I’ve never been keen on travel guides. Not that I object to the concept - and I read the appropriate sections when I get the chance - but their relative value seems outweighed by their sheer size, and the arbitrary nature of much of the information. It’s better to carry an extra pair of socks than unreliable advice. So I didn’t know that Doolin was a village renowned for its music, or that it was the closest village to the majestic Cliffs of Moher and an easy jumping off point to explore the standing stones and sculptured rockscapes of The Burren. All I knew when I booked into the hostel (creatively called Doolin Hostel, and the only one open at that time of year) was what I could see - a narrow ribbon of road skirting frost-tufted fields and a string of pearly houses gently unravelling into the sea.
The hostel was typical of Ireland - a whitewashed sod cottage with an open turf (peat) fire... and freezing cold. The fire, though stacked high with turf, hardly warmed the earthy sausage-logs, leaving you the difficult choice between sitting with a frozen back, or standing to adopt a rotisserie approach and slowly revolving in front of the smoky flicker.
Hostel owners seem to believe backpackers value experience over warmth. So while we struggled to coax lazy flames from the usually damp peat - receiving more warmth from carrying the turf than from burning it - they would invariably be sweating in front of a glowing coal sun. The discrepancy was always greatest in the YHA hostels, where wardens would flash smiling signals through foggy windows to let you know they weren’t opening the doors before five o’clock, no matter how miserable you looked standing saturated beneath that tree ... even when the hostel was twenty miles from the nearest village and you were the only guest. But they happily took your money once you discovered “We’re just baking potatoes, would you like one?” is actually wardenesque for “Do you want to buy an outrageously expensive baked potato?” And in the morning you’d still have to Mister Sheen the banisters or try to polish the swinging glass door in the foyer during the check-out rush.
After a few days exploring the local area, I decided this was a place I could imagine staying for a while. Apart from the area’s natural beauty, there was a regular trickle of backpackers passing through, and the local pub, Connolly’s, was everything an Irish pub should be - warm and cosy, filled with cloth-capped old men and music on those rare nights when the old men felt like playing (and they always felt like playing if there was a cold Guinness on offer). So I quizzed Paddy, the hostel owner, about local employment opportunities, and he eventually offered me a job painting the hostel for the grand sum of 25 Punt a week plus a pint of fresh milk per day. I accepted. The next day I began painting everything in pastel shades of yellow and green.
So the stage was now set. Coincidence had brought me here, when I’d been heading somewhere else. Coincidence now kept me here, when I should have been continuing my journey elsewhere.
A few days later I was sitting by the fire reading when Marion walked in... with her boyfriend, Arne. Not that I paid much attention at the time (new people had come and gone almost every night, so it didn’t pay to get too quickly attached to strangers), but I did notice her sparkling glacier-lake eyes and a crooked smile which seemed to generate more heat than the fire. But they weren’t passing through, they’d come to stay a while. Arne was an Ireland fan, and he’d been to Doolin several times to enjoy the music and the atmosphere. Marion had wanted to go skiing in Italy, so she was a little unenthusiastic to start, but was beginning to see its good points.
They stayed a week - a week of excursions and long walks on misty, foam-flecked beaches, music-filled nights at Connolly’s or swirling reels in Lisdoonvarna, steaming porridge and potatoes hauled from the fire, spicy hot whiskeys revealing hidden futures among the cloves, and laughing evenings basking in warm conversation. But soon, too soon, they left. The hostel felt even colder than usual that night, and no matter how high I stoked the fire, there was no heat to be wrung from the soggy turf or from the soggy strangers sitting beside me. But I threw myself into the painting (though not literally) and consoled myself with the thought that I was going to see them again, sooner or later...
