Vagabonding (Travel) – An Accidental Vagabond

2014; The End of an Amazing Year a.k.a My Year of Grieving

Published on January 1, 2015March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

At the time of writing this post there are six hours left until the New Year begins; for me that is. My friends in Australia and New Zealand have already seen the date change.

I think that if it were not for one event in my life, and a major event it was, I would chalk up 2014 to being challenging, but pretty thrilling, and damn- for lack of a better adjective: interesting. But, there was the main event that just broke my heart in a so-far-irreparable way: my heart was shattered. No one wants their parents to die (almost no one) and no one wants to know that that precious parent was found dead alone on a bedroom floor, and no one wants to know that that parent died of a drug overdose; prescription or otherwise. Yet, at the end of the year no matter how that loved one died, death is death. That life is over and you just have to let it go, and keep living.

In all honesty, I haven’t really dealt with it too much. When the thoughts of my mother rise, my brain goes into emergency mode: “You can’t think about it. Don’t think about it. You are not in a safe place. There is no passage here. Avoid it. Avoid those thoughts!” And so I mostly do.

Well, this is the New Year. I’m in Prague and the snow has fallen. Time is ticking and my year is nearly over- not that life is really gauged in years, but it’s a great way to write out a list.

2014

New Year’s Eve in Zhengzhou, China. The night starts out at Maddie’s with Bobby. We have too many drinks and go to Muse, a little smoky dance club next to Maddie’s apartment. Maddie leaves at a reasonable hour, but Bobby and I stay the whole night, have to climb stairs in the morning, and we wake up on Maddie’s couch. Bobby is covered in Gummie Bears. He fell asleep on them.

January
I travel to Ho Chi Minh City and meet a new friend who I had been communicating with via Facebook. We were on similar journeys. Took a trip on the Mekong River: One of my favorite moments in Vietnam.
Met up with a dear friend in Australia. We met new and great people in Sydney and Melbourne.

February
The 13th read a message from my mother. She was excited to hear about my trips to Vietnam and Australia. I wrote her back saying I would write on the 16th.
14th back in Zhengzhou.
16th forgot to send an e-mail to mom.
19th around 10:00 p.m. in Chico, California: Mom dies.
20th around 2:00 p.m. after school, Zhengzhou, China: Get a strange message to contact one of mom’s friend’s. Skype to find out my mother died.
21st Fly to San Francisco, CA. Stay a night with a friend before another, my best childhood friend, Rachelle, comes to pick me up and drive me to Paradise, California.
22nd another of my best friends, Rosi, comes from Seattle to help me with mom’s funeral arrangements.
23-24 We pick up mom’s things from the police. Have her cremated. I don’t see her body (not sure if this was good or bad since I haven’t seen her since August of 2013). We clean her apartment with mom’s best girlfriends. She had really loving girlfriends just like I do.
25th- My birthday begins with cleaning mom’s apartment: she had so much shit. A regular little horder. My best friend Rosi and my mom’s friends kick me out of the apartment. Rosi says, “what do you want for your birthday?” I say, “I want to go to the psychic, Madame Ruby, who lives across the street.” I’d seen her neon palm in the window since I was a little kid.
Rosi leaves, and Sara N. comes from Portland. We pick up mom’s ashes and Rachelle and her husband drive us to Eureka to spread mom’s ashes. My only knowledge of the place is that it was her only place of positive childhood memories. We spend the night in Eureka and then drive to Trinadad. We hike up the mountain and throw some of her ashes into the wind above a dramatic pacific ocean. I don’t know what she would want. She didn’t plan on dying so soon. Some things are hard to plan.
Dad comes to visit and drives me around Chico to the places where mom and him met and the first place they lived.
I give some of mom’s ashes to her girlfriends, and put a few ashes in Chinese stacking dolls for me.

March-July
One last night in San Francisco before returning to Zhengzhou, China
Shao Boa, and Xiang Kia take me to Hua Shen, and we hike one of the most dangerous mountains in China. I toss some of mom’s ashes off of the sacred mountain. Now that she’s dead she can travel.

Apple takes me to Luoyang and we visit the Longmen Grottoes and hike in a gorge outside of the city after being stuck in what may have been the craziest country Chinese traffic jam ever.
School ends.

My students take me to Kaifeng for a three day trip. Me and five 16 year olds on e-bikes.

CIMG5291 — Kaifeng with some of my students

July- August
I work at a new school.
Trip to Xi’an and meet a new friend: Leslie a fabulous scientist! See one of my childhood dream sites: The Terracotta Army.

