Photos and other stuff: We
Tartu-Valka
Last-things-to-do which we did were simple. Some time ago I helped a friend to build a gigantic bookshelf, he presented me with this bottle of good Georgian wine, for opening and drinking of which the time was perfect. And we made sign for hitchhiking saying “ODESSA” with nice, beautiful and big letters. Just in case somebody get’s the coolness of that or wants to give us a really long ride.
From left: Him, Her, MeDone. Ready to go. At those moments, maybe only for those dubious people of my breed, there are always thoughts there, at farewells, headed by the bursting “Why the fuck do you want to leave? Isn’t it nice? Couldn’t you stay a bit longer?” Argonauts, I envy you. I don’t need any Sirens to whisper that to my ears, sun-filled verandah will do just fine. And there is Orpheus with his lyre, singing promise of a enjoyable future happening not here. Split in two, going and staying, for an intense n-time before the first step.
And then suddenly your walking. Going to city centre, changing some money, taking a bus to outskirts. Everything changes. Turning back is a taboo, unthinkable, there is nothing there suddenly, behind. Verandah with sun is suddenly a story, a dream, a dear memory, not a simple place six kilometres away. Only on can you go from here, on, let life happen, let the road cater.
With hitchhiking I am usually the boring pragmatic type proposing to split up, to create couples and solo players in the name of efficiency. Me and Him had even tossed the coin to see who goes with Her. Did we argue over gender equality issues after that? But this time I was voted out. We’ll do it all together! It is more fun like that! Well, that’s true, I say in my head, and admire the amount of enthusiasm present at the beginning of every longer hitchhiking trip.
We were there, by the road near the edge of Tartu – there’s quite nice place for hitchhiking - and kept our thumbs out for the cars in turns, occasionally flashing our ODESSA-sign.
/We had walked some and had a bus and walked some more and one thing became obvious already, acutely – I should have had that late evening around-the-block test walk with my impedimenta-solution.
They had tried to convince me out of this, but without success – I had been intended to have a suitcase with me as a main piece of a luggage. a) I love suitcases (argument easy to refute) b) I had a lot of stuff to carry with me (possible to argue, but hard to denounce) c) I had no big and comfortable backpack, no money to buy one and no will to lend some (possible to argue, except the last and decisive one – no will to lend money. Nowadays, who would condemn?) d) I had to carry a laptop bag + a camera bag + tripod, which actually supported the use of good wheel-solution e) I just couldn’t imagine going to a wedding in Armenia wearing a suit and a huge backpack (theme never used).
So I had found a pair of soviet-era suitcase wheels in a second hand in Tartu. A nice piece, two wheels, about 7 cm in diameter, about 18 apart from each other. Foldable solution, which one could attach to a suitcase with a leather belt. Nice. Camp. Later I got a suitcase itself, brown leatherette with golden (sic!) lining from maybe mid nineties, for about 6.5€ from a second hand in Tallinn. Budget.
A simple 20-minute walk from the House to the centre was enough to assure suspicions. No way! The thing wanted to topple, I had to walk carefully like a ropedancer and the leather belt was so uncomfortable to hold on to that after these 20 minutes I had welts and cuts on my hands. That all looked just miserable. I hoped that we won’t see any acquaintances to whom I should enthusiastically say that “I’m going to hitchhike to Poland!”; we did meet, yes we did. She and He managed to veil their most probably dark thoughts, for which I was thankful as my own auto-blaming process was in full bloom anyway.
While in the bus for outskirts, I managed to engineer a solution including misusing a tripod, which made the suitcase pullable as well as pushable, and thanks to the specific shape of the tripod head, gave the whole process of guiding the suitcase a somewhat joystick’ish feel. Silent cries of joy. And a Tom Sawyer touch to it also.
Cheering a bit too early, though, but we didn’t know that then. Forth member, Comrade Suitcase, we had with us, not the best bloke around but definitely not the most boring one either, a character at least.
She and He? They travelled lightly. Very lightly. /
And actually it was quite late when we reached the roadside. Half past five or six, something like that. Nonsense time for starting. The first ride was short, only a little bit on, to a small settlement. But good, nevertheless – while hitchhiking, moving, however short the jump might be, keeps the spirit up, things happening, thoughts moving. We bought some pies, walked to the other side of this borough and started waiting. Now we saw clearly the consequences of a late start – there simply were no cars. We waited, talked, started to solve issues of some alcohol we had with us.
How many cars we had I cannot remember, I only, although vaguely, remember the last ride in Estonia: a nice and calm middle-aged lady. Remarkable, as it is rare to catch a ride with a female driver, not to mention when you are three. She dropped us at the border post (literally) in the border town Valga-Valka. This is a little twin-town, part of it in Estonia and part of it in Latvia. Now with Schengen the physical border is gone once again. He and She went to get some coffee, I took a leak. In search for a nice quiet place for a small call of nature I turned behind some wall, found an abandoned garage, did my thing (not under the roof, of course) and took a bit different route back to the road. Then I discovered it – I peed in Latvia. Sorry for that, Latvia.
