It's on the Meter

by Paul Archer

After one drawn-out day at university spent with Google Maps and a laptop, we had come up with a first draft that was acceptable to everyone, but further research and tweaking had continued to take place as new information came to light. We would have to deal with closed African land borders, border-crossing difficulties in Israel and the neighbouring Arab states, and we realised what an expensive, impractical and difficult detour Mongolia would make. However, the route remained essentially the same as it had started out in spirit: an overly meandering path from London to Sydney through some of the most varied and extreme terrain in the world, from the frozen Arctic to some of the hottest deserts.

  After driving down to Paris, we would turn north to Scandinavia and the Arctic Circle, then down through Russia. We'd then swing back west through Eastern and Central Europe before driving through the Middle East to join the ancient Silk Road through Iran and Pakistan and into India.

  The plan was to then head north through Nepal and China, before cutting through the middle of China down to South East Asia and shipping the taxi to Australia from Singapore. The drive down the east coast of Australia would make up the final leg. We'd hopefully cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge about nine months and 30,000 miles after we'd left England, easily breaking the current record of 21,691 miles, set in 1994 by three bankers who drove from London to Cape Town and back.

  So why was our first stop Paris? We weren't exactly sure, but my aunt lives there and had promised us champagne on arrival, and apparently that's all it takes for us to make a 250-mile detour. Plus the photo opportunities seemed too good to miss.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HORNY DUTCH CAT

  Touring the outskirts of Paris and crawling through the fog, we eventually arrived, after seven hours of driving, at my aunt's house at 4 a.m. Exhausted, we slept for the first full night in weeks, and in the morning we ate croissants and baguettes and finally packed the car properly. Despite the roomy taxi interior, space was at a premium as we had been joined on the London to Berlin leg by our good friend Chops, further adding to the mountain of bags and spare parts we were carrying.

  The next day we headed off before dawn to get the first landmark picture of Hannah's travels: we imagined her parked proudly in front of the famous Eiffel Tower, which would be all lit up and looking majestic. It would be all we'd have time to see in Paris, but we had to keep moving, and we thought it would make a nice memento of our short time in the City of Light. However, when we got there the tower's lights were out and it was shrouded in fog. Not the types to be so easily defeated, after checking there was no security around (it was 4.30 a.m.), we unclipped a fence that said 'Piétons seulement', 'Pedestrians only', drove down the Champs de Mars, got the best picture possible, considering the dark, and got on our way.

  One of the many things on our biblical to-do list that had slipped during the manic final week before leaving was to book accommodation at our next stop: Amsterdam, European capital of prostitutes, weed and stag parties. After one of the most stressful and hectic months of our lives, we were ready to pull on our party boots and were expecting big things. However, a last-minute Internet search just before we left Paris had horrified us as we saw the extortionate hostel prices, particularly at the weekend. The thought of paying over €100 for one night in a grotty hostel filled with British 'lads on tour' forced the others to take my suggestion of Couchsurfing seriously.

  I had been Couchsurfing for a few years and singing its praises to unconvinced friends for nearly as long. The idea of finding a host who is willing to let you stay in their home for free, in a reciprocal-karma-community kind of way, appealed to me. The search for a like-minded host can be narrowed down by any number of factors from age and gender, to music interests or life philosophy, and a feedback system keeps the whole process pretty safe.

  I originally started using Couchsurfing as a way to save money on a previous trip to pricey Helsinki, but soon found that the hosts were almost universally interesting and friendly people who delighted in showing surfers a side of their cities not usually seen by guidebook-clutching tourists. Far from being awkward or uncomfortable I had found that staying in the home of a total stranger was a great way of travelling and I had since used the site for trips all over Europe.

  We had just entered Belgium when my phone vibrated with a message from a Dutch Couchsurfer named Jasper, inviting us to stay and giving a postcode for our satnav. With my previous Couchsurfing I had always searched and chosen specific hosts based on similar interests, but due to the eleventh-hour nature of this request I had posted our situation in a last-minute group, basically asking the whole of the Amsterdam community if any of them would host us.

  Meeting new Couchsurfers is always a bit of a nerve-wracking experience, but as we sped ever north towards the city, not knowing anything about Jasper other than his name, address and telephone number, and with three sceptical friends in tow, it seemed especially ominous. When the satnav took us to what appeared to be a derelict industrial estate on the outskirts of Amsterdam, the derisive voices began:

  'Are you sure this is the right place, Johno?'

  'There's nothing here.'

  They were right. All we could see were low industrial buildings with roller-shutters long since pulled down, and the occasional vacant two-storey office building with flaking white paint and overgrown parking spaces. It seemed almost as if someone had played a trick at our expense.

  The idea of just inviting yourself round to someone's house and sleeping on their sofa is just plain weird. No matter how much Johno tried to persuade Leigh and me, I just thought it was one of his strange Johnoisms. He's northern and also a fan of freeganism (he claims it's good for the environment or something), but being so tight you'll hunt in supermarket bins for free food is a step too far for me, no matter how skint I am.

