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

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” I said, one hand on my hip. “Do you think they’ll mind?”

  Annett shook her head and stepped towards them. “Nah. I think these people could use some spontaneity.”

  I picked a woman at random. She wore a pink-and-white traditional dress, puffy around the sleeves. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. In the short break between songs, I motioned to her male partner, pointed at Annett, motioned to myself, and then pointed at the young lady. He nodded and politely stepped aside. The whole group shuffled a little bit to create space for us, and we entered. The next song began. Annett and I exchanged mutual looks of terror as the perfectly synchronised mob began swirling around us; we attempted to keep up, learning the steps as we went, in real time.

  For the dance I needed to hold my partner’s hands—one in front of her body, one behind. Then we would take one step forward and two steps back (just like my literary career). Next we would turn and face each other, and link arms and circle each other, one way, and then the other, before resuming our original formation, and repeating.

  It is, of course, very easy to explain all that now because I’ve watched the video of me doing it several times, and in slow motion. At that moment, however, in the tyranny of real time, I was hopeless. I dance like concrete swims. Actually, I dance like I swim. When the group turned left, I turned right; when they went two steps forward and one step back, I shuffled back and out. Fortunately I had a patient, pretty partner who smiled politely at me throughout. She didn’t seem shy, nor to mind that the song involved so much touching. As the song ended, I bowed to her and, out of a feeling of guilt over what I had made her endure, I stepped away. Annett did the same. We regrouped in a gap between dancers to swap notes.

  I was giddy. “That was awesome!”

  “I know. I was terrible at it though.”

  “Me too,” I said, trying to make her feel better.

  “You don’t need to tell me that. I was right behind you.”

  I spotted Mrs Park just a few metres away, by a pole holding the country’s flag. One of six thousand in my eyeline.

  “Mrs Park.” I bowed. “May I have the honour of this dance?”

  “Dance?”

  “Yes. Me and you.”

  She giggled nervously. “I’m not really a dancer.”

  “You haven’t not seen anything yet,” I said, trying to reassure her but just confusing her with a double negative. She handed her bag to her fellow guide. Her arm in mine, I led her into a small gap in the nearest formation of dancers.

  “Do you know the steps?” I asked.

  “I know the steps.”

  “Good. Teach me.”

  The song began. The beat was faster this time. The people in front of us began to swirl. I tried to follow. I tripped, recovered my balance, turned (out of time). They clapped. I tried to mimic Mrs Park. The group swirled back the other way. I followed, but forgot to spin back when they did, and bumped noses with Mrs Park. Next came the kicking of the leg, then a high-five. After a rocky start, I felt, by the time the song was fading out, that I had been only mostly awful.

  We stepped out of the group. “What was that?” Mrs Park asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  She crossed her arms. “Was that supposed to be dancing?”

  My pride bruised, I retreated to the pavilion to watch the rest of the spectacle from a distance. As Jack had predicted, there really were just six songs on a loop. The event ended exactly one hour after it started. Just a few minutes later, ten thousand people had filed neatly out of the square.

  The group reassembled at the entrance to the pavilion.

  “WOOO,” said Kevin. He jumped on a couple of his friends. “THAT WAS AMAZING!”

  “What did you think?” I asked Annett. She looked out at the empty square. “I don’t know. I think I’m going to need some time with this.”

  I needed it too. I had this heavy, tense feeling in my stomach. Sadness, I decided, at having watched ten thousand intelligent, creative, imaginative people reduced to arriving at a set time, in a set pattern, in set clothing, to dance to a set number of songs, for a set duration, before doing some final (set) fist-pumping and then heading home again, in a set order. What if these people were actually allowed to do what they wanted? To create their own dance moves? To write their own songs? “Free” will still has value.

  Having had one of my most treasured experiences, one I’ll never forget, I left the square elated and baffled yet feeling deeply sorry for everyone involved in giving it to us.

  A few days of bowing later, it was all over. At 5:45am we boarded the tour bus for the final time and headed to the airport where arrivals and departures were (oh wonder of wonders) separated. Jack snoozed in his seat at the front. I was going to miss these people. Friendships were built quickly and deeply in the DPRK. You have so much time with each other and you bond over the madness you’re subjected to. I was even going to miss Jack. Maybe. A little bit.

  At the airport, I asked him why he’d bothered to get up so early to see us off. “I only didn’t come once,” he said. “It was the time that one of the guests, a sixty-year-old American, freaked out at the airport and started screaming and shouting and trying to convince his handlers that they were living in a lie, that the regime was composed of dictators, that North Korea had started the Korean war. They arrested the goon. He burst into tears. Scribbled a quick letter of apology and they let him back on the flight. He later described the experience as ‘the scariest of his life.’” Jack chuckled to himself. “No shit.”

  Nothing dramatic happened at the airport. We hugged our handlers, Mr and Mrs Park, and took some final group photos. A few people were tearful. This place got under your skin. But then, mosquitoes also get under your skin. We were getting out. We were the lucky ones. One day, this regime will collapse and we’ll learn just how callous it has been to its people. Until then, I’ll remember that the people we met in North Korea were extremely nice and offered what meagre scraps of honesty, doubt, and curiosity they could get away with. I have no doubt that they have doubts about the regime but that the cost of expressing these is simply too high. They aren’t brainless zombies. It would have been easier to stomach if they were.

  “Would you recommend other people come here on holiday?” I asked Annett on the flight to Beijing. We were flying Air Koryo, the country’s national (and only) airline, voted in one poll as the worst in the world. “It’s the most memorable place I’ve ever been,” she said, then frowned. “But it’s hard work. They really tour the crap out of you.”

