PART TWO: THE REST OF THE STORYPART TWO: THE REST OF THE STORY
CHAPTER SIX
GOING TO HELL AND ARRIVING IN PARADISE
I had been paddling for two days and I was getting tired. I had fallen on the ice-covered deck of the barge back in Usti and had badly hurt my shoulder. It ached now. After covering only twenty kilometers in a day and a half, I decided to walk the last sixty kilometers to Prague. I got the kayak out of the water and began to walk with it for the last leg of this part of my journey.
The road got narrower and the traffic, denser. Afternoon came and went. There was no way to avoid the glare of lights coming from all directions. After about twenty kilometers, I had a near miss with a car, so I stopped and waited until the traffic calmed down.
I trudged on, now with fever, a toothache, a headache, and pain in my injured shoulder accompanying me. Every time I coughed, my shoulder felt it. Did I mention that my throat and ears were sore? And my sprained ankle, an old injury, was acting up again.
I was cold and sick.
Adding Insult to Injury
As if my day wasn’t bad enough, one of my kayak’s wheels got a puncture and I did not have a pump or any patches with me. I was already carrying too much equipment: 200 rolls of film, a mask and flippers, and a thin 2.5-millimeter wetsuit that was not even suitable for the Red Sea.
There I stood, sick and miserable, with a 100-kg kayak and going nowhere. In the middle of a fucking field in the Czech Republic, staying away from the road and huddling against the snow and wind to await the morning light.
It was impossible to sleep. Each time a cough racked my body, the shoulder would ache. The cramps in my legs and stomach were making me scream like a girl. I felt so bad that I felt like throwing up. But I refused to do so because I knew I needed to keep the food in me.
While I did not experience any dizziness like during a malaria attack, I felt like I was going to die. I bombarded myself with motivational thoughts:
Move! Warm up! Don’t give up! You’ll get through this just like you’ve managed to fix everything else before.
Come on, you bandit, take what you want. Give me a shot in the neck. Just let me rest. To hell with you!
Calling on that Fighting Spirit
The next morning I combed my hair and brushed my teeth, just to show that I still had some semblance of control. I packed the punctured wheel with grass and retraced my steps back to the road. A kindly truck driver pushed my kayak back to where I started, by the water’s edge.
After having fought my way for miles and miles in the cold and with a broken body, I was happy to be back on the water again.
Fate and the little town of Mělník gave me shelter and a shower at a rowing club, which also appeared to be a hotel where some twenty Ukrainian workers lived.
From a few days of hell to paradise. I felt good.
The last five kilometers before Prague were very beautiful—hills and half-naked rock, lots of egrets, cormorants, and ducks. Three metallic blue kingfishers became my honor guards. A muskrat swam curiously beside the long, white arrow-shaped craft until it discovered that it was not a friend. It dove below the surface.
The Elbe had been a beauty until the human race plagued it so. There were millions upon millions of plastic bottles on the beaches. The trees on the beach looked like overdressed Christmas trees with plastic bags and paper napkins from the last high tide. The water was so dirty that even just rinsing your face in it would be disgusting.
Prague, Finally
I finally arrived in Prague. I had imagined a triumphant entrance, paddling through downtown with people walking, waving, and watching while I lay stretched out on the kayak, vocalizing a spirit roar: Jaaaaaaaaaaaaa… (the Swedish version of “Yeaaaaaaaaah…”)
It didn’t play out as I had envisioned.
A guy who played international rugby for the Czech Republic was out walking his yellow dog. Behind an old gymnasium, he helped me lift the kayak and take it out of the water.
To pull a kayak through Prague in rush hour was an impossible feat; so I looked for a phone and called Adele, a friend of Martin’s, the student in Usti. Two hours later my long white girl was securely stored in a garage in Prague.
Prague gave me a breather from the hard life. I sat in cafes and bars, talking to Adele’s friends. When I was by myself, I ended up in gypsy bars where glasses were thrown at the walls and everyone sang forehead to forehead and swore eternal friendship that lasted two hours.
As I had always liked to watch films, I decided to see a few movies while I was in town. Another day found me in the home of Joseph, a retired sailor, sitting and listening to Edita Gruberová’s opera singing. We sat quietly at the table, our eyes riveted on something far, far away. The hairs on my arms were standing straight up. And when she took her highest notes, tears bloomed in my eyes.
Avoiding a Barroom Blitz
I went into a small, dirty, and cheap hangout and had a beer. Two very-packed Czechs were in the room. While I was paying for the chicken-to-go that I had ordered, one of the Czechs did some kind of karate move that swiped the beer out of my hands. The other brute was flying towards me.
I quelled my rising anger before I did something that I would later regret. I was about to unleash myself on them, but then I realized that I would not get any satisfaction from busting these two clowns. It would be just like swatting two small bugs with my hands. The idiots wanted a fight with a two-meter Swedish lumberjack. That was not so smart. Instead, I averted a potential bar brawl through discourse. The olive branch and the future help that they extended came as a bit of a surprise. The goons had become good Samaritans.
I had a few remaining days of relaxation in Prague, but soon and for a very long time, I would be fighting upstream on the Moldau River. My goal was to try to take myself to Austria and the Danube through this route. I would hardly get any rest until I reached a cheaper country like Hungary.
Tomorrow I would be on the road again. Until then, ciao!
