Tag: random thoughts

Take a Train Through Bohemia: Drawing Maps with a Stranger

Published on 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.

Traveling in Bohemia

Published on by An Accidental Vagabond2 Comments

As I grabbed my pack and left the apartment for the final time, Cat Steven’s “Baby it’s a Wild World” played on repeat in my head. My spirits had been low as of late, hell the spirits are all over the place,  for reasons and no reasons at all. It’s tender footing and walking on eggshells in this brain. Having Cat Stevens as a companion at the moment was encouraging.

blonde woman with a backpack standing in from of a red and white door.
Leaving the apartment on Kublelikova in Zizkov, Prague.

Oh Baby, baby it’s a wild world. It’s hard to get by just upon a smile girl.”

I sat on a Czech train gently cruising deeper into Bohemia. It has been years since I have ridden a European railway. At first I was confused to where to sit. In China the seats are open and similar to the seating arrangements as Amtrax, America’s rail line. This train was compartmentalized by little rooms with sliding doors and eight seats to a compartment.

I sat in the darkness with an older Czech man as the train went through a tunnel. We had been silent because I don’t speak Czech and he cannot speak English. The light in the train car was dim and I could barely see. It gave me a moment to think on how rarely I travel so impulsively on my own. Although, many people could say I do this all the time, but more often then not I have a place to stay at my destination; this time I did not. I suppose I did the same thing in Ireland many years ago, but that’s another story.

burgundy train seats in a Czech train car.
The train to Cesky Kumluv

Originally I had planned to make this trip with my new friend Keiko. We had met during our TEFL training at The Language House in Prague. Most of the other students had found places to live, and jobs, but Keiko whose final destination was South Korea, and myself whose final destination seems to be god knows where (due to visa and passport issues) were left to our whims while we had money. Keiko had been using couchsurfing a website that connects travelers to people who are happy to open their homes and host them for a night or two. Keiko suggested we should couch surf together for a week. It was decided. We had planned to go to Kunta Hora for a day and then the next day we would head for Cesky Krumluv.

It is amazing how quickly things can change, literally things can change in a mater of five minutes or the click of a link. Keiko has a love affair with Poland. She had been there before and had a friend who was a DJ in Warsaw (I think Warsaw). As we sat on my bed looking on our computers Keiko read a link to her friend’s radio show. He told her to listen because he had mentioned her. She sighed heavily. “I wish I could go to Poland. The only thing that is keeping me from going is money.” She sighed again and then clicked on another link- and there it was an offer for her to volunteer teach in Poland. All she had to do was get there, but the weeks accommodations and food would all be provided. And like that, a wish and a click, plans had been changed and Keiko headed to Poland.

I was solemn for a moment, but only because I knew I would not see Keiko again in person or at least not for many years. This lifestyle brings lasting strong friendships that are maintained through social media. In the past you knew you had to say good-bye possibly forever, but now we can always look at each other’s pictures and send a message on birthdays and on those occasions when we realize it has been years since we have said hello to that dear friend you met in that foreign place. If I am going to be entirely honest with myself another reason for my brief but somber mood had to do with my newly developed and increasingly uneasy anxieties. I would classify it as a fear. Fear of what exactly I’m not too sure. I’ve always struggled with anxiety and worry, but since China, since my mom’s death it seems to be stronger. Although I feel like there have always been twinges of anxiety- after all I’ve had more than one panic attack, I suppose it is fitting for it to manifest itself in new and exotic forms.

With all these nightmares
It’s a wonder that I
ever made it out from
my childhood
bedroom.
– Annabelle, Zizkov

There has always been potential for me to be someone who hides and lives in books and television series, and movies. In a way it was how I was raised. Mother and I always watching movies together. The last few times I had visited her it was hard to get her out of the house at all. A lot of it had to do with the pain that she was in, but she had always hid from the world that was so often cruel to her. The movies and the series, and the books were better, safer, they eased her pain and they helped her forget her sorrows. I know this life very, very well. I grew up with an overwhelming feeling of being trapped. Trapped in poverty, trapped in a small town, trapped with her, always looking out at what other people do. I was afraid if I left she would die, and eventually she did. We all do.

I pushed these feelings away as I watched Keiko do the necessary planning to make her very last minute bookings to Poland, plus her Skype to her concerned mother. Keiko turned to me before she called her mom. “Just wait she’s going to warn me that I could be sold into sex slavery.” That is exactly what her mom worried about. I chuckled remembering my mom having the same worry when I was in Prague fourteen years ago. It must be so hard on parents with their children dashing around the world when the news produces images of such terror. As she spoke with her mother I decided to do our planned trip on my own. I looked for places to book in Krumluv, but for some reason I was not able to book anything. So I would just have to take my chances and hope to find something once I arrived.

Running through the train station with only five minutes left to catch my train, I stumbled through incredibly broken Czech asking people to help me find the platform. Miming in the Czech Republic had been far more successful than my miming attempts in China. Through the assistance of strangers, I found my platform, and my train and sat down in the compartment with the nice older man who shared in the silence and the darkness of the tunnel.

“Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world, I’ll always remember you as a child girl.”

To be continued…

Traveling Does Not Erase the Loss You Feel, But it Sure is Beautiful

Published on by An Accidental Vagabond1 Comment

Today, I randomly opened my book Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and read a quote that seemed to answer a common request I’ve had of late.

Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you,
you must travel it for yourself.

The quote is from his poem, “Song of Myself”. An ex-boyfriend gave me the book nearly ten years ago, and his reason was specifically for me to read “Song of Myself”. It took me a couple of years after he had given it to me for me to read it. When I finally did, I couldn’t remember a poem moving me so greatly and causing me to pause with such huge sighs of awe. How could this man from the 1800’s know how I was feeling today? It is a poem of self empowerment, and a testament to the wonder of life, and what potential we all have, and it is more.

I had grabbed a few books with me on my journey to China. I’ve already left a couple behind when I came to Prague, and I will most likely leave the rest behind, but Leaves of Grass will travel with me. Walt Whitman speaks to all my life longings perfectly as if he had taken words from my own mouth, my own dreams. He answers my questions and soothes my anxieties as if he is here listening to me speak and cry out,  but this is impossible because he had these thoughts, these ideas, these wonderments before my existence. Even so, I feel he speaks to me as if we were alive in the same time. Would we be kindred spirits? I like to believe that we would.

This journey, as wonderful as it is, and as grateful as I am to experience it, has been hard. As I look back on my life, I think in most moments I have thought things were almost always hard, and part of this is because there is something wrong with my brain. This is true, it is called depression, and it can cloud even the most amazing experiences. I’m fairly certain it is hereditary based on some of the behaviors and actions of people in my family. I’ve struggled with it since I was a teenager, and at periods of my life it had been pretty bad, coming with its wonderful array of self-loathing and suicidal thoughts- it’s truly a joy to have around. There have been periods when I was able to keep it under control through meditation, yoga, and other forms of exercise. It can sometimes be an extra challenge to the normal challenges of life,  like a layer cake of challenge. This year is a great challenge: living in foreign countries, loosing my mom, struggling with the monsters called bureaucracy and soon to be dealing with the issue of no money, and plus this little brain thing. I’m beginning to wonder if I can handle all this shit. My life in the now is rarely happy. It is only in the past that places and experiences look better or they create longing. This is a thinking pattern that really bothers me, but I have yet to change it. There is one particular moment of time where I feel real contentment and peace, and it does involve traveling, but I’ll save it for the next post. I often feel bad about feeling bad, like I’m ungrateful or filled with self pity and misery and I don’t deserve to have these experiences- they should go to people who have a greater appreciation for the adventures of travel. The kind of people you see in photographs.

I had wondered before coming to Prague if it was really the right decision. If I had the strength to make it through the course, if I have the strength to make it through this process of trying to find work to get the visa to deal with the bureaucracies. I also wonder what I’m doing it for. If it is all so hard in the moment then why bother? Why not just go back? At this moment I can’t answer these questions. I kept hoping I would get a sign, something to tell me I am on the right path, that I’m actually on a path and not just flailing about lost in a forest that I don’t even know I’m in because all I see are the trees.

This year (who am I kidding I’ve done this multiple times) has made me throw imaginary arms into the air and cry out, “I give up. I can’t do this can somebody please do this for me? Can somebody else live my life?” But, no, no-one can. Like Whitman said, “no one can travel that road for you, you must travel it yourself.”

All I see are the trees.

It is not far, it is within reach,
perhaps you have always been on it since you were born and did not
know,
perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

A few days ago, for the first time, I had felt the prickling of missing China. It was small like I mentioned- a prick. I had wondered if I would miss it. If missing it had been too buried under my culture shock, my mother’s death,  the pollution. I was kindly relieved to feel this small feeling of missing this place. It gave me some kind of hope that it wasn’t a mistake that I did learn something there and that over time I will grow from it. Time is never what we think it should be. We don’t heal or grow like we are told we should. We don’t become wise just because we grow older and we don’t get happiness just because we followed the rules. It is never what we expect. I had read Siddhartha while I was in China, and I had asked myself, and I still ask myself, will I ever see my life as Siddhartha saw his; that each experience was purposeful, and carried meaning? Will that self-reflection of one’s own journey- my own journey; will it be seen? Will I see the forest and the mountains, the land and the sea? Siddhartha is a little over a hundred pages, but years had passed in the story. Time is never like a book or a movie. Patience. That is the only word I can really say to myself in this moment. Patience, and perspective, and don’t panic, after all it’s just life, and mine isn’t so bad even with depression.

I know I am not alone in these thoughts. I also know I am not alone in feeling bad of feeling bad about being in a foreign place. After all don’t people dream about traveling? Don’t people wish they could pack it all up and start a new life in an exotic place? But, dreams are not realities, and nothing can be how you expect it especially if you’re bringing yourself along, and maybe yourself has some extra baggage. So, this is my final thought on the matter of someone else doing this whole life thing for me or maybe for you if you ever feel similar. No one can travel the road I’m on as no one can travel the road you are on. I know we are not traveling together, but with all these roads we must be crossing paths. So, with the baggage we carry, the pieces we were born with and the pieces that we’ve accumulated, I hope, that when all the roads converge, we’ll be able to drop our bags and converse before traveling on our own roads, but with our hands free.

 

Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of light and every
moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me,
shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

CIMG5921
The Burial Tomb of Emperor Qin. Legend is that it is protected by a lake of mercury. Scientists have tested the hill and have found extremely high levels of mercury. It will be many years before the story is told.