He’s the 18th century French adventurer who explored his own bedroom in his travelling outfit of pink and blue pyjamas and wrote, ‘Voyage autour de ma chambre‘ (A Journey Around My Room).  It wasn’t his only trip, he also made it to the Caucusus as a soldier.

The point de Botton makes is that travel is a state of mind.  He steps out into his local west London streets ready to be filled with wonderment and it works. The everyday is transformed by his willingness to look again and to see it afresh.

The Latin-American writer Jorge Luis Borges says this:

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
(from El hacedor)

It may be that he is seeing his own reflection or it could be that all he has seen is now, or already was,  part of him.

Or as my friend’s mum puts it, ‘Wherever you go, there you are’.

Once I got to Damascus I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come. I found myself wandering in those nameless streets. But I was glad to have travelled somewhere that’s sometimes spoken of negatively.

Actually, the streets do have names. They’re written on the signs in Arabic and English and also given a number. The numeric code gets round any confusion over inconsistencies in transliteration, I guess. Perhaps in practice nobody who knows the city uses them. For an outsider it’s useful to have a shared frame of reference. That way you can use your existing map and what people tell you as well as what’s actually around you to feel where you are.

Leaving home challenges you into reality, you’re forced to experience and absorb. Back home you can float in the familiar.

malias

malias

There’s something about Paris that makes me not want to avoid cliches.

Arriving in Austria I immediately saw a mountain village, in Romania gypsies with a horse and cart, in Turkey a mosque and in Syria a man wearing a red and white checked headscarf.  It felt like I was winning at stereotype bingo.

Lunch in a Parisain cafe is fine with me.

The old part of the station is covered over with a glass structure.  It’s a bit like a glass dish placed over a piece of aged Roquefort.

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Pulling out of the city we pass timber framed farm houses but none of the shacks improvised from boards and plastic sheeting which sprout on the edges of Belgrade, Bucharest and Istanbul.

It’s been the most difficult thing to keep track of.

The bar I go to in Strasbourg is like a pub with wooden chairs and half-curtains.  The barman is tall and skinny with an ironic manner, pure  Brick Lane.

The city is very comfortable with Christmas decorations in the streets and shop windows.  People stuff their faces in cosy German-style beer parlours or Patisserie tea rooms.

I can see why the European Parliament chooses to spend one week here each month.

When I arrive I see people waiting for the shopping mall to open its doors for the day. Thinking of Damascus Souk I go in and look around the same way, as if everything were strange and all the details were deeply interesting.

We head together up an escalator under a pyramid skylight. The multimedia store Fnac’s crammed with gadgets and gifts, including Johnny Hallyday CDs and electric photo frames.

I leave.

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