Yesterday Muhe and I agreed to meet today. And so we did. I left the house at 12:40, which was very late, but I still believed I would make it. Normally I should have left at 12:25, or 12:30 at the latest, to make it comfortably.
At first I walked fairly normally, but about a quarter of the way in I started running every now and then, because things were starting to look grim. My train was leaving at 13:07 and in the end I missed it. It pulled away practically under my nose – when I came flying in, I could have reached out and touched it. While I was running there, I passed some boy who said something to me, but I didn’t catch what. So I checked when my next train left from Ropice zast. to see whether there was some special train, but it didn’t look promising, and sure enough, there wasn’t.
Fine then, so I went to the other stop and waited there for about 15 minutes. I’m waiting and waiting when suddenly Muhe writes on FB. I was just about to send her a text. I mainly needed to tell Muhe 2 things – that I would arrive later, and whether I should withdraw some money, what she was actually planning. We hadn’t discussed that 2nd thing yesterday; I had simply assumed I would withdraw the money and use it if needed. But today the weather looked all over the place and I really didn’t know whether we might go and sit somewhere, which is why I wanted to withdraw the money.
And so I arrived in Tesin. I was in the middle of the train and there apparently wasn’t a conductor, so I had to buy a ticket at the Tesin station. I rushed past an ATM, but an older woman had just stepped up to it and it didn’t look like it would be quick, so I rushed to the station, bought a ticket with my IN Karta, and on the way back the older lady was just leaving, so I withdrew 400 CZK, which came out as 4x 100 CZK, and ran off. Surprisingly, the train was standing on the most out-of-the-way track, so I first rushed to a track where some train was standing, but it wasn’t the one – that one wasn’t going anywhere, at least judging by the signals.
I flew back down and ran to the very last platform, and there it was. But I was definitely not the only one running this late and almost missing it. Even after I got on, more and more people kept coming, and 4 girls even sat down on the seat next to mine, so I had plenty to be nervous about. But that’s how it always is. Muhe kept dropping offline every now and then, so each time I wrote her a few sentences, then closed my phone and waited to see whether it would vibrate. Of the girls traveling with me, 3 got off in Havirov and 1 not until Ostrava-Vitkovice – just like me.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I swapped the battery in my phone, because yesterday I kept telling myself I’d charge it today, but today it just wasn’t possible, so at least I had a charged spare battery, which I put in, and carried on. Luckily, yesterday I had at least looked up where the Most Cs. armady stop is, so today I found it right away. At Vitkovice station I bought a public transport ticket – a 15-minute one for 16 CZK, and in the process I learned that the City of Ostrava contributes 32 CZK towards this ticket :-D.
At the stop I paced like a caged lion. Now I don’t know exactly when the tram ran, but it felt like I had been waiting there for half an hour, when it was actually only about 18 minutes, once I subtract 7 minutes for walking and finding the stop. And that was exactly the problem, because I thought it left at 14:33, but I got there late and didn’t see the :33 one leave, so I waited for it, thinking it was running late. But then the 14:48 one came, and what I couldn’t understand at all was that at 14:50 I was already at Josefa Kotase, even though I wasn’t supposed to be there until 14:55 😀 .
Maybe the 14:48 tram came early; I wasn’t paying much attention to the time at that tram stop. Anyway, I moved my caged-lion pacing from the Most Cs. armady stop to Josefa Kotase and looked forward to Muhe showing up. At first I walked back and forth in an arc, because I really had no idea where Muhe would come from. Time went by and I got tired of walking, so I sat down. Between my arrival and Muhe‘s, about 10 local trams pulled up at “my” track, and I was anxiously waiting for Muhe to arrive.
I kept looking out for someone in a skirt, because she had replied that she’d be wearing a skirt when I wrote to her that I had on jeans and a gray jacket. And then I noticed someone on the other side “grinning” at me – not with contempt or anger or anything like that, but simply so that I would notice her. I immediately stood up; meanwhile a message had come from Muhe asking where I was and saying she was already there, but I only read it much later. To tell the truth, I was expecting someone, but the person who came took my breath away with her beauty.
I’d like to describe Muhe to you here, but I don’t know whether Muhe would like that, so better not. When I asked her whether we could hug, Muhe obliged, and for me the world truly stood still for a few seconds – in her embrace, which wasn’t tight because I was still holding a bag with a big umbrella, but was nonetheless very intense, I felt truly calm and immensely content. Muhe apparently wasn’t as startled by me as I had thought she’d be, so we walked and talked. About Tensing and a dream about it, about Jira, and a few other things, until Muhe led me to some benches arranged around an oval, in the middle of which were some children’s climbing frames, slides and the like.
Muhe asked me where I wanted to sit, but like a proper gentleman I let Muhe choose the bench. In the end we sat on the nearest one on the right, and we had barely taken out our origami supplies when 2 little girls came up to us, 1 of whom could already even read! :-). This one was called Natalka, and the other introduced herself as “Kaca“. After I got home and talked with Muhe about it, we agreed that Natalka was a little less sharp than Kaca, who was really “on fire” :).
