Green and peasant land

Ah, the joys of unspoilt Umbria. The perfect place to get back to basics: ciabatta, olive oil, pecorino and truffles washed down with a rough country red, says Jeremy Atiyah. But it takes a certain type of Brit to appreciate these simple pleasures, of course

Published: 12 May 2003

Hi. I'm a Brit, on holiday in Italy with my woman, looking for wines and olive oils and truffles and mushrooms and all that. Nothing fancy. Just good honest, simple food. You see, people like us, we understand the secrets of Italian life. And peasant food, I can tell you, is one of them, alongside a jolly good dollop of culture, such as church frescoes and medieval villages and crumbling abbeys and what-have-you. With no plebs, anywhere. This is what I call a holiday. You see, we are on an organised walk.

And it starts here, in this awfully nice town called Spoleto. I admit it's covered in rain and cloud at the moment, and the centre of town is scruffy and clogged with funny little cars. But look here, these medieval stones are cracked and bleached to perfection. Everything is mouldy and rotten, but characterful as hell. Guttering gurgles. Dank lanes wind through the town. Shops offer giant dusty cheeses the size of tractor tyres, stinking truffles and hairy legs of dried ham. Stepping under a 2,000-year-old archway, we enter the main square, where some Spoletano in a van is cutting slices from a whole wild boar stuffed with rosemary. My woman and I, we love all this primitive, authentic stuff.
The next morning it's time to get going, with our maps and route instructions, while a terrific character called Luca takes charge of our luggage. "We Italians wouldn't walk it, you know," he keeps chortling. "You are sure you want to walk? Sure you don't want a lift?" What an amusing fellow. We praise him and pat him on the back for his guileless charm.

Meanwhile, the weather has rather gone to pot. In truth, it's a let's-go-back-to-sleep sort of day. Except that my woman and I are not the types to lounge in bed. Instead we march off through Spoleto's dripping lanes to grab a few items for lunch. Just the usual stuff. Ciabatta baked with olive oil and rosemary? Throw it in. Vine tomatoes? No, let's take those colossal knobbly ones instead. A bottle of Montefalco red? It's anything we can find, really.

Off we go. Luckily we aren't bothered by the rain. In fact let's be honest, Italian rain has unique qualities. Before long we are shuffling through wet leaves in the forest, with porcini mushrooms erupting from beneath our feet. Important signposts announce areas reserved for the collection of truffles. Hamlets, orchards, groves and copses compose themselves on fog-shrouded hillsides. Splendid fissures open in the heavens, allowing shafts of light to ignite distant ruined forts and towers.

Good God, I tell my woman, this is simple beauty of a kind that only simple people like us deserve.
She agrees. In fact it will be raw, native pleasure all the way until lunchtime, when we find ourselves approaching a dot on the map called Cese, population about 25. The landscape round here is a droll fusion of the Alpine and the Mediterranean. Cows with bells round their necks chew grass beside hillsides covered in olives and vines. In Cese, a classic mountain peasant woman, wearing army boots and a table cloth tied round her waist, is standing in a doorway, filling large barrels with chopped tomatoes. "Mamma mia," she screeches, at the mere sight of us. "No umbrella? No car?"

"We are British," I say, with a knowing smile, before asking if she can direct us to any sheltered spot. In the end we find a mouldy barn in which to eat our lunch. Mud squelches and rivulets trickle. The cheesy stench of manure is a pleasingly genuine touch. A mangy dog puts a wet tongue on our pecorino. "But good God," I am forced to exclaim to my woman, "this ciabatta is perfection!" She thoroughly agrees. At that moment we turn to see two ancients under huge umbrellas creep into our line of vision.

They too, bless them, seem worried about our safety and our sense of direction. I inform them that we are walking over the hills and through the forests to the Abbey of San Pietro in Valle. We have maps and instructions. "Dio mio," one of them grunts, "you'll get lost!" Such are the quaint concerns of the Italian peasantry. They imagine that spirits of the forest, or perhaps wild boar or wolf, will whisk us away. We smile and continue on our journey.

It takes a few more dank hours to find our accommodation for the night and by then my knees will be suffering from something jolly near to rigor mortis. But pain means nothing to my woman and me. How so? Because we know that the Abbey of San Pietro in Valle, when we get there, will embody that unique Italian fusion of culture and beauty and taste and class and decency that suits people like us so well.

We are proved right. As we finally step into the grounds, monkish chants come echoing out of the chapel. We are shown past medieval cloisters to our bedroom, a vast baronial hall with a rough stone floor, commanding views across a green, deep, rain-swept valley. A sense of my true merit seizes me. Suddenly I feel transformed into a courtly knight, while my woman acquires the characteristics of a comely maid. I shall give her a jolly good rogering tonight, methinks.

But first it is time for dinner. A German woman called Anna, an employee of the abbey, drives us to a nearby restaurant. "I am living here for 20 years but still this is not enough to be accepted by the people," she complains. "There is no reading here, no culture, no opinion." She seems to be distressed. But these are a peasant folk, I want to remind her, who drive mules and feed their dogs on cheese and bread. Why expect the world from them? She need only adopt the simple life, and she too can be happy, like us.

Then, moments later, while stepping from the car into the restaurant, I become the unexpected victim of a diabolical act. A ticklish buzzing in my hand is followed by searing, stabbing pain. An enormous, no, a gigantic wasp has stung me.

I spend the meal with a blob of cold cream soothing my swollen red hand and a string of well-dressed ladies from nearby tables approaching to ask if I can still breathe. "Perfectly," I reply, having regained my composure, while our waiter is prattling at speed, about the next course. "This is a very traditional Umbrian dish of cured meats and cheeses which we would like you to savour," he recites. Or, "now we would like you to try our dessert wine, with these very traditional biscotti". One of the courses comprises a boiled egg with soldiers, into which truffle sauce can be added. This would seem terribly charming if my hand didn't hurt so much. In fact the truffle tastes mulchy and soily. As I have said, I am a man of simple tastes.

That night, in my baronial bed, beside my woman, I lie awake with shooting pains extending up my arm, worrying about the giant centipede that has also been spotted in the bathroom. In the morning, the clouds reach right down to our window.

