Around the World in 80 Dates (15 page)

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I sighed. My head was starting to throb again; the spongy headdress was itching uncomfortably. Back out in the courtyard, however, the remaining crowd had no such misgivings. Hands paused mid-gumming and groping, they let out a collective sigh. This was the romance they had come for. The floor show had begun.

Fortunately, Eleanor took one look at my face and pushed through the crowd to where Solimano was now waiting expectantly beneath the balcony. “Come along, Romeo,” she said briskly. “Jennifer knows that bit of the story already. Let's find somewhere more private for your date.”

Solimano looked dejected but trailed obediently after her. The crowd followed with their eyes, mutinously disappointed, like children told they could not throw their pet from the window to see if it could fly.

 

Eleanor found us a couple of thrones on the first floor and the date began.

Solimano was fun, sensitive without taking himself too seriously. We chatted about life on the road. He traveled all over Italy performing, but always played Romeo when he was home.

“Don't you ever get bored of it?” I asked. Unexpectedly, a look of guilt and frustration stole across his face. Solimano quickly looked away to compose himself, then turned back. “I love Romeo,” he protested, “but the problem is that he is young and his emotions are not…” He waved his hand around, searching for the word. “…developed.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice in a conspiratorial manner. “I am not telling anyone this yet, but I am thinking maybe now I am more interested in Mercutio.”

He looked deep into my eyes, watching my reaction to his confession for signs of…I have no idea what. Outrage? Ridicule? He was clearly going through a bit of a character crisis and my question had unwittingly opened the floodgates.

Actually, most of my Romeos seemed to be at a crossroads, going through something (hey, who wasn't?), but it never occurred to me that even
the
Romeo would be.

Fresh from my intense meeting with Davide, I knew how to keep a poker face. I also knew a reaction was expected. “So, why Mercutio?” I asked conversationally.

Solimano looked troubled; then, leaning in close again, pausing to assemble the words before speaking, he answered: “Mercutio is—how you say?—the central pillar of the play.”

All around us, cameras flashed incessantly as groups of tourists stood inches away posing for photos with us. I slapped away hands that tentatively snaked over my shoulder (this was the first date where I was actually more concerned about being groped by the passersby than by the Date). Of course, the crowd had no way of knowing that they were not witnessing perfect love in action. Juliet was halfway through a rejection—Romeo didn't want to be with her; in fact, he didn't even want to be with himself.

But Solimano was unaware of or immune to the crowd, and he continued to unburden himself: “You see, at first it is a play about life. But then Mercutio dies and it becomes a dark, brooding play about death.” Solimano sat up straight, his speech gathering momentum and intensity. “Mercutio is the play's turning point; he is so strong, he can change the play from day to night, light to dark….” Solimano spoke with a feverish passion; he clenched his hands and arched his body in the chair. “…He is the most powerful person in
Romeo and Juliet
and I want to be him. I am sick of love, I want power. I have had enough of being Romeo. I want to be Mercutio.”

Reaching the climax of his speech, Solimano cried out this final pronouncement. He paused, suspended in the intensity of his realized feelings. Then a huge smile lit up his face and he collapsed back in his chair, sighing deeply, all tension gone from his body.

But I was busy having a revelation of my own: I'd come all this way only to be proven superfluous. Romeo was cutting Juliet out of the deal altogether and going straight to the afterlife on his own, as Mercutio. Love was passé; Death was in.

No wonder Davide had won the bloody Juliet prize, I thought bitterly. When it came to the most intense relationship, it seemed nobody beat Death.

“Thank you, Jennifer,” Solimano breathed. “I have never told a soul this and now I have told you. You were sent to me: I know now what I must do. No more Romeo, I am to be Mercutio.”

The cameras continued to flash and Solimano leaned back, spent and content with his revelation. I sat with my mouth slightly open, trying to work out what the hell had just happened.

 

I said good-bye to Eleanor (without whom I very much doubt I would have got out of Juliet's house alive) and embarked on a long cross-country train journey via Bologna to Florence. After two hours by bus through the soft green hills and vineyards of Tuscany, I arrived in Siena.

I had a date with
Umberto (Date #23).
He ran the traffic dating website www.motoristmail.com. I knew from our emails that the idea had come out of Umberto's frustration at being cut off in traffic:

But Umberto was a businessman and he soon realized his website could be put to better use as one of the
labor-saving devices
for busy single people. It was now a dating website custom-built for Italians who spent most of their lives stuck in their cars in traffic. Rather than registering the license plates of bad drivers on the website, it now allowed you to register your own license plate if you were single and looking to meet someone. So if you saw someone you fancied in a traffic jam but couldn't get to talk to them from your car, you just went to Umberto's website and, if their details were registered, emailed and asked them out on a date.

The idea had caught on, and Umberto's site now got six thousand posts a day.

This and all Umberto's other businesses kept him so incredibly busy, however, that he could only spare the time to date me over lunch. So we met at a teeny pizzeria and chatted at a table outside in the bright Tuscan sunshine. I was fascinated to hear about the site and really liked Umberto, who was shy but charming. But he seemed a total workaholic. I was sad for him but not surprised to hear he didn't have a girlfriend. “I'll get one when I have more time and lots of money,” he said matter-of-factly before having to rush back to work.

