ASPW Introduction to #ASPWTheNextJourney

TRANSCRIPT

Program announcement (00:00):

Welcome to the Next Journey, the Adventure Travel Podcast. With me, Andrew St Pierre White.

(00:08):

I’ve been overlanding for over 40 years. Alright, I did the first proper overland, and when I say overland, I’m talking about an expedition style trip in 1975 with my parents and my brother, and it was in Botswana, and if I think about it now, incredibly remote and actually quite risky because I don’t think my father really knew too much about the risks that we were confronting and we got away with it, but it sowed a seed that grew and grew and grew, and I’d do this for a living and I have been doing it for a living for close on 30 years before. In between, after I left school, while I was at school, did a number of amazing trips with my parents. I became a commercial film editor. I would edit commercials. I did some dramas and did some documentaries, but it was mostly commercials and I won awards for my editing in New York, in Cannes and in South Africa.

(01:05):

And so I was good at editing. I realised quite early on that I had a knack and I had a skillset, which was I’m good at editing. That has translated into, now I do these off-road and over landing shows. It means that I’m good at telling stories because that’s what editing is. It’s telling stories, and so people love my stories. So I kind of combined that history of film with my love of the outdoors and love of these experiences. But these are just my stories. What about the people that I’ve interacted with through my life have some amazing stories to tell and I want to try and tell their stories. The next journey is about adventure travel and everything that could possibly be associated with adventure travel, whether it be on sailing boats, four wheel drives, yacht, piano with wheels. It doesn’t matter anything that can take you out of your comfort zone a bit.

(02:03):

And the cleansing. And as I said, the spiritual power of travel is the next journey. The first episode, which will be live next week, is a chat by the name of Rob Barton. And I think this is typical of the kind of show that I’m going to be producing here. Rob Barton is the first man alive to have rode a boat unsupported from mainland Australia to mainland Africa, and I had him in my studio. What a fascinating story to tell. Absolutely wonderful. This is the kind of story that I want to share with you, and I’m going to start by right now, episode one with a story of my own, which has not been told. And that is how I ended up in jail in of all places Norway. This was 1981. A lot of you that know my show know that I wear a Rolex Submariner watch, and I bought this also in 1981.

(03:13):

I was 21 years old. And the reason why I mentioned the watch will be apparent soon, my good friend and I, his name is Dirk, we’re still in contact. He lives in Cape Town. I live in Perth, Australia. We decided to go and do a trip overseas, and we were going to go and do it on the cheap because I mean, I was an editor at the time was, I think I was an assistant editor at the time, 21 years old. I might’ve just been a junior editor at the time. And we headed off the first time I had ever been overseas without my parents. And we got on a 7 0 7 and we flew to Amsterdam, got off the plane, we had backpacks. We were doing a kind of a backpack, cheap dollar a day type trip. And we ended up at Amsterdam at what they call the alien’s office.

(04:05):

Now, this was where you went when you could find no accommodation anywhere. And I remember it was quite late in the evening and stood around in the alien’s office to try and get some cheap hotels. And there was nothing available. There was absolutely nothing available. And we were literally thrown out at eight o’clock in the evening. We were thrown out, sorry, we can’t help you. And I said to Dirk, we are still going to be alive tomorrow morning. We need to be smart. We are on the streets of Amsterdam, a city that we don’t know. Let’s go to a place where it’s well lit. In other words, not a dark alleyway. We will go to a place where there are lots of people and maybe even if we lean up against a bus shelter or something like that, we can catch a couple of hours sleep Now, sooner we decided to do this and were thrown out on the street.

(04:55):

Two girls came up to us and they were probably German or Austrian, not sure at the time, and don’t remember that clearly. But they didn’t speak good English. They spoke a very broken English. And they said, we have nowhere to go and we are scared. And we said, well, we’re the same. We are exactly the same. We’ve got absolutely nowhere to go. So maybe being in a group, bigger group would be safe for all of us. And of course, yeah, let’s tag along. And we got talking, limited conversation. And then this man walked up to us, plain clothes, ordinary clothes, and he said, what are you doing? And I kind of stood up and said, we are tourists. We arrived at the airport today and we have nowhere to stay. We’ve been told by the alien’s office that there are no hotels. He said, right, do you need a place to stay?

