Making a choice on two wheels

“Here are the keys”. My grimace of relief as I handed them over betrayed to the landlord the profound implications the gesture had for me. It was the month of September 2003 and I was about to depart.

I was leaving the small flat in gloomy Bergamo where I’d lived for the past four years and heading for a hotel in Germany, the starting point of my little private Odyssey, with a tiny knapsack, a bike, and a book, Claudio Magris’ erudite and spell-binding “Danube”. I looked over the schedule of the unusual challenge I’d set myself and grinned at my own recklessness. I planned to reach the Black Sea in a month starting from the Black Forest, cycling along the banks of the legendary River, the Danube, a blue ribbon I had chosen as the red thread to run through my colour-blind and restless view of life. And what about after? That remained to be seen. For the first time I was to be off for a month all on my own without even a single advance booking. Scope of the endeavour was a reportage of places on route. As it turned out, it was a catharsis. It was initially intended to be an on-the-road inquiry into the state of the Balkans. It was to turn out to be a self-confidence boosting trek along the winding and bending pathways of the mind.

The first carefree turns of the pedals took me over ruddy, sun-drenched Bavarian hills and dales. Every once in a while there were thirst-quenching stops aided by glasses of refreshing, foamy beer. The majestic swelling and changing colours of the strange Danube, the only river that stubbornly sets a straight course across troubled Central Europe, was a sight to behold. I could feel the River heaving and surging; I could even smell it. The more I looked at it the friendlier it seemed to become, like a travelling companion; I felt it was stirring up the milk of human kindness in me.

One afternoon, lulled by the sluggish swell of the waters, drowsy from sheer physical exhaustion, I slumbered away in the shadows cast by the walls of the famous Abbey of Melk, which inspired Umberto Eco’s world-famous novel, “The Name of the Rose”. I hadn’t taken a siesta since the age of five. I was overwhelmed by a deepening sense of peace that was taking possession of me. For an instance I felt as if I was actually experiencing that baffling concept that has taunted the human intellect for centuries: happiness. Indeed, I felt as if I was really alive for the first time. Over the following days I felt a slow change come over me. My wanderlust was beginning to strip me of the heavy, tinselly cloak that burdens our daily lives, pleasantly freeing me of all-absorbing thoughts, woes and concerns, boredom, stress, fears, cell-phone, and mail.

The somewhat odd and venturesome cycling caper I had undertaken was turning into a source of carefree, childlike contentment. The big issues and more commonplace quandaries typical of the routine Western way of life have been whittled down to the bare essentials: “What t-shirt am I going to wear this morning? The same as yesterday’s. What shoes? Likewise”. I no longer cared about reading the morning newspaper or watching television. What’s more, I was starting to cherish my cheerful ignorance, fully captivated by my new lifestyle, in which living required no knowing. It was a life where the pathos that comes from news mongering on a global scale by which the miserable rot of the planet is brought home to us and indeed into our very living rooms to be swallowed with sham sympathy was safely kept at bay.

I was at this stage pedalling along amidst the yellow fields of the Great Plain that lies below Budapest, gulping in the freedom-laden air by the lung-full. I was slowly reaching my destination, drawn on as if by a magnet but at the same time reluctant at the thought of the end in sight. I had met Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians; with the efficiency of a road grader the bicycle had as if swept away the stereotypes and prejudices that come of living comfortably in Western Europe and that I had even tended to for decades! The kind hospitality and warm welcome I received from the people I met have long since been lost by us. After three weeks of this way of life, I had utterly shaken off all vestiges of a materialistic existence and cast off the fetters of consumerism.

A roof over my head and a very small suitcase by my side are all I need now to conduct my life. I can now see Jules Verne’s point when he contended that, “if it only could paint its shell, the happiest animal on Earth would be the snail”; it carries everything it needs around on its back. I had set out to discover the Danube; I had discovered the wanderlust and thrifty soul slumbering in my bosom, instead.
I became fully aware of it while sitting on a bench at Constance in Romania, with the slick waters of the Black Sea stretching out before me and the magic of the journey accomplished dissolving itself in a loaded sunset. I’ve never again had a fixed address since. I move about with a small, 15-kilo suitcase as my only material possession. And, what’s more, I’m happy.