Snowy People and Places

It is early morning and we travel by train. My camera somehow is in the front seat by many other ones. the view outside the window is really great – snowy mountains and valleys. I want to take some picture so I ask for my camera. It is hard to explain as it is under some wind-jackets and so a young man gives me some tablet that is in the front of everything. It looks nice, but when I say that it is not mine he is surprised why. When I finally get my camera, the train already quickly picks up speed and I can not catch anything. It is going almost 200 km/h and I just see houses passing by like some small tiny comets.

Finally it is the stop we need to get out. There is already a bus waiting for us. I smell this cold outside air and winter all around. It is magnificent. Roads are cleaned and it is an easy way to some small town. This time I am sitting alone and feeling lonely as others seem to be having a lot of fun, but my thoughts stay with a beautiful country I am in. Getting out the warm and comfortable bus to face the wilderness and some small parts of human life was the first challenge. We are walking through number of small houses and mountains were all around us. There were streets and at the end of them could see mountain massif. Small red houses seemed even smaller under the big cover of pure white snow. I could not stop taking photos. I took one from one side of the city and then turned out to take the view towards other side. And after some time I noticed that there was nobody around. I tried to go back to the place where the bus stopped, but there was nobody anymore, just some trails of tires.

Being alone in an unknown place gave me time to explore the way I wanted so I just went like on a big walk. Different roads and smaller paths were moving up and down. It took energy, but I felt strong enough. I did not know how much time passed, but I guess that were many hours, in front of me I saw a building that looked like my hometown train station. There were places where to sit outside and there were many people reading and just spending their time there. The problem I found was that I did not now where my bus went. I had only some paper on which was written what was the first town we were in. I knew that they will visit many places as this day was planned to be the most active one and tomorrow evening it was already planned to have way home. I remembered that I had a number from the young man sitting in front of me on the train. I called him and first thing he said was that he knows that they forgot me and that they are sorry. They said that they can come and pick me up and I said that I am at the train station and maybe it is better idea for me to take a train. He said some place where they will be, but I did not understand how that is written. I asked him to send it via a text message and he did that. Only problem for now was that I had really few money with me as the rest was left in a bus. Basically I had only my camera and some warm clothes. I was wondering if I should ask people for money, but I knew that I am not used to it and it will take for me too much courage and so I started to think about hitchhiking. Roads did not seem perfect as I did not know which the main street is and where the smaller roads go. There were just a few cars passing buy every couple of minutes and I was surprised that some truck driver took me. I showed him in my phone where I need to get and he said that there is no problem as it is quite a big city where everyone at least passed by. It was good to hear that. He had some coffee making machine and this time I did not even reject his offer differently as I was used to. I did not even wait for it to cool a bit down and could drink it like that. My body filled with nice warmth and I could feel like the life and energy restores. All the way I could hear some North songs and their language that fascinated me. The driver told me about their coldest winters and how he has stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere thinking that he will die, but somehow he got lucky that others took care of him. Usually I don’t look a lot in people’s faces, but in this I really saw that sterness and hardiness that showed how strong mentally and physically he was. His big beard was full of small snowflakes which melted after short time. He was smiling a lot and I knew that despite that people here are pretty introvert and individualistic, they like to smile almost all the time. It made me calm.

When I finally found the buss I was driving, others did not say much, just the guy said that they are really sorry and how did I get to that train station, if I took some other buss from a small town. I honestly said that I just walked and somehow the way led me there. I was together with the m and they seemed being really cold so after some time we were playing snow fight. The mountain masses become darker and soon everything looked wilder than ever. I did not want to leave the people I was with. At least for now.