...and, as it turned out, I only had to wait three days. After Doolin, everything had seemed pale and lifeless, though neither of them would admit it, and they would have continued north if they hadn’t befriended two backpackers (Rodney, a fellow Brisbanite... but no, I didn’t know him before I left Australia; and Dave, an American) in Galway who were heading south - to Doolin. It was all the excuse they needed to return. And for the next week there was five of us squeezing into Marion’s Renault 4 to drive to the cliffs, or cheering encouragement as Marion danced with a withered grey leprechaun, or stifling our laughter as Rodney almost convinced a young Canadian that AIDS originated in elephants (though I’ll skip the details of his complex theory, especially the bit relating to how the disease spread to humans...).
There was also, to my pleasant surprise, plenty of time alone with Marion - much to Arne’s delight. (He was allergic to any symptom of what he perceived as undue ‘clingyness’. Such symptoms included Marion wanting to spend more than a few hours a week together, or objecting when he spent the night at one of his myriad ex-girlfriends’ apartments.) He wanted an open relationship between independent, self-sufficient individuals, and for once, Marion was quite happy to ‘do her own thing’ ... as long as it included me.
One night we even stayed up to watch the sunrise, tramping through a cow paddock and crouching beside each other in the shelter of a mossy stone wall as the darkness slowly dissolved around us. It could have been a romantic moment if Rodney hadn’t accompanied us (though we certainly didn’t begrudge his company), or if he hadn’t discovered he had so much in common with the cows. Their mutually (moo-tually?) enraptured moo-ing wasn’t exactly a dawn chorus to inspire romance. (Not so much a mood enhancement as a moo-ed interruption.) And besides, romance was the last thing I was looking for. So it was with mixed emotions that I watched them leave a few days later.
Two months later Raene and I met up again and both agreed it was time to head south again for a while. We looked for cheap flights to Spain or Portugal in London, but even the cheapest flight seemed an unwarranted extravagance, so we decided to hitch. Across the channel to visit friends in Belgium and to pick up the necessary visas. But trying to get a visa from the French embassy in Brussels was like trying to get pate from a live goose, so we opted to head to Turkey instead... stopping along the way to visit Marion and Arne.
Marion and I spent the next week talking and talking well into the early hours of each morning, continuing long after Raene had retired to the spare room (actually the storage room, since it was only a one-room apartment), and Arne had made a fleeting appearance. There seemed so much we wanted to say, so much we needed to say to each other, that it was simply impossible to stop until everything had been said. Until exhaustion began mugging each thought before it could take flight into words, and we had to surrender to sleep.
We knew we couldn’t maintain this level of intimacy without something happening. Our friendship had swollen with every word, every whisper of laughter, inflating like an emotional Zeppelin. I could feel it, now, tugging against its heavy anchor of indecision and fear. If I released the cables it would soar on the exhilarating winds, rising higher and higher, reaching heights as yet unimagined... but would it eventually crash into a mountain of doubt and despair, leaving only twisted wreckage and crumpled memories? But if I tried to deflate it, to pile on more ballast and keep it hovering sedately overhead, perhaps it would eventually collapse beneath the weight of its own sad inertia. I wanted to release it, but my hand was gripped firmly around the mooring line and refused to let go.
Until, early one morning as we reached another moment where words seemed too flimsy to carry the weight of meaning, Marion read a poem she’d written about me (well, about waiting for me). Suddenly I knew the feelings I had for her (she was wonderful, generous, beautiful, kind, funny ... perfect, in other words) were reciprocated... except, perhaps, for the beautiful part. Finally I could let go.
“I never had a girlfriend before,” I stammered as the enormity of the moment overwhelmed me. I’m still slightly embarrassed by my lack of worldliness at that moment. Was this the best I could come up with? If I’d only had a script and a few good rehearsals before a competent director, I could have been as nonchalant as Richard Gere. I could have said something seductive. Something cool. Something at least a little more memorable. Instead, I’d blurted out the innocent truth. What kind of a start to a relationship was that?
But it was the truth. I don’t know whether it was meant as a warning, or a plea for understanding, but it was the first thought which came into my head. Perhaps I was just letting Marion know that the ball was firmly in her court, that the next move was going to have to be hers, or there’d be no moves whatsoever. But Marion was a good mover, and she moved closer.
