No man is an island - except good ol' Dave!

I last wrote, if not thought, about David Glasheen on little Restoration Island on the 3rd of May 2005 in my travelogue to Thursday Island.

He hasn't had much luck since! As the Sun Herald reported last month:

ROBINSON Crusoe-turned-Romeo believes he may have found and lost his Girl Friday.

Tropical island castaway David Glasheen lives in a palm-fringed paradise. But he can't find a girl. "It gets lonely out here," said the 65-year-old beachcomber.

His home is remote Restoration Island, 2000 km north of Brisbane, in the heart of the northern Great Barrier Reef.

"You've got to have the bait in the water, or you don't catch the fish," the wannabe romeo said yesterday. "Love, it's a numbers game. It's like Lotto. You've got to be in it to win it. My only hope is for a mermaid to turn up on the beach."

The lovelorn Mr Glasheen, who shares his island with Quasi the dog and a shop mannequin dubbed Miranda, said he just wants a soulmate to share the sunsets.

And he made international headlines when he joined an on-line dating agency. He got hundreds of hits when his RSVP profile launched six months ago. Some female admirers lusted after his idyllic lifestyle. One asked if he knew about tantric sex. Another said she liked to cook fish in a tutu.

"It's a big learning curve this dating game," said the former Sydney high-flyer, who lost $10 million in the stock market crash in 1987.

His story featured in newspapers in Australia, China, UK, US, Poland, Mexico, and the Middle East. One women's magazine offered to do a makeover, put him in a suit and take him to the city - "but that's not me". He's appeared on current affairs television, Fox TV and most recently, a French documentary series based on Jules Verne's novel Mysterious Sea.

But of hundreds of hits, he was most drawn to a female version of himself. "She was really keen," he said. "She's lived on an island, sailed halfway around the world on her own, a gorgeous-looking girl." Now Pearl, 50, a former nurse from Perth, has "dropped off the face of the planet".

The heartbroken hermit now believes he may have lost his Girl Friday.

What's wrong with Miranda, Dave? At least she won't talk back!

P.S.

FAST FORWARD TO AUGUST 2012: read the latest news [here].

I am off to Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta

 

The tendency to look back contemplatively on one's life as one gets nearer to the end of it is a natural human instinct which I indulged in last night as I sat in bed, with two heaters going and the electric blanket switched on high, to watch the old German movie "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" (I often think of Piroschka). I had last seen it as a boy of 10 or 12 accompanied by my sisters, in a Sunday afternoon movie matinée.

And how the memories came back! Of my boyhood and of the Piroschkas in my own life and the Hódmezővásárhelykutasipusztas I've been to! (Can I speak Hungarian? No, but I can be silent in several other languages!)

P.S. Hugo-Andreas (Andi) Hartung's book with the same title is based on the author's student days in Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta in 1925 when he was 23 years old. Somebody visited the place in 1990 and wrote,