But these are minor troubles, trifles, hardly worth mentioning. In general, the coming days will pass splendidly. Each seems to start with wind, rain and a punishing ascent; each eventually climaxes with cured meats, artichokes, lentils, chestnuts and vino rosso della casa. We cross upland meadows where boar, deer and even wolf have been spotted; we espy lone, stubbly shepherds, guarding their flocks. "These men," I assure my woman, as we sit astride windy ridges to eat salami slices and pears, "know many things that supposedly superior peoples have forgotten." And let me tell you that my woman and I feel a rich sense of kinship with these uncomplicated types.

At the end of the fourth day we stagger up steep lanes into the earthquake-cracked village of Preci. Freezing fog, impregnated with wood smoke, hangs over the church steeple. But these signs of winter do not deter us. We now resemble two mud-splattered peasants. Our pastas are becoming heartier by the minute, our cheeses stronger and our red wines heavier.

Then on the fifth day the sun comes out. Under old oak trees, a path described in our walking notes as "lovely and ancient" leads us through a valley towards the monastery of San Eutizio. Acorns crunch underfoot. But hang on: this path looks almost English. What's more, we will later spend several hours walking through an immensely long valley that resembles the Blenheim Estate, where lone apple trees stand on slopes of smooth grass, where sheep bleat and faint mists rise. You could almost wonder whether some bloody bastardo didn't design Umbria just to flatter British tourists.

But when we reach San Eutizio we find ourselves looking at an ancient building that grows endearingly from a cliff-top. It is obvious to me and my woman that you couldn't build that if you weren't Italian. What's more, as we picnic later under a walnut tree, we find nuts crashing to the ground beside us, conveniently cracking open as they land. "The natural abundance of Italy!" I exclaim, as my woman forages for bounty.

We finally creep into our last destination, the tiny walled city of Norcia, at the time of the twilight passeggiata. Happy children scamper. Happy adults stroll. Happy shopkeepers stand in doorways. Happy pilgrims pay homage to the local hero, Saint Benedict. As for the happy tourists – that is to say, us – we go in search of souvenirs. Before the shops close, we'll pick up some olives marinated in walnut oil; pecorino cheese matured for two years; wild boar prosciutto; truffle-flavoured grappa; dried porcini mushrooms. It'll be rough, peasant stuff of course, and nothing you would appreciate, unless you were blessed by the same plain Italian tastes as me and my woman.


Traveller's Guide
Jeremy Atiyah's walk was courtesy of Inntravel (01653 629010, www.inntravel.co.uk). The week's independent walking tour, called "Umbria: Italy's Green Heart" costs from £735 per person based on two sharing. The price includes return flights from Heathrow to Rome, transfers, seven nights B&B, five dinners and two picnics, six days walking with maps, and luggage transportation.

You can cover the same ground by finding a cheap flight from Stansted to Rome Ciampino on easyJet (0870 600 0000, www.easyJet.com) or Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com); Ryanair also flies to Ancona on the Adriatic coast. Alternatively, fly on Alitalia (08705 448 259, www.alitalia.co.uk) or British Airways (0845 77 333 77, www.ba.com) to Rome Fiumicino. Rail connections to Spoleto are slow, but cheap.


More information: Italian State Tourist Office, 1 Princes St, London W1B 2AY (020-7408 1254, www.enit.it).

Hotel Astoria, St Petersburg

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 12 May 2003

Two grand old hotels in St Petersburg survived Lenin and Stalin to become five-star establishments of the 21st century. The Astoria is one of them. (The Grand Hotel Europa is the other.) Not that the Astoria's pre-Communist glory amounted to much: the hotel's opening could not have come in a less auspicious year, namely, 1914, on the eve of the war that was to end Tsarist rule in Russia. Three years later, the Bolsheviks were in charge of St Petersburg and the toffs for whom the Astoria had been designed – aristocrats and rich foreigners – faced an 80-year wait until they could claim the hotel as their own.

Despite being named after the crooked American capitalist John Jacob Astor, the hotel entered legend during the Soviet era, as the place in which Adolf Hitler planned to hold his victory party after the surrender of the city. During the Nazis' three-year blockade of Leningrad, Hitler was even reputed to have had invitations printed and ready to send out to guests.
Today there is no sign of either revolution or blockade. The ballroom and the winter garden have been restored, and a harp tinkles in the lobby as St Petersburg's wealthiest foreign visitors take afternoon tea.


LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Bolshaya Morskaya 39, 190000 St Petersburg, Russia (00 7 812 313 5757, www.astoria.hotels.spb.ru), right next door to the colossal St Isaac's Cathedral. It has a prime view over the statue of the most hated Tsar of them all, Nicolas I. The major sites of the city, such as the Hermitage, the Russia Museum and Nevskiy Prospekt are within a few minutes' walk.


Time from international airport: the Hotel Astoria is only 17km from Pulkovo Airport, but in traffic-clogged St Petersburg the trip can take an hour. The hotel will charge about US$50 (£31) to send a car. If you are arriving by train from Moscow, the fare from Moskovsky railway station will be about $20 (£12.50). These charges are high by local standards but if you are staying at the Astoria it would be unseemly to make a fuss.


ARE YOU LYING COMFORTABLY?
The views of St Isaac's Cathedral are a selling-point, but rooms are on the small side, and are restrained and classical rather than sumptuous and extravagant. The flooring is traditional Russian parquet, and the furniture is comfortable but not eye-catching. Those who wish their luxury to be ostentatious and glamorous are likely to be disappointed; connoisseurs of discreet class will enjoy it.


THE BOTTOM LINE
Double rooms cost from $328 (£204). However, for the best deals and minimal bureaucracy, consider holiday packages from the UK. For example, Abercrombie & Kent (0845 0700 612; www.abercrombiekent.co.uk) offers four night-packages from £880 per person. This price is based on two sharing a standard double room and includes breakfast, flights from the UK and transfers.


I'm not paying that: cheap rooms are hard to come by in St Petersburg. One UK company offering cheap stays and help with visas is the Russia Experience (020-8566 8846, www.trans-siberian.co.uk). A budget hotel booked through the company will cost £125 single/£200 double for three nights.