August
Leave China.
One day and night in Seoul, Korea.

Arrive in Prague, CZ.

September
TEFL training and certificate.
Visit Viktoria in Switzerland.

October
Go to Cesky Krumluv and Ceske Budejovice
Can’t decide if I want to stay in Prague

November
Decide to stay. Begin visa process
Go to Poland for Angloville- 5 days

Go to Berlin for Visa application- 3 days meet another amazing woman.
Back to Prague and begin new job
Go to Brno, CZ for first teaching job

December
Malacky, Slovakia for work.
Trenčianske Stankovce, Slovakia for work.

CIMG7721 — Trenčianske Stankovce, Slovakia

Poland for Christmas.
Prague for New Year’s.

CIMG7822 — Snow on the Zizkov tower babies

The End of 2014

Musings From Ceske Budejovice

Published on November 22, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

Taken from a journal entry: October 10th, 2014

It’s a Friday, and I am in Ceske Budejovice- a city whose name I can not yet pronounce. I am sitting in the city square, drinking a cappuccino, and waiting for Carol and her boyfriend Lukas to arrive.

Carol was with me at the language house. She was one of the few students that had not planned to stay in Prague for work. Ceske Budejovice was home for her. It had only been a week since the course had ended, but it felt as if a month had passed since I had seen Carol. They had driven to Cesky Krumluv and picked me up and drove me into CB and left me at a place I had found on Couchsurfing. That morning we agreed to meet in the square.

I had ordered the cappuccino before finding a place to sit where I felt I could be seen. I had asked for the coffee in Czech, Dom si cappuccino prosim, but when she asked me a question I responded in Chinese.

“Shi…I mean…ano…ano”

I know a little of each language of each place I have lived or visited, but never enough to converse and in each new place I seem to regurgitate the wrong language. I can only ever order and thank.

The central clock tower chimes and it sounds like a children’s rhyme. It is eerie like the music from a horror film.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star
how I wonder what you are
up above the world so high
like a diamond in-“

I wait for the rest, but it never comes it only repeats:

“Twinkle, twinkle…up
above the world so high
like a diamond in-“

And the music hangs onto nothingness.

I am having many memories, not nostalgia, but distant memories moving like a train of dreams. I try to capture one and place it onto the paper, but they are too fast, too fleeting and they escape my ink. They are not meant to be permanent at this moment.

I’ve been traveling for three days, yet it feels like I have been gone from Prague for years. This is only a weekend holiday, but I haven’t worked for two months so do I really have any holidays? I must express with absolute honesty I love the freedom of time that not working gives me. I am free and belong to none. There has been work, personal work: getting the TEFl, finding places to stay and to live, writing (the only work I really want) and finding me. This is valuable work that comes with no income, but it is important that I recognize that it is work. I must remember that living fully is part of the work because in the past I did not see this. I had listened to the words of the narrow minded world. You are lazy. You are wasting your life. You do nothing. What do you do for a living? For a living; what an odd question. Am I really wasting my life sitting here in a square waiting for a friend to arrive? It is true, I can be in a cubical waiting to earn money, to buy myself something that makes me feel valuable, but is that living? It doesn’t matter living is living is living is life.

But, I will need money soon. I don’t worry. I’ll find it, I know this.

A spider walks on my finger. He raises his abdomen, and I can see his web leave his body and attach between my finger tips. He has decided to make my hand his home. I spread my fingers apart and allow him to crawl his tightrope from my first finger to my middle finger. I gently shake my hand, it is an accident, but he falls. His web supports his decent as he belays to the ground. My fingers move to much for him to call them home.

He is living too.

Midnight Wanderings in Cesky Krumluv

Published on November 20, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

It was midnight when I decided to visit the Krumlov castle. It was dark and cool. I only felt small twinges of fear as I ascended a curving stone staircase that lead from the medieval village toward the castle. There wasn’t a need for this fear because the castle grounds were safe. It is not a common experience, for me, to feel able to wander alone in the darkness safely. I stopped to look through the black bars of an iron fence that was on both sides of the small bridge that preceded the main doors to the castle. On either side of this bridge 6 to 7 meters down (roughly 20 feet) were the bear pits. The famous bear pits. Not just famous to the castle but famous to me personally. To myself and friends from Garmisch, famous to the memory of a lost friend. Alex had fallen into the bear cage over 16 year’s ago.