What surprised me was the carefree way Natalka came up to ask us what time it was – that’s actually how we “made friends“. When we told them it was almost 4, they thought that was too early. They said they’d thought it was at least 5. Then Kaca noticed that we were doing something and immediately got interested too. Muhe told them it was origami and that they could tell their parents to get them some materials so that they could fold too.
Suddenly the book became more important too, mainly because the kids were picking from it what they would fold. Some things would take too long and some things Muhe didn’t know how to do, but Muhe knew a lot of them, and when we told them we were now folding a little box, they gladly joined in. We helped them a bit, and I tried to help Natalka a little too, but then I started concentrating more on Muhe than on the origami, and all of a sudden I was slower than the kids :D.
Fortunately Muhe kept asking me whether everything was OK, and when it wasn’t, she helped me. In return, I served as a professional paper holder for her and the kids, because there was a strong wind and the kids were apparently so excited that they forgot to hold on to their creations. In the end, for the box, which they said they would put small toys in, they chose something really simple, namely a cup. Muhe asked me to read step 1 to the kids.
It was the same as step 1 of the Cowboy Hat, but having read it so quickly, I couldn’t make sense of it myself, let alone the kids. Muhe very gently took it out of my hand, looked at it, and was already helping the kids do step 1. As I write this, I almost forgot about Ada, who also turned up on her bike. Natalka and Kaca immediately started dividing us up – they would have Muhe and Ada would get me – but I didn’t like that at all, and neither did Adelka. Maybe that’s why Ada was very shy the whole time, but she managed to make her cup by herself, just like Kaca and Natalka, and she got the box already finished from Muhe.
As we left the same way we had come, the kids shouted something after us, or rather after Muhe, but I didn’t catch what they said – hopefully Muhe did better. As I was walking along, Muhe asked me whether I liked children. I thought she still had our origami folding with the kids on her mind, but no, Muhe took me to the playground. First she showed me a kind of yellow spinning seat, and I no longer remember exactly what she said about it, but it was something along the lines of it being “pretty crazy”, and finally we went under the climbing frames, took off our jackets and started climbing.
Higher and higher with every step, until we had climbed almost to the very top, and let me tell you, that was quite a height. What really surprised me was that another small child was sliding down from the very top, along the central pole no less. Well, I didn’t get a good look at the kid, because I felt sick from that very first glance; fortunately Muhe asked me whether I wanted to climb any higher, I said no, and luckily Muhe listened. We sat there for a while, and then I had the idea to take Muhe‘s picture, but she didn’t want to be photographed from the front, so at least from behind. And so that I would have at least one photographic memory of today, Muhe took pictures of me 3 times right away, so at least I had a few to choose from.
I even put one on FB and have it there as my profile picture. Then I started telling Muhe that I have a terribly crooked spine (scoliosis), and quick-witted Muhe immediately gave me a tip – that the abdominal muscles and the spine form a single unit and complement each other, and that when the abdominal muscles are lacking, everything rests on the spine. So on the steel ropes there she showed me a few abdominal exercises and off we went again. This time Muhe asked me whether I was vaccinated against ticks. I told her that I’m not vaccinated against anything and that crawling into the grass probably wouldn’t be the best idea – and I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I don’t like climbing or moving through grass at all, since ticks are almost the least of the problems you can run into there. So we had to skip the grass, but that didn’t matter at all, because after a while Muhe found a small concrete patch, perfect for us. Once again she told me to take off my jacket and put my bag down, and we started exercising.
Muhe demonstrated the exercises for me – first we ran, then did exercises like the ones I used to do back in primary school, and then we worked on our abs again. It was really nice. But by then the 2 hours that Muhe could spend with me at most were up, because she had to study for her final exams and take care of other things. She walked me to the stop where I had arrived, Josefa Kotase, and I wanted to give Muhe the things I had brought, a small gift bag with a few little trinkets, but Muhe refused, saying that she could only accept such gifts on her birthday, not just for spending time with someone, because that is actually a kind of “humiliation” for the person giving them – having to stoop to little gifts to thank the person who spent time with them.
I would never see it that way; for me it was not only a great joy but also a great honor to spend 2 hours with such a wonderful girl as Muhe. When I saw that I couldn’t change Muhe‘s mind even after I had bought my tram ticket, I sadly had to put it back in my bag and hope that someday Muhe will take it. As the tram was pulling in, I quickly asked Muhe whether I could hug her once more; luckily she agreed, and then we just waved to each other (although I waved more), and while we were hugging, about 2 people on the tram noticed us and then looked at me as if to say, “Oh dear, what is today’s youth coming to.” At the Vitkovice station – Peron stop, I sent Muhe 2 more texts about what an amazing day it had been and what I should do with the little gifts for her, but Muhe hasn’t replied to this day – by text, I mean.