So where have we been?
It has been days, if not weeks since I last updated. I feel like it is an age, and yes – I am going to use the excuse that we simply haven’t been able to find internet, mainly I use that excuse because it is true.
The internet populous land of Estonia seems far away and in Latvia, passing along roads that are barely surfaced with lonely old women picking their own food on either side, the modern world could not seem further away.
After passing through the lovely city of Riga, with its grand buildings we start to get the feeling that it is, in fact, no greater than most European Cities, it seems to be missing the medieval splendour of Tallinn, the quaint feel of Stockholm or the veibrant alternative culture of Copenhagen.
After a night out on a few very reasonably priced beers and, in the warmth of an evening, watching young lovers dance to the live band I decide that I really didn’t care about how backward Latvia was, how I will probably be paralysed in the next few hundred kilometres of bad roads nor how certainly unscrupulous campsites mangage to turn just a few Lati into 20 euro, I really don’t care about that anymore.
We have ahd some real shi t-hit-fan times on this trip – the van breaking down, not being able to find places, the sat-nav having directed us in the almost complete opposite direction and so forth. Yet every single time it seems like things are just destined to continue upon the road of pain, discomfort, misery and short tempers something comes along and makes everything ok.
It comes in just such a slight form, you allow yourself a little smile of recognition as suddenly you are in full realisation of the fact that you are many miles from home, in another country, another culture (and another bloody currency) and you find yourself attempting, in no more than five universal words and unlimited hand actions, nods, waves and expressions, to explain what we are doing and what the other person, sat on the table across from us is doing in this town, this bar, this moment.
That pretty much sums up our whole trip to this extent, Drive, have a few problems, loose where we are, eat, sleep, meet people, regale upon them our stories (which by now are approaching voluminous sizes) and listen to their stories, go for a few beers and start again.
A life that, on the whole does not sound exciting, but yet in a way it is. From the morning to the evening we have no idea how our day is going to go, no idea what events lurk around the next hairpin bend that the sat-nav has decided is the fastest route for us, nor any idea as to what state the food will be when it is served from a small roadside cafe that does not have a menu in English, nor we have any idea what the food is, (it was delicious by the way, though the meat was quite possibly fried donkey.)
I know none of the above answers the question of where we are now. We have also visited Warsaw and Berlin in the meantime, but all of this is seemingly inconsequential. Buildings are buildings, streets are streets, we are glad that we have seen, no, experienced them – but truly we are all in search of that holy grail, those few minutes of learning about and from other people and then attempting to relay our story, perhaps the greatest challenge on this trip is being understood.
