Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places

by Adam Fletcher

  A spontaneity siren sounded in my head. “Later tonight? As in, pretty much now later?”

  “Later tonight,” she confirmed. “After dinner later.”

  Well this was certainly the biggest decision I’d had to make since the morning’s Apple vs Banana Conundrum. I’d chosen the apple. It had been a close call; the banana lost due to mild exterior bruising.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun, and it’ll get you out of the house.”

  That’s another one for the list. Why is being in the house always considered a bad thing? Houses are a comfort zone of Internet, sofas, cushions, toast. They’re really an embarrassment of riches in a cruel, indifferent, and largely toast-less world. “Yeah, I think I’m going to pass. It’s always awkward when we meet them because I can’t ever remember what we talked about last time, or what Rob does for a living, or, really, anything about him. Then when he remembers stuff about me I look like a bad friend.”

  Annett sighed. “You are a bad friend. We know them for a year already! He works for the Arbeitsamt.”

  “I thought it was one of those Amts. Nah, I guess I’m just not feeling it with them.”

  Eyes were rolled. Not my eyes. “Oh no. They’re not about to get your defriending email template are they? I like them. Sarah’s a great laugh.”

  “You can go. Just tell them I’m busy.”

  “Busy with what? Making spam websites? Googling yourself? Avoiding anything that looks like a responsibility? Taking the easy way out? Did you reply to Dan about his wedding?”

  “I don’t want to go,” I said, breaking eye contact. Dan and I had been best friends for ten years, all through school. He still lived in my small home town, Thetford, back in England.

  “I want to go! It sounds fun. Don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve been dating for six years and yet I’ve never even been to Thetford?”

  Six years, damn. Time flies when you’re on the couch. “We’ve been there, don’t exaggerate.”

  “Yeah, we’ve picked up your nan and then driven straight out. That’s it.”

  “Trust me—for my home town, that’s more than enough.”

  Her voice grew louder. “I think you’re in a rut. All you do is sit about the house eating chocolate and watching documentaries. I get why not really having to work was fun at the start, and it’s still amazing to me that those websites work without you, but isn’t it enough now?” Her mouth twisted at the edge. “Don’t you want to get back out in the world and do something?”

  That sounded like almost certainly the worst idea ever. I sucked in my cheeks. “I’m in the world. Sometimes.”

  “You’re not. You just sit around taking me and just about everything else for granted. I’m going to meet them tonight and I want you to get off Planet Adam and come with me, okay?”

  I shrugged and decided this was a good moment to become really interested in a nearby plant. She tutted, slipped on her green headphones, and became personable with her laptop. Their relationship still burnt with the fire and intensity of heady, early moments of infatuation.

  An hour later she tried again.

  “You’re not coming are you?”

  I shook my head. Wordlessly she got up, put on her shoes, and left, the door slamming behind her. I stayed in, on my beloved couch. I fully intended to change that light bulb but fell just short. I took consolation in some light googling of myself.

  It would be fine. We were going to Istanbul tomorrow (her idea). There would be plenty of relaxed, quality “us time” there. I hoped there would be couches.

  3

  Istanbul to Berlin: “I fear this ends in some kind of Eat Pray Love epiphany.”

  Flights, Eat Pray Love, also-rans

  As we sat on the plane hurtling back to Berlin spewing toxic fumes from its rear, carbon hastening the demise of Maldivian islands and panda-grazing habitats, I felt odd. Not myself, but like a ghost haunting myself. Surprisingly, what with all the difficulty we’d been having breathing, I was sad to leave Istanbul. A ridiculously attractive and charismatic city. A seductive, best-of blend of Asia and Europe, tradition and modernity, petulance and serenity.

  The intensity did drop in our final days there, but not by much. We sat with the protesters in Gezi Park when it felt safe to do so. We felt the heat and rip of tear gas upon our nervous systems several more times. Over the whole ten days of unrest, more than 8000 people were injured, 4900 were arrested, and 5 were killed. There were 150,000 tear-gas canisters used. None of which came home with us. We saw Ada a few more times. Several of her friends had been beaten up, arrested, or both, fates her and her girlfriend managed to avoid.