I had been living in Germany at the time. Alex and a few others from Garmisch had taken a trip to Cesky Krumlov. I’m not certain exactly what had happened, but what I had heard was that he had been climbing on the wall and slipped and fell into the pit. He had broken his back, and it was amazing that he had survived. As I stared down and tried to gage the distance of his fall, I thought about the the bears’ reactions to this young German man falling into their dens. I felt a sudden wave of sadness. He had survived that fall, but five year’s later he would die in an avalanche. Too many young people from Garmisch had already died. Alex, Carley, Stephano, Sue…my dear friend Sue. There had been others.

I left the pit and wandered aimlessly the length of the castle. I thought of ghosts and history. I had the castle to myself for most of the evening aside from one couple that had followed behind me. They had their arms wrapped around each other for warmth and affection. They passed me as if I were invisible. I was an apparition silently standing in a haunted the palace. While I walked the streets of Krumlov after midnight, I felt like I could lose my fight or flight awareness that I had to carry with me when walking at night alone. It was exhausting always thinking of an escape route. Here I could just be with myself in the peaceful evening. The night itself is not bad, many beautiful things live in the darkness, it is man that makes the night terrifying.

The streets were narrow and each pathway took me through a a sliver of history that I did not know. I reached a church and began to walk the steps. Fresh urine dripped down the top of the stairs, the scent pungent and the piss was still inching over a step. It could’ve been a dog, it could’ve been a man. I heard a noise. I had a eerie feeling. I was probably being paranoid, but I decided to save the church for the next day. Still, my nervousness did not ruin my midnight explorations. I stood on a bridge and took pictures of the castle under the lights. Two drunk musicians were laughing and singing. One held out a beer to me. “Ne” I said with a smile.

In Czech he said, “you speak Czech?”

“Ne?” I said.

“Come have a drink with us!” He sang joyfully in English.

“Ne.” I said with a smile.

They shrugged and continued to weave and sing down the street toward a hidden pub.

I took one last night photo of a saint with the full moon in the background.

Life was beautiful. It was time to sleep.

Tales from Cesky Krumlov: A Prison Sentence and a Fairytale Wedding

Published on November 3, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond2 Comments

The idea of a native country, that is to say a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from other bits by a red or blue line: no not for me, my native country is the country I love, meaning the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well.
Gustave Flaubert
The Art of Travel, Alain De Botton

I am living in the Czech Republic, and I have 90 days to be here legally. Not only in the CR, but in all of the Schengen countries which covers most of Europe. When I was here in the late 90’s, the last hay days of the American dollar, if your tourist visa was about to run out, you could go to a neighboring country hang out for a while and then return to your desired country with a fresh new entry stamp. Those days are over. You have to go farther away and spend more money for that to work. If you become illegal in all of Schengen you will have an enormous fine and not be allowed to return to Europe for up to ten years. It is a race for the visas if a person wants to stay. I want to stay, and I know other Americans who are gambling with time for their visas and for the opportunity to stay in a place that is other then their birth place. It’s all politics and government.

When the ability to live where you have greater resources, or to have a better life for your children or to marry whom you love or just to live a new life in a new place is impeded by politics it doesn’t take an individual long to figure out how little they matter to politics, governments, and big corporate business, and you can feel very small and vulnerable. That’s how control works. Of course, everywhere in the world should be a good place to live, but this world is not equal.

Marek’s story was similar to mine except he was a Czech living in America. He had gone to America on a visa very much like I am doing now in the Czech Republic. He was lured to stay for romance which in my opinion can cause a human to take more risks. Most of the risks people take to live in a country other than their own comes from love. The love to be with someone, the love to take care of a family, the desire to have a better life for that family. A better life. Love for yourself. I don’t know why Marek had gone to the U.S. originally, but while he was there he met someone, and decided to stay. He became engaged to be married. Getting married and getting citizenship in a country other than your own is not an easy thing. You are often treated more like a criminal than a potential new citizen. It is a slow and long process. As Marek and his fiancé waited for the legal procedures his visa expired. He admittedly said he knew it went over, but he was going to be married, and was waiting for his green card, and he didn’t realize the consequences were more than a fine or the threat of deportation.

