Sunday 6 August, 1314 British Summer Time, London W1, United Kingdom

Quite why Edit "Nina" Weaver, nee Varga, had decided that they were going to have Sunday lunch at a Berni Inn was a mystery that was unknown to anyone living.

But there the four of them were in the faux-Tudor chain restaurant, waiting for their starters to show up. With the options being prawn cocktail or melon boat with marschino cherry.

The choices for the main course? Rump steak, gammon steak or plaice... all served with chips.

And the wonderful selection for dessert? Black Forest Gateau or something from the cheese board.

Perhaps the Hungarian-born wife of Desmond Weaver wanted one last taste of British gastronomy, or the lack thereof, before leaving. Although to be honest, they could have just gone to one of the curry houses that were increasingly proliferating.

Weaver was drinking a pint of Double Diamond beer while her husband was paying a visit to the gents. She was a not unattractive lady in her 30s, who had fled with her parents from the Soviet invasion in 1956 ending up in West Germany, where she had ended up working as a barmaid in a pub frequented by RAF personnel, where in 1965 she had met Desmond Weaver who had then been a truck driver for a Canberra squadron.

Now they were engaging in their love for long distance travel in a pair of VW Kombis; both of which were parked near the guest house at Victoria Station. The party would be walking back after lunch - or even springing for a taxi.

She took another sip of her beer, then looked at the others.

"So," she said in a hard to place accent, "Is this your first time going East?"

"Not the first time, no," replied James with a shake of his head. He spoke very well and with a clear Scottish accent, as he sat relaxed leaning back in his chair. He took another deep draw from his cigarette and slowly exhaled, then took another large gulp from his pint.

"I've been off these isles a few times - Rome, North Africa...I'm mostly looking forward to Consta...sorry, force of habit...to Istanbul. I've wanted to see the old Byzantium for some time, but it's been difficult to find anyone in my area with an interest enough to fund anything worthwhile. Many of these sojourns are self-funded, and..."

Realising his tongue was running away with itself James smiled, and took another puff.

"Sorry, I do tend to go on a little when talking of my interests. And there will be plenty more to see and do long before we get to Istanbul.

And...you? Clearly you're not British, and that slight accent would indicate...Eastern European? So I would surmise you're not new to overseas travel."

From what Himura had observed of Jimmy over the past couple days, the conversation would not need any help form Himura.  All the best, really.  The only English Himura understood clearly was the English spoken by the school teachers in Japan.  It took less than one day abroad to shatter any illusion that resembled anything spoken off the island.

At first when Himura heard "East" he panicked a bit, thinking the question was directed at him, as Japan was sometimes refered to that way.  When Jimmy jumped in, Himura made no effort to hide his relief.

Himura recognized he was already conceding to the charisma of the large Scotsman.  True, he had the towering build of the beigun (zainichi beigun, the American soldiers in Japan filling the bars and other, less respectable, establishments), but he treated Himura like another human being and they seemed to see the world the same way.

While Himura wasn't sure at first (in truth, Himura is never sure at first) when he had ran into Jimmy at the anti-nuclear protests in Scotland, he was already coming to rely a great deal on the outgoing companion.
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Nina shook her head.

"Most definitely not," she replied. "Although my first time was not exactly voluntary. Ever heard of a place called Sopron?"

Once they had answered, she continued.

"I was born there in '41. My biological father, who I never knew got himself killed on the Eastern Front. Mama married Papa after the war."

Desmond nodded.

"Then of course, the communists took over," he added. "With their version of Stalin actually going to school there."

Nina tutted.

"This is my life story, darling, let me tell it. May Rákosi burn in hell, the b*****d," she continued. Anyway, you know what happened in 1956."

At that point, their starters arrived. And Himura Kanzou got to see his first prawn cocktail as it was placed in front of Nina.

"Sopron? I'm not sure - where is it situated? The Roman Empire held those lands for a time, certainly during the reign of Trajan, but I'm not precise on the details there. I've heard Budapest is nice, but more than that I'm sorry to say I do not know."

Jimmy returned to his beer and his cigarette as Nina and Desmond responded. Her tale was not that surprising, for the Second World War had brought many consequences, both good and bad - the overthrow of the terrible fascist dictator had only been a part of it. It was almost impossible to estimate how many lives had been taken, altered or changed completely. Perhaps, though Jimmy, it would have been easier to count those unaffected by the conflict.

And then the starters arrived. Jimmy loved seafood, and although there were some places in the world he wouldn't risk it this felt about as safe as one could hope. Before he started on his though, he turned to his Japanese friend to gauge his reaction.

