Reading the International Herald Tribune in Amsterdam

I have to say, first of all, that I love travelling - I especially relish arriving in a strange city alone - I lean back in the taxi, looking out at the dark streets - different moonlight floods over a baroque cathedral - I hear songs from the radio - the girl is singing a love song in a language other than my own -

When I lived in Highgate, I read Boswell's biography of Johnson - reading it was one of the times when I was genuinely happy - Doctor Johnson once said, of being driven rapidly in a post chaise - life has not many things better than this - I feel likewise, when I watch the runway fall away, as the beautiful jet rises up into the sky -

One of my pleasures, once settled in a foreign city, is to buy a copy of The International Herald Tribune - I weave my way through the people on the bright pavement - I look at the statues of poets and revolutionaries, shaded by trees in quiet squares - I feel the warm morning sun upon my skin - I make my way to a cafe, to drink coffee, and to read my Tribune -

Unfolding the paper, sipping the coffee - be it coffee au lait, served in a thick glass tumbler, in Taroudant, say - or an expresso, in a tiny cup, in Naples - I feel that I could be anyone -

When I was in Amsterdam, I sat in a bar with a glass of Jupiler - a man came into the bar with his daughter - he was on his way to see his wife, from whom he'd separated - there was an article about Pope Paul II on the front page of the Tribune -

Anne was with me - she asked the young father where we could eat - he suggested a Thai place, near the red light district - his little daughter danced around the bar -

The Thai place turned out to be a tiny room, entered through a bead curtain - on the way there, we saw the young women in the windows - they looked like pale statues -