After our pizza date, I caught the train to Pisa and flew to Berlin. As the plane taxied for takeoff, I took one last look out the window at Italy. Another country done. It had been fascinating and I had met some lovely people, but I was now more than twenty dates into my journey—a quarter of my potential The Ones met—and I was still no closer to finding my Soul Mate. Was I doing something wrong, or was it simply that I hadn't yet achieved the critical mass that statistically contained my new man? What were my Soul Mate odds: one in how many?

How many more before I met him? Was I close? What more could I do to speed up the process, or be confident I was even on the right path? If I held my breath until we took off, if the man next to me finished his chapter before the captain said we could undo our seat belts, would I meet my Soul Mate in Germany? Was our meeting a matter of such superstition or random luck?

Did I have to work harder at finding my Soul Mate, or did I have to work harder at trusting Fate? I wasn't exactly losing hope, but it was a surprise that so many people had yielded—and I don't mean this in an unkind way—so little. And in the meantime, I seemed to be loading up my romantic mystery tour bus with a huge number of people who all quite understandably expected my energy and attention. Was I in danger of becoming so busy picking up passengers that, when the time came, there wouldn't be room for the one person I wanted on board?

This was a very real possibility.

 

Although Berlin had regained its status as capital of Germany, most airlines had yet to build this into their schedules and fly direct. As a result, although travelers might just make the tight connections, their bags generally weren't so lucky, and lost luggage had become the norm.

Sure enough, I got to Berlin but my bags didn't. And I'd made the mistake of agreeing to meet
Ede (Date #24)
in Arrivals. Even on a normal day, I like to arrive at my own pace. Today, with makeup and dating clothes in my lost bags, I felt particularly unprepared.

Ede was waiting with a single yellow rose (which, unlike Willem in Holland, he gave me straight away) and didn't seem at all troubled by the fact that we couldn't leave until I had reported my bags missing. There was a huge line at the lost luggage office, so we went for a coffee.

It was to be my first—and, I hoped, last—airport date.

I sneaked a look at him as we queued: mid-thirties, tall and slim, with long legs and a slightly mysterious air. He was nice and easy to talk to, but I struggled to concentrate on the conversation; all I could think about was my bags and if I'd ever see them again.

Four hours later, we finally made it to the front of the line. The clerk assured me that my bags would be delivered to my hotel by 5 p.m., although “there may be a delay as all streets are being closed for the Love Parade.”

I knew all about the Love Parade. It was the reason I was here.

Since 1989, Berlin's Love Parade has been the world's biggest techno street party. It might take two to tango, but it took up to two million to techno, as big-name DJs on flamboyant carnival floats pumped up the volume in Tiergarten Park, surrounded by huge crowds of ravers. I wanted to see if I would be lucky in Love in Berlin.

Ede was lovely but he didn't have my attention. It was no one's fault. I liked him and in a different situation we might have clicked, but not this time. I felt bad when he dropped me at my hotel: I halfheartedly said maybe I could see him later but secretly hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed when I didn't get back in touch.

 

I was staying in Prenzlauer Berg. Part of old East Berlin—one of the few areas to resist Hitler's rise to power—this was where the radicals, intellectuals, and students lived. It felt like a place only you know about, and it was fascinating to stumble across quirky galleries, stark buildings with beautiful features, plus loads of funky bars and cafés.

I
was staying here, but apparently my bags weren't; there was still no sign of them.

I went out to see an art installation in the cavernous and scary basement of a water tower up the road. When I came back, there was still no sign of my bags. I went for a long walk round the Berg, poked round shops, found a great bar, and settled down with my book until 11 p.m. The bags were still not at the hotel when I returned. “Maybe midnight, maybe tomorrow?” the receptionist answered without looking up from his paper.

I knew there was no point in getting angry: It would just give me a headache and the Tylenol was in my lost bags.

 

I came down to reception the next morning. “Any sign of my bags?” I asked in a monotone.

“No, we have no idea where they are,” the receptionist replied cheerfully.

Sometimes I think there is nowhere more foreign than Europe.

I went back to my room, drank some coffee, turned my knickers inside out, then set off in two-day-old clothes and no makeup to join some of the most beautiful people in the world dancing for joy.

It was a shame I wasn't at my best, as I had quite a tricky dating day ahead of me. I was to go to the parade with
Paul (Date #25),
a raver I'd met via one of the Love Parade websites, then date
DJ Frank from Holland (Date #26)
on his float, then
Franz-Philipp (Date #27)
on his float. I knew from my BBC Radio 1 days how incredibly resistant club people are to being nailed down; any arrangement was going to be fluid.

 

At school, I was always very sporty. Love Parade gave me an insight into how it must feel when no one wants you on their team.

I made myself up in a department store using the testers on the cosmetics counter. I then met Paul, who was very young and completely hyper on E. Ten minutes into the date, he scaled a lamppost and that was the last I saw of him (I was wearing a skirt and two-day-old knickers; I wouldn't have joined him even if I'd been able to). DJ Frank's float had been detained at the Dutch border, and the bouncers on Franz-Philipp's float took one look at my appearance and refused to even pass on a message saying I'd arrived.