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The writer Anita Konkka was one of the travellers on the Literature
Express Europe 2000 train tour taking 107 writers through Europe,
19 cities, from Lisbon to Berlin. This is her account from
the journey.
Two weeks after the end of the journey, I remember that the jacaranda
trees in Lisbon had blue blossoms; that the stones of the pavements
were cream-coloured; that Fernando Pessoa sat, cast in bronze, in
his favourite café; and that the air above the Tagus river
turned violet a moment before sunset.
The journey had started on 4 June
in Lisbon: the Literature Express Europe 2000 ran the route of the
historic North-South Express, on board 107 authors from 43 countries
taking part in this unique pan-European project. Among the writers
were three participants from Finland: Anni Sumari, Markus Jääskeläinen
and myself.
The train traversed the continent
in a great arc, crossing the Iberian peninsula, France, Belgium,
Germany and Poland, up to the Baltic States and Russia, turning
down again via Byelorussia and Poland to Berlin, where it arrived
on 14 July. Eleven countries, 19 cities, countless events, parties,
forums, discussions and readings were behind us. But the journey
is not yet finished. It continues in the minds of the participants;
experiences, perceptions and recollections will be published
next year in a book called Eurobylon – Timetable for Europe.
I remember early hotel wake-up calls,
hurried departures, the bustle and noise of the railway stations,
announcements one could not make out, the popping of flash-bulbs,
the staring lenses of television cameras, local drunks leaning on
station walls and the trackside graffiti, everywhere so similar
that they could have been painted by the same person.
I remember long, arduous and hot journeys
in trains with no air-conditioning, the chaos of languages in the
restaurant cars, trees flashing past the windows, flocks of sheep
in the shade of the trees and, in the heat of the afternoon, writers
sitting on the train, each alone with his notebook and laptop computer.
I remember that on the train I taught
a French colleague what toe is in Finnish. Varvas. He asked whether
it was masculine or feminine, and I told him that toes do not have
a gender.
I remember that in Bordeaux the rain
and wind made it so miserable that the street organ grinder's white
cat was wearing a green woolly waistcoat. But the red wine of Bordeaux
warmed our hearts and at Malagar, François Mauriac's home
farm, the sun came out from behind the clouds and poets recited
poetry in 57 languages under an old oak tree.
I remember that in Paris I danced
my feet into blisters in the Cabaret Sauvage disco, which was also
a writers' soirée, and that I lost my voice when I had to
speak, in the French national library, on the subject of literary
utopias.
I remember the big, friendly and humorous
women of Germany. I remember that Hannover was at the centre of
the European heat wave and that the zoo's pigs and tapirs were covered
in suntan oil so that their skins would not burn. I stayed in the
Hotel Kaiserhof, which was as hot as a hatchery, and that I gave
away my Expo ticket because I did not have the energy to see a world's
fair. There was enough to wonder at in the ringing rainwater drain
of the railway station. It played the sentimental pop songs of my
youth.
I remember that in Moscow my sense
of reality began to disappear. I felt as if I were sleep-walking
as I wandered at sunset across Red Square. The square was redder
than ever and the walls of the Kremlin looked like cardboard cut-outs.
A Belgian colleague said this was like something from a Disney movie.
At night, in my hotel room, I thought about the European identity
problem: who am I, since this seems so strange.
I remember that in Minsk my sense
of money disappeared when, in a café, I paid four million
White Russian roubles for an espresso. It was a relief, after Minsk,
to get to Warsaw. Everything was comprehensible and clear in western
terms. Next to the hotel was a Pizza Hut where you could buy cardboard-flavoured
pizzas for a few zloty, and a stone's-throw away was an internet
café, something I could not find in Minsk, although I had
asked a black-moustached policeman the way to where it should have
been.
I remember when the literature train,
after six weeks and 7,000 kilometres, arrived at its destination,
Berlin, how the crowds received us at the station with applause
and hurrahs as if we were heroic travellers. The crowd at the reception
at the Berliner Ensemble's theatre was so enormous that I thought
I would faint from lack of oxygen and travel-weariness.
The next day, the large lecture room
of the central library in Berlin was full of Germans inspired by
the train journey, who wanted to hear the travel experiences of
German and Finnish writers while they were still fresh. But it was
difficult to say anything about them; they were still in a single
chaos in my mind, like a strange dream from which one has just awoken
and which one has, at yet, no words to describe.
Writing produced on the Literature Express Europe 2000 tour can
be found at www.literaturexpress.org
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