When Michael Palin met Lech Walesa in Gdansk, the interview did not go well. “He stood awkwardly, his answers were heavy and deliberate. He gave me a standard spiel and he looked plain bored,” says the veteran traveller.
Given that Palin is officially the nicest man on television, it is inconceivable that even he could not coax a little charisma from the legendary trade unionist, human rights activist and former president of Poland.
But after some nervous shuffling, a chink appeared in his armour. “As we wound up the interview, I threw a parting comment into the ring. I had heard his daughter was performing on the Polish equivalent of Celebrity Come Dancing and so I wished her well,” laughs Palin. “I saw this big smile. He apologised for being abrupt - he was travelling the following day - and suddenly I saw a small glimpse of the man who had inspired so many people.”
It is this juxtaposition of a heavy history coupled with a flourishing future that has peppered Michael Palin’s latest expedition – to New Europe (the BBC series broadcast in the UK last autumn). His journey through 20 countries began in Slovenia and ended in northern Germany, taking in some nations with a population little larger than Brussels, but each with a very distinct identity.
His latest trip was taken as much by necessity as design. Having trekked the Himalayas and travelled pole to pole, Palin was contemplating which part of the globe to bring to BBC viewers’ screens next. As his first grandchild had just been born, he wanted somewhere exotic and yet within reach of home. With the globe pared down to locations within easy flying distance of London, he and his team began their research. What they found east of the old Iron Curtain was a new world that belied even Palin’s expectations.
Many of the countries featured in New Europe did not exist when Palin was born 64 years ago. He had dipped his toe in the water of central Europe in the 1980s with a couple of short trips to Prague, when Soviet troops still marched the streets. But these were countries that had changed fundamentally within a year of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
People found themselves living in entirely new political systems, where former communist apparatchiks grew rich overnight as state enterprises were sold off. Old corruption was replaced by new corruption. But, says Palin, unease over the future was coupled with hope. And the world he was beginning to uncover was being reshaped even as he filmed, as Romania and Bulgaria became the latest countries to enter the EU.
Among tourists, much of eastern Europe is still an unknown quantity. This propelled Palin to throw open the region’s doors even further. “I don’t set off with expectations, but it seemed people were really excited about the changes going on in eastern Europe, and apprehensive too."
“One thing I did want to do was put the colour back into an area which is often perceived as grey and full of uprisings – a gloomy, monochrome world.”
In fact, Palin found stunning scenery and a spirit that defied eastern Europe’s steely image. “The scenery really took me aback. It was beautiful – in particular the Carpathian mountains and the valleys of Turkey.
“Moldova really got under my skin, which was amazing because half the time I got the country’s name wrong. Was it Moldova or Moldavia? I wasn’t sure. But it has a gentle landscape and attractive capital and it is largely undiscovered by tourists.”
“Throughout my year-long journey I certainly didn’t see borders that were heavily armed. In fact I saw very few armed men, which surprised me. When I crossed each border I definitely got a sense of a different language and currency and culture. People were anxious to emphasise their separate identities too.”
From the monochrome world emerged Croatians who “celebrated with gusto”, Bosnians with an infectious sense of humour, and Hungarians who knew a good pageant when they saw one.
Many countries had their pasts “surgically removed” by different military occupations and now find it easier to relive a golden age of the 14th to 16th centuries than to dwell on their recent – and often painful – past, he explains.
It is easy to understand why. Lisa Mikova met Palin in Prague. Now 86, she was from an affluent family and thought of herself as Czech first and a Jew second. But listed on a wall outside a Prague cemetery are twenty members of her family who perished after Hitler’s invasion in 1939.
Her parents are there, as well as a brother shot in the Dachau concentration camp three days before it was liberated by the Americans. Lisa herself was packed off to the ghetto of Terezin, near the German border. Her husband was taken to Auschwitz. She never saw him again.
“Lisa took me back to Terezin 66 years after she’d left and told me her story. It was desperately sad, but she had no self-pity. She was inspiring, together, measured and beautiful because the life she had survived had been so awful,” Palin reflects.
There were other poignant reminders of a century of scarcity and conflict too. “Everywhere we went in the Czech Republic there were constant remnants of concentration camps and places where borders had meant borders,” he says.
In Albania, ruled by Enver Hoxha from 1944 to 1985, Palin sensed the isolation from the rest of Europe the dictator had imposed, and the legacy of a people who had been denied freedom of expression, religion and movement during his long reign.
“The Hoxhas of this world were big people. Visiting his house was very strange. It had very modern architecture, but his was an incredibly repressive regime where people couldn’t perform or entertain or even listen to the World Service.”
In Mostar, he walked with 28-year-old Kamel who had survived the bombardment of the city during the Bosnian war of the 1990s, which many there feel was perpetuated by the lacklustre response of the international community.
Despite this, Palin did not find people quick to judge the West, or him. “I tend to go blithely into places until I find someone who will take me to task. I don’t go in apologetic about what the West has or has not done, and I usually gauge it from people. Mainly I have found people want to talk,” he says.
In other countries, Palin was treated as a celebrity. Monty Python was huge in the former Yugoslavia and in Croatia he was given the task of stirring a record-breaking truffle pancake – an honour usually reserved for Croatian VIPs.
“They told me they had watched Python around 1979, when Tito’s grip was easing. He was a dictator but he seemed to perform a fascinating balancing act between East and West. I think Python struck a chord, because it poked fun at the establishment and, of course, it was just very silly.”
Palin sees his foray into travel – he has now made 46 programmes for the BBC covering everywhere from Pakistan to the Philippines and Antarctica to Kenya – as less of a departure and more of an extension of the Python years.
“I’ve never had a job description,” he says. “When I did '80 Days around the World' I didn’t know it would be successful, I just thought it was a great way to see the world. Now I get to travel, write and be a very silly person.”
The bizarre and often ridiculous glimpse into foreign cultures appeals to Palin. In Istanbul he witnessed an oil-wrestling display. “It sounds absurd, grown men covered in olive oil, hands down each others’ trousers, but there is a curious dignity to the whole procedure,” he says.
In Germany he found himself engaged in conversation with a woman about lavatory design, and whether, as a man, you should sit or stand to pee. “It’s a very big discussion point for the housewife,” she told him. Within Palin’s New Europe there is a real sense of venturing into the seemingly familiar yet utterly unknown and turning up something quite wonderful.
Palin claims never to set off on an expedition with an agenda, but he admits, in this case, he may have had an ulterior motive. “There are people in Britain who have arrived from the countries of new Europe but there is also a kind of xenophobia never far below the surface.
“Many of them are treated like second-class citizens, but we share an awful amount of history, in science, culture and religion. People think they’re from another planet, that they swamp our country and there was a part of me that wanted to dispel that.”
He wonders how these emerging countries see themselves within a European political framework too. Many people he met were keen to have a federal economic framework, but were uncomfortable with the idea of a US-style empire. “It will be very interesting to see the tightrope the new Europe walks,” he says.
“New Europe is a new world and it’s not altogether comfortable. Many of the countries we travelled through have undergone a rapid change. There are places where people have not benefited in terms of wealth, but there is a real feeling they can contribute to the world, and not just in a cringing Eurovision Song Contest way."
“This part of the world has been embroiled in wars for the last 100 years and the idea that they could coexist with cooperation rather than conflict could be wonderful. I hope New Europe gives them that voice.”