When it was discovered that Marek’s visa had expired he was arrested, and sent to a prison for 70 days. A prison with bars, and a number, and an orange jump suit. Not, because he had stolen, vandalized, raped or murdered, but because he overstayed his visa as he waited for his green card. He was 22 had never committed any actual crime, and he was sent to a state penitentiary. It wasn’t just the arrest or even some jail time that surprised me, what surprised me was the amount of jail time and that it was prison time. To me prisons should be used for real criminals, like rapists, child killers, murderers in general, companies that steal millions of dollars from people subsequently causing economic crashes and destroying lives- real crimes. I don’t understand why people who are illegal, whether they snuck across a boarder or overstayed a tourist or student visa, are being sent to prisons? Why not just deported? Does it cost more money to keep an illegal immigrant in our prisons then to deport them?

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Were these words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty ever true? I think, as I travel through this life, I gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be free. That this freedom can not be taken for granted, and many of those who believe they are free are not. Are our world boarders really protecting us? Protecting us from what? From people stealing our homes, our children, our dreams? Those things are stolen from us everyday from our backyards, our schools, our homes. It isn’t people who arrive illegally who take a person’s home away, it’s a very late mortgage payment and a bank that takes away that American Dream. Not one illegal Mexican repossessed an American citizen’s house. What is this freedom? Freedom is not about purchasing power it is about being able to make honest daily choices about how you want to live your life, raise your family, and how you want to love, it should also include where you want to live. The world is filled with plenty of successful unhappy people who believe they are free.

Marek got married while in a prison in America. He told me that he and his wife placed their hands on the glass that separated them, and he promised her that they would have a beautiful wedding once he was free. Marek obviously was free, and he came out of his 70 day’s in prison a new person with a new perspective on life. Life is precious, short, and can easily be stolen from you. He made simple promises to himself to spend time in the mountains, to appreciate life, to make the most out of it. To live now.

As I gathered up my belongings and paid my bill Marek showed me a picture from his wedding. The bride in a beautiful strapless white gown, and Marek in a dark suit kissing on a bridge with the Krumlov castle in the background, and a gorgeous pale blue sky. A fairytale wedding, as he had promised. Not everyone behind the prison glass gets to keep that promise because they are still waiting behind the prison glass.

At the point of writing this post, I still have time on my tourist visa, and if it was up to me I would have cut through the red tape, but it isn’t up to me, and the clock ticks as the days pass. It doesn’t matter that I’ve paid the required amounts to begin the work visa process all that matters is that the visa is approved before my time runs out. That is not up to me but, as far as I know, they are not arresting Americans for being illegal.

“There should be no boarders. We migratory creatures. We should be free to wander and free to stay. These “others” the corporate gods who live in the banks and government buildings high above our heads, they care nothing about us.They want to keep us in pig pens and call them boarders. They want to control our food, our water, who we love, how we love and live, and then they tell us to have pride while they make our pens smaller and tighter till we claw at one another. That’s not freedom that’s a factory farm.” – Annabelle, Zizkov

Eat Dragon Tongue in Cesky Krumluv

Published on October 26, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of
the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
Walt Whitman

The name of the restaurant escapes me. Names escape me but memories flood. It can be the smallest rainstorms. Perhaps a long frozen winter, a warm spring day, small rain, and then a flood that washes out the reality of your current moments and takes you back, drifting into your past. Anything can do it: a sound, a touch, a taste.

***

Zezo had recommended the place, and I remember it began with the letter L. It was down a narrow pathway like every place in Krumluv. All the roads are cobbled and all the roads are winding. A beautiful maze.

