Kiss My Grave!

Hello, sweet readers. I left a proverbial cliffhanger at the tail of my last entry, and in the interests of whetting your apetites even further, I'll tell you that since that first "MAJOR CATASTROPHE!", we have have a second MAJOR CATASTROPHE! But I'll get to all that in good time. First of all, I'll pick up where I left off, as our merry band leaves Paris and heads for sunny Vienna..

It was morning in Paris, and a mild one at that. This humble narrator was stalking Parisian streets looking for fruit and nuts with his companions. It was Day 5, and the realisation had set in that perhaps simply alternating between greasy Chinese take-aways one night and greasy Turkish take-aways the next did not fully constitute a balanced diet. We wandered from canape to canape, examining the fresh fruit on offer for Cost/kg, aesthetic appeal and softness to the touch. Having stocked up on a fair selection, we made our way to a nearby cemetary in the interests of making a pseudo-pilgrimage to 'The Doors'-frontman Jim Morrison's grave. His final resting place was attributed almost as many rumours as the circumstances surrouding his mysterious death. We'd heard tales that the (initially unmarked) tomb had been the #1 tourist destination in all of Paris, the site of sordid mass-orgies by night and that it had been set upon by rabid cults of 'Doors' fanatics with supernatural urges, who hoped to dig up his mortal remains and bring him back to life through obscure and bizarre rituals. However, before we embarked on our own journey to visit old Jim, I had more urgent business to take care of. Scatalogical business.

The public toilets in Paris are interesting, in that they are modern in appearance (stylish metal exteriors with electronic doors which open at the touch of a button) and high-tech (with a self-flushing/cleaning/purifying system that could be straight out of Battlestar Galactica), and yet they are, and I believe this is the official scientific term, 'f###king disgusting'*.

*Apologies to my sister, who told me when I last spoke to her that I needed to clean up my language if I wanted to garner any literary acclaim with this travelogue. I, of course, deferred that even with the squeaky-clean vocabulary of a Jerry Seinfeld, literary acclaim would still remain at best a pipe-dream.

Back to the scatology.. the most noticable thing about these facilities is the distinct lack of toilet seats. It was therefore an interesting situation I found myself in when (perhaps because of my excitement at our impending encounter with Mr. Morrison) I realised I was on an unavoidable course to a 'Number Two'. I pushed the button and with a swanky "Fsshhzzt!" the doors slid open and I entered this Parisian WC. I'll spare you the gory details (many of you are probably wishing I'd started that policy a good few paragraphs ago, but I suggest that those people are reading the wrong blog). Let's just say that of all my 18+ years on this earth, what transpired in that public toilet would rank right up there in the list of 'Things I'd Really Like To Forget', along with the first time I saw a dead body (in Mumbai, India), and the entirety of 'Scary Movie 2'.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Jim Morrison's grave..

We arrived at the cemetary, fruit in hand. I was also loaded up with half a baguette and a big hunk of Port Salut cheese. At this point we were fairly well practised at cemetary ettiquette, so we made our way to The Big Board, which for the laymen reading is a list of all the famous folk buried in the grounds. Jimmy M was there, of course, but we were also happily surprised to discover that the Pere Lachaise cemetary also hosts the corpses of Moliere, Chopin and Oscar Wilde. We cross-referenced their assigned grave-numbers with the cemetary map, and planned out our route.**

**It was in writing this paragraph that I realised the extent to which our newfound hobby is morbid and bizarre.

Chopin and Moliere looked rather as expected. Tasteful design, some flowers, some letters of adoration: the usual. Even Jim Morrison's was fairly unsurprising, save for the condom delightfully strewn atop his stone. The real shock'n'horror came when we reached Oscar Wilde's grave. I'm not sure why, perhaps he'd carelessly uttered the line "Kiss my grave!" at some point during his time on this earth, but for some reason his headstone was covered from top to bottom with lipstick kisses, with the occasional "I love you, Oscar!" scrawled betwixt the lipstick adoration. At the foot of the grave was a placard reading, "Please respect this gravestone. Do not grafitti."

After the cemetary (and having wolfed down our fruity delights), we made our way directly to a greasy Turkish kebab shop for undisclosed meat and soggy chips. I needed something to wash the food down, and approached Senor Kebab behind the counter for some tap water. A young guy, perhaps a little too eager to please, zipped down below the counter and whipped out a chilled bottle with four glasses in under six seconds. God forbid, the English tourists should be kept waiting for their free tap water!

Next, we were on our way to the train station, leaving Paris for good. The Hugless Stone entertained the group with an in-depth analasis of 'Star Trek' and a fascinating explanation of why he liked a show whose cumulative episodes and movies would take more than a year to watch, even going solidly, back-to-back. Nerd alert!

The train to Vienna was yet another learning experience. We had a six-bunk cabin the size of a Parisian public toilet, whose bunks folded away to create seats. The Hugless Stone was chosen to attempt the folding, given his super-human strength and nimble co-ordination***.

***For readers unaquainted with The Stone in 'real life', I should perhaps clarify that he lacks a skill for deft, subtle movements. It's perhaps unsurprising that he's an incredible rugby player.

Once the cabin had been sorted we realised three things: (1) the seats were not comfortable, (2) the seats were NOT comfortable and (3) we four kings had two additional passengers joining our cabin in only a few stops time, and it made sense to have the bunks nicely arranged with bags shelved away in order to welcome them. The Hugless Stone thusly set about undoing his good work from moments earlier, until eventually all was ship-shape and ready for nightfall. We climbed into our bunks and exchanged a mellow banter for a while, before I found myself drifting happily into the land of nod.

I awoke a few hours later to see one of our two cabin-mates had arrived. A middle-aged and somewhat overweight French lady, she was sleeping with a calming snore on the opposite bunk below. Relishing my superb vantage point, I reached for my bag to unleash my camera so as to capture the sight for future nostalgic posterity. However, when I reached inside said bag, I discovered the perhaps it was not the smartest move on my part to leave an open carton of Pineapple Juice in the same rucksack as my camera, iPod, and indeed the very same handwritten diary which forms the basis of this blog (or at least acts as a memory jog for my more senile moments). Incredibly, the Gods seem to be smiling upon this blog and it's protagonist, as neither diary nor electronic aparatus were damaged in the slightest. Rucksack emptied and crisis averted, I went back to sleep and awoke in Vienna, as a slightly attractive and very franticly disorganised hostess thrust a dry hunk of bread and a bland cup of cocoa in my face. We were there at last!

Well, readers, I know I promised "MAJOR CATASTROPHES!", but right now my time in the internet cafe has run out and I must defer. But join me next time for all the aformentioned, plus a drum'n'bass rave, a Taxidermy-preserved slave, and an epic poker tournament that separated the mice from the men! All this and more, coming soon..