FOUR types of people go Inter-Railing. First, those who like visiting foreign places without feeling as if they are commonplace holidaymakers. Second, those who do it to “find themselves”. Third, those who do it because everyone else they know seems to be doing it. And, finally, there are those like me, who do it by mistake.
Over the past few decades, Inter-Railing has become as integral a part of the bohemian under-25 experience as attending the Glastonbury festival, buying your first joss stick, and pretending that you think On the Road by Jack Kerouac is a thumping good read. This summer, once again, thousands of students will set off across the Channel, armed with the odd change of clothes, a travel pass and a copy of the latest Röyksopp album.
Some of them will find beauty and truth; others will just get sweaty and irritable and yearn for the simplicity of their childhood caravan holidays to Mablethorpe. But I feel certain that all of them will have a better time than I did when I embarked on my own rail odyssey in June 1998.
Without the benefit of several thousand more words, some matches, a bottle of paraffin and a copy of The Rough Guide to Europe, it’s hard to properly emphasise the futility, frustration and dread of my experience as an Inter-Railer. The trip had been the idea of my then-girlfriend, Vicki: a compromise between her aspirations to travel and broaden her mind, and my aspirations to sit on a beach somewhere with a big load of that sugary icy stuff you get in a tub. We would go on holiday, like normal people, seeing our favourite country, Italy, by train. Naively, I believed this would exempt me from coming into contact with the kind of people who Inter-Railed properly.
Things began to go hideously wrong virtually from the first overhead luggage compartment. The carriage in the sleeper train to Milan was cramped and hot with the unwelcome addition of an alien leg from the bunk above, the seafood in Verona led to projectile vomiting, the hot plastic covers on the seats seared our bare legs — and those were just the things keeping me looking on the bright side.
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In Napoli, we watched a dog dying in the corner of the station, had several thousand lira stolen, then paid the first of many surplus fares (an annoying hidden snag with the standard Inter-Rail pass) to get to the Amalfi coast, where we got stuck on a train next to two liposucked blondes who talked about how “quaint” the locals were, and then on a bus next to an Australian man called Brad who reeled off the list of places he’d been to as if they were sexual conquests, and shared his mineral water with Vicki and looked down her top as if I wasn’t there. Before we knew it, we’d been awake for 47 hours straight.
Our problem seemed to be that we had set out without taking heed of the golden rule of Inter-Railing: thou shalt be prepared to rough it. We were in a constant state of nervous momentum, moving from one place immediately to another — hoping that it would have clearer sea water, a landlady who wouldn’t steal our passports, a room we could afford, a train whose engine didn’t fall out on to the track outside Venice and leave us stuck in a confined space with four spoilt American architecture students who preached the restorative qualities of gargling with sesame oil (but only while the moon is waning). The more we wanted to stop, the more we found ourselves moving.
After Vicki had hyperventilated in a gutter in Sorrento, and we had performed Luke Skywalker dives through the doors of the day’s final train back to Rome, we admitted defeat. We had lasted a grand total of four and a half days, but our troubles weren’t over. As we arrived at Calais station three gendarmes forcefully took me to one side, emptied the contents of my rucksack on to the floor, and led a tearful Vicki off down a corridor, before finally walking away, sans apology or explanation.
We certainly had not been smoking any marijuana (that would have been far too much fun). Had the lab detected the remnants of Glastonbury 1995 on my rucksack? Or did this happen to everyone who turned up at Calais with four days’ stubble, a tear-stained girlfriend and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt? Needless to say, we missed the final ferry of the day, and our crossing coincided with that of several hundred dejected, volatile England supporters on their way back from the World Cup. We barely had the energy to care.
Over the past few years, I have frequently thought about precisely why my holiday was such a disaster. Maybe I had missed that enigmatic pocket of a person’s youth where getting really dirty, sleeping on sticky railway platforms, reading pretentious books and going to foreign places to meet other people doing exactly the same thing makes sense.
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Anyway, this summer when the time comes to get away, I will head somewhere safe, still and sandy — a cheerfully unambitious holidaymaker, doing his best to lose, rather than find, himself.