Paul Mansfield
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First published in the Daily Telegraph
Everyone warns you about Bucharest. At the run-down Gara de Nord, thieves, pimps and hustlers hover like flies. You fight your way through to a taxi, which rushes at breakneck speed through what at first seems like a ghost town, with grandiose boulevards devoid of people.
Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime spent its last years engaged in a mad attempt to emulate in Bucharest what Ceausescu had seen in North Korea. Consequently the city now resembles a giant building site, or the set of a post-apocalypse movie. The skyline bristles with abandoned cranes and unfinished buildings; packs of wild dogs roam; kids sniff glue; the streets are full of pickpockets and conmen who flash meaningless police badges at you and demand your passport. But if you laugh, they laugh right back at you, caught up in the absurdity of it all. Life in Bucharest resembles a comic opera more than a tragedy.
At the Capitol Hotel, the turn-of-the-century facade gave way to a spirit-sapping interior of tatty carpets and rickety furniture. In the dining room I chatted to a Swede named Tom who was writing a book on Dadaism – the origins of which, he said, were Romanian. I could believe it. Tom had been invited to attend Bucharest’s ‘international’ conference on Surrealism. But when he’d arrived the only language had been Romanian, of which he knew not one word. ‘But I made my speech in English, as planned’, Tom said. ‘And nobody understood a thing.’
Just then two prostitutes were ushered in by the waiter, and sat eyeballing us from the next table. When I went to the lavatory the youngest one darted out after me and stood waiting by the door of the Gents. I suggested, as kindly as I could, that she was wasting her time, and she took this as an affront. ‘But I never say you nothing. I never say you nothing…’ She had a tired, whiney voice. I tried to placate her.
‘Look, I’m not accusing you of anything….’
‘I never say you nothing!’
‘Please don’t shout.’
‘I never say you nothing!
People were beginning to stare. My new friend was whining on. The thought then occurred to me: through no fault of my own, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, I have ended up in a Bucharest hotel lobby defending a prostitute’s honour to herself in front of an audience of curious locals. Jesus.
First published in Daily Mail
Which is the most fashionable island in the Mediterranean? Capri? Ibiza? Sardinia?
No. Think of a volcanic outcrop of land closer to the African coast than to Italy. Think of a place so remote that celebrities are free to roam there, far from the prying lenses of the paparazzi. Think, specifically of Giorgio Armani, Isabella Rosselini and Sting, all of whom have houses there, and of repeat visitors Eric Clapton and Michelle Pfeiffer. Think of Pantelleria.
If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone. Only forty miles from Tunisia, yet still part of Italy, Pantelleria is a peculiar hybrid of an island; far off the beaten track but not lacking in creature comforts; a place of spectacular beauty, but with a rugged, down-to-earth feel.
Pantelleria Town is a modern port, hastily rebuilt after the Allies bombed it flat in WWII. But behind the town green volcanic peaks reach up to a dramatic, mountainous centre, and the streets have odd, Arabic-sounding names, like Bukkuram, Khamma, Bugeber.
At my hotel, the Mursia, there was a friendly family welcome. Rosario the owner, a bulky man in his thirties, took me on a tour of the island. The name Pantelleria, he said, derived from an Arab phrase meaning 'Daughter of the wind'. We passed a cluster of black-stone Sesi, Neolithic funeral mounds built by Pantelleria's first settlers - probably from Tunisia, but no-one knows for sure.
Other strange shapes came into view. These were the dammusi houses unique to Pantelleria, with whitewashed walls and multi-domed roofs. Cool in summer and warm in winter, they are masterpieces of island architecture. And, once again, their origins are uncertain. 'The roofs are Arabic', Rosario said. 'But to me their foundations look Phoenician’ Another mystery, on an island full of them.
On Pantelleria's east coast, low slopes of rich volcanic soil are carpeted with wild flowers; vineyards and olive groves. We stopped at the 'Lake of Venus', whose aquamarine colours changed as the clouds passed high above, and whose mud is said to possess therapeutic properties – a heavily-pregnant Madonna was once spotted happily wallowing here.
