Unexpected Layover in Iceland Courtesy of Icelandic Airlines
This is what I think probably happened during my summer escape to and from Istanbul in the summer of 68. It was all part of my Orient Express jaunt that began early that summer in Iceland and almost ended in Istanbul before making it to Germany and later home for my senior year at Berkeley. I had almost twenty-five hundred dollars saved from my Jewish foundation scholarship and the extra hours working the library bookmobile. It was good money and could last me all summer if I planned it right, or wrong, or not at all.
This road bite starts in late August when Ib and I left Istanbul via train during a paranoid rush that would take us to Sofia, Belgrade, and other places, before leaving me at a US military base in Karlsruhe, West Germany where my sister and her husband were stationed. I did leave Germany to go east after stocking up on cigarettes and jeans before I finally went home but that’s another piece.
First, a word about meeting and traveling with Ib. My round-trip ticket on Icelandic Airlines from NYC to Amsterdam cost $186. After three weeks of traveling across the US in a 56 VW bug checking out county fairs, national parks, and local bars (that’s another story) I was ready to take to the air My luck was with me as I had an unexpected three-day layover in Reykjavik due to a bent propeller. The Icelandic turbo-prop plane had approached Iceland during a ferocious icy storm that rattled us to the core and bent one of the propellers. I didn’t have any scheduled plans for Europe so it was great that Icelandic Airlines put me up for three nights as they waited for a new propeller to be installed. It was the first time I had slept in a real hotel bed in almost a month.
It was a truly dreamlike introduction to Europe. I was probably the only Latino in Iceland at the time and the scenery was out of this world with glaciers moving to the sea and irritable volcanoes burping just inland. I was in shock as I had never seen so many blonde, blue eyed, tall girls everywhere and they seemed to find me of special interest. The guys were mostly tall Nordic types who found me curious but I reserved my attention for the girls. No details at this point but enough to say that the Nordic girls at the hot springs and the bars were very friendly, some would say intimate. The guys were mostly OK and I spent two days partying with a bunch of Icelandic college students and European hipsters who taught me how to drink brennivín, a crazy schnapps with caraway flavor. I also had my first taste of kief that a Dutch guy had just brought in from the Maldives. The Dutch guy was Ib and he had just finished college and was on break before taking an accountant job at Shell. We got along well and he asked if he could stick with me for a few weeks before he had to report for work. Ib and I bonded in the two days over drink, cod, kief, and blondes so I said cool and we left together for Amsterdam once the plane could spin its propellers again.
Istanbul Instincts and the Orient Express
Our rail trip out of Istanbul had an unexpected start. Ib and I had been exploring Istanbul for about a week when my instincts cried out that we had to leave Istanbul. It was past midnight and my skin was crawling and I could hear my abuela’s voice in my ear telling me to get smart and get out. The hotel was ancient and at one time had been the home of a reputed crime boss who had made a deal with Atatürk to keep his side of town under control in return for informal export privileges for the growers in the countryside I don’t know if the story was true but the hotel was cheap at about two US dollars a day and access to the hammam. Our room had two cots bent with age and suspicious sheets smelling of smoke and riddled with cigarette burns. The only saving grace was that we were on the fifth floor and could see out to the mosques and the Galata bridge that sparkled with lights and the constant flow of people, donkeys pulling carts, and vehicles farting exhaust. The rooms had seen their best decades earlier but the hotel was cheap, close to the main bazaar, and the hammam deep beneath the main floor gave me an experience I will never forget, but that’s another story for later. Back to trusting instincts.
Before leaving home my abuela told me to always trust my instincts, especially when I was on my own and far away from family and friends. My instincts were screaming when I told Ib around midnight that we had to get out of town now. He was mad as we only had half of our promised kilo of kief that we paid forty dollars upfront to Mario, a German hipster and college drop-out who also stayed at the hotel. I figured that a pound was better than nothing. I trusted my instincts to get out of the hotel immediately. Mario told us earlier that day that the local police guy was demanding more money before letting his new shipment arrive, including our other half key. I told Ib it was time to leave and he said some cuss words in Swedish that he had taught me a few days earlier. I got his message and told him that he could come or not and he and said that he was leaving under protest. He felt confident that it was Ok to wait for the other half. I told him again I was leaving and he could wait. It had cost us forty bucks and I was content with my share of kief. Ib shrugged his shoulders and said he had gotten use to me and we would leave together.
