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Journey to the East Chapter 3
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Thursday 19 June, Munich/Salzburg. Would this rain never cease, I thought to myself as I gazed out the window of the youth hostel at the downpour. This put me in a bad mood, as I had made up my mind to leave today. I took too much time checking out the best way to the Autobahn, so I left the hostel in a rush, leaving my hostel card behind. The loss of the hostel card irked me, as it meant I would have to buy one further on, from my dwindling resources. Still, things could have been worse. Forty years earlier the writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor, walking to Constantinople, had his rucksack stolen from the Munich Youth Hostel, and it contained his passport, books, money and worst of all his travel diary. The advantage of my little ex-army shoulder-bag was that I could fit everything of value into it, and, unless it was securely locked up someplace, it never left my side for the duration of the trip.
I took the bus to the Autobahn, but
when I arrived there were about 15 hitch-hikers ahead of me. Had to join
on at end of queue. Waited for about an hour and a half in the cold and wet,
and was resigning myself to a long stay--I could still see people ahead
of me, and the queue didn't seem to be getting any smaller.
Then there was a sudden flurry of cars pulling, maybe the drivers started taking pity on the hitchers standing in the rain!
While several others ahead of me were discussing lifts with a couple of drivers a truck pulled in and I jumped straight in.
I tried to make myself understood, but the driver didn't speak a word of English, or any other language that I tried.
It turned out he came from Iran.
He stopped for a coffee and bought
me a tea. With hand gestures and drawings he explained that he
couldn't read the Western script, so he wanted me to direct him to
where he had to deliver his load. We spread my map and his Cyrillic map
across the table and I marked the route he had to take, then got back in the
cab with him to direct him there.
I left at the Ausfahrt and started
hitching from there, but was told off by the cops for hitching on the
Autobahn. I waited until they were gone, then returned to the spot.
Got several short lifts before getting one into Salzburg from
a guy who had been to India. He had one horror story after another.
I got the feeling that he was trying to put
me off going by telling all the bad aspects of the place.
The town was originally a Celtic settlement, exploiting the
neighbouring salt-mines. It later came under Roman control but was
abandoned with the onset of the Barbarian invasions. After the
establishment of an abbey there its fortunes revived.
An Irishman, St.
Fergal (also called Virgil, after the Latin form of his name),
who became bishop in 745, built its first cathedral. Fergal
was an exponent of the Celtic church and maintained its traditions while
abbot in Salzburg, much to the annoyance of Boniface, who was
technically his superior in what was then Bavaria.
The great
administrator
Boniface, who was from Devon, had several disagreements with Fergal,
during one of which Fergal enlisted the support of another Irishman,
Di, abbot of nearby Chiemsee, until the death of Boniface. An early example of
English/Irish conflict!
Later Fergal
came into conflict with the Pope for maintaining that the world was
round, and that the other side of the globe was inhabited. Although this
idea was in agreement with some earlier geographers, it was contrary
to Church teaching at the time.
Fergal was
canonized shortly after his burial-place was rediscovered in
the 12th century.
As usual when arriving in a country one of the first thoughts is
currency. I found it difficult to get my bearings and walked around
for about an hour trying to find the train station to get some money changed
and store my rucksack.
I expected to find it in the centre of the town, as is generally the
case in Germany, but here it is situated north of the town centre.
At the Hauptbahnhof I found posters
of all-singing, all-dancing Julie Andrews advertizing the "Original
Sound of Music"
tours (it was filmed in Salzburg in 1964). My guidebook informed me
that the old graveyard behind
St. Peter's church was where Liesl's boyfriend Rolf blew the whistle
on the von Trapp family.
Bought some food which I ate in the gardens of the Schloss Mirabell
(shown on the left).
Friday 20
June, Salzburg/Innsbruck/Landeck It started to rain early in
the morning, so I decided to move on. I just needed to decide
whether
to go to Vienna and meet up with the gang from Munich, or head as
planned down to Italy. The weather would not be any better in Vienna,
and it was supposed to be expensive, so I decided on Italy, via
Liechtenstein, which would mean a trip through the mountains of the
Tyrol and Vorarlberg.
Took a bus to the start of the Autobahn.
Three people were there, one English bloke had been waiting for two hours.
More people arrived even as I was looking for a place to start from.
