The gods, wormholes and shorts!

I am quite used to it now, whenever I travel I know that I will forget to pack something vitally important and that it will be an enormous struggle or prohibitively expensive to replace at my destination. I am reminded of the trumpet player who was going on a gig where he knew that he would need every conceivable type of mute, he carefully gathered all his mutes together (they always managed to hide themselves in the most unlikely places) and put them in his gig-bag and toddled off to his concert feeling very pleased with himself. When he arrived he opened his bag to show his mates his magnificent collection of mutes; they were all very impressed, until some wag asked “Where’s the trumpet?”

When I conduct I am completely neurotic about my musical scores, I will check I have them all several times over. My usual habit is to get them all together the night before, knowing I will wake up in a cold sweat, check them again until I am quite sure they are all there. The night before my flight for this trip I woke to remember two scores that I needed that were not packed, and my bag was already bursting at the seams. They came as hand luggage. Now I’m here I do think that I have all my scores, though I am pretty sure that my Mahler 3 is the wrong version.

So - the first day in a strange city, with a language I can’t read nor understand, is always spent looking for things that I forgot to bring, or as I prefer to put it, that my wife forgot to pack. It is very hot in Bulgaria, I knew I would need shorts, and I don’t have any. I have three million shirts, but no shorts. This was going to be very annoying, but my bag was damn close to the 20 kilo limit for the aeroplane so I decided to manage without; I would go for a wander around the town of Ruse, or Rousse, or Pyce in Cyrillic.

My walk was without particular purpose, but I took off in the general direction of the Concert Hall, which I had been told was at the end of a certain street. I found the street and wandered to the end, there indeed was an impressive if slightly run-down building that could well be a concert hall. Culture was very important to Eastern European countries during the Soviet era, since then it would appear that little money has been spent on keeping the buildings up to date. I was surprised to find most of the shops open on a Sunday, and it occurred to me that I might be able to buy things that I had forgotten, if only I could remember what. What was it I needed?

Deodorant, of course! How could I forget? When I conduct I sweat a bit (OK, a lot), and deodorant NEVER gets packed. At moments in time such as these, something very curious usually happens, I am sure that I can’t be the only person to have experienced it. All the pharmacies, or any shop that is likely to sell deodorant, collectively jump down a wormhole to another dimension. However hard I look I know that I will never ever find one. This was of course the case, and where-ever I looked there were plenty of restaurants, clothes shops, computer shops and mobile phone shops but not a single pharmacy. They had all escaped to an alternate universe.

The secret is not to panic, and not to worry too much. Show the gods that you don’t really care. After all, if I smell a bit after some energetic conducting, I don’t notice. It’s only everyone else. The thing to do is to find another shop and buy something in it, the shops that you really need then re-appear in great numbers. There were two book shops quite close to each other. I like bookshops! But everything here is in Bulgarian and therefore Cyrillic, no use to me whatsoever. Never mind, on my quest for deodorant I must go in and appear interested.

Inside there were, well, plenty of books. None of them were of any use to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the dictionary section. Then, even better, Longman’s dictionary of contemporary English. This is an interesting book! One of my clients typeset it, and I always enjoy looking on the back of the title page and seeing “Set in Some-Font-That-I-Have-Never-Heard-Of by Letterpart”. It gives me a nice feeling of satisfaction that I contributed in some small way to the production of this book. I then flicked through the pages at random and found a definition of “Chip and Pin”, wonderful.

Then, a brainwave! Bookshops sell maps, I could genuinely buy a map of the town, this was something that I really needed! Off to see the (very pretty) girl behind the counter, who spoke English, and who quickly found a little map, IN ENGLISH! Brilliant. 1.50 Leva, about 75p. Can’t argue with that. I left the shop feeling very self-satisfied, mission accomplished. Now, what was it I really needed? Err.......

This doesn’t happen very often, but out of the corner of my eye I spotted a Pharmacy! Deodorant! And they sold it, even for men! Roll on versions too! This was going to be a good day.

So, back to the hotel to play with my new toys. The hotel is an old Soviet style building, and was probably top of the range when it was built and still looks quite impressive in places. The rooms have air-conditioning but the communal spaces do not, and the fourth floor corridor on which is my room is located is stifling. Back in my room I remember how hot it was outside, inside it was so cool! Shorts! Dammit. OK, make a list of all the other things I was going to need. Well I would want a bite to eat, but that would not be a problem, the town was heaving with restaurants. I had seen clothes shops, but where? I had my map, with its aid I could retrace my steps and find them again.

So, out into the streets again to find some shorts, I could feel the space-time continuum shifting as all the clothes shops collectively hopped down a convenient wormhole and were replaced by an excessively large amount of pharmacies. There would be no point in going in them, I already knew that they would have a much larger choice of deodorants at half the price I had paid. Never mind, don’t let it get you down. Find the clothes shops.