"What do you think, Kanzou? I'm sure most of us are unfamiliar with the cuisine of your culture, so how is this from your perspective? Do you think it looks inviting, threatening, or possibly even a challenge?!"

"Challenge?" Himura intoned thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the strange glass.  "Prawn...we eat in Japan...but how do you eat...this?"

It is, of course, quite simple to eat prawn with chopsticks, but to put one on a spoon would be slippery and awkward.  Furthermore, the British did not take dishes into their hands while eating them like the Japanese, meaning the food had to be ferried all the way from the table to their mouths without spilling.  Was this delicate balancing act the challenge of which Jimmy spoke?  Or was it meant to be eaten with fingers like the ever popular fried fish and chips?

One thing was certain, Himura would wait and follow the table's lead.

"Sopron's on the border with Austria. In fact, after World War I, it was initially allocated to Austria... then they had an uprising and a vote was arranged, the vote being to go back to being Hungarian. Still a fair number of Germans were living there though. Like Mama."

****
The prawn cocktails were provided with forks and spoons. Nina picked up hers and skewered one of the prawns with it. Desmond had a melon boat, using a fork to eat each of the bits of melon. They were on a table for six; two more people were expected at least.

****
Nina continued the story of her life.

"We ended up in a refugee camp for about a week, then the Germans agreed to take my family. We resettled in Kleve. The English name is Cleves."

Jimmy would know Cleves from school; it was where Henry VIII's fourth wife had come from.

"Eventually I got my German citizenship," Nina said. "Decided I wanted to travel, so I got a job at a beer garden frequented by British military guys so I could practise my English. There I met Des. Been married for five years now."

She reached into her handbag producing two passports; a black-blue British one and a green one labelled BUNDESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND.

"Just got this one from the embassy recently. I filled the other one up with stamps..."

When the starters arrived Jimmy tucked in (without being a pig), because he he knew to enjoy a good meal when the prospect of your next one was uncertain. Hopefully the prawns were fresh, because he really didn't want to start the trip with stomach troubles, although he usually avoided the worst of such ordeals.

Nina's story was interesting, even if she was just one of thousands upon thousands (if not millions) who had moved all over the world since the great upheaval of the war.

"I've never been to Germany. My old man joined the army in the last couple of years of the war but by the time he was posted abroad it was to north Africa, and all the action had long moved north. He never fired so much as a shot, not even from the tanks he was a gunner in - not in anger at least. He was quite happy to return home to Scotland and live a quiet life, which was fine for him I guess. What little he told me of the Middle East was enough to stir my childish imagination, and that has never really changed. It's a big old world out there, I'd love to see more of it."

He picked up his pint and drank it almost - but not quite - to the bottom. Perhaps their generous hosts would see to refills all around. Speaking of which...Nina has gotten a new passport, having filled her old one?

"That must have taken some effort, to fill a passport with stamps! How many places have you been? What countries?"

Gillian pushed her way through the door, struggling with a large and overstuffed holdall. She looked round, and broke into a cheerful smile when she saw the others.

"Sorry I'm late. The coach got held up on the M4."

Her accent was home counties, with just a hint of north London. She was fashionably dressed in a striped T-shirt, white hot pants and white boots, though her most immediately striking feature was her unruly mane of curly red hair.

She ordered her food, starting with a prawn cocktail, and a pint of Skol, before sitting down.

Nina started to count on her fingers.

"I'd have to check, but there is something like 150 independent states on this planet at the moment," she said. "Before you count the various colonial territories still out there."

Gillian arrived at this point and sat down.

"The M4 is awful, isn't it?" Desmond said. "I'm looking forward them actually building a motorway around London so there's less of the through traffic to deal with. Although Nina thinks it will just attract even more of it."

"Yes. We can have that and many other discussions on our long drive ahead," Nina replied, then resumed her discussion.

"I think I've done around 55 to 60 countries. All of Europe that's not in the Eastern bloc, most of Southern Asia, a fair chunk of the Middle East and parts of North Africa. Looking to do Kenya and Tanzania next autumn once this is done.

I went to Israel last year... and forgot the issues that an Israel stamp can cause for being let into some countries. Getting told at Cairo Airport that I couldn't enter Egypt was a bit embarrassing...

Now, in the Common Market as you guys call it, they generally don't stamp my passport unless I ask... so, during our trip down to Greece in the spring, I made sure that I got stamps at every frontier... and took several day trips to France after we were done."

Desmond added.

