Gatecrashing Europe

Gatecrashing Europe Kris Mole

Valley Press

First published in 2015 by Valley Press Woodend, The Crescent, Scarborough, YO11 2PW www.valleypressuk.com First edition, first printing (August 2015) ISBN 978-1-908853-39-4 Cat. no. VP0035 Copyright Š Kris Mole 2015 The right of Kris Mole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission from the rights holders.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copy editing by Kristofer Beanland Printed and bound in Great Britain by Charlesworth Press, Wakefield www.valleypressuk.com/authors/krismole

This book is dedicated to the memory of my aunt Susan Proto 1952 – 2007 for whom I completed the challenge

1. Terry Wogan Plants a Seed I don’t like the Eurovision Song Contest. I love it. And despite the loss of Terry Wogan, and despite being a heterosexual male, I always will. You see, for me as a young boy growing up poor – first in South-East London, then Brighton – the Eurovision Song Contest provided me with my only glimpse of what the continent across the water had to offer: jolly fat men with moustaches, and the beautiful girls who loved them. And smiles: big, cheesy and, most importantly, genuine smiles.

Europe took on mythical status in my pre-pubescent mind as, come the end of the annual Saturday night’s entertainment, I would drift off to sleep with dreams that one day I too might get to experience that Promised Land. That one day I might be able to smile like the Europeans. I wasn’t yet eight years old but already I was a confirmed Europhile – and this in itself was quite some feat, because at that age, my limited vocabulary didn’t include the word Europhile.

There were no holidays for my family. We couldn’t afford a bus ticket to school, never mind a flight to some overcrowded Spanish resort. My sister and I were lucky if we had more than a slice of lettuce to go between the two slices of stale bread that we took to school each day and generously called a sandwich.

So for me, the night of the Eurovision Song Contest became my substitute getaway, and Terry Wogan my tour guide for the evening – as I travelled the length and breadth of the continent without leaving the comfort of my settee.

Years passed with no decline in my fascination for all things Euro: but then came the afternoon that would change the course of my life. It was the day my mum told me that to make a bit of extra cash through the summer we would be hosting language students from, yep, you guessed it – Europe. This was to be my first interaction with anyone foreign; I had to impress. In the weeks leading up to the arrival of our first guests, I spent hours

each night spread out on the living room floor writing down and memorising words from my mum’s French and German dictionaries. I instantly found that I was fascinated by foreign language and couldn’t wait to start practising on our guests.

And then they came: Stefan and Andre. Two Germans with long hair and denim jackets, and for two weeks, I worshipped these two men. That’s right, these were no boys; these were sixteen-year old men. For only men were allowed to go out into town in the evening unaccompanied, mingling with girls and smoking cigarettes – I wasn’t even allowed in the front garden on my own after dinner. Stefan and Andre were the perfect guests. Polite, intelligent, spoke fluent English, tidied up after themselves, ate whatever they were given and, most importantly of all, were patient with the annoying and curious young boy of the family. Actually, they were more than patient, taking me under their wing and even letting me tag along in their free time, hanging out on the beach with their large group of German school friends and playing football in the park. I would look on in awe at Andre while his girlfriend sat on his lap, sharing a smoke or an apple. Europeans ate fruit.

The whole group made me feel like a peer rather than the little kid that I was. I was sad the day we dropped Stefan and Andre off at the coach station for their journey home, but comforted by the fact that in a few days’ time we would be welcoming some new faces into our house: girls. French girls.

Over the next two years we had a regular stream of these exotic young people sharing our roof for a couple of weeks at a time, and a pattern quickly took shape. When we had boys, we would talk about and play football; and when we had girls, I would stare at their beauty and wish that I were older. I would remain sad for a short period after each departure until the coming of new friends lifted my spirits. I continued to teach myself French and German – finding more success with the former – and would practise with our students whenever the opportunity arose.

At the age of twelve, these summers of European exposure ended, as it was no longer practical for my sister and I to share

a bedroom. I spent the next few years in the wilderness – apart from one Saturday evening every twelve months, when Terry would take me away for a few hours. My contact with Europe may have been cut, but the dream lived on. One day I would smile like the Europeans. After all, I was a twelve-year old boy with my whole life ahead of me and was, according to my teachers at least, full of potential. Yet even at this tender age I already had a couple of regrets in life. The first was that I hadn’t been born European: popping out of my mum’s body with a bit of designer stubble and a cigarette poking nonchalantly out of the side of my mouth. The second was that I had never thought to ask any of our students: ‘What the hell is it that you lot are smiling about over there?’

