THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

One evening, I was sitting on the terrace of our home in Stupava, Slovakia. I was living some 20km north of the city and teaching at a school in Bratislava. Sometimes, the walnut tree at the bottom of the garden, planted the very day this house was finished, seventy years ago, and its attendant pines, would fill with birds and they’d get this crazy call and answer conversation going. When the distant weekday rush hour hum of the motorway isn’t there, it’s truly magical, if the speakers in the streets aren’t doing their thing. You find these in towns and villages all over Slovakia – hangers-on from communist days and used to announce town events, deaths, marriages and the like.

But when not even a mouse stirs elsewhere in the house, in the later evening, you get this curious effect from those speakers in the streets all around the town. Goodness knows what they are saying. They start with a sort of jolly country accordion jingle and then the echoey tidings mingle into a jumbled mess of identical announcements all slightly out of synch with one another. And tonight, my thoughts take me back to one post-poker night echoing in the early morning streets of Amman six or so years previously.

Swaying homeward, floating on exhaustion and Amstel beers, the Mosque call begins all around me. The streets were so empty in the first glimmers of sunlight that morning, the mosques standing out in silhouette against the rising golden dawn while the apartment blocks are acting as sound deflectors. Now, the timeless chant that somehow always managed to give an ‘everything is ok’ feel to life there, the reminder to come to pray, starts to envelop me from every side – a three-dimensional, melancholy colliding of calls. Some of the Imams are shrill, some passionate, and some have a deep, melodious quality to them. Here they all combine, and it is beautiful.

But we’re still here on my terrace this evening contemplating the sounds of travel and listening to the birdsong. Now, the thought train travels to Africa. Who can forget the music of the African bush when camping at night? Or the constant hum of Mosi oa Tunya (the Smoke That Thunders – otherwise and more ridiculously known as Victoria Falls)? And talking of Zimbabwe, what about the clashing of metal panels over potholes, raucous conversations, goat bleating and the glorious static ridden Zimbo pop radio stations that together make up the signature tune of African buses? Or maybe even the lapping waves on the beach in Bali backed with hotel voicings or Carnival in Trinidad? And we haven’t even started on Indian train journeys… “Chai-chai, chai-chai”.

That is what this site is all about: sitting down somewhere quiet and musing on the sights and sounds and experiences of travel, of living and working around the world and road tripping about the place in a campervan or hire car, however hairy the road conditions. So, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Although the captions don’t always mention it, credit for any quality photo, or photos of the author must go to Natasha.