Ryan is a graphical designer, policeman and a care taker in a temple, and all this in one personality. Usually he doesn’t take work too seriously because Ryan has a dream. Namely, his mother, who has a well-opened sixth sense and who works for the president and heals people with water in her free time, once predicted for Ryan that he’ll get married in a couple of years. Since the Muslim girls are too conservative for him and too dependent on their husbands he’s decided to collect some money and go and live in the USA with an intention of getting married.
Namely, it’s a shame here if a man in his thirties isn’t married and that is why he has to hurry. He first has to collect some money, then find a woman and so it could take years before he could get married. In general, he’s planned to have it all done in two-three years. If I asked how he thought to find a soulmate from a foreign country he said he trusted the God. And it’s not necessary to find a soul mate, it’s important to find a woman because the best gift in the world is a son. And a child without marriage is out of question.

So, my boyfriend Ryan has decided to marry a girl he’s dating in about two years. I recommended not to talk the western girls about his plannes in a too loud voice.
Ryan has alo decided to find himself step parents. He already has a step mom, a woman from the USA who’s promised to help him find a woman when he arrives in the USA. He needs step parents because his real parents got divorced five years ago and the scars in his soul are too deep. For me it is of course difficult to understand why a grown man suffers so bad because of his parents but if you take a look around on the island here, and see how families of tens live, it would obviously feel weird to come home in which there are only three people waiting: father, brother and sister in law. Not to mention the hippie mother who’s living alone in Jakarta, enjoying the anonymity of a metropol,  and who has turned her back to Islam conservatism. But in every city Ryan has uncles and other relatives whose doors are always open. Since my boyfriend had decided to lengthen our time together and drove me back to Solo I opened my door for him so that he could rest after the 20-hour ride and before heading back to Bali. I turned the lights on and went outside to call him in. Ryan was looking at me with confusion:
“THIS is your room?”
Since I didn’t quite understand what the stressed THIS had meant, I thought that my ascetic room had scared him.
“Yes it is, I’ve just moved and the room isn’t ready het,” I tried to explain why I sleep on a mat not in bed, although I have no plans of exchanging my beautiful colourful nest for something more soft. I finally understood what was bothering him. Namely, my ground floor windows open to the street and as I don’t want to ruin the wide view I haven’t got myself curtains. And then I took a look around – there’s no house where there would be wide windows without curtains, and if they didn’t keep their front doors open during the day I wouldn’t know how their homes look like.
“Good luck living here,” he said and huddled into a dark corner. “I don’t feel comfortable here.”
Meanwhile I’d taken I shower and wearing a towel I joined him on the terrace. It was midnight and very quiet. Again he looked at me with his eyes filled with surprise and started fidgeting funny. He tried to sit in a way I’d be as hidden as possible and dragged my towel lower on my legs.
While I’d been away a guy from Singapore had moved in, we ran into each other in the living room, both wearing only towels we carried out a short greeting dialogue. If this was unacceptable, then imagine Ryan’s face when Georgio came out from the next room in the evening and spread some fresh Solo rumour: Kiwa had sunbathed (or carried out sun meditation, as Kiwa calls it) on the balcony, stark naked.
Although I try to follow the local clothing rules when I’m outside, at home we always have our own rules, anyways there’s no one walking in the streets at night. But I did hear the question of “where are your trousers” so often, when I tried to feel a bit more humanly in a 35 degree heat wearing only a long shirt, that I finally couldn’t help but furiously stared at him.
The second case took place one evening when there was a huge amount of people in our house that had suddenly transformed into a culture centre. Many of them drank too much beer and crashed in different rooms. I went to get some tofu, forgot myself talking to the village boys, and got back an hour later. When I arrived I found the boy lonely sitting in the livingroom.
“What are you doing here? Everybody’s sleeping, you’re tired too, why don’t you go to bed?”
“I thought I don’t know where I could sleep.”
“What do you mean? There where you’ve slept before – in my room.”
“But here’s so many people, all are your friends.”
“There’s somebody sleeping in my room?”
“No.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“I don’t know if it’s appropriate.”
“What?!”
“Sleeping in your room.”
“You’ve already slept there for two days, why shouldn’t it be appropriate now?”
“You’ve got so many friends here today, they’d all see me going to your room for the night.”