  It had been a great trip, made so by the energy of the protesters. We’d met so many interesting people standing up for what they believed in, what they thought would make their country better. In some small, insignificant way, we’d joined them.

  It felt good.

  Annett was in the aisle seat watching something on her laptop. I tapped her on the arm. Begrudgingly, she removed her headphones. “What?”

  My pulse quickened. I groped for the right words. None came.

  “Yeesss?”

  “Do… do you think I’m one of the good guys?”

  She frowned. “What kind of a question is that? What does good even mean?”

  “Well, everything that happened in Istanbul has got me thinking. If some higher power came down, some kind of karma accountant…”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is quite an elaborate scenario you’re painting here.”

  “I’m not saying it’s imminent. But if it did happen, do you think he’d find me to have been an above-average human?”

  Annett’s grimace showed that the line of questioning annoyed her. It was not an Annett line of questioning because it was pointless and unanswerable and she lived in a perfect realm of practicality. There was nothing she wouldn’t optimise. Everything had a specific place. Our apartment was covered in Post-it notes with specific instructions for the systems she’d concocted to organise our shoes, batteries, towels, light bulbs. She even numbered the juice cartons in the fridge to stop me opening them out of order. She logged every single financial transaction she made, even chewing gum, into a MASTER FINANCE spreadsheet so detailed the mere sight of it gave me a migraine. She’d nailed adulthood and its responsibilities. I ignored it and hoped it would go away.

  She finished pondering my pointless, unanswerable question. “You don’t volunteer, you don’t donate to charity, you only vote when I arrange everything for you and tell you who to vote for. You’d sell your own mother for five euros. You think a principle is something that leads a school. As far as humanity is concerned, I’d say you’re pretty much a Mitläufer. What’s the English for Mitläufer?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  She tilted her head. “Also-ran, maybe? Hanger-on?”

  I winced. “Ouch.”

  “My Mitläufer,” she added, taking my hand in hers. “But a Mitläufer nonetheless.”

  The fasten seat belt light came on. I didn’t fasten my seat belt. I was done fastening seat belts. It was time for a new me. A better me. I sat straighter in my chair, looked her square in the face, and said, “I’m done being a Mitläufer. I think. Hmm. I don’t know. Ugh.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start, possibly, or a premature end, perhaps. I sank back.

  She nudged her glasses back into position. “You interrupted me to make that bold statement?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I fastened my seat belt. There was new and then there was reckless. She turned back to her screen. I cleared my throat. I was losing her because I was delaying saying my least favourite words in any language.

  “You’re right…” I hated saying those words, but she was. “I’ve been in a rut. I’ve let my life get too easy and comfortable. On this trip, rather than some perfect, sanitised tourist experience, we got a glimpse of something raw, something being built-or destroyed; I’m still not quite sure about that. But
I am sure it was messy, alive, uncertain, and there was something at stake. I remember what that feels like now and I think I’d like to feel it some more.”

  “Oh no,” she said, covering her eyes. “I fear this ends in some kind of Eat Pray Love epiphany. Do you want to go find yourself?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or just get lost a little in parts of the world other tourists ignore. Which leads me to my question. I know you were excited about a trip to Italy in November, but—”

  She tapped her lip. “But you want to cancel it and go somewhere more challenging?”

  “Would that be okay with you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Ooh yes! Let’s get you out of that rut, mister. And I think I even know where we should go next.”

  4

  China: “It’s ugly in here. And murdery.”

  Chinese New Year, John Wang, never-ending bus rides

  “Cesou, cesou, cesou,” practised Annett, as we climbed the three steps into the warm night bus, shaking the snow off our new winter clothes.

  “Cesou? You can’t possibly need the toilet,” I said, walking behind her down the aisle, scanning for our bunks. “We only went a minute ago.”

  She kicked her bag roughly under a bunk. “Don’t underestimate me.”

