My Silence is Ending

Dear readers,

I know it has been a while since I have written anything here and I must apologize for that. I have been sitting in a state of not so blissful writer’s block, where the wall has been the focus of my stare for countless hours and my blank notepad had remained blank. It is moments like that where you find yourself not sure if your thoughts are worth sharing or whether what you have to say will be of any interest to anyone at all. Even now I doubt what I have to say will be of any vast importance to anyone, but I want to write, I need to write.

Over the last couple of months I have felt an undying need to write, but I have had nothing worth writing. No thoughts or words that needed to be shared or told and certainly no interesting stories. The most I could have done was spin some tale of great adventure for a character that I have yet to name. That is not what this blog is meant to be about however, so I have studiously avoided doing such a thing here. Instead I sat and I waited for something interesting or exciting to happen to me.

That made me realize that I was waiting… I was expecting something to come to me. That was not how I started this blog, it was not how I started my new life here in Poland. I applied to the job thinking I would not get it, then when I did I took it and I packed a suitcase, sold my car and got on a plane. I made that happen. I went to the adventure, I did not wait around for it to come to me. So as soon as I got some time off work for Easter I decided I would take my flatmate up on the offer of traveling. A good friend of mine flew in from Denmark to visit and the three of us decided to set out on a trip.

It was my first experience traveling without plans. In North America you need to plan things ahead of time, you have to figure out your method of travel, where you’re going to stay and all of that. I suppose on some level I have always had a need to know how things were going to work out and what was going to happen. This trip however taught me a lot and I think, possibly, changed me.

So you might be asking ‘Where did you go then?’ a valid question indeed. We booked tickets for a bus that left from Krakow to Ostrava in the Czech Republic, from there… well we had a few ideas in mind, but we had not settled on anything. The trip to Ostrava was quicker than we expected, we left Myslenice at an hour that I do not enjoy being awake at and arrived in Ostrava by 10am. The trip only took two hours and when we arrived we were a bit shocked. We had read a bit about the city and learned it was mostly industrial, so when we got there it was as we expected. Until we ventured from the station to the closest public building which happened to be the Karolina Galleria. I think it was the largest shopping center I have seen since I left Canada. I was stunned.

After finding a tourist info booth and getting a map we ventured into the city centre. Our little group did not see much of the city, it was nice enough, but not worth spending much time in. I am sure in the summer there is more to see and probably festivals worth taking part in, however when we were there is chilly and dreary so we decided to move on. From there we got on a train to Olomouc, only a three hour train ride from Ostrava. Once we arrived there we knew we had a place worth exploring.

Now I could write so much about this city, it would probably be my longest post yet if I decided to do so in this one. However, I would not be able to talk about everything I wanted to. So I think I will have to save that for another post. One that I assure you will be jam packed with photos and stories, wonderful stories.

My point with this post today is that I have found an end to my writer’s block and that I shall be flooding my blog with posts and photos for the next few weeks at the very least. One weekend away has changed something in me and I have found more words to share with you than I thought I ever would.

So dear readers, thank you for sticking through my prolonged silence and thank you for reading this. Silence is a blessing, but it must come to an end and I shall end mine with plenty of tales and some helpful advice for traveling around the Czech Republic (at least the parts I saw).