"Nina's a bit reluctant to go across the Iron Curtain, so I tend to handle the excursions to that part of Europe. Russia? Positive nightmare to drive across..."

Nina laughed as the waiter came over with Gillian's Skol and her prawn cocktail.

Desmond continued, now very much into the swing of an anecdote he had told quite a few times.

"Especially when your Intourist guide can't read a map to save her life... and almost gets the whole party shot..."

He launched into the story.

"So, a bunch of Marxist students are on this trip... I'm happy to take their money myself... and our guide, who I swear was KGB, decides we're going to visit a collective farm near Minsk... Fair enough, so I let her navigate to this place."

He picked up the salt shaker.

"So, we're driving down what is basically a glorified dirt track when all of a sudden, we turn a corner and I'm looking directly at a nuclear missile, along with a bunch of rather scary looking soldiers..."
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A redhead arrived, clearly part of the company but she sat down without introducing herself, and neither Nina or Desmond moved to do so. So he took the initiative, offering his hand.

"Hi, I'm Jimmy. And you must be..?"

Once the introductions were completed he turned back to the conversation.

"I love North Africa, its like stepping back in time. Nothing much has changed in hundreds of years, if at all. And there are some beautifully preserved ruins in Cyrenaica, at Ptolemais, where I spent a few months. But I'd love to see much more of Africa, south of the Sahara. Depending upon how this trip goes, I may wish to join you next autumn!

Glad to say I haven't been to Isreal, so my visits to Egypt have been trouble-free. A British passport still provides you with a lot of advantages there, though perhaps not as much as it once did."

Jim downed the dregs of his beer as the conversation moved on to Russia.

"From what I hear the KGB follow every foreigner, so you were probably right. Anyway, what happened next?"

Desmond continued.

"The soldiers start screaming at us to get out of the vehicle in Russian. Apparently, they were from Kazakhstan; they definitely looked a bit Chinese to me. We climb out and kneel on the ground. One of the guys starts praying rather loudly - which probably wasn't the best thing to do, but still - and I'm having thoughts of ending up in a gulag..."

He drank some of his own Double Diamond.

"Then this officer shows up. He's clearly an officer because he's wearing one of those big caps they like to wear. There's a brief discussion with our guide... and then we're given directions back to the farm, being allowed to leave.

As we leave, I see a younger looking soldier, probably one of the conscripts get a rifle butt to the stomach from a Sergeant. I'm guessing that he must have mucked something up or something. Possibly forgot to put a sign out or something."

He took a bit of his own melon boat.

"Anyway, we went to the collective farm and the rest of the day passed without incident."

He declined to mention the report he'd made to British military intelligence once he'd crossed back into West Germany then turned to Jimmy.

"Ptolemais?" he asked. "Is that in Libya?"

She shook Jimmy's hand.

"Hi Jimmy, I'm Gillian. Gillian Brooks."

She took a drink of her lager and started on her prawn cocktail, listening to the tale of a road trip in the USSR.

"I'd love to see the ruins. I'm studying History, and it's much better seeing places in person than just reading about them. A castle looks more intimidating in stone than on paper."

"I can think of more relaxing trips to see farms, but having grown up on one perhaps not...I'm sure a KGB interrogation pales by comparison with some of the inquisitions my father gave me..."

Jimmy gave a small smile to show he spoke in (perhaps?) good humour, then his arm moved slightly before returning to its original position. He wasn't sure of etiquette at this point, and just how much of this was put on for all of them. Only one way to find out...

"Shall I order us more drinks?"

That done he moved swiftly on.

"Yes, it is indeed," Jimmy confirmed Desmond's enquiry as to the location of Ptolemais. "Interesting country, Libya, still trying to find it's feet after the coup in '69. Every man in Libya gets a weekly dividend from the state, so most of the young ones don't work, just spend their days looking for something to do. It's a strange mix of Islam above all first and foremost, coupled with new technology and fizzy drinks. Women, whether dressed per religious beliefs or in a more western style, are completely unapproachable to outsiders, whether you'd want to or not. But for all that they are a very friendly people, eager to please, if only to fill in the day one supposes.

And I haven't even mentioned the ruins yet..."

"Yes, you're very much outside the Western world once you start hearing that call to prayer thing on a regular basis. Basically, once we hit Turkey, although there a fair number of Muslims in Yugoslavia and Albania. More of them coming here of course from the Indian subcontinent."

Nina took a sip of her second pint.

"Many of the people we'll meet will be friendly. But if you hand a guy a uniform and especially a gun, there is a real danger he can turn into a... how do you say it... a**ehole?"

Desmond laughed.

