Back in Europe. For 5 days
Aranjuez and Bratislava - transfer stations between India and Peru
Europe: Sound of Silence.
It feels surrealistic, like watching TV with muted sound. Silence can be so refreshing!
From Madrid Airport where Irene’s parents came to pick us up we drove to Aranjuez for 1 hour in perfectly organized, chaos-less and noiseless traffic. Not a single car honking, nobody driving kamikaze style, no cows on the road. It was really almost hallucinogenic the smoothness and quietness of the ride.
1 day in Aranjuez and then home to Bratislava.
I opened my backpack, took out the only clean t-shirt which I had and wanted to wear it on the way from Madrid to Bratislava, only to find out it smells of fire, which means...
...that it's loaded by smoke from cremated dead people in Varanasi!
Some souvenirs from India I could really do without
3 days in Bratislava: friends and family including my “heavily pregnant” sister. And then back to Aranjuez for 1 day again to catch the flight to Lima, Peru. To get to Madrid I took German Wings flight from Germany to Spain and one month later, in the retrospective, I was pretty fucking grateful that the main pilot didn’t have to go to pee!
Altogether 5 days in Europe has got to be enough: we are off to Peru & South America to visit the last inhabited continent I haven't been to and one of the last two continents I haven't lived in yet (Africa, wait your turn).
I had shaved my head when I left to India, watched my hair grow for 27 months, and coming back from India for the second time I figured out I don't have to see the 28th month. So Irene’s cousin Diana cut my hair and here we are ready to go.
So good bye to the Old World, let's see the New World!
Hasta la vista, amigos!
