Killing Batteries

[The last in the "Don't Go There" series (so far), is my physically sickening October 2003 visit to the capital city of the tiny nation of Andorra.]

Being the typical uninformed American, I hadn’t known that the country of Andorra even existed until I got my hands on a large, detailed map of Europe near the beginning of my tour. Like a caraway seed stuck in the gums of Europe, Andorra is landlocked and sunk deep in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. According to the online CIA World Factbook, the entire country is only “2 and ½ times the size of Washington D.C.” My curiosity ran wild. I wanted to unlock the secrets of this obscure country and report on it while pretending like I knew it was there all along. (editor note: oops)

To say that Andorra la Vella, the capital city of Andorra, was a huge let down would be a disservice to all of the other things that I’ve called a “huge letdown.” In fact, it was a monstrous, stunning, flabbergasting letdown of biblical proportions. To the max. That about sums it up.

This scorching downer didn’t start immediately. In fact, my first impression of the city had considerable potential. As you descend into Andorra la Vella, population 32,000 – the entire country has just under 66,000 residents, only a quarter of which are actual Andorran citizens with the remainder comprised mostly of Spanish ex-pats – you can see the entire city in all its claustrophobic glory. The city is nestled in a gorge between two gigantic mountain ranges. From the bottom, picturesque peaks and landscape can be seen from any point in the city simply by looking above the rooftops of the shoulder-to-shoulder apartment buildings. The sprawl of the city has required that new apartment buildings be built up, seemingly hanging off the valley walls with narrow streets separating the buildings, planed crosswise into the mountain. You don’t walk up the streets in this part of town so much as scale them.
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[Continuing the shameless recycling of my "Don't Go There" series while I drink wine and sleep late, the Monaco installment was written after an October 2003 visit where we were made to feel like lepers, criminals and gypsies.]

I’d heard stories about the nonchalant, frittering of millions of dollars in Monaco for years. Though I’m not normally a supporter of raging materialism, I was nevertheless excited to see the effects of a little wretched excess in the form of fast cars, faster women and yachts so big that their helicopters had helicopters. I never imagined that I’d rate on the Monaco Welcome Scale just above gum on the shoe and just below an elevator fart (as if anyone farts in Monaco).

Our Monaco visit started out on a giddying high note. The first thing my hostel companions and I saw after exiting the lavish, marble festooned train station was a Ferrari that looked like it was about five minutes old. The guy apparently saw us staring because he laid extravagant rubber when the light turned green and gunned the car for a rip-roaring 50 meters to the next stop light. “Four inches” one of my companions muttered.

In the next five minutes we saw two more Ferraris, three Aston Martins and a sea of Mercedes and Porsches. It was flabbergasting and exhilarating. Sadly, Monaco’s allure wilted from there on out, sinking to tedious and then plummeting to tragically hateful with startling speed.
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[Continuing the reuse of my "Don't Go There" series, the Naples installment was written while I quietly whimpered in a corner of my hostel in November 2003. Unlike Berlin, Naples has apparently gotten worse in the interval since I visited.]

I’d initially only intended to stay in Naples long enough to break the Guinness World Record for Sprinting the Length of a City While Carrying Two Heavy Bags, before diving onto the ferry to Sicily. I’d formulated this plan on the strength of several reliable sources warning me that Naples was an unequivocal shithole and my feelings were that in the previous six months of backpacking Europe, I’d categorically filled my Shithole Quota.

However, in the days before I hit town, a few people had swayed me, enthusiastically ensuring me that Naples had been given a bad rap. I even ran into a native Neapolitan who was very nearly reduced to tears while singing the praises of his home town. So at the last minute, I dipped into my Lonely Planet to sort out accommodations. Things looked up immediately. Lonely Planet raved more ardently about Six Small Rooms, a hostel in the heart of Naples, than any other accommodations options that I had read about previously.

Although Six Small Rooms was within reasonable walking distance of the train station, I had it on good authority that the immediate vicinity around the Naples train station, Piazza Garibaldi in particular, was a free-for-all of thievery, hustlers, junkies and a few entrepreneurs employing a scary combination of all three. Those who weren’t in the aforementioned demographics were selling stuff that was so recently stolen that you could detect what the former owners had had for breakfast.
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In the timeless, venerated tradition of writers reusing their own material when they’re jammed with work, super hungover or just don’t feel like it, I’m rerunning a short but popular series from my travelogue entitled “Don’t Go There.”

Chapter One, “Don’t Go to Berlin,” was written after a disagreeable visit in the summer of 2003.

I realize that any travel writer with even a shred of integrity wouldn’t title an article “Don’t Go to Berlin.” It seems as if doing this might be a sweeping, unfair summary of one of the largest and important cities in Europe and indeed the world. A city with huge and important historical significance. A city of countless ethnicities and cultures coming together. A city with a shameless level of admiration for David Hasselhoff. Well, if you are thinking these things, to that I say have you ever been to Berlin? If not, then with all due respect, shut your pie-hole.

Berlin is a city full of drunk, ornery, rude, tourist-haters. It is a city that boasts countless, expensive tourists sights ostensibly catering to people from all over the world, yet not having gone through the trouble of printing any information or literature in any other language except German. It’s a city where the ongoing, open competition of Let’s-Give-the-Tourists-Wrong-Directions-on-Purpose has been honed to a fine art. It’s a city that has been abandoned by all dedicated and talented map makers. It’s a city where authorities target tourists for minor, laughable offences like J-walking. In short, it’s a city that will take your money and dignity and give you nothing in return.

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