Okay, a sorta true story. It starts with boy on a journey as grand as the heartthrobbing sunsets and as cool as barefoot disco nights while the bass is booming Dancing Queen straight into your heart – yip, exactly, that one, the trip of a lifetime, the heck a roller-coaster ride, the nothing short then the uber-funky sublime man maker experience.

Well scratch that. Fast forward please.

You are back home again. Two days, a week, a month, it doesn’t matter. You just are.

Ain’t it swell?

Enough already?

But wait.

First a big hurray for mums mashed potatoes, “Just as you like it“. And also a big cheerio for sipping beers with your old mates (and lasses), in your old pub, on your own stool. And finally, ah true bliss, a loud applause for that sweet smell of (100% guaranteed!) clean sheets after a year of ‘well, things could be much worse’ naps and coma sleeps. It’s still there and it’s glorious, just as you imagined during one of those boring long distance bus trips, eye-stroked and death yawned by seemingly endless miles of rocky desert or paddi fields…

Okay. The big whopping return – Woot! Bet ya! You have such a high hopes. You feel so much alive, larger then life perhaps, with bucketloads of promises and mind-boggling (hear hear, the future is bright!) achievements to fulfill. You are up to it. All of it.

Yeah, everything’s cool.

So no word, not a syllable of doubt or alarm, not even when your gorgeous tan dwindles to the paleness of monday mornings alarms, and the next solar ignite, if ever, is at least half a year or season of more stubborn neglect away. And oh so coyly you accept the public yawns and shrugs when something – which could be anything at those times – triggers your picture perfect stories of far away places and so-called ‘exotic-so-big-spiders-there-eh?’ situations. You’re smart and spunky, wiser now, and so you quickly learn to shut up and put those images on the shelves marked for private use only. Walk the walk and talk the talk, you know you can do it – trading flip flops for fashion boots, who cares when your steps are still light and radiant as still walking on distant shores. Not you.

An then as time passes and things just go on and on and on, work, hanging out, shopping, the usual stuff. And meanwhile Supertan Man slowly becomes sort of distant memory, a blur – vivid at times, but painstakingly vague a sec later. You can almost taste it, smell it, feel it, but (“well fuck that eh..”) in the end it’s one of those flashy ads for the ultimate experience during the Super Bowl, clowning the real thing instead. Gradually, as the gap between what was and is grows bigger and even more surreal, you reluctantly notice that your smiles are rimmed with a sense of mourning for (well, if you already brave enough to name it) that earlier, better, you.

So there you are, back home, a day, a week, or a couple of months, and some grey morning before going to work or school or whatever that’s scheduled for the next year and beyond, you notice the radio is playing a groundhog tune and despite the writing on the wall says ‘it’s either to create the thrill again or program yourself to to forget’, all you know is dark days are still ahead.

Meanwhile Somewhere Tropical (a Monologue)

“You know the world is kinda boring don’t you think? I mean just look around. This… The beautiful people. I’ve seen them all. A zillion times. The happy campers, the sweaty first timers, the beach hunks and bums, the lost hippies, the wannabe hippies, the never wannabe hippies. Sorry but jeez… The arrogance, the ignorance… Sometimes I just get so sick of these original ones, plastered with those Try Walking in my Shoes, Hey Look, Be Awestruck I am special, I Own the world, you can’t touch me smiles. Right on! Believe me, nothing is worse then these Travel Czars with there street pad thais… oh oh ain’t it yummie… with there great travel stories. Real Livingstones, or Thesingers, Byrons, Hemingways or lets not forget another bloody Jacky K, eh? ‘Been here, been there.. And what did you actually pay, really that much… You really should have gone there, it’s awesome… You shouldn’t miss this!’ Shut up snobs! I don’t wanna know! Who gives a shit you found that perfect lonely beach with authentic ‘local’ ambiance, or God help me, that awesome shop to get those cheap fisher pants that look ridiculous anyway. Jeez! Please grow up! Facebook your folks or friends back home but don’t bother me. And by the way don’t touch my shoulder when doing so, cause lets get this clear, I am NOT your mate…”

“But I need to pee. Another beer?”

“You wanna hear something really funny? I used to be one of them. Yeah, another sorry 80 liter backpack carrying bloody Indiana Jones on a effing quest wanker, c’est moi, yours truly. Cheers to that. It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited to go somewhere but once too I truly expected to find that bloody holy grail of the 9 to 5 drag and the truth in when traveling you can find an easy shag? And just as them I wanted to spread the word, endorse the nomadic never ending voyage, celebrate the true gipsy freedom, yada yada, and then die happily. Boy, did I succeed.”

“Dare to be surprised” you say. Sure. But what if that beach is just another beach, and a new town once more like the last one but with different grid and street signs, and being lost, which is sorta fun in the beginning, has become more like feeling lost, which is of course totally crap. Well? And the people, the food, the smells, the NEW you wonder? Well, for all I know it’s always the same back and forth mixed in a different blend and in the end I just want a good sushi. Pathetic, yes. But hey, everyone loves to trave! And I wrote that so it must be true!

“Young Christian Bale ‘P-51! Cadillac of the sky!’ in Empire of the Sun, that’s me. Too drunk too explain but I really feel like closing my eyes…”

“But hey, enough about me. Let’s talk about you. So what do you think of me?”

[Part 3, 'Surviving The Travel Bug, The Final', is planned to go live in a week. I guess...]