Icarus Burning: August 2007

In Australia it’s easy to get away from people. If you want a quiet beach all you gotta do is drive up or down the coast a little and suddenly you’re there. Admittedly, during summer city beaches are packed, but if you go outside those zones it’ll be quiet. Sure, on those beaches there will be people, but they’ll be scattered. Everyone seems to respect each other’s need for space and keeps their distance.

August in southern Europe is mental. Everyone has gone on holidays here. The beaches are packed. This is not an exaggeration either.

When we were travelling through France from north to south, four out five shops would be closed for the entire month of August with a French note to say gone swimming back next month. Trying to organise bands to film at gigs has also been a bit of a pain. I’ve received dozens of emails from really blunt people in bands saying, ‘Why are you coming to Zagreb, Rome, Ljubljana> in August. Nothing is happening!”

As if this hadn’t already become painfully obvious to me, I reply with, ‘Thanks for the tip, buddy. Anyone else you can recommend?’

Everyone is on holidays. And the bands that aren’t, they’re doing the big festival circuits.

So what can you do? You do as they do. When in Rome, you go to the beach.

We have and it’s beautiful.

In Croatia the water is ultra clear and it has that tropical turquoise colour you always see in postcards. The bottom is totally visible too with little fish swimming about. Apparently because there hasn’t been much heavy industry in this country the coastline has remained pristine. That’s if you don’t count war or ethnic cleansing as heavy industry.

And there’s no sand either, the mountains go right into the seas creating these rocky beaches and cliffs, so there’s not that old problem of getting sand in your underpants. Personally, I reckon that’s a good thing. And by having big rock faces to jump from into the sea it increases your chances of looking really good in front of your girl.

At the beaches though I can’t help wondering if I’m looking at any war criminals? How can you recognise one? Do they wear their hats differently? Do their boobs wobble strangely? It seems the EU is on the look out for them too. With Croatia’s EU membership coming up, it’s not likely they’ll get complete acceptance until they pick up their toys and hand over their war criminals to The Hague.

So we’re at the beach and we have our Aussie need for space. Admittedly, there are a millions of women lying around topless, but strangely enough you learn to turn a blind eye to them. It’s not because I’ve become desensitised to boobies, I don’t think that’s possible, but most of the girls who seem to get them out and jiggle them free are a few of generations older than me.

But then we did stumble onto a nudist beach. Well we stumbled upon the gate, that is, where a man told us, ‘Hold on there. This is a nudist beach.’

‘So can we go down there?’ I was keen. Sandy open to the idea. But the bloke standing there wanted to charge us to go onto the beach.

‘10 Euro to get your bits out?’ I repeated his price.

He nodded.

‘That’s outrageous!’

No way. We’re on a budget.

So we’ve been beach hopping for about week, cruising down the coastal roads and stopping to swim whenever we want. A couple of days ago we stopped at this old ruined barracks that was right on the beach, it looked about 300 years old.

Of course there were people everywhere, except on this one spot. It was on top of this little building that jutted out of the old fort into the water. It only had one girl on top of it.

I said to Sandy, ‘If we go up there we’ll probably scare her away and have the whole space to ourselves.’

I could tell she didn’t like my tactics, but said, ‘Cool, whatever. I just wanna swim.’

We picked our way over the rocks, mumbling ‘excuse mes’ and ‘pardons’ till we reached the building.

It’s only one story high, jutting out into the sea with big rocks surrounding it. Getting on the top is easy because where there had once been an empty doorway big rocks had been piled up into it which left only a small hole in the top of the doorway. It was almost a perfect way to climb up.

Next to the building is a family staring at us.

I looked on top. The girl sitting up there was glaring back at me. She looked mean.

‘You go first,’ I said to Sandy.

‘Why me?’

‘Because it’ll be easier for you if I give you a boost.’

She agrees and scrambled on top with no problem. Set down her towel on one corner and began to bake. I climbed after her.

On top the view is great. The other girl has turned around and you can see everyone swimming on the beach in both directions. I knew this would be a good idea. I go to set my towel down in the middle of the roof.

It’s then I hear a creaking noise. It starts soft and gets louder.

Cracks started to form around where I was standing, a crumbling square in the middle around me. Luckily for Sandy and the girl, they’re both on the sides in safety. Big slabs of rock are shifting under me. Time felt like it was slowing and speeding within the same second. You might say my brain had flipped a gear because as I watched the effect of my weight stretch across the roof in sharp jagged splinters, it felt like the moment that had stretched across a thousand years inside a second. I won’t say my life flashed before me because it didn’t, but the smell of dust and sea spice were acute. The sounds of people talking and laughing in Croatian in the background were clear while the sound of the cracking roof was roaring in my ears. I can still picture the dust puffing out of the cracks as they formed around me. Sandy’s look of surprise turn to shock. Her fear to horror. But while this slow motion effect occurred my body felt like it’d been emersed in honey as I watched, moving sluggish the earthquake happened beneath my feet. I wanted to jump, but where? If I leapt to the edge where Sandy was sitting I would most likely go over and into the rocks of the sea below. In Hollywood the protagonist would always make that leap to safety.

Sadly, I can’t afford a stunt double.

