title: Rite of Passage: Tales of Backpacking 'Round Europe
author: Lonely Planet
description: Lonely Planet brings its customary panache to this collection of true tales' -- San Francisco Chronicle<br />
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
  _**HAND ME  
  DOWN WORLD**_
  
  
  
  
  
  [**_three_**](Jone_9781921799822_epub_c6_r1.html#d6e4)
  
  
  _The inspector_
  
  
  In May the south is the first part of Europe to warm. The birds awaken from
  the tiny monuments of winter. The first of the supersized tourist buses
  arrive. The gypsies begin their shift north. The flotillas from Libya and
  Tunisia resume their hazardous voyages across the Mediterranean. The
  surveillance flights increase—and with depressing regularity come reports of
  Africans in the sea, popping up like corks, Africans clinging to wreckage,
  arms slung over debris, they cling on, wait. Sometimes a rescue boat turns up,
  sometimes not.
  
  
  The cafes around the station provide coffee, ashtrays, snacks. The barmen look
  like barmen, raised from birth to become barmen. They have the same large
  faces, lower jawbones that weigh the face down beneath folds of flesh that
  enclose secrets. They have been trained to listen in such a way that they do
  not remember 