I sat outside under the bright light of the moon, and ordered something called Dragon Tongue made from tempeh. I had bulgur on the side and a small green salad. It had seemed a year had passed since I had eaten anything so healthy. It bordered on bland; low on the salt, and very clean and healthy. It sounds by my description that I didn’t like it, but I did. It reminded me of the eighties when the first of the vegetarian places were popping up here and there. You could get carob, and vegetables, but not much variety in flavor. Again, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy my dish, but I did. It was simple and relied on the natural flavors of cranberries, and tempeh, and bulgar with very little salt or spices. The way vegetarian food used to taste when it was just food and not a cuisine. It was quite nostalgic. My first experience with vegetarian food was when I was in seventh grade. I don’t think I had ever heard of anyone not eating meat. I was more in awe of the idea then anything else. I had a fairly typical response in my head: if you don’t eat meat then what do you eat? My mom and I would go many days without meat, but only because we didn’t have any money. Then it would be pickle and condiment sandwiches which I never equated as vegetarian. Oddly enough, my first vegetarian food experience was mixed with getting saved by Jesus. I’ll end the suspense right here and now, and let you know, I’ve been saved more than once, but it doesn’t seem to stick. When I was twelve The Heinkes (yes of the California fruit juice family Heinkes Fruit Inc.) made one of many attempts. This time they had sent me off to a Seventh Day Adventist church camp. Cowboy camp. I had slept in covered wagons; rode horses; learned that I was way behind in shaving my legs (and subsequently something was wrong with me because of that); had prayer meetings every night where secretly a newspaper article of Simon Le Bond’s sunken yacht was passed around and cried over. As we were meant to pray to Jesus for forgiveness the girls’ begged god to save the lead singer of Duran- Duran. Their prayers were answered, but I’m not sure how many of the girls were saved. I learned that some people do not eat meat, and I also learned who was Simon Le Bond (I pretended I already knew just like I pretended I could ride a horse). Seventh Day Adventists’ do not eat meat, and so it was my first experience with fake chicken nuggets, and fake ham served at the fake luau where I learned I would have rather had been in the fake surf camp then cowboy camp, because there was a real blonde boy in the surf camp who was real cute, and I didn’t like riding horses. In all honesty, camp was a kind of hell, except for the food. All that bullshit rounded out into pure curiosity towards vegetarianism. All these random thoughts triggered by eating Dragon Tongue under the light of a full moon. This is exactly the kind of thinking that can happen when you are traveling. You are in new places, and yet there you are with you. You in your past and you in your future. Look up from your meal, and hello, it’s you. It is also very hard to lie about knowing of Simon Le Bond and knowing how to ride a horse- you will be found out.

It amazes me the power of the sense memories.

As I sat silently eating my meal, the Vltva continued it’s ceaseless flow around the base of the castle’s bluff, and my mind continued to flow into strange and far away places. The tempeh began to taste how I imagined a dragon’s tongue to taste. The more I chewed the more I imagined I was eating the actual tongue of dragon. I suddenly felt ill, and slightly crazy, since it was impossible to eat a real dragon tongue. I blamed it on the castle, and The Game of Thrones, and my freakish imagination, and of course the moon.

I had ordered mead which was served very hot, and I drank it erasing my image of chewed tongues. The waiter had warned me that the mead could be very strong and to let him know if I needed to add more hot water. It was strong. A hot honey alcohol that made me feel a little tired. I really just wanted the mead to go with the dragon tongue because it made sense to me. Very Beowulf, I had thought to myself. I sat and listened to the river roll and drop into rivulets and swirling pools. I stared up at the castle lights that threw a blonde shine over the small medieval village. It was already ten thirty and I contemplated walking to the castle since Zezo had said it was open 24 hours. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to walk alone in the night to an empty castle. The village seemed safe, but I was trained by the very nature of being born a woman to be cautious.

The restaurant cleared out and I ordered a cappuccino. The waiter was extremely friendly and his English was very good. I suspected he had lived somewhere native English was spoken because he had even said one or two colloquial sayings, like ‘gotcha’, and ‘you know’. Could he have lived in America or Canada? I wondered. His name was Marek, and as the evening slowed he stopped and chatted with me. The usual small talk that you make with customers, but the more we spoke the more the conversation drifted from polite fiction into real life.

And how easily we can get to know something about people, when we are open to truly meeting them. And how much we can learn about ourselves. And what did I learn from Marek? The beginning of an ongoing gratitude, because while people may have traveled similar paths with similar intentions you quickly learn that governments can control the path you are on, and not every government is so kind- and my birth country has many boarders.

Go to Cesky Krumluv and Experience a Fairytale

Published on October 21, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond1 Comment

A cool night. 8:30 p.m. A full moon. Dark. An empty train station. The ingredients to a horror story.

I came without information. No direction, no reservations, no contacts. I could have taken this moment to berate myself on my lack of preparation, but what was the point. I was here now, and self degradation was a waste of emotional energy. Just walk, I told myself. I didn’t worry about injury just the cold. I walked toward a dark tree lined street, but something told me that I was moving in the wrong direction. I heard the sound of wheeled luggage on pavement behind me, and I turned to watch the silhouettes and shadows of people leaving the train station head down a steep hill. I decided to follow the other passengers.

