Silence
Silence like the cancer grows. Pathetic, exaggerated, but I think a true statement. For my personally silence is a killer. I hate it. Whenever silence is around my I feel I am under siege. I do not know how to defend myself, and I am full of anger.
Silence is remarkable mostly at night, when everything is silent. As I have a lot of nights with almost no sleep I should have get used to, but I did not. I associate silence with loneliness. Scientifics ideas that silence brings us calm and health are simply gullible for me. For me silence brings anxiety, curiosity and anger.
Silence as well gives us time to think. Sometimes it is really constructive, but it can be as well … destructive, and for my it is. Silence, lack of voice, of sounds, leads us to odd conclusions. Why odd? Simply in silence you do not have inspiration, a topic to think about, so you touch what is least obvious and most universal. What can it be? For example death, or life, family, values. Your conclusions made in silence are from time to time worth sheering with others, but mostly they are forced by nostalgic feelings and sadness, so you keep them deeply in your soul. It may lead to depression and moreover to uncontrolled anger.
Silence is not worth giving it a try. Silence do grows like a cancer, and it can be, as a cancer dangerous. We need to by anxious all the time not to let silence mislead us…
From the other side of the world for the final time
Until this point I couldn’t really believe that I was going home, but writing my final post seems to put it all into perspective – the next time I’m typing will be at my desk at home, a thought I do not want to think about!
Since Krabi, where I wrote to you last, we’ve carried on having the most incredible adventure. We took our consecutive sleeper bus up to Bangkok and yet again got no sleep, an increasingly regular occurrence on increasingly regular night transport. Frey was getting bunged up with a cold so was dead to the world pretty soon, but I found it hard to sleep particularly as on a midnight fuel stop I got out to go for the toilet, but id had my eye mask and earplugs on so my senses were still readjusting and didn’t spot a deep drain in the floor which I promptly stepped in a scraped off half my knee which kept me awake for the rest of the journey, not that I’d have slept much anyway. After a terrible journey we arrived in Bangkok in the early hours and were exposed to the madness of the Khao San Road. With hookers, ladyboys, and drunk tourists still singing and stumbling, we made our way through every single guesthouse until we found one after an hour of searching that wasn’t full and within our price range. We didn’t do much exploring of Bangkok, however we did manage to achieve a smiley face tattoo on our toes, before we left for Chiang Mai the next evening, and yet another awful nights sleep in a minibus sitting next to the two most annoying pineapple heads in existence. Chiang Mai was awesome though, well worth the journey. We did a trekking tour while we were there with the most amazibng group of people ever that luckily we got on with so well.
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Vancouver Winter Olympics
On Thursday, 18th of February, our plane took off at 8.30 from the Warsaw airport. At 10.30 we were in Frankfurt with 3 hours of spare time. We visited all the shops and restaurants. In one of them we met a Polish woman working there. I felt really strange having talked to her in English at first. At 14.40 finally it was the time to go to Vancouver. During 9 hours and a half of the flight I was watching a display from GPS on a screen. I could not fall asleep because of some Russians walking around and shouting. However, the view of sunny Vancouver compensated me for the whole tiring journey.
It was around the midnight, but not in Canada. There was about 3 a.m. and the sun was incredibly shining. Everyone in the streets was wearing Canada ice hockey team shirts and shouting: “GO CANADA GO!”. That was totally crazy. The Canadians are so nice people. It is enough for them to look in your eyes to start a conversation. They are fantastic. I would never think so if I did not experience it myself. They also speak fantastic, clear English. It was easy to understand them.
We arrived at a hotel in the city centre with some magnificent views on the Vancouver Bay. When we checked in, I felt exhausted after the flight, so I wanted to have a nap. Unfortunately, my father woke me up after 15 minutes. The time came for my first Olympic event ever – ice hockey game. Slovakia played against Russia. We expected an exciting match. In the first period Russia took the lead 1-0. I do not remember the second period, because I fell asleep. Luckily, the greatest emotions were still to come. In the third period Slovakia scored a goal expected by the majority of the crowd in Canada Hockey Place. Then Slovakia needed 7 series of penalty shoots to win the game. It was extremely thrilling. Now I know why the Canadians like this sport so much.
The next day we went to Whistler. It is in the mountains about 100 km from Vancouver. The competitions of alpine skiing, ski jumping and cross country skiing took place there. Whistler is a small town, but during the Olympic Games it was full of people of all the nations. We went to see men’s SuperG. The sun was shining again so we burnt our faces. I was sitting in front of a couple from Norway. When a Norwegian Axel Lund Svindal was going for the gold medal the woman was shouting straight into my ear. Except from this I liked this event a lot.
In the evening we also went to see a medal ceremony in Vancouver. There was a show and lots of people, but it would not be my best experience from that evening. After the ceremony we went to a restaurant called The Shore Club to try Canadian steaks. My steak was poetic. It was the most magnificent thing I have ever eaten. I would never forget it.
On Saturday we planned to visit the last Olympic venue – Cypress Mountain. It is close to Vancouver and even smaller than Whistler, but it was full of people as well. We watched women’s Aerial. To be honest, I have not known this discipline before. However, it looked fantastic. The ladies were doing acrobatic figures it the air I did not expect. It was also exciting.
In the afternoon we went to buy some souvenirs. The shops were full of Olympic mascots, maple syrup, gloves and clothes with the sign of the maple leaf. When we encountered an official store of the NHL I was lucky to have my father with me. If he had not been there, I would have been able to spend all my money. Then we went to see the Chinatown. It is just another world. The “shops with everything” are everywhere. You can buy dried fish in size of a finger, an octopus, hundreds of various condiments and masses of other things I do not even know how to name. In the evening we went to The Shore Club again to try other kinds of steaks. They were also perfect.
On Sunday we were supposed to get back. The journey had the same distance, but it seemed to be a lot quicker. Perhaps it is because I slept about 4 hours. I was sad to leave sunny Canada and go back to Poland still covered with snow. It was also a thermo-shock to feel 0 degrees having felt 12 for a few days. I was shivering with cold for a week after getting back. The whole trip has been the most exotic in my life so far. I liked Canada and the Olympic Games. It was a great experience especially for me – a person who loves traveling and sports.