When I was sixteen, a dream was fulfilled. A dream I had harboured since long before hair had started sprouting proudly out of previously bald parts. I kissed a girl. I know what you’re thinking, but let me stop you in your tracks – this was not my first kiss. I had kissed many girls by the age of sixteen. Okay, not many, but a few… one or two. This was, however, my first European kiss. The evening had started like any other; three of us schoolmates out in town for a bit of underage drinking in a bar on the promenade that didn’t check IDs. A few hours later we were stood at the bus stop, the only natives in a sea of foreign students making their way back to their host families after an evening of activities, just like our students had done each night all those years previously. Only something was different now, something had changed. I wasn’t tucked up in bed.

I wasn’t a little kid. I was a man; for only men were allowed to go out into town in the evening unaccompanied, mingling with girls and smoking cigarettes. Well, only one of us smoked – and it wasn’t me – and none of us were mingling with any girls, but we were definitely out in town. And we had been drinking beer – not from a can in the park, but in a bar with other like-minded grown-ups. Yes, we were men. I cleared my throat.

‘Men,’ I said, ‘why are we not mingling with the girls?’

There was silence, followed by the shrugging of shoulders.

Lee looked down to the ground, James looked down to the ground and I looked down to the ground. We were not men.

We were shy little boys who should have been tucked up in bed long ago instead of taking up space that could have been filled by proper men. The number two bus pulled up and, along with a swarm of strange-language-speaking blondes, we boarded, taking the last three available seats upstairs, none of which were next to each other.

‘If I were a man, I would turn to this beautiful girl sat next to me and say something friendly and intelligent,’ I thought angrily to myself. ‘But I am not! I am but a young boy who is not worthy of such a seat.’

‘Hi.’ ‘Yes, I would say hi and from there a beautiful conversation would develop. Hang on, did she just say hi?’

I turned my head slightly to the right and my eyes were met by a beaming smile: a Eurovision smile.

‘Hi,’ I replied, in a squeaky voice that definitely didn’t belong to any man. And sure enough a conversation developed.

I had often asked myself what the result would be if scientists were ever able to reproduce Gazza’s goal against Arsenal in the 1991 FA Cup semi-final but in human form, and now, in the shape of Kristina, a 16-year old from Helsinki, I had the answer. The English language simply didn’t have a word capable of conveying how I felt when I looked into the twinkling eyes of this girl. Kristina’s host family lived a couple of miles further along the bus route than me, but this didn’t stop me from bidding Lee and James farewell for the evening as the bus stopped close to our homes and they jumped off; while I carried on into the next town, locked in deep and meaningful conversation.

‘Do you want to walk in the park for a little while?’ Kristina asked me as we got off at her stop. ‘I don’t have to be in until 11:30. We still have half an hour and I am enjoying your company.’

I nodded. Five minutes later, under the glare of streetlights beaming through the trees into the park, we stood with our 10

arms wrapped around each other and our lips locked together: for I was a man.

From that day on I never looked back. Every evening throughout the summer months was spent making friends with the hundreds of students that flooded into the city, and every night ended with a kiss. Every night except one, when I experienced my first European slap round the face, courtesy of a feisty Swede. But that’s a story for another day. I had made up my mind. I didn’t want a Lisa, a Becky or a Tracey when I now knew I could have a Valentina, a Maria or an Ana. Together with Lee, one of my best mates from school, we worked our way through almost every nationality the continent had to offer, even learning in the process about countries I hadn’t heard of before: Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania. I soon found myself more and more attracted to one nationality of girl in particular: Italian. I can’t tell you if it was down to the accent, the way they dressed, their long dark silky hair or their curvy figures – there was just something different about the Italian female. There was, however, one slight problem with preferring Italians to the Scandinavians and Germans of this world – their grasp on the English language tended to be well below average, meaning that too many romantic words went wasted. So I did what (I presume) any man in my position would do: I went to the shop and bought an Italian dictionary, before enrolling in an evening class in the Italian language at a local adult education centre – not caring one little bit that I wasn’t actually an adult.

