Corking it

When I was thirteen years old, the world was rocked by a movie about a pair of doomed lovers on a sinking ship. At that time, a movie ticket in Helsinki cost about 30-35 Finnish marks, but when Titanic arrived, the price was raised to 50 marks - it was said this price made justice to the staggering length of the movie: over three hours. And we all loved it. Regardless of age, nationality, sex or nautical miles travelled, Titanic had us all gaping at the Ship that Sank, singing our on-going hearts out with Celine Dion, almost wetting our pants when the lights of the Titanic flickered and went out forever, and whooping out loud when Kate Winslet spat on the face of her husband-to-be.

Titanic is the movie which, possibly, for people of my generation, provided the first experience of bawling in a movie theatre and made it completely normal to go to watch the same movie five times. And even now, when listening to "My Heart will go on", we remember one of the highlights of the nineties, an event nobody could have missed. My mother once told me one of her friends living in Kuwait, who never had time to watch a single movie, watched Titanic - even though this meant she fast-forwarded through most of it.

I'm writing this in my father's aunt's house in Vienna, where I've been staying with my parents and my father's cousin for some days. Biologically speaking, she's not really his aunt, but it's a long story and I'll elaborate on it another time (if you've been familiar with my blog for a longer time, you'll know I say this frequently). Right now, my father's other cousin (who, biologically speaking, really IS his cousin) arrived with his wife and their adopted son, and we're getting ready for a barbecue in the garden.

It's boiling hot, but of course not as hot as in Damascus, where we'll travel tomorrow, and certainly not as hot as Venice, which was something of a disappointment with its infuriating masses of tourists and lousy customer service - some stretches of the city made you feel like you were in some freakily huge amusement park, while the calmer parts of the city were much nicer, especially if you found a street shady enough to prevent your sunburn from getting any worse. This presented some interesting challenges to our street-navigating ("We were supposed to cross that canal but we'll stay in the shade and turn left instead").

The 12 hour train trip from the Santa Luzia train station was uneventful. A blonde female tourist carrying a huge red rucksack, a black smart briefcase and a plastic bag stuffed with umbrellas approached me on the platform to ask how she would know how to find her wagon. I explained to her there would be plates with the carriage numbers hanging on the doors, and she seemed genuinely surprised when I corrected her and told her she didn't have a seat: she would be travelling in a bed ("Where do you see BED?" she asked, and I pointed at the Italian: Letto).

I assumed she was American, but a chain-ring hanging from her chaotic rucksack screamed CANADA! With an enthusiasm very characteristic of North American people on their first trip to Europe (I sometimes feel like they reply "Yes, I LOVE it" to whatever you ask), she suggested taking a picture with the two of us (I had known her for about two minutes) and when she started approaching one of the crazy Russian fans travelling to Austria for the football match, wanting to ask her if she would take a picture, I stopped her and suggested she go to the station to get herself some water, instead, because the trip would be long ("When will we arrive?" Honestly, I don't know how she had survived all the trip until now - and what was the meaning of all those UMBRELLAS? She looked like she had an allergy to rain, or maybe someone had told her umbrellas were hot merchandise in Italy).

The approaching train saved me from having to go through any more embarassing small talk ("I'm going to Syria in a week to see my grandmother", I said. "Serbia?" came the reply) and I quickly found my seating compartment, which was already occupied by a Malaysian man studying in Cork. "Kohk. You know, Ailan? Ailan? Kohk?" "Ireland", I translated to the arrogant Bolivian couple who couldn't stop staring at the guy and looked like they were ready to take the next plane back to La Paz. They got off pretty soon, but the guy from Kohk kept asking me for advice, even waking me up in the middle of the night in a fit of panic: "What time is it in Austria? Same as Italy????!?!???"

And so, these are just some of the things I'm remembering - Titanic, and the absurd people you meet on night trains - while I prepare myself for barbecue with my biological and non-biological relatives, as well as the football match and, finally, tomorrow morning's flight.