Read part 1 of the story.
This is part 2 of 4.
I had calculated that if I went to sleep at around 8 pm, I could still get my full 8 hours of sleep. It's better not to be hungry or tired when sitting and waiting "somewhere". I was tired but not hungry and decided that, after sleeping, my situation would be improved. Besides, the sun would rise at six o'clock. Once inside a country, you could get everywhere, especially in daylight. As a result of these thoughts, I was pretty relaxed, or rather tense and relaxed at the same time. A new sensation for me.
The young Latvian asked me where I wanted to go, why I traveled, etc. and we started a very nice conversation. Students are similar wherever they come from. We had an incredibly fast developing rapport, a common basis. We exchanged e-mail addresses (divine intervention!!!), talked about my business cards, which she deemed beautiful (yeah! She studied design), and swapped travel stories. For the first time in my life, I had my business card nearby in just the right moment. M was an experienced coach traveler on her way to Riga and once had a long-distance relationship to a German. She spoke all the languages that I didn't and perfect English. She asked about my route and promised to reach out to her contacts in Estonia to organize a couch in Tallinn. What made me most interested in this possibility, however, were the random connections and networks that open up thereby. Before my inner eye, I saw a network of red lines stretch around the globe. They were all the small connections and acquaintances, who got to know each other and through each other all the possibilities, the stories, the angles and point of views. All the small worlds and communities, which are mostly closed and live side by side on the same planet, and only by random encounters, are interconnected and form the red network, which was now vibrating in my head.
For a few hours, I was completely present, reconciled with the world. My trust in the road was deep and I felt safe and secure. The old ladies, who were sitting in front of me and were about to stretch out over all four seats in their rows, were waking at regular intervals to go to the loo. They smelled like the older women in Germany, but their supply baskets were at least twice as big. I was looking forward to the extensive breakfast when I arrived "somewhere" and drank some sips from my bottle. To my astonishment, the bus driver distributed 0.5 litre water bottles to everyone, so that my supply was topped up and I stayed hydrated in the morning. It was the little things on this trip that made me happy.
Stretched out across all four seats of the bus (do like the locals), I found a deep and recovering sleep. I only woke up when one of the old ladies went to the toilet. Then I stared at the ceiling of the bus, wondering about the design of the seat lighting – is it intent that they look like a pit bull in the dark? I was trying to take a picture but my iPhone was not good enough (see the above picture) and my big camera too far under my seat. I took an iPhone photo anyway, posted it (the internet on the bus was excellent) and hoped that my parents were already sleeping and NOT looking at Instagram. After all, they had to get up early tomorrow morning and needed their sleep. I guessed I was safe because it was already after 10 pm. Then I turned to the side and tried to fall back to sleep. For security, I put my wallet into the zip-lockable pocket of my fleece and covered myself with my jacket. It was cuddly warm, a beautiful starry sky flew past my bus window. We were already "somewhere in nowhere" between Poland and Lithuania. In my sleep, my hands found their way into the pocket of my fleece and grabbed my wallet, everything was here. Nothing forgotten, nothing mislaid. There were no problems that I couldn't handle on my own.
The next time I was woken up by the bus driver, we had arrived. An hour earlier than announced, but this was definitely where I had to get out. I grabbed my backpack, hastily slipped into my shoes and stumbled out of the warm bus into the cold night. The old ladies looked at me from the bus, with big eyes as if they could not understand why a young woman did this alone. Tucked into my fleece, my jacket and (for the first time on my journey) my self-knitted woolen tube scarf, I put my headphones on, my fleece hoody over my head and sat on a bench in the darkness.
(The story continues.)
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