Wednesday 16th August 2017
Welcome back. For earlier episodes in my ‘Travel Snaps’ series, to bring you up to date, just visit my previous posts by clicking on the ‘Travel’ tab in my main menu.
What is time to the traveller? Do our experiences ebb and flow, fading into a faint memory that eventually disappears as a bubble bursting on a stream? Over two months have passed since my travels, and everyday life at home has resumed. It is Sunday 29th October 2017, and I realise it has been a while since I last sat down to write my blog, and share some of my thoughts and experiences with you. Perhaps I am feeling reflective about time because the clocks went back an hour today, and for a usually rainy and wintry place, it was surprisingly sunny and summery today, with a hint of autumn in the air, and crisp golden leaves scattered on the ground.
As I write I can hear the hum of my washing machine in the background, and I am curled up on my sofa looking at a beautiful city scape with the sky fading from blue to beige to yellow to grey as night falls. Lights from the traffic over the motorway blink incessantly as car after car blurs one into another. I wonder at my sense of anxiety and nostalgia about my experiences. Do you also ever fear forgetting?
Musings aside, let’s return once more to the Hotel Diplomat in Prague. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as they say. The evening meal was a buffet meal. I sat with my two friends, the couple that I had met earlier on the trip, at a table for four. However, I was asked to move by the coach driver, who wanted to make place for two ladies to be able to sit with each other and nearer to their friends, so he showed me to a window table where he sat with two other girls. I had, as many others did, presumed that these two young ladies were friends, perhaps teenagers on a trip together, but it turned out that they were a very youthful looking mother and her mature looking thirteen year old daughter.
Sometimes what might at first seem like an inconvenience and a move out of our comfort zone, such as being asked to move tables away from new friends, can turn out to be a happy little piece of serendipity on our journeys through countries and through life. The ‘girls’ turned out to be very friendly, and the ‘little one’ an inquisitive, smart and funny chatterbox, both of whom I have kept in touch with, with the daughter showing more interest in maintaining a friendship, perhaps because of being more well versed with the world of social media 🙂
So my travels progressed from being a single, solo traveller, knowing no one on the trip, to making new friendships that I am hopeful will last long into our new, and perhaps once more, shared adventures.
So keep an eye out friends, for the ways in which those little ‘inconveniences’ in your day may actually turn out for the best.
Life as it happens to be 