America

Help! I Left My Heart in Nashville

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Imagine a city where every third man and woman is dressed in roper boots and ten-gallon hats. Bars with gaudy neon signs line the Main Street, bearing the names of stars of the Country music scene. Live music sails out of the windows of every floor. Every. Floor. A city where, despite its infamous popularity with bachelor and bachelorette parties, the folks still turn a welcoming smile on you and ask how you’re doin’. A city where, as the sun goes down, the streets seem to glitter with the reflected light off the rhinestone-studded outfits worn by revellers in the street.

This is Nashville. And it’s quite unexpectedly captured my heart.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that a self-described country boy with a habit of eschewing cities should find himself very much at home in the Music City where Country music is king. I am so glad I came here. And to think I didn’t even know much about the place beyond the occasional mention in the odd James Brown and Tina Turner number…! Thank you, Mackenzie, for opening my eyes to this wonder.

But hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s more to Nashville than just the frenetic delights of Broadway. First, let me take you on a detour to the strangest hotel I’ve ever seen: the Opryland Resort.

It might look like an enormous walk-in aviary, but it’s actually a vast hotel and spa complex. It’s free to explore, even if you’re not staying, but what a place…! It’s hard to know what is the most bizarre thing of all: the waterfall, the boat tours along the artificial river, the nods to American architecture (up to and including a distinctive New Orleans home) or the fact that all of this can be found within a gigantic glass-roofed building that looks like a recycled film set for Jurassic Park III.

Well, I did want to see the America that most casual tourists don’t get to see, and I’m not disappointed! Maybe I’ll be mad enough to spend the night here someday.

With our things stashed away in a much less outlandish (but nonetheless phenomenal) establishment, Mackenzie took me out onto Broadway for a bit of shopping ahead of a night bar-hopping and soaking in as much live music as a single night can offer. I’ll admit I was almost tempted to shell out on a pair of boots and/or a hat, but in the end I settled for a Country-style shirt. After all, it’s likely to get a little more mileage than the hat!

Kitted out in my new Nashville wear, we grabbed a couple of drinks at Luke’s 32 Bridge, where we met up with the rest of Mackenzie’s friends. One of the local bands was kicking up a storm on the roof with a couple songs I recognised. I’ve done my homework with this genre, which I confess is relatively new to me!

I caught myself singing along to Country Girl (Shake It For Me), Chicken Fried and Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy), all of which seem to be crowd favourites (and all of which have now found their way into my golden jukebox playlist on Spotify). More impressively still, they wound up their set for the evening with an almighty medley that included the one and only Play That Funky Music, the song I used to close gigs with back in my schooldays. And what a mashup…! Yes, I was taking notes! I might be on holiday, but I’d be a fool not to jot some ideas down for house music when it comes around.

We didn’t get any free drinks for the birthday hat, though birthday wishes were flying in from all directions from well-wishers on the street, which was sweet. The drinks we did get, though, were fantastic. It would be madness to come to Tennessee and leave without sampling the famous Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky, which I had in the form of a Fireball. Yum!

To quote Luke Bryan: I don’t want this night to end. But it did, like all good things do, and in the best possible way: with a little bit of chicken fried to share. I haven’t tried nearly enough of this Southern speciality, so I guess I’ll have to come back and remedy that someday.

Nashville is something else. If you’re even partially interested in good music, grab your boots and make a pilgrimage here as soon as you can. It’s got to be the most fun I’ve ever had in the city and that’s a fact.

Say, that tower looks like the Eiffel Tower. I wonder if that’s intentional. If that’s not a reminder from the universe that I need to spend some time in France this summer before teaching A Level French for the first time (God help me) then I don’t know what is!

See you again sometime, Nashville. I think I left a bit of my heart with you. BB x

Shooting Star

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Her father was a man “led by a star” as the natives say, and would follow it over the edge of the world and be no nearer.

Henry Rider Haggard, The Ghost Kings

We travel for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes you set out to see a place because you have a particular place in mind: maybe you heard about it somewhere, or saw it in a magazine, and need to see it with your own eyes. Sometimes it stems from a deep-seated desire to get away from home: “anywhere but here”. And sometimes, when the time is right, the driving force is beyond your control. It starts like a tide coming in, the waves rushing about your feet, warm and wonderful. Before you know it, the waters are racing back the way they came in a cascade of glittering sand and silt, pulling you into their wake, as though you’re standing upon the wake of a shooting star.

