The Inestimable Nature of Reality

‘I’ve just had a crazy thought. What if this is real life?’

The water flows under us, under the canoe. A weave of branches tries to stop us but still the water flows. My t-shirt rips but still, still, still…

The night before, we had camped in a ruined castle at the top of a hill, surrounded on all sides by forest. We cooked on an open fire and tried to play a mysterious musical instrument that made my teeth vibrate. The owls responded and the bats made shadows in the flickering light. Earlier that day, I had been at work; the next day was a national holiday – but I felt inexpressibly distant from reality at that moment.

‘That thought is just too crazy,’ I reply to Rebekah, my canoeing companion.

We step out of the boat, out of the fast-flowing river, and investigate the tantalising refrains of music coming from the shore. To our delight, we discover not only a live band but food, beer, mead and – best of all – stilts. I step easily onto a childhood memory of walking tall in the garden at home.

The surreality follows us again back to our boats and onto the water.

Now I am carried in the flow of tourists in Prague; no longer navigating a river jungle but another kind of jungle: the capital city. We wend our way from modern art to alternative theatre to a lazy picnic in the grass with a view across the red-roofed, spire-filled urban scape.

On one occasion in Prague, I arrive empty-handed and return to Liberec afterwards with Katie, a friend from Durham. From city-break on Saturday to break-from-the-city on Sunday: we venture into the Jizera Mountains and, inevitably, swim in a lake.

Inevitably for me, at least.

It is an inescapable fact that the joy of swimming in lakes can be enhanced yet further by jumping into lakes. Jumping, diving, flipping… Attempting to flip, in any case. I am hesitant and Radek gives me the best kind of encouragement: ‘Try not to kill yourself.’

If the joy of the jump was not already sufficient, I add to Radek’s enjoyment of it by flipping only halfway. When I resurface, he is laughing. ‘Did you change your mind mid-air?’

As if that wasn’t enough, he (a Czech) beats me (a native speaker) at an English language word game. The cheek of it!

Living so close to the three-point border, it would be rude to neglect the neighbouring countries. We go to Germany on the understanding that I will do all the talking: Radek insists his German is no good. Upon arrival at the ‘animal park’, however (a far more accurate description of the spacious, wooded area than ‘zoo’), it quickly becomes clear that Radek’s animal lexis is inexhaustible. Of course, there is a dash of logic in the German language: what could a ‘spiky pig’ (Stachelschwein) possibly be other than a porcupine? A particularly splendid spiky pig he is too! He stands on a rock within arm’s length of us and watches us watch him – but we don’t feel the need to verify the length of our arms. He really is very spiky.

Then there are the gnomes. You can’t miss them: Wroclaw is Poland’s fourth-largest city but must surely be gnome-capital of the world. Our Ukrainian couch-surfing host Ola gives us an expansive tour of the city – on foot and on terrifying scooter – and we pass legions of the little bronze people. We experience the ineffable delights of Polish pierogi and Georgian khachapuri, while Ola tells stories about the city: the gnomes, she says, are not just charming. They symbolise an anti-Soviet resistance movement from the 1980s.

Now charmed and fascinated, we sit by a multi-coloured fountain drinking Polish beer.

This can’t be reality. But time flows inexorably on: soon, if not now, reality will return.