Europe on a backpack?

Used to be a time summer was meant for Europe. You put on a backpack and walked into two or three embassies and took visas

Used to be a time summer was meant for Europe. You put on a backpack and walked into two or three embassies and took visas (there was the time before SHENGEN), took an Eurail pass and wandered around Europe.

You stopped here or there or wherever fancy took you. You wanted to stop in Paris but when you reached there you found it raining, so you took another train to Aix-en-Provence where Vincent Van Gogh had spent a lot of time during his lifetime observing the countryside and painting.

You got off at the station, made inquiries about cheap hotels/youth hostels, went, parked your bag and started wandering through town for a couple of days trying to see if you could glimpse what Van Gogh must have seen (as you can well imagine, did not even come close), spent a couple of days and moved on as the mood took you, maybe even as far as Germany or Austria or maybe some other part of France not knowing where, almost till the time you got there.

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Now, it’s all so different. Before you go to Europe, you have to give long explanations at the visa office. You have to stand before a man in a white checked shirt wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses and explain to him where you will be on May 17 — which is the hotel you will be staying at and whether you have a confirmation for the hotel. He will ask you these questions, looking stern. It has got to be fax, and e-mail will not do. And if it comes to his mind he might well ask you where you are going for dinner on the night of May 17. The joy of wandering through Europe in summer — and I am reliably informed that Australia and New Zealand are even worse — has all but vanished. The visa officer squeezes you like a lemon for information, and it is death of your trip right in Bombay itself.

The great joys of travelling in the classical sense — with serendipity — are over. Going where the mood takes you is no longer possible or feasible. Europe on a backpack and a shoestring is a thing of the past. Even wandering through Europe in a beat-up car stopping at this city or that, dropping by this village inn or that, are now all firmly in the past. I understand that visa officers have compulsions but what I want to ask is: do I look like the sort of guy who would make trouble?

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