There followed joyful days. Each moment together brought new discoveries and a deepening contentment. I was in love! In love with Marion. In love with the world. In love with life.
There followed passion-filled nights. Of course I had nothing to compare it with - no ancient wisdom passed down from my father (in my family, sex was never mentioned, let alone the intricacies of relationships), no helpful institutional education (Banyo High School was hardly a holy shrine of late-70’s enlightenment), only a handful of movies, and the few furtive passages from The Joy of Sex Cameron got for his 21st birthday (from friends, not my parents ... so maybe I’d just been hanging around with the ‘wrong’ crowd?) - but once I stopped acting as though we were in some cheap Hollywood drama and began responding naturally, instinctively, it was wonderful.
Virtual reality, hyper reality. Why is reality never enough? It has to be super-charged, superfast, superloud, with a soundtrack and special effects. We’re too busy making movies instead of making love. Blockbuster sex full of ineffectual licking and groaning, but it only heightens our sense of unreality. How come Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger never ended up with a mouthful of short and curlies? No wonder we’re so easily disappointed. No wonder we’re all addicted to the lives of the rich and famous - surely they’re enjoying all this groaning and licking! If only we were richer or more attractive or funnier or more experienced - if we only had more - then we’d have a million dollar smile on our faces too. We’re forever stumbling through ignorant darkness across frozen fields of loneliness, searching for light in the blinding pyres of passion, searching for warmth in the consuming flames of lust. But it’s the constant flame which gives most light, the steady fire which gives most heat. Without the emotional and spiritual connection, sex remains just so much sweaty moaning.
I wanted to stay there ... forever, but I’d promised to travel south with Raene. Though I didn’t want to leave, I also thought leaving wasn’t such a bad idea. It would give us some distance, some perspective. I’d accompany Raene through the Eastern Bloc and meet Marion in Yugoslavia or Greece during her holidays.
After a long farewell at the autobahn petrol station, we headed south. But hitching was slow, and it took us all day to get to Munich. The success of hitching always seems to depend on your mood. The more optimistic and positive you are, the easier the rides. Or is it just that it all seems so much easier when you’re feeling good? I called Marion from Munich, secretly hoping she’d urge me to return, but she seemed somehow remote, wary... or maybe I was just misinterpreting it? Then we headed to Austria.
The route between Munich and Austria is a hitching blackspot of universal proportions. I’ve done it eight or nine times - in both directions - and my record is eight hours for the 135 kilometres. This time proved no exception, and by the time we arrived in Innsbruck, we were both exhausted.
I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was return to Marion. I called to ask her thoughts on the idea, and though she still seemed wary, she agreed. So after seeing Raene safely off on the early morning train to Greece, I walked out to the beginning of the northern motorway. I hoped the romantic nature of my journey (I was travelling from the land of Mozart along Germany’s famous ‘romantic street’ in order to live happily ever after with the love of my life) would prove a lucky talisman. (After all, didn’t Doris Day, no less, claim everybody loved a lover?)
But Austrians care as little for romance as they do for hitchers, and it took almost an entire day just to leave Austria. For much of the day I found myself walking along deserted back roads after some helpful soul had dropped me off on a ghost exit.
(I’ve become distrusting of anyone who claims to know a “good hitching spot”, because it inevitably turns out to be some weed-veined byway which hasn’t been used since the Nazi Occupation, or in the middle of a motorway junction where the slowest cars are travelling at 200km/h, except for the police car which cruises past to eject you into the forest - Do they think I want to be there? - and the next village is more than thirty kilometres away through crocodile-infested swamp ... But worst of all, you have to smile politely and thank them for their generosity, which feels very much like thanking Satan for delivering you to Hell).
Then I crossed at a border post normally reserved for smugglers and draft-dodgers, walked five kilometres to the first petrol station on the German side (always an encouraging development), then caught an interminable string of short lifts (none further than the next petrol station), finally climbing through Marion’s apartment window just after midnight (luckily the last lift had dropped me at the door) on the first of May. After she’d overcome her initial shock (I’d tried the buzzer but she was in the shower and hadn’t heard me, so she thought someone was breaking in), we fell into each others’ arms and ...