Hmm - lots of mobile phone shops, computer shops and restaurants. No clothes shops, None.

I was just about to give up when I spotted the street where they all were, this was unusual, but there was no doubt about it, clothes shops. And, they had shorts. Being 6’ 2” does have some advantages, my children’s friends are all scared of me, this is a surprising plus, all I have to do is growl slightly and they all run away. But Bulgarians do not appear to be a large people, besides - I am very overweight. I did find a pair of shorts that normally I would not be seen dead in, they had gimp-like zips over all the pockets and would have made a twenty five year old look silly. Fortunately they were far too small so I wasn’t able to buy them. All the other shops were the same. I had forgotten that only young thin people buy clothes, unless of course, the wormhole had taken all the tall fat-person’s clothes. Back to the hotel with a resigned air, don’t let it get you down.

One of the odd things about being away is that your family suddenly want to talk to you. Grown up kids are busy and have jobs, so they never normally have time for a chat, and teenage kids are by the laws of evolution prevented from speaking to parents. This changes somewhat when there is distance involved. The greater the distance the more they want to chat. And the wife – well!

With the age of the computer comes the age of the video call, it all works quite well now, providing you have a good connection and headphones. These latter I had forgotten to pack. I have hi-fi headphones for doing my homework on scores, but not computer headphones with a mike. Well, I had seen lots of phone and computer shops, there was one at the top of the road.

Of course there wasn’t. How could there be, I wanted to buy something from it. They had ALL disappeared to be replaced with restaurants, clothes shops and pharmacies. Don’t give up, keep an air of devil-may-care insouciance. If you don’t care enough you will find one. It worked, a mobile phone shop, with lots and lots of – Bluetooth headsets. Not what I wanted at all. The sales assistant was a boy of about 10, but wonder of wonders and blessing of capitalism, he spoke excellent English. He understood “Headphones for a computer with a microphone and standard 3.5mm jack plugs” perfectly. There were some for about 9 leva, £4.50 or so, excellent. A victory, albeit a small one. So back to the hotel, the 10 year old had carefully put the receipt in the bag and told me “if you have any problem just bring them back”. I had even complemented him on his excellent English. This was a big mistake. HUGE in fact.

Could I get those headphones to work? Of course not. The gods were against me since the moment I pretended I didn’t care. So I gathered together the packaging, the bag and the receipt, none of which I had yet lost. The packaging was even in good condition, it wasn’t the heat sealed type that is impossible to get into and half destroys the contents in the process. This was all TOO good, I was being lined up for some huge humiliation, I could feel it. Let’s try the headphones once again. The headset had a volume control, better try that! Then, of course, they worked perfectly. Can you imagine how I would have felt going back to the shop, in my “I’m a computer expert and these don’t work” mode, to have the ten year old plug them into something, adjust the volume control and say “There you are - Sir” in the most condescending conceivable voice. It was a narrow escape, I was going to have to be careful.

So, some study, some chat with the wife about her computer which she had broken, then supper. No problem here, there had been restaurants all over the town all day. They couldn’t possibly disappear. There was time for a quick nap as well.

When I woke I found my phone and wallet and went off in search of a restaurant. The gods had decided to punish me for finding the volume control by having it rain. Never mind, there were plenty of restaurants nearby. But what if they were all to close early? It was eight o’clock and they couldn’t possibly shut that early, and indeed so it proved. All the restaurants were still there and still open, the only thing wrong was that it was raining.

The first restaurant turned out to be a bar, then the next, then the next... They were all bars, no food anywhere! The rain got harder, I started to panic. Where was I going to eat? My head started to swim, I went in bar after bar, not so much as a sandwich anywhere. I was losing my sense of direction, and I had left the map in the hotel room.

Getting more and more desperate I started wandering in ever increasing circles, sometimes stumbling back into the same bar four or five times looking for a bite to eat.

I lost sense of time and place, Bruckner’s majestic but doom-laden eighth symphony kept ringing round my head. The panic was increasing, I was starving, confused and hopelessly lost in a strange city with a language which I could neither understand nor read. The gods were exacting a terrible revenge, on my first day I had beaten them three times. "You won over the shorts" I
thought.

Once again I felt a slight rumble, the space-time continuum shifted again, something had changed. I walked round the corner to find - a McDonalds. The gods are indeed cruel.

No - no - no, I would not do that, I would rather starve.

My head span, by stomach rumbled, the music changed to the final scene of Gotterdammerung. "OK, I promised not even to look for shorts, and even if I stumble across some I will not buy them, I promise!"

Valhalla crumbled around me, the fires engulfed its remains, the Rhine burst its banks, the Rhinemaidens took my promise and bore it away.

I looked up, shook my head to clear it. I was standing in a puddle and in front of me was a Pizza parlour.

A Pizza parlour. I could cope with that. “A Calzone and some tap water please”. The gods had shown some mercy.

On balance, a fair day.