Holiday. That one word sums up relaxation combined with adventure, taking us out of our everyday world. It's winter - in Australia we head overseas, chasing the long rays of the sun. And so it was that I packed my bags after months of planning. I was off on the elusive perfect holiday, a dream journey of exclusive hotels, mythic places, magnificent vistas and the long northern summer sun. With the Professor. First stop was Prague, a fairy tale city, home of Franz Kafka, one of my favourite authors. I now call the Professor 'J'.
Ann Turner
Prague has wondrously beautiful buildings from centuries ago, surrounded by brutal, Soviet- era architecture. Poetry and a thudding foot combined. And there's the looming castle on the hill, an exotic mix of pastel paints in green and pink. Traversing the quiet lanes and streets is inspiring - and challenging. There is exquisite music played by prestigious Czech orchestras, and bitter, nasty taxi drivers. On one day, a cab driver charged us what we knew was five times the amount. Luckily I was with the Professor - I was about to argue but received a vivid warning of alarmed, frowning eyes. Later when I Googled, Prague is renowned for its cabbies who not only rip off tourists, but assault them if they challenge the fare. Heads smashed on the bonnet of the cab, then left in the middle of nowhere. Without J, I probably wouldn't be here to tell my story.
And thence we went to Bergen, Norway, where I was keen to see the Hanseatic Houses, timber, merchants' warehouses from the 16th Century that reminded me of the vision of the dwellings I had for the abandoned Antarctic whaling settlement of Fredelighavn, in my second novel Out of the Ice. I'd chosen a hotel close by, and was really looking forward to it. The Professor always likes a nap on arrival. Our room was two monkish single beds side-by-side. I would have tried to change, but J wasn't having any of it. My single-teenage-bed was decidedly lumpy. And when I lay down, I was quickly bitten. J didn't believe me, and chivalrously offered to take that bed for the night. Off we went to explore the Hanseatic Houses, that are very old, very beautiful, and literally creaking with history. And then we returned to our room. I lay down again - and was bitten again. I Googled Tripadvisor. There, in black and white, was a recent tourist complaining of bedbugs at the hotel. Bedbugs! I knew they'd been in exclusive hotels in New York - and I'd avoided them; I knew they were rampant on Cape Cod - and I'd narrowly avoided them. And here I was in Bergen getting bitten by bedbugs. I read out the comments on Tripadvisor to the Professor, who moved faster than I'd seen in years. Bedding ripped back to the mattress, to reveal little hard black things, that we started to pincer out with our fingernails. I assembled the booty on the silver top of our computer, and then I found, what I knew from my Googling, was a pale white nymph, a bedbug in its early stages. I put the nymph with the dark intruders, terrified that I'd discovered that bedbugs can lay eggs quickly. I had a gorgeous teddy bear bought for our one-year-old great niece - what horror would it unleash if it was bedbug infested, passed from great aunt, grandparents, parents, along with the gorgeous child?
I called the hotel manager. Up he came, just as I was taking photographs of my assembled bedbug evidence - but I was stressed, and accidentally turned the camera on to my own face. Alarmed. Horrified. That was it. And then the hotel manager whisked the evidence onto the floor with a desultory flick of his hand. I had nothing but a photograph of myself looking deranged. We left.
To Oslo. A high-tech hotel with beautiful mood lighting, reflecting whatever time of day you happened to walk in/awake/go to sleep. Pure romance. Here was the luxury escape I'd craved, delivered with Norwegian inspiration. Until the Professor ran an errand for me, while I had a lovely shower before supper. As the Professor left, he locked the door. And then the lights suddenly went out in a technical glitch. What had been an elegant shower became hard, horrifying waterboarding in the pitch black. I stumbled out, traumatised, and stubbed my toe, ripping the nail off the nailbed. Excruciating pain.
From Oslo I hobbled to the Amalfi Coast. Here, at last, was my fantasy holiday. Except to get to our hotel we had to take a bus. A blue leviathan that hung off a cliff, promising to fly over a tiny wall to a death-drop to the sea. Oncoming buses couldn't get around the hairpin bends at the same time as ours, and we came face-to-face with tourists, equally sickened. The Professor thought his illustrious career was about to end, catapulted off the cliff into the jaws of the misty Tyrrhenian Sea. He broke down and wept like a kitten, as had John Steinbeck on the same horrid ribbon of road. And so did I.
But when we arrived home, friends and family asked how our trip was, and we both replied in unison - fantastic! And isn't that always the way? A holiday is often not idyllic, but we like to remember it differently. For there, in our mythic forests of memory, we find our ultimate escape. And start to plan our next adventure.
Ann Turner's new novel, The Lost Swimmer, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £7.99