I said Auf Wiedersehn to Wolfgang in Vienna, with a heavy heart. He opened so many doors for me into an alternative world.
Viennese cultural sophistication was mind-boggling. Simply sitting in an audience watching ballet, a symphony orchestra or a choir was something I had never experienced before.
As a schoolboy aged 17, I had travelled all over Europe with the Framesby High School Choir, performing to large audiences in the most magnificent ancient theatres, cathedrals and just about anywhere. Sometimes shows did not do justice to the incredible settings which were designed for the best performers in the world. When a production managed to do more than just match the classical setting and the ambience, the audience would leap out of their seats in a deafening standing ovation. Such events are rare and a privilege to experience.
My first experience of sheer audience euphoria unfolding around me in a magnificent world-class ancient theatre is impossible to capture in words.
The divine magnitude overwhelmed me, and I would have given anything to share this experience with my fellow choristers. It is saddening to think that my schoolboy choir friends had most likely never experienced such a palatial theatre with world-class performers except as performers on stage.
I battled to control my emotions, but a few tears escaped anyway. Here I was, the adventurous, impoverished backpacking student seeking education beyond the syllabus, and the choirboy who was used to performing for such audiences yet had never experienced this as a member of the audience. And then I discovered the unconditional acceptance of Viennese strangers who embraced me.
Sexual freedom of expression in Western Europe was far more acceptable than many other countries. I had never experienced this in mainstream culture before. To find that a large group of gay men could go to a theatre and greet each other openly with hugs and kisses was exciting.
At gay clubs, the sexual tension and the hunt for Mr Right generally prevented affectionate displays. I never really understood that! Maybe people did not want to jeopardise a potential encounter by coming across as sluts… I wonder?
The casual sense of belonging and openly expressing love and intimacy in Vienna was way north of just feeling welcomed. I was not even sure how to show affection to strangers privately, yet here, open affection was abundant and shared.
I was being hugged as a familiar. Everybody seemed to get a lot of hugs, so I felt more at ease, but I was not sure how long you were supposed to hug someone!
Anyway, I was being spoilt and felt like a king.
Or a queen?
Wolfgang was the ultimate host and ensured we got superb seats. His small crowd of friends admired him, and they immediately accepted me as his “friend.”
I was not even sure what my status was or how Wolfgang would describe me beyond being the lost backpacker. I still felt like the lost Labrador puppy following the wolf.
After four days, so many new experiences had already changed my life. I realised I was falling in love but was not ready yet and grabbed a train to Salzburg with great urgency.
This time, Wolfgang looked like the lost puppy, and I was bewildered. I knew I had to leave immediately before passion trapped me. There were plenty of trains, and Wolfgang walked sadly with me to the station to catch the train to Salzburg.
I promised to return to Vienna soon. Wolfgang was very kind and offered to help me find a bursary and said I could stay with him for free. We would then also continue my Viennese cultural education.
That made us both feel better.
I felt heartbroken when Wolfe stood there quietly waving goodbye to the departing train.
Solo backpacking at 21 was a totally different and frightening adventure, without any safety nets. Choral camaraderie at 17 was the total opposite of solo travel, which required flexibility and more survival instincts than I thought I had. Having no one to talk to is challenging.
It is not only Aliens who feel alienated at some point of life. Everybody seeks their tribe. The one we are born into is often not our tribe. Maybe our navigation when we incarnate becomes faulty!
The train carried me into Salzburg, where the emotional aftermath continued. At least I found accommodation fast. The next day I explored the charming little town where The Sound of Music was made.
That night I needed to be with people. I strolled through the streets, looking through the windows of a Wirtshaus where jovial Austrians and tourists were having a good time. I felt hesitant to enter, knowing no one and wondering if I would even find a seat. I managed to get in and relaxed after a hearty meal and some beer. My heart still ached and nostalgia overwhelmed me. So much emotion drained me, and despite being surrounded by people, I left the pub feeling lonely and went to bed.
Growing up suppressing my emotions in tough neighbourhoods had not helped me keep them in check.
Salzburg felt too intense for me, so I headed further west in the direction of Paris, where I wanted to spend some time.
The Austrian- German border was only a six-minute train ride away, and I decided to get off at the first interesting little town. Towns were so close together that if a town was not to my liking, I could simply grab the next train west.
This way I explored a few towns before stopping in Munich, where I decided to spend another night. Appearing German or Scandinavian helped, and I found the Germans charming even after they realised, after a barrage of German, that I looked confused.
They were always intrigued when I told them I was from South Africa.
Munich was not as expensive as I had anticipated, and the city had a lot to offer, so I spent a night. Next on my list was Augsburg, only 60 kilometres away and one of Germany’s oldest cities. I spent the day walking and exploring interesting sites and boarded a train again.
The landscape changed quite quickly into forests and densely populated places. Soon I reached Stuttgart and the stunning Black Forest, where I spent another night.
As interesting as these places were, I felt like a tourist.
My tribe was in Vienna, amongst the charming Viennese.
Switzerland was gorgeous, but this time I wanted to focus on the small towns and literally walk across fields filled with pretty flowers. Milan was next and then southern Italy followed.
I adored southern Italy where towns were close and the Italians seemed to like me too!
I spent a bit more time there than intended, moving through different towns before working my way to Nice.
There I spent two nights sharing accommodation with a group of solo backpackers from different countries. We celebrated, drank too much and generally behaved like young people with little money and zero sense. I tried hashish for the second time, but without the magical ambience of candles, a cathedral and Zoolook — it was just not the same. I ended up completely zonked out. After recovering I decided that I never wanted to experience hashish again.
The American was cute and had a Freddie Mercury moustache. We both sensed our Alien tribal connection! Shared accommodation handicapped intimacy. We settled for entertaining conversation that went right over the heads of our comrade backpackers.
Nice was a marvellous coastal city with a village atmosphere. I must confess that the rocky beaches were awful compared to our soft sandy beaches. As a few solo backpackers, it was a pleasant change to not be alone. Few humans are true loners. All good things come to an end, and we parted and said au revoir.
The TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) took just over seven hours to get from Nice to Gare de Lyon in Paris. On the newer straight sections of track, it could then reach around 160 km/h, whereas today’s TGVs can reach up to 320 km/h. For the first time the lullaby of the wheels on the track did not send me to dreamland. There was far too much to see as the landscape blurred past.
I was warned that Paris required a more detailed itinerary, so I prebooked a horrible hotel in La République, which seemed to trade on the historical significance of Place de la République square. Disappointingly underwhelming. It was annoyingly pricey and surrounded by even shadier suburbs.
My sister won a beauty competition with Payot in 1981 and had the trip of a lifetime in Paris. I did not share her rosy views as Paris’ underbelly is ugly. Paris did have an immense number of things to do, and I spent my life on buses and trains.
The gay clubs were incredible, and the cuteness of the Parisians helped me forgive their overrated pricey city. There were many tourists from all over the world, and I met one of the most gorgeous boys from Finland. He was an elf-like twink and the polar opposite of the famous “Tom of Finland” drawings. After my Finnish encounter, I was finished. Paris, though, seemed rather charming now.
Until the next day when I was pickpocketed on one of the crammed Metro underground trains. The thief stole my little spare wallet which contained too much cash and my Eurail Pass. It was a disaster and French bureaucracy is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. My impatience got the better of me, and I cut them short and left.
Urgent alternative plans were required, although kidnapping my charming Finn, who looked like an elf, was unfortunately not an option. What I was really thinking was that I was quite prepared to kidnap the Finn, with or without his consent. No one should be allowed to be that cute! I needed to make new plans, and I wished I could simply kidnap him for company — and, uhm, some entertainment! The most logical solution was to buy an expensive train ticket to Brindisi in Italy and then to take the six-hour ferry ride to the Greek island, Corfu. I drowned my sorrows with Ouzo shared with new solo backpacking drinking buddies. Being the least desirable travellers, we accepted our lowest-caste tourist fate. Banding together with solo strangers consistently offered new experiences. Groups of backpackers traveling together the whole time might just as well travel by bus, as they miss the point of the adventure factor of solo backpacking.
Solo travellers seemed to have more adventurous spirits. They reached out to others no matter how lowly they were regarded by the traveller caste system. Arriving in Corfu, most of us were terribly hung over, and trust me, an Ouzo hangover is not for sissies. Corfu was cheap and cheerful, and I rented a scooter which was wonderful as Greeks didn’t seem bothered about helmets. I zigzagged all over the island and loved the quaint little towns with widows in black and old men playing games or just enjoying the sun. Charming younger Italians added colour to this cinematic scene.
