Talking to Myself in Public

It's come to that. Really.

It's strange how alone you can feel even surrounded by hundreds of people. Ok, maybe not hundreds of people in my case. The village I am staying in has a population of 200 although the nearby city has many more. It's quiet though, as it is the off-season as well as today the National Holiday.

I have been using my Czech and my pathetic hand motions as though I am consistently playing a game of Charades. I speak in the present tense when I want to use the past, I know how to say 4 words out of a 7 word sentence. I have had several days of unplanned time to allow for flexibility -- most of which have ended up with my exploring on my own in places where I don't even hear people speaking Czech. Sometimes it's nice, to have quiet time for reflection. It does mean that I've gone through my collection of English movies really quickly though.

How to Start Talking to Yourself without thinking you're completely NUTS

On my first day in Debolin, I had looked up buses to get to my first interview in Strmilov (another small town nearby with a weaving factory). I got to the bus stop early, sat, and waited. And waited. And continued to wait. It was impossible for me to miss the bus from my vantage point. From the bus stop, you can see the signs telling you that's you've entered Debolin as well as the one telling you that you've now left it. Trust me, if that bus had come I would have seen it.

I called my contact to ask her what to do and she kindly offered me a ride into town. It took maybe less than 5 minutes. And thus, I began to wait from my connection in Jindrichuv Hradec to Strmilov. I had the printout with the times and the platform number. I even checked on the timetable to see if I was in the correct place. According to all that information, there should have been a bus there at 10:05 to get me into town at 10:30 for my 11:00 interview.

"should" is the key word. In essence, I waited for three hours at the two different bus stops only to end up getting onto a local bus that hadn't shown in my initial search to go to Strmilov. Luckily, my interviewee had called to reschedule the interview to 3:30 before he even knew of my troubles with the transportation system.

It was during this three hour period that I began to talk to myself. Mostly words that aren't worth repeating here.

The trip out to Strmilov was well worth it for my research. I had only a few minutes with a translator but we managed to get enough information across that I was able to spend the afternoon in the weaving factory learning about the names of the different parts and a little but more about the family that has owned it for 5 generations.





This is part of what I've been doing there. It's not quite zoomed in enough to see, but each of the different stripes is a different pattern. I've been back a few times and will go again tomorrow for probably the last time. After that, I'm off to the blacksmiths and who only knows what kind of internet access I will have.

I refuse, however, to take another local train to get there. It is a painful memory. Not figurative, but literal pain as my backside continues to remind me. Much cursing in English, French, Czech and even Spanish ensued.