  I was worried that kipping on a stranger's sofa could be another such experience.

  However, having now developed a healthy disregard for the satnav's ability, we had little faith that the empty industrial estate we finally rocked up at was the right place.

  'You have reached your destination.'

  'This is not our fucking destination, this is a derelict office block,' Leigh correctly informed the inanimate object. Just then a man with floppy hair, who looked inherently Dutch, stuck his head out of a window and started waving.

  'Hi, I'm Jasper, this is my house,' he announced as he led us into his huge living room. 'I don't pay very much rent because I prevent people squatting here.'

  Vintage electric organs lined every inch of wall space that wasn't occupied by threadbare sofas. We threw our bags down in a pile in the middle of the room and made ourselves comfortable. Introductions were made, cups of tea were produced and Jasper asked, 'So, what do you want to do in Amsterdam?'

  We had all decided on the drive to throw ourselves into the Dutch culture with vigour, and Leigh, in what was probably an attempt to endear himself to the stereotypical Dutch man, announced, 'We want to get really, really stoned.'

  'Oh yes? Well, here's one I rolled earlier,' Jasper replied, pulling out a humongous joint.

  We spent the next hour transfixed as Jasper jammed on the organ, occasionally pausing to comment philosophically on life in general, and to let us know why his cat was humping Chops' bag.

  'She's on heat, so she wants to go out and have sex with lots of tomcats… but she has to stay indoors no matter what, so she tries to have sex with your bag, no?'

  He carried on jamming for a bit before stopping to watch the cat again. She was obviously exceptionally hot and bothered, stretching out and rubbing herself against Johno's leg.

  'Can you imagine being that horny? She's just so horny she can't function.'

  We giggled in a moronic manner, then after an unidentifiable period of time we realised that we were all really rather stoned and that we hadn't spoken for an extremely long while. We thought that we were obviously too amateur to smoke in Holland and decided to head into town for something we had a bit m
ore experience with: beer.

  As the alcohol flowed and we slowly regained our power of speech, our group of five had become ten, then 15; some of them Jasper's friends, others just random pub-goers or friends of friends. Eventually it was decided that we would all pick up some booze and head to one of their houses, which turned out to be a large, open-plan, beautifully furnished top-floor flat. Everybody crammed in, guitars appeared and joints were washed down with cheap wine and bad songs.

  I told the owner how lovely her house was and she thanked me, swigging red from the bottle.

  'It's actually used for filming a lot.'

  'Really? Amazing! For TV and stuff?' I asked, impressed.

  'No… not for TV – for porn. In fact they were doing a movie in here just yesterday,' she said, perfectly casually. 'We had two girls over there on the table and, actually, a boy–girl scene just where you're sitting right now…'

  'Oh, how, err, lovely.'

  I suddenly felt incredibly English as I leant forward from the sofa I was sat on, now somewhat unsure of where to safely rest my hands.

  The thing I remember most vividly about that night was the intense look in Paul's eyes. During the five years I had known him I had never seen him looking as afraid as he did at that moment, sitting across the room from me mouthing, 'We have to leave here, right now!'

  I was sat on a bright-red leather sofa, sandwiched in between a well-groomed and immaculately dressed guy in his 20s and his much older female partner, who presumably owned the luxurious flat. Each of them had a hand resting suggestively on my thigh and I had spent the past 20 minutes trying to figure out whether they were hitting on me or whether the evening's immersion in Dutch coffee-shop culture had left me too paranoid for my own good.

  They had forgotten me for a moment though; distracted by a brewing argument between one of their party guests and our new friend and host, Jasper.

  With the couple's attention elsewhere Paul hissed at me in a low tone, 'Dude! We have to get out of here, that guy just actually threatened to kill me.'

  I summoned some mental clarity and thought over the past few minutes. From what I could tell, the troublemaker party guest had suddenly ripped off his shirt and pulled down his trousers before grabbing the quintessential Dutch flower, a tulip, from a vase on the glass coffee table. He then proceeded to shove the tulip where no tulip should go and dance around, completely naked, trying to whack other guests in the face with the pretty end.

  Paul and Leigh were eager to record some of our experiences throughout the trip, so they pulled out our sponsor-provided pocket video cameras and slyly started filming the whole affair from opposite sides of the room. Unfortunately, Paul was not so sly.

  The next thing we knew, an inexplicably topless Jasper was doing his hardest to calm the increasingly irate Mr Tulip, promising that Leigh and the now heavily sweating Paul would delete the videos.

  Snapping out of my meditations, I slapped away the hands from my thighs and said decisively, 'OK guys, I think it's about time for us to get going, thanks for having us.'

  I was pretty gutted they made me delete the video: I knew that if I told someone we went to Amsterdam where we partied on a porn set and a Dutch guy stripped naked and shoved a tulip up his arse, they simply wouldn't believe me.

  Jasper had found his top and hopped out of the house behind us.

  'Fuck them, I stole some of their wine, too!' he shouted, laughing as he cracked open a bottle.