I made a sign for Innsbruck. Very few lifts, and the rain continued.
I finally got a lift off an oldish but very tanned and
healthy-looking guy. He said he was going to Innsbruch by a roundabout
route, via the Kitzbühel Alps, and I could come if I wanted. That sounded interesting.
We drove off the main Autobahn and followed the course of the
Salzach river towards St. Johann, then on to a narrow
mountain road, very steep, right up to the level of the snow. We
stopped
near the summit of one mountain, at a little wooden chalet
surrounded with snow two feet deep,
where we had bread and cheese and fresh milk straight from the
cow. My driver told me he was an architect and had to discuss a contract for a
job he was doing. He said he spent a lot of time gliding. At another point further on he
had to give me snuff to help my breathing in the thin air!
We continued our drive through the snow to a village called Alt
Maria, which appeared to me to be as high as you could possibly go in
those parts. Here my driver did his business with the Bürgermeister,
and then we were on our way again.
The scenery was fabulous. Steep, snow-covered cliffs on each side as
we drove through the valleys. Fantastic views from the mountain roads.
It was late afternoon by the time we reached Innsbruck. This was
another ancient Celtic settlement. I remembered a
Jacobite story
Much as I was tempted to tarry in Innsbruck, with its memories of
Austrian history going back hundreds of years, I stayed only long enough
to view some of the sights of the city and buy some Lire.
Innsbruck means Bridge over the river Inn and was in the news because it was the venue of the 1964 Winter Olympics (mainly at the ski resort of Igls). The Inn rises in the South of the Tyrol, flows across the Tyrol and into Germany and joins the Danube at the German/Austrian border town of Passau. Directly south of Innsbruck, via a recently completed motorway through the Wipp Valley that goes all the way to Verona, is the Brenner Pass, the most direct way to Italy (but I was taking a roundabout route, travelling West!).
I walked as far as the Autobahn. I found myself at
an awkward spot, but wasn't waiting long when I got a lift from three
heads in a VW bus. They were heading West along the motorway, which goes through the Inn Valley, to some destination that I didn't understand (and they didn't speak very good English). They had a lot of dope--Afghan--and we smoked a
pipe-full together. What an experience--belting along the mountainous
Austrian roads, nicely stoned and listening to Pink Floyd. At one stage they intimated that they'd be leaving the motorway and
driving up into the mountains, and offered to take me,
but as I didn't know where I might end up, I preferred to be dropped me off at Landeck, where I
spent the night in someone's garden. Saturday 21
June, Feldkirch/Vaduz/Lugano
Feldkirch, located at the Western edge of the Vorarlberg region, and along the river Ill, was an interesting historic town, like the others
recently visited, its origins going back to the Celts. There's a Schloss, the Schattenburg, that dominates the town. I had read that
Arthur Conan Doyle had studied here for a year, at a Jesuit college. James Joyce also visited here, and probably crossed from here over to Switzerland in 1915. He used to go to the local railway station to listen to the passengers speaking their local dialect, Allemanisch.
I contemplated
spending some time there, but then decided to go to Vaduz,
capital of Liechtenstein, which I
imagined would be something similar. I walked through the town
as far as the Liechtenstein border, to try to get a lift.
It was a long wait,
almost 4 hours. At least the weather was improving, but hanging around
for this length of time was frustrating, especially since there were no
other hitch-hikers in my vicinity. Well, everything comes to him who waits.
But then Vaduz! What a disappointment, made all the keener
because I had passed up the chances of exploring the Austrian towns to come
here. Mainly plasticky tourist cafes and
souvenir shops. Everywhere you looked coach-buses were ferrying around
hordes of older English, American and German tourists.
I thought there had to be more, and visited the tourist office to get more
information, but that was it! I thought it best to start heading south
towards Italy, so after a tasteless meal at one of the many
fast-food joints, headed again back to the road.
The first lift took me as far as Thusis,
an attractive resort filled with elderly happy hikers. The Hinter Rhine, one of the sources of the Rhine, flows through here.
Then again
a long wait.
A previous driver had told to watch out for "TI"-registered cars, so
I tried extra hard to attract their attention. I was on the point of giving
up--it was after 8:00 PM and getting dark--when a driver finally pulled up. He
was going to Lugano and would take me all the way!
Every cloud has a silver lining, I was thinking as we started off.
