S. Lee Manning: We’d planned a European trip for years. Somehow we never got
around to it. What can I say? We’d always put it off – for many reasons that
seemed good at the time.
But last fall, with Trojan Horse, my first novel, under
contract, and money and time at our disposal, we planned a month-long trip.
After all, I was now a writer of international espionage. I wanted to research
possible locations for future novels. And my husband could finally satisfy his
travel lust.
So we planned it. London. Paris. South of France. Ireland.
And we bought the tickets, in mid-November 2015. Our adult daughter, who lives
in LA, would join us for the trip. Then on the night of November 13, gunmen and
suicide bombers in Paris hit restaurants, bars, a major stadium, and a concert
hall, leaving 130 dead. On March 22, 2016, terrorists killed 32 people at
bombings at an airport and a metro station in Brussels.
“Don’t go,” said numerous friends and cousins.
“Don’t go, but if you go, don’t wear a Jewish star.”
We thought about cancelling. I went on the State Department
travel alert website. Risk of terror attacks was rated high in every place we
intended to visit, except Ireland.
“We can just go to Ireland,” my daughter suggested. She
loves Celtic music, and she’d visited Paris on her honeymoon. She’d had to skip
Ireland to fly home for my father’s last illness, so Ireland was the top of her
must visit list.
We already had tickets for the train from London to Paris, for
the plane from Nice to Dublin, and had prepaid for a rental car to tour
Provence, all non-refundable. We would have lost a lot of money. I’m risk
adverse, but I’m also cheap. Did I mention I’m Jewish?
Then there’s the fact that we really wanted to see France.
We belong to a French conversation group in Burlington, Vermont, where I
regularly embarrass myself with my lack of vocabulary and inability to
conjugate verbs except in present and present perfect. For years, we’ve watched French movies and
made pathetic efforts to speak French in visits to towns in Quebec. We wanted
to see Paris, and we wanted to see the South of France.
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Rue Montmartre Paris |
Statistically speaking, we knew we were more likely to get
killed driving to New Jersey from Vermont. Statistics are cold comfort, but
still they offer a rationale to do what you really want to do anyway.
Then there’s my writing. Not that I needed this trip for
research on the sequel to Trojan Horse, that I’m currently writing. I wanted to
use the trip as a springboard for my imagination for future books, as yet
unplanned. Moreover, I could almost feel the scorn from my characters,
especially my protagonist, Kolya Petrov, at the idea of my abandoning my trip.
All the terrible
things that you’ve done to me. All the dangerous places you’ve sent me, all the
risks you’ve had me take, and you’re too terrified of the random chance of a
terrorism attack to even tour London and France? He’d add something rude in
Russian, which in deference to readers of this blog, I won’t repeat. But, okay,
Kolya. I got it.
We decided to go. I showed my 23-year-old son, who stayed
behind to finish college, where we kept the wills, and I exacted promises from
cousins to help him if we didn’t make it back.
We took off for London.
I expected to have the trip marred by excessive security or
by constant fear of attack, but once we
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Piccadilly Square in London |
landed, the anxiety disappeared.
Londoners were going their normal affairs. In fact, I was more troubled by
acrophobia than by anxiety over terrorism. And I spent much of the trip envisioning
how I could use different scenarios in future novels. I left the London Eye to
my husband and daughter.
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Westminster, London |
During our visit to the House of Lords in Westminster,
I had to beg off visiting the gallery to listen to the Lords debate because of
the tiny winding stairs and a resulting panic attack – think Vertigo. I sat on
a bench downstairs, near a kind but not too attentive security guard, while I
jotted notes for a story in which a middle-aged spy faked for devious purposes
what I was experiencing.
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Tour Eiffel |
Paris, which I’d expected to be overflowing with security,
was, well, not. An underground shopping mall close to our hotel had installed
security guards at every entrance, but all they did was glance into my purse. I
had an umbrella stuffed into a coat pocket; it could have been a gun, but no
metal detectors, no body searches.
There was a lot of security around a parade of horseback
soldiers on the Champs Elysees, but it drifted away after the parade. Nothing around the Tour Eiffel. I would note
that when we visited the Tour Eiffel, it was so cold, we were almost totally
alone. Just us – and about a hundred Parisians selling overpriced souvenirs.
