Analog Me
by wjw on March 10, 2015
I’m in search of lost time, as Proust might put it. I’ve got a closet full of slide carousels documenting my various travels through the multiverse, and I’ve just bought a scanner/converter to bring them all into the digital age. So for the last few days I have been soaking in nostalgia for the lost worlds of my youth.
Here I am, barely out of my teens, on the island of Hvar, trying to hitchhike down the Dalmatian coast, which is hard because there’s no road, and you have to flag down a boat. (As I remember, I got picked up by a Yugoslavian LST.) Those were the days! —when you could hitchhike, even behind the Iron Curtain, and not get murdered (mostly).
Good lord, that was a great trip. Paris, Switzerland, Vienna, Dalmatia, Athens, Delphi, Crete, Epidavros, London, Oxford (where I went to college, briefly), Dublin, then home. And I was so busy enjoying myself that it barely registered what an extraordinary time I was having. I’ve never had a journey more diverse or more eye-opening. I was quite a different person when I got back, or so I thought.
Note the original Perry Rodent tee, with the original artwork by Harry O Morris, Jr. I was a fashion plate, even then.
Had Fermor’s “A Time of Gifts” come out by then and inspired you, or was this a more natural 1970s walkabout?
I never did a fraction of the traveling you’ve done, but I had that t-shirt too. (Wore it out, darn it.)
By the way, a book of Harry O. Morris’ art is out from Centipede Press: http://www.centipedepress.com/art/harryomorris.html
That last comment was from me. Not sure why my name. etc., wasn’t automatically entered in the comment form like usual.
I hadn’t read “Time of Gifts,” otherwise I probably would have gone all the way through Bulgaria, and never been heard from again.
No, I was just aiming in the general direction of Greece, and was taking advantage of everything along the way.
Did you ever get to go to Bulgaria, Walter? Highly recommended! I’ve been about five times. I usually get a cheap package holiday and then wander off into the landscape looking for plants (I’m an amateur botanist). I have, of course, been heard from again …
If you’ve never seen the Scarlet Paeony of Constantinople growing in a hornbeam thicket in the Strandzha Mountains, you’ve never lived!
No, I never got to Bulgaria. My rail pass didn’t cover East Bloc countries, which is why I went by boat down the Adriatic coast instead of direct through the Balkans.
I’ll have to check the Scarlet Paeony some other time.
Yes, Fermor is seductive in his writing. I know I was feeling the pull to chuck it all, hop a flight to Amsterdam and set off on his old route when I read “A Time of Gifts” a few years ago after you blogged about it.
The third book was recently published posthumously – it’s in the ever-growing “To be read” pile.
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