This would take me all the way through Eastern Switzerland almost to the Italian border (according to hearsay, Switzerland, along with Sweden, was the worst country in Europe for hitch-hiking, and
after having been there a few years previously, I could confirm that Sweden
was bad).
The driver told me he had driven from Germany and had been at the wheel for
about 14 hours non-stop. He was totally exhausted, he said, but he wanted
make it home that evening. It dawned on me why he had picked me up!
We drove at full speed for hours along the mountain roads,
with sheer drops below, through passes surrounded by snow-covered mountains
and one tunnel after another. In a way I was glad that it was now dark
and I could not see how high up we were.
All the while the driver kept talking to try to stay awake.
We passed through
the San Bernardino tunnel and joined the major North/South motorway at
Bellinzona, the canton's capital.
We
stopped off for coffee, and I took an extra cup for him and held it as
he drove. Occasionally his head would begin to droop, and I would punch
his arm or shake him to make sure he wasn't nodding off. I watched him
like a hawk. On several occasions he almost lost control of the car, but
managed to get back on course. At times, when I managed to catch a glimpse
of a sheer fall into nothingness as we skidded around a curve, I broke into
a sweat, and I thought seriously
about asking him to stop and let me out. What prevented me from
doing it was the hopeless position I would then be in, as there were very
few places for cars to slow down, never mind pull in. So I just had
to grin and bear it.
I was never so happy to get out of a car as when we finally reached
the outskirts of Lugano, as my driver thanked me profusely for helping him to make it.
He drove off into the hills while I sat down on the grass verge to get
my breath back. I was in almost total darkness.
I saw what appeared to be a well-appointed house nearby and walked in
that direction, then around behind it to what appeared to be a garden.
The whole thing was on a slope, but I thought what the hell, it's the
early hours of the morning and you'll sleep anyway, so I bedded down as best
I could.
I didn't sleep well, and must have kept turning over in my sleep,
because when I awoke for the last time, when it was bright, I had
moved some distance down the slope and was up
against a tree, and just a few yards from a sheer drop of about 20 feet.
Sunday 22
June, Lugano/Brescia.
This part of Switzerland,
South of the San Bernardino pass,
is called the Ticino (Tessin in German). Lugano is situated in a mountainous part of the country
surrounded by 3 lakes. Lake Lugano winds its way like a wide river to the south;
to the west is Lake Maggiore, broad and majestic,
nestling among the last of the Alpine foothills;
and on the east in Italy is Lake Como. The Ticino is Italian-speaking,
but I was told that many Germans are coming to the lake region now and setting up
holiday homes, so that in the Summer German is heard more than Italian. This
tradition is not really new--at the start of the century there were
many
colonies of German artists, writers, political utopians and the equivalent of hippies of
the time around the Monte Verità, a hill above Ascona.
Nor was it limited to Germans--an Irish lord (well, probably English with Irish connections, a St. Leger from Doneraile in Cork), Richard Fleming, moved here from Dublin
with his Russian-born wife, Antonietta (rumoured to be an illegitimate daughter of the Czar), and after living on the coast for several years bought two islands in Lake Maggiore.
I found out later that around 1919, James Joyce came to Lake Maggiore while he was writing Ulysses. The trip gave him some material for the Sirens episode, and also for the Circe episode. He had heard of the Baroness St. Leger who lived and made dolls on the island. She was rumoured to have "tearlessly buried" seven husbands there, and admitted to three. On account of the wild parties, etc., she was known variously as the Siren or as Circe. She showed Joyce the walls of her house, which were decorated with scenes from the Odyssey, and brought him into a room which contained a trunk full of books on erotic perversions and a packet of obscene letters (which no doubt helped him with the Circe episode!).
From the 1950s the gardens became the Botanical Park of the Canton Ticino. Its lush vegetation, thanks to the unique climatic conditions, is subdivided in zones representing flora from all over world.
After a long wait (well,
it was Sunday!) I got a lift as far as the Italian border at Chiasso. Border crossings
are always good spots for hitch-hiking, and I soon
got
a lift from a Belgian guy going to Bologna, right in my direction.
We drove past Milan, but missed the outlet
for Brescia, so he left me off (rather abruptly) at Piacenza North. Had to
walk about 7 Km. in to the centre of Piacenza in the boiling sun. There was
practically no traffic at all on this road. After walking about 4 Km. I
reached a deserted crossroads, at the same time as an elderly chap
wheeling what at first looked like a ice-cream cart, but in fact was
beer! I stopped him and asked him for a beer (grateful that I had thought
of changing currency earlier on). He reached in and the first bottle
he brought out was a bottle of Guinness! I had to laugh.
He couldn't understand a word of English, and my Italian was very
limited, but I felt a lot better after a few beers, and continued on
my way.
From Piacenza I got a train to Cremona and from there to Brescia. Phoned Gigi
at his house, and fortunately he was in, and came to collect me with
his brother Claudio. I could relax at last!
Monday 23
June, Brescia. Sunny and warm--what a change from the weather in Germany
and Austria! Stayed for lunch with Gigi--large meals--then into Brescia
for a game of billiards. There was an anti-Fascist art exhibition on at
Piazza Loggia, where a bomb had killed several people the previous year.
Like Germany, Italy had been going through a period of
terrorist violence, the difference being that Italy was subjected to it
from both the right and the left. In the previous year there were
several explosions caused by the neo-fascist "New Order". In Brescia the
bomb on 28 May in Piazza Loggia killed 8 and injured 103. Gigi told me
that already this year a number of shootings and bombings had taken
place. From the little I had already read of Italy back home, it
appeared that many on the right feared a Communist takeover in Italy,
and that only an alliance between the Catholic Church, the Christian
Democrats and maybe a little help from the Mafia would be able to keep
them out of power. But the Fascists were taking no chances, hoping to
help bring down the state institutions and revert to a Duce-type
dictatorship, similar to what happened in Greece in the sixties.
Afterwards we went to La Grotta, a small bistro-type place, where
some of Gigi's friends hung out--Margaret, Wilna, Jean, who had been to
Dublin, and Domenico. They were a happy but argumentive group, someone
was always getting involved in a serious political discussion. They
were talking about an on-going police investigation into the death of a
left-winger, Pinelli, who fell out of a police-station window while being
interviewed about the infamous Piazza Fontana bombing in 1969 in Milan
which killed about 8 people and injured many more.
Pinelli was shown to have played no part in the bombing, but the
circumstances of his death remained mysterious. Dario Fo's
play based on the case, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist,
exposed the botched cover-up attempts of the police.
The policeman who interviewed Pinelli,
Calabresi, was himself shot outside his house in Milan in
1972 in equally mysterious circumstances.
After a lively discussion on who killed whom, we were picked up by Paolo, another friend,
and drove to Garda, a lovely resort on the lake of that name. The place was
packed with visitors, many German-speaking, and gangs like ourselves out for an
evening's entertainment. Tuesday 24
June, Brescia.
We stuffed ourselves on Gigi's mother's pasta. They ate the same
meal twice a day, once at one and again at 7:00 PM. At lunch we'd drink
red wine mixed with water, in the evening a slightly better wine. A
real pity I didn't speak Italian.
Then once again by bus into the centre of Brescia and afterwards to the Grotta.
The gang was apparently carrying on where they'd left off yesterday, ie, arguing
about the political scene.
In the previous few months a number of
left-wing acitivists had been killed in various places around the
country, with demos and riots almost a daily occurence in some of the
cities.
In this month alone a left-wing
female student had been murdered in Reggio Emilia, and a week later another
died of wounds in Naples after a Fascist bomb attack. The situation was becoming
polarized, some of the more extreme
groups favouring violent measures to counteract the Fascists.
One of the groups discussed was the Red
Brigades, originally been set up in Milan around 1971 as an activist political organisation.
A couple of weeks earlier, Margherita Cagol, the wife of the leader of the
Red Brigades (Renato Curcio, whom she had previously released from prison),
had been shot dead after a shoot-out with police, after an
attempted kidnapping of a businessman. The police claimed she had been
shot running away, but the Red Brigades said she had been unarmed when
shot, and vowed never again to be caught without arms. It's amazing how
many of these characters got killed--according to Abbie Hoffman
"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it."
Anyway, the arguments were raging back and forth. It looked like the
Red Brigades could follow the trail blazed by the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, which had hijacked a number of planes and the
previous January had made several attacks at Orly airport with rocket
launchers, and had escaped to Baghdad after taking hostages. They were
being helped by the Japanese Red Army.
