Sunday, January 27, 2013

Meeting I.

I arrived at my great-uncle's place still quite tired from yesterdays expedition. My great uncle is now a very old but kind guy with some life experience I could say. We talked about my trip a little, it peculiar to get an old man's input. I would have thought he wouldn't even know where Kamcatka was. Anyway he greeted me with an enormous dinner as it seems to be the tradition in southern Moravia.

When I was getting sleepy because of too much food, old uncle decided we should drink to this occasion. I had some doubts but just didn't have the heart to refuse. By 7PM and because of my very low resistance to alcohol I was nearly drunk. I was supposed to meet I. in a few minutes.

At the moment, I. was my only shot, my ticket to the east. I can't say there won't be others but I didn't want to mess that one up.

I. studies medicine, it's her last year I think. She seems smart. Not the kind of person you could easily manipulate. Not the manipulative kind either. Those things are subjective but it's my quick guess. She did kickboxing and travelled to Syria. Crazy enough to come with me but not suicidal either. Not to mention the obvious benefits of medical studies. Her language skills might be rustier than mine but I must have some advantages musn't I, otherwise she wouldn't want to go with me. Overall, she always was the rational choice even though my intuition was sometimes shifting me towards K.

We met on a square with a replica of a giant dildo. My head was still spinning because of my uncle's slivovica and I was focusing on not letting it show. It would be quite stupid to sabotage this epic trip to the east because of some booze, right?

I recognized I. even though I only saw her on a few summer pictures. I am always dead curious about the people I meet in real life after knowing them on the internet. I don't know what particular stuff there is to expect, maybe I expect them to float or to exist in 2D or something. The encounter of the third kind went fairly smooth. It wasn't akward at all. Maybe meeting people with no goal feels akward but when you have a common project it's very different. We went to some german castle; I thought it was very nice actually. I like being on top of eastern castles, looking down on the effing city powdered in snow. Truly effing romandic if you ask me, especially during the night. I have the same impression on each eastern euroepean castle, not the western ones so much, don't know why, maybe they're too posh or something. It's kind of lame so I tried not to show too much enthousiasm otherwise it would look fake. I hope I didn't look bored because I wasn't.

Then a security guty threw us out. I thought we could climb accross the wall but I was feeling lazy and i didn't want to look immature so soon during the encounter. I mean, I am doomed to look immature at some point, I know that, I just hope she'll realize it somewhere in Armenia or something.

We discussed the important questions, whether or not each of us is hoping to return alive and well (and we both are, amen to us!), how annoying we are, what reactions should we expect of ourselves in various crazy situations. And there is the independence issue.

I need my privacy and my time alone after a while and that's a big issue when you're travelling one glued to the other. One of the few disadvantages of travelling with women is that a lot of them don't have that issue, I mean statistically. Or maybe that's my misunderstanding of female logic.

Everything went well and for the first time I felt this journey would be possible. I mean I really could see us both standing on the side of some mongolian dirt road with thumbs up.

We agreed on a definite maybe. If we depart it'll be in the first half of May and the final decision should be in April. Seems great but such decision lies still very far ahead. Who knows how many times we'll change our minds until then.

Anyhow, it's a wonderful perspective.

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