13. Rooms and railways
On travelling and writing
“Les voyageurs… voyagent pour écrire, et voyagent en écrivant, mais c’est parce que pour eux le voyage est écriture.”
"Travellers... travel to write, and travel while writing, but this is because for them the journey is writing."
Michel Butor, quoted in Claude Bouheret, Ils parcoururent l’Europe.Voyages d’écrivains et d’artistes 1780-1880, Les Editions Noir sur Blanc, 2018.
A little over a month ago, on 19th October, I set off by bus from the Transylvanian town of Brașov for a day-trip to Bran castle - or “Dracula’s castle”. Although any link to the fictional character is tenuous, there was a small exhibition on Bram Stoker which presented a number of his preparatory notes for Dracula (1897). When I first read the novel a few years ago, I was struck by the precise description of the characters’ train travel - especially Dr. Van Helsing’s constant back-and-forth in between Amsterdam and England. It turns out, Stoker carefully studied train timetables in order to make the diary entries as credible as possible. Here are his preparatory notes for Jonathan Harker’s diary entries during his journey to Transylvania.
Unlike Jonathan Harker, my train journey through Transylvania was not fictitious and, although I wandered around a few castles, I did not meet any centenarian counts. However, it too was punctuated by writing. Perhaps, now that the journey has come to an end, I can share a bit of the other side of the canvas.
Indeed, the imperative of writing required seeking out peace and quiet to reflect on the encounters, visits, discussions, and travelling done during the week, and to pull my ideas together. There was also a bit of panic chucked into the mix, because of the weekly deadline I had set myself (and which, I am afraid, I have totally disregarded this week), and the random technical obstacles (such as my computer charger not fitting into Italian plugs).
But I have fond memories of those days in seclusion, in hotel rooms, hostel dorms, or cafes. My first experience was in the small Tuscan village of Bagnone, where I stayed in the foresteria, or guesthouse. I had a large room which overlooked the village square. It was busy on a Saturday afternoon, and there was a loud and constant babble of conversation which accompanied my writing. In the evening, I left the room to seek food, which was more of a challenge than expected, since all the restaurants were either closed or fully booked. I ended up finding a small place tucked away in the hillside, by the river, where a friendly waitress inquired about my travels. We had a pleasant conversation, despite not having a language in common.
The following week, on 15th September, I spent a long morning at the grand foresteria in Saltino (near Vallombrosa), waiting for my bus back to Florence. I sat in the lobby, listening to a film crew pass the rainy time together in song and music - and got so distracted I felt I could write about nothing else. In Venice, I also wrote to music. The hostel I was staying at overlooked a canal, where gondolas floated by, carrying eager tourists and gondoliers singing their hearts out, their powerful voices echoing off the walls all the way up into the sunny kitchen which was my office for the day.
After nearly three weeks, I finally left Italy and all the church bells and singing. I ended up in Slovenia, where I wrote from a dingy hostel in Ljubljana, on a small table in the courtyard. It started drizzling and I was driven into the mould-riddled dorm. At least the room didn’t smell as bad as the previous hostel I had been staying at, where the mould and the company was worse. I had left that messy and dirty place, inhabited by strange people smoking themselves into apathy whilst constantly complaining about being bored. The memory of Slovenia is one of discomfort, mould and rain - interspersed, thankfully, with jazz concerts at the bar Prulcek and delightful walks along the Ljubljanica and up to the castle.
And then I was in Hungary - a few days in Budapest and then off to the small town of Eger. My lodging was luxurious after the Slovenian experience. Warmth, salubrity, solitude, and a clean kitchen with a kettle and complimentary tea - what more could I ask for ? I spent an evening eating in the garden, watching the colours of the sky and the building darken into evening. On Sunday, the day after writing, I spent a gloriously relaxing day in the Turkish baths, letting my mind drift away in all the different tubs, stretching my muscles in the outdoor pools, sweating in the sauna and hammam.
I could have spent the rest of the journey there - I didn’t. A week later, I tried writing in a hostel in Cluj-Napoca, on the point of being closed by the authorities for some obscure reason of “customer protection” (the whole issue was unclear to me, as the staff was linguistically unable to share any information, on top of being utterly unwilling to). After several days of dealing with leaks, lack of hot water, the staff’s laziness, and the general confusion of the place, I rushed off to Sighișoara, to a comfortable lodging, more conducive to writing. The town itself was quite charming - by day at least. The supposed hometown of Vlad the Impaler became unsettlingly eerie after sunset - dark, silent streets, not a soul to be seen… and stray dogs. I ended up more or less trapped in my room, as a very aggressive one guarded the sole egress from the dead end my accommodation was situated in. (I did have to confront it eventually, when I left Sighișoara. This involved waving a stick around, shouting at it, and hiding my sheer fear as best I could. I escaped the street unscathed, although a bit shaken up.)