Embraced with a light slightly turning to evening we had our coffees, grogs actually, there at the border stake, said our mental goodbyes to Estonia, picked up our stuff and walked to Latvia.
And on we walked in Latvia. We had to walk through Valka, to the other side. Beginning was jolly. Three travellers we were, walking broadly on the empty streets. Pushing my luggage with this great solution, taking turns. Then the jolliness started having cracks, literally. It was one of the wheels. Rubber tire started slipping off. I adjusted it, walked on. Adjusted it, walked on. Adjusted it, walked on. Comrade Suitcase was putting up a show again. Now I saw some compassion in His and Her eyes, dark thoughts pushed aside, maybe, by my now obvious and profound remorse.
Crack-crack, and suddenly there was only a hub left of that sad little fuck of a wheel. Yes, the suitcase had built-in wheels also, in the style of nineties – four of them, front ones turning - and even a special leather handle with a bow for pulling. I had spent some four hours trying to repair two of those wheels initially broken (6,5€), but that didn’t make them any bigger or appropriate for asphalt. Four small rubberrollies, airport floor type of dudes. We tried, nevertheless. It took about half of a kilometre for one of those dudes to loose it, loose it’s rubber around the hub that is. That suitcase was not pullable nor pushable any more. Nothing else left that good old “carry me” and the weight and the malaise. We moved on, slowly, and sad it looked, and because of me, and no good it made me feel. I used my Egyptian headscarf to make a bowknot through handle to lift some of the weight on my shoulder, but not too much help found there either.
I felt like little piece of worthless shit, honestly, when we finally reached the hitchhikeable place by the road, a bit out from Valka. It was getting dark, and also dark-cloudy, and it went well with my mood. Cars? No cars. Who leaves a little border city far from everything facing late evening?
My thoughts were stray. Scattered by impedimenta crisis illustrated with straightforward physical effort it took to carry my suitcase. Home was far away, Tbilisi even further. And they didn’t even share a chronotope. Once you’re on the road there’s a mental space created between home and you, it doesn’t ask of actual time or distance. Tbilisi, on the other hand, sported a very real remoteness, imaginable in unknown amount of kilometres and days of journey.
When there was a rare car one of us rose his/hers thumb. I was making another shoulder belt out of leather part remaining from the external wheels, following His proposal to divide the weight between us two. He was watching deep dark clouds closing up with a worried face of a metrologyst who doesn’t have an umbrella. Drops there were soon. She went for scouting. On one side of the road, opposite from us, there were some private houses behind a hedge, on the other side, our side of the road, there was hedge also, high and thick, behind of which seemingly fields. I walked to the bus stop some thirty meters away, for a dustbin: I wanted to get rid of those remaining pieces of wheels. With every step I felt the lightness of walking unloaded, the pleasure I had denied for myself for that trip, groundedly but so what? And sadly, unwanted outcome – denied to some extent for Him also, who he offered his help.
She had news when she came back. She had found a house. Abandoned, half built robust example of 90ties architecture. We went for a weird shaped small triangular verandah in the corner of the building. A really tiny space, scantily for three of us. Few windows were broken. Not particularly nice hideout in its never finished, dust covered form, but best what we had. And unscrewing some wire didn’t feel like breaking in.
We sat there into the dark. Crouching with our stuff, looking at Latvia getting darker, looking at rain incapable of deciding whether to pour or drizzle, listening songs from mobile phones, sharing some stories, smoking some cigarettes, sipping some snifter. Few times one of us went to the road, and came back again - quiet restlessness and unease of the end of the first day’s journey. We heard from where we were if a car passed by, rare roaring disturbance in the tranquillity of spatter. That day was done.
We changed our dusty little verandah for bare brick and concrete in the house itself. Up on the third floor under the huge round window three wooden pallets made a bed for us. Horror stories were demanded but never told.
Or maybe there was one story, a story in doze, a story about a children camp teacher telling a carefully composed horror story as a bedtime story for the whole camp, studiously composed to please the more demanding group of older youth and colleagues, and to offer a “boo!” moment for smaller ones. And then, when everything is finished, while his having his bedtime secret-cigarette, he hears that one from the two of his own cabins, little girls, they are not sleeping, no, they are crying. Everybody in that little wooden hut. This was his first year. And small girls were somewhat of a mystery. And crying small girls... He rushed at the spot, trying his best. Answering the questions, and telling stories, other stories, nice stories with flower-fairies and teddy-bears. He almost falls asleep himself on that wooden floor of a little forest hut, lullabyed by calm breaths of young sleep.
A story at the transition of realities, told, thought or third. Sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment