Karfreitag

So now we have the second most obnoxious horridays in the calendar. The country shut down today, and won't re-open till Tuesday, double horriday.... and we can all suck it up.
Terrible scenes at the market this morning, and you would think there is going to be no food left for anybody ever, and they get rude. and rowdy.
Yesterday was 'Not-So-Good' Friday. And my last chance to get down to Gamlitz, and as school is out, the bus schedule was the pits and made it into an odysee.

And then it got worse..... I got my train, and the conductor who checked my ticket said, 'You will have to transfer', and I said, 'I know...' Except I didn't. Soon after we left Graz, there are all these 'service announcements', telling you what the next stops are gonna be, and so on, and I had taken a book along because in this new version, you never see the countryside, because they put up all these walls to keep the noise out from the houses nearest the tracks, you see, and it is like riding in a tunnel. So I read....

But I perked up my ears when I heard, 'This train is only going as far as Werndorf. There are busses outside the station which will continue the course.' And I thought, 'Oh fuck, here we go again...' They picked this week to repair and work on some things on the line, because not so many people ride them, and school is out, you see.

So I transferred to a Postautobus, and off we went in the most unbelieveably convoluted secondary roads and streets on the old system before the Autobahn was built. It was pretty, actually.. but I couldn't get anything good, because I couldn't get a front seat.

But the picture was of Leibnitz, just before we arrived there. Another town dominated by a hill, a former monastery that now houses seminars, and a church....

The bus got stuck behind a tractor, and they can only go about thirty miles an hour... No passing lines on the secondary roads, to speak of.... Whatever, we got to Ehrenhausen 15 minutes later than the train would have... and got dumped out on the highway across from the train station, and had to hoof it a little... Fifty minute's wait, and then I got my connection to Gamlitz. 'My' driver... it is always the same guy.

I would guess he is 35-40, and as I am the only passenger most times, he seems to be intrigued as to why I would go down there so frequently, so I told him at first, and since then, we have our eight-minute dialogues in the noon-time, and afternoons returning. It is nice to have those little chats about nothing in particular, the weather, the upcoming horridays, how traditions differ between the City and the countryside, and I ask him things... (He's straight, Annti... you'd like him...) He gets my sense of humour, and I like to make him laugh. 'Was at the market this morning, you'd think the next famine was about to happen...' Cracked him up. 'We all buy way too much when the long horridays happen, and then we end up having to throw things away...'

'And the hundred gramm ladies, mostly retired.'

He said, 'Huh?'

'Y'know, the ones who order one hundred grams of this, of that, and it never seems to stop, and you are at the market at six in the a.m. , just to get what you need, but they are in a hurry, and you are champing at the bit, because, YOU have to go to work. But THEY are in a hurry, because they have no time....'

I am so glad he didn't drive us off the narrow road, and land us in a culvert. He laughed, and how....

So he got me to my stop, and I went to the home, to find Peter crying. And I said, 'I TOLD you I was going to be an hour later because school is out and the schedule changed...'

But it wasn't because of that. He'd been watching tee-vee. And it was friggin' Good Friday... And he got an overdose of films that depressed him to the max. Although Ben-Hur sort of cheered him up, don't know why.... I can speculate, but don't wanna go there. You do NOT watch tee-vee on Good Friday here if you are ill, or even if you are healthy. And if I see 'The Ten Commandments' one more time, I will barf.

All in all, it was depressing.

I took a snigarrette break, and got the photo above. The countryside is turning green at last.

Whatever, I got him a small bit of Easter bread, and a few colored eggs, and he liked that.

I saw they had a full programme for the seniors, kids reading to them, and today, priests and a boys choir.... (shudder)..... then a Mass, and then an 'Easter Party'.

He wants nothing to do with it, and stays in his room, although there are enough people who would wheel him to the rec/dining room. There are also enough other programs to keep one fit and alert. Nada. All I got was, 'I'm old enough, I don't need to have to look at all the others.'

Uh-huh. I'd be there photographing it, if I could....

On my second break, I stepped outside downstairs, and the woman on duty in administration came out, to 'talk' to me. About finances. I am SO glad I do not have power of attorney. They are supposed to be getting a part of his pension, and the rest gets paid by the state, and it hasn't happened yet. And he wants a subscription to a newspaper, and should I be the one to say ok.... (HUH???) I explained that I have absolutely no say, and they have to work it out with the social services and him, and I cannot decide anything, that I can do small things for him, financially, like take his slips to his bank and hand them over, but nothing else.

And again, am against being gay married to such a financially irresponsible person.

Whatever, got my bus back to Ehrenhausen, and normally have a 45 minute wait for trains, but there was a bus to get me back to Werndorf, and a train back to Graz. And I usally stop into the Gasthaus in this place and call it my purgatory.... The personell is very nice, but it is full of raucous, and rowdy people, and I sit myself down where I can watch the clock.... order a mineral water with lemon.... and read. For them I am a changeling as well. I asked the lady if the schedule had changed, and turned out it was fifteen minutes earlier. And had to go out and wait on the side of the highway to get it. 'You have to travel to learn... ' Mark Twain Happy Easter.