Hmmm, well, basically we weren’t out of each others’ sight for more than a couple of days after that. We spent long weekends exploring Paris and Amsterdam, New Year in Austria, outdoor pubs, winebars, long walks through the forest, swimming in a local waterhole, and generally developing a permanent, fulfilling, ecstatically happy relationship. We never argued (after I stopped leaving ‘brake-stripes’ in the toilet). We never disagreed about anything important. Life was truly carefree.
Of course I had a few visa problems - Germany wouldn’t be Germany without bureaucracy, the cornerstone of ‘efficiency’. I couldn’t get a visa unless I had a job. I couldn’t get a job unless I had a work permit. And I couldn’t get a work permit unless I found a job no German could do (understandable in a country which grants citizenship according to ‘blood lines’ - no German blood, no citizenship, no matter how many generations you live there). So I found a job teaching English in a private language school which only employed ‘native’ English speakers (which happened to be my only qualification for the job), but my application was turned down. I appealed and my hopeful employer protested (they were desperate for teachers, and I’d not only completed the intensive week-long instruction course - where we mainly discussed the World Cup - but had already been working ‘under-the-table’ for a month, so they were keen to make it official), and two weeks later I had my work permit.
I returned to the immigration department for my visa. Surely it was a mere formality ... so why were they ushering me into a back room? Because, a fuming bureaucrat tersely informed me, it was illegal for me to have a work permit when I didn’t even have a visa! How can I work when I’m not allowed to stay? I could be deported. I could be thrown in jail. But he was in a good mood, so he’d give me three days to leave the country instead!
Pale and disbelieving, I left and wandered into Marion’s office. She was incredulous - surely I must have misunderstood ...
But there was no misunderstanding. The bureaucrat was adamant.
OK, we’d get married. (Although we’d never actually discussed marriage, it seemed an entirely natural - and ultimately necessary - progression.)
The bureaucrat told us he frowned upon marriages of convenience.
We protested it may be a convenient marriage, but it certainly wasn’t a marriage of convenience.
He dismissed us. As long as I left the country within three days, he didn’t care what we did.
The hostel was typical of Ireland - a whitewashed sod cottage with an open turf (peat) fire... and freezing cold. The fire, though stacked high with turf, hardly warmed the earthy sausage-logs, leaving you the difficult choice between sitting with a frozen back, or standing to adopt a rotisserie approach and slowly revolving in front of the smoky flicker.
Hostel owners seem to believe backpackers value experience over warmth. So while we struggled to coax lazy flames from the usually damp peat - receiving more warmth from carrying the turf than from burning it - they would invariably be sweating in front of a glowing coal sun. The discrepancy was always greatest in the YHA hostels, where wardens would flash smiling signals through foggy windows to let you know they weren’t opening the doors before five o’clock, no matter how miserable you looked standing saturated beneath that tree ... even when the hostel was twenty miles from the nearest village and you were the only guest. But they happily took your money once you discovered “We’re just baking potatoes, would you like one?” is actually wardenesque for “Do you want to buy an outrageously expensive baked potato?” And in the morning you’d still have to Mister Sheen the banisters or try to polish the swinging glass door in the foyer during the check-out rush.
After a few days exploring the local area, I decided this was a place I could imagine staying for a while. Apart from the area’s natural beauty, there was a regular trickle of backpackers passing through, and the local pub, Connolly’s, was everything an Irish pub should be - warm and cosy, filled with cloth-capped old men and music on those rare nights when the old men felt like playing (and they always felt like playing if there was a cold Guinness on offer). So I quizzed Paddy, the hostel owner, about local employment opportunities, and he eventually offered me a job painting the hostel for the grand sum of 25 Punt a week plus a pint of fresh milk per day. I accepted. The next day I began painting everything in pastel shades of yellow and green.