(05:51):

I immediately got a little bit suspicious. I said, who are you? He said, you cannot stay here. You stay here because the drug squads will be coming quite soon and they will search you and it’ll make your life miserable. You don’t want that to happen. I said, please tell me who you are. He said, I’m a member of the drug squad and in two hours time, I’m going to be here, so you need to sort something out. And I said, well, we don’t have anywhere to stay. And he said, I have a boat on the canal. You can doss down in the bottom of the boat. And I was comfortable with this. I wasn’t suspicious of what he was saying. We walked for 20 minutes and he said, that’s the boat. It was a wooden ramshackled wooden boat. He jumped on the boat, he grabbed one of the girls and helped her on.

(06:41):

Next girl helped her on Dirk and I. We jumped on and he said, right, the girls, you’re going to sleep there. And it was a wooden, it’s all it was. It was a wooden bench. He said to the girls, do you have any sleeping? Sleeping bag pillow? No, no. They had nothing turned to us. Do you have anything? We have a sleeping bag. And he said, how many sleeping bags? We had one each. He said, fine, give me one. And he gave it to the girls and he said, you girls, you’re going to stay there. You’re going to sleep there. You’re going to use the sleeping bag. You two, you’re going to come down. And we went down to the bowels of the boat, I suppose this was about a 40 footer, 40 foot wooden pleasure boat. Nothing fancy. Very, very basic. And I remember him saying, are you boys?

(07:20):

You stay there. Which was fine for us. And we had an uncomfortable night, but at least we felt safe early, early in the morning. First light, I get up now, I notice that one of the girls was terribly, terribly clumsy. She kept tripping over things and falling over things. Dirk, who’s six foot four, jumps onto the canal and I toss in my bag, toss in my bag, grab the girls’ bags, lean them up in, he’s pulling the bags, pulling the bags. I then jump up onto the key side and I swing around. And the first girl, I grabbed her by the hand and helped her up. And the second girl, I thought to myself, you need to hold on tight, little voice, whatever. It was said to me, you need to brace yourself. And I remember grabbing a pillar and she grabbed my hand and I said, no, no, no, no.

(08:10):

And I grabbed her wrist and she grabbed my wrist. And guess what? She fell. She slipped and fell. And because I had such a good grip on her, I her up. Okay, so that was that. We then had a fairly uneventful trip. We went, then took a train. What we would do is we’d go to A, B and B and then stuff ourselves with breakfast, not eat anything during the day. And we had Tupperware containers with a thing, something, and I think it was called Nut nutrition or eutrophic or it was basically a food protein supplement. We knew that we were going to be hungry because we weren’t going to be able to afford to buy much food. So we had this reason why I’m telling you that again, will become apparent. And we would try and eat a full breakfast, have a nutrition drink at lunchtime, and then have a simple meal in the evening.

(09:10):

And of course, we needed to keep money for beer. The plan actually worked quite well because we weren’t staying in that many hotels. We would stay, for example, b b stuff ourselves with food night train so we could sleep on the train. Then a day or two in the city, then A B, B, and then another night train, et cetera, et cetera. And we actually took a ferry, again, night ferry to Oslo. And if I remember correctly, it left from Hamburg and it went to Oslo. I remember once we, I think it was Hamburg, we had drunk quite a lot. Oh, right, yes. Now I remember now there was a train station. We’re waiting for the train. We had had no sleep. We had laid out in the corner of the railway station, laid out our sleeping bags and fallen asleep. I woke up with a start with a bump, and I looked up, Dirk was asleep, but his backpack was gone.