  I touched the base of my spine. “I think I strained something with all that bowing.”

  The attendant handed us our in-flight food. A mysteriously non-descript burger-shaped spongy object. It had ingredients but we couldn’t name them. Other than kimchi. We hadn’t had a meal without it in ten days. “Do you think it’s different from other dictatorships you’ve seen?” Annett asked, between bites.

  I jerked my head back. “God yeah! Just the scale of it. The omnipresence of those same two faces, day in and day out. They were seriously needy, those two. Forty thousand statues? Every adult having to wear their faces on their heart each day?”

  “Yeah, they made vanity into an art. The whole place was kind of like a dystopian, terror, misery, kimchi theme park.”

  I sighed. “I feel incredibly lucky to be going back to Germany.”

  17

  Berlin, Germany: The end

  I checked my phone as I walked up the stairs to our first-floor apartment. It was 6:10pm. Annett would be home soon. Inside the hallway, I dropped my yoga gear in a heap by the door. I glanced at the whiteboard, where I’d scrawled “Boredom is a luxury good” in green pen. I took a deep breath. It was good to be home. Wait, wasn’t there something I was supposed to do? I did some mental accounting.

  I’m fully dressed. Nothing is on fire. The fridge has food. I paid all my taxes. I did the washing up this morning.


  Everything seemed fine. Ah, I’d wanted to email Dan. That was it. I’d get to that later. I hadn’t heard from them in ages. I groped for the light switch. I flicked it. Nothing happened.

  Change the light bulb. That’s it.

  I took one of our cheap IKEA chairs from the kitchen and opened the dedicated light-bulb-and-battery drawer Annett had created. I smiled as I looked down at bulbs sorted by wattage and batteries sorted by size. All annotated with brightly coloured Post-it notes. It was both deeply impressive and absolutely terrifying. A pretty good summary of Annett, I concluded.

  I dragged the chair out into the hallway, stood on it, and reached up for the light socket. The chair groaned under my weight. I heard a key jangle in the lock. The door flew open, slamming into the wall with a dull thud.

  “Hey,” Annett said, slamming it closed again. That poor door. “I don’t know why I bother getting the postal mail. No good news ever comes via postal mail. Did you ever notice that?”

  Our hallway was L-shaped. She came round its corner and stopped to look up at me on the chair. “You’re changing the bulb? Wow, I only had to ask you what, like three times? That’s twelve fewer than normal.”

  I screwed the new bulb in. “You’re welcome. Give it a try.”

  She disappeared back round the corner. “‘And God, said let there be…’”

  Our dark, narrow hallway became, well, slightly less dark. “Good enough,” I said, as she squeezed past me en route to the living room. I returned the chair to its home in the kitchen.

  Back in the living room, I found her spread across the couch, as if shot by the relaxation gun. She smiled up at me. “How was your day then, my little Mitläufer?”

  I crossed the room and sat, demurely, on the small slither of couch she hadn’t claimed for herself. “Good. I went to the co-working place. I think that’s making a difference. I almost feel like I have a job and colleagues again.”

  “Did you do some work or just eat chocolate and do vanity searches?”

  “I did some work. Not much. But some. I think I’m going to try to write that book about unusual countries. Probably nothing will come of it, but let’s see. How was your day? Anyone fail to notice your genius?”

  She wafted a wrist in front of her face, like a slighted movie starlet. “Only just about everyone, as per freaking usual. It was crazy out there. That stupid woman from HR. Doesn’t know her ass from her elbow. What do you want to do later? I was thinking maybe—”

  “Sure.”

  She sat up. “I didn’t even say what it was yet.”

  “I know. Doesn’t matter.”

  She tilted her head. “What if it involves leaving the house again?”

  “Especially if it involves leaving the house.”

  “And meeting other humans? Maybe humans who might want something from you, like your caring a teeny tiny bit about their lives, maybe? Or at least remembering something about them?”

  “Sounds pretty good to me.”

  She grinned. “I could get used to this.”

  “Try not to,” I said, looking round the room. “That was my mistake.”

  You! Me! Free Stuff!

  I’d like to keep this good thing we’ve got going on, well, going on just a bit longer yet. So I’ve set up a special little VIP readers’ club—Fletcher’s Email Persuasion (FEP), I call it.

  It’s completely free, and if you join it, you’ll get two free books:

  A free digital copy of A Picnic for Perverts—my book of absurdist short stories (an exclusive for club members).

  A free copy of The Freedom Figure—a book about how to work less, live more, and thrive in the digital age (normal price $3.99).

  A chance to get future books for free as part of my Eagle Eye Proofreader program.

  News about new books, videos, and events.

  My undying gratitude.

  Convinced? You can join here: adam-fletcher.co.uk

  Help me keep doing this

  You made it all the way to the end? Fantastic. Thank you. You’re a wonderful human. I’m extremely grateful you took a chance on me (there’s a song in that, I think).

  Want to know the hardest part of being a writer? It’s not the words—it’s everything that happens after the words. There are a lot of words out there. I’m just one little bald British man. I don’t have a publisher supporting this book. I don’t have a big marketing budget to help people find it. I can’t put up posters of my face in the subway. I can’t hire a blimp to circle the Super Bowl.

  But I have something much more powerful and effective anyway, something publishers would kill for—a group of loyal readers. Readers like you. Honest reviews work like rocket fuel for books. Writing a review is the best thing you can do to both thank me and help me write more books. I want there to be more books. I hope you do too. There were so many interesting trips I didn’t have space to include in this one. I’d like to tell you more stories about my trips.

  Ready? Great, you can jump right to the Amazon page here.

  Thank you. I owe you.

  Adam