my nod, his grin grew wide and lascivious and he opened his coat, not shockingly fast, more casually, like we were continuing to have a normal, albeit one-sided conversation, to reveal a skinny, naked body with an impossibly long penis. I was equally repulsed and amazed. It was gross but also unbelievable, given his physique otherwise. I screamed. He looked at me like I had broken some contract between us; some code. His eyes showed hurt. “But you said you wanted to see it!,” they seemed to say. I guess that’s what he’d been muttering in German when I nodded and smiled.
I turned and ran back to my group, breathless and annoyed that I never got my ice cream. The image of the man’s bits and pieces was burned into my brain and making it difficult to enjoy the otherwise fantastic scenery. My friends laughed and said they wished they would have been standing there. No, you don’t- you can’t unsee that. I was worried that I had caught an STD from simple proximity or visual association. What if he was infested? His eye-contact made me feel like I needed a shower and a brain scrub. For a seventeen year old virgin this was a traumatic event. I survived, but EWW!
The adventures continued. We marveled and clapped for our coach driver who managed to squeeze into the tiniest winding streets in Paris and outpace other cars on the Autobahn. My group got a little lost in Paris while navigating the Metro and I had a mild panic attack from it. I never want to end up in the wrong part of town. Since I knew so little about the right vs. wrong parts of Paris, I worried. Given that we were on free time with no chaperones, I worried that extra little bit. We could be kidnapped, a long-standing fear due to repeated viewings of the six o’clock local news as a child. After stopping at a MacDonalds (seriously, someone needed to teach my travel companions some culture), eating fries with mayonnaise. and regrouping, we found our way to our desired location, Jim Morrison’s gravesite.
Jim Morrison’s grave is a tourist attraction unto itself. It sits in a lovely and famous cemetery full of raised sites and unparalleled statuary. When we arrived we were one group of many who had made the pilgrimage. People sat around singing, chatting with Jim (sure, that’s normal) and writing loving graffiti all over the site. It’s a whole thing and my group was eager to take part. Especially since there had recently been a bit of a Doors/Jim Morrison revival with the release of the biopic starring Val Kilmer. It was the highlight of the day as far as they were concerned. I like The Doors, sure, don’t get me wrong, and I wanted to see the site, too. But I didn’t want to stay there all day and take part in the singing ritual. I don’t respond well to prolonged thoughts of death and the guy sort of did it to himself with drugs, so could we just meditate a little less on the matter and instead head out to the next site? I was starting to get the heebie-jeebies being surrounded by dead people for so long; perhaps subconsciously worried that it was contagious. Plus, there was more to Paris that I wanted, nay, NEEDED, to see. My breathing started to constrict. Enough with the mini panic attacks! I contributed an “I love you, Jim” to the wall and appealed to the group to move on. It was hard, due to all the teen-aged emotions suddenly flowing for a guy who had his heyday before they were even born, but finally we left. It was time to celebrate life before I lost it.
Our visit to Switzerland offered visions I’d never imagined. When we drove into the country, all was fine and pretty and ordinary and then suddenly, like a backdrop direct from fantasy, the Alps appeared. They were not there, and then they were, in all their glorious majesty. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.. I felt cold and tingly from inside the bus, before I even stepped outside and into their presence. If you haven’t seen them, they are an awe-inspiring, overwhelming, visual perfection; a confection of snow-capped beauty. I kind of wanted to eat them. On the ground, however, it was early summer and a rich display of color trimmed each peak; a dazzling array of gorgeous flowers. Periodically we would spot a waterfall and in one area, rainbow-hued hang gliders dotted the landscape. I was scarily breathless, like I had jumped off a wall, forgot to bend my knees, and had the wind knocked out of me. I was frightened and stupefied and in love all at the same time.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to take a train up the Jungfrau to the ice palace at the top and try a little skiing for anyone who’s interested.” I almost fell off my seat. I want to ski! Wait, we’re going up one of those peaks? That’s a bit high, right? And steep. Hmm. Not so sure about that one. The whole group was going. I would go.
After a perfect evening and night’s sleep at an inn in Interlaken, filled with a down comforter-aided cloud-like sleep that continues to blow away every other night’s sleep I’ve ever had, we boarded a rickety-seeming train that took us slowly up the Jungfrau, one of the highest peaks in Europe. I had to keep myself from looking out of the window at the sheer drops along the side of the train cars. My hands started to sweat and I had trouble swallowing. I stared directly at my friends as they talked because if I focused hard enough on them, I might have a chance of not passing out. Up and up and up we climbed. I could no longer see the ground because of the winding of the train on the mountain. All that rose above us was a vast whiteness. Was this it? Was I going to heaven now? One of the chaperones came around to give us the lowdown once we got to the top. I wanted to tell him to sit down, and not stand up during the ride. Safety first, man.
“Once we get up there, we will walk through the ice palace and all its carvings. You are free to get a bite to eat at the café or you can go outside and try to ski a little. It’s just trying it out, as we don’t have the time to stay and ski for any period of time.” He cleared his throat. “Now, you all are from Florida, which is really flat, as you know. I don’t know how much experience you have with altitude…” He looked around and everyone shook their heads no. “Okay, well, this mountain is really high. Really high. When you get off the train, just take your time walking around. Don’t try to run around, as you will get really tired. Get some water and drink lots of it. You might feel dizzy. You might feel sick to your stomach. You might get a headache. The air is thinner, so it might be…different…to breathe.”
What?! He’s just telling us all this now? I was already struggling with breathing from my panic and now we were going to the top of a REALLY HIGH mountain in the Alps. As far as I knew, all Alps were really high, so to say it was really high meant this mother was REALLY HIGH! Dizzy and sick? Check. And I hadn’t even gotten out of the train yet. Oh boy. I wondered immediately if there was a medical station at the top. Or, if we stopped breathing, would we have to take the slow, rickety train ride all the way back down to the small village at the bottom for care? I was not liking this at all. Oh no, I just looked over the side. Must stop doing that.
We reached the top and I walked out, taking steps in slow motion. The others looked at me.
“What? He said to take it slowly.”
“Yes, but not to be crazy about it,” said my friend. “You’re not re-enacting the moon landing. Let’s just get some water and you’ll be fine. Walk normally. Just don’t run right away. He said once we get used to it, we will be fine.” I picked up my pace, but only a little bit, so as not to attract attention, and judgment.
In the ice palace, I was fine. It was awesome actually. Ice sculptures in an ice building at the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. What could be cooler (no pun intended)? Plus, I couldn’t see the outside and thus didn’t have a constant reminder of just how high we were up in the sky. I drank more water. My dizziness, whether self-imposed or actually brought on by the altitude, started to subside. It was time to face the outdoors. I would not let my fear hold me back.
There was a large open area where they allowed people to strap on skis and give it a shot down a relatively flat hill. Once I could put them on and stand up without immediately falling, I held my breath, never the wisest choice, and pushed myself off my stationary spot with my ski poles. Within seconds, I was speeding way too fast down the hill into a white void. There was nothing to see but white and the silver jagged peaks of neighboring mountains covered in more white. Then I saw unexpected red. I had fallen, tangled up in the red plastic fence netting at the bottom of the hill used to mark the end point of the ski area, and I assume,