I could not see the city center or the castle. I knew it was a sleepy city, and that I might not be able to find accommodations for the night, but I felt somehow I would be okay. The moon was full, and a bright rainbow of light cast a ring around the moon. There is a wise tale that say’s if you stand under the moon with a ring it means that you will find true love. In this wise tale you need to be standing under the ringed moon with another person, and that person is your true love. But, what does it mean if the person you are standing with is your mother or father? My mother would have loved that. The last time I had seen her before leaving for China (not knowing I would never see her again) she had been looking at me lovingly, and with a longing that made me feel uncomfortable. “Oh honey,” she had sighed, “I wish it could just be you and me forever.” I had looked at her with scrutiny before I spoke. “That’s great, mom, that’s what every daughter wants to hear from her mother.” “That’s not what I meant.” She had said in a huffed and insulted tone. “Yes it fucking is.” I had said. There were times when she would hug me and I felt that she was trying to absorb me into her flesh till she was pregnant with me. I’d push away from her during those embraces. Now that she’s gone I only feel sadness at my inability to give her what she wanted, but I had desperately wanted to be my own person. I didn’t have to think about it any longer. I could just stand under the ring of a full moon in Cesky Krumluv, that’s all there was now. So, what did it mean to stand under the moon alone? Perhaps it meant I would love this small village?

I was at ease. I was at peace. I didn’t always feel this way. I embraced these moments of calm. I longed for it to stay. There were more days’ of anxiety, and a heavy shadow of worry then there was this feeling of bliss. It would come in strange and unexpected moments. I vowed to find a way to bottle this feeling.

I cut through a park with a cobblestone path. The first leaves of fall sprinkled the ground like an autumn carpet. Although the park was dark and foreign I wasn’t afraid. The woods are not always haunted. Through the trees I saw the castle illuminated and glowing. Lumière chiaroscuro. A painting floating against the canvas of the night.

I stood for a moment staring at the castle taking in as much as I could in the darkness. It was built on a cliff of rocks, medieval and, yes, fairytale romantic.

I walked on till I was out of the woods and at the beginning of the village. I walked toward what looked to be an old guard’s gate, and to the right of it was a huge sign that said “Hostel 99”. That would be my first try. I followed the signs to the hostel over cobblestones, and down a backstreet that lead to a closed door. A light was on in a room, and I looked through the window as I passed. Inside I saw the face of a man that I had seen before. We did not know each other, but I had seen his face many times over the course of many years. He was the friend of my friend Gregg who I had lived with in Prague many years ago. I knew a few stories about him, I had even met his girlfriend briefly at the Clown and Bard the week prior to my trip. His name was Zezo and, because of social media, I had seen his pictures many times, but he knew nothing of me.

I rang the bell. He opened the door. I smiled like I knew him, and even though he did not know me he returned the same smile.

“You are Zezo.” I said.

“Yes.” He said surprised.

“I am a friend of Gregg’s from the Clown and Bard.”

“Oh, hello.” And he hugged me. “What can I do for you?”

“Do you have a room available?”

“Oh shit. No. Only a double for 700 koruna.”

“Do you know of another hostel?”

“Oh, yes, but man it is really fucking far away.”

He grabbed a map.

“How long are you staying?”

“One night.” I said.

“Oh shit. I can take care of that.”

-and he did.

I had shelter for the evening. Zezo directed me to a vegetarian restaurant where I could find some thing to eat. I had a limited time to find food because he told me that things closed early in Krumluv. He also told me that the castle was open for 24 hours so I could walk through the gates if I so chose.I thanked Zezo for his help and hospitality and wandered into the night and medieval city to explore and to find food.

Visit Ceské Budejovice and Experience Goulash and Beer in a Dive Bar

Published on October 20, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest- in all its ardor and paradoxes- then our travels.
Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel.

My connecting train to Krumluv was not going to arrive for two hours. I took my pack and wandered into the square near the Ceské Budejovice train station. I was hungry, and had to pee, but I had no idea where to go. I walked toward a sign that pointed to a restaurant in an alleyway. I didn’t know why I picked this particular sign to follow, maybe it was the alleyway or maybe I liked the flowers and stenciled tree on the sign. The sign did not match the restaurant. It wasn’t really a restaurant as much as it was a watering-hole that wanted to be a restaurant, but gave up on the restaurant dream years ago, and kept the sign.

When traveling I always feel awkward. It doesn’t seem to matter how many years or times I have wandered into a strange place in a strange city— that feeling of insecurity of place lingers. I live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, yet float in a state of constant awe that I’ve made it as far as I have. I’m fairly certain there are three of me living inside this one body. One is the great believer and spontaneous adventurer and the other is attempting to return to the cave where the ignorance of fear feels safe. The third is the observer wondering what the other two crazy me(s) are doing and how it is possible that we are still alive. I carry these thoughts— they are steady companions. My observer self is always amused, thankfully. What would I do without that part of me? How can one be concurrently so confident and so frightened? It makes no sense. I think that when I die maybe these three, my personal trinity, will finally become one. Until then I live with this triptych personality; sometimes open, sometimes closed, but some how we make it. I make it. I don’t think this is all entirely on my shoulders. Other humans can make life feel awkward, and more times then not it may be a case of: it’s not me it’s them.

