Hooking Up, Part 3

About August 30, 2003

Another random meet-up, this time in Slovakia.

Finally I left the Tatras, bound for Krakow. This trip involved a long wait in Kosice, Slovakia, which actually turned out to be really pleasant. I had a picnic lunch with a couple of Aussies next to the Musical Fountain in the very pretty city center. Then, when I was just strolling around I was yelled at from an outdoor cafe, and it turned out to be a guy I had met on the train from Poprad, who had in turn met up with a few mates and was drinking beer and hanging out. The invited me to sit down and relax with them, and I innocently did, with no clue what I was getting myself into.

Two of the guys were Aussies- one named Rhino with a shaved head, and another named Ryan or something, with a sort-of Mohawk, lip ring, pierced eyebrow, massive tattoo on one shoulder, and an unbelievable personality. He took great delight in calling and yelling at good-looking girls walking by, and often gave them the slow clap to show his approval. It was like he had no inhibitions- he wanted to eat, drink and get laid, and it was infectious. We all acted like him after a few beers, and I have to admit that it was really fun to just say whatever the hell I wanted, be a chauvinist dick for a while. However, the flip side of this came when we went out to eat. When the bill came I had to pay by credit card, so it was easy for me, but the other four ended up having a huge crisis about the bill. Rhino disappeared- I still have no idea where he went. Basically, the two Canadians ended up footing most of the bill, and the Aussies were just a mess. By the time I left them they were wandering around looking for the Blue Lagoon Club. It was sort of like getting caught up in a storm, bouncing around for a few hours, then getting spat out in the rain at night. Looking back on the afternoon and evening I have no idea what happened- it made no sense at all, I could never have predicted it, and it ended so quickly. Sometimes I've heard this called 'road magic', when seemingly random things all come together when you're on the road.

A final note to this post: I woke up the next morning feeling like death, if death could be beaten about the head with a mallet and kicked down several city blocks. I had to sprint to catch a train, and barely got on at all, with a pounding, spinning head, pouring sweat, roiling stomach, and clutching a bag of what I hoped were muffins from a vending machine in the train station. I'm pretty sure the nice Slovaks on the train were appalled- they probably wished they could bring back the USSR just to keep Americans like me out. God Bless America!

(Picture caption: Bratislava Castle, Bratislava Slovakia. And yes, it had nothing to do with this post. Wiseass.)

Hooking Up, Part 2

April 12, 2006

By this time I had moved on to a different island- Kon Tiki, AKA Nananua Lodge, on the island of Nanu-i-ra. Back to Random Encounter Theater:

More time on the beach today, with a sunburn to prove it on my chest and stomach. The day was undershot with anticipation, though, since one girl named Jody and a Dutchman named Melvin collected money from everyone and went into town, returning with food and BOOZE! I hiked the ridge of the island, which apparently the owners of the Kon Tiki also own. It’s actually quite a big piece of land, about 400 acres or so, and most of it is pasture; rolling grassland dotted with the occasional spreading tree. The batteries in my camera are dead, so I’ll have to try to preserve the scene in words instead. After a short walk you come to the ridgeline, above the lodge, where there is a small sort of observation deck and an electricity-generating windmill. From there you basically follow a cow path through the swaying grasses up and down the rolling landscape. The view of the ocean is spectacular, blue water in every direction, discolored where a reef lies below the surface, waves breaking where a shoal is. It’s a small taste of the scope of the Pacific, the sheer size of it. Down by the beach it’s easy to forget just how huge this is. The sunset from up here is amazing as well, stretching orange and yellow shades across the water.

At night some of the backpackers cooked a huge curry, and soon we all sat down at the end-to-end picnic tables to eat. It was like a small family had sprung up out of nowhere: we ate and drank rum and Cokes (made with the very potent and foul local Bounty rum). It didn’t take much to make everyone fairly tipsy, noisy, and happy. Joe and Oscar, two local employees, joined in the fun, and for a little while it was like we were all old mates, joking and palying CDs and just enjoying each other. Later there was a bonfire at the beach, but the combination of Bounty and the late hour made for a lot of people sleeping in the sand. I love how these things seem to happen, that in a very short period of time you can become so friendly with complete strangers.