My Dutch visitor and I had planned to go to the mountains. We were both flue-y, it drizzled, it was cold, the forecasts were miserable, but we had planned to go to the mountains. And so we went.
[October 2015]
When we got on the bus in Trojanovice, the bus was filled with pensioners; ladies with dyed perms and full shopping bags. By the third stop they had all gotten off again, and now it was only us and the bus driver who was making lame jokes.
It was foggy and wet. The mountain was steep. Steep, wet mountain. But we had no choice, we had to go up. According to my Dutch visitor the advantage of a steep mountain is that your face is closer to the ground. In that way you get to see more.
She saw a caterpillar
and a yellow-black lizzard.
We saw a lot of wet.
Wet leafs.
Black tree trunks.
Slippery paths.
And the little sparkly raindrops
that decorated
pine needles
and cobwebs
and blades of grass
(like a poem).
We hiked to the top, where we had booked beds in a mountain hut.
The hotel was empty, apart from six guests. Much to our sorrow, these six guests had ended up in the room next to ours. And because the only entertainment in the hotel was rich food, affordable beer and poor tv, around midnight our neighbours had become properly drunk, and they behaved improperly loud. But my Dutch visitor was both indignant and unafraid, and she knocked their door with a warning not to let things escalate, and after this everyone could finally go to sleep.
The next day we descended the mountain at the other side. It was still foggy, and we were both a little flu-affected. We didn't meet a living soul. Apart from the man we had bumped into in the forest the day before. "Hullo, yesterday's girls!' he hollered cheerfully.
We ended up in an - to us - obscure town, where just that day President Zeman would be visiting. He was to address the people after four o'clock, and we had neither time nor interest to wait for this. But when we were eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the town square, the presidential Skoda came sailing round the corner, and we saw the president after all. Not that we had been desperate to see him, but still. It gives you a story to tell.
[October 2015]
When we got on the bus in Trojanovice, the bus was filled with pensioners; ladies with dyed perms and full shopping bags. By the third stop they had all gotten off again, and now it was only us and the bus driver who was making lame jokes.
It was foggy and wet. The mountain was steep. Steep, wet mountain. But we had no choice, we had to go up. According to my Dutch visitor the advantage of a steep mountain is that your face is closer to the ground. In that way you get to see more.
She saw a caterpillar
and a yellow-black lizzard.
We saw a lot of wet.
Wet leafs.
Black tree trunks.
Slippery paths.
And the little sparkly raindrops
that decorated
pine needles
and cobwebs
and blades of grass
(like a poem).
We hiked to the top, where we had booked beds in a mountain hut.
The next day we descended the mountain at the other side. It was still foggy, and we were both a little flu-affected. We didn't meet a living soul. Apart from the man we had bumped into in the forest the day before. "Hullo, yesterday's girls!' he hollered cheerfully.
We ended up in an - to us - obscure town, where just that day President Zeman would be visiting. He was to address the people after four o'clock, and we had neither time nor interest to wait for this. But when we were eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the town square, the presidential Skoda came sailing round the corner, and we saw the president after all. Not that we had been desperate to see him, but still. It gives you a story to tell.
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