It was a divey little place. Smoky and filled with men having beer during the early part of the day. The only women in the place were a lady in her sixties sitting near the entrance, and a woman, also in her sixties, working behind the bar. As I stepped inside all conversations stopped and all the men turned and silently looked at me, only the smoke moved. I hesitated wondering if this was one of those places that women did not go to, but the woman behind the bar smiled at me and the other women gave me a nod. I sat at a table as two men at the table beside me turned in their chairs to watch. I can never understand the blatant staring and examination of strangers. Do people not know it causes discomfort? Is that the intention? Have they never experienced it? I sat with my back to the men, but I could still feel them staring. The man closest to me leaned toward my shoulder attempting to get a better look at my face. Again, this was a moment of uncertainty; I was uncertain as to why I was still sitting there. I felt the men turn away from me, and the conversations started up again.

The bartender told me the specials, goulash and something I couldn’t understand.

“Dom si goulash prosim e pivo, prosim.”

All I can really do in Czech is order food. As I ordered, the man closest at the table again turned to watch me. He turned back to his friend said something and they began laughing. I pushed aside my discomfort. I had had many Chinese people watch me order food and eat when I was in Zhengzhou, but I still had not grown accustomed to the examinations. Also, there is a difference in feeling when two large men are staring at you like you are not a human being, but an exotic animal and when a small Chinese woman is staring at you like you are an exotic animal. I’ve become increasingly aware of how easily people disassociate themselves from the humanness of others. The examiner is the human the visitor is the strange animal— the other.

I drank my beer and ate my goulash slowly and in silence. The men at the table behind me slowly began to lose interest in my existence. ABBA’s, Fernando played on the radio. Smoke filled the room. Men chatted in Czech and ordered more beers. The carpeting was red and worn. Carpeting is never a good idea in bars, and I wonder why it has ever been done. The lady behind the bar had a tired face and the other woman finished her cigarette and then walked out with a wave of her hand. There was a man at the bar all in black with Motorhead stenciled in white on his black leather. His hair was stringy and died black. He could have lived in Portland, Oregon. I was still hungry after eating the goulash and I resisted the urge to lick my plate. I received a text message from Carol a new friend from the TEFL program. She was now living in Ceske Budejovice with her boyfriend. I had sent her a message earlier that I would be visiting CB. Through serendipitous timing she said she happened to be in the mall very near to the bar. We agreed to meet up. I paid my bill and went to the bathroom. When I returned the bartender handed me a shot. The two men at the table beside me had bought it for me. They could not speak any English except to ask where I was from.

“Ameriky.” I said.

“Na zdraví ” they toasted to my health.

The shot was sweet almost like a plum. I said, thank you and grabbed my pack and walked out of the bar.

I met Carol and her boyfriend Lukas in the mall. We sat in the food cart chatting and discussing my return to CB and what we should do during my visit. They walked me back to the train station and helped me to find my connection.

“It is only 20 minutes to Cesky Krumluv from here, but who knows how many stops the train will make.” Lukas said.

“Hopefully, I will get in before dark.” I said, “I have no idea where I am staying.”

They wished me luck and put me on the train. It took an hour to get to Krumluv, which reinforced the fact that the student agency bus would have been the better choice for travel.

It was dark when I arrived. This sentence was the first line I used to describe my first moments in Prague 14 year’s ago. It was dark when I arrived and I had no idea where to go. I had many memories of my first time in Prague as I traveled on the train. My first journey alone into the Czech Republic was on a train. The train, the darkness, and the blank almost meditative state of mind was a similar sensation to how I had felt all those years ago. I carried caution, but simultaneously moved blindly forward. There is never any way to go except forward.

Take a Train Through Bohemia: Drawing Maps with a Stranger

Published on October 15, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

You know I’ve seen a lot of what the world can do
and it’s breaking my heart in two
because I never wanna see you sad girl.

Don’t be a bad girl.

a photo of a train station in Trebon, Czechia taken through the train window.