It was a little after midnight as we put on our shoes, stuffed our backpacks and went down to the front desk. Ib had grumbled the whole time and wanted to go back to the room when we saw that there was no one at the front desk. I didn’t want to ring the bell and hassle with the grouchy front desk man so I walked outside and spotted the night watchman who was smoking a cigarette while leaning on tghe wall next to the front door. He recognized me as I had offered him a couple of cigarettes in the past so I knew his name was Omar. I walked over and told Omar that we were leaving and wanted our passports. At first, he pretended he didn’t understand us but I kept repeating “passaporte”. He motioned to the office and gave a hand signal that it was locked. I pulled out a small wad of lira, and after some bickering he went to the office and returned with our passports. He held them in one hand and motioned for more lira. I just looked at him, grabbed both passports, and left him shouting probably some very unkind things at us as we walked out the door. I did hand him another cigarette as we quickly hit the street to the station to take the Orient Express out of Istanbul.
I had done my research and knew that the Orient Express, the grand old lady, was scheduled to leave twice daily. The classic Orient Express left a little after midnight and it was the popular one with some deluxe wagons, a restaurant open all night, and a bar. We could have caught it as it was just leaving but I wanted the cheapo ticket for the next one that left at six and was supposed to arrive in Sofia in twelve hours or so. Neither of us slept that night at the Istanbul station. We squatted down on a small iron bench and kept awake on the lookout for police and station guards. It was a hot night and the train station was littered with debris and small groups of scruffy looking guys roaming the station. We pretended to be in deep talk sitting on our rusty bench and didn’t make eye contact with the guys who would occasionally walk over to check us out. I spoke only Spanish when they asked us anything while Ib spoke Danish, part of our master plan to keep distant from strangers. One guy, a bit older than the others, walked over and would not leave although we motioned him away with our hands. His face was scarred, oozing pimples, and he looked loaded with something more than beer or weed. He motioned to our backpacks and walked over to Ib. Ib was six three and me six one and when we stood up together we towered over the guy. He pointed to us, said some shit in a loud and nasty tone and we said “fuck off”. He backed up but not before spitting something in front of us. Ib wanted to punch him but I held him back. We stood standing for the rest of the time until we could board the train. By boarding time, we were bone tired and had not slept since running from our hotel to the train station in the middle of the night.
The moment they allowed boarding we rushed to the first second class wagon that we were told was close to a food wagon where we could buy food as the restaurant was reserved for first-class passengers. We were stupid to think we could get into that wagon as people had camped out at strategic locations and they filled that and most of the other wagons closer to the front within a few minutes. We finally made our way into one of the last wagons, near the end of the train. It did not look like it was ready to head out as there was debris everywhere. Most of the windows were cracked or jammed open, the wood benches had piles of debris under them and the few working ceiling lights were putting on a psychedelic light show. Within a few minutes our wagon was fully occupied by poor looking folks, mainly men and all of them holding baskets, sacks, and cages filled with goods and livestock. This was the start of the grand historic line that embarked from the Sirkeci Train Terminal to points north and west. I can still smell the rank air of our wagon that grew richer each hour on the train; it still makes me weak with hunger and desire.
Border Time
It took more than twelve hours on the dilapidated Orient Express to make our way past the Bulgarian border to Sofia. The sun was elbowing its way on the eastern horizon and we were groggy, thirsty, hungry, smelled like soot and past ready to get off the train. It had been a rough and slow ride for the first three hours as we stopped at every train station on the route to Sofia as the locals scampered off and on carrying baskets and sacks filled with produce and other goods. Ib and I had not packed any food other than some stale crackers and moldy, but very tasty, cheese that we took out and ate within the first hour of the ride. We were the new show in town as everyone on the wagon turned to look at us whenever we got up to take a piss or stretch our legs, but only one of us at a time so that we could guard our backpacks and seats.
Our routine was to look at each other and talk crap every time someone walked by and slowed down to stare at us. After what felt like days, rather than hours, we arrived at the Bulgarian border where the train changed engines and the border guards came onboard. They were young guys, probably not as old as us. Here we were, a Chicano college hipster with a beard, mustache and long hair and a clean-cut very tall, blond, blue-eyed Viking. The two border guards who came through our wagon were surly and looked tired and bored. Their dull green uniforms looked washed out and they had ancient looking carbines slung across their backs. They walked over to us and motioned for our passports. We always carried them in our pants, reached in and passed them the passports. They spent a lot of time looking at them, going through each page filled with a jungle of visas and markings. They looked confused and I pointed to us and said students, estudiantes. They said something to each other and pointed at our backpacks and motioned for us to open them up. I was ready to pass out or piss in my pants or do both. Ib saw my concern as we had split the kief and had buried our stashes at the bottom of our backpacks. Ib calmly took out a pack of Camels from his backpack, opened it up and offered each of the soldiers a smoke. They took them and kept motioning to open up the bags. Ib had balls as he gave the pack to the rougher looking of the two and tried to shake his hand. The soldier didn’t take Ib’s hand but did take the pack of cigarettes and they walked away. We were saved by a smoke.
