land and sea journey pt 4 - greg in grenoble, broken hearted in berlin, police in poland, relaxing in riga.

wow what an intence and yet short period of time it has been... full of hard emotions and goodbyes...
La Terriade
mike and i spent a few lovely days in la terriade by the vercours mountain. here we went for walks and saw live music. There was a little concert happening there one night of beautiful traditional celtic music. On afternoon before the concert i was sitting on a path way to the garden surrounded by about 10 tiny blue butterflys (the exact same type as the one which had previously spent an hour with mike and i in the meadow a week earlyer) and as i sat there David (one of the guys who live perminantly at la terriade) walked up to me holding something in his hands. As he came close the playfull butterflies who had been lolloping about on the ground together cascaded up into the air and spiraled around me "wow" David said. I was going to ask you to look after this bird but parhaps i shall leave you with the butterflies" In his hand was a small robin which had been found in the claws of one of the cats. its was close to death and barely able to move. David sujjestd the chicken coop would be good for it to let it die in peace without the cat bothering it too much more so i took it to The Palace (funnily enough my mums chickens live in a coop called Cluckingham Palace.... i guess chickens have a royal airs about them) and lay it in the shade on a little grassy tufft. The chickens (including one cute new born furry yellow chirpy chicklette) were intruiged by this new comer to their kingdom so i teek a few steps back and watched them to make sure it was all ok. fiurst the Cock came over...turned his head sideways and looked down with his side eye to the sorry little robin.... unsure he got a bit closer and then noticing me he scurried away. Next up was a puffy feathered hen, closer she got and i could see what was coming... yup a quick peck picked it up "oy!" i yelled and she scuttled away leaving the poor robin... unsure what to do i started dropping water drops on to his beak (being that water is such a great healer) which he started to drink readily and began to pirk up...blink a bit and even began to move a bit... unfortunatly it wasnt long before it was all too much for him...he went into a fit and died... i sighed...waited a moment before approaching him agaiun, checking he was truely dead and i took him up the side of the land and put him into a bush where a fox would find him and the circle would continue...

After a lovely day or two in the community in the vercours mountains we headed hitch hiking to grenoble ready for my next morning departure.... feeling romantic we splashed out in a road side patissery and enjoyed cake together... and recieved lovely friendly rides from local people. I really truely love this part of the world and hope one day to live there for a more extended period of time (infact david almost had me convinced not to leave at all haha) the mountains hold so much beauty and strength, the soil is fertile and strong and the rivers pure and fresh and cool. wow.

So we arrive in Grenoble to meet our friend Sabine who lives there. Realising i didnt have a print out for my ticket sabine and i cycled to a local internet place at 8pm hoping it would still be open...luckily for me it was ramadan and they were open all night! so i printed off the ticket and we headded home. We spent the evening relaxing and before bed i checked my bus time... i had thought it was 7 in the morning turns out it was 6.30 in the evening!!! YAY a whole day extra with mike! we snuggled and celebrated with a nice snoozey evening and a day of hanging out in the laundrette and washing our clothes and reading jack kerouac.... at about 4pm i double checked my ticket.... turns out i wasnt leaving untill actually then next day!! so we celebrated again, and went to the bio shop and brought chocolate as a gift to Sabine for all her lovelyness and some almonde pate yummyumm. Then we went home and began to chill out for the evening. Sabine came back and we shared food and shortly we recieved a Text from miked dad Greg...and he was in grenoble!!! and we knew he was in france heading our way but we didnt expect him so quickly...so on we put our shoes and trudged out into the city of grenobles to search for greg and kerry in gregs flasshy swish new car. That night they slept in the tent in the garden and mike and i settled into our final, final night together.... *sigh* in the middle of the night we heared a huge crash of thunder and the heavens opened...i cringed thinking of poor greg and kerry on their air bed in the tent...and fell asleep again.... and then i woke to mike saying "oh shit" .... "what?" i reply "the laundrys still hung up in the garden" we groaned and fell asleep again. once the sun was up i walked to the window to see the front of the tent flapping about as someone was moving about...later i learned from kerrie that she had woken to find a big ginger cat sitting on the end of the airmatress hiding from the rain and what i had wintness in the flapping was her trying to convince the cat that it should go outside....which of course it knew fully well it would rather be on a nice warm dry air bed that out there...so it didnt move and in the end poor kerry got out of bed and came up to us instead. ..greg however...slept through the whole rainstorm :) I stood on a bee just before i left...poor thing but atleast his pain ended quicker than mine...i still tending a sore sole of my foot. Its better today but yesterday it was burning up and really itchy.