"That is true, although often nothing that a good bit of baksheesh doesn't solve. Sometimes they're genuinely corrupt, sometimes they don't get paid enough. A lot of poverty in that part of the world, especially once you hit India. Adding over a hundred million to your population in ten years sure doesn't help."

"Not for me just now"

Gillian had only just started on her first pint, even as she finished her prawn cocktail.

"I'm looking forward to meeting other cultures. I've never really been anywhere before."

A school day-trip to Boulogne didn't really count, she decided.

"It will be interesting to see if Muslims the world over are broadly the same. For a religion that advocates peace and love, not all of them appear to have read from the same Koran, something of a mixed bag in my experience. Which almost goes without saying, regardless of which religion we're talking about. Haven't really looked into any of them with much enthusiasm after all those torturous Sunday mornings at Sunday school as a kid - our parents made us go every week, and it was the most tedious experience of my life. It might have been that way for me even if the Bible had made any sense to me, which it never did. I just remember sitting there in uncomfortable clothes, too cold most of the year and then too hot in the summer. Dreadful."

Jimmy shook his head and smiled ruefully, but thought he should add a quick rejoinder.

"Of course, that was just my perspective, yours might be very different."

"My parents were more Christian by habit, so I never had to do Sunday school. But my school had church services at Easter and Christmas, and we used to have to sit for hours on those wooden pews. We called it 'numb bum house'."

Gillian grinned.

"Not really sure what I believe in religiously, but I believe in cushions."

"There are a lot of Muslims out there," Desmond said as their finished first courses were taken away. "Out of the 3,700 million or so people currently living on this planet, there are something like nearly 600 million Muslims. That's likely to increase a lot over the next couple of decades, considering where populations are growing."

Nina nodded.

"They are definitely very different. Afghanistan looks very different to Turkey. You'll definitely want a headscarf in Afghanistan. And to cover up, because 'loose women' can cause a lot of upset."

"Loose women can cause upset whether they're covered or not, in some cases...

...Or so I've heard, at any rate. I couldn't possibly comment from personal experience, of course..."

Jimmy grinned, in the way that he tended to, which left some little doubt as to whether he did speak from experience or not, but most likely did. He hadn't come down the Clyde in a banana boat after all. He puffed on his cigarette and appeared to lose himself in thought for a while - his smile dropped a bit at one moment, but he appeared to almost shrug mentally and pass it off, before putting out the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table.

Nina raised an eyebrow and then lowered it.

"Also, they're not really into cutlery in that part of the world. You use your right hand to take the food. Not your left. That's the one you use for wiping your bum."

Such candour was something of a surprise to Jimmy, at least initially, but he reasoned that a seasoned traveller like Nina took such matters in her stride. Still...

"I would say that this is as good a time as any to bring that up, but perhaps not in the middle of lunch! Seriously though, it's better to be acquainted with any change of custom well ahead of time, so one becomes so familiar as for it to be second nature. Even the simplest of misunderstandings can lead to all manner of bother.

On the other hand, what appears to be remarkable kindness can be something of a double-edged sword. One time at Cyrenaica I was working alone late into the day, and was then invited to spend the night at the house of a minor official who considered himself something of a bigshot in the local area. He was very hospitable if a little full of himself, and talked of his family and fine possessions - to his eyes - as if he were a rich man indeed. The food was passable and the evening was interesting at least, but the highlight was being promised his 'finest guestroom' with bed.

Or so it appeared. An hour after I turned-in, I woke up with the most terrible itching - bed bugs! They were voracious! Fortunately I had my travel bag with me, and I tipped the bedding onto the floor and used my sleeping bag wrapped tight around me on the old metal bedframe, while trying to lie still and not scratch. A terrible night, which of course I could make no mention of the next morning, all while thanking my host profusely. Worse than that, from that point on he began asking us for hefty amounts of dinar every time we needed something. We only had ten days of dig left and I haven't been back since, but it's not something I'll easily forget."

As Gillian started on her plaice and chips, she silently agreed that foreign toilet practices were not an appropriate topic!

She grinned at James's story.

"Those with power make the rules, or exploit the rules. Always the way. Most of the time, 'Don't let the bedbugs bite' is just a saying."

"'Don't let the mosquitoes bite' is a more relevant saying," Desmond replied. "Malaria is pretty awful, so make sure you take your anti-malarial tablets. As for local officials, some can be great, some can be awful. Customs men in particular. The Yugoslavs once hauled Nina off for questioning for about two hours because of her accent. Thought she was a spy. Well, she certainly infiltrated my heart."

Nina blushed.