h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, so I just realised that I've been referring to this trip so many times that it's about time I actually described it properly.

Year: 1992

Recession - living in a city with a lot of industries, the recession in the early 90ies became pretty obvious pretty soon - and so, I had no trouble getting leave of absence from my w*rk.

Having been smart enough to buy some shares that had increased in value quite a bit, I sold them off and spent it all on a trip I had long dreamt about.

Pink Caravan isn't only the name of this Swedish company, but also the colour of all their buses.

I remember a sign at the back of one of the buses saying something like 'no TV, no toilet, no air-conditioning - but lots of fun!'

Four buses named Pelle, Måns, Bill and Bull (from a Swedish fairy tale) and a pick-up named Maja.

All painted pink.

Around 120 people all together.

So *how* do you get from Sweden to Egypt?

Well, first of all, you drive all the way to the very south of Sweden, where you take the ferry from Trelleborg to Lübeck (Germany).

Drive through Germany, then (at that time) Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia (still one country back then), Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan.

Haven gotten this far, with a Syrian stamp in your passport, travelling through Israel has become quite impossible.

So, the next step would be a ferry from Jordan to Egypt.

Now, we did all contribute a little something to get us across the border Turkey/Syria faster (the queues were several miles long) but the rather corrupted Egyptian customs office were asking for a considerably larger bribe.

So, surrounded by fences in an Egyptian harbor area, we passed the time by tossing a frisbee, some badminton, some cooking ('some' isn't really an appropriate expression when you're cooking for 120 people, but what the hey).

Eventually, the Egyptians got bored watching us enjoying ourselves and finally let us out without us having to pay any bribes at all!

OK, so far, it had taken us a month and a half to travel from Sweden to the rim of Egypt.

The Sinai peninsula was our next goal. Amazing how those Beduins manage to turn up in the middle of nowhere trying to sell you stuff, considering the buses had just turned off the main road and parked in the desert.

No cities, no villages, nothing but sand - and Beduins.

And, for some reason, completely fearless sparrows sharing your breakfast the next morning.

Imagined conversation:

'Shoo - this is *my* breakfast!'

'Who are you? What are you? What are you doing here?' *snatches a bit of bread but doesn't fly away with it but eats it up pearched on the table, or the back of a chair, or your shoulder*

Mount Sinai

Fascinating place. Monastery. Stairs - lots of stairs. I and a friend hired camels that walked along a path for 1½ hours straight uphill. Oh boy was I stiff after that ride!

And then another hour climbing up the final stretch of stairs, stopping to wheeze every fifth step or so, because the air was so thin.

Splendid sunset!

And then spending the whole night wide awake despite sleeping bag because it was sooo cold on top of Mt Sinai. It was worth it staying awake though - for the first time in my life I could actually see the Milky Way (no light or air pollution) and so many stars in the sky that I couldn't spot any constellations.

And then - don't let people fool you into believing that the sunrise is extraordinary, like the Japanese tourist group that climbed the mountain in pitch dark and so stepped on us poor Swedes in our sleeping bags.

The sunrise was nothing but a bleak version of the sunset.

Sharm El Sheik

In those days, it was a rather unremarkable place. There was a coral reef pretty close to the beach, which meant you could reach it with very simple gear, no tubes required.

There was limited water supplies, which we didn't discover until returning from the beach to take a shower - not. Not for another three hours.

Ras Mohammed

At the very southern point of the Sinai peninsula

No one living there

Just cliffs and sand

But underneath the water surface - vivid colours, vivid patterns!

Coral reef

Low tide when we arrived

Shark observatory in the bay we visited

Sharks?

Not being able to wear my glasses while pootling around underwater, I got a bit eager to see a Picasso fish in detail.

Unfortunately, it was a bit shy, so I raced after it and suddenly found myself past the edge of the coral reef!

For a moment, I thought I'd fall down - but then I remembered that I was floating.

But with the shark observatory in mind, I thought I might feel safer in waters less deep.

But the tide was rising, and I suddenly found myself being tumbled around as if inside of a washing machine.

Now, I had seen some pretty nasty cuts on some of my travel mates, so I desperately tried to stay away from the coral covered bottom while, at the same time, trying to surface to catch a breath of air.

Waiting eagerly! Please continue SOON!

*Holds breath*

*Has to breathe - but luckily is not under water*

Stray observation and question: How come I always hold my breath when I watch a movie with people diving or swimming under water.

Well, I don't know.

Fabulous story, Ti

tartaronne, I do the same thing.

IrvWash - do you have a theory?

Sympathy? I'm not sure. I think that when I get wrapped up in a movie, a good one, I am there with the character. If the character's underwater, I hold my breath. If something jumps out at them, I flinch.

...and if someone sneaks up to the main character from behind, I shout 'look behind you!'

I don't do that. I often root for the person sneaking up behind. But then a lot of movies have heros that are whiney little jerks.

>>and if someone sneaks up to the main character from behind, I shout 'look behind you <<

Afternoon matinées at the cinema with Zorro and cowboy films - and a lot of noisy kids rustling with paperbags of sweets, and living the film

*hopes for a continuation*

I have sometimes held my breath in sympathy. It would be mildly embarrassing, but you can hear other people giving up and sneaking a breath around you.

OK, so where was I?

>>But the tide was rising, and I suddenly found myself being tumbled around as if inside of a washing machine.

Now, I had seen some pretty nasty cuts on some of my travel mates, so I desperately tried to stay away from the coral covered bottom while, at the same time, trying to surface to catch a breath of air.>>

Ah yes.

I couldn't see anything, because the water was full of air bubbles.

Being tumbled around made me lose any sense of what was up and what was down, so I just kept holding my breath until I thought my lungs would burst.

I also kept my paddling moves as small as possible instead of wildly flailing about, all in order to stay the away from any sharp corals.

And lo and behold - once I had been washed into more shallow waters, the waves subsided and I managed to get up on my feet (I was wearing plastic shoes) and finally surface, coughing out water through my mouth, nose and ears - or at least that's what it felt like.

At a later occasion, I noticed that a thorough rinsing with salt water (due to a leaking diving mask) is an excellent, albeit not very pleasurable, and more or less instant cure for sinusitis.

Once I, utterly exhausted, reached the beach, I noticed that sun screen lotion and a T-shirt do not provide enough protection for a couple of hours snorkeling...

But I feel I've jumped ahead somewhat - I should be describing the actual journey to reach Egypt in the first place a bit more...

Impressions and memories along the way to Egypt:

What was then still Czechoslovakia I, for the very first time, came across wine in Tetrapak, in Prague. Remember, this was in 1992, and all wines in Sweden were still sold only in glass bottles.

The wine was also so cheap it was silly.

And we also had a silly theme for the first Pink Party among many, which we had at the camping site just outside Prague - compulsary head wear.

Amazing the ideas people can come up with - and highly amusing.

Now, imagine 120 people all getting tipsier and tipsier while having silly competitions - it was hilarious!

Something else that struck me while in Prague was how absolutely self-evident it was that young people would almost automatically get up and offer their seat to old people on the tram.

And how very embarrassing it was when foreign tourists failed to notice this.

There was this little old lady with a stick that got on the tram, limped up to a seat close to the door and stared at the young person sitting there.

Unfortunately, it was a young American man who was way too busy talking to the young American lady next to him to notice the old lady. Actually, he did eventually notice someone trying to burn a hole into him with The Lòók, but just looked confused and clueless as to why she was staring him down.

A few seats away, a Czech young man noticed what was going on and hurriedly offered the old lady his seat, offering her his arm to lean on while escorting her to it.

It made me feel ashamed of being a foreigner, it did.

In the very south of Czechoslovakia we stopped in a village that I've long forgotten the name of, but that looked very interesting. There had been a lot of very old buildings that were destroyed in a huge fire, and afterwards, exact copies were built up in, I think, the 19th century.

So, very old style houses, looking surprisingly well preserved.

I remember having an omelette and a beer in a roadside café there, the price of which was lover than simply a beer in Sweden.

Czechoslovakia is also where we visited Theresienstadt (now Terezin).

It used to be a Nazi transit camp, and has been preserved that way.

Over the entrance, there was the usual big, fat lie:
"Arbeit macht frei" (literally "work brings freedoom" - hah, as if the Nazis ever gave anyone their freedoom back once the person had entered one of their camps!

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Theresienstadt_arbeit_macht_frei.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Theresienstadt_arbeit_macht_frei.jpg&h=353&w=316&sz=69&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=nDKM3Cp56LzTKM:&tbnh=121&tbnw=108&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522arbeit%2Bmacht%2Bfrei%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DX

Despite being a transit camp, a lot of people died in Theresienstadt - from starvation, from diseases or executed if caught trying to escape.

The isolation cells were tiny - absolutely tiny. And to think some people manage to survive for years in those cells...

One of the top officers of the camp was attacked on one occasion - supposedly by villagers from a place not far from the camp.

The revenge was hideous - all males were executed on the spot in the village, and the rest were imprisoned and taken to the camp.

Before Czechoslovakia, we had just hurried through Germany.

Ah yes, Prague - more memories.

Beautiful old town, and all the statues on the Charles bridge.

Amazing clock with moving figures - and a legend that said that the person who ordered it had the eyes of the creator destroyed so that he couldn't construct an even more beautiful clock.

Pizza Express - squares of pizza served in paper, and reeking of garlic...

And a fortress on the top of a hill.

Next stop was Budapest in Hungary.

Salami - mmmm.... ...nothing like Hungarian salami... *wipes off drool*

The hot baths, of course.

Covered market - a must for all food lovers.

Wine festival - traditional folk costumes, traditional folk dances, free wine sampling. For a folk dance freak like me, that was heaven.

And then, one evening in a small restaurant in the old part of the city - the Tree of Life. Or at least, that's how it was translated to us.

It was a tree shaped skewer, and it held all kinds of different meats and - uh - innards? Such as liver and so on.

All perfectly grilled and tender, and oh boy did I feel carnivorous while wolfing down the meats... I've never, before or after, eaten such a large quantity of meats.

Reminder to self: next drive-through Romania.