10 Unforgettable Travel Moments (so far) - Part III

#5: The Moment of (Dream) Childhood Revisited
Disneyland, Paris
August 1999

When we arrived in Disneyland Europe, on Day Four of our great Inter-railing trip, I was twenty-one years old and a bit. A real adult, in other words. Even though I had lived in the UK for two years by this point and had got quite fairly accustomed to the way of life here during this time, the maiden voyage to the Continent – the word immediately implying a vast body of land separate from the snug British Isles, at the other end of which lay my true home – still offered up that unique sense of thrill. And the first three days in Paris had been filled with proper, adult itineraries – the museums, the neighbourhoods, the cafes. I had looked forward to the Disneyland trip as a belated childhood treat, but not anticipated any great excitement about it. Thanks to the ‘reform and opening up’ policy of the Chinese government, my generation – the first single-child generation – had been fed on a TV diet of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, though limited to thirty minutes every week, usually on a tiny black-and-white TV screen. The world of Disney was, for the Chinese population of 1980s at large, one of many a gateway that had all of a sudden appeared, to the exciting land that was the materialist, Capitalist Western world. But those of us under twelve, we were utterly oblivious to the ideological significance of those characters at this crucial time in our nation's history. We simply adored them – all voice-dubbed in Chinese – as much as our American counterparts, and the scarcity of their appearance made any virtual encounter with them all the more precious.

We joined the expectant crowd for the daily parade down the central boulevard, and when the ‘magical world of Disney’ soundtrack sprang into life, with the full cast of fantasy characters emerging in their impeccable costumes, my eyes inexplicably welled up (to my great annoyance). In this moment, what had all those years ago existed as the Other, distant, fantastic but alien world, decidedly out of reach except on TV screens, was finally reborn as part of My world. I was there, Minnie Mouse was smiling and waving to me, and this whole surrounding – in 3D, complete with soundtrack – was no longer Myth but a cultural discourse of which I could claim participatory experience, complete with heat and sweat. The dreamland, right there and then, dusted off that dizzying, alluring aura, and entered the diary as just another memorable destination – even for a twenty-one-year-old.


#4: The Moment of Charmed Arrival
Levoca, Slovakia
April 2000

Unlike some of the other off-beat destinations where we’ve left our footprints over the last 12 years, this one hasn’t become the Hot Spot on any Frequent Traveller’s Map, and probably never will be. But this quaint, enchanting little town in north-east Slovakia will forever retain a special place in our hearts, in part thanks to the unexpectedly ‘grand’ hotel where we ended up – well, to be precise, the manager/receptionist who was truly one-of-a-kind.

We had arrived in Levoca station after a creaky train journey from Bratislava, and all the coughing and nose-running I had tried to battle off over the previous two days had chosen this moment to metamorphose into a fully escalating fever. The two uphill miles from the station to the town centre seemed even longer in the rain that was just that little bit too malicious to be called drizzle. The hotel in question, right in the middle of the old town square, was listed in the ‘Top End’ category in the guidebook, and sounded unimaginably lavish by our standard at the time. It turned out to be our only choice by default after the discovery that the other, more budget-friendly option down the road, had closed for good.

Having sign-waved our way through numerous conversations in various small Czech and Slovakian towns by this point, we were startled when the only member of staff on duty opened his mouth with what could only be described as a mock-Basil Fawlty accent. ‘Ah, welcome to Levoca. I trust your stay shall be peaceful’ – meaning, as we discovered thirty seconds later, that we were the only guests in the hotel (and, by deduction, the only tourists mad enough to have come to this part of the world at this time of the year). Then, when being presented our passports – ‘Ah, I believe you are the first Chinese visitors we have ever had here.’ When being quizzed about weather in the following days – ‘I’m afraid the weather is expected to be unfavourable.’ Unfavourable! The last time I had heard anyone utter the word in real life was, well, actually no one ever spoke like that in Newcastle. W’ther’s go’a be shite, more likely. We ended up staying there for three full days and I have wanted to revisit Levoca ever since. To this day, not only was it the only hotel in all our hard-travelling years where a truly elegant suite (with art deco bathroom, complete with free-standing bath) cost fifteen dollars a night, but the memory of such ineffable charm, effortlessly exuded by one single person in the most unexpected place, always brings a smile to my face. These are the moments that make travel addicts out of us.