"Call an airline route an air road, then guess where we're going first, because all roads lead to the eternal city and this is the most modern way there is of seeing the one ancient place there's no need to name." "Rome." "The eternal city." "Unchanged yet ever changing." "Testament to the power of the past, yet never more attractive than it is today." "Here architects of a bygone age used their skills with inspiration to build superb examples of man's creations, a handy reminder of the living heritage from which Europe grew her wily roots." "Monuments conceived in beauty grace the many wonders of a city, where to some extent, time has stood still through these scurrying centuries, respecting the enduring mysteries of the past, yet offering to us all a foretaste of a fateful future," "which talk time itself, will flow till eternity." "Yet time means little in the eternal city, where past and present, old and new, take each other's hand and offer assurances for the future testimony indeed that time itself has been afraid." "There's a saying all roads lead to Rome, in this jet age that's not strictly true." "Admittedly Rome is one of the busiest aerial crossroads in today's thrusting complex of airborne technology, but it is also the threshold of experience, whose doors open to reveal architectural beauty everywhere." "Elegant squares of grand proportions sparkle in the hot Roamn sunshine, where cooling water is dispensed in literally moist cascades." "For here, where the sun calls the tune, water is something that you worship." "Just as here, at Saint Peter's, christians have traditionally worshipped across the centuries." "Here, pilgrims from all over the globe, and indeed the world, tend to soften reservoirs, to savour the atmosphere of this timeless city." "mindful perhaps of those earlier christians, for whom time so signally failed to stand still here in the colosseum, this monumental slaughterhouse, where starved lions savoured the atmosphere of the excited christians and lunched at length, Roman style, to the delight of the frenzied pagan mob." "What early christian indeed would believe, that this was the city where they'd coin the phrase 'la dolce vita'." "For in those far off days life was cheap, and the pussycats a good deal bigger than these." "Yes, drive through Rome, and you drive through history, an endlessly unfolding tableaux of our common heritage, so let's change gear, slow down, rest a while, and drink the wonder of it in," "get your beath back, and digest what you've seen." "there's plenty of time, after all, Rome wasn't built in a day." "But like the coloseum, it will remain, to remind us of those who didn't built." "It." "And here's another city that wasn't built in a day either." "Yes, Venice." "Pearl of the Adriatic, aquatic home of the one-time doge, watery birthplace of old Shylock." "Yes, Venice, the eternal city, or is it?" "For they say this old queen of the Adriatic is steadily sinking, the wash from the colourful gondolas is relentlessly eating, at a rate of 1 and 3/8 inches per annum, into the very bitties of the city." "But for the 1.36 billion tourists who anually visit here, as for the Venetians themselves, who, with typical 'what will be will be' fatalism, carry on as they've done for centuries, prodding themselves energetically about," "Venice is far from sunk." "Yes, Venice." "The very mention of its name immediately conjures up visions of gondolas." "With every reason:" "For Venice is truly the city of gondolas, where daily, year in, and year out, from early in the morning until late into the night, gondolas glide up and down the canals, as they have done for centuries past." "Venice is indeed proud of her gondolas." "They have been going up and down here for almost as long as the city itself has existed, and that's a long time." "Gondolas, gondolas, gondolas." "Everywhere... gondolas." "But there's more to Venice than gondolas, this ancient watery metropolis is a city of infinite variety a glittering kaleidoscope of fabulous artistic treasures, a staggering storehouse of renaissance one." "So much to do, so much to see, and so as we regretfully leave this remarkable city, slowly sinking in the west, we pause to reflect that despite its cathedrals, its palaces, its bustling markets," "and its priceless legacy of renaissance art, the one thing that Venice truly lacks, is leprechauns." "But there's no shortage of leprechauns here:" "Yes, Ireland, the emerald island, land of mists and bogs, little people, and the blarney stone, and one of Europe's most rapidly burge- oning centers of industrial development for international cooperation and favourable export tarif rates" "are launching Ireland on a voyage of prosperity with a full steam ahead economic policy that makes hard commercial sense in a nation burning with desire to make its industrial mark in the harsh realities of a thrusting post-jet world." "Yes, Ireland is really on the move, as you can see from this exciting new piano factory at Cork where the special tax concessions offered are sweet music in the ears of foreign investors." "Now