Crossings

There are a lot like this: when my internet calm returns, I will post the better ones


Alois is 52, he lives in the south of Slovenia, a village that has been Italian and Yugoslav; now it is Slovenia again. “My father is an ‘Italian’, I am a Slovene.”
Last night Alois was in Lyon with his van, last week it was Budapest. He’s driving back to Slovenia the cheap way – not through the Fréjus tunnel but over the Mont Cenis pass.


There is always one

Which is good news for me. “I was in Ipswich last year, I go all over Europe, delivering things, picking things up. After Sanji’s adventures with the police at La Chambre I am reticent.

After he left school Alois worked for ten years in a factory making car components in Estragom, Hungary. “We were close to Slovakia. That’s the thing about Slovenian communism [when it was part of Yugoslavia under Tito] it wasn’t bad. Doctors, teachers, lawyers – they got no pay, but if you were a worker there was money, there weren’t borders. I’ve been a driver now for 25 years, but the first few years I did it, going to hardline communist places, Romania, Bulgaria, that was really bad. Slovenia: no problem.




She is looking for a job as a model

Now this kind of business, taking furniture to collectors, moving families’ possessions, this is the new Europe. Alois takes the Mont Cenis pass often, it’s free – unlike the Fréjus. “And it’s much more beautiful, it is an Eden for the motorbikers.” Some more roar past.

At the lake – artificial, made for energy generation, Alois goes in search of Marmots. “For the women’s coats…” He finds two dens, sees Marmots everywhere.



For everything else: National Geographic

There is no family at home, it’s ok he says. He likes travel. But he hates borders. “Whenever there is a border there is trouble. Look at us, 200,000 dead in a civil war, for what?” He speaks, German, French, Italian a little English, gets by in Hungarian.

“Last night, in Lyon, first time in many years I slept in my van,” he says. “There’s too much tourism these days.”