"Mit diesem Film verbindet mich eine Besonderheit. Ich bin 55 Jahre alt und hatte als kleiner Junge diesen Film gesehen. Er hatte mich sehr angerührt. Als ich 1989 das erste mal in Ungarn war, dachte ich an den Film. Zurück in Deutschland war mein Interesse geweckt und ich begann nachzuforschen. Der Film Piroschka ist basiert auf den Roman von Hugo Hartung, 1972 gestorben. Was nicht jeder weiß, Hugo hieß mit vollem Nahmen Hugo-Andreas (Andi) Hartung. Ich besorgte mir also seine Biografie, und richtig, es gab eine wirkliche Piroschka. Aber wo war nun das Nest Hodmeövasarhelykutaspuzta? Ich wusste es lag an der Bahnlinie des Nachtzuges von Oroshza und da gab es wirklich einen Ort, der Hodmeövasarhely hieß. Ich ging also 1990 da hin. Das war aber nicht der richtige Ort und so fuhr ich der Bahnlinie nach Oroshaza entlang und kam nach Szekuttas, so heisst der Ort heute. Ja ja ich weiß, heute weiß man das in Sekunden bei einem Blick ins Internet. Aber 1990 war da nichts mit. Ich hatte nur das Buch und meine Neugier und ehrlich gesagt hat die Sache dadurch das es nun jeder übers Internet weiß an Reiz verloren. Also da stand ich nun in einer Kleinstadt und wusste noch nicht, das dies der gesuchte Ort war. An der Umgehungsstrasse standen mitlerweile hunderte von Häusern, aber wenn man die alte Dorfstrasse befuhr kam man an alten kleinen Häuschen und auch an einem Bahnhof vorbei. Ich suchte nun nach jemanden der mir helfen konnte und ging zum Dorfpfarrer in der Hoffnung er hätte was gelesen. Aber leider wusste er, wie die anderen Dorfbewohner auch, nichts von einem Film "Piroschka". Der Film war nicht dort gedreht worden und Ungarn war im Ostblock und von Deutschland ziemlich abgeschieden. Ich klärte ihn mit meinem Buch auf und er staunte nicht schlecht. Ich wusste ja, das Hugo Andi Hartung als Student 1925, also mit 23 Jahren hier gewesen war. Der Pfarrer schlug mir vor, nach einem der Ältesten im Dorf, dem Dorfschmied zu gehen, um ihn zu fragen. Der war nun sehr alt und damals, in 1925, 16 Jahre alt. Der erinnerte sich an die Sache denn ein Gast aus Deutschland kam damals wohl nicht so häufig vor. Er erzählte von den Beiden, Andreas und ...nein, Piroschka hieß die ECHTE Piroschka nicht. Er zeigte uns auch den Hof, in dem Hartung damals wohnte. Ein trauriger Anblick. Der Hof war völlig herunter gekommen und baufällig. Eine Schande für jeden Piroschka-Fan. Er gehörte übrigens damals dem Tierarzt. Der Bahnhof stand auch noch da, ein sehr schmuckloses Gebäude, zig Jahre Sozialismus hatten ihre Spuren hinterlassen. Der Bahnhof ist übrigens etwas größer als in dem Film. Ich erfuhr vom Schmied so manche andere Sachen, wie z.B. das "Piroschka" oben im Bahnhof wohnte, sie aber nicht die leibliche Tochter des Bahnhofvorstehers war sondern eine angenommene Tochter. Im darauf folgendem Jahr war ich dann wieder dort und brachte das Video von dem Film mit. Der Film ging durch das halbe Dorf.Inzwischen interressierte dem Dorfpfarrer, der inzwischen mein Freund war, die Sache auch und ein oder zwei Jahre später gab mir der Dorfpfarrer dann eine frohe Nachricht. Er hatte die ECHTE Piroschka von damals gefunden. Sie wohnte etwa 80km entfernt von Szekuttas. Wir fuhren sie dann besuchen. Sie war inzwischen eine sehr alte Frau geworden die uns freundlich empfing und mit dem Pfarrer (er heisst Imre) auf ungarisch allerhand besprach. Imre übersetzte mir das dann. Zuletzt machten wir ein Foto von uns dreien und "Piroschka" schrieb mir was in mein mitgebrachtes Piroschka-Buch. So bin ich wohl einer der wenigen, der dieses Glück hatte. Ich fuhr jedes Jahr in den Ort und besuchte Imre. Dann kam die Nachricht, das Piroschka gestorben war. Tja, inzwischen ist alles anders, ich war rund 8 oder 10 Jahre nicht mehr dort. Mein Freund Imre schrieb mir, es gibt seit kurzem ein Piroschka-Museum. Meine Nachforschungen haben sich also gelohnt. Tja, das war die Geschichte von Piroschka und Andi (Hartung)."

"I am I because my little dogs know me." (Gertrude Stein)

Had a sit-down bath to clean as well as warm myself up! So as not to waste all that precious water - although it's right now pouring outside and the tanks will soon be full to overflowing - , I chucked the dogs in as well.

