"Something with chocolate..."

[July 2015] The cycle trip went through sleepy Moravian villages. At the grocery store - just in time for closing time - we got off to buy some more water. It was a very hot day.

It was a friendly day. We befriended the poodle waiting outside the shop for its owner. We befriended the little, bouncy kitten that was circling around our feet. The poodle glared at the cat, and the cat stared at the dog. We picked the kitten up, and put it down near the dog, to see if they could become friends too.

The poodle's owner came outside the shop. We talked a bit. About the dog, the weather, and about the fact that we are foreigners.

She said: "My grand-daughter's boyfriend is a foreigner."
"Oh," we said, "where is he from?"
She didn't know.
What was his name then?
"A long complicated name," she said: "something with chocolate."
"Wait, now I know. His name is Tofi!"

We talked about the weather, and then she told us about her son who had died many years ago in a car accident.

Life in a sleepy Moravian village.

We got on our bikes again. We rode past fields with golden stubble and golden fields with bales of straw. The sky was milk white and warm. Half-ripe plums on the trees. Starlings flapped off when we passed, and turned elegant loops in the sky. We ended up at a little lake, and on the cliff beside the lake stood a somewhat threatening-looking, dilapidated castle. There was a pub - there's always a pub - and they served beer, schnitzel and potatoes.

We took the same route back. Or more or less so, because we had lost our map. Back through the golden fields under the milk white sky. Late in the afternoon we passed that sleepy Moravian village again. The old lady with the poodle strolled under the trees near the grocery shop. It was as if we were in one of those slightly absurd Czech films, that ends where it started. We waved at her, raced out of her world, leaving her with her poodle, village life and old grief.