So like a ship’s captain I went down. I fell. Rocks tumbled. I got rumbled. I don’t what went after that, maybe instinct took over maybe luck. I’d like to think that my inner ninja took over and helped me land safely because the next thing I remember is Sandy’s face looking down at me, through the swirling clouds of dust. She was saying, ‘Oh my God! Is anything broken? No, don’t move! Can you move?’

I checked.

All was good. A few cuts and scrapes. One seriously sore foot and a sore hand, but nothing broken.

I whispered to my inner ninja. ‘Way to go, buddy.’

So as I’m crawling out of the hole where the rocks had been piled up into the doorway, this fat topless mamma, who I assume is the mother of the girl who was on top, starts blabbering at me in Croatian.

‘No Croatian.’ I mumble while I’m on my hands and knees covered in dust and blood.

She doesn’t care. She’s on a roll. Her boobs are wobbling and her mouth is moving, but that’s not flying with me because my inner medic has taken over. I’m stumbling away into the sea to wash my cuts.

Believe me, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that this is the second roof that has fallen on me since I got to Europe. The first fell on top of me at Reg’s when his kitchen ceiling fell on my head, while we were playing Yahtzee and now I fall through one. I’m trying not to think in terms of omens, warnings or curses.

But if there is something out in that mystic never never place who wants to say something to me, send me a God damn note!

So other than a few rumble tumbles things are good. Not good, awesome.

We’ve been to Milan, where we hooked up with some anti-fashion punksters. A couple of bands called Morkobot and Ufomamut (translating to UFO Mammoth), plus this psychedelic poster designing outfit called Malleus, who have made posters for the likes of Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Dresden Dolls, and loads of others.

We’ve seen Venice.

Tonight we’re in Zadar, Croatia, to hook up with a US band called Kulture Shock, they hail from the US but most of the band members are immigrants there, some them are originally from this way (Bosnia) and their sound is gypsy punk with a political edge.

So we’ve had some serious problems.

We were in Amsterdam filming our last interview with a coffee shop owner. Everything was going great. Our chubby British proprietor, with his glassy red eyes, was opening up, getting all meaningful by looking directly into the camera and telling us how he had to flee Birmingham so he could get stoned perpetually. It was a heart moving story. Really.

For us, this interview was a fact hunt, we’d already found out what the Dutch thought about smoking pot (most of them don’t), about how much you should pay for a joint (3-4 euro), and all the other silly questions you can think of like, ‘Can you die from it?’ (Um….no) and ‘Which nationality do you see vomiting the most?’ (English and Italians are on par)

For this interview we just needed a little more info about the ‘grey import market,’ as opposed to the black market, for importing marijuana from Nepal, Morocco and Afghanistan. Personally, after discovering (to my horror) that none of the pot-farmers were receiving a decent cut from these sales, i.e. it wasn’t fair-trade, I thought they were all a little dodgy. We also wanted some more info on how much a ‘hooch shop’ can legally hold on its premises. (It’s no more than half a kilo, if you’re interested, otherwise when the cops come in, which they do, they can take it if the shops over the limit).

You might say, everything was going too perfect. This guy was giving us everything we needed. And with emotion too.

When two young lads walked into the shop and pretended to be interested in the interview, I paid them no mind. Sandy was too busy filming to notice. Soon the lads left. So did one of our bags!

It had our passports in it.

Oh god, the Anguish. We screamed. At each other. At the Brit. At God.

On the street, millions of tourists were wandering.

The little bastards were nowhere in sight.

So I bolted around the alleys glaring down every little fucker that might or might not have looked like them. Everyone looks guilty when you’re bloods pumping faster than a race car in the formula one. I guess I might have appeared pretty messed up because most people avoided me, I would’ve too if I saw someone like me coming. You might say this method of sleuth investigation wasn’t the best, but what can you do in a situation like this? And if did I find them, what then? I haven’t been in a fight since my early years of high school so I’d be hard pressed using my powers of persuasion to ask for it back.

But I tell you, it was horrible. If someone had given me the choice between having our passports stolen or having my balls shaved with big rusty knife, I would’ve taken the later.

You can imagine us at the police station saying, ‘Our bag has been stolen!’

‘Where were you?’ The cop asked, grabbing a pen.

‘At a coffee shop.’

The police officer’s eyes look at the ceiling, you can tell he’s thinking we’re another pair of silly stoners. He probably has to deal with hundreds of intoxicated backpackers everyday.

‘We were filming an interview,’ Sandy says before going onto explain the legitimate nature of what we were doing.

The cop opened up after that, telling us how bag snatching is major problem in Amsterdam and a major racket is working the area. While we were making our statement, another woman came in to report her bag stolen. A pair of young lads (possibly the same ones!) had stopped her to ask directions and when she had turned around – that special magic happened again – her bag had vanished.

Anyway long story short is that we high-tailed it to the Australian Embassy in The Hague, where we got emergency passports issued. Apparently if you lose two passports within five years the replacement price goes up - so keep them safe kids.

We’re in Lyon, France, now, taking it easy in the sunshine. I can’t speak French so I’m talking to the locals in English with a French accent. I think they really appreciate it.

Things are getting better and better.