One of the beautiful things about traveling is that every day brings
something new. Sometimes that’s a good thing, like when you come to a lovely
place. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, like when your luggage vanishes. But
sometimes it’s just weird. And, really, how often is life at home just plain
weird?
Years ago I went to a town in Switzerland called Lugano. I don’t remember
why, exactly, except that I was traveling with a woman I had met, and
somewhere in Austria I had detected a certain chemistry between us. One
international border isn’t much to cross in pursuit of such things. But that
chemistry had started to fade by the time we reached Lugano, so when we came
into town, hardly speaking, late at night during a rainstorm, it seemed
appropriately melodramatic.
Lugano is a beautiful lakeside town in the southern part of Switzerland.
The thing about Switzerland, though, is that in every part of it people speak
a different language. In Lugano it’s largely Italian. It takes a while to
adjust to Swiss people speaking Italian. To complete the picture, imagine a
gorgeous lake surrounded by a town that looks like Italians built it and Swiss
cleaned it up.
We got to this place on a rainy January night, with no place to stay and
no idea where to go. We were also hungry and, like I said, not speaking. Our
true love of three days had gone south. We were wandering, in every sense,
when a man approached us and said, “Where are you go?”
It’s not odd for Swiss people to be helpful; what was odd about this guy
was that he looked Arab and spoke with a French accent. We said,
“Hotel,” and he said, “Okay, after me.” Not in a position
to be picky, we followed him into the rainy night.
Our guide, it turns out, was Lebanese, so he spoke Arabic and French —
Lebanon being a former French possession. I remembered just enough French from
10th grade to have a kiddie-level conversation with him. He led us through a
maze of streets and buildings, stopping occasionally to, yes, ask directions.
But everybody in the town spoke Italian, not French or English or Arabic, so
we moved slowly. The rain came down harder.
Finally he stumbled into the hotel he had in mind. The lady there, of
course, spoke German, but we managed to get checked into a room.
Next, our guide said he knew a good cheap restaurant where we could get
fed for seven francs, which at the time was about four-and-a-half bucks. In
Switzerland, for four-and-a-half bucks you can usually get a banana. So we
followed the guy back through the streets and the buildings and the rain and
the multilanguage confusion — to a Burger King. What the hell, I thought, and
plopped down what turned out to be seven bucks for a burger, pommes frites,
and a petite Coke.
As we ate, the guy asked where I was from. Now, I was five months into an
international journey at this point, and I was long since tired of telling
people I was from Memphis and then putting up with the whole Elvis Thing. I
already had, in my address book, a German guy who insisted on visiting me and
going to Graceland, an Australian who dreamed of seeing Sun Studios, and two
Japanese Willie Nelson fans who had gotten Memphis and Nashville mixed up. So
I told our man in Lugano that I was from my college town, Dallas.
Well, this guy’s eyes lit up like Bastille Day, and he said to me,
“Dallas? Dallas? This is the home of the Von Ericks!” The Von
Ericks, you must understand, were the royal family of Dallas’ professional
wrestling scene. I would have rather had this guy get out an Elvis scrapbook
and ask me to sign it than what happened next. He started asking me, in loud
kiddie-level French and sign language, whether I thought the Freebirds could
be trusted, whether the Missing Link would actually come to the aid of the Von
Ericks, and whether the two Von Erick brothers who had died (of overdose and
suicide) were assassinated.
He went on to explain that in Lebanon, the pro wrestling shows from
Dallas were the biggest thing on TV. My mind was reeling. He said he was
trying to get a visa to come to America so he could go to Dallas and see
wrestling in person. Not New York, not San Francisco, not the Rocky Mountains
— Dallas. A French-speaking Lebanese guy who had led us from our German-
speaking hotel through the Italian-speaking streets of a Swiss town to a
freaking Burger King wanted to go to Dallas and see professional
wrestling.
It was so odd, so filled with weirdness, that I ‘fessed up, if only to
slow him down. “I’m actually from Memphis,” I said.
“Memphis,” he repeated. He paused, looked at me blankly for a
moment, said “Memphis” again, then smiled a little. He reached into
his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
And then I knew that after everything else that had happened to us in
Lugano, I was about to face the unavoidable, the inevitable, the Elvis Thing.
