Hello everyone!
Again another weekend and more time to participate in another "engagement" prompt (143) in the #WeekendExperiences community hosted by @galenkp who suggests us different topics so that we can choose one and thus tell one of our experiences. And when I have seen them clearly I knew which one to choose:
Lost in a foreign country.
Because I have lived in different countries and have visited many others, and I have gotten lost more than once... although I think that the "magic" of getting lost is being lost, because now with mobile phones, gps and google maps it seems that we always find our way more easily, but not always.
In any case, until a few years ago we did not carry so much help in our pockets, some of us even remember the paper maps that we did not know how to fold again in the same way. Of all those moments of temporary loss, because in the end we always find a way out, I share a curious one of those past moments with you.
Lost in a park in Moscow, Russia
Far away, about 10 years ago and with a very old mobile phone that I bought for that season that I spent there, and nothing more. I was going with my brother who was visiting and on vacation for a few days, so I took the opportunity to visit areas that I had not been able to see, and without anything, because I had memorized the map before leaving, or so I thought, and with so many metro stations I thought that would be easy.
In Moscow there are many parks and when the weather starts to be good, that is, less cold, you really want to walk through all of them. But there is one that is even bigger, it is actually practically a forest on the outskirts of the city, in the eastern part. Izmailovsky Park.
Getting there was relatively easy with the subway, after that you had to walk just a bit to the entrance, but the trees themselves and that green foliage so different from the concrete of the buildings told us that we were on the right path. Everything under control.
And what a park, immense and gigantic, walking and walking, the feeling was already different, as if lost in a forest, but where there were also clearings and an immense lake. Relaxed people strolled, children played as if it were almost summer, so they intensely enjoyed spring days under a shining sun that encouraged us. He encouraged us to follow routes and trails, to walk under trees or through cleared areas of meadow, although with power lines... and we passed through many areas, also small animals, or people so relaxed that they appeared on a bench in the middle of nowhere, what? sleeping?
I don't know if we were already lost or just lost track of time, but we had to find the entrance or exit again, and do the whole way in reverse. But we started going around in a circle, hadn't we been here before? And we start to get tired.
We thought about asking people, but how? In addition, suddenly we looked and there was nothing nearby. And now? Well, to keep walking, and to look up almost towards the sky in case there was a tall building in the distance that could serve as a reference.
In the end, after much more walking, we came out, we came out on a road, but... that was not the same access. Where are we? Surely we went out the other way, but even further away. It was a road that we started going north in the direction the cars were coming from, to see if there was anything. Suddenly a McDonalds there, a place where to stop for a while, drink, eat, regain strength and think about what to do.
We went out to the crossroads and I looked at the bus stop there, good, I didn't understand anything... But I also saw some vans stopping there and people getting on and off. Was it some kind of small bus disguised as a normal van?
I decided to ask, we couldn't stay forever my brother and I there. With my weird, little and bad Russian, I repeated a metro stop name that I remembered nearby, to see if I could find out if they could at least take us there.
I don't know how I did it, that survival intuition would be... but I understood that they weren't taking me to that stop but to another and how much was the price. It didn't really matter which metro stop any of them would serve since later with the map of the entire network and making line changes we would arrive at our destination again.
So we paid a few rubles and we went in, like happy crazy. There were only a few soldiers who looked at us strangely except for one in front of us who was sleeping, and a few other people who talked and who came down immediately.
We didn't know where it was going, the old van followed the forest on one side and a lot of traffic too, it turned a couple of times and I was already disoriented and totally lost. Should we go west? I didn't know anymore...
But suddenly it stopped in a livelier place and there was a metro sign! Hallelujah! They said something, we got off, we said thank you. Looking at the plan on one of the walls, we were able to locate ourselves and return to the center, how far we had come!
(probably lost around the blue sign)
Thanks for reading! Have an inspiring and relaxed weekend.
