A Message from Žajfa

What I thought to be an intermediate chapter in my last trip to Europe, turned out to be a whole encyclopedia of adventures, stories, and wonderful and awkward experiences. At first, I couldn’t avoid comparing ourselves to the musketeers, Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc., and even to the All-American Rejects. What I have just started to realize is that we were the writers of our own Odyssey.

I had spent one week in the community of Taize, France; and David, whom I had never seen personally, was supposed to pick me up there on the 31st of August to go to meet the rest of the band in Paris. Suddenly an unexpected message from David arrived to my mobile “So.. we just saw that electricity in our [van] doesn’t work and so van doesn’t start. Now we’re stuck at the place with no toilets. We have to fix it (on Monday). Shall I come for you today and we go back tomorrow?” A million of scenarios with bad outcomes came to my mind. A “place with no toilets” was not exactly my idea of an Eden. However, I decided that if there was an obstacle, we had to overcome it together.

It was around seven in the afternoon when David arrived. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly but at least I had a wandering idea of how he was supposed to look like. Then, I saw him. I wasn’t quite sure if it was really he, but an answering glance from his eyes made it clear.

I joined these three Slovenian strangers one morning on the 1st of August. Then, the “I” became “we” and we became a “Famille Gay”.

In Paris we were practically adopted and wonderfully aimed by a lovely French family. There, we explored the Parisian monuments and offered respect to some of our dead idols that rest underground in this French capital. We left Paris with a good taste in our mouths towards our next destination a well-known commune in the province of Normandy, Mont Saint-Michel.

Twenty minutes to the West, we provincialized ourselves under Bretagne’s flag, a province that became ours after our visit to its cold, Celtic lands.

Spain welcomed us with the warm, strong aroma of the Catalan territory. But neither the heat that melts the chocolate-ice-cream church, nor the adversity could prevent us from going forward to Madrid.

Žajfa, 10/11/2011