Sofia and Bulgarian College Students
The ride from the border to Sofia took another four hours and we could barely stand up and walk as we stumbled off the train. Our tickets were good through Belgrade but we were too tired to eat any more of the black smoke from the Bulgarian engine, endure more stares, or hold our breath when we went to the WC that was a broken piece of plastic circling a shit laced hole in the floor. We were ready for a break.
Neither of us knew a word of Bulgarian but we figure out someone might know English or French, as Ib was good with both. I didn’t think my chances of finding a Spanish speaker was high and left it to Ib to go to the ticket counter and speak to an old guy who was smoking a cigarette. Ib walked up to him, offered him a cigarette, and started speaking French and the guy responded. Ib gave him a few more cigarettes and walked back to me. He said that we should go to Sofia University as there were students there who knew English and French and lived in coops. Ib said it was at least a three hour walk so we called the Sputnik travel service, the only official one in the city, for a taxi and waited almost two hours before a junk pile called a Skoda drove up. The car was a piece of crap but we were happy to take it to the University and it cost us less than a dollar of our new lev, what they called their money. Ib and I had both traded ten dollars each at the train station post office and had small bundles of lev as we didn’t expect to stay more than a day or two to rest up before going back on the train to Belgrade.
We felt that we had been transported to heaven as the Skoda left us at a square, a true zocalo, in front of the University. It was Saturday mid-morning and the square was ringed with cafes and shops catering to students. It was truly hog heaven for us as we found a table with an umbrella and a blackboard menu in French and Bulgarian. I was glad that Ib was a very cosmo European who knew French and English well and he could gargle in German if needed. A lovely young woman, probably a student, came to the table, shook her head for a moment as she looked us over, and said student? We both said yes and she explained that they had only two offerings, moussaka and fried carp. We both chose the moussaka and asked for beer. She left and came back within a few minutes and the moussaka was hot and tasty and the beer was lukewarm and thick as molasses. It was a glorious meal and we barely noticed that a bunch of students had slowly gathered at nearby tables and were looking at us as they spoke among each other.
We were on our third beer when a young man walked over and asked in OK English if we were Americano or English. We stood up and I said I was a Chicano. He turned his head and yelled out to the table where his friends were all looking at us and they yelled back to him. He said no one knew what a Chicano was and I told him I was from Mexican parents born in California. He just shook his head and turned to Ib who said his name and that he was from Denmark. The young man was a bit shorter than me but looked to be in good shape. He just smiled, nodded his head up and down, said yes. He was probably a year or two older than us but he looked assured and acted cool. He was probably about five ten, good shape, jet black hair, straight mustache, and a sharp nose, a genuine Slavic type of guy. I knew this was a special moment and he held out his hand to me and I took it and shook. Then he shook hands with Ib and said his name was Damyan and that he was a medical student. He waved to his table and told the waiter we were moving and we walked together to his table.
There were three other guys at the table. It turned out that the other guys were third year students in the engineering program. All cool guys who shook our hands and started asking us about Western stuff, especially American, music, politics, and food. Damyan let them talk for a bit and then turned to the two girls, both beautiful, who had not said a word. He told us they were from his home town and that his job was to keep them safe while they went to school to become teachers and maybe find and marry rich and powerful men. The young women were both striking with dark hair, brown eyes, and a pinch of eyeliner and lipstick. They were both dazzling to us as the women in Istanbul, all of them except for young children, were draped and invisible. These beauties made us feel alive again. Damyan said they were in their final year of studies in education and would soon be teachers. I was mesmerized by them and for a moment thought I was back in Mexico at the zocalo watching the women as these two could pass for Latina with their looks and demeanor. I was impressed. They both wore American style jeans along with billowy blouses and thong slip-ons. It felt like I had fallen back into my Berkeley campus on a summer day. Back to the slip-ons. I was happy to see women’s feet and toes again and theirs were beautiful. The two girls nodded at us as Damyan introduced us. They continued to smoke their cigarettes while sipping from tiny cups of coffee. They did not say a word to us but I had fallen in lust with the taller of the two girls who had a smile that punched through my exhaustion. She had long black hair falling across her shoulder and looked great in her jeans. Damyan took stock of our looks and introduced us to the girls, Sofia and Adriana. I walked over, bent down, took Sofia’s hand in mine and bussed her on both cheeks. She smiled and I did the same with Adriana but it was not the same. Ib followed suit with the girls and we stayed with them the rest of the afternoon talking, drinking their surprisingly good red wine, and sharing bigger pieces of each other as the afternoon turned to night.
