When one embarks on such a long journey that its end lies beyond the last sheet of the current calendar, its impossible to absorb this fact immediately. It’s almost unbelievable for it means derailing from the tracks you used to ride in such an insane way, that it’s necessary to repudiate the very existence of something like ‘tracks’.
And so I’ve been waiting, when will my current journey finally become an integral part of my perceiving of the world. It certainly didn’t come in yet almost homely Bratislava, didn’t come in Maribor either, where I slowly started to realize that it will take some time before I’ll have a goulash and a Pilsen beer on tap.
I will not lie to myself nor to you – the first week, especially after the slow farewell to Bratislava, where warm blankets and the food of my grandma were so close, I was as sure about all this as I’d be about fathering an unexpected child of a promiscuous friend with benefits. Through my head wandered all the coming days, weeks and months, approaching winter, constant hunger and mainly thoughts about the turbulent state of my digestive tract.
But because I definitely couldn’t imagine returning back and sitting somewhere at a lecture or in an office, I kept going and the image brightened, everything started to settle down and wear out the edges. After two weeks I start to realize again what it means to live on the road, I come to terms with it and in this reconciliation I wind the much-needed peace and plain happiness that makes a real life out of the ordinary surviving-it-through.
It’s about emotions
In fact, nothing special happened this week, nothing that would deserve a banner headline – much more than about particular experiences, these days are full of ungraspable undocumentable feelings and strong emotions. I tried to convey at least some of it through my videos, but I don’t think I was successful. The only think I can do is to encourage you to get out of the offices, out of the attendance chips cycle, out of the half-hour lunch breaks – at least for a moment – and try to enjoy the following:
- Emerge from the damp foggy morning valleys west of Ljubljana, climb the ridge, slip between the Alps and the Balkans, and enjoy the magical journey through the rabbit hole into a country, where even now the sun shines.
- Sleep in an abandoned rescue booth at the beach, make it your cozy home for the night and then watch the sunrise, cast light on long-forgotten dreams.
- Drive twenty kilometers through a silent deserted dirt road through the lagoon of Lago di Commachio and in the midst of the calm mirror where the swept skies look down on themselves, cook a lunch.
- Experience the true Italy first-hand, its energetic language, confusing distances on road signs that show 100 to Venice and a roundabout after that 120; three thousand and six hundred and fifty quintillions trattorias, pizzerias, restaurants and cafes; genuine parmesan, domestic oranges and tangerines; chaste Italians in white summer dresses kneeling at the Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence; peeled, flaked shutters of Venice, rotting in the fading afternoon sun; widows in black, riding a bike with a basket full of fresh vegetables from the market – la dolce vita, wherever you are.
Settled in the saddle
It was on the shores of Lago di Commachio where enjoyed a relaxed ride, whistling tunes from the game ‘Neverhood’ (those familiar with the game certainly know which), when it finally came. Suddenly I knew I was on The Way and that it’s My Way and that’s exactly what I have to do now and what I will do. In front of me, there were all those countries I am about to pass through and I’ve just begun to look forward to them so badly!
I finally stopped feeling the constant discomfort, feeling that I might be better off at home, feeling of being a homeless outcast – I’ve begun to enjoy every day of the journey and every hour like I had just been born and enthusiastically tore unfamiliar new sweet fruit from the tree of the World.
This enthusiasm is also caused by the fact that I’m trying to stay with the ‘natives’, whenever it’s at least a bit possible, because the nights are already cold, and the bag with tools that I leave out overnight, is all white from frost in the morning. And through these people who are experiencing a a part of my journey with me, again and again I get home every day, through them, I try to document the journey and vice versa thru me they are traveling farther than they can afford just now. Thanks to that the count of kilometers is not important anymore, I now travel more in the clouds of my thoughts and so it seems that my much-longed-for spiritual journey has begun.
It’s about time already! – Next week a tiny part of my wandering is over and the weekend will meet me in the Eternal city. A presto, Roma!
And while everywhere in Europe orange sunsets are raging as crazy fools, I try to compose this testimony on the banks of the River Arno with the help of bottle of Montepulciano and a jar of olives. It’s not easy – I could write about all this and talk about all this for hours, but let’s leave it to those cosy warm evenings in some of Prague’s, Hodonín’s or, uh .. uh .. Brno’s pubs.
Add a comment