Satch Bus, Crossing the Polish border into Switzerland.
Bump bump bump bump fucking bump.
Driving out of Poland is as bad as driving into Poland. The motorway is single lane in both directions with lotsa bumps. The bumping woke me at 05.05. I got up at 09.00 after briefly falling asleep between about 08.30 and 08.50. One characteristic I've noticed, of these brief returns-to-sleeping after being-awake-for-a-while, is that the dreams are disturbing. This morning, I was suffering a terribly disturbed dream, with no resolution available, and then knew: this is only a dream. So I woke up and the irresolvable came to an end.
Not long after I was up, the second driver, Sister Of The Animal, also got up & went forward to the second driver's seat.
Yammer yammer yammer. Giggle giggle giggle. Yammer. Giggle. Two German drivers celebrating the morning & the commonality of their language.
10.21 Now we are through the crossing into eastern Germany, and the endless Teutonic yammer has returned. Lots of laughter from Sister Of The Animal, even from The Beast. The conversation has been without break, other than at the border crossing, since Sister Of The Animal got up.
The bus is the property of its drivers, not its passengers. Similarly, a shop is the property of its employees, not its customers. I have observed this repeatedly over many years in several countries, particularly coffee shops. For example, Jane Asher's Tea Rooms in Chelsea, a wonderful little & well-renowned establishment. I went there c. 1988 for morning coffee. The serving person, a young woman, was playing music of the inappropriate (for a teashop) kind on a small Noise Pollution Unit. The music was not loud enough to be part of the teashop & contribute to its ambience, nor quiet enough to be unheard by the patrons. Just noise. Noise to serve a need of the employee. After this, I never returned to Jane Asher's because its management was clearly not on top of customer needs.
But I can't get off this bus.
10.29 A short break in the yammer is returning, but in a more attenuated form, and the loud giggling from Sister Of The Animal has stopped.
10.38 The bus has pulled over for a cigarette break & driver change. The drivers' smoke is blowing back into the bus through the open door. But they're not on the bus: how can their smoke affect us?
10.52 The Beast is off to sleep. Yammer is over for the while.
11.34 The Beast is asleep & not available as a co-lingual yammering partner. Without helpless yammering conversation, Sister Of The Animal is confronted with quiet. This is too hard to bear. Where is there some another noise to fill the space? Sister Of The Animal has just experimented with the radio. Fortunately, the experiment was short.
11.36 Oh no! Sister Of The Animal has moved to another station!
11.37 Relief. Mick Brigden acted swiftly to de-vibrate the infilling of sonic space. Sister Of The Animal will now have to confront the absence of noise.
12.38 We have just passed Chemnitz, the birthplace of Katerina Witt. The Crimson of Double Trio formation played here in 1995 or 1996 & the spirit of the East was still very present. My hotel room felt like a prison cell, with a single high window. The only bright sparks I saw in Chemnitz were three working girls, leaving the breakfast room with their be-suited pimp, just after eight in the morning as the Crims were checking in from an overnight drive.
Aprrox. 400 miles & 7 hours driving to go.
15.19 Sister Of The Animal is now back driving after lunch stop.
16.50 Just passing Nurenberg with an estimated 256 miles to go & travelling time of 4'29".
19.32 Austrian>Swiss border.
"The musician has three disciplines: the disciplines of the hands, the head and the heart."
