It’s funny, the things you remember from trips abroad (writes Jim Alexander). From Paris, I don’t remember the Eiffel Tower: I remember a huge man wearing a tiny party hat screaming “I SMELL UK! SMELLS GOOOOOD!” while he tries to convince my co-roadie to, um, “come into the basement” and have a drink with him.

My memory of Switzerland isn’t of the Alps - it’s a guy who looks like a cross between John Thaw and Jimmy Saville waving a jar of pickled mushrooms like a banner, his chest barely covered by the open folds of a magnificent pink shellsuit. His chest-hair hides the glitter of medallions. His belly hides the shortest pair of short shorts you’ve ever seen. From whence spring the thick red legs of a man who spends his time grubbing for fungi on the slopes of mountains. I got the impression he foraged in those shorts and that top, crawling over the glorious foothills of his front garden like some kind of pink beetle.

Let me explain. I’ve seen quite a bit of Europe in my capacity as one half of a roadying duo. The duties of a roadie are simple: get the band from show to show, don’t lose anyone and don’t let sleeping in an ancient van on top of a load of amps get you down. In the days before sat-nav, this involved quite a bit of getting lost and an awful lot of turning up in out-of-the-way places in the middle of the night; unloading, reloading and getting our first view of picture-perfect mountains, rivers, or the little red walls of a border town with sunrise.

It also involved people: lots of people. I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower from the windows of a van; I’ve driven through Paris in rush hour (if you’ve never done it, you should - it’s the only place on earth you’re allowed to swear at total strangers without getting clocked). I’ve been stunned by the Gothic awesomeness of Reims Cathedral. Wandered the gilt-covered squares of Nancy (locals will point out the glittering statue of the Duke of Lorraine in the “Place Stan’”, which is reputedly pointing not at some historic location but the site of his favourite whorehouses); marched the unbelievably opulent streets of Nice and Biarritz. But when I think back on all the tours we’ve done, all the gigs, towns, cities and countries: I don’t really remember anything except the people.

People are travelling. That’s what it’s all about. You can see amazing things everywhere in Europe: but I guarantee the thing you will remember most, the story you’ll always tell, is the guy on the bus who took you to meet his family, the crazy old woman who thought you were Joseph Fiennes. What I remember most about Spain ain’t Barcelona - it’s a mad Catalan who insisted on giving me a painting. He didn’t speak English, so he yelled “JACKSON POLLOCK!” at me repeatedly for almost an hour.

Eventually he managed, with the aid of the venue owner, to make me understand that he wanted to make a gift to me of something he’d done himself - a rather disturbing still life of some dead black flowers. I tried my best to convey my gratitude - he nodded and smiled, gesticulated happily, hugged me in an embrace that smelt of whisky and garlic.  “He says,” the owner of the venue translated, “that if you don’t take good care of his painting, he’ll cut your throat.”

I still have the picture. It comes out on stage sometimes when we do a show on Halloween.

Most of all, though, I remember the man in the pink shellsuit. He welcomed us into his beautiful home: a huge dark lodge spilling over the side of an Alp. He fed us pickled mushrooms and frites and completely ignored us for two hours while he yelled in an incomprehensible dialect at a football match on his TV. He spoke no English and his French was so peculiar that none of us could understand any of it. But his kindness, and his happiness at feeding us his weird home-pickled meal, was unmistakeable. 

We ate on a balcony overlooking a vertiginous drop littered with casual Alpine beauty. An occasional Flemish-sounding curse rattling the windows. If you could tear yourself away from the view, you’d see this glorious pink mountain man dancing around his TV set waving a beer can. Perfectly happy, perfectly welcoming, perfectly removed. That, not some building - some queue - that, to me, is travelling. Smells goooood.

About the author

Jim Alexander is a writer and roadie who has been travelling Europe and the rest of the world for the last ten years. He currently calls a little village in Devon, UK, his home – for now, at least...