T H I S+W E E K Sleeping with elephants By Don Meredith Earth-shaking encounters in Kenya > Sleepless in Siena By Don George, Editor The strangest place I've ever slept Man is an island By Jan Morris The Isle of Man is the last contented jewel in Britain's imperial crown D E P A R T M E N T S The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Corn off the cob Passages "Desiring Italy" Mary Taylor Simeti's Sicilian journal Readers' Tips and Tales My private wanderlust - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LA S T+W E E K Tuesday, August 12, 1997 S t .+E l v i s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Who took the grace out of Graceland? By Cintra Wilson Our columnist goes to Memphis The King and us By Christina Boufis The world's most maniacal Elvis fans Way dead Elvis By Greil Marcus A tribute to the King proves that his posthumous legend has become equal parts sincerity and trash A full list of all Wanderlust articles

S L E E P L E S S +I N +S I E N A BY DONALD W. GEORGE | last week I introduced a new Mondo Weirdo theme in this column by asking the question: What's the strangest place you've ever slept? We've already received a number of intriguing and sometimes amazing answers to this question, and we'll begin posting them when we return from vacation on Sept. 2. (Next week Salon will be devoted to a special selection of our best stories to date.) This week I want to answer this question myself. In two and a half decades of world-wandering, I have found myself in some pretty strange beds, from a back-stabbing rough-straw pallet in Jakarta to a concrete slab in Luxor, a fuel-perfumed sleeping bag on the deck of an Aegean ferry to the mother of all U-shaped sagging-spring mattresses on the Caribbean island of Carriacou. And I have shared sleep -- or the lack of it -- with a wild range of comrades, from crazy nightmare-muttering Eastern European poets in a youth hostel to prim, pent-up, nervous-giggling Swiss secretaries in a train compartment. And of course I have spent my share of hours with companionable mosquitoes, rodents and cockroaches. But the answer that leaps to mind is the first of my miserable nights on the road. So let me take you back to December 1976. I have recently graduated from college and am in the midst of a year-long fellowship teaching English at Athens College in Greece. It's Christmas vacation and so I have set out on an exploration of Italy and Austria -- footloose, penniless, experimenting with the world. I have been blessed by the pope -- a velvet-shrouded third-story speck -- on Christmas Day in St. Peter's Square, and spent days gaping at the Sistine Chapel, the Pieta and other treasures, awed by the convergence of skill, faith, courage and perseverance. In this epiphanic mood, I have missed one train to Siena and so have gotten on a later train, a train that arrives in that dazzling 16th century town at 11 at night. This is when I discover that 16th century towns go to bed early. I wander off the train platform toward the information booth, where I am accustomed to finding a room for my stay. Closed. I look around at the last few passengers scurrying into the black, cold night. No fellow travelers; no sympathetic locals. I take some frayed Let's Go guidebook pages out of my backpack and find a few pensiones near the station. Shuffle down the street and knock on the door of the first one I come to. The door opens a crack and quizzical eyes peer around it. "Scusi, una camera ..." I begin to say, when a voice barks, "Completo!" and the door slams shut. Three more doors, three more "Completo!" Around midnight on an end-of-December night, all of Siena is completo, I am sure. So I wander exhausted over the in-other-circumstances charming cobbled streets of the town until, brain-weary and bone-cold, I come upon an elegant old apartment building. On an impulse, I push the door, and it opens. Alice in Wonderland: I step into a marble-and-chandelier foyer, dark and deathly silent. A wide polished stone staircase spirals in front of me. For some reason I walk up and up and up, until on the sixth floor I find a hospitable-looking door stoop with a welcome mat for a mattress. There, almost numb with sleep, I unroll my sleeping bag and slip into a stony repose. The next thing I know light is slivering my eyes -- the Siena sun! Well, no, it's light spilling through the door that has just opened above me, barely illuminating the astonished eyes of the Italian gentleman in the silk bathrobe who was expecting to find his morning paper. He stares at me, unable to speak. "Scusi," I say, stumbling over my tongue. I wave a wan hand in the air. "Tutto completo," I say. "OK, OK," he says, and closes the door quickly but carefully. I lie back, trying to recollect who and where I am, then number the creaks in my body and assess the gray whirl in my head. In my 23 years I cannot remember hurting so much, in so many places. I am cold and sniffling and creaking and all I want to do is pull the sleeping bag over my head and discover it's a dream, but then I think about the old gentleman dialing the Italian police and figure I'd better get moving. So I coil my energy, preparing to leap out of my sleeping bag, roll it up, stuff everything into my backpack and get walking before I am conscious of the cold. As my frozen fingers are stubbing my sleeping bag into its sack, the door opens again, and the man reappears -- with a roll on a china plate and steaming coffee in a gold-rimmed cup and saucer. "Prego," he says, setting it on the stone hallway with a small smile. "Efkharisto," I say in Greek, because I suddenly can't remember the Italian for thank you. He nods and shuts the door firmly. Suddenly that spare, sixth-floor stoop feels like a sumptuous sitting room, and I stretch my legs on the stone floor, sipping and chewing in Sienese grandeur, and silently saying "Grazie" to a welcoming wooden door. Aug. 19, 1997 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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