Then there was the mystery of the aircraft, used by the Italian Secret Service and the CIA, that crashed after an improvised explosive device detonated on board. This was supposed to have been the work of Mossad, from Israel, in retaliation for the pro-Libyan Italian government's decision to expel, rather than try, five Arabs who had tried to blow up an Israeli airliner.
Could violent
protest be justified? How far could it go? How moral was it? Where
will the killing all end?
I was introduced to a Scottish girl, from one of the islands, who had
been living in Brescia for about a year. She was extremely thin and
outrageously made up in punk style. I had seen sights in London and Amsterdam, but
nothing quite like this! Later her boyfried, a good-looking Italian,
came in, and she wrapped herself around him. Gigi said she was
into drugs, and I could well believe that she was into something.
Wednesday 25
June, Brescia.
Got photos of London developed: the gang at Elsworthy road, Gigi's
going-away do, Matilda's, etc.
I should have taken more film with me.
I think at the time I wasn't interested in carrying around lots of film--I kept
my baggage to a minimum, and at the
back of my mind also was the risk that I could get robbed anyway. I
re-packed my gear--I would leave my rucksack and anything non-essential with
Gigi, to be collected when (if!) I came this way on my return,
and would take just the ex-army shoulder bag and light sleeping bag, which
fitted snugly on top. The sleeping bag, when rolled up,
was one of the smallest I had ever
seen, and I attached a piece of string to it so that I could carry it
across my shoulder. I also had a small, light tent, which I think Gigi
gave to me. This was intended to be discarded when I hit warmer climes.
Went with Gigi to the Grotta that evening. A friend of his invited
us outside for a smoke and sold me a tab of acid for 1000 Lire. I dropped
half. The trip came on about half an hour later, when I was sitting in the
Grotta. Very strong.
A skin-head came in and starting talking about politics, displaying
his admiration for fascist policies, and almost started a fight. Margaret calmed
me down and Jean took me outside for a stroll around the square.
Fantastic visions. I spent what seemed like hours there, but was in
fact probably only about 20 minutes. Afterwards back to the Grotta and
was so engrossed in the trip that I almost missed the last bus back to
Gigi's. Had to run for it through a maze of coloured flashing lights.
Didn't nod off until about 3:00.
Thursday 26
June, Brescia.
Wrecked! I had intended leaving today but was in no state to do so.
Lay in bed all morning and then talked to Dario for a bit, before
paying one final visit to the Grotta. That's Gigi, Domenico and Jean
on the right.
Friday 27
June, Brescia/North Yugoslavia.
Rose early to get a good start. My next objective was Greece, via Yugoslavia, then, somehow, get
to the islands and then take it from there. I wrote out a list of the cities
on my route so that I could make signs for getting lifts as I went.
At the entrance to the motorway I made a sign for Venice, or rather, Venezia. The first lift took me to
the outskirts of Venice, then the next as far as Triest where I crossed the border without incident, and the
next lift took me further into
Yugoslavia. Then I made a sign for Zagreb. One more long lift took me to
midway between Ljubliana and
Zagreb, but I got left out at an awkward spot. I met two shabby-looking
Yugoslavs who said they had been waiting there for hours. All in all I
was happy with progress that day so I wasn't too concerned.
As it was getting dark we looked around for somewhere to sleep and
managed to find a barn. I thought I may have been taking a chance in
staying with this pair--they didn't fit into the same category as
the many hitchhikers and freaks I had met on the road, bound for Greece,
Amsterdam, Copenhagen or India like me.
They had no rucksacks or
other gear with them, and probably no money. I kept my knife within
easy reach when bedding down, just in case.
Saturday 28
June, Zagreb.
The Yugoslavs returned again to the spot where they had spent most of
the previous day. Experienced hitch-hiker that I now was, I thought
that spot was a waste of time, and walked for a good distance until I
found a one with better potential. Two lifts brought me into Zagreb.
This was Yugoslavia's second-largest city. The part that I saw wasn't
very interesting, and I thought it might take too long to explore the
sights, so I walked for some distance across the outskirts to get to the
south-bound motorway.
Another long wait before being picked up by an English truck driver,
a former Merchant Navy sailor, who took me about 170 KM, cursing and
complaining about "bloody foreigners" all the way.