(10:05):

Mine was still there. So I kicked him awake, stood up, saw a man putting Dirk’s rack sack on his back, walking, and I just sprint. I didn’t think I just sprinted him. I was in full flight. And as I passed him, I grabbed the bag as I passed him, which threw him onto the ground, my weight and momentum threw him onto the ground. He then stood up and I stood up and I said, thief. But this was in Germany. Who would understand that? Well, actually, quite a few people did. Dirk then ran up to me leaving my bags and our sleeping bags unattended. The people around started shouting, pul Pul Pul. The guy then ran off. I then immediately thought, well, what’s is my bag still there? And we hurried back and there was a man standing over it, and he said, in very broken English, I look after your stuff.

(11:09):

So he had seen what was going on and came to look after our belongings. And we were so deflated by this and we thought we were so tired, we hadn’t slept properly and we were hungry. So we walked out this railway station and we found a park and there was some lovely trees, and we thought we could catch a couple of hours sati in the park. We could just rejuvenate ourselves with a bit of sleep. The next thing, a guy comes up to us and says, can you help? My car needs to be pushed. Yeah, sure. We can help you push your car, I guess. So we got up and broken English. We started, and I remember it was a Ford Cortina. It was an orange Ford Cortina. And we pushed and it was pushing backwards to start it backwards, but then he was kind of in the car and out the car, and I was trying to say to him, get in the car and steer and put it in reverse and we can just push you a little and you can start the car.

(12:08):

It wasn’t going to be a difficult start, but he wouldn’t get in the car. He was also trying to push and steer. The car started accelerating, and now he couldn’t get into the car and the door that was hanging open, hooked on a post was ripped right backwards. It was a complete calamity. And this guy and I started shouting at us and everything. Anyway, so we went back and we then decided, well, the sleep isn’t going to work. Let’s go and drink some more beer, which we did, which you do when you’re 21 years old. We got on to a ferry from Hamburg to Oslo, and we decided, well, we have to make the evening last. We were sleeping on the basic accommodation on the slip. I think it was on the ship. It was a big open place where you could just plop your sleeping bag down, no beds or anything, but at least there was a space for people like us with no money and travelling Europe on a dhar day.

(13:04):

And so sat in the lounge and we would drink half beers. And we reckon, well, the whole evening, all we could actually afford was maybe three beers each, but they would have to be half pints because we couldn’t afford anymore. And some Danish people who came and said hello to us and asked us what we were doing, we told ’em we were travelling, and they said, would you like some beer? Oh, yes, please. Because they could see, by the way, we were dressed that we had no money and bought us beer. And they actually bought us two beers that night and they didn’t interfere with us just when our beer were down, they came along and bought us in a couple of beers. They were very, very, very, very nice of them. And we had a lovely evening actually. And we ended up and we slept on the boat and ended up in the morning in Oslo where we looked around a little bit.

(13:57):

A lovely, I remember we had a lovely, actually, our best of all of the accommodations on our entire trip was in Oslo. We had a p n b. We just walked around the city, real touristy things. And then we got on a train and our destination was Bergen what magnificent scenery. This was in May, I think the first snows had fallen, but I think they were the first snows. It was certainly early snows, snows, everything was a white wonderland, but it was really warm. And we were in t-shirts, and when the train stopped at various stations, they would have like 20 minute stops, 10 minute stops, and we would get off the train and just walk around the station in t-shirts in the snow. It was brilliant. And we also had a B M B in Bergen, and Bergen was wonderful, definitely the highlight of the trip.

(14:41):

Now, after a day or two in Bergen, we decided that we wanted to go to the uk, and we had actually planned to go to the uk, but we hadn’t planned on how we were going to there. And one of the ideas was that we should go down to the docks and find out if there was a freighter going to the UK, and we could work our package as a deckhand or something, thinking about it. Now, yes, that was very naive, but in those days it was actually possible. But our inquiries obviously raised the suspicions of some of the people in Bergen. And that’s where the trouble started, because somebody at the docks then said to us, I’ll tell you what, the way to do this is to go to the alien’s office in Bergen and ask them about it. And he then escorted us to this place, and we started asking questions, and it’s easy for me now to look at that, the passage of events and understand what went on at the time.