  We hadn't gone more than a few metres before two police officers pulled up behind us on their bicycles and informed us that street drinking was illegal in this area and we must throw away the wine immediately. Jasper got rowdy and started to kick off about something in Dutch, all the while cheekily swigging the wine. The police told him if he kept on drinking, they would arrest him.

  'OK, OK, OK,' Jasper replied as he casually walked over to a bin. Just as he was about to put the wine in the bin, he looked up, caught the policeman's eye and took a heroic swig before smashing the bottle into the bin.

  Out came the cuffs and a van was soon on the scene to cart Jasper away. We stood around awkwardly, unsure of what to do. As Jasper was manhandled off, he somehow managed to fling a set of keys at us, along with a strained, 'I'll seeee you back at the flaaat.'

  Thanks to the hordes of mainly British and American rowdy tourists, the Amsterdam police are remarkably experienced and efficient at dealing with 'antisocial behaviour', and we were relieved to get a text message soon after from the angry Jasper, saying that he was now on his way home with nothing more than a €70 fine and a bruised ego.

  As soon as he got in he cracked open the bottle of French wine we had brought from Paris as a thank you gift and told us that apparently the main problem hadn't been that he was drinking, but that he refused to show the police his identification – something he furiously disagreed with on principle.

  As the level of wine in the bottle dropped, Jasper grew calmer and calmer until he suddenly sat bolt upright.

  'Guys!' he yelled, startled, '… where is the cat?'

  CHAPTER 5

  DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAB?

  It took the best part of 13 hours of straight driving to get to Berlin, with the most exciting moment coming when our meter successfully went over its first £1,000 without any millennium bug-style disasters. The German countryside passed by in a hungover blur; little villages and green fields that we half-heartedly watched as the day drew on. We had arranged to stay at one of my brother's friend's houses – her name was Anne, and she lived in Berlin, so she was rapidly dubbed 'Anne Berlin', much to her puzzlement – but unfortunately by the time we arrived it was 1 a.m.

  Buzzing from the fact that after three years we were finally on the road, we were ready to go out again. But we assumed that nothing would be open, especially on a Sunday and at this time of night.

  Anne tutted at our ignorance. 'My God, guys, this is Berlin, anything goes. The clubs stay open all night.'

  'Even the filthy rave clubs?'

  'Yes Paul, even the "filthy rave clubs",' she impatiently scolded.

  'Do we need to dress up, wear shoes?'

  'You really don't understand Berlin,' she said, 'we'll just turn up like this.'

  Apparently Anne didn't understand Berlin either. After being turned away from three different clubs for not being 'hip' enough, we eventually found ourselves in the only place that would take us, a German reggae bar complete with a man-made beach in the car park. After sampling some traditional German beverages, the conversation had turned to tattoos. The combination of peer pressure and alcohol somehow managed to persuade Chops that it would be a good idea to get a tattoo of the taxi, and with filmed footage of him agreeing to this we retired from the bar with a mission for the following day set in our heads.

  When we came to, in a sprawl of sleeping bags and the scent of stale alcohol, lunchtime had been and gone, unnoticed by the five comatose people squeezed into the one-room apartment. Chops groaned with despair as soon as he was reminded of his promise and Leigh groaned even louder when he looked in a mirror and saw that after passing out upon our return someone had given him a new, very unflattering, haircut.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time everyone was dressed and out the door, ready to jump in the taxi, see the sights and find a tattooist.

  Paul reached the corner of the road first and turned to us all with a grin. 'Guys… where's the taxi?'

  'Ha ha, very bloody funny!' snapped Leigh, who was not really in the mood for joking around after his unexpected haircut.

  'No, really; the taxi is gone.'

  'Why are you bloody laughing then?' asked Leigh.

  'I'm not, I mean, I just don't know what else to do,' he said, suddenly serious, 'I swear I haven't moved it.'

  The colour drained from all of our faces and a sense of dread settled deep in our stomachs as we looked at the empty space where we had parked the car the night before. How could we have lost the car on only the fifth day of the expedition, and w
ho would steal such a conspicuous car? Could things really be over before they had even really begun?

  When we got to the police station they informed us that the car had actually been towed, due to illegal parking, and not stolen. They made us pay them €150 to tell us where it was; all of the money, and more, that we had pooled for Chops' tattoo. Slightly depressed and rather concerned that we had already managed to misplace the car and had yet to leave Western Europe, we headed to the airport to drop off Chops. His part in our adventure was over; he went home tattooless, leaving the three of us to carry on to our next stop: Copenhagen.

  It was cold. Bloody cold. And as we headed further and further north, past fields of whirring wind turbines, unsurprisingly, it got colder. We started to regret not fixing the heating system in the back when we were in more civilised climes. Wrapped up in skiwear and in a sleeping bag, with only his eyes and his woolly hat poking out, Leigh got a text from our planned Couchsurfing host for the night telling us that something had come up and we couldn't stay. So we put up another 'emergency' Couchsurfing message. Within 20 minutes a text came through: