It is said that the English are obsessed by the weather and that talking about it is their favourite topic.
Well, if that is so, I have been in England too long, as I seem to follow that same path (as friends on Facebook could vouch, as the first question I asked them when they returned home was about the weather).
Most seem to assume that the fondness of weather topics for the English is rooted in their somewhat awkward relationship with each other and to people they don’t know, eg that it is a result of their emotional repression. In order to overcome their reservedness towards other people in general, English choose a topic that will reveal very little.
The weather topic then is this unthreatening, unrevealing, uncontroversial topic all can agree on to say as little as possible about themselves and keep any personal relationship to a minimum.
Or...
Maybe the obsession with the weather is the result that the English as one of a few people have fully understood what influence the weather has on our mood. Most people will agree that if the sun shines, ones feels happier and more upbeat than then we are surrounded by fog, cold and rain.
This coupled with the fact that the weather is fairly changeable over here may explain the preoccupation with weather topics. Of course abroad, where weather patterns are more stable, it would not make sense to talk about the weather, and through that asking about your inner equilibrium, as it (the weather and the equilibrium) was the same as yesterday, and the day before and the day before that...
So rather than being aloof, talking about the weather is a good start to actually really enquire of the emotional state of the conversational partner.
So, how was my holiday, again as in previous years spend in Zeithain, doing an international volunteer workcamp ?
Well, as hinted in the headline, I departed from a fairly average situation here in England into summer, with brilliant sunshine and hot temperatures (only once or twice being interrupted by rain and cooler temperatures). And with this metaphor all should have been said.
As in previous years, the work was ever so slightly boring, as we were still digging for the camp road in the former Prisoner of War camp come nature reserve, and I have difficulties understanding the relevance of making ever more excavations on a road that we know is there. After all, knowing that the road must be going along the axis we can identify on old aerial photographs and the excavations we made previous years, not finding the road surface ( eg stones that were used to make the road) does not actually mean that the road was not there, juts that the stones for one reason or another are not any longer situated in that location (and the fact that the area was used after the war by the Russian Army as a tank driving range may go some way to explain the absence of stones).
But it was not the work, or even the weather that made the camp the best one in previous years, it was the people. Whereas in previous camps the group fragmented increasingly during the camp, resulting for instance last year in four different groups doing their own stuff over the weekends, the group this year largely stayed together, which resulted in all of us going to Berlin, meeting in Dresden one Sunday and apart from people who had made prior arrangements went all to Prague for the weekend after the camp.
I can only agree with what Luis, one of the volunteers, wrote in Facebook: “I'll never forget the "aasht", the "pf-pf", the "oh yeah!", the "nononono", the "chicken!", the "d'you know?" and all the words I learnt with you (Nasdravi, nasdrovia, nasdarovia, prost, siktir, otpadki, podpadki, "dabei, dabei"...)(I know that it's not the right spelling...), Berlin, Dresden, the Shisha Bar, Riesa, Kreinitz, the walk to the river, the elektro-punk concert, too many things I can't write here...”
And I am afraid you would have to been there to appreciate what brilliant time those few utterances stand for.
And as Luis also wrote, it was a wonderful time especially because of the people who were there: Luis, Marie, Agnieszka, Maciek, Richard, Šárka, Anastasia, Bor, Rakel, Farid, Rustam, Katya L, Katya G, Bärbel and Lucy
At the end of the camp 10 of us went to Prague, and if you know what happened last time I went to Prague with my car from Zeithain, you that I was a bit apprehensive about my car doing the trip. (to recap, last year, my car broke down, resulting in a longer than anticipated stay in Prague, a return journey to collect my car after the camp, and fine because I thought I could get away with not paying the Czech maut on motorways).
But this year Gertrude performed wonderfully. Not only had she managed to bring me all the way to Budapest at Easter, not this time she made the trip to Prague without any incident. Brilliant!
Prague also was just brilliant, blue skies throughout.
So when it came to get home on Monday morning, I was not looking forward to getting back to grey, rainy England (which of course it was).
Making the 14+ hour drive home did rely on me maybe catching a Eurotrain for the tunnel perhaps a bit earlier than I had booked. Normally that was not a problem, as I was able to get on earlier trains before.
But did you know that the second topic for conversations in England, after the weather, is public transport? And for good reason.
Because it is as crap as the weather – and unfortunately, conversations about the failings of the public transport system are exactly that, complaining about an abysmal situation of eternal delays – no deeper meaning in these sort of conversations.
And true to form, of course the trains through were delayed – almost 5 hours. So instead catching an early one at perhaps 22.00 and arrive home at about 1.00 in the morning to be able to grab a few hours sleep before I had to start work again, I dozed in the car waiting for the service to continue in Calais and then, taking an hour rest on some motorway stop, had to go into the office without proper sleep, still dressed very summery (in Prague in was sunny, remember?) in shorts, and without having had a shower for a very drawn-out day of work.
That it was cold, grey and rainy certainly described my mood perfectly at the time.
In fact, it has been miserable ever since here in Brum that I actually contemplate to take up the offer to go to Azerbaijan – the only fact that worries me slightly is the amount of mosquitoes they have there. There are so many that you can not leave the house in the evening.
Well, that must be why they apparently still use mainly donkeys for transport. A) they don’t break down so often as English trains, and B ) they move so slowly that they can part the clouds of mosquitoes easily; going by car would blacken the windscreen in minutes.... (ah, sorry,just another in-joke from the camp)
Anyway...
Well, time to go back to work...
