The Wind Corridor

A few months ago, one German, one French and one Estonian set on a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a place where one famous Englishman, a great master of words was born. So there we were, three different cultures pressed together at the back seat of National Express’ coach, eating self-made chocolate muffins and reading Shakespeare’s sonnets out aloud to each other in a language which was not a mother tongue for any of us, wishing to melt into the fourth culture. I feel we succeeded, I feel we were part of that road, heart and soul.

Portsmouth and the south-east landscape was vanishing in the spring sunset behind the window-class, further and further, and midland’s hills and fields veiled before us so fast I could not tell where one began and other ended. Yet I could single out trees, cows eating grass and horses standing still and indifferent. I could separate houses and people from the landscape. Or could I, are not the houses which have been in one place for centuries become a part of the landscape? And families who have inhabited the houses and grown crops and animals on the fields, too, became a part of the landscape? Have they not grown their roots there? I do not know. All I know is that we were just passing through and taking a part of their culture with us, trying to fix it within us.

Since the first time I drove pass the English landscape I have always felt as if time does not exist there, it has left everything untouched there, in a way it was at the very beginning. But then the cities arise; large shopping centres, car factories, Victorian houses, chimneys, smoke, noise. All of a sudden time is very present again.

The arrival in Stratford-upon-Avon was somewhat different, I did not feel the roaring voice of industrialisation or see people rushing here and there, back and forth, in and out. The countryside just became one small town. There were people and houses and noise but they all had a warm, welcoming sound which is peculiar to quiet places in the evenings where a visitor can tell that there has been a busy day but now the town is falling asleep. All that is left in the air are the remains of the day. This is how I felt when we stepped out of the coach, into dim light. I could still see the thin line of a pink sky when I looked towards the countryside, but when I turned my eyes towards the town, I could see the streetlights had been switched on to help us find a way to our hostel which was at the other side of the town.