OF COURSE, I GOT OUT FIRST!

After all, they're male dogs, aren't they? And there's nothing strange about my sexual orientation!!!

The week that was! (and still is)

According to my McDonald-calendar (the only pin-up calendar I'm allowed in the house), we're already well into July! This being a far from newsworthy week and with a cold weekend ahead, I have decided to go public a couple of days early and go back to my warm bed. If anything earth-shattering such as another celebrity death or an utterance suggesting even a hint of intelligence from our elected leaders occurs in the next 48 hours, I shall add it to this blog later. In the meantime, here are the things that moved the world during the past five days.

The good people of Bundanoon, our little piece of Scotland in the Southern Highlands, have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a ban on bottled water. Only one of the 350 local resident voted against the proposal, along with a representative from the bottled water industry. No doubt they found they could cook their porridge with good ol' tap-water. Never missing a publicity stunt, the New South Wales Premier jumped on the water-wagon and orderd all government departments and agencies to stop buying bottled water. I can see public service recruitment going into overdrive as extra staff are be needed to make up for hours spent 'round the water-cooler!

To climb or not to climb? This question is hotly debated in the Northern Territory where a proposed ban on climbing Uluru in Central Australia has sparked debate between tourists, traditional owners and political leaders. A traditional owner of Uluru is relieved a ban on climbing the iconic rock is one step closer to becoming a reality. Vince Forrester from Mutitjulu says the rock is sacred to the local Aboriginal people and traditional owners have wanted the climb closed since the park was handed back to them in 1985. "You can't go climb on top of the Vatican, you can't go climb on top of the Buddhist temples and so on and so forth," he said. "Obviously you have to respect our religious attachment to the land too, so we're saying please do not climb Uluru - we've said it in all languages." The 346-metre high rock is visited by about 350,000 people a year, about half of whom are from overseas. More than 100,000 people climb the rock against the wishes of the traditional owners. Not everyone agrees with the ban. "It is not as if anyone built it. It was always there. Climb on it if you want. It is like saying you can't swim in Sydney harbour or walk around the Grand Canyon," wrote Ron Rat. No doubt, he'll be called names worse than that before the debate is over.

The Royal Australian Navy has confirmed four members of HMAS Success's company were removed from the ship in Singapore in May after female crew members made complaints about alleged sex games. (Are they the same women sailors for whom the Navy paid $10,000 each to have breast enlargements for purely cosmetic reasons?) The sailors from HMAS Success reportedly ran a contest to see who could sleep with the most female crew members. Records were allegedly kept in a book known as 'The Ledger' and dollar values were placed on each woman's head. The sailors reportedly dared one another to have sex in numerous locations, like the top of a pool table, and more money was on offer if a sailor could sleep with a female officer or a lesbian. In the Battle of the Sexes, "Australia expects that every man will do his duty."

And while on the subject, across the Tasman an enterprising teenager tried to sell some sexy photographs of his mother on an internet auction site after the pair had an argument. The 18-year-old student opened an auction for "five naked photos of my Mum" on the Trade Me site after being told to clear the family garage and sell any unwanted items on the site. Trade Me pulled the auction the next day, but the student, identified only as Michael, was soon back trying to sell a series of eight-year-old "glamour" shots of his mother, including one of her in underwear. His mother Jennifer, 44, who did not want the family name published, told the paper she was "pretty annoyed" when she found out about the first set of photographs. "He was quite naughty... I thought you cheeky little git," she said. But she was annoyed that Trade Me withdrew the second set of pictures, of which she approved. "I insisted Michael show me first, the little bugger. They are quite artistic. There is nothing dodgy about them. I wanted 50 per cent of the sale, but more than that I miss the nice comments." Some mothers do have them! And some sons do have them!