The Czech man and I shared the train car in silence for about an hour. I am not sure what prompted him to break the silence but he began to speak to me even though I could not understand him. He knew I was going to Cesky Krumluv because I had shown him my ticket before I sat down. I handed him the ticket said, “prosim?” And then pointed to the seats. “Ano, ano,” he replied. I sat down and we smiled those strange tight smiles that you smile when you know that you can not communicate. There is a holding back in the smile because the next instant behind a genuine smile is the impulse to speak. The smile is lost and stuck in a sort of limbo. It doesn’t know if it should stop smiling. There is no where else for it to go. There we were stuck in awkward silence with these lost grins. There was a moment in China when I had first experienced this lost smile. I stood waiting for an elevator in my apartment where the school had housed me, and as the doors slowly parted I saw the kind face of one of the Chinese head teachers at my school. We both greeted each other with a surprised, “ni hao,” and behind this simple hello brimmed the communication, “Hey, what are you doing here? So surprised to run into you here.” Our smiles were bright and open, but just as quickly as the elevator doors slide open and then closed we remembered that we could not speak the same language and our smiles fell into the same tight smiles as the one I shared with the Czech man on the train. That silence of inability is strong. The desire to communicate is visceral and real. There is a poignant moment of realization that the moment is lost like our smiles.

“Cesky Krumluv?” He said.
“Yes. Ano.”
“Ceske Budejovice…”

…And he began to pantomime instructions to me. “Smer”, he said. I had seen this word many times in the train station and metro and I had guessed that the word meant exit. “Ceske Budejovice smer…” and somehow out of only recognizing one or maybe two words I figured out that I needed to get off the train in Cseke Budejovice and transfer to another train. The beauty of all of my understanding of the word smer is that I was incorrect in my translation. The word means direction, but my guess of exit is what saved me from missing my transfer. To clarify my understanding of what the man was telling me I handed him my journal and had him draw his communication. I needed to transfer in Budejovice, but where was I to find my connecting train? I decided to worry about it once I arrived.

A hand made map of directions written in black ink. — Clear enough instructions.

Once the man knew that I understood him he began speaking to me more freely as if I could clearly understand the Czech language. I realized at that moment that I didn’t even know how to say, “I don’t speak Czech.” I continued to smile at him and nod my head, and in truth, I was straining to understand. In retrospect it is amusing that I would attempt to understand words that attached no meaning to my native language, yet I still tried.

“Cesky Krumluv…Ceske… Historicky.”

Any word that I slightly recognized caused me to jump with a small jolt of excitement.

“History? Ano. Ano.”

He grabbed a magazine from his bag. The cover had an image of what looked like a viking and the title ‘Historike Ceske’. He leafed through the pages and showed me a picture of a castle, and then he began naming off places. Then an amazing thing happened. I understood that this man was telling me of all the historic places in Bohemia that I should visit. He also told me how many kilometers by train or walking it would take to get from one place to another. Again, I had him draw me a picture. In my journal he made a scratch pad map of where I should visit and what places to stop to transfer to the next place. We spoke in this manner with drawings, and his use of one or two English words and my understanding of one or two Czech words for thirty minutes. Once we had exhausted our abilities to communicate we both returned to our silence and watched the sky and the trees quickly stream past our window.

Directions to Cesky Krumlov written in a journal.

I felt free as I often do on trains. There is a magic to traveling by train that I never experience or feel when I’m on a plane or traveling by car. Although, all forms of transportation delivers you to a place it is on a train where I feel like I am truly traveling. It is on the train when I feel truly free. It breaths life into the saying, “It is not the destination, but the journey,” for me. I’ve had the experience more than once in my life that it isn’t the moment when I am in a new place or the moment when I am leaving a familiar place that brings me happiness. It is when I am in-between. I am nowhere. I am leaving and going simultaneously. Time is crossing paths with the future and the past and it is in this moment where I am present. Now. Now I am going. I don’t dream of the next place or long for the place I had left. I am only here on the train listening to the wheels singing against the rails, and watching the trees and the life outside, the entire world, flow by like a river. I flow with it into nothingness and everything, and that is when I am free. My home is the train.

We are familiar with the notion that the reality of travel is not what we anticipate.

The Art of Travel- Alain De Botton

Botton, Alain De. The Art of Travel. New York:Pantheon Books,2002. Print.

P.S. A tip on traveling: The best thing to take when traveling from Prague to Cesky Krumluv is the student agency bus. It is cheaper and faster than the train, and it takes you directly to the city center. Still, there was a personal advantage to my making the mistake of taking the train. I just happen to love trains.