(15:40):

However, that was not the case. I was interviewed in a separate room from Dirk. We were not interviewed together, which of course should have been a red flag, but wasn’t. Why do you want to catch a ship to save money? Do you not have any money to get to England? No, I lied. During the process of being interviewed in Bergen, we found out later, didn’t know at the time, but found out later that our bags had been searched and they had no doubt found the cash and the traveler’s checks that I was travelling with, that I had secreted in a book. So they knew that when we said no, we didn’t have money that we were lying. This again, obviously raised red flags. They searched through our bags, both of our bags quite a lot, and said, no, you cannot take a boat. In fact, you have to fly out tomorrow and we will escort you so we can watch you and see you buy your air ticket.

(16:48):

They absolutely insisted. We realised at the time that, okay, they weren’t happy. These were officials, border control officials, and they were not happy. And we thought, well, we will spend the money on an airfare and fly into Newcastle, which is in the northern part of England. Then they said to us, since you have no money, we’ll give you accommodation in our jail cell, which we accepted because at this time we didn’t know that they knew that we had money. We were still trying to get a free passage. So we accepted it because we told them we had no money. We couldn’t exactly say, no, we do have money after all, and we can find a hotel. The jail was very, very well lit. I remember in the cell, it was just Dirk and I in the cell. There was no, it was heated floor. The floor was actually hot to the touch, hot, not warm, hot to the touch.

(17:43):

There were two enormous fluorescent tube lights left on all night above our, so it was incredibly bright and incredibly hot in there, no bedding of any kind. But they did give us our bags with our sleeping bags. So we rolled the sleeping bags out and we lay on top of them to help hopefully that they would insulate our bodies from the hot floor. And in the cell next door, there was an insane person. He was screaming. This man was screaming the whole night. So we had an absolutely miserable night, and the following morning, so we’ve now got our air tickets, they’ve kept us in jail all night. They then said to us, okay, you can go. They had no reason to hold us. And what Dirk and I did, and again, this was probably incredibly suspicious, was that we decided that a great, because we didn’t have any money.

(18:37):

How do you buy gifts for your family and friends if you don’t have any money? Well, you go into, and those days, this was something that worked banks, and you ask them if they have any money boxes. Banks used to give free money boxes for kids, and of course it would have the name of the bank on it, so it would be a souvenir of the country, something little bit unusual. So we went from bank to bank to bank. And I remember once that morning, I remember our flight was in the middle of the day, so we spent the morning going to banks, one bank after the other. And I said to Dirk, I think we are being followed. And so we kind of looked and we could see and what we thought was suspicious, and we tried to outrun them. We had no idea of the severity of the situation we were in.

(19:29):

No clue, absolutely no clue at all. We were just naive teenagers. There was another thing that obviously sparked interests and made us targets. We were teenagers, not very well dressed, but I was wearing a Rolex Oyster Submariner date watch, which at the time was very new. How can I think about that? Where did I get the money from to buy out Rolex? So we then eventually got onto the plane and flew into Newcastle airport, and we were met. Do you have anything to clear? I was asked and Dirk was asked. I said, no. Dirk said no. I remember them saying, are you sure? You are telling me that you have nothing of and can’t remember exactly what he said, but got me to repeat the fact that I had nothing to declare. They pulled us aside and started dismantling our bags. They pulled out the container of nutrition or whatever it was called and said, what is this?

(20:34):

Because it wasn’t in its packaging. It had been decanted into a Tupperware. I explained that it was a protein shake. I remember him stirring it with his pen. I was a very light smoker at the time. And I had a cigarette box and it had some pebbles in it and a rusty nail. And the reason for the pebbles and the rusty nail is that I had collected them in Oslo and Amsterdam, my girlfriend at the time said, just bring me something. And she bring me some pebbles. And she was kind of quite bohemian type, and she just wanted, and I found a nail and I found a few of these things. They asked, what are those? I said, they’re stones from Amsterdam. Why? Because my girlfriend asked me to pick them up. He must have looked at me as if I’d come from another planet.