After Opposition leader Mlcolm Turnbull copped it sweet on the OzCar email debacle, he unveiled his own "debt truck" which will tour the country carrying a billboard highlighting how far into the red the Government is. Keep them rolling, Malcolm! Maybe there's a future for you as a carpark attendant!

Speaking of which, in downtown Jerusalem, several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews in their long coats and sable-fur hats have been throwing rocks at police, setting rubbish bins alight, even throwing dirty nappies or rotting rubbish at anyone who uses a municipal carpark on Saturdays - or Shabbat, the day of rest when Jews are not supposed to do anything resembling work, which can include something as simple as flicking a switch, turning on a light or driving. As the ABC's Middle East correspondent Anne Barker reported, "Suddenly the crowd turned on me, screaming in my face. Dozens of angry men began spitting on me. I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting - on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms. It was like rain, coming at me from all directions. Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face." Why does Israel need the atomic bomb? All that spitting is enough to keep anybody away!

So you may not be travelling to Israel but you may have encountered this only all-too-familiar problem: you're at the airport and suddenly realise that you haven't got a single gold bar on you! The good burghers of Frankfurt have overcome this problem by installing gold bar vending machines at both the airport and the central railway station. Bon Voyage!

One man's enclave is another man's exclave

With so many different countries in Europe struggling to achieve a new identity in a 'unified' Europe, it's interesting to ponder what national identity means? The answer perhaps lies not in the usual definitions, but in Europe's forgotten enclaves — tiny fragments of one country cut off and completely surrounded by another. Stuck for centuries between different cultures, currencies, and (at times) languages, each is resplendent with idiosyncrasies.

Many of them appeared in the Middle Ages - after the Treaties of Madrid (1526) and of Westphalia (1648), the latter ending the Thirty Years War and creating independent principalities that made the map of Europe resemble a sloppily manufactured patchwork quilt. Others resulted from land disputes, or plain mistakes - and most were eventually re-attached to their mother countries or swallowed up by host states.

Now only four "proper" enclaves remain in Europe. They are: Campione d'Italia, an Italian town in Switzerland; Llivia, a Spanish (or rather Catalan) town in the French Pyrenees; Busingen, a German village in Switzerland; and Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog, a Dutch/Belgian municipality comprising 22 patches of Belgium and eight of Holland.

It took Vitali Vitaliev, the author of the book "Passport to Enclavia", several months to locate and visit all four. The enclaves' near-obscurity is a shame, for their ambiguous status makes them ideal for studying the increasingly cross-cultural and cross-national character of Europe. And, politics aside, each of them is resplendent with fascinating (often bizarre) idiosyncrasies of everyday life. Perfect destinations, indeed, for an inquisitive, knowledge-hungry traveller.

Having gone to explore Campione d'Italia, Vitali Vitaliev was put up at a hotel in Como, some 12 miles away, and had to cross the Swiss-Italian border several times a day. This was irritating, due to long tailbacks and the unpredictability of the customs officers, who would occasionally wave his car aside for inspection. Though part of Italy, Campione is not part of the EU (it is excluded from membership by a special Protocol). However, as Italian passport holders, its residents have the right to live and work in any EU member country - but not in Switzerland, on whose territory Campione is located. The safeguarding of law and order is entrusted to the Como-based Italian police unit, but every time a policeman goes home he has to leave his weapons in Campione, in accordance with a Swiss law forbidding foreigners to carry arms across Switzerland. The Campionese drive around in cars with TI number plates (for Ticino, the neighbouring Swiss canton) and carry Swiss driving licences, but mail their letters with stamps of the Italian Republic. Paradoxically, they are not expected to show their Italian passports when going to Switzerland, but are routinely checked when travelling to their native Italy. "I always have my passport with me, just in case," said Fedra, Vitali's Campione-based guide. It all started in the year 777, when Totone - a local landowner - tried to buy an indulgence for his sins by donating his holdings, including the fishing village of Campione, to the Basilica of St Ambrose in Milan. As a result, Campione fell under the rule of the Milanese ecclesiastical authorities and not those of nearby Como, as would have been more logical. Miraculously, this illogical bond has survived all the ups and downs of a turbulent history. Campione's modern townscape is stunning: narrow streets winding up and down the hill; the renovated casino; mountains spotted with red-roofed houses, as if suffering from measles; the mirror-like surface of Lake Lugano. Yet it looks and feels distinctly un-Italian - in its tidiness, in the absence of washing on the balconies, in the quiet demeanour of the locals who seldom gesticulate or raise their voices. Its spotlessly clean Italian coffee shops sell inimitable Italian espresso, for which you have to pay in Swiss francs. Two seemingly incompatible lifestyles packed into one square-mile of a town that was once poetically compared by Giovanni Cenzato to "a little Italian boy wearing a Swiss costume".

