Page 136 - Exile-ebook

136 AN EXILE OF THE MIND MAGGIE, THE FLOWER CHILD 137

The Byzantine church on Paros dates back to 326.

televised in Italy and getting a ride packs in first and climb on top.
was a little easier. Polizia tried Such a relief to stroll through the
to confiscate our passports as we watery lanes of Venice with not a car
camped in a disused parking lot in sight and a boat to catch instead
near the River Po in Piacenza. We of a bus. Palaces of the Renaissance
were visiting my aunt’s sister who and the Gothic lined the canals of
didn’t have a clue who I was. Under this gently sinking city. We stayed
cover of darkness we sneaked to at Europe’s melting pot of itinerant
the outskirts and woke up the next travellers, the YHA with its million
morning in a sheltery field of sheep. dollar view.
Hiking along miles of Italian road, In the Adriatic port of Trieste we
two girls in a tiny Fiat, smaller than split up to make thumb travelling
an English telephone box, pulled up easier. I went by train to Zagreb in
alongside us. Russell and I, both over the former Yugoslavia. To walk its
six feet tall with oversized backpacks, streets under mournful grey slabs of
tried to pull in our packs on top of us apartment blocks beneath a haunted
with no success, then to cram our sky, and then on to Belgrade with
its reading rooms and art shops.
Fisherman mending nets on Paros. Outside of Skopje, the birthplace of