Love thy neighbour

Finland has been independent since 1917, so why does Helsinki still pay homage to a Russian Emperor? The answer, says Jeremy Atiyah, is that the Finns have a tradition of being rather nice to their oppressors

Published: 30 March 2003

I am trying to understand Helsinki, with its penchant for nice design, its saunas, its woman presidents, its conferences on security and co-operation in Europe, its cranberries and its lemon pepper salmon. The only living Finn I've heard of is Mika Hakkinen. But to judge by these respectable people in long coats, he isn't representative.

All I know about the residents of this city is that their trilling language is not an Indo-European one. It seems, in fact, more closely related to the language of bears and elks than to that of (say) Swedes or Russians. By day, the people of Helsinki may wear suits and surf the internet. But by night they dream of their Karelian wilderness of forest and clear lakes, their wooden saunas, their jars of home-pickled mushrooms, their fresh fish and arctic brambles and cloudberries ...

Or so I suspect. And others have drawn similar conclusions. Back in the 1920s, indeed, the Finns were a rather modish people in the salons of western Europe, what with Sibelius the composer, Alvar Aalto the designer, and the original "flying Finn", Paavo Nurmi (not to be confused with Mika Hakkinen), who won four golds in track and field in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Word got out, back then, that Finland was a magical country of 188,000 lakes and 179,000 islands, but no cities.

Maybe Finns just don't do cities, then? Maybe the miraculous fact that they have emerged from history with a state of their own owes more to their ancient traditions of being nice to traditional oppressors. Finlandisation, it used to be called: and aren't they still at it now? A lady from the Helsinki tourist board, called Kaarina, is going so far as to take me to dine in a Russian restaurant.

"You see, this place is so authentic," she tells me. But authentically what? Its velvety interior and Dickensian lighting make me suspect that Rasputin and Dostoyevsky are drinking vodka at the next table. The food here – cranberries and steak – is far better than in Russia itself. But why, in Helsinki, are we thus deferring to the old colonial power?

I am not yet sure. The next morning, strolling the sleety streets, I find that the pale pastel plaster façades of the Finnish capital also look remarkably Russian. Senate Square, the city centre, is an ensemble of neoclassical buildings that would not look out of place in St Petersburg. What is more, in its very centre – at the heart of the heart of Finland – stands a statue of a moustachioed and rather limp-looking Alexander II, the Emperor of all the Russias.

"Yes, the good Tsar," points out Kaarina, hastily. "The one who emancipated the serfs ..."
Groping for reasons, I begin to speculate: might it be that Helsinki respects Russia for having brought the Finnish capital here from Turku in 1812? "Oh no," comes the vague answer. "No, no ... we just don't mind Russians."

But after declaring independence in 1917, the Finns must have faced a dilemma regarding their imperial statue. Should they tear Alexander down and risk offending the Russians? Or should they keep him, and risk offending the Soviets? To do nothing, in the end, seems to have been viewed as the least offensive option.

I stroll down to the harbour to find that it, too, is dominated by the sinister-looking Uspenski Cathedral, a giant Russian confabulation of dark bricks and domes. Not that the Finns seem to care about things like this. The place I am heading for now is an offshore island. Perhaps the fort of Sveaborg ("Castle of Sweden") will help to uncover the mystery of Helsinki's identity for me.

A few fur-hatted old men are aboard ship. Under our movements, the ice plates murmur like sherbet as they slide slushily together; a seagull perches on a wobbly ice floe. Looking back, I now see that Helsinki resembles a tiny fishing port, ominously dwarfed by two colossal Swedish ferries currently in dock.

But once on dry land again, 15 minutes later, I feel more hopeful. Here the snow is deep and crisp. No noises are heard. Big old trees sprout among the yellow buildings. And, suddenly, I have a beardy little guide at my side. Sveaborg, he declares, was originally designed 250 years ago to dominate the eastern Baltic. "It had the greatest dry dock in the world," he adds, in a confidential whisper. "After the Russians had built St Petersburg, and fortified their own offshore islands, we had to go one better."
"You did?"
"Yes, the Swedes did," says the man, airily. "In those days there was no difference between Swedes and Finns. Anyway, as I was saying ... this fort housed a lively community before Helsinki ever did."

As late as 1790, in fact, the Swedes were still beating the Russians in these parts. Not for much longer though: 20 years after that, they abandoned this whole "invincible" fort to a fleet from St Petersburg, with scarcely a shot fired. It was a surrender that embarrasses Finns to this day. "A shameful incident," my beardy guide is now muttering. "We should not have surrendered ..."

These days, Finns call the place the Suomenlinna, "castle of Finland". But it has largely lost its military function. The old garrisons have been converted into flats; only the naval academy survives. The great dry dock from the Swedish era is still there, housing up to 20 wooden ships, hauled up for the winter. But these are museum pieces. Does this place throw any light on the spirit of modern Helsinki?

I look south across the Baltic, beyond dribs and drabs of snow-covered islands. From that direction, I suddenly remember how, during the Crimean War in 1854, British ships had humiliated the Russians by launching a bombardment upon this very hillock where I now stand. "Oh, a savage attack," my guide is now recalling. "Savage. We took many casualties."
"You took them?"
"Yes. The Russians took them."

That's it. I'm ready to give up. The Finns must be out there on their lakes somewhere, eating their cranberries, not here in Helsinki. I promptly storm back to the mainland, where a couple of hours later I rejoin Kaarina as night is falling once more. I'm fed up because I can imagine the kind of thing she'll have in store for me: a typical Swedish meal of Baltic herring.

"Don't be stupid," she says. "We're off go-karting."
"Off what?" I gasp.
"Go-karting. Round a race-track."
She's serious. This, apparently, is what the people of Helsinki do in their spare time. Ten minutes later we arrive at the indoor track in time to see a group of girls and boys kitting up in what look like Formula One overalls.

"Car man with guts" is how the local paper describes the owner of this place. I see tiny cars with real engines, awaiting starters' orders. But there is no air pollution inside: giant air conditioners suck out heat, fumes and the whiffs of burnt rubber as soon as they are generated. And yes, Mika Hakkinen is a regular visitor to the track. To prove it, pictures are promptly brought out for my benefit, showing Mika grinning like a bear.

