Subject: BRNO
Brno, my next stop, means mud. Veronicka, my next hostess, is an enthusiastic young couchsurfer who works at a travel agency that caters to schools. They had a group in New York dealing with Hurricane Sandy. She met me at the tram station and dragged my luggage to the first floor flat she shares with a retired couple who speak no English but understand a little German.
Brno, my next stop, means mud. Veronicka, my next hostess, is an enthusiastic young couchsurfer who works at a travel agency that caters to schools. They had a group in New York dealing with Hurricane Sandy. She met me at the tram station and dragged my luggage to the first floor flat she shares with a retired couple who speak no English but understand a little German.
Despite a forty-year age difference, I felt like we were contemporaries. There was a big slab of cow's tongue and a slicing machine in the kitchen we were welcome to. I shared my bread and cheese. Veronicka gave up her bed for me, sleeping on the floor, and Annetchka, the flat-owner didn't mind my sleeping in the next morning and even offered me coffee.
I went to the supermarket for celery root, apples and bread, then into town to a big shopping center, and sat reading, bought some goulash soup at a food court and suddenly realized the map marked with the tearoom where I was to meet Veronicka at 5:30, was gone.
I retraced my steps and cursed my carelessness, finally returned to the flat by tram and threw my comb at the window, trying to get Annetchka's attention to let me in. I had left her babysitting her grandchild. Her boyfriend returned and let me in - Annetchka was watching TV in another room and would never have heard me - and she called Veronicka and re-established our meeting place at KFC.
I took the tram back to town, found the old square, the museum about to close, a food market where I bought a glass of 'new' wine, and headed for the castle up the hill. Most attractions were closed until tomorrow and I didn't see how I could fit them in before my bus to Bratislava especially with my heavy luggage.
I retraced my steps and cursed my carelessness, finally returned to the flat by tram and threw my comb at the window, trying to get Annetchka's attention to let me in. I had left her babysitting her grandchild. Her boyfriend returned and let me in - Annetchka was watching TV in another room and would never have heard me - and she called Veronicka and re-established our meeting place at KFC.
I took the tram back to town, found the old square, the museum about to close, a food market where I bought a glass of 'new' wine, and headed for the castle up the hill. Most attractions were closed until tomorrow and I didn't see how I could fit them in before my bus to Bratislava especially with my heavy luggage.
I bought a winter hat at a second hand shop (somewhere I lost my warm one), then walked in circles around the castle until I had to rush to my rendezvous with Veronicka. We went to a hidden second floor tea room that offered hookah pipes of tobacco as well as tea, and sat on the rugs and talked, smoked and sipped. Some Moroccan friends working for IBM called from a nearby bar and we joined them for a beer, (they mostly had tea) and I trotted out all my Arabic from my time in Morocco in the late seventies.
Veronicka and I shared a can of kidney beans with garlic powder and hit the sack. In the morning we went to a vegetarian buffet for breakfast and she saw me to my bus. From such a short visit I found an intense friendship!
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