Crosby, England

acuarimantima — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:06:00 GMT

Sunday morning in bed, had breakfast in bed too and remembered when I used to do the same in Garagoa -that is a little town 4 hours away from Bogotá D.C. in Colombia and also my hometown. I used to read in bed and before breakfast all stories that talked about distant hot cities by the beach. The memories of the sound of the rain against the window and the unstoppable plots of the stories were still fresh, as if they had happened yesterday and remembering those memories so vividly despite the time and distance had a taste of unavoidable nostalgia. After having some late lunch, my landlady invited us to go to the beach...the beach! Up to this point of my stay in Bootle, I didn't know there was a beach near my neighbourhood. She asked us to get ready and we (me and Ann, my flatmate who had woken up in a great mood) just took our cameras but my landlady suggested to wear wellies and coats. That was the end of my excitement: No heat or paradise weather as I had read in my morning bed stories. I didn't know what to expect from Crosby then. Off we drove there without many expectations and after going over a grassy sand dune, I MET THE SEA!!!!!! For the first time in my entire life! It was cold and windy and there were "quite a few" iron men standing forever in the beach. A master piece, my landlady said. For me, it was a kind of intervention to the landscape, as Christo did but in a smaller scale. Since it was the first time in the beach, I tried to reach the waves to contemplate how my wellies sunk in the damp grey sand that contained tons of dead starfish and starfish arms and long shaped shells. Some of them were still alive so I and my landlady's daughter and niece went on a mission: taking the still alive starfish back to the sea. We had no equipment of any kind -just our wellies and our hands. So the long shaped shells became tweezers if we used them as Chinese chopsticks and we started to pile up still alive starfish. The task seemed quite simple but the weakness of our tweezers didn't help much and the starfish started to fall on dry sand and that was very sad to see. We were not saving them at all I said to the girls. According to the them, the mission was aborted for the sake of the starfish and because of a strong lack of appropriate tools. The high tide would accomplish the mission better than any of us together, I said to the girls. In the meantime, my landlady had a cup of tea to keep warm which I wanted too but my hands smelled of starfish and that was simply great for my first time in the beach .

Dover-Calais

acuarimantima — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:42:00 GMT

Dover-Calais

23 December 2007

18:34

My trip had just started and I was so excited I had my camera in my hands -programmed in automatic, of course, ready for the perfect shot. Because of the thick fog I couldn't even see the trace of the ferry on the water...If there’s nothing to see outside, look inside, I said to myself trying to keep up the excitement despite the cold and darkness of the scenery. I was getting quite bored trying to look through the window, so I looked around and found it: if there’s nothing to see outside, look inside...so I took my camera and surfed the scene. There was this guy reading in front of a window containing that boring sea and automatically, I remembered this article about photography which said one should ask the subject to be photographed. Though he looked entertained with the reading, I dared to ask if he minded taking him a picture. He said he wouldn't, so off I went and took several shots. I didn't like any of them but he did. He grinned and asked

-Where are you going?

-I'm going round Europe during the next 10 days

-By train?

-Nope. By bus.

He told me he was German and I got glad about it because of the nice memories I have about Germany.

Although I find the German language quite intelligible, I had listened a thousand stories about the country, the cities, the people. That is why I felt confident asking. The stranger was from the South of Germany by the end of the Rhine river.

He looked like taken out of an 80s movie of Nordic sailors: white to the bone, blue eyed, earring and red moustache. After laughing at my face about the number of days I was going to be locked up in a coach around Europe, he recommended some places I definitely couldn't recognize. The picture showed the head of a man sitting by the window with his feet on its frame. While reading, he ate an apple in the same way any Nordic sailor from an 80s movie would have.

Travel Stories

Crosby, England

Dover-Calais