In my overalls and helmet, I think I look authentic. I'm soon off in my go-kart, hugging hairpin bends, screeching down the straights. The maximum speed (I have been warned) is 60mph: electronic controls prevent will prevent me from exceeding this. But suddenly, in my throttle, I can feel Helsinki coming to life. And after 10 minutes of extremely tight corners, I am ready for anything. A stylish meeting room with seating for 20 perhaps? A luxury sauna, where, from small windows, I can keep half an eye on the track? All these facilities are available on site. And all, it seems, makes perfect sense to Finns.

Thus revved up, so to speak (as Kaarina points out), I now have no choice but to indulge in Helsinki's greatest pleasure. It's a short drive back into town, and I am heading for a drink in the Sanua-bar. This turns out to be a bar where, for the price of a drink, I can also use the sauna round the back. "Take a beer and a towel," says the bartender. I feel as though I am going to a very expensive bathroom.

Having changed into nothing, I enter the innermost steam room to find a naked disc jockey and a naked banker. The disc jockey is mumbling about the need to get relaxed before going on the night shift. "If sauna and beer can't relax you, you must be dead," says the banker. "That's right," growls the disc jockey. "Real Finns are born in the sauna. And after we die, we are washed and laid out here."

The naked banker and I retire, wrapped in towels, to the outer room to drink our beers and stare into fish tanks. I tell him about the go-karting. He reminisces about great sauna experiences of his life. I have never felt so relaxed in my life. This is it, then. Finnish Helsinki. I've found it, against all the odds.


The Facts


Getting there
British Airways (0845 773 3377; www.ba.com) is offering return flights to Helsinki in April from £139.

Travelscene (020-8424 9648; www.travelscene.co.uk) offers a two-night break in Helsinki from £287 per person, based on two sharing, staying at the four-star Hotel Klaus Kurki on a b&b basis. The price includes return flights from Heathrow on British Airways.


Further information
Finnish Tourist Board (020-7365 2512; www.finland-tourism.com/uk).

The perfect place for an Urban Drop - Out

Where are the most chilled, liberal human beings on the planet? In a remote corner of Latin America that nestles inside the US border. Jeremy Atiyah boards their earthship

SUNDAY 16 MARCH 2003

I'm in Taos, New Mexico, chilling, and dropping out. I'm also sniffing the high, desert air for insights into the meaning of life. All these hippies, artists and sundry bohemians: what has drawn them to Taos? Ancient secrets maybe, from the local Indians? That's my assumption. The natives have never been mere nomads, after all. They built proper pueblos (villages) containing adobe houses and adobe temples. And the Taos Pueblo was here before Christopher Columbus born.

If that isn't enough to provide an urban dropout like me with some cultural backbone, I don't know what is. But even without the pueblo, there would always be the Hispanics to fall back on. They have lived here in their ranches with their dusty furniture and bleeding Christs, on more or less equal terms with the Indians, for about two centuries longer than the US has existed. Think of the Taos area, in fact, as Latin America's most northerly outpost. From here, in the good old days, it was a 40-day trek along the Camino Real (Royal Way) to Chihuahua, and 70 days to Mexico City.

Which sounds marvellously promising for anyone planning to chill out here. All this talk of antiquity and continuity: it is such an improvement on large cars and automatic icemakers. For people who want orgiastic nights of drumming and dancing around fires and sleeping under stars in a tepee, what could be better? Even the tourists here – I've met tax experts from Nashville and lawyers from Seattle – seem to be poets or painters in their spare time.

As for the people who have dropped out permanently to Taos, these may be among the most liberal, chilled human beings on the planet. They've all been through life's recycling bin a dozen times. First there's Maria and her husband from New York who are building a house in the sage-brush and living in it as they go along ("coyotes sometimes bothered us before we put the walls up"). Then there's Karen who has got into breeding alpacas for fur. Donna who lives in a trailer. Harry the ex-mountaineer. Like me, they all seem to be skint, but unlike me they all know the difference between straw bale houses, passive solar houses, houses built of pallets and houses built of a pumice-cement mix squeezed out of a tube.

"My floor-recipe contains mud, straw, wood ash and a little ox blood."

(That's the kind of thing Karen will say.)

"I live in a half-built house," says Maria.

"She's reading a book which tells you how to build a house," adds Harry.

"The house is turning out like a ship."

"I did all the adobe on my inside walls myself, that's seven tons of brick."

"She peeled the vigas with a potato knife."

"It's great living in a house which changes every day."

This is what people talk about round here. One day Karen and Maria take me to a place called the Greater World Earthship Community on the edge of Taos. "It's a very Taos thing," they explain gently; that is to say, a bunch of houses built of old car tyres and tin cans rammed with earth, where the pot plants are fed by water from the lavatory. "Holy moly, no utility bills," somebody shouts. This is not architecture, but biotechture; these are not houses, but earthships.

Streets on the Greater World Earthship Community have names like Happy Trail and Star Lane. When you ask the inhabitants what they do for a living, they might tell you they make incense-candles, or that they are "in storytelling." Fortunately an earthship costs next to nothing if you have time to build it yourself. What sacrifices do people make to live here, I ask? "Telephone," says someone. "Swimming pool," sighs another.

Such bourgeois weaknesses. By the way, I myself am staying in a b&b that must rank as one of the most olde worlde in the United States. This is the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, no less, in the middle of Taos. The fact that it currently happens to be owned by my wealthy American relatives also fits in with another fine Taos tradition – the high esteem (and patronage) paid by the wealthy to dropouts.

Which brings me on to the subject of Mabel Dodge Luhan herself, who built up this house in the first place. We Brits have hardly heard of her, but all good American Bohemians know her as the wealthy heiress who famously dropped out to Taos in 1918. The most shocking and best part of the story was her marriage to a local pueblo Indian, one Tony Luhan, her fourth and favourite husband.

Although it hasn't yet occurred to me to look for an indigenous wife, I like the sound of this couple. Mabel sometimes ordered Tony to sleep in a tepee in the courtyard downstairs, so that she could creep down for an encounter with a savage at midnight. And in the end Tony and Mabel almost took over Taos. This quiet, conservative community was flooded out with Mabel's designers, cooks, servants, friends and funky acolytes. Tony would drive her to the grocery store and honk the horn for food. And they remained king and queen of northern New Mexico right through to the 1960s.