they found the key to economic success" "Ireland is really calling the tune." "Yes, in the vicious blueprint for survival today, where harsh economic folk demand inch perfect precision," "Ireland is hammering the message out." "These prawns for example, individually handreared, will finish up in a unique freeze drying unit, developped in Ireland, by a team of Hibernian experts, enabling food, furniture, and vegetables to be dried and packed," "ensuring freshness right to the dining tables on mainland Europe." "But in all this hurly-burly of modern Irish living, symbolized by these thrusting space-age skylines at Connemara where can we go to find the peace and happiness that sensitive people sometimes yearn for, far, far away from the stress and tension of that frenzied celtic world." "Here perhaps, behind the iron curtain, in Bulgaria." "Here it's roses, roses all the way, a land of simple happiness where we can sample true colour and content" "Here there's gaiety and spontaneity in abundance." "Nobody's told these merry folk that they're out of pace with modern streamlined living the simple life, peasant style." "And today they're crowning a queen in this little village." "Hard to believe isn't it, that these simple happy folk are dedicated to the destruction of western civilization as we know it." "That these idyllic scenes are just a transparent charade, arranged for our cameras by a propaganda department in reality bent on oppressing every aspect of spontaneity in a once happy and free people." "This isn't the kind of place for us." "No way squire." "Peace and tranquility, my ass." "Take one photograph of the wrong building here, and they're taping electrodes to your reproductive organs." "So let's try Austria, a tranquil carriage ride through the Pilsenstrasse in the heart of Vienna, city of Johann Strauss, and song, and the highest suicide rate in Europe." "For here, among the glories of the old Austro-Hungarian empire, they're topping themselves at the rate of nots." "No wonder old Siggy Freud set up shop here." "For here in Vienna, depression is king, and sexual hangups part of the rich Habsburg heritage." "No if you want a carriage ride, why not try New York:" "a buggy ride through sunny Central Park." "because you'd be shot, mugged, or raped before you were halfway accross, that's why not." "And so, back to Venice, queen of the Adriatic." "Here certainly we have peace and tranquility, and also, more of those fucking gondolas." "Sorry, but we need them like we need a hole in the head." "This looks like a paradise though, an ultramodern sunsplash shoreline a pleasure filled polyglot playground for the western world." "Yes, Acapulca." "Here surely we can find peace and timelessness, relax with a sunset cocktail, content that at last, we've got away from it all." "Dear me, look at that poor cow try to smile, she's never been so bloody miserable in her life." "Because you see you can't get "away from it all"." "All this dashing about in search of peace and contentment, it doesn't work." "Wherever you go, you take your problems with you." "There's no escaping yourself." "A man can run and run for only so long." "Then he's gotta stop, face himself, ask himself the eternal question:" "What am I doing here?" "What's it all about?" "Is there a god?" "An all-powerful intelligence directing our existence here on earth?" "Surely the evidence is against it." "So how do you face the, the existential terror?" "The hopelessness, the dark corridors of one's mind, the yawning, black, meaningless, abyss they don't tell you about in the brochures." "Oh no my friends, there are no package tours to despair, it's a one man journey and you'll pay for it all your life." "Don't you feel that, sometimes in the small hours in the morning, don't you want to cry out, "What am I doing with my life?" "!"" "Well, I'll tell you what I'm doing with my life:" "I'm sitting here doing commentaries for these awful bloody bilge, these cheapo rip-off fillers, written by some ex-public school twit too half-witted to get a job in advertising." "And you know something?" "You know who's fault it is?" "You lot!" "Yes, you, you so-called cinema patrons." "You sit there, stuffing your stupid faces with chocolate peanuts gulping at these dreadful films." "Well why do you put up with them?" "You could stop them tomorrow if you had the guts to go to the manager and say," ""Why do you put this rubbish on?"." "I'll tell you why they put this rubbish on, incidentally, because they don't have to pay a proper hire charge for films like this, that's why, they're dead cheap." "I don't care about you lot, I can't take it anymore." "I can't stand any more of these films, they make me throw up." "No, I gotta get away, get right away, fly off to some sun-drenched, polyglot pagan paradise jam packed with wild eyed snake hipped horny Danish blondes, and where the punting spout glittery kept days of Vitorotto till eternity," "that's what I need." "A holiday!" "Haha!" "A cruise!" "Travel!" "# Around the world in 80 days..." "# Yadadada, dadadada..." "Yadi-dada, yadadadi-dada, yadadada..."