i am standing by the side of the road in bulgaria, fishing for friendliness. i struggle upstream. i feel like my outstretched thumb is a rod with no hook and not even any line, it feels that ineffectual. "friendly people i am ready to meet you" i call out, "openness, trustfullness, dear sweet friendliness, where art thou?" o people of the world, i feel so lonely amongst you. i desire to meet a crazy lover of life.
at the end of the day, the smile that the woman gave me at the bus station becomes a shimmering golden moment. the best moment of the day: somebody smiled at me. the next day was extatically golden, a woman comes out of a shop and gives me a big slice of juicy red watermelon. o joyous friendliness.
ah, bulgaria. bulgaria. just the bulgaria sounding of the bulgaria name of that bulgarian country gives me so many bulgarian impressions and bulgarian sensations. a gruff voice demands that i show my passport. i say, but my train is about to leave. he doesn't care he wants to scrutinize my passport. his smile is a thousand miles away. the look in a person's eyes tells everything about everything.
later i berate myself for judging: what am i looking for, for everybody to smile and say have a nice day? i don't speak their language i don't know their story, i snatched three days of fleeting impressions, that may or may not be representative. i got ripped off at the bulgarian/romanian border. i was hitching and a guy said: i will give you a lift if you give me this much money, then at the border, if you give me the rest of your bulgarian money i will give you these little romanian notes in exchange. little romanian notes i found out later.
i later berate myself for always wanting to take and not give. i think of how i can implement mother teresa's advice in my life. she said: (something like) (i read this somewhere) "always leave another person happier than when they met you".
i thought: maybe giving that guy my money was the best way to make him happy.
my passage through bulgaria came off the back of an awesome tour of turkey. i left my bike at a couchsurfer in antalya and began hitching, sampling the diverse cross section of society (actually usually a cross section of the single males of socity) that hitchhiking offers. after a month i feel tuned in to the cultural experience of being in turkey, of being offered tea, of being seen as a person meriting curiosity, of having generosity lavished upon me. certain topics of conversation have become habitual: islam, turkey's multicultural influences, russian women. i go from one car to the next, from one world to the next. i have made many new facebook friends. (usually the sixth question asked, after where are you from? where are you going? how long have you been in turkey? what do you think of turkey? and, what is your job? is "do you have facebook?" it is ramazan and most muslims go through the day eating, drinking, smoking nothing. drinking not even water. still, there is a photo of my lift-giver and i standing by his car with cans of coke in our hands. probably smiling. doubtless smiling. a boisterous lorry-driver, instead of modulating the speed of his fluency to aid my understanding, raises the volume of his voice. i jump out of his lorry, feeling shouted at, feeling grateful for the two hundred kilometres given. i cross the land to the sea of marmaris, dialoguing with my lift-giver who gives me an attentive ear and allows my little parcel to turkish to florish. he has me building up little phrases like "okumak kitap kapilar achiyor" - reading books opens doors - "yeni dunyalar" - new worlds. - turkish script i am now unable to render with this romanian keyboard - he leaves me with a bag of chillis and the good tomatoes that come from channakale. encountering him has uplifted my soul, the next car that skids to a stop contains three youths that laugh and pretend to hit each other and swerve on the road, take the small road - they say they are avoiding the police - to their little town. even those youths - who told me in turkish - i dont know how i understood - that they had been drinking and smoking - must invite me to tea at their local cafe, tea after tea - "no i am okay i am really okay i have already eaten, thank you" give me a packet of cheese crackers nonetheless, tea after tea, the local men and the youths crowd round to look at me - the hitchhiker from scotland they found on the road, an unusual spectacle in this wayside village (Edincik), the next youth insists on taking me 30 km off the main road to his town of gonen - he insists i will get a lift from there - i say "take me whererever you will", hitchiking is a little version of life - all life is journeying - but a crazy version of life. crazy in the sense unpredictable. you may be waiting for hours you may be pleading "who will help me?", faith in the goodness of people will keep you standing there and Life may help you or it may not and may be you may have to walk with your tail between your legs to the bus stop. as evening falls hours outside the town of gonen, the next youth stops saying he will take me to channakale, then asking "how much money do i have? do i have money for petrol?" he turns the volume to a full blast of electro music and i have to dance along with him in his car, he says "lets go to a disco in channakale tonight!" when i say i have no money for that, (meaning i do not want to have money for that) he says "where else will you sleep tonight? come back to my house and we will go to disco in channakale tomorrow night. i have money tomorrow" i have to really insist to get out of his car, and to the last he is pouring out cashew nuts into my hand. the men in the gas station across the road witness the event and usher me over, give me a seat in the shade, saying ignore that youth he has been smoking marijuana, bring me out a piece of bread and a lump of cheese - they themselves will not eat until sunset. the friendlinest of all came from the little boys in the town of edirne, where police find me bedding down in the abandoned land outside mosque. they want to see my passport - doing so ever so politely, a politeness and reverend respect i have never seen in any police before - then direct me to the local park. the retinue of little boys quizz me about me, then fifteen minutes later come back with a sandwich and a little bottle of orangeade. full of sincerity full of goodness. that was the most touching.