Their old house? At first glance you see giant cottonwood trees, flat roofs, exposed beams, rounded corners and walls smeared smooth with chocolate-brown plaster. Then you see the courtyards, cloisters, solariums, ceramic cockerels and petroglyph stones. I call it a pueblo in itself; an adobe empire on the hill.

And when you step inside, the US might as well not have happened. It's cool and rustic, with crooked doorways and cavernous fireplaces and creaking floorboards and twirling columns and rickety staircases. People sit drinking afternoon tea. No wonder an American equivalent to the Bloomsbury Group once chose to coalesce here. Back in the 1920s, on Mabel's invitation, urban sophisticates were rolling up in their motor cars to chill out with Indians and sit on bear skins and paint and write and marvel at the biblical simplicity and savage light and arid landscapes. Among many others, D H Lawrence, Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams were soon on their way. A movement had been born.

And that's the movement I am still trying to drop out to, right now. But what wisdom can I acquire from these artistic connections? Possibly (I am advised) I should try visiting an upstairs bathroom known as the "D H Lawrence bathroom."

This enigma concerns a bathroom designed with big windows and no curtains because Mabel (up here) and the local Indians (down there) wanted a good view of one another while she bathed. But Lawrence, when he arrived, was too uptight for such gratuitous exhibitionism. So he insisted on painting the bathroom windows over with ducks and chickens and stars and suns before taking his clothes off. These windows, I notice, are maintained to this day with as much devotion as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

But I'm not sure that Lawrence provides a benchmark to which I should be aspiring. Yes, he was a kind of dropout. But he also spent his time in Taos writing intense essays on the subject of Indian rituals and Indian religion. He definitely did not chill. The few who still can, recall him as a nasty, self-important little theorist. And to this day, I find people round here gossiping maliciously about what really happened to his ashes: Lawrence's wife Frieda, and Mabel, together, are rumoured to have eaten them for breakfast, mixed into a dish of scrambled eggs. Maybe that's the fate of people who bring their introspective preoccupations to Taos.

With this warning in mind, I decide to explore the town, in search of different inspirations. Is Taos beautiful? Yes. Huge spaces open to distant mountains. "But the rich are building on the hills!" locals keep telling me. "And the poor are building on the mesa!" They can hardly bear thinking about issues like this, until pressed, when they'll admit it: that 25 years ago more than 90 per cent of the population of Taos was Hispanic or Indian. That figure is now falling like a stone dropped from the Rio Grande Bridge.

And my main impression of the town centre today is of a dusty, traffic-jammed highway lined by fast food outlets and parking lots.

Nor is there anything very alternative about the latest immigrants to Taos. These days it's mainly Americans looking for holiday homes. People like Donald Rumsfeld and Julia Roberts for instance. It's getting almost as commercial as the state capital, Santa Fe. "Art" is no longer the refuge of bohemians, but big business, with every second store functioning as a gallery to display local styles.


And the main square, which in the old days enclosed saloon bars, mule wagons and men in villainous hats, now comprises boutiques selling curios and gifts.

In some ways, the meaning of life is as elusive in Taos as in any other town in America. How did this happen? How did we get from Mabel Dodge Luhan to Julia Roberts? What, I ask myself, came in between?

I haven't gone into the 1960s yet. But that confused decade soon saw hippies cruising along Route 66 into New Mexico, singing Dylan and shouting "Far Out!" as they came. Perhaps word had escaped that the Indians had a religious tradition of getting high on peyote. Anyway, New Age extended families and naked roving kids were soon crowding in. Communes opened. And finally the dreaded film-maker and actor Dennis Hopper moved into the Mabel Dodge Luhan House.

Let's not be too hard on Hopper. The trouble was that by the 1970s, you had to be so much nastier to maintain anti-establishment credentials than you did in the 1920s. So when Hopper reached Taos, he sold all the original furniture, tried to cut Mabel's bed in half with a chainsaw, dropped lots of acid, waved guns around and beat up innumerable women. Before long, by some accounts, Taos was a hotbed of riff-raff involved in dodgy communal living, public nudity and drug-taking. The Hispanics were outraged and the Indian culture was giving up the ghost; the old men in traditional blanket wraps were just about all gone by the time Hopper cleared out.

Since which time (it now occurs to me), Taos has gone in a reactionary direction. The hippie instincts are not gone but my chilled friends building homes with their bare hands have their backs to the wall. When I visit Cid's Organic Food Store, I find grass juice for sale, whole-wheat couscous, raw organic Brazil nuts and brown rice crisps. But everything is expensive. "When you know who you are," states a message posted on the wall, "you enter rapid learning and peak efficiency..."

Is this supposed to be an ancient secret? Or have I been looking in the wrong places? One day I drive off down a dusty track to the impoverished Pueblo, where a young Indian is explaining what "his people" have been through at the hands of colonialists. We're standing in a clean and tidy village square, scattered with stones and sleeping dogs. Brown adobe dwellings are heaped up around me; a sign outside one house announces "Real Indian stuff for sale". I follow a pair of tourists wandering through back alleys, peering through people's doors. "We just want to see what Indians eat," I hear them murmur, in front of a house. A girl's voice calls out: "I like peas but my mum hates 'em."

Over there, meanwhile, in an area forbidden to tourists, are the mysterious kivas, temple-pits in the ground, accessed by long ladders. It has been whispered darkly that the kiva ceremonies are no longer serious; that particpants get drunk and forget their duties. But right now I am intrigued by those pairs of poles, the extended tops of ladders, projecting from the ground like insect antennae.

Any sign of the meaning of life? A faint mist is certainly lifting off the mountains. And there's that smell of wild sage in the air again. No, I haven't found the elusive ancient wisdom yet, but Taos – to its credit – is still trying to give me a clue.

The facts

Getting There

Jeremy Atiyah flew to New Mexico as a guest of American Airlines (0845-778 9789; www.americanairlines.co.uk). Fares from London Gatwick to Albequerque, New Mexico, via Dallas/Fort Worth, start at £381 return.

