train hotel Paris Barcelona with Zahara

It was a very strange night.
My sister and I went to bed around 12 in the same cabin with 2 more women. I had already had a bite and was annoyed of having possible fleas (flöhe) in the cabin of the train. But could see nothing so I tried sleeping. Soon had more annoyances and itches and reminded the days when I lived with bedbugs. Bedbugs are only active at night, eat human blod and are one of the most dificult home parasites to exterminate. They are less than 1 mm thick and they are transparent. They get a red/black dot inside of them when they have bit a human!

I woke up at 1am with bites and I had the instinct to look around. I developed this habit during about 6 months, and it became almost automatic. I mean, why was I turning on the light and looking obsessively in my bed, around the sheets, and pillow over and over for so many minutes in the middle of the night?
And there was the bedbug. It brings me terrible feelings of hate. But I am not disgusted by it. It can barely hurt, it only bites and that's all. But if it stays with one and it establishes at one's house you have to exterminate it with very poisonous methods. And still maybe it doesn't die. I'm sorry, I know this must be disgusting for you. I am very sensitive to their bites. Some people never react to them.

So I looked even closer at every bit of dust or lint or small rest of something in my sheets and there it was. A tiny bug, bringing all my memories. Once you locate a bug under the light it will usually not manage to escape. They are not fast walkers and they are very unconfortable in light environments. I let it walk - thinking what to do. Who should I tell?
I decide to kill it and tell the Schaffner and she decides to change my sister and me to another cabin. Once in the new cabin, only for us 2, to wagons further in the back of the train, we don't know if the bugs followed us. I had a jacket right by my head, where the bugs walked around. So I inspect it and find another smaller bug also with blood inside. I am scared that there are more. I kill it and look obsessively in everything. Find nothing else.

My sister and I spent 4 hours speaking before bed and now we are awake and alone and nervous and instead of sleeping we speak again. Until almost 5.
Finally at 7 we wake up and we realised we managed to sleep for 2 hours. It's very sad when I sleep so little. I get very vulnerable.

Because Warsaw was beautiful - and the robbers in Krakow

Although the weather changed from 24 degrees to 10 or less in 4 days and Warsaw welcomed us with the coldest wind we have had in Poland, I think this city is very nice and clean. Not that clean is usually something I specially appreciate and not that Krakow was dirty. But already in the train station we got this quiet comfortable feeling of walking to the hostel and loving the hostel and walking to the center and finding it very pleasant.

Or maybe because when we left Auschwitz, near in Krakow, we didn't have the greatest feeling. Auschwitz wasn't good itself and this was very good. !Because Auschwitz is not meant give a good feeling - note that they don't make profit with it, it is free entrance - you can actually cry there when you imagine that life. I though it would be great to have actors playing the role of a prisonergroup, working and being hit. But this would be to much of a carnival and only americans would turn a concentration camp into an amusement park.

So, the concentration camp was all destroyed by the Nazis when they found out they were about to lose the war. So what you can see in Auschwitz I are mainly reconstructed buildings that have been turned into a Museum about the Holocaust With photos and explanations and hundreds of glasses, shoes and other stuff from the prisoners and you really get the feeling.

But because we are laid back and we were hungry before we got into the Krematorium we went to look for some pierogi or borsch or any other polski yummy food and we ended up in a horrible empty fast food place were I ate fast food borsch. I have bought some Borsch soup powder and I am sure it will be better than that. Anyways, before we started eating M found out her wallet had just been taken out of her bag in that precise moment by a couple of dressed up guys that were sitting right behind us for no longer that 5 minutes. So we run out of the restaurant and he pointed this man dressed in black that was running. His friend dressed in white wasn't running but took the opposite way. This is confusing now but at that moment it wasn't a confusing desicion - I just wanted to reach the man in black and then I would make up something to tell him. So he was running and turned around the corner and I was running and turned too. M went to take the phone so she can call any useless institution and I went on running and saw the man stop behind a black 4x4 car parked 60 m away in that empty industrial area outside Auschwitz. When I was about to reach him the man in white passed by in front of me and run away, further than their car (it seemed their car) but the man in black was still there, talkin on the phone.

I approched the man and asked, screamed a bit, that he should give me back the wallet and keep the money. Then he looked at me. I wasn't really there, I was just acting out of adrenaline reactions and instinct, so it ws difficult to find out what was logical to do. And what he did was giv me back the M's wallet. I opend it and everything was still there. The money was still there too! So I asked him what did he want, what did he take, I seemed to have turned crazy and he came out pointing his head and and saying 'hospital-hospital' 'whatdo you want??!!', 'I am crazy' 'crazy, sick'.

After 1minute like this, I couldn't understand and for some reason he started coming closer to where I was standing -that is at least 2 m from him- so I started walking backwards and I kind of woke up and thought he might have done that to leave my sister alone in the empty restaurant with her big camera. Then I run back and on the way I found M who was coming to reach me and said I was all white screaming 'the camera!'.

Back at the restaurant I wasn't hungry. The camera was still there and my sister was alright. We thought that was very good comparing to what could have happened to us.

I though it had been very good comparing to that time in China when I started yelling crying completely full of rage against the chinese when I discovered that my bag had been cut to take out my wallet.

And so we all were moved after Auschwitz and we are all quite happy after Warsaw with potato pancakes with cream and cranberry sauce waiting in the fridge for tomorrow's breakfast.

And monday we are back in warm Barcelona and more things happening!

Travel all the time

I plan to go to Moskow in a month through other places. Nothing is sure yet, no plan is fixed.


Decided to travel in Barcelona too, even here I got to meet new people from overseas. Hear new stories, listen to people and ask ask ask. New persons and stories are like an everyday piece of life. I keep to myself the secret, that moving around different people and getting to live inside their culture (through my own eyes, if I am there, through their words, if I just listen) and to be empathetic become big daily adventures.

As if I could be everyone else and this could be a permanent amusement park.