Ryan did sleep in my room that day, as usual, after every thirty minutes he peeked to see if there was someone peeping into the room.
There were situations like that at least a couple of days a day and when I explained how I saw the things he thanked me profusely. I’ve never heard anybody thanking me so much. Thanks for letting me drive you, thanks for letting me to cook for you, thanks I can be near you, thanks for being here.
One morning, after a number of days I had lost my nerve, Ryan left. He left behind his pillows, his air conditioner, his drawing book and water colours, his weird turtle-shaped instrument, his helmet, his doormat and a chess board he’d secretly bought for me. And also a drawing of an old lady who’d asked us to her mountain cabin. He did it all by leaving me a letter, starting with Thanks…

They are greedy because on the opposite shore of the lake there’s a cemetery, they take their dead there but they never bury them. So the tourists pay an awful lot for the boat trip to see the bodies, they’re not told that most of the road could be passed on land. And the road by the lake, which took us to Trunyam, was hunting in my mind for a long time.
Trunyam didn’t seem agressive because there was an old friend of Eddie’s taking us to the cemetery by his little wooden boat. On the still lake, that reminded me of Titicaca’s Bolivian side, there were old ladies with fire wood sailing past us. They looked so fit that every grandmother in Estonia would envy them.
The cemetery itself was something we’d been looking forward to. On an area with a size of a few square meters there were six coffins made of straws standing, one could easily peek into them, too. The last body had been brought there three weeks ago and it more looked like a skeleton not a rotting body. The rest had got rid of their flesh and skin a long time ago and they were simply lying there. A pile of flip-flops, bowls, dishes and clothes. A reasonable amount of assets had been sent there with the dead, but as they didn’t bury that too, the pile was decaying there at its slow speed and waited for another pile of trash. Next to the pile there was a line of sculls, slowly becoming mossy; there were thigh bones other bones lying here and there.
There was no smell. Not a single sign of sacredness. Not a bit of eeriness. We were standing on this human land fill quite emotionless and we sat down right there to enjoy the beautiful view on the lake.

There certainly is something peaceful and calming in the atmosphere of Bali. Maybe it’s because of the glorious mossy temples, maybe because there’s life in the middle of the tropic atmosphere, but  for many it’s certainly the uncountable signs taking you towards spirituality. And the latter is achieved not in a mystical way, which means finding the one and only guru after a long journey, who would then be responsible for the development of his student for years, but there are explicit  road signs taking you from one teacher to another: Sacred mystery school, Heaven and Earth workshops, Chakra balancing healing session, Balinese yoga, Rebirthing breathing, Ashtanga yoga, Ayurveda as it is, Intuitive flow, Yoga and Chi Gung, Energy treatment and other similar one could endlessly choose between. So, everyone can compose  his/her spiritual development similarly to a training plan: Thai massage course in the morning, white magic teacher in the afternoon and then to  the Tibetan  energy world.
This is why I’m not surprised the mainly middle-aged people from the West move to Ubud and being droopy from the materialistic world consume spirituality. Of course they have to pay a lot. 70 dollars a night in shake therapy and 60 dollars for a chakra lecture. In the search of self the rich hippies dash towards the invisible world and don’t even realize that the spirituality that should help them break free from the boundaries of the capitalist order is available if your paycheck is big enough, it’s a product wrapped in pink and available only for those with certain resources – natural gifts don’t play a role any more.
It also seems as if spirituality was a sign of social status, just like TJ said with a grin: “Susan seems to know a lot about chakras, she’s cool, lets hang around her.” Because in every Starbucks like café, where people from the west sip their lattes and read their mail online, one could hear conscious explanations about energy streams in your body or get knowledge about spiritual awakening. If you’ve read two or three Buddhist books it’s enough to create a bastion of your knowledge in some middle-class American town and to start guiding people.
This is why the town arose some contradictory feelings in me. Actually there’s nothing bad in self development if there are people who are not ready to give up their western commodities but still want to experience this tropical vibe and get a feeling that is earthy and close to one’s soul. This is the place Ubud is excellent for. Everyone should be able to find something suitable and continue developing it if he wishes to. But equalizing practicing the self-help guides and knowing the spiritual world, and what is more, taking the position of a paid guru, seems to popularize the same materialist shallowness people try to find a cure for.

The house where our bedroom was, was big but empty. Seeing the portraits on the walls and statuettes of Jesus we first thought that it’s a church, and when we were proven wrong, I thought it was a kindergarten, because the house was surrounded by about ten children, and only one of those was actually living there. But it was simply a manse belonging to and old lady. Regardless the fact that their home was notably more posh than an average Benin family has, they still cooked their food on fire in the sandy garden,  and a dream of a shower with water falling on you was scattered soon, too.

So they lived there – the old lady was kneading dough on a huge table and formed little bagles, her daughter was taking care of the children and flattened the pink sheets on her single-size bed, and placed a statuette of a crucified Jesus on her pillow. Nobody ever left the house, if ever, then for shopping, and no men besides relatives and her husband were never seen behind these walls. In the front of the house there was a wooden stall, where the old lady, some of the children or her daughter herself sold pastry, juice and toilet paper. When we told them about our previous experiences and the voodoo sessions we’d seen then the old lady gave us a frightened look and suggested we’d get rid of our pagan thoughts in the church. It was an exemplary of a  god-fearing family.

Although we had to live at the old lady’s she hadn’t much time to deal with us because of the children, and this is why she had been given an order that our supervisor in the city was going to be Big Brother who she was going to introduce us.

Jim lived next doors and the moment we approached his gate we understood that the loud reggae music came nowhere else but from Big Brother’s house.

We slightly opened the iron gate and found ourselves in a garden full of banana trees, in the middle of which there were remains of a house and another wall with a door. The latter seemed a lot narrower and barely hung on the iron sheet wall. Through the corroded holes we could feel strong cannabis scent. The small woman opened the door for us and left.

Suddenly we were standing in a garden which walls were different words written on:  Ganja, Bob Marley, King of King, Vodoun, etc. All walls had broken up and the place itself reminded more of a garage front than somebody’s home. Big Brother, as he was known here, stepped out of one of those sorry-looking huts. Since we were no relatives for him we agreed to call him Jim. Meanwhile people were dashing in and out the gate, they spoke a few words to us and then went to the back garden. Jim’s curly haired girl Charlotte brought out some plastic chairs and put them under the roof made of palm tree leaves. About ten minutes later a huge pile of food was before us and if we didn’t eat all of it, we heard a sentence we’d acquired in Africa a long time ago: Il faut manger! At the same time Jim was sitting next to us cutting an enormous dosage of cannabis. All the mornings in this garden were like copies of one another.

We can’t say that we weren’t surprised when a little entirely Christian women left us under the surveillance of, as it later appeared, the most known cannabis dealer. Then we of course didn’t know that Big Brother’s clients and people of trust were the greatest crooks and police, Rastafarians and church priests, black and white mages, voodooists and princes of the town at the same time. If it was safe for us anywhere in this criminal town, it was in Jim’s wild and woolly home yard.

 

Visits in Africa is a separate theme and paint a vivid picture of life before the development of technology. Since calling is expensive then normally credit is bought for a one minute call, which means that the credit is done in the middle of your call. This is why people tend not to use the phones (if we leave aside the cases when locals call to us in Estonia). So people sit on scooters and knock on doors. In the yard there  is about ten people but not a sign of the man of the house. Then you may sit and wait for a few hours or come back later and try your luck. After a few tries we reach the priest. After this things go as it does in uncountable cases during this trip:
We sit in armchairs in a living room and we’re offered a shot of alcohol. We greet everybody in the room and wait. There are a couple of men whisking in the room, they’re topless and wear pijama-like pants so common in Africa. Who’s the priest? Christian is talking something in Foni and we have no idea of how to react, who we could talk to, how important is the person we’re visiting and what’s going to happen next. Then one of the man raises and asks us to follow him. In the back yard a door to a little room is opened, we try cunningly to do everything like Christian does because we still don’t know what’s going on. We’re in Benin, we have a meeting with a weir priest and nobody has ever told us what to do at a “meeting” like this. Still there are signs of certain rituals which should be followed. The room is small, filled with bottles and legba statuettes. Those semiotically intelligent dolls translate human wishes so that they’d he understandable for spirits.

Fa priest is sitting in the middle of them and starts talking in Foni. Christian whispers that it’d be good if we had a few coins. The priest takes a long string with convex aluminum plates and continues in a language we don’t understand. Christian tells to put coins in front of our mouths and ask them questions. I do what I’m told. After a number of rituals the priests puts the strings with plates on the ground and starts drawing lines on the sand. The plate with the curvature above (closed) – one line, the plate with the curvature below (open) – two lines. Finally he studies the combination and starts talking. With a worried look he tells me that I should never row a boat, it brings me bad luck. He also says I shouldn’t let people make decisions for me and I should choose a man for me myself. He doesn’t recommend wearing a necklace, but earrings bring luck. In his long speech he predicts my future, talks about my work and private life but still I don’t get an answer for my question.
But he has the gift, this is what the village people believe. 16 days after he was born he didn’t open his left fist and no matter how much they tried it didn’t open. On the 16th day it opened and to important tools of Fa priests appeared. Having seen that the parents went to a Fa priest who found that the boy has a holy gift. No matter what the child said it came true. Gradually he took the priest position and became famous for his skills of foreseeing and foretelling.
As soon as the priest has told his story and noted that it’s not meant for the public and telling it to us he’d made an exception because we’re foreigners the wind raises and the sky is cast with lighting clouds. We hear a noise from the garden. Children are hitting a stick against the ground, finally a man saves the day. We see how the man puts a yellow hissing snake on the stick and tries to get it out of the garden. “This snake was Dani’s spirit,” the priest says. “This story was a secret and wasn’t supposed to be told, Dani didn’t like it.”
I exit the priest’s house with contradictory feelings. Was it really what the village people arrange their future by, the aluminum plates? Or was my question a bit too selfishly West oriented and wasn’t supposed to be answered in a Benin village commune? Christian talks about this analytically and in a balanced way, but he also says that he doesn’t deal with things like that – foretelling at Fa priests isn’t among his practice.  But when he takes his shirt off in the evening I see the same combinations on his chest the Fa priest had drawn on the sand. This brings good luck, he believes while being a non-believer.

(views on the bus station)

Hippie, nomad, hitch hiker, wanderer, student, how ever one may call us, we live in our own worlds, constructed and designed by our own ideals. Our dreamland is governed by the laws of freedom and creativeness. Happiness is received from emotions not from materials and the world of consumption is pushed far from the perspectives as a shallow entertainment.

But in some cases, like when you suddenly find yourself from between the shiny jewelry and shoe shops of Venice, you feel alone in the world as the only one who cannot afford the luxuries of modern life. You forget your eyes in the middle of these romantic channels on the people who are sitting happily in the fancy restaurants or rushing with bags full of delicious food and drinks towards their expensive hotels.

One of those mortals we have been staring at stops if front of us and asks for a map. A bottle of Beefeater is peeping out from the plastic bag, just next to a nicely smelling baguette. I think he saw my saliva dropping on the ground as he comments on his bag:

„It’s good stuff in this bag, isn’t it. I cannot wait to try it either. My girlfriend and I have been in Venice already for a week. We lived in the streets in front of the train station. It’s just today that we really needed to shower and decided to take a hotel for the last night here. Hence the bottle for little celebration.“ And off he goes towards his main street hotel, with his gracious manner of walking, pride reflecting from his face and leaving us behind with some instructions of survival.

We only need one night to see the Art Biennial and leave. Renting a room is out of question and this stone city on water has no place for a tent. The only option left is to follow the man’s idea and doze off on a terrace of the train station’s restaurant.

It is around 6 o’clock in the morning when a well-eaten man with a punch of keys claps his hands in the middle of the yard and shouts:

„Time’s up, kiddos! Off we go now!“

Several heads start to rise from different corners of the terrace, hidden behind the pot-plants. Just a few meters from us there lives a French couple, on the opposite side sleeps a Dutch gentleman and an old Russian hippie. Another head arises, wearing a trendy hat and extravagant clothes as if he was coming straight from Milan’s catwalks. In the streets one could easily mistake them for the wealthy European. They all have their heavy cameras and tiny iPads in their pack-bags, none of them is really a homeless. But none of them can afford spending their holiday in a hotel of Venice.

An older gentleman who works in the cafe notices us in the bushes and comes to sit on our sleeping bags. He is worried if we could sleep well, if anyone bothered us and if we wish for a cup of coffee. He brings us a free drink to the floor, helps us to get into the shower rooms and pays for our bus to leave the town.

And there we are standing, in the middle of the channels and celebrating our survival with the cheapest ice-cream around. Some young travellers are passing by, staring at our satisfied smiles enjoying the dessert and are probably thinking how awful it feels not to be able to keep up with the wealthy tourists.

Fortunately all that is just illusory.

The guard grins.
Take a random bus. Go to… well, guess where to. Just like in every city in Russia the centre is nowhere else than on Lenin street. 

Most frequently changes your company.  You can share your “cubicle” with a lady in a sweat suit, a boy with smelly feet, road constructor, and at some point in the afternoon of the second day, if everything goes smoothly, your Estonian friend catches the same train. Of course there are more people in the car, in the first hours you know none of them and in the final hours you wish them all luck and promise to call if you’re in trouble. These are normally either elderly men who offer you whisky and greasy fried potatoes with speck in the morning, or young boys who approvingly smile at your every move, but only when their own girlfriends don’t see. And of course the car attendants, who finally sit on your bed and secretly sip their vodka.
As frequently as the company changes, changes information.  One shouts, why are you going there! Without a permit you can go nowhere. The next says, that of course you can! You always can if you have to. Then the third notes that the river is impassable, it is ice-clad. The fourth says that cross the river by car. The fifth knows that the ice is soon going to start moving and nothing can be done. Finally the sixth one writes on a piece of paper Maladjošnõje politiki and tells us to go directly to the city government buildings.
But on the other side of the window there is a new picture every day. In the beginning I wear short sleeves when I go to village shops to get some beer. I lick ice cream on the platform and enjoy the sun. On the second day I put on an autumn coat. Village shops have been replaced with ladies who come as soon as the train arrives and sell pies. At the night of the second day, when it’s already midnight, the sun’s still shining. And in the morning when I wake into the sunshine my watch says exactly 3.40, no more or less. On the third day nothing is the saime. Civilization has been replaced with empty white plains. Far away I see the Ural Mountains. There are no village shops nor ladies on our way. There is nothing. When I go outside I wear a fur hat and a winter coat. And from the window I see I sign: ЕВРОПА – АЗИЯ.