Being There

At the Mabel Dodge Luhan House (001-505 751 9686;www.mabeldodgeluhan.com), 240 Morada Lane, Taos, New Mexico, double rooms start from $110 (£73) to $160 (£106) per night in the main house, $85 (£56) per night in the more modern guest house on the grounds, or $200 (£133) per night for the Gate Lodge, which has two bedrooms.

Further information

New Mexico tourist information, 01329-665 777;www.newmexico.org.

In search of: A ski resort for a non-skier

Hurl myself off an icy mountain top on two planks? No way, says Jeremy Atiyah. There are other ways to enjoy winter in Austria

SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY 2003

I detest skiing. Why on earth would I take my holiday in a ski-resort?

Perhaps because someone else in your family is desperate to go skiing, but feels guilty about going without you. Or perhaps because ski resorts can be beautiful places in themselves, as long as they are not too crowded. Pertisau is a good example of this: set in a snowy valley by Lake Achen (Aachensee), it is hemmed in by the dramatic peaks of the Karwendel mountains of western Austria, a couple of hours' drive south from Munich airport. Your family can go downhill skiing, while you relax and enjoy yourself. The main point is to take a complete break from your everyday life, in a place where the air is extraordinarily fresh and clean, in a cosy family run hotel, with a spa and an excellent restaurant.

Hah. All that vile Germanic stodge, you mean

In fact, Austrian cuisine combines influences from French, Italian and Balkan, as well as German, cooking. Austrian white wines can be surprisingly good. In the Hotel Wiesenhof where I stayed, the food was excellent, with lots of duck and pork as well as good vegetarian options (and no sausage). There was excellent hot chocolate to drink between meals. The tarts and cakes were outstanding, especially the apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce.

So I'll just have to stay in and get fat

Not at all. The fact that you are not keen on downhill skiing does not mean you can't do any exercise. The village of Pertisau is itself a famously scenic place. Austro-Hungarian Emperors came here for their holidays, as did Sigmund Freud. Just take a walk round the village. Otherwise, you might try some cross-country skiing, which goes along the valley floor and is entirely non-scary. All you need is a bit of balance and the strength to pick yourself up every time you slip over.

But that sounds almost as bad as ordinary skiing

In that case you can always go snow-shoeing or Nordic-cruising, which are different ways of walking comfortably through, and across, deep snow. Neither requires the slightest skill and is hardly more tiring than walking. But they do enable you to walk through beautiful forest snowscapes, which you will probably have to yourself. And if even they don't appeal, you can try getting on a horse-drawn sledge instead, wrapped up warmly in blankets, and trotting along past the pines. The Wiesenhof offers the possibility for a group to ride out to one of the gasthofs in the valley for a traditional lunch of potatoes and pork and beer.

I'm not geriatric, you know

So you want an adrenalin rush then? Let me offer something that might appeal, if you are so averse to downhill skiing: snow-biking. Pertisau, in fact, goes so far as to call itself the "the world's first snow-bike region"; exponents refer to their bikes as "piste-ponies". Essentially you ride down slopes on a bicycle which has skis instead of wheels. The art is considerably easier to pick up than skiing (and vastly easier than snowboarding), to the extent that most people in my class could ride down the nursery slope in comfort, and at speed, after just an hour of instruction. Personally, I think you will enjoy it as long as you are not required to turn or slow down.

No thanks. I think I'll stay in my room

If you insist, by all means stay in the hotel, but don't confine yourself to your room. The best thing about the Wiesenhof, after all, is that it contains not only a swimming pool and children's room, but also a very special and luxuriant spa, where you can enjoy baths and Jacuzzis and saunas and steam-rooms and "treatments".

Treatments? But I'm not ill

That's what they all say. Only after they've smeared your naked body with mud or hay from meadows, or put you in one of their special baths of "stone-oil", will you know what it is to feel well.

My naked body? This is an outrage!

Oh, calm down. You know the central Europeans never wear clothes if they can help it. Locals have been bathing in stone-oil for 100 years. It is extracted from rocks in the valleys. It may look black and gooey, and smell of crude oil, but it sure helps to extract those toxins from your skin. And once you've got out of that bath, you can go and sit in beautiful, intimate tiled rooms with soft lighting, where steam is fed out through lavender and rosemary. Then you'll take a shower in a "mint mist", before going to recline in the warm meditation chamber, on a ceramic bed, in the nude, staring out through huge windows at the snow and the mountains, listening to recordings of Philip Glass.

The whole thing sounds perfectly hideous. I'm going to Florida.

I'm sorry, but you probably wouldn't be able to afford that. A holiday in Pertisau on the other hand will break neither an arm nor a leg. Inntravel (01653 629010;www.inntravel.co.uk) offers three-night and seven-night breaks in winter (between 21 December and 23 March). A week at the Hotel Wiesenhof costs from £594 per person sharing a double/twin room, including seven nights' half-board, return scheduled flights between Heathrow and Munich, rail and hotel transfers. Three nights on the same basis costs £396. Skiing lessons, gear hire, horse-drawn sleigh-rides, and hotel spa treatments are extras. You'll pay, for example, about £50 for six two-hour lessons in cross-country skiing, and about £3 per day to rent the boots and skis. The horse-drawn sleigh ride costs about £7 per person. In the spa, massages and stone-oil baths cost about £16 each. Guided walks and Nordic cruising, on the other hand, are organised free of charge at the hotel on certain days of each week.

Holy emperors! It's the birthplace of Europe

Unity takes on a new meaning when Jeremy Atiyah travels with his father to Aachen to visit Charlemagne's grave

Published: 09 February 2003

It is not easy choosing a holiday destination for you and your father, when you are already 40 years old. I was wondering if we might take a week in Greece, or Spain, in early summer. Instead, we are going to Aachen, in Germany, by train, in the middle of the winter.

My dad insists. "Charlemagne is buried there," he explains. "The first Holy Roman Emperor! The founder of European unity!"


And so do things begin to make sense. My dad is the type who goes misty-eyed at the thought of the peoples of Europe coming together in harmony. He loves the Roman empire, the Mediterranean, sunshine, fresh fruit and wine. The trouble is that he doesn't like cold weather, sauerkraut or beer.


I just have to hope for the best. Anyway, it won't be a long trip. We are going by Eurostar to Brussels, and then on to Aachen. To be on the safe side, although this is the nethermost of low seasons, my dad has gone to prodigious lengths to book his train tickets weeks in advance, visiting half the travel agents in southern England in the process.


And although we are going only just beyond Belgium, when we meet at Waterloo I find him dressed for Siberia. "You're ready then?" I mumble, looking at his Russian fur hat and padded gloves and trench coat. He could be a general in the Soviet army. "The last time I went to Brussels," he reminds me, sternly, "was in 1938." He seems to be suggesting that it would be wise to be ready for any outcome.


Off we go. It is dark and wet. Our journey through the tunnel to Belgium seems normal to me, though my dad can't understand why we are being served a meal at 11 o'clock in the morning. "What do they think this is, lunch-time?" he exclaims indignantly, having dismissed, with some contempt, the offer of champagne. What's more we have only 20 minutes to make our connection to Aachen, and we look like being late into Brussels. In the event, we are obliged to run for it, which may be the first time my dad has does any kind of running since 1963.


An hour later, though, he is beginning to cheer up. We are reaching Germany. As we cross the border, somewhere between Liège and Aachen, the sky is almost pitch black, and he has begun recalling his last visit to this part of Germany – during that same trip in 1938. "Yes, now let me see," he suddenly exclaims, trying to peer out into the darkness, "where are those famous German autobahns?"


In Aachen itself, by the time we arrive, my dad seems contented. It's a tidy, medium-sized provincial town. He keeps marvelling at the nicely painted apartment blocks. The only trouble is that he can't help talking about the war in a loud voice wherever we go. "I don't know if we really needed to smash them so thoroughly," he muses, looking at the passers-by.


Anyway, the main reason for our presence here is to visit the relics of Charlemagne, which we begin doing the next day. Under dark skies, we amble through the lanes in the centre of town, which are full of brightly lit shops selling gingerbread and tarts and cakes and biscuits. Hardly anyone is out in this freezing wind, except us.


Our first stop is the Schatzkammer ("treasury"), containing Aachen's hoarded treasures from the past 1,200 years. My dad seems suitably impressed. The first thing we see is the famous life-sized bust of Charlemagne, made of partly gilded silver and covered in antique gems and cameos. Charlemagne's real cranium, we read, is enclosed behind this forehead, in the "anatomically correct position". In the next room, we find the 1,000-year-old gold Cross of Lothair, studded with huge precious stones. My dad begins marvelling aloud at the altars, reliquaries, chalices, sceptres and crowns, all embodying the spirit of European unity.


By now we are ready to enter the church itself, built by Charlemagne more than 1,200 years ago. Only when we find ourselves signing up for the compulsory guided tour does my dad suddenly look suspicious. "What?" he exclaims. "A guided tour in German?" And he begins muttering darkly about this whole trip having been a waste of time, until our guide actually appears.


Like most Germans, she speaks perfect English. From her, we immediately learn that the cathedral was the first monument in Germany to be included in the Unesco Cultural Heritage list. All I have seen of the building until now has been a sooty, scaffolding-clad conglomeration of steeples and vaults and porches. But the moment we step inside, we can see what the fuss is about. We are standing under a 1,200-year-old octagonal tower. Galleries rise up around us to a distant ceiling that is almost lost in the gloom. A colossal chandelier suspended on a dizzyingly long chain hangs almost to our faces: in fact, this turns out to be a recent addition, a mere 800 years old, given in the 12th century by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. "After organising the canonization of Charlemagne," our guide informs us, "Barbarossa declared the inhabitants of Aachen to be freemen, and the burgher-community was granted liberal rights of coinage and commerce ..."


My dad likes the sound of this. It seems to fit perfectly with his ideas of European unity. "Yes yes," he keeps exclaiming, "Frederick ... I must read more on him ..."


Meanwhile, our guide is taking us through the Gothic choir, to one gilded shrine containing the relics of Charlemagne, and another containing the nappies of the infant Jesus. She then leads us upstairs to the gallery to inspect an ancient marble throne on which 32 German kings were crowned. Tests prove that the throne dates back to the age of Charlemagne himself.


What single object, suggests our guide, could be more sacred in the history of European unity than this? "How marvellous!" sighs my dad. Whereupon we leave the church, well satisfied with our discoveries. Just round the corner, stands the gothic City Hall, built up from the ruins of a separate annexe of Charlemagne's palace. We gaze at its great façade, still decorated with the statues of the Holy Roman emperors. In a vaulted hall within, we learn that the annual "Charlemagne Prize" is awarded for services to the ideal of European unity. Up the stairs hang pictures of previous winners, who include Roy Jenkins, Ted Heath and Tony Blair. My dad is nodding in approval, once he has got over his hilarity at finding that the German word for city hall, Rathaus, sounds exactly like "Rat House".


By now it's almost time for dinner. I propose something authentic: a knuckle of pork with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, and a litre of beer. "Beer for dinner?" chokes my dad, as we step into a cosy inn, with dark panelling. There's a nasty moment when he can't find any wine at all on the menu, and Charlemagne's reputation looks to be in the gravest doubt. Only after studying the small print does he find that wine is served by the glass; only then can he possibly agree to drink a toast to European unity.


The Facts


Getting there
Eurostar (0870 160 6600; www.eurostar.com) offers return Leisure fares to Aachen via Brussels from £85 return if you book 14 days in advance.


Further information
For accommodation, contact the German National Tourist Office (020-7317 0908; www.germany-tourism.de).

The new barbarians: confessions of a middle-class nomad

by Jeremy Atiyah, 17th May 2005

Even the middle-class and middle-aged can go wandering looking for themselves on a kind of ‘walkabout’. Jeremy Atiyah’s tale of abandoning the trappings of modern life in the first world may inspire you to bust out of your own confines. Be warned.

January 2003

I am a well-educated man approaching middle age. I am clean and respectable and have a lot of middle-class friends. But I am writing these words crouched over a keyboard in a cubbyhole at the top of a ladder above a friend’s study. For this is the place I call home – at least for tonight. You see, a year ago I let out my flat with all its contents on the grounds that I, as a poor writer, could not afford the mortgage. As I entered my 40th year, I turned myself into a vagabond.