So the stage was now set. Coincidence had brought me here, when I’d been heading somewhere else. Coincidence now kept me here, when I should have been continuing my journey elsewhere.
A few days later I was sitting by the fire reading when Marion walked in... with her boyfriend, Arne. Not that I paid much attention at the time (new people had come and gone almost every night, so it didn’t pay to get too quickly attached to strangers), but I did notice her sparkling glacier-lake eyes and a crooked smile which seemed to generate more heat than the fire. But they weren’t passing through, they’d come to stay a while. Arne was an Ireland fan, and he’d been to Doolin several times to enjoy the music and the atmosphere. Marion had wanted to go skiing in Italy, so she was a little unenthusiastic to start, but was beginning to see its good points.
They stayed a week - a week of excursions and long walks on misty, foam-flecked beaches, music-filled nights at Connolly’s or swirling reels in Lisdoonvarna, steaming porridge and potatoes hauled from the fire, spicy hot whiskeys revealing hidden futures among the cloves, and laughing evenings basking in warm conversation. But soon, too soon, they left. The hostel felt even colder than usual that night, and no matter how high I stoked the fire, there was no heat to be wrung from the soggy turf or from the soggy strangers sitting beside me. But I threw myself into the painting (though not literally) and consoled myself with the thought that I was going to see them again, sooner or later...
...and, as it turned out, I only had to wait three days. After Doolin, everything had seemed pale and lifeless, though neither of them would admit it, and they would have continued north if they hadn’t befriended two backpackers (Rodney, a fellow Brisbanite... but no, I didn’t know him before I left Australia; and Dave, an American) in Galway who were heading south - to Doolin. It was all the excuse they needed to return. And for the next week there was five of us squeezing into Marion’s Renault 4 to drive to the cliffs, or cheering encouragement as Marion danced with a withered grey leprechaun, or stifling our laughter as Rodney almost convinced a young Canadian that AIDS originated in elephants (though I’ll skip the details of his complex theory, especially the bit relating to how the disease spread to humans...).
There was also, to my pleasant surprise, plenty of time alone with Marion - much to Arne’s delight. (He was allergic to any symptom of what he perceived as undue ‘clingyness’. Such symptoms included Marion wanting to spend more than a few hours a week together, or objecting when he spent the night at one of his myriad ex-girlfriends’ apartments.) He wanted an open relationship between independent, self-sufficient individuals, and for once, Marion was quite happy to ‘do her own thing’ ... as long as it included me.
One night we even stayed up to watch the sunrise, tramping through a cow paddock and crouching beside each other in the shelter of a mossy stone wall as the darkness slowly dissolved around us. It could have been a romantic moment if Rodney hadn’t accompanied us (though we certainly didn’t begrudge his company), or if he hadn’t discovered he had so much in common with the cows. Their mutually (moo-tually?) enraptured moo-ing wasn’t exactly a dawn chorus to inspire romance. (Not so much a mood enhancement as a moo-ed interruption.) And besides, romance was the last thing I was looking for. So it was with mixed emotions that I watched them leave a few days later.
Two months later Raene and I met up again and both agreed it was time to head south again for a while. We looked for cheap flights to Spain or Portugal in London, but even the cheapest flight seemed an unwarranted extravagance, so we decided to hitch. Across the channel to visit friends in Belgium and to pick up the necessary visas. But trying to get a visa from the French embassy in Brussels was like trying to get pate from a live goose, so we opted to head to Turkey instead... stopping along the way to visit Marion and Arne.
Marion and I spent the next week talking and talking well into the early hours of each morning, continuing long after Raene had retired to the spare room (actually the storage room, since it was only a one-room apartment), and Arne had made a fleeting appearance. There seemed so much we wanted to say, so much we needed to say to each other, that it was simply impossible to stop until everything had been said. Until exhaustion began mugging each thought before it could take flight into words, and we had to surrender to sleep.
We knew we couldn’t maintain this level of intimacy without something happening. Our friendship had swollen with every word, every whisper of laughter, inflating like an emotional Zeppelin. I could feel it, now, tugging against its heavy anchor of indecision and fear. If I released the cables it would soar on the exhilarating winds, rising higher and higher, reaching heights as yet unimagined... but would it eventually crash into a mountain of doubt and despair, leaving only twisted wreckage and crumpled memories? But if I tried to deflate it, to pile on more ballast and keep it hovering sedately overhead, perhaps it would eventually collapse beneath the weight of its own sad inertia. I wanted to release it, but my hand was gripped firmly around the mooring line and refused to let go.
Until, early one morning as we reached another moment where words seemed too flimsy to carry the weight of meaning, Marion read a poem she’d written about me (well, about waiting for me). Suddenly I knew the feelings I had for her (she was wonderful, generous, beautiful, kind, funny ... perfect, in other words) were reciprocated... except, perhaps, for the beautiful part. Finally I could let go.
“I never had a girlfriend before,” I stammered as the enormity of the moment overwhelmed me. I’m still slightly embarrassed by my lack of worldliness at that moment. Was this the best I could come up with? If I’d only had a script and a few good rehearsals before a competent director, I could have been as nonchalant as Richard Gere. I could have said something seductive. Something cool. Something at least a little more memorable. Instead, I’d blurted out the innocent truth. What kind of a start to a relationship was that?
But it was the truth. I don’t know whether it was meant as a warning, or a plea for understanding, but it was the first thought which came into my head. Perhaps I was just letting Marion know that the ball was firmly in her court, that the next move was going to have to be hers, or there’d be no moves whatsoever. But Marion was a good mover, and she moved closer.
There followed joyful days. Each moment together brought new discoveries and a deepening contentment. I was in love! In love with Marion. In love with the world. In love with life.
There followed passion-filled nights. Of course I had nothing to compare it with - no ancient wisdom passed down from my father (in my family, sex was never mentioned, let alone the intricacies of relationships), no helpful institutional education (Banyo High School was hardly a holy shrine of late-70’s enlightenment), only a handful of movies, and the few furtive passages from The Joy of Sex Cameron got for his 21st birthday (from friends, not my parents ... so maybe I’d just been hanging around with the ‘wrong’ crowd?) - but once I stopped acting as though we were in some cheap Hollywood drama and began responding naturally, instinctively, it was wonderful.
Virtual reality, hyper reality. Why is reality never enough? It has to be super-charged, superfast, superloud, with a soundtrack and special effects. We’re too busy making movies instead of making love. Blockbuster sex full of ineffectual licking and groaning, but it only heightens our sense of unreality. How come Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger never ended up with a mouthful of short and curlies? No wonder we’re so easily disappointed. No wonder we’re all addicted to the lives of the rich and famous - surely they’re enjoying all this groaning and licking! If only we were richer or more attractive or funnier or more experienced - if we only had more - then we’d have a million dollar smile on our faces too. We’re forever stumbling through ignorant darkness across frozen fields of loneliness, searching for light in the blinding pyres of passion, searching for warmth in the consuming flames of lust. But it’s the constant flame which gives most light, the steady fire which gives most heat. Without the emotional and spiritual connection, sex remains just so much sweaty moaning.
I wanted to stay there ... forever, but I’d promised to travel south with Raene. Though I didn’t want to leave, I also thought leaving wasn’t such a bad idea. It would give us some distance, some perspective. I’d accompany Raene through the Eastern Bloc and meet Marion in Yugoslavia or Greece during her holidays.
After a long farewell at the autobahn petrol station, we headed south. But hitching was slow, and it took us all day to get to Munich. The success of hitching always seems to depend on your mood. The more optimistic and positive you are, the easier the rides. Or is it just that it all seems so much easier when you’re feeling good? I called Marion from Munich, secretly hoping she’d urge me to return, but she seemed somehow remote, wary... or maybe I was just misinterpreting it? Then we headed to Austria.