No visible security. Nothing that would have reminded the
unaware traveler of the terror attacks six months earlier.
Then we rented our car and headed south. In Beaune, we
wandered through narrow streets to a market where I purchased a small sharp
pocket knife that I forgot I had and that was missed during subsequent searches
at tourist sites. In Arles, we stayed in a thousand-year-old cottage in the
French countryside, the only danger being the mold and an overfriendly dog who
almost bowled me over in his eagerness to play.
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Palace des Papes, Avignon, France |
In Avignon, we rented a
gorgeous two-bedroom apartment, two winding flights up that I could only master
by clinging to the wall and counting. At the Palace des Papes and at the
Pont d’Avignon, I waited on the bottom floor while my husband and daughter
climbed the heights. I imagined thrilling adventures by a knife-wielding woman,
abandoned by her family.
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Nice, France |
In
Nice, I gazed out my window at a blue-green Mediterranean sea. Only in
Cannes, which we toured one
day before the opening of the film festival, did I feel the presence of
security, when bicycle riding police descended on a package that appeared to be
deserted and a military ship lingered in the harbor.
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Leenane - Letterbrickaun, Ireland |
The only true terror I felt on the trip was when we wound on
curved roads through Monaco, with the sheer drop off ledges towering over the
sea, and when my husband drove on the left side on tiny Irish roads, the side
mirror closely encountering the bordering stone walls and hedges, while tour buses
barreled down in the opposite direction at 100 kilometers per hour.
I do not intend in any way to downplay the true horror of
the attacks in Europe this past year. Nor am I trying to tell anyone to ignore
warnings not to go into a truly dangerous situation. But terrorism alerts are
high everywhere, including the United States. It is a cliché, but if we
barricade ourselves in our homes, afraid to experience the world, we are giving
terrorism the victory.
I am now back in Vermont, with sights, sounds, and plots in
my mind, and wonderful memories of places that I’d long wanted to see. I know
that I’m lucky that all went well, but I’m also lucky that I had the chance to
take this trip.
The responses of the various places to the terrorist threat is fascinating. I'm so glad you had a wonderful trip! I love this your great travelogue, and all of your insights.
ReplyDeleteI remember being in Paris and London in the 80s when the world seemed to be melting down with AK-47s and constant attacks. We had a great trip, too, and I learned a great deal that I've used over and over in my books.
Can't wait to read your next novel!!!!
Thank you, Gayle. It was a great trip. While I know I can write well about places I've never visited, it does give an extra dimension to the writing to have walked the streets and eaten in the restaurants.
ReplyDeleteReally admire your tenacity, Sandy. And those pics are stunning. Can't wait to see what you come up with for the next book!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful experience! Thank you for sharing the gorgeous pictures!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! We were in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada when a PLO package bomb went off two doors from our outdoor dining table. Someone was killed, but we weren't hurt, and neither were the hundreds of other people in the plaza. We've been to many places in the world before and after, and you know what? Nada. Nothing except friendly people and playful dogs. More people get hurt in the United States than other nations and then mostly by things that aren't terrorism. Just plain old Life. So I say that if you can, travel-travel-travel, keep your eyes and senses open for things that strike you as odd, and enjoy the world!
ReplyDeleteI remember my husband calling me once from a notorious IRA bar in Belfast, and saying indignantly, "I'm here...and NOTHING IS HAPPENING." I suppose trouble comes when we AREN'T looking for it. Thanks, Sandy--
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shane, Francine, Sonja, and KJ. So much of life is just luck, good and bad, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSince it's impossible to pinpoint where and when terror will strike, I guess we just go on about our business with our wits about us. Glad you enjoyed your trip and let's hope an pray this global terrorism will soon reach its end.
ReplyDeleteTerrific description of your travels! I don't know if I would have been that "brave" to head to those European areas in the midst of all the travel advisories and news stories about terrorist threats and refugee confusion. But you did and wrote beautifully about it! Thanks so much for "taking me there."
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed that post about your travels to "reportedly" dangerous places. You really painted a terrific picture of those cities -- and I loved having a chance to read about your adventures! Great descriptions, great writing!
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