In the morning, Pat came to the apartment house and we went to a local market offering another wide range of products I never had seen before. For breakfast, she bought some mango and sticky rice and other delicious things, and we went to her home.
After breakfast, I went back to “my room” by bike and stayed there until 5 when Pat came home from work. I could update and plan and write a lot and felt relieved…
Later, at her home, Pat helped me with my blog post about the Khao Yai NP with some animal names.
After that, Pat, her mum and I went shopping, she wanted to buy meat to cook for her dog
“Bayern Wiener”?! Viennese sausages in Bavaria style? “Bayern collagen”?!? that can be name for food?
and again we took some food at a market for me to try.
egg white fried to a very hard texture
Then we changed the team, mum stayed at home and Robert came with us for dinner. We had 3 different soups with three different kinds of noodles (and there would have been more to choose from).
At home, I could make another recording of some Bürgschaft (=”The pledge”) lines with Pat and Robert. Robert is from New Zealand with Dutch background and so some German sounds that were hard to produce for Pat, were much easier for him.
The next evening, I would change to Pam but Pat and Robert both would have a long evening, so we would not meet anymore.
It was time to say good-bye…
This makes my trip so intense:
When I am cycling, I see so much nature, but also hear so much traffic noise, have to find my way, for water and food, watch the traffic and so on. Then I come to a place to stay, some a very comfortable, some challenging, and so is the WiFi that I need for uploading what I produce in the evenings. And the next day, it is a similar sequence but different anyway.
And when I stay with friends that I had not seen since they were in Vienna, or in a few cases, since I had visited them 2015, there is this special quality of friendship with people you know only by a few days encounter. And by them I learn and see (and taste) again so much what is new to me and we do something together and talk and so soon it is time to say good-bye again.
In Iran, this was again special, as from one person, Nader, whom I knew from Vienna, an incredible network of family and friends opened up, multiplied by one friend, Arash, who again passed me on from friend to friend (respectively relative).
So, sometimes all those feelings of intensity, friendship, good-byes and nostalgia are too much…