From Corfu I headed to Mykonos which was the gay paradise of the Mediterranean. The plan was to spend my last 8 days there as it was also extremely affordable. If you were young and good-looking there were always free drinks arriving on the counter. Courtesy of one of my many admirers. They were shrewd about getting eye candy less inhibited, ensuring easier pickings. I paced myself, no matter how tempting it was in such a boisterous atmosphere, with bouzoukis playing and the whole place buzzing with typically festive Greek energy.
Getting so merry, I spent more than planned and my last few Drachmas drained fast.
Young solo backpackers impulsively banded together. We were constantly moving from one city or town to another, often with little money, few plans and absolutely no safety net. Our paths diverted constantly so we kept meeting new people.
Yet somehow, we looked out for one another.
At the time I simply thought backpackers were unusually friendly. Later I grasped that something deeper was happening. We were all vulnerable in the same way.
If something went wrong, there was no tour guide, teacher, parent or organised group to come to the rescue. You had to rely on strangers who understood exactly what it meant to be alone in a foreign country.
There was almost an unspoken code to it — rather like the camaraderie I previously recognised amongst bikers or the leather crowd. You might not know someone’s name, where they came from or where they were going, but you recognised that they were one of your own.
And if one of your own was in trouble, you helped.
And judging by the number of us sleeping on beaches, I suspect we had all failed accounting at school.
Financial planning sucked!
Sleeping on a beach sounds wonderfully romantic until you must do it.
Sand gets in everywhere. If you are a restless sleeper who rolls around, you eventually wake up with your face buried in the sand you had optimistically decided was your pillow.
Washing in the sea helps but makes you sticky. You emerge salty, sticky and with hair that looks as though it has declared war on civilisation.
My slightly curly blonde hair was particularly rebellious. After a night on the beach, it stood Medusa-like out in every direction. I started looking less like a young backpacker and more like a Germanic barbarian charging the Roman lines, determined to destroy everything in its path — even if it killed me in the process.
Of course, there was a perfectly logical reason for sleeping on the beach. It saved money, and I didn’t need to shave yet, so I still managed not to look too scruffy.
We could sacrifice a bed and still afford something to eat, a few drinks and a night out. Financial planning clearly wasn’t our strongest subject, but we had developed our own economic model.
Unfortunately, the model had an unexpected downside.
After two nights sleeping on the beach, we all looked a little wild. Sand found its way into our hair, our teeth and places where sand had absolutely no business being.
I was used to people hitting on me, but suddenly nobody seemed remotely interested. Instead of free drinks appearing, people seemed to move away.
The bar owners weren’t particularly enthusiastic about a bunch of sandy backpackers arriving at their establishments either.
I think they distrusted us. Or whatever we had might be contagious!
Looking around at our wild hair, salty skin and beach-worn clothes, I couldn’t really blame them. We probably looked less like glamorous young European travellers and more like a small group of survivors who had just washed ashore after a shipwreck.
Still, we had money for drinks. In our minds, the financial plan was working perfectly.
After sleeping on the beach for a few nights, we also felt safer. We were no longer a collection of mostly sexy but vulnerable solo backpackers. We had become a young, unshaven beach gang.
And in my imagination, at least, that meant we were far less likely to be kidnapped and locked away as sex slaves in some eccentric person’s kinky dungeon.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
Besides, there was another advantage to travelling as a gang: if one of us disappeared, someone would notice.
Our financial planning may have been questionable, but our survival strategy was improving.
And somehow, somewhere between the trains, the beaches, the sand in our teeth and the money disappearing from our pockets, I had stopped feeling like a solo backpacker.
I had found my tribe.
This is a brief excerpt from Rubin van Niekerk’s upcoming Memoir/Autobiography, titled Mentors, Family and Friends Matter, chronicling the people, places and experiences that shaped his life from early childhood to later adulthood. We all relate to this universal experience.
New chapters will be published regularly in the Magazine section of the landing page of Gay Pages website, alongside our favourite archived articles, as the journey unfolds. Chapter 16, “Back in South Africa and falling madly in love” follows.