i have learned the worth of simplifying language as a viable good way of communicating. always focus on communication, irrespective of grammatical correctness. turkish taught me that with its lack of definite article - why define article when understood anyway? - and lack of verb to be in simple sentences. for example to say "i have been here for three weeks" you say "three weeks i here" often plural isn't even recognised, you could just say "three week i here" (maybe i'm wrong there i haven't studied the grammer to an indepth level, but i feel that one gets off very well saying three week i here). Jonas, the austrian who was walking to Jerusalem, first said me how happy to speak english not correct correct but to understand. i said "okay, you have mastered the first basic step, but surely the better second step would be to abide by the standard rules of grammer?" but no, he was perfectly happy to make mistakes, and communicate. i have come round to his way of thinking now, really happy to walk up to someone and say "excuse me, internet cafe where?"
also in bulgaria and romania: "excuse me where is train station?"
really happy.
this was an habitual kind of conversation in turkey: i am in a crepe bar by the sea talking to a girl. she says: do you travel alone? i say: yes - but as alone sounds lonely - i say "but i am always with God" i must have used that word to want to evoke something of the relationship of love that connects me with the universe. she says: what? i say: "with God, with Allah"
"are you a muslim?"
i talk about not distinctions - muslims, christians, jews, hindis, athiests etc - but the One Universal Spirit,
she says: i understand.
at the end of the day, the smile that the woman gave me at the bus station becomes a shimmering golden moment. the best moment of the day: somebody smiled at me. the next day was extatically golden, a woman comes out of a shop and gives me a big slice of juicy red watermelon. o joyous friendliness.
ah, bulgaria. bulgaria. just the bulgaria sounding of the bulgaria name of that bulgarian country gives me so many bulgarian impressions and bulgarian sensations. a gruff voice demands that i show my passport. i say, but my train is about to leave. he doesn't care he wants to scrutinize my passport. his smile is a thousand miles away. the look in a person's eyes tells everything about everything.
later i berate myself for judging: what am i looking for, for everybody to smile and say have a nice day? i don't speak their language i don't know their story, i snatched three days of fleeting impressions, that may or may not be representative. i got ripped off at the bulgarian/romanian border. i was hitching and a guy said: i will give you a lift if you give me this much money, then at the border, if you give me the rest of your bulgarian money i will give you these little romanian notes in exchange. little romanian notes i found out later.
i later berate myself for always wanting to take and not give. i think of how i can implement mother teresa's advice in my life. she said: (something like) (i read this somewhere) "always leave another person happier than when they met you".
i thought: maybe giving that guy my money was the best way to make him happy.