That is the force that has carried me here to Alabama. Something like it, anyway. It’s not exactly on the tourist trail. I’ve certainly not seen the Heart of Dixie appear in my social media feed over the years, whereas I dare say I’ve seen enough selfies in New York, Chicago and California to make like I’ve been there myself by now. But I do like to leave the beaten trail when I can. So here I am.

Independence Day found me on a boat in the Tennessee River, a mighty tributary of the mightier Mississippi, with a merry band of Americans celebrating their country’s national holiday the right way: beers in hand, country music blasting from the speakers, the immense American sky overhead, and the Stars and Stripes billowing out behind. I could hardly have asked for a more authentic way to celebrate the Fourth of July if I tried.

We spent almost all day out on the river, which may well account for the angry sunburn that has now morphed into one of the darkest tans I’ve had in years. Or maybe the burn came from standing in the wake of that shooting star, I can’t say. Either way, I had a lot of fun diving into the Tennessee River.

Some sights are so beautiful that you daren’t get too close, afraid that even the lightest touch might drive you mad, but I couldn’t leave America without some kind of contact with one of the two-hundred and fifty daughters of that legendary river that drains the entire continent of North America. Incidentally, it’s almost certainly the first time I’ve ever swum in a river. What a way to break a habit!

My host, the wonderful Mackenzie, had one all-American experience after another to throw my way. After watching the Fourth of July fireworks in a parking lot in downtown Huntsville, she took me to a diner for a proper American-style brunch of sweet tea with biscuits and gravy – consider me converted! – followed by a visit to Target, America’s legendary superstore, where I was amazed by the low cost of clothing. And to top it all off, we went to a baseball game at the local stadium between the Birmingham Barons and the local team, the Huntsville Trash Pandas.

Baseball – at least to this outsider – seems to be more of an event than a game. Nine innings across nearly three hours of play, broken up by a stream of events intended to involve the audience. Along with the opening national anthem, I clocked a kids’ race against the mascot, a couple of singalongs with a hype man and the sparkly cheerleaders, a cabezudo-style “space race” in support of a local enterprise and even a dance-off… all to keep your attention throughout the marathon experience.

With all that going on and more, I was very distracted, so I can’t say I’m any the more familiar with how baseball works, but it was such an incredible experience!

The fireworks after the game were even more spectacular than those that were set off the night before, which really is something – though deserved, perhaps, given that it was the home team that took home the win. The spectacle lasted a full twenty minutes, which is about as long as it took to leave the car park after the game. Everyone left in a mad scramble via the two exits to the car park, creating a logjam that went on for ages. One stereotype is true: America is a country that has yet to learn how to queue properly.

Nashville calls tomorrow. I have a good feeling about that. BB x

Slow Travel: The Highs and Lows of Amtrak

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s 17.09, it’s been over nine hours since I last ate something and I’m somewhere in the Alabama woods between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. If we were running to schedule, I’d be arriving in Birmingham in the next few minutes. But, as every American has gone to great pains to explain, the trains in the US never run on schedule. If you’re not in any particular hurry, it’s a phenomenal way to see the States, provided you’re happy to gawp at trees for most of the journey. Lucky for me, I’m easily pleased, and it’s been all I can do to peel my eyes from the window for the last eight hours or so.

The American South reminds me in many ways of Uganda. There’s something familiar about the immensity of the sky, the redness of the earth, the rusting abandoned vehicles and – especially – the enormous homemade painted advertising on homes, cafés and storefronts. The most American thing I’ve seen so far – beside the lone bald eagle standing on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain – are the countless colourful billboards advertising private law firms, demanding your attention with Colgate smiles in nauseatingly familiar language: Bart’s always got your back, Call ya girl Desi, IYKYK, that sort of thing.

Let’s forget any time pressure for a moment. Riding an Amtrak train is actually a really comfortable experience, and I’m surprised it isn’t more popular. There are charging stations for every seat, curtains for the windows, sturdy WiFi and a cheery Southern burr over the tannoy to replace the cold, automated replay of British trains. I’ve even got enough leg room to stretch my legs, and that’s taking into account the fact that the guy in the seat in front has put his chair back into full recline. I haven’t seen as much wildlife as I’d have liked over the course of my vigil, but I’ve still managed to clock a few deer, a whole lot of egrets and a few birds of prey, including the symbol of America itself. That’s not too shabby for a bit of on-board birdwatching.

To be honest, the only thing I’d change is the seat numbering, which is baffling – and very obviously a new concept, as even the ticket inspectors seemed to get muddled up by the numbers (which don’t really correspond to any of the seats at all). Folk don’t seem to mind, though. I think most of the passengers here have simply found an empty seat and made themselves comfortable, and all of them are quite happy to shuffle as and when a couple or family comes aboard. That’s one major difference to European trains. I was traveling in Germany once and still remember an officious German lady who made the entire coach get up and scramble because there was somebody in her seat and she absolutely had to sit in the seat she had been assigned. The human soul: the price of efficiency.

I ended my stay in New Orleans with a jazz fest, seeing a local band in Preservation Hall and then taking the Natchez steamboat cruise down the Mississippi with its attendant Dixieland band providing a jaunty backdrop. If it’s done one good thing for me, New Orleans has reminded me that there is hope for those of us who still believe in music bringing the world together. The Preservation Hall jazz band ticked more diversity-and-inclusion boxes than a school website: the trombonist was black, the saxophonist Latino, the pianist Scandinavian, the double bassist Japanese and the lead trumpeter Creole. I hate to admit it, but I’m still bleeding a little over the way my Gospel Choir was torn apart years ago. Maybe I always will be. That’s partly why I’m here in the States, in this limbo between jobs, between worlds: to try to put a seal on that episode of my life, and to remind myself that there are plenty of people out there who don’t see things that way. And where better than America, the great Melting Pot itself?

I’d better stop writing – it looks like we’ll be arriving soon. In the end, we’re only 50 minutes behind schedule. It’s funny how little that seems to matter! In the UK, there’d be apologies over the tannoy and prompts to get a refund via the website…

Alright America. I’ll admit it. Just this once, you have us beat on heart. BB x

Gators, Gumbo and Vanishing Cabinets

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Alright, so the primary reason for my trip to the States is to soak up the music out here. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that I could have saved a little and gone to Glastonbury, but frankly the idea of camping out in a field with thousands of party-goers sounds like Hell on Earth to me. I’m quite happy chasing a more traditional, more intimate range of older styles out here in the States. That’s why I’ve shelled out on a couple of jazz-themed events this afternoon. But before that, there’s one other major reason I decided to kick off my American adventure in Louisiana. The Bayou.

I’ve got a thing for swamps. I spent weeks of my childhood clomping around the misty reedbeds of Stodmarsh in search of bitterns and marsh harriers, while anybody else my age with half a brain was honing their social skills at the park or on the pitch. The Easter holidays required a ritual voyage to Doñana National Park, the ‘Mother of the Marshes’, which became something of a Mecca of mine. So to come to Louisiana and not pay a visit to the Bayou would be foolishness in the extreme.

Of course, it isn’t all that easy to get into the Bayou proper without a boat, or a car for that matter. Fortunately there are a lot of offers on the table to take you out of New Orleans and into the swamps. I threw in my lot with Cajun Encounters – it looked to be far and away the best one going.

The bus picked me up from outside the hotel shortly after eight, giving me plenty of time to wolf down breakfast. The driver, though not a tour guide himself, did a brilliant job pointing out the sights as he took us through the residential districts of New Orleans and out into the wilds of Slidell. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina is remarkably apparent, even twenty years on: together with the hulking wrecks of houses and ships, the skeleton of New Orleans’ only amusement park can still be seen arching above the trees, while the bizarre Fisherman’s Castle on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain remains the only building to have survived the floodwaters intact.

The tour begins beyond sleepy Slidell on the bank of an inlet of the Pearl River, where the swamp-folk came pearl fishing many years ago. The six of us in my boat were assigned the formidable Captain Zander, a former warehouse packer and a true Cajun to boot. To say we drew the winning ticket would be an understatement. As well as being a no-nonsense authority on the Bayou, he seems to know just about everybody out on the Pearl River – including Cindy, one of the biggest gators in the swamp.

You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to the presence of the alligators. I must have counted around forty by the end of the outing, from amber-skinned yearlings to hulking, black-scuted beasts, visible only by the unmistakeable silhouette of their snouts just above the water. Before you know it, you feel as though they’re just part of the scenery!

When I was a kid I had a picture book that listed the American Alligator as endangered – which is true, as back in the 90s it was facing the very real danger of extirpation. Since then, however, the environmentalists have stepped in to throw the spirit of the Bayou a lifeline, and they have returned in force: more than a million can now be found in the Louisiana swamps alone.

Summer is one of the best times to see Louisiana’s gators, but the heavy foliage can make it harder to see the other denizens of the Bayou. All the same, over two hours I clocked wood ducks, whistling ducks, a pair of high-flying anhingas, several ospreys, green, yellow-crowned and black-crowned night herons, roseate spoonbills, cattle and great egrets, a single great blue heron and, in one of the deeper inlets of the Pearl River, a family of raccoons – a real American experience!

It really was quite something to drift along the snaking rivulets that cut through the Bayou, shielded from the merciless Southern Sun by the trailing beards of Spanish moss hanging from the cypress trees – named neither for their origin or their species (being neither Spanish nor a type of moss) but for their resemblance to the long grey beards of the first Spanish explorers to pass through these swamps hundreds of years ago. I wonder if Cabeza de Vaca and his brave company passed through here on their odyssey?

Back in New Orleans, I grabbed some lunch at Mr Ed’s Oyster Bar, following a tip-off from my Uber driver. It’s easy to shell out on your first meal in another country when you don’t know how things work, and I ended up with a starter that could have fed three as well as a main and a drink – before factoring in the inevitable 20% tip expected in the States and, of course, the inescapable taxes. That said, one cannot come to New Orleans and not try the food, and I have to admit the crawfish étouffée has shot up into the top ten foods I’ve ever tried. It was absolutely sensational. Didn’t feel brave enough for the oysters just yet, but maybe next time!

When I came back to the hostel, it was to find that Room 302 was being taken in hand: three Mexican labourers were hard at work uninstalling the ceiling tiles to address the leaking air-con unit, which meant I had to linger in the lobby until they were finished.

I had the shock of my life after they left, when I returned to the room to find my locker open and all the contents removed, with the exception of two shot glasses from Prague (a gift for a friend). Clothes, camera, the cash my students gave me as a leaving gift – all gone. In a blind panic I took the stairs at a run to find the receptionist and let them know what had happened… only to get a knowing smile and a ‘forgive me’ gesture.

Turns out they’d moved all my belongings into a new room while the works were being done and hadn’t found me yet to tell me.

Crisis averted – at the expense of a couple of years off my life! I’m not generally that fussed when it comes to losing things on my adventures – one less thing to carry and all that – but as this is my first time in the States, I’d rather be prepared, not to mention have enough clothes to wear for the next few weeks! BB x

Skylink

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Four days ago I was standing in the ruins of a Roman theatre in the Andalusian port of Cádiz, a contender for the oldest continually occupied city in Europe at over three thousand years old. Four days, one Leavers’ Ball and a ten hour flight later and I’m sitting in Terminal B for Bravo in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, built in the year 1974. The fact that Cádiz’s Roman theatre itself is relatively young – built around 70 B.C. – only adds to the stark comparison. The culture shock is real.

First impressions:

  • The Mississippi is huge. Enormous. It looked like a colossal brown snake winding across the plains into the distance
  • Cowboy hats seem to be worn unironically here – and with a frequency that would surprise you!
  • The selection of in-flight movies on offer is considerably superior to all the streaming services at the moment (heck, they even had both Dune movies)
  • Airport taxes – what the hell is that about?
  • Security was thorough but not nearly as austere as I expected

In case you haven’t noticed, this is my first time in the United States. I honestly have no idea what to expect, since until recently I wasn’t particularly interested in crossing the Atlantic for an adventure – well, not this far north of the Caribbean, at any rate.

But I did promise myself that I’d reward myself with a proper adventure if I landed a new job this year, and a promise is a promise. I just didn’t expect it to take me to the land of Sitting Bull and Civil Rights, that’s all!

I don’t have too much to report on just yet, beyond a general wide-eyed wonder at all of it. After all, I haven’t legally set foot in the States yet – that will happen when I touch down in New Orleans in a few hours’ time.

Sounds like they’re boarding in five minutes’ time. Not sure what a Deadheader is outside of a gardening context, but I’d better get my stuff together all the same. Starting to feel the jet-lag kicking in, but I hope I can shake it with an early night this evening! BB x