The route between Munich and Austria is a hitching blackspot of universal proportions. I’ve done it eight or nine times - in both directions - and my record is eight hours for the 135 kilometres. This time proved no exception, and by the time we arrived in Innsbruck, we were both exhausted.
I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was return to Marion. I called to ask her thoughts on the idea, and though she still seemed wary, she agreed. So after seeing Raene safely off on the early morning train to Greece, I walked out to the beginning of the northern motorway. I hoped the romantic nature of my journey (I was travelling from the land of Mozart along Germany’s famous ‘romantic street’ in order to live happily ever after with the love of my life) would prove a lucky talisman. (After all, didn’t Doris Day, no less, claim everybody loved a lover?)
But Austrians care as little for romance as they do for hitchers, and it took almost an entire day just to leave Austria. For much of the day I found myself walking along deserted back roads after some helpful soul had dropped me off on a ghost exit.
(I’ve become distrusting of anyone who claims to know a “good hitching spot”, because it inevitably turns out to be some weed-veined byway which hasn’t been used since the Nazi Occupation, or in the middle of a motorway junction where the slowest cars are travelling at 200km/h, except for the police car which cruises past to eject you into the forest - Do they think I want to be there? - and the next village is more than thirty kilometres away through crocodile-infested swamp ... But worst of all, you have to smile politely and thank them for their generosity, which feels very much like thanking Satan for delivering you to Hell).
Then I crossed at a border post normally reserved for smugglers and draft-dodgers, walked five kilometres to the first petrol station on the German side (always an encouraging development), then caught an interminable string of short lifts (none further than the next petrol station), finally climbing through Marion’s apartment window just after midnight (luckily the last lift had dropped me at the door) on the first of May. After she’d overcome her initial shock (I’d tried the buzzer but she was in the shower and hadn’t heard me, so she thought someone was breaking in), we fell into each others’ arms and ...
Hmmm, well, basically we weren’t out of each others’ sight for more than a couple of days after that. We spent long weekends exploring Paris and Amsterdam, New Year in Austria, outdoor pubs, winebars, long walks through the forest, swimming in a local waterhole, and generally developing a permanent, fulfilling, ecstatically happy relationship. We never argued (after I stopped leaving ‘brake-stripes’ in the toilet). We never disagreed about anything important. Life was truly carefree.
Of course I had a few visa problems - Germany wouldn’t be Germany without bureaucracy, the cornerstone of ‘efficiency’. I couldn’t get a visa unless I had a job. I couldn’t get a job unless I had a work permit. And I couldn’t get a work permit unless I found a job no German could do (understandable in a country which grants citizenship according to ‘blood lines’ - no German blood, no citizenship, no matter how many generations you live there). So I found a job teaching English in a private language school which only employed ‘native’ English speakers (which happened to be my only qualification for the job), but my application was turned down. I appealed and my hopeful employer protested (they were desperate for teachers, and I’d not only completed the intensive week-long instruction course - where we mainly discussed the World Cup - but had already been working ‘under-the-table’ for a month, so they were keen to make it official), and two weeks later I had my work permit.
I returned to the immigration department for my visa. Surely it was a mere formality ... so why were they ushering me into a back room? Because, a fuming bureaucrat tersely informed me, it was illegal for me to have a work permit when I didn’t even have a visa! How can I work when I’m not allowed to stay? I could be deported. I could be thrown in jail. But he was in a good mood, so he’d give me three days to leave the country instead!
Pale and disbelieving, I left and wandered into Marion’s office. She was incredulous - surely I must have misunderstood ...
But there was no misunderstanding. The bureaucrat was adamant.
OK, we’d get married. (Although we’d never actually discussed marriage, it seemed an entirely natural - and ultimately necessary - progression.)
The bureaucrat told us he frowned upon marriages of convenience.
We protested it may be a convenient marriage, but it certainly wasn’t a marriage of convenience.
He dismissed us. As long as I left the country within three days, he didn’t care what we did.
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