It wasn’t long before I was conversing nightly in the language I had only just picked up (on a basic level, at least) and, at the age of 18, with the summer period over and with money in my pocket from the job I held in a ceramics showroom, I booked a budget week in Italy’s capital. Alone. If it were a film it would be titled Rome Alone. But it wasn’t a film, it was just my first holiday abroad: for I was a man.

Unfortunately, the week that promised language immersion, culture, history, cuisine and romance took on a completely different shape on the very first day; when I stumbled upon Finnegan’s, an Irish pub close to the Coliseum. I liked it in 11

Finnegan’s. I liked it in there a little too much. After returning to Brighton and embarrassingly explaining to people that all I could really remember of Italy was throwing up on my jeans, falling into a fountain and being the victim of an attempted robbery on the street by a couple of Russian thugs, I vowed to return – for more than just a fleeting visit.

‘I’m moving to Rome,’ I told Lee one evening whilst sitting in his living room watching Good Morning Vietnam. ‘Fancy coming along?’

Great film, Good Morning Vietnam. It may have inspired me but I can’t be sure.

‘Yeah, okay. Might as well,’ was Lee’s surprising response.

So the decision was made. In February 2003, aged 19, I flew to Rome on a one-way ticket along with Lee and another old school friend Matt, with less than £700 in my pocket and no plans in place for when we arrived. Money soon ran out, and after a month we had given up any hopes of finding work.

We got kicked out of the apartment we rented in the suburbs when we could no longer afford the weekly rent, and headed into the centre of the city to find a cheap hostel to stay in until we could arrange for someone back in England to transfer us enough money to book a flight home. The hostel we stumbled into was looking for a couple of cleaners and a receptionist, and nine months later I was still running the front desk. Everything had fallen nicely into place and I felt completely at home in Italy’s capital, wondering if I would ever want to return to England. Then one day, completely out of the blue, I was called into my boss’ office and told that I was surplus to requirements and was being let go. Oh well, I thought, it’s been great while it lasted, but I suppose returning to Brighton and getting a proper job wouldn’t hurt too much.

Before making my way home there was somewhere I first had to see: Slovenia. In my mind, the name Slovenia conjured up images of poverty, war, bread lines and grey apartment blocks. It was the East, and the East was backward – I had learnt that in school. However, I had fallen for a colleague in the hostel, a Slovene girl who worked through the summer 12

but had to return home for the resumption of her university studies. I needed to see her one last time before leaving the European mainland, even if it meant risking getting shot by a sniper or bitten by a rabid dog. After all, Slovenia was a dangerous, lawless, uncivilised place. It was part of the war-ravaged ex-Yugoslavia. I knew that. I had seen it on the news. To go to Slovenia was to risk my life. I took the train from Rome to Venice and then on to the border city of Trieste, in Italy’s north-eastern corner, where I was picked up by car and driven to Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. I left a week later for England with a completely different view of the world. Slovenia, far from being the cesspit I had envisioned, was as western and forward thinking as anywhere in England – more so than any Italian city I had visited during my ten months in the country.

People drove cars, homes had electricity and everyone spoke fluent English. I was also in love for the first time in my life; and as luck would have it, the object of my affections, Vanja, seemed pretty smitten with me too. On the way to the airport for my flight home, I bought a Slovenian language course, and as soon as I got back to Brighton I set about learning as much of it as I could, whilst enrolling in a course to get myself qualified as a teacher of English as a second language. It took just a couple of months working a night shift in Marks and Spencer to save enough money to make my next move – and in February 2004, armed with a teaching certificate and £1000 in cash, I flew one-way to Ljubljana where I rented a cheap studio flat.

Once there, I found myself playing football for a team in the national league, and got myself a job at the most prestigious language school in the country: all because Terry Wogan had planted that seed in my young, impressionable mind.