  We had just boarded the fourteen-hour night bus from the small town of Tangkou to the megacity of Wuhan. We bought these bus tickets not because we enjoyed long night-bus rides, or had any desire to go to the industrial city of Wuhan, but because a mixture of Chinese New Year and the worst weather in fifty years had made this the only option that would move us in the (general) direction of Xi’an. It had thousands of terracotta warriors standing around in a big hangar, for our enjoyment. We really wanted to go to Xi’an.

  “You want to change?” Annett had said just a month before, as we walked through a park in Berlin. “You want to struggle. I’ll give you struggle, buster. I’ll give you change. A billion humans’ worth of it. We should go to China.”

  I groaned. “China? That feels quite deep end. Maybe we could splash about in the shallow end a bit first, country wise? Canada? Chile?”

  She skipped a step. “Noooooo way. You’ve been shallow too long, my friend.”

  My admitting she’d been right about my early-thirties life crisis had only galvanised her. I had become a project. The ultimate delusion is the delusion you can change your partner. I’d re-awoken that delusion. Perhaps the bigger surprise was how it had also seduced me. Two cheap, last-minute flights later, we’d come face to face with the Asian dragon strutting through Chinese New Year. We’d thought this would mean fireworks, dancing under paper dragons, and drinking mao-tais while enjoying benign displays of patriotism. Instead we’d actually plunged ourselves, in unsuitable clothing and complete cultural ignorance, into sub-zero temperatures and the largest human migration on earth. During Chinese New Year, seven hundred million people are on the move.

  This year, seven hundred million… and two.

  In Tangkou we’d climbed a mountain in a blizzard. Before I’d climbed a mountain in a blizzard, I would have said it was impossible. Having just about survived doing it, I could now say it was merely not recommendable.

  The bus had three rows of metal bunks, two bunks high. These bunks were a reasonable size, assuming you, by Chinese standards, reasonably sized. I was not. I cramped just looking at what was to be my home for the night—left aisle, bottom bunk, number 13. A good omen, no doubt. To my right was a window offering an intimate view of the blizzard. Total visibility: five centimetres. I climbed into my bunk, adopting an innovative mixture of the foetal and brace-brace positions.

  Suddenly, there was a loud, guttural HWKKKWWHHH sound from the bunk above Annett’s new home, next to mine, in the middle aisle.

  “Ugh,” she said, leaning out into the aisle so she could get a look up at the elderly Chinese bunking above her. That sound, we deduced, was the man reaching deep within himself and returning an offering of his phlegm, which he’d spat into a small carrier bag. He was attaching this bag to the corner of his bunk. A spit bag.

  “China is disgusting,” Annett said, rolling over to face away from me. There’s a “better out than in” belief in China, so it’s totally okay to spit, burp, and fart at will. We’d been trying to let go of our Western “it’s better in than out” philosophy, but it had proved stubborn to shift. Much more stubborn than this man’s phlegm, anyway.

  Fourteen hours to go. I put head on my pillow, trying to ignore its smell of smoke, closed my eyes, and groped for sleep.

  I was brought abruptly back to consciousness by the loud sound of another fluid exodus. “Hey!” shrieked Annett. I found her on her back kicking at the bunk above her.

  “What happened?”

  “He is… argh, yuck.” Steam rushed from her ears. The man peered down at her. “You missed!” she said, pointing at a trickle of phlegm running down the side of his spit bag, down the bed frame, and onto her bed. The man smiled a mostly toothless grin, adjusted his spit bag, and lay down again.

  “I hate it here,” she said. “It’s disgusting. The weather is horrible. Everything we’ve tried has gone wrong. I hope you’re getting something out of it, because I’m not sure I am.”

  “I am. I think,” I said, not feeling brave enough to risk an all-out difference of opinion. I didn’t hate it. It was alive and bustling and weird and exciting. Every day was full of challenges. The weather was relentlessly bleak, though. I was with her on that.

  One hour of our journey had passed. Thirteen to go.