In his 1891 Handbook to Southern France, Karl Baedeker - somewhat disdainfully - referred to Llivia as "a dirty village of ancient origin with some ruins remaining". It is a pity that the great guidebook writer overlooked the most interesting feature of Llivia: it's the only Spanish enclave in Europe. Founded by ancient Romans, Llivia had been a pawn in Franco-Spanish struggles until 1659, when the Peace of the Pyrenees Treaty gave 33 "villages" in the Cerdagne Plain to Louis XIV of France. The French thought that Llivia was included in the transfer, but the Spanish regarded the territory not as a village (pueblo), but as a town (villa). Having spotted the discrepancy, the patriotic residents of Llivia, who wanted to remain Spanish, claimed that the treaty had nothing to do with them, and the French had to agree. So we may assume that the enclave status of Llivia was the result of a simple historical boo-boo. Today's Llivia is much less "dirty" than it, allegedly, was in 1891, and its per capita rate of recycling bins must be one of the highest in both France and Spain. Yet the hooray-patriotism of its 1,000 inhabitants remains unchanged. Modern Llivia is fiercely Catalan, with few people willing to speak French to a visitor - an unusual scenario for a village - sorry "town" - surrounded by France. A huge red-and-yellow Senyera - Catalonia's national flag - stands in the corner of the modest office of Josep Alcalde, Llivia's 36-year-old mayor, a member of the United Catalonia Party, which he himself described as "moderately nationalistic". He told of a letter he received from a nearby French village a couple of miles away. The letter took 15 days to arrive for, according to EU regulations, all inter-EU mail has to go though a sorting office in Amsterdam. "I could have walked there myself in half an hour and picked it up," he shrugged. The mayor also complained that to call the same French village from Llivia he would have to dial an international code. Llivia enthusiastically embraced the euro in the hope that it would clear up at least some of the financial mess in the town, where both French francs and Spanish pesetas were freely circulated.

Busingen, a small German enclave in Switzerland, scarcely features on maps, owing to the fact that it is actually a suburb of the Swiss town of Schaffhausen, where the residents of Busingen routinely do their shopping. Few of them, however, would choose to go shopping in their native Germany. First, because they would have to show their passports or ID cards at the German border - a procedure they are spared when going to "foreign" Switzerland; second, because there are strict quotas on the amount of German goods these German subjects can bring back to Germany. They are restricted to half a kilo of meat, 125 grams of butter or a kilo of sausages. The quotas are imposed by numerous Swiss and German customs posts scattered along the erratic Swiss-German border that goes totally haywire in the Busingen-Schaffhausen area. In one instance, it runs across the beer garden of a Busingen pub, so that the tables are in Switzerland and the bar in Germany. The reason for this frontier madness is that - rather like Campione - economically Busingen is Swiss, whereas politically it is German, albeit not part of the EU. Busingers get their salaries in Swiss francs - the only currency allowed to circulate in this one-street German village - but, being German citizens, they have to pay German income tax. True, Swiss prices are high, but taxes are relatively low, whereas in Germany it is the other way around: lower prices and very high taxes. In Busingen, therefore, they have the worst of both worlds. Busingers are free to shop in Switzerland, but those who wish to work there need a hard-to-obtain permit, normally granted only after many years of residence. But German inventiveness and practicality help to ease the burden of their duality, if only slightly. The village has its own car number plates - "BUS" - but two different post codes: Swiss and German. In the village centre, next to modernistic Burgerhaus, two differently coloured phone boxes - Swisscom's and Deutsche Telecom's - stand next to each other, sparing the locals the expense of international calls when phoning the nearest cinema or supermarket. In their daily trials, the residents of modern Busingen are reaping the consequences of their own ancestors' unforgiving pride, better known as stubbornness. In April 1693, Eberhard Im Thurn, a popular ruler of then Austrian Busingen, was kidnapped and put in prison in Schaffhausen for a religious offence - to the villagers' great dismay. He was released in 1699, but Busingers have a long memory and when Schaffhausen tried to incorporate the village into the Swiss federation in 1723, they came out adamantly against it. Eventually, Busingen fell under German control, where it remains as a living reproach to Schaffhausen for the mistreatment of its leading citizen.