Slovenia became my home and Vanja, after a couple of years of sharing a flat with me, became my fiancée. England became but a distant memory. I worked mornings in the school, I spent evenings with my football team, I adapted to the culture and the language; I travelled to other ex-Yugoslav republics whenever the opportunity arose and I fell in love with the country 13

that had offered me a living. Unfortunately, I also gambled compulsively, and when ankle ligament damage forced me to give up the football, I threw myself more and more into the world of betting. My team trained four days a week and played matches at the weekend. We went on tours together, played in tournaments across the continent and spent a lot of time participating in social activities that brought families, girlfriends and wives into the mix. It was a way of life. So when I could no longer play I didn’t know what to do with myself. Become a Born Again Christian? Do a university degree? Do some volunteer or charity work? Read books? Write poetry? Nah, I know – I’ll gamble more. Three years after moving to Slovenia, I found myself in more debt than I could handle and had to make the difficult decision to once again return to Brighton with my reputation in tatters and my relationship with Vanja – a girl who had given me nothing but love – in ruins, thanks to my destructive addiction.

As I sit here now, I can’t help but think back to my childhood, and the posters pasted all over the walls of my school with messages like: ‘Alcohol – Just say No!’ ‘Drugs – Just say No!’ ‘Cigarettes – Just say No!’ I am amazed that the local police liaison officer didn’t have the foresight to campaign on a much more common problem.

Where was the poster saying: ‘Some intimidating Montenegrin mafia characters are offering you lots of credit to play poker in their illegal games room in the attic of a small unlit bar up a side alley that you would never have known was there unless you were specifically searching for a game you had overheard a degenerate gambler talking to his mate about in the post office – JUST SAY NO!’ Back in Brighton I soon found employment in another language school and, after a couple of months, Vanja followed me so that we could have one final attempt at making our situation work. It wasn’t to be, though, and in the summer of 2007 she 14

returned to Slovenia: our partnership had failed. To take my mind off of the painful situation I had caused I threw myself into work, and getting fit again. It was also at this time that I began learning about the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of their Israeli illegal occupiers. It was a subject that moved me, and after inhaling as much information as I could on the topic, I decided I needed to see the place for myself and offer any help that I could to the people there. I found a ‘resistance and solidarity’ charity organisation, attended a couple of their training weekends and was all set to leave England once again, this time for the West Bank. The only thing delaying my departure was funding; my gambling was out of control, but I would be good to go by October, I knew it. I handed in my notice at the school and worked through the final month in a daze, not knowing what lay ahead of me but feeling more than ever that I needed to get away from it all. After having my independence for so many years abroad, it was now unbearable living back at my family home with an alcohol-dependent yet hard-working father, and a manic depressive, alcoholic mother.

It was a warm September’s evening when I turned up at football training with the local team I had recently joined, ready to participate in my first full session since the injury. As I lay on the ground screaming in agony, I knew that I had damaged the same problem ligaments in my ankle as before. The physiotherapist had convinced me that I was healed; he wasn’t a very good physiotherapist. I took the news that I wouldn’t be able to play badly, and slipped back into old ways, spending my nights drinking and gambling, flitting my way through the Palestine fund in no time. I had, as they say in France, fucked up. The language school had already replaced me, and as the summer was now over there wouldn’t be a lot of teaching work on offer anyway. The future looked bleak, I was skint and depressed; until the October evening that changed everything.

As I sat in front of the computer at home playing poker, I received a phone call from a German girl I had worked with in the school, Stefanie. Stefanie and I had had a brief fling 15

towards the end of the summer, but it had quickly fizzled out as we realised we were much better suited as friends. She was out having a few leaving drinks with ex-colleagues; she was due to leave England and return to Germany, and she wanted to meet me afterwards to say goodbye. At first I made my excuses, much preferring the idea of staying in and continuing my gambling session, but after a few moments of thinking I called her back and said I would be there in an hour. I hadn’t been out in a while and didn’t like how unsocial I had become.

We bought a few bottles of beer and sat on the beach, under the stars, listening to the water gently washing in against the pebbles – and, as the alcohol loosened my tongue, I told her how envious I was that she was getting away from Brighton.

‘What do you want to do, Kris?’ she asked, as I sat sulking like the little kid that I still was.

‘I want to get out of here. I want to see new places, meet new people. I wanted to go to Palestine but now I’ve blown that option through my own stupidity. You know, I lived on the continent for four years in total, and in all that time I only ever saw a small handful of places. I want to know what’s out there.

I want to smile like they do in the Eurovision Song Contest!’

‘The Eurovision Song Contest? What? What are you on about?’

‘Never mind that bit. But I want to see Europe.’

‘Then do it. Go travelling.’