I made my way to Brașov, and then to Bucharest for two short days. When I arrived on 20th October, at about 10pm, there was some confusion with my booking. A chaotic phone call and a short taxi ride later, I settled into a neat flat on the fifth floor of a building block near the centre, plagued by guilt at the thought of renting as a tourist an apartment probably designed under communism as a home for a couple or a family, and thus contributing to the gentrification and “touristification” which is the bane of so many cities nowadays.
Barely a week later, I was far away from those worries and from Romania itself, writing (in rather a hurry) from a box hotel in Hannover, in the North of Germany. I spent the morning in the lobby, gulping down complimentary tea and coffee before rushing off to catch a train to Bremen. Fittingly, I had been writing about running out of time… And every subsequent day seemed to fly by faster and faster. By the following weekend, I was already in the Netherlands, writing from a yet another dingy hostel , situated on what must have been the busiest strip of Rotterdam. The stairs were so steep it was quite a scramble to get up to my dorm on the third floor, and once there, I had to climb into my little coffin-bed on the top bunk. Cooped up in the tiny, dark space, I wrote the antepenultimate piece, feeling more and more despondent at the idea of the journey coming to an end.
Over the subsequent days and weeks, The Peripatetic Museum slowly unwound in France, as I wrote from the comfort of my flat in Paris (or what used to be my flat). I am now trying to find the appropriate point final from Fabrègues, feeling slightly sick and very nostalgic, wrapped in a warm woollen blanket, sipping on steaming tea, memories swarming in my mind, and struggling more than ever to choose what to say and what to leave out.
***
There are certain acknowledgements, however, that I do not want to leave out. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people more or less directly involved in this project, and all those whose support made it possible.
Over the course of two months, The Peripatetic Museum travelled through seven countries, covered over 6,600km, and has been on 61 trains, visiting numerous museums, exhibitions, art events, galleries, artists’ studios and homes, alternative spaces, and an artists’ colony, meeting artists, gallerists, curators, and other professionals in the art world. There has been a certain amount of planning and a certain amount of haphazardness, and many memorable encounters.
I would like to thank all the wonderful people who gave life and substance to this project. I would like to thank all the exceptional artists themselves, for their generosity in sharing their thoughts and artistic musings : Vivianne Duchini, Róbert Lak, Mihaela Moldovan, Giles Eldridge, Luana Cloșcă, and Tineke Smith. I would also like to thank all the various people in the artword who enthusiastically opened the doors of their museums, or galleries, who generously shared their experience and insights, and who helped me along the way : Ivonne Papin, Pierre Stépanoff, Claudia Reichold, Lucia Pedrana, Zsófia Rátkai, Helga Thies, Luana Cloșcă (as a curator), Sorana Serban-Chiorean, Harro Jenss, Berit Müller, and Tineke Smith (as a gallerist).
And of course, thank you to all those who enriched the experience of travel itself, whether they be old or new friends : Carine et Edouard, Piero, Jean-Baptiste, Khushboo, Marco, Astrid, Hadrien, Marcell, Erszébet, Katia, Jonathan, Jimmy, Anna, Valérian, Bart, and many more, and all those with whom the encounters were too brief for names to have been exchanged, but the memory of which still remain.
Thank you to all those who supported The Peripatetic Museum by welcoming me into their homes : Sab, Delen, Victorine, Elisabet, Camille, Jan, and Michael. Thank you for the bed to sleep in - yes - but thank you also for your warm company and the lovely conversations.
Thank you to all the friends and family who have supported the project financially on Tipeee: Sandrine Alemanno, Jérémy Albrecht, Nathalie Alvarez, Camille Barro, Bregt Beerends, Jan Hermes, Nadia Hopkins, Steven Hopkins, Adèle Hospital, Phil & Anna Lane, Nicolas Lassus, Léa Lo Van, Olivia MacLellan, Loïs Mallet, Mickaël Minotto, Romane Parès, Heidi Reinardy, Helena Reinardy, Anne Rougée, Roger & Delia Smith, and Max Sourintha. Thank you also to Rémy David and Erzsébet Tarsoly. I am very grateful for this invaluable support which made this project possible.
And finally, thank you, dear readers, for your loyalty, for your feedback and for your words of encouragement. And see you soon, perhaps, for future peripatetic & artistic adventures !
If you have joined us en route, you can catch up on the other weekly pieces (preferably in order). Written from France, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Germany, and the Netherlands, they tell about the art, people, and places which made The Peripatetic Museum.
On how The Peripatetic Museum came about
2. Paul Dardé: from the Larzac to Paris… and back again
On leaving home and returning
On artistic and romantic partnerships… and where the women end up
On losing one’s train of thought to music
On the stories our equine friends tell
6. Far from the madding museum
On everything that happens outside and in between
7. Chance, choice and constraint
On setting rules… and creating with and around them
On memories embedded in objects
On what places do to art
On time and the lack thereof
11. Creation instead of destruction
On conflict and peace and how artwork end up where it does
On concluding and returning