Since I already have more than enough blogs and domains and don’t feel like starting a new one, I’ll just put this here. Don’t read the older posts; for one thing, all I ever managed to write was when I got up and that I slept in my clothes :-(. That’s pretty much the only thing I remember from the whole day 🙁
But on to today.
Since KMO had already sent me a pre-reminder with the list of my borrowed books on February 8 at 9 p.m., it was high time to show up there. I thought that after a month you always have to return some books – one, half of them, and so on. Today I got up before 1 p.m. – well, I would have kept sleeping if Mom hadn’t woken me up. And I went to bed after midnight – oh well, when you sleep in your clothes, you’re just as tired as when you went to bed, and on top of that you sleep not 8 hours but 16 hours :-(.
Sigh. So I was at home until 1:30 p.m., and by 2:45 p.m. I had decided I would go to the library today rather than pay 5-10 CZK for every reminder they would send me day after day. I was at the Ropice station at around 3:25 p.m. The Ex Landek 👻 The timetable on idnes.cz vanished long ago without a trace. passed through, hauled by a brand new “Rat” locomotive with a new Taurus at the back.
I arrived in Cesky Tesin (the Ex was already gone), went into the station, bought a return ticket to Ostrava-Stred (99 CZK) and some paper tissues (3 CZK). I walked to the platform hoping something would leave soon – the CE (CityElefant) was already standing there. I got on, sat down, and the train set off. The train was completely full, though; I found only a spot by the stairs that had no seats opposite. I blew my nose (and the tissues smelled lovely 🙂 ), kept the radio playing and pulled out a book, The Greatest Mysteries of the World – Life After Life ( 👻 There used to be data here. Now it’s just an empty lot on the internet.), so I could take photos of some of it before returning it.
In the end I photographed the entire Chapter 9: 👻 This link is a digital monument to itself., which was titled “Suicide in Spiritual Literature“. Pages 166-167 didn’t turn out well; oh well, the train was shaking a bit, and then there are my trembling hands.. 🙁 For the first few photos I checked whether they were OK, but after that I couldn’t have cared less 😀 :(.
Then I pulled out the book “Life After Death in the Teachings of Various World Religions” – 👻 The page moved out and left no forwarding address.– First all of Judaism, and before we got to Ostrava-Kuncice, also a bit of Buddhism. Let me tell you, that Buddha must have been one crazy guy :D. With the other religions I’ve read about (only Hinduism and Zoroastrianism), I’d pretty much accept what they teach about death and the life after it, but I’d have objections to Buddhism. How can all animals automatically go to hell, or rather to the “Animal Realm“?!
I kept reading in Kuncice too, and if the word “Vitkovice” on the station announcements hadn’t caught my attention, I would have forgotten to change trains :). But I didn’t forget, I realized it and rushed out, just as a railcar from Frydek-Mistek was pulling in, heading for Ostrava-Stred and the main station. So I stood for that one stop (there was nowhere to sit anyway) – the train had only 3 cars – and got off at Ostrava-Stred. I didn’t look at the departures to see when my train back would leave; it didn’t even occur to me. I went straight to the library. I had to wait at 2 traffic lights, several minutes at each.
At the second one, when everyone got fed up and crossed on red, I did too. I got to the library and had a new library card issued (the first loss is free, each one after that costs 20 CZK, which pleased me, because in Cesky Tesin it supposedly always costs 70 CZK), and they even issued the new one under a new number and blocked the old one :D. I was also told that in most cases I don’t necessarily have to return the books; I just need to write to them (replying is enough) to their email (pre-reminder, first reminder, and so on) saying what I want to renew (everything, if I like), and they’ll let me know whether that’s possible, whether someone has reserved it or just doesn’t want to allow it, and so on. I went to a PC to look up call numbers of books for Mom, but that’s where disappointment set in.
Just last month, when I was there, they had Chrome installed, set up so that no other programs could be launched and only the library catalog could be loaded. I don’t know why today there was only IE, maximized to full screen with no back button and no way to open a page in a tab – so if someone didn’t know about Backspace (and so wasn’t exactly into ?IT?), they were in deep sh?it?. I really don’t know; you couldn’t install any extension in Chrome either, and since no address other than the KMO catalog would load, I honestly have no idea why they replaced it :(.
I picked out 2 books for Mom; they had both in stock, so I called Mom to ask whether she wanted them. She said yes, so I filled out a request slip for the stacks, and a moment later the books came up in the elevator. OK, I headed back; this time the road was completely clear, so I crossed straight over instead of using those stupid traffic lights that had run out of green for pedestrians. I got to the station at 5:20 p.m., and at 5:22 p.m. there was a train to Kuncice. So again that one stop, and in Kuncice the train to Cesky Tesin was already waiting.
I went to the first doors: both blocked. To the second ones: same thing. 8 doors blocked in total. Luckily that was all of them, because when I looked in Tesin, no other doors were out of order. In Tesin the conductors changed shifts. Otherwise that whole middle car was somehow faulty, because there wasn’t even any heating. So I walked from the front of the train to the back and stood there all the way to Tesin, reading a little along the way. From Tesin I walked home – partly because I didn’t have a ticket for that stretch and didn’t feel like buying one stop for 12-13 CZK, and partly because I can walk to Ropice faster than those trains would get there :).
I got back before 7:45 p.m.
Oh, and if you’ve read this far and you’d like to see the photos too, or just the photos with my comments :D, they’re on 👻 The page moved out and left no forwarding address.🙂