‘I can’t, can I? I’ve no money and now no job either. Sometimes I think about just buying a cheap ferry ticket to Calais, and then seeing how far I can go without cash in my pocket – just walking off into the French horizon,’ I told her, honestly.

‘You’re crazy,’ she said with a laugh, ‘but knowing you as I do, I wouldn’t be surprised if you really tried something that ridiculous.’

I remained silent for a couple of minutes, lost in imagination, before turning to her with a glint in my eye that hadn’t been there for quite some time. I mean the glint hadn’t been there for quite some time; the eye had been there since birth. Since before birth actually.

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‘I am going to do it. I am going to go and see Europe. And I am going to do it without any money. Who needs cash anyway?’

Stefanie looked at her watch and saw that it was coming up for four in the morning already. She had heard me come out with a thousand and one foolish drunken ideas since we’d met and she knew that after a sleep I would have forgotten all about it.

‘Come on, I’ll walk you home,’ I said, as we picked up our empties and staggered across the pebbles.

I dropped Stefanie off at her door and felt around in my pocket, finding a £5 note and a few pennies. It was just about enough for a taxi home, but being as it was the early hours of a Saturday, and being as it was my last bit of money, I opted for the long walk so that I would be able to have a bet on the afternoon’s football. As I walked I noticed a spring in my step as my mind raced with the thought of really doing what I had said I would. But how would it be possible? I needed a plan. I needed a goal. I needed a wee. So I found an alleyway.

After a few hours sleep I dragged myself up for the walk down to the bookies before returning home and making some tea and toast. It was like any other Saturday: I would sit on the settee in a pair of shorts, watch Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports, rip up my losing bet slips and tell myself that next weekend would be the one that would set me up properly. Celtic wouldn’t give away a 91st minute equaliser to balls up my accumulator and I would be able to start building a gambling roll for myself. Except this wasn’t like any other Saturday, because five minutes into the afternoon kick-offs I lost interest in what was going on in stadiums around the country and logged on to the internet to read travel forums and blogs, in search of any information about travelling for free. All I found were the usual hitchhiking tales and details of farms that offered accommodation in exchange for hard labour, but that wasn’t what I was after. I didn’t want to spend my time milking cows or cleaning out horse shit, that wasn’t what travelling meant to me. Travelling was not knowing from one day to the next where you 17

would be in 24 hours’ time. Travelling was witnessing rituals that were alien to you. Travelling was crossing borders and having your passport checked. And most importantly of all, travelling was coming home at the end of it all with a whole wealth of stories to entertain those who hadn’t been there to experience it for themselves. The ideas started flowing. What if I started in the north of France and tried to make it to Turkey?

No, wait, a better idea. What if I could find enough money for a flight to Morocco and then try to make my way home over land? No, too boring. What if I tried to get to every country in the European Union? Yes, that’s it! No, wait, that’s too easy. I knew, for example, that there was a point in the Alps where you could be in Austria, Slovenia and Italy almost simultaneously, I wouldn’t even have to spend any real time in each nation. I wanted more. I wanted to do something no one else had done. Something no one else had probably even imagined.

And then it came to me.

Every. Capital. City. In. The. European. Union.

That evening I went to see my aunt Susan in hospital where she was bravely battling lung cancer. I sat by her bed and watched as the doctors and nurses did their best to keep the patients comfortable, and I felt sad. Sad that so many people around me were dying. And then the light bulb above my head flicked on and I had my final idea. My mission to get to every capital city without any money would be called The Great Euro Freebie Challenge, and in the process of completing it I would raise funds and awareness for Cancer Research UK through sponsorships. I would dedicate the journey to Susan Proto, my battling aunt.

The next week or so was spent in preparation for this, the biggest ordeal I had ever thought of putting myself through.

I set up an account on the fundraising website Justgiving. com, who would manage all sponsorships that I received and make sure the money went straight into the coffers of Cancer Research UK. I set up a blog where people would be able to follow my preparations, and eventually the actual journey. I posted on travel forums and Facebook the details of the trip 18

I was planning. I got people interested. I emailed the local papers to ask them to spread the word. I wrote up the official rules that I would live by: 1. No money will be handled by or spent by me.

2. No credit cards will be used.

3. I will visit every European Union capital city on the physical continent.

4. I will say yes to any unplanned opportunities that arise.

5. Donations from people I meet along the way of anything other than cash will be accepted.

6. I will update the blog whenever I get the opportunity.

7. As England is not on the mainland, the challenge will begin in a foreign city.

8. I will not let any woman compromise the challenge. This is not a sex tour.

That was basically it as far as rules were concerned.

Rules number one and two are pretty self-explanatory. I would at no point take part in any transaction that involved money nor would I use any type of payment card. Now let me explain rule number three in a bit more detail. The European Union consisted at the time of 26 countries, they were: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Three of these countries – the UK, Ireland and Cyprus – were all islands and, as such, not part of what I considered to be ‘the continent.’ My mission was to see the continent, so these three were taken out of the equation, leaving me with a list of 23 capital cities. Rule four is perhaps not so self-explanatory.

Say I was standing at the side of the road in the Czech Republic trying to hitch a lift to Prague when a driver pulled over and said, ‘I’m not going anywhere near the capital but I am going to a small village that you have never heard of before and I invite you to come along for the ride and to meet my family’, I 19

would have to accept this offer. The thinking behind this rule was that it should lead to interactions and experiences that otherwise would not take place, and would add to the unpredictability of the journey. Rule number five is another simple one.

If someone offered me a bus ticket, for example, I could accept it as I hadn’t paid for it. The same went for food, drink, accommodation, etc … Rule number six is there because for people to know how I was getting on, they would need contact from me. Through the blog I would be able to update any interested parties on my situation and provide the stories of how I got from A to B, all the while encouraging people to donate a little to charity. I would have to rely on the kindness of strangers to allow me to use their computer for a few minutes at a time.

Onto rule number seven. I would start the journey on the continent. After much deliberation, I decided against beginning my trek in any of Lisbon, Athens or Helsinki and opted instead for the Swedish capital of Stockholm. From there I didn’t know whether I would head up and across the Scandinavian north to get round to Helsinki, or south to Denmark and through to Germany. That would be decided once at my starting point.

Finally rule number eight. As is probably obvious by now, my initial fascination for all things European was sparked by those dangerous little creatures – girls. However, years of experience had taught me that these females of the species were not the be all and end all of life and sometimes something more important presented itself. The Great Euro Freebie Challenge was bigger, stronger and more important than any fling I would have along the way. This was my personal project and I would see it through to the end without any unnecessary complications. For I was a man and this was my calling.

So, the rules were in place and I was ready to go. The last thing I needed now was time to talk myself out of things, so I asked my dad if he would buy me a cheap ticket to Stockholm for as soon as possible and, when we found a one-way flight with Scandinavian airline SAS for under £50, he obliged. Departure date was set for the 1st of November 2007, which was just a week away. If I spent a couple of days in each capital, I 20

would be home in time for Christmas. That was the plan. One of the local papers, the Shoreham Herald, sent a photographer round to take my picture, I went out on one final bender with my mates and I filled my rucksack to the brim with warm clothes and a sleeping bag. A random email from an American student who had stumbled across my blog advised me to have a look at a website called Couchsurfing, which I did. Couchsurfing was an online community with members all over the world who were willing to have complete strangers spend a night or two sleeping on their settee or floor. Members’ profiles included a photo, a description of what the guest would be sleeping on, a bit about themselves and, most importantly, references that had been left by other Couchsurfers who had either stayed with or hosted the person. This website would save me having to regularly sleep in train stations, parks and by the roadside. It would also introduce me to people my own age that otherwise I might not have had the opportunity to interact with. I quickly created a profile and emailed a couple of Stockholm residents, Philippe and Mia, explaining why I was soon to be in their city and asking if either of them would be able to put me up for a night or two. Positive replies came almost immediately from both, but Mia’s came slightly earlier and I accepted her offer. After thanking Philippe for his kind offer and letting him know I was now sorted, he told me to take his mobile number in case something went wrong and I found myself in a desperate situation once there. The discovery of Couchsurfing filled me with confidence that had until that point been low.

I had just one more thing to do before setting off in search of that Eurovision smile. On the evening of the 31st October I went to see Susan one last time. Just as I was leaving and giving her a final kiss on the forehead, she leant in, looked me in the eyes and asked, ‘Are you really going to see this challenge through to the end?’

‘Yep.’ ‘Good boy.’

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