my passage through bulgaria came off the back of an awesome tour of turkey. i left my bike at a couchsurfer in antalya and began hitching, sampling the diverse cross section of society (actually usually a cross section of the single males of socity) that hitchhiking offers. after a month i feel tuned in to the cultural experience of being in turkey, of being offered tea, of being seen as a person meriting curiosity, of having generosity lavished upon me. certain topics of conversation have become habitual: islam, turkey's multicultural influences, russian women. i go from one car to the next, from one world to the next. i have made many new facebook friends. (usually the sixth question asked, after where are you from? where are you going? how long have you been in turkey? what do you think of turkey? and, what is your job? is "do you have facebook?" it is ramazan and most muslims go through the day eating, drinking, smoking nothing. drinking not even water. still, there is a photo of my lift-giver and i standing by his car with cans of coke in our hands. probably smiling. doubtless smiling. a boisterous lorry-driver, instead of modulating the speed of his fluency to aid my understanding, raises the volume of his voice. i jump out of his lorry, feeling shouted at, feeling grateful for the two hundred kilometres given. i cross the land to the sea of marmaris, dialoguing with my lift-giver who gives me an attentive ear and allows my little parcel to turkish to florish. he has me building up little phrases like "okumak kitap kapilar achiyor" - reading books opens doors - "yeni dunyalar" - new worlds. - turkish script i am now unable to render with this romanian keyboard - he leaves me with a bag of chillis and the good tomatoes that come from channakale. encountering him has uplifted my soul, the next car that skids to a stop contains three youths that laugh and pretend to hit each other and swerve on the road, take the small road - they say they are avoiding the police - to their little town. even those youths - who told me in turkish - i dont know how i understood - that they had been drinking and smoking - must invite me to tea at their local cafe, tea after tea - "no i am okay i am really okay i have already eaten, thank you" give me a packet of cheese crackers nonetheless, tea after tea, the local men and the youths crowd round to look at me - the hitchhiker from scotland they found on the road, an unusual spectacle in this wayside village (Edincik), the next youth insists on taking me 30 km off the main road to his town of gonen - he insists i will get a lift from there - i say "take me whererever you will", hitchiking is a little version of life - all life is journeying - but a crazy version of life. crazy in the sense unpredictable. you may be waiting for hours you may be pleading "who will help me?", faith in the goodness of people will keep you standing there and Life may help you or it may not and may be you may have to walk with your tail between your legs to the bus stop. as evening falls hours outside the town of gonen, the next youth stops saying he will take me to channakale, then asking "how much money do i have? do i have money for petrol?" he turns the volume to a full blast of electro music and i have to dance along with him in his car, he says "lets go to a disco in channakale tonight!" when i say i have no money for that, (meaning i do not want to have money for that) he says "where else will you sleep tonight? come back to my house and we will go to disco in channakale tomorrow night. i have money tomorrow" i have to really insist to get out of his car, and to the last he is pouring out cashew nuts into my hand. the men in the gas station across the road witness the event and usher me over, give me a seat in the shade, saying ignore that youth he has been smoking marijuana, bring me out a piece of bread and a lump of cheese - they themselves will not eat until sunset. the friendlinest of all came from the little boys in the town of edirne, where police find me bedding down in the abandoned land outside mosque. they want to see my passport - doing so ever so politely, a politeness and reverend respect i have never seen in any police before - then direct me to the local park. the retinue of little boys quizz me about me, then fifteen minutes later come back with a sandwich and a little bottle of orangeade. full of sincerity full of goodness. that was the most touching.
i have learned the worth of simplifying language as a viable good way of communicating. always focus on communication, irrespective of grammatical correctness. turkish taught me that with its lack of definite article - why define article when understood anyway? - and lack of verb to be in simple sentences. for example to say "i have been here for three weeks" you say "three weeks i here" often plural isn't even recognised, you could just say "three week i here" (maybe i'm wrong there i haven't studied the grammer to an indepth level, but i feel that one gets off very well saying three week i here). Jonas, the austrian who was walking to Jerusalem, first said me how happy to speak english not correct correct but to understand. i said "okay, you have mastered the first basic step, but surely the better second step would be to abide by the standard rules of grammer?" but no, he was perfectly happy to make mistakes, and communicate. i have come round to his way of thinking now, really happy to walk up to someone and say "excuse me, internet cafe where?"
also in bulgaria and romania: "excuse me where is train station?"
really happy.
this was an habitual kind of conversation in turkey: i am in a crepe bar by the sea talking to a girl. she says: do you travel alone? i say: yes - but as alone sounds lonely - i say "but i am always with God" i must have used that word to want to evoke something of the relationship of love that connects me with the universe. she says: what? i say: "with God, with Allah"
"are you a muslim?"
i talk about not distinctions - muslims, christians, jews, hindis, athiests etc - but the One Universal Spirit,
she says: i understand.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento