Tales of the Armchair Traveller

Once in a while the moment arrives when the computers are all occupied, including my own laptop, and I have no intention of watching television. So I wander listlessly among the bookshelves, and since the English literature by authors from A-S is stranded high above my short reach, I am forced into close contemplation of the children's literature in the hallway, or the literature from S-W. Three to four days ago this paid off when I discovered three works by Mary Stewart, a novelist who dabbled, with considerable success, in the romance-adventure genre during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Nine Coaches Waiting is the best of these, I think. The premise is that Linda Martin, a half-French and half-English orphan in her early twenties, becomes the governess of the nine-year-old Comte de Valmy in Haute-Savoie, and becomes enamoured of the brooding son of the Comte's uncle, before she finds out that there is a sinister scheme to bump off the Comte and no longer knows whom to trust. In the spirit of the typical novel synopsis, heightening suspense to the utmost, I hereby add ellipses: . . . Anyway, the two or three episodes of vigorous kissing aside, the tale itself is a good yarn, with interesting characters, fine sense of scenery, and a profusion of literary quotations and allusions that do not seem like a wearying attempt to show off but like the overflowing of a genuine love of books. It is not set in an ambiguous time, either, but reflects the decade when it was written, and reminded me vaguely of To Catch a Thief and the less exotic European scenes in James Bond (Thunderball, I think). And I suspect that the dashing description of Paris in the beginning is efficiently excellent, too.

At present I'm at a loss for things to do. I am not working on any story, and I haven't yet tried writing a travel article for the Globe and Mail as I had intended. My fantasy about spending two days in Florence was short-lived, because my enthusiasm wasn't so great; my American prairie idea was abandoned a long time ago because, given my inexperience, it is highly unlikely that I could have earned my room and board, and not having a driver's license in the countryside is awkward. And, for whatever reason, I have not taken the step to whole-heartedly look for a job, though I know now what I could do: homework help, freelance writing, minor proof-reading, minor translating (German to English and French to English, though having 23% in my second UBC French Lit course might torpedo my chances there), secretarial work that does not involve telephoning, dish-washing, and cleaning. I did visit a tutoring office on a mission of inquiry, but it was after-hours and I haven't returned; as for online job-searching (one of the circles of quotidian purgatory that Dante presumably left out), I have not done it for at least two weeks.

The newest castle-in-the-air about moving into my own apartment has been severely damaged by the trebuchet of financial considerations. I wanted to have only one or two rooms, parquet or plank floors, in a building predating the 1930s,and a separate kitchen and bathroom, but with the costs of heating and electricity and water this would have amounted to at least 300 Euros per month. Then I would factor in 150 Euros per month for food and toiletries; I can eat moderately, but if my siblings or other guests come over I would want to have a stock of pistachios, chocolate, etc., too. Payment of health insurance (my coverage under my parents' plan will, so I've been told, end when I turn twenty-three) will swallow about another 60 Euros per month, given an annual income of 9600 Euros. The cell phone costs I'm not quite sure about yet, but they should not exceed 15 Euros per month; an internet connection might require another 30 Euros. A year's ticket for the U-Bahn, buses and S-Bahn in the AB region of Berlin would cost me 670 Euros, which I would be able to pay from my present savings account; it would be cheaper if I am a student, but the university fees and textbook costs would also set me back a few hundred Euros. So, as far as my research has indicated, I could hold two 400-Euro jobs, or one job paying at least 700 Euros (if I had gotten the job at the Café Einstein, it would have been 800 Euros per month), which would be my prerequisites for moving out, and still run the risk of only scraping by.

Anyway, as I was googling Mary Stewart and her oeuvre, the idea struck me that I might try to take the premise of one of her novels and write my own according to her plot-paradigm and setting. So I typed out a first chapter from Amazon.com, found hints about the plots and characters from reader reviews, and began to research the setting, which is at first Athens but mostly Delphi. The point is not to steal ideas, but to try writing according to preset guidelines (as authors with companies like Mills & Boon must do, according to a recent Guardian article), with precise historical detail and "local colour," entirely for my own practice. Once I did pick one of the novels, I was reluctant to go far with it -- the heroine is named "Camilla Haven" . . . ("Linda" is not my favourite name, either, by the way) -- but I thought that I might as well undertake the research.

First of all I went to Google Maps (which was useful a few weeks ago when, for the purposes of a historical tale, I was trying to trace the route that a 17th-century carriage would have taken from London to Gloucestershire, though I doubt that the modern A40 corresponds to that route), and followed the highway out of Athens, around the bay, and along the mountains to Delphi. I noted the landscapes and towns on the way. Then I researched the flora and fauna of the slopes of Mount Parnassos, which overlooks Delphi and the vividly green river valley below that runs out to the sea, and found out historical and geographical details about that mountain and the ancient site of the oracle itself. Now I am much the wiser, though the Greek place names are slipping my memory again.

And, for the first time, I feel tempted to visit Greece. On the whole I've tended to think of it (I know, I'm a terrible philistine) as a hot country full of loud modern buildings and glaring yachts, barren rock and mountains on which forage unhappy sheep and goats under the humourless eye of surly shepherds, tourist beaches, and piles of crumbling stone that are all that remain of buildings and civilizations, which one must read about for hours and hours if one is to understand them. The Greek Orthodox Church intrigues me, and I like the food and wines, the intensely blue Mediterranean, and bees gathering honey on the slopes of Mt. Hymettos, but these temptations are not great enough. Also, I liked learning about Ancient Greece (much preferring it to Rome, esp. before Athens became an empire) in school and university, and am very fond of the myths, but I prefer to create my own picture of it in my imagination. In any case, either in Greece or in Scotland, I should like to see the "purple mountains" that I've encountered so often in fiction and never in real life.