Wet and green Hué The ancient city-center, bombed out during
the war and partly restored.
Yes, you do sometimes
meet remarkable people while travelling. On the 20-hour train ride from Hanoi to
Hué I shared a sleeping compartment with the Italian couple in the picture
above. Of course, everybody stocks up on snacks, drinking water and booze before
boarding, and it is one of the true joys of travelling to find other people in
your compartment that you like sharing the stuff with, more specifically the
booze, while talking away a good part of the night which for me would have been
largely sleepless anyway. Halfway down a bottle of Vietnamese whisky the girl
was relaxing on the middle bunk while I was still standing in the compartment,
so our faces were quite close together in the semi-dark - I'm sure such
accidental details matter for what you tell each other. She was quite
girlishly attractive. For some reason I asked her how old she was, and she said
thirty. I was surprised, because she looked twentyfive at most. 'Yes', she
said with a melancholy smile. 'My usual answer when people say that is: 'I'm
five years younger', and that is because I don't want to tell them I spent five
years in jail. I was a member of the Brigati Rossi, and was arrested while
carrying a gun. In Italy you get five years for that, whether you used it or
not.'What are you doing with this gun?' all these policemen said, 'the gun is
bigger than you'.' As I didn't really know what to say next, I said: 'Where
you involved in any kidnappings or killings?' 'No', she said, 'but friends of
mine were, and at the time I supported their ideas. I don't know what I would
have done if they had asked me to help with that. But I accepted the gun and
always carried it with me. Although I don't know why. In any case, I didn't
fight when I was caught.' Her boyfriend, who was by now snoring in one of the
upper bunks, was a dokter she had met after jail. They went travelling together
to celebrate that she had finally gotten back her passport from the Italian
authorities. Also, he planned to write a book about Vietnamese indigenous
medicine, so they tried to find local shamans to tell them all about their
secret herbs and therapies. After leaving the train, we spent a few quiet
days in Hué, visiting the monuments and doing nothing much in particular.
Politics didn't come up, nor did I notice anything remotely resembling
fanaticism in her. In fact, they were some of the most friendly, comfortable and
trustworthy people I met while travelling. I guess the difference between
joining Greenpeace, the student fraternity or an urban guerilla movement is less
than most of us want to know.