..so...saying goodbye to your lover... sitting on the bus and seeing him through the window i finally cracked... i burst into tears feeling the stitching of my heart and soul begining to unravel as the bus rolled away as if the thread was caught on him and and the further away i got the more appart i was comming. Phoneless.... friendless... and crying on a bus full of strangers... a few hours later i got to leon where the (quite mean i must add) driver and co driver told me i had to get off and change and i found myself lost, confused....ot and sweaty and hyperventilating slightly and thinking over and over again "i cant do this, i cant do this...i think i have made the biggest misstake of my life...i just lost my lover" ... the next bus came...and i hesitated before i got on wondering if i should just go back to grenoble...but i knew i should atlest get to latvia before making any rash decisions...after all jack was there waiting for me. On the bus i pulled out the giuft James had given me...james...grandfather of divination and new daddy to baby Noah Oak... a dice... with 4 empty sides and two marked sides...one saying left..one saying right. "left- go back to mike. Right- stay on the bus" ....shakey shakey in my palms.... peek.... "right.....shit"

i calmed down for a few hours while listening to inner heights on my ipod, but by the time id got to berlin 24hours later my heart rate way back up...i was shaking and crying and needing to speak to mike... eventually i got through to him after the lovely sabine helped me online to calm down a bit...but 5 euros on a payphone to a uk mobile doesnt last long and before my heart was calm the money ran out but he said he would ring back....i stood by the phone knowing he would...it didnt ring but i picked up the handset and there he was... "hello?" i said "hello?" he said "yes i can hear you mike!" "hello?...i cant hear you...and i dont know if you can hear me...but if you can..." and he proceeded to tell me sweet loving things to calm my heart about strength and love... by the time he put the phone down i was smiling...my tears were joy and i trundled off to find my bus to lativa.....

russians.... alcohol.... wow...

so on the bus to latvia i meet two english lads as im getting on the bus, flicky hair, tight jeans and glitter they are heading to a festival to play a gig a few hours after they arrive and then next day get back on the bus and go back to england again. they had spent the last 24 hour drunk on the coach and one hand been passed out in the aisle for half of the jounrney..in the end the bus driver confiscated their beers (which they had been handing out to other passangers) and when i had met themthey were begining to sober up slightly and lets just say they looked a little worse for wear. one of them was called Jamie, a sweet guy who when he found out i used to live in brigthon asked if i know "gogeouse, tall emma who makes amazing waistcoats" .... yes!! so that was quite fun. As soon as i sat down onthe bus the guy next to me complained about me (i think i was probably quite stinky) and i got moved to the front to sit next to a red haired latvian and her russian boyfriend and his friend. her and her boyfriend had had a row... him and his mate were comp[letely rat arsed and downing jaegermeister. over the next hour they got louder and louder and more abnoxious to the pouint where the bus driver pulled in and called the police... then the boyfriend started insaulting the lady behind him (bear in mind this was all in russian) and she was getting quite angry and in responce HER boyfriend jumped up and got the drunked guy into a headlock and started punching him. The bus driver told them to stop and after an hour of faffing and drama and tutting and sighing the "back up police" (this is all in poland by the way) arrive and no one can understand each other even though to me its all the same gobbledy gook and finally the drunken russians and the red head and taken off the bus.... while all of this was going on i was trying to ignore it and read Dharma Bums by Jack kerouac ... a nice jucsterposition.

my blessing being that i then became the only person on the bus with two seats to sprawl out on and finally got some good sleep since before the thunderstorm in grenoble.

Arriving in Riga 48 hours after leaving grenoble. Enter Riga...enter a rain cloud... however as i get off the bus and go to the front of the station and say goodby to a lovley english girl whos heading of to do enviromental work at lake baikal Jack arrives on a bike! So that was nice... if not a bit surreal.

Turns out its Jacks birthday and we spend the evening wondering round riga and hanging out in a bar called "up in smoke" which is in a back ally and has no sign out front but a blackboard just in the front door withthe words "jack lives here" which we found amusing. Our couch surfer works in this funky place which is like a mix between an opium den and a psytrance party but without the drugs and electronic music... the walls plastered in psychedelic artwork, the sofas covered in psycedelic fabrics and a selection of little boothy rooms out bag full of cushions remaining (im guessing) from the days when people could smoke in bars and this was a buzzing place (the name of the place gives away what im guessing it used to be known for). These days its not smokey and actually quite lovely with "flower power" radio on the speakers... Its Jacks Birthday and Vita our host even presents Jack with a chocolate cake!! yum yum.

..tram home... Vita is working late so we catch the last tram back which unfortunatly for us not only involved interactions with 3 groups of hideously drunken people but also the tran decided it wasnt going to go the whole way and dropped us at a random place in this city we dont know and all we have is a road name and knowing its near a TV tower... we walk for an hour and finnaly arrive back to find poor Vita fretting about where we might be worried we were lost and trying to contact people top find out where we are....

but we were safe...had a lush nights sleep and a lazy day today...... on wednsday we get a bus to ST petersburg and our russian adventure begins.

i also got a latvian sim card and had some nice lovely texts from mike and greg, they are on their way to the hot springs together tinight :) lush! Gregs finally getting the holliday he deserves. :)

The music of my friends have been keeping my heart afloat in sad times... green, mike, radek, susie, ayla, carrie... thank you... you have no idea how much i appreciate and love you all. xxx