Armani was the first celebrity to arrive in the 60s: his sprawling estate sits in manicured gardens high above the tiny port of Gadir. Others soon followed in Signor Armani's footsteps, and you can see why. Pantelleria has a quirky character all its own. The soil is so fertile that almost anything will grow here, and Pantelleria is that rare thing, an island with few fishermen but full of well-off farmers. We passed an acquaintance of Rosario’s loading up his pick-up with olives. How was he? ‘Siempre lavoro’, grunted the old boy, stacking his boxes. ‘Always work’. But he said it with a grin.
And in Pantelleria Town the atmosphere was sun-baked and lazy. A handful of small hotels are Pantelleria's only concession to tourism; and the seafront cafes are crowded with locals. Here, at the evening passeggiata, there were one or two chic young people dressed to impress, but there were also grizzled old farmers with pot bellies and cigarettes dangling between their lips. The bars were packed with beefy young blokes in overalls or jeans, tipping back beer. The ordinariness of it takes you by surprise. ‘You can see why Armani and the others like it here’, said Rosario. ‘People treat them the same as everyone else.’
Time for a cruise, on the dive boat Santa Rita. Captain Antonello, the skipper, was a likeable rogue with a stubbled chin and tangled long hair. We took a spin around the north-east coast, with the waves choppy out to sea, but calm in the coves. From the water, Pantelleria’s black volcanic shoreline looks like strange abstract sculpture. Antonello cut the engine and we drifted through a narrow channel into a punchbowl of rock open to the sky. As we bobbed in the cave, little streams of phosphorescence appeared beneath the bow.
Next day Rosario and I drove out past the airport - remote, and perfect for private jets – and on to the vertiginous summit of the Montagna Grande, 4000 feet high, with Sicily just visible to the north and there to the south, a flat band of hazy red on the horizon - the coast of Tunisia. 'It's a beautiful island, no?' said Rosario. 'And it's not like anywhere else.'
No it isn't. On my last night, we ate at a trattoria in a mountain village. The food was a mixture of Mediterranean (Rabbit casserole) and Arabic (Couscous and Briq),served by the big, bony sons of the proprietor, who ferried eight courses in all, plus jugs of murky local wine, to the solid oak table.
Back at the Hotel Mursia Rosario switched out the lights on the terrace and the sky was transformed into an effulgent canopy of stars. I was astounded. I'd forgotten how bright the Mediterranean night sky can be without the glare of city lights. I'll say this about Armani and the others - they have excellent taste in islands.
First published in Daily Telegraph
Down at the Stockyards the night was hotting up. In the old days, Fort Worth had a strict social code: no Cowboy was allowed to make eye contact with, let alone touch, a lady in public. This was based on the reasonable assumption that any wrangler, after a long trail ride, would be heading straight into town to misbehave. And the old Stockyards – with its saloons, honky-tonks and bordellos - is where they did their misbehaving.
The bordellos are long gone, but the place still houses the biggest honky-tonk in the world, Billy Bob’s, with space for 6000 people, and a raft of old-style saloons. I called in at the White Elephant, one of Fort Worth's oldest bars. The place was packed with a noisy crowd singing along to a country band. Halfway through the third number the fiddle player fell over and didn't get up. Couples two-stepped artfully around him and glided across the floor: a Stars and Stripes hung in the corner above the legend 'These colours don't run.'
In the street drinkers drifted from bar to bar. In a succession of neon-lit joints I drank glasses of Steiner ale and was temporarily befriended by large men in Stetsons who perched on stools at the bar going 'Haw-haw-haw!' at each other's jokes. In one, some cowboys were playing pool, and Johnny Cash was singing on the jukebox:
I ain't too old to cut the mustard
Just too tired to spread it around
'I know how he feels', said the man next to me. 'Haw-haw-haw!
He drained his beer and got heavily to his feet. 'What the hail', he shouted over the music. 'There has to be some gurls somewhere.'
But the only girls I saw were having a punch-up outside a bar called PR's on Main Street. 'You stop messin' with my Ross, you hear?!' screamed one. ''Ain't me that's doing the messin!' screamed the other. It was like watching some travelling version of the Jerry Springer show, and enormously entertaining.
Eventually the girls calmed down and headed back into the bar, no doubt in search of a terrified Ross. I had a final bourbon at the Cadillac Cortina bar and drifted back to the Stockyards Hotel to sleep. That's what I like about Fort Worth. Re-invented, re-emergent and much-improved it may certainly be, but it will never, ever be precious.