(21:20):

That’s not what you do. Well, that’s what I did. He then found a diary. Now, at the time, I kept a diary, daily events, when something interesting was happening, I would keep a daily diary. And I wrote, again, looking back at it now, it’s a bit ridiculous what I wrote, but I wrote the following words, collected the stuff from Dirk’s place and then left work early. He said, what’s the stuff now? It was a very small diary. I couldn’t spare space to write the word Nutrien. So I wrote stuff, or like now I can’t remember exactly what it was called. It was nutri something. So I wrote the word stuff and they kept on coming back again and again, what is this stuff? And I kept on saying, it’s that stuff. It’s Rogen that Dirk had organised and I had to collect it or something.

(22:14):

I don’t remember the details now, but that was the truth. They did not give me a full cavity search. But they did do a cavity search on Dirk. They, for example, told us, they took the camera and they said, does the camera work? And I said, yes, it does, it does work. And they said, we need to open it up. I said, well, that’s fine. And then I wound the film into its container. So what I’d taken pictures of wouldn’t be destroyed. And they then kept that aside and they put it aside. I’m sure that they were going to perhaps use it as, I dunno, difficult to know right now why they put it aside. But obviously they were suspicious of it. I then had to open the camera and prove that it worked. Obviously it did. Our backpacks were dismantled. All the tubes, even the tubing was dismantled and they blew air through it with their mouths to make sure that there was no obstruction and other words, nothing stored in why they didn’t just x-ray it.

(23:15):

I don’t remember at this moment. They went through our belongings with an incredibly fine tooth comb. The man then said to me, what route did you come? And I explained that it was from South Africa, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Oslo, Bergen, uk. He said, that’s a very strange route. And I remember my reply was, I dunno what you mean by strange. It’s a logical route this way. I do a big arc of Europe and I don’t have to cover the same tracks twice. I don’t understand why you think it’s strange. He went, ah, yeah, it actually does look quite a good route. I remember him saying that to me. He said right towards the end of it, they had only found these little stones. That’s the only suspicious thing that they had found. He said, what are we looking for? And I remember answering without hesitation, I said, drugs.

(24:03):

And he said, why drugs? I said, well, okay, I live in Johannesburg and if you want to buy drugs, it’s really not difficult to buy drugs in Amsterdam. They want to assault you if you don’t buy the drugs from them. And so it has to. What else could it be? It has to be drugs. He said, do you do drugs? And I said, no. And it was the absolute truth. I said, I’m just completely not interested in drugs of any kind. No, nothing. And I think he believed me because by that stage they’d found nothing. I said, what are you looking for if it’s not drugs? He said, diamonds. And I remember thinking and saying to him, so South Africa is a diamond producing country. Amsterdam is the world, the capital of the world. Diamond cutting industries in Amsterdam. That’s all I can think of. And he picked up the stones and he said, those were discovered by the alien’s office in Bergen.

(25:02):

And they called us and they said, we’ve got these two young guys coming off the flight asking to take a working freighter to the uk, wanting to avoid ordinary transport systems, which in itself is suspicious. They then found the stones and put two and two together and got 112 instead of four. And they let us go. And that is how I came to spend a night in jail. We had been at the airport for a tadd under four hours during the searching process. This is Newcastle airport in the uk. And I said to the guy, I said, we’ve missed our free coach into town. There’s no other public transport running. Now. What are you going to do about it? He said, nothing. Your problem, mate. We are going to do absolutely nothing. You’re on your own. That ticked us off a lot actually, because they could have actually done something.

(26:02):

They could have done something because we were completely, completely innocent. And we look back on it now and think to ourselves of all the stupid things that you can do, we did most of them because we were naive. We were just completely naive. But it makes a great story to tell. And if I think about my events that have taken place during air travel and cross-border travel, that is without doubt the most bizarre. I hope you’ve enjoyed my little story. There are lots of wonderful stories ahead. You’ll find them on the next journey podcast broadcast here where you found this one and where all good podcasts are broadcast weekly on Sundays, the next journey. See you next time.