in the middle of the overcrowded regional music. It's annoying, but somehow it's also really cool shit. Whatever this mix of languages is, the rhythm is intense and I can't help but appreciate it by slightly bobbing along. Respect proves to be a lysis once again. Consent is not something he would consider as another option anyway. He's doing this live for his YouTube channel, he says more than he says it.

I would still prefer to share a foursome with the perfect backpacker I saw earlier who is currently reading something, but at least I'm the third coolest person in the entire compartment. That gives me hope.

Ventimiglia and Cannes: Contrasts of the Côte d'Azur

Ventimiglia is basically a road leading from the train station, with a direct view of the sea. I've learned to hate it since I started planning in the Rail Planner because it's difficult to leave the border town before nightfall.

What exactly should one do here?

Getting your way can sometimes end badly and then you do take the nicer train to the azure coast and of course I love the view from the first moment, it is a soft, visually stunning panorama with much better cleaned windows than in Italy.

Moments of shock later, and a nice chat with the guard outside the station, who says that everything is locked and that it is not very safe, but at least it is safer than Nice. I write about the French fiasco in many places, but here we will just let Cannes by night sink in.

When I arrived in Cannes, my laughter died down when I was told late at night that there was no luggage storage as it was already after 10 p.m. And the cheapest hotel that was still available - there are no hostels in this pseudo-rich wannabe chic - cost around 150 for the night that had already started.

Overnight in Cannes: Unexpected beauty

Overrated like everything in the South of France, but nevertheless the planned overnight in Cannes begins with something really beautiful - although not with 60 liters on your back and a killed calf.

Before that, my feet in the sand, the smell of useful grass in my nose and the next Algiers rap, this time from the sound cube of a similar loner on the other side of the jetty at the public beach, triggered me back into the nagging love child. Everything's fine, as long as you don't move too much.

I'm at Plage Macé, the only beach that seems to be busy this evening, and it's populated not by decadent wannabes but by you and me in a thousand variations.

The real luxury is the relaxed people around, the two cuties, who are high on MDMA in the waves with their clothes wet, the dog who is happy and amazed with us all, amidst all the aaaas and ooooochs. In such random hours, the blue is understandable.

Reflections on Travel

Traveling is the eternal dream, the desire, the yearning, the memory of living instead of working and dying. I am also a seeker, of words and deeds, of beauty and horror, neither concealing either, not inclined towards satisfaction or eternal novelty, perhaps still a child of restless momentum, paragraph by paragraph, but thankfully slow in the head so as not to attach meaning to every kick.

Outlook: A foretaste of what’s to come

Whatever I still have to say, how this night in Cannes will go, how everything will come into harmony, kicked into granita in the pearly clear waters of the islands of love, or sometimes not, these are the traces of the joy of dancing through the days like a shadow.

Crowned here in advance, the mystical Narcissus grins in my honor. The blue is a golden, air-polluting sparkling sky in the black night. Afterwards I will listen to a rave and laugh at the supposed luxury of supposed luxury hotels.

And what is forgotten is brought to life, giving dignity to the title of this little elegy to curiosity and the silent cry. Even if the idiots who rule our world are never far away. But that is another space-time haiku, for another flight striving for happiness in nothingness.