The cars here
were driving very fast and it seemed that anyone trying to stop would
risk causing an accident. But there didn't seem to be any better spots
in either direction.
Waited at this spot for several hours. I was beginning to feel
hungry. A local took me a few kilometers to the nearest village, a tiny
place, where I had a couple of glasses of wine in a bar, but they had no
food. Just as it was beginning to get dark I walked out of the village
to look for a good spot for the following day. It started to rain, and
I just managed to get the tent erected in a field before a thunderstorm
broke. It was without doubt the loudest thunder I had ever heard in my
life, accompanied by hours of flashing lightening. Was I glad I had
brought the tent!
Sunday 29
June, Slavenski Brod.
Rose as soon as I awoke, as today being a Sunday I expected things to
be a bit slow. In fact the second vehicle that passed me stopped. It
was a truck with an Opel station-wagon in the back. The driver couldn't
speak English, other than a couple of badly-pronounced words. I wanted
to get to Slavenski Brod, about 10 KM down the road, to get something to
eat. He told me, in German (which I couldn't understand), that he was
going to Turkey, via Bulgaria. He said he had a taxi, and asked me
about my documents. I understood that he wanted to know whether I had a
driving licence. As it happened, I had my British provisional licence
with me. He told me I could go with him to Turkey, and I should drive
his taxi. Well, why not?
Travelling all day--very tiring, but we covered a lot of ground.
Hassled twice by cops. On the first occasion we were stopped for 2
hours. The second time we were stopped for 6 hours because lorries were
not allowed to use the road on a Sunday. Reached the queue for the
Bulgarian border around 11:00 at night. Very tired, but Ali, the
driver, won't stop. Probably making up the time lost waiting for the
road to open.
Yugoslavia seems a bit like Italy, but the people seem to work very
hard. Although it was a Sunday there were people out working everywhere
we went--a lot of old women with wrinkled faces to be seen in the
fields. Did not see much of the cities. Belgrade looks quite modern
but anonymous from what we saw of it from the road.
Monday 30
June, Yugoslavian/Bulgarian border.
Driving, inching along in the queue, all night--a total of 10 hours.
Didn't have even a couple of minutes time to sleep. Another couple of
hours spent at the customs on both sides before we were back on the road
in Bulgaria. Got fed by Ali. He insisted on paying for the bills--I
didn't argue.
Tuesday 1
July, Bulgaria.
Driving through Bulgaria. Stopped outside Sofia and went into the city.
Clean spacious, nice city. Cobbled squares, lots of people hanging
around restaurants. Intimate feel about the place. Slept in Opel.
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Salzburg is a beautiful
town, most famous nowadays, perhaps, as being the birthplace of
This is in the more modern part of the town, and was built at the
start of the seventeenth century by one of
the powerful archbishops, Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau (on right), for his Jewish
mistress, Salome von Alt (by whom he reputedly had a large family).
Feeling much more relaxed, crossed the river Salzach (Salz,
salt, crops up everywhere around here, reflecting the its
economic importance
in the olden days) to visit Mozart's birthplace, now a museum.
Then took a leisurely stroll around the old
town. This is filled with ancient churches, museums, and palaces
added to over the centuries by the powerful prince-bishops who
ruled here (in the 13th century the archbishop and his successors were
made princes of the Holy Roman Empire). Took in the Dom St. Rupert, the
Cathedral, which was damaged by air-raids in the last war. Climbed the
hill to visit the fortress, Hohensalzburg. Here again I found mention
of Wolf Dietrich, who was a great-nephew of the Medici pope, Pius IV.
Apparently he came into conflict over a matter of salt rights with the
Elector of Bavaria, who brought pressure to bear on Pope Paul V. The
pope deposed him and he died a prisoner in the fortress in 1617.
Feeling tired after the day's tours, I found a comfortable corner to
bed down in the garden of a block of flats.
Clear fresh air, a wonderful view of the countryside surrounded by snow-capped
mountains. There are worse places to wake up in!
The two islands lie a
little more than a kilometer from the shore near Brissago, which lies just beside the Italian border. They are the little island of Sant'Apollinaire and the larger Island of san Pancrazio. In 1885 the couple bought the two islands and the Countess started constructing the gardens, which became a meeting place for artists and bohemians of the time.
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