Back then all kinds of people felt sorry for me, including my new tenants. I did nothing to encourage this: walking out of my front door in January 2002 with a rucksack on my back, I assured them that I was not sentimental about mere possessions. ‘But what about your TV?’ they gasped. ‘And your CDs? And your books? You are leaving them all behind?’

The decision did not feel like a revolution at the time. I had no family. I had plenty of prior experience of living out of small bags. I had long ago dispensed with a diary and I owned only one pair of shoes. The important thing was that I still had a bicycle, an email address and a mobile telephone. I also had a desk in the British Library. I even had a suit, albeit a creased one. I could sleep (friends assured me) in their spare rooms and homes.

I only vaguely wondered what I was. A bloke who had run out of cash? A gentleman of the road? Or the embodiment of a new Volkerwanderung? The answer seemed to hinge on how I would react to being homeless: whether I would pine for my own bed and bath or ride out across the London steppe on my bicycle, truly without a care.

At first I suffered no doubts at all. I was delighted to be in charge of nothing that could break down other than my bicycle (which I could fix for myself). And I certainly enjoyed having no pot plants to water, no bills to pay, no car to park, no windows to clean, no dishwasher to empty, no roof to fix, no drains to unblock, no boiler to service, no valuables to insure. These freedoms, I felt, were privileges for which the rich would pay millions.

Another startling realisation was that I could now live anywhere in the world at practically no cost. Friends from California to Italy began offering me rooms in their houses. I chose to spend three months in a small Russian city. I sniffed out a pension in the centre of Barcelona that offered rooms for pounds 20 a week (during an earlier phase of homelessness, I had once booked it for an entire year). I also remembered some friendly ashrams in India, where I could live healthily and comfortably on about pounds 2 per day.

It even turned out that I could afford to stay in London. To be a middle-class vagrant, in my case, meant being blessed by supportive and well-off friends. I was soon being offered spells house-sitting in properties ranging from two-up-two-downs in Stoke Newington to five-bed mansions in Kentish Town. Whole gardens came my way, with lawns to cut and hedges to clip, in case I should feel like dabbling in the obligations of the bourgeois life – for the sheer fun of it, perhaps.

Meanwhile, my abode of final resort, whenever others failed, was this cubbyhole that can be reached through a hole, via a ladder, in a friend’s flat. It is a cosy space at the top of a house. It contains a mattress, my clothes, in piles, and a window overlooking quiet gardens. I occupied it, in transit, permanently ready for my next move. The perfect solution for a man of nomadic tendencies? Not quite. But I had been up my ladder for at least six months before I began to entertain any doubts on the subject.

First, there were the normal problems of communal facilities. As the man from the cubbyhole, I did not feel entitled to lounge round the house in my dressing gown. I hardly ever seemed to watch television or listen to music. I rarely cooked. Above all, I was unable to receive guests, unless they really wanted to drink tea, crouched in a very small space staring at a wall two feet away. None did. This, it seemed, was the price I had to pay for my chosen lifestyle: to have to justify my existence to disconcerted, anxious friends.

It is hard to do this unless you feel certain of your case. I found my finances being discussed, in pitying terms, at dinner parties at other people’s houses. In panic, I took to telling people that I would soon be back in my own home. ‘It’s all a question of facilitating cash flow,’ I would bark, ‘pending future income!’

For a few weeks last summer, it got too much. I grew ashamed of my cubbyhole, which now seemed to be overflowing with dirty socks and unpaid mobile phone bills. My thoughts repeatedly focused on schemes to fund a move back into my flat. l had almost forgotten about the possibility that my lifestyle might actually suit me.

Such moments of weakness were to be expected, considering the obstacles confronting the would-be nomad. I can see this now. For much of history, I might have been locked up for the way I was living. As recently as the beginning of the 20th century books were being written on the ‘pathology’ of nomadism. The condition was treated as a sickness, and a hereditary one at that. Classifications of nomadism included ‘melancholic’, ‘somnambulistic’, ‘epileptic’, ‘impulsive and demented’ and ‘dromomanic’. Gypsies and Jews were known to be afflicted, though psychiatrists seemed surprised to unearth cases among even ‘civilised’ peoples such as the Swiss, whose symptoms included ‘tramping aimlessly from one place to another’ and ‘setting fire to haystacks’.

It was in the autumn of last year that I understood the nature of my challenge: to explain myself to people in a way that would not trigger off their deepest fears.

I needed to explain to friends that nomadic tendencies did not make me unique. My latest line at dinner-parties is to explain that man is not by instinct a sedentary species. The first hominids seem to have migrated large distances, seasonally, perhaps like birds; the human foot is designed for endless traipsing.

Does this not mean that we nomadic types epitomise the ‘unhoused, de- centred, exilic energies’, as Edward Said put it, of an ancient group longing to reassert itself in the modern world? Am I not subconsciously helping to revive the age-old struggle between wandering ‘barbarism’ and settled ‘civilisation’?

In the end, this is what I too seem to be: a nomadic revivalist, lamenting the appearance, 8,000-odd years ago, of more settled patterns of life. Just as I rely on settled people for my physical survival, so settled people rely on us vagabonds to provide them with entertainment and diversion. I cannot hold dinner-parties from my cubbyhole, but I make an interesting guest for anyone willing to invite me into their home (I believe this was also Attila the Hun’s forte).

History, it seems, has fallen kindly for me. Two thousand years ago I would have been slandered as a barbarian. A hundred years ago, I might have been forced into work as a tinker or a peddler. Today, in Blair’s Britain, I can live with friends and travel, read books by Edward Said and leave behind whatever I cannot carry.

After my year of home-free living, I look to the future with optimism. Friends have got used to my situation and I have decided to sell my flat and commit myself to this life. True, I have a slight pain in my knees from crouching, yes, it is a bit cold in my cubbyhole and no, I have not worn an ironed shirt in months. But I have certainly found my niche in life.

Copyright 2003 Independent Newspapers UK Limited

Jeremy Atiyah is a freelance journalist who has only one pair of shoes. He's a middle-class man who decided to abandon everything that was 'owning' him to pursue something else - a search for his soul perhaps. One day he'll meet himself and become whole again in that time honoured Aboriginal tradition of 'walkabout'.