If Busingen strikes the visitor as eccentric, then Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog - a cluster of Belgian and Dutch enclaves to the south of Breda - can safely be described as insane. The border here resembles a hank of wool thread chased by a playful kitten, thoughtlessly leaping across streets and squares and cutting through houses, offices and shops. The confusion is such that every building in town has to be marked not just with a number, but also with a tiny Dutch or Belgian flag underneath it. Of three houses, standing next to each other on the same side of the same street, one can be in Belgium, the next in Holland, and the third split between the two. "If the border runs through a house, it is better for a baby to be born on the Belgian side, because child benefits are higher in Belgium," Anne-Miek Smit-Rygersberg, a Dutch artist with appropriately double-barrelled first and last names, explains without a shade of irony. In rural Baarle it is still common to give birth at home with the help of a midwife. The most thriving trade in the Belgian parts of Baarle is in fireworks, which can be legitimately sold all year in Belgium, but only on Christmas Eve in Holland. The Dutch bits of the town respond with numerous sex shops - not allowed near public buildings in Belgium, but thriving on the Dutch territory, next door to the Belgian town council in Baarle. There is no end to the duplicity of life in Baarle - the town with two mayors (Belgian and Dutch), two sets of political parties, two town councils, two fire brigades trying to beat each other to the fire, two post offices, two refuse collection services. It is the only town in the world where police forces of two different countries share not only the same police station but also the same offices, with filing cabinets painted in the colours of Dutch or Belgian national flags. The existing 22 Belgian and eight Dutch enclaves that constitute modern Baarle are a huge improvement on the situation in 1843, when, in the aftermath of the Treaty of Maastricht, 5,732 parcels of land between just two border posts had their nationalities laid down separately. Baarle's split personality crisis originates from 1203 when the Duke of Brabant, in a gesture of gratitude and appeasement, lent a chunk of his territory to Godfrid of Schoten, the powerful Lord of Breda, but kept all inhabited - and hence tax-paying - bits (houses, farms etc) for himself. In the course of centuries most dwellings disappeared, but the patches of land on which they stood retained their original "nationhood". Yet some of the town's features give hope that a united Europe might eventually work. For example, several years ago Belgium and Holland had different licensing hours which the landlord of one of Baarle's pubs, bisected by the frontier, blatantly exploited by installing a set of doors on each side of the border. When they stopped selling alcohol in Belgium, the patrons hastily left through the Belgian door, only to re-enter immediately through the Dutch one and to carry on boozing. The situation was so ridiculous that eventually the two states had to harmonise their licensing laws. More often than not, an absurdity has to reach its apogee to force the authorities to act.

Now, if you think I'm making all this up, listen to this sound file, then go and buy the book: "Passport to Enclavia - Travels in Search of a European Identity" by Vitali Vitaliev. Happy reading!

P.S. Some more information on Ely Place, Jungholz, Kleinwalsertal, Vennbahn, Verenahof, and Samnaun.