  At the front of the bus, the crew talked loudly. We had a crew of four. I had no idea why a bus needed a crew of four. I think most likely because this was China and owning a bucket was considered a three-person job. There seemed to be a one-size-fits-all problem solving solution here that I’d summarize as keep throwing people at it until it goes away. The bus pulled to a halt. Out the window was a thick, fluffy blanket of white.

  I closed my eyes again.

  An hour later, I was still awake, and we were still stationary. I climbed out of my bunk and ambled to the front of the bus to stretch my giant, impractical, European legs. We were in front of a bridge. Through the windscreen and falling globs of snow I could make out an electronic road sign flashing a big X at us. Behind that sign was a barrier, and that barrier was down. Traditionally speaking, that’s not how you want your barrier. That’s when barriers are being no fun.

  The crew were deep in discussion as I approached. The leader was obviously the man sitting in the driver’s seat. He had a thick head of ruffled hair, parted to one side and combed forward in a moppish, Beatlesesque manner. His toned, lithe body had commendable posture, and the belt holding up his faded jeans—jeans faded through wear, not the whims of fashion—had a large metal buckle. He chewed between words, like a cow chewing on grass. The steel in his gaze could have been mined for millennia. He reminded me of a Chinese John Wayne, a John Wang, if you will. The crew turned as I approached, as if I might be about to say something, which I wasn’t, because I couldn’t, because we shared no language. A small bottle of whisky passed between two of them. I stared. They stared back, before turning and resuming their conversation. I ambled back towards my seat. I imagined John saying: Team, we have a situation here. The bridge is closed and we have two Westerners on the bus tonight. One is from England. England is the size of a large melon. The longest journey he will have done is twelve minutes, when he circumnavigated his entire tiny island. I’m concerned if we don’t get to Wuhan on schedule he’s going to die of travel fatigue. We need a plan.

  Although it was probably more like: Team, we have a situation here. We’re running very low on whisky. The bridge is closed, and I have absolutely no clue where the fuck we are, and, therefore, where we can buy more whisky.

  We settled in for our first night on the stationary bus. That night was long, every second cursed with the heft of ten. The bridge stayed closed. We stayed in front of it. The X continued to flash.
The skies continued to release clumps of frozen water. Night put up a good fight before finally surrendering to its nemesis, morning. Out the window I could still see nothing but snow. Popular consensus is that China is overpopulated. Actually, vast chunks of China are as barren as the moon. The cities feel overcrowded, so much so that they’re building cities they don’t even need yet. Backup cities. Reserve cities. B-side cities. Cities full of empty homes. Sixty-four million homes stand completely empty. There’s plenty of space yet beyond their cities’ borders.

  Ten hours had passed.

  I apologised to my angry limbs. They’d called a meeting and were threatening to evict me. My back was particularly outspoken. It was having a miserable time in my too-small bunk. It wanted change. Morning became mid-morning. Because Annett and I had believed this was just going to be a fourteen-hour journey, and overnight, the only sustenance we’d thought to pack was one five-hundred-millilitre bottle of water and two croissants. We shared one of these for breakfast, and as we were doing so, something in our fearless leader snapped. He fired up the engine, turned us around, and drove frenetically down the hard shoulder, away from the bridge, past all the waiting cars.

  “Holy shit, we’re moving!” said Annett, sitting up in her bunk. We high-fived across the aisle.

  Hooooock, tsst.

  Annett’s bunkmate was harvesting saliva once more. She snarled up at him. His bag had gotten quite full overnight.

  Fifteen hours had passed.

  At two in the afternoon, the bus skidded to a halt once more. From my window we could see, some twenty metres in the distance, two wooden shacks.

  “Wuhan’s let itself go,” I said. Annett climbed from her bunk and looked for her shoes. “It’s a cesou break, I think,”

  There had been unofficial toilet breaks during our first night at Hotel Barrier Down. People had gotten off whenever and relieved themselves by the side of the road. There was no privacy, but in this part of the world, privacy was a fairly novel concept, like Blockchain or the Higgs boson.