OH! “Do you love to travel?” Part 3. Although today is already 8 December, and snow is falling, and it is cold and slippery, it is all the more pleasant to lie on the sofa, having already eaten (I know, I know there is no such word 😻) as many as two croissants, and at once having cheered up 🤓, I start writing about the tedious boarding of the cruise liner with the much-promising name “WONDERS of the Seas.” I write in “petty” and unpleasant details for me. ...

DO YOU LOVE TO TRAVEL? Part 2. Each time I think: “Ira, write a little every day….” And it doesn’t work! Of course there is information and it must be written down and analysed. Suddenly it may happen that I start forgetting my life, just as my mama is now. She no longer remembers her life… But today’s part of writing will still be about our cruise. You know, I really strained myself in noisy Rome in those two days before boarding the cruise ship. I understood that to fall from cool Norway into a hot summer is a real torture for me. The city centre, heat, crowds of tourists, among them cyclists and motorcyclists, cobbled alleys with a heap of “little eateries” that one does not want to go into. But I am a “tourist,” not a “inspector,” and my aim is to see as many sights as possible, which is what my husband and I tried to do. ...

DO YOU LOVE TO TRAVEL? Part 1. I do not. I am a homebody and distant distances do not draw me. But it happens that I have such a possibility of “suddenly” going somewhere. 🤔 The initiative comes not from me, of course from my husband; he proposes a variant, I agree. And so, once my computer husband (and he is indeed “computer”! Since for 40 years already he has been “ploughing the computer science of programming and working, and working, mastering everything new and newest in this field) I think of him with pride, that he is a computer genius. So then, my genius, in January 2022 saw an advertisement for “cheap” tickets on a cruise liner with the tempting name Wonders of the Sea, briefly asking me “Shall we go?” I decided not to think long and agreed, asking myself “how old am I” and thinking “what are you, fool, Little Red Riding Hood? to refuse such a possibility” (well, that happens with me, I conduct a “casual” monologue with myself). ...

Two months of anxiety. Part 3. We met Mama and before us stood the task of getting as soon as possible to Copenhagen, to my sister’s flat. At first we tried to take a room in a decent hotel, but everything there was taken, and in the hostel we could stay only until 10 in the morning. My sister decided to look at a rational route. Naturally that was a plane, but from Kraków, late in the evening. ...

Two months of anxiety. Part 2. A night of waiting. We had planned and paid in advance for a youth hostel, a room for two. When we got off the bus at the railway station, we understood that on our own on foot at 22 o’clock in the evening we would not walk and would not find this hostel. We went up to the police, we ask, and the police are “not local people,” they politely send us to ask the local people in reflective yellow vests, the volunteers. We go up, they take us for arriving refugees and want to send us to the station to spend the night in the waiting hall. We try to explain that we are meeting Mama in the morning and will be going to Denmark. “Ah! To Denmark! And here is a bus for refugees, tomorrow it will go to Denmark, so you can spend the night here at the station.” Sensitive, responsive people, the volunteers! But we understand that we need to find a taxi and get to the hostel. ...

Two months of anxiety. Part 1 The first days of the war in Ukraine. Confusion and incomprehension in my soul. Nothing to calm myself with. I look for a way out, I think how to evacuate Mama. Alarming reports, who is right — who is to blame — what to do — unknown. And then on Facebook they show a live broadcast from Moscow, a government sitting headed by Valentina Matviyenko. They reason and report about money and not a word about military actions on the territory of Ukraine. That was, I think, 3 March. The war in full swing, people are being killed, they are bombing, and in Moscow they reason how to distribute the budget! And those listening to this nonsense can write comments as the sitting goes on. ...

as uncle with the propeller named Karlsson used to say. Having driven out to a more spacious place in the village, we stopped by an old abandoned two-storey house in the shade. We decided to get out of the car, walk and look for this villa that Vanya had booked and paid for. We walk… Vanya strides ahead, I like Cheburashka with a little rucksack trail along and start falling behind, because we have to go a little uphill, a burning wind blows, nothing to breathe, we have gone into that narrow alley again, I feel my strength leaving me, I shout to Vanya: “maybe it’s time to ask people where this Villa is?” Although I know exactly, Vanya will not ask; I need to “switch my brains to English (at least!),” perhaps they will understand me. ...

“How I spent the summer” part 5. The last night in France. We drove half a day without particular adventures. When we stopped at Supercharge to fill up, it was already 15.30 on the clock. It seemed like lunchtime, but since it was very hot we did not feel much appetite. My husband suggested fast food sold next to the charging station; I refused, saying if he wanted to eat he could eat. We decided to look where we could stay the night and have lunch there in a restaurant. ...

A not bad quotation, one can even say it inspires me: “Writers write. If you want to become a writer, write.” Regina Brett. Thank you, Regina! Everything is simple, if you don’t complicate it… but it doesn’t always work out. We drive to the hotel, GPS tells us the way, we listen, look at the screen and drive. Outside it is 35 degrees of heat, and we are comfortable, you can choose the temperature; we drive into a French suburb, villas, cypresses. ...

I seemed to study well at school, but I was indifferent to geography. I remember that they started teaching that subject from the 4th class. Horror seized me when I went up to the geographical map — I could find nothing there, complete disorientation. The teacher would say: “Take the pointer and show on the map where the Volga flows into?” My feeling from a geographical map at that time: a heap of winding many-coloured lines, and among those “threads”-lines one had to find the Volga…. 🙀 So, something pulled me back into childhood. Well, you understood that I remained not very strong in geography, and I had a chance to display my illiteracy on the trip. ...