| 25/11/2011 drucki-zucki.de One of the things I learnt at work today was that someone wanted to register that domain name. Got a good giggle out of the German team. And after that little moment of giggle I then found myself embarking on an epic adventure across vast icey wastelands to collect a parcel, which was meant to have been delivered to my flat (but it seemed the courier had wanted to phone me first and...well...my phone was not on me. God I'm an idiot) but then I ended up having to go to the depot to collect it. *re-reads what I just wrote* Oh dear, I made the journey sound like far too much fun. Figuring out where to take the tram wasn't too difficult. But then I made the mistake of assuming that there was a bridge somewhere to take me over the large grouping of railway tracks to get to the other side of both the railway and the motorway in order to reach the industrial park. That also happens to be another mistake I made: the courier depot was not in an industrial park. To give you a better idea of the layout of this little place known as Svinov, I'd...best describe it. There's a very long bridge that connects to a very long road that carries traffic flowing East <=> West, which also happens to carry the local means of public transport. Walking along this bridge and walking downwards off of it is simple enough. Now under this bridge is a motorway and a railway carrying traffic North <=> South. Surrounding these vital veins of an industrial civilisation is just unused natural land, with a building of some use plonked on it every so often. This building was anything from a shopping emporium, to a power plant, to a large cement distributor. I was surprised how close I got to the cement facilities, it was surrounded by nothing more than a standard metal fence. And I got nowhere near the power plant, it was just so huge there was nothing else to see while crossing the bridge. So the only way to get to the courier depot was by road. I was walking. There is no footpath. The specific road you need is a slip-road that leads off then on to a motorway, so thankfully the traffic is not as fast as on a motorway (except for 2 cars, I think they were even breaking motorway speed limits). Walking along the rough ground while next to this slip road reminded me of the time spent in Bolivia, where motorways had no pavements on either side of them, yet it was deemed acceptable that people could walk by their sides. But this being Ostrava in the wintertime, there were some obvious differences: 1) it was freezing, not hot. 2) I was walking along after the sun had gone down. 3) The Czech drivers actually noticed lonely old me walking along and had the courtesy to slow down and give me some overtaking room, like drivers would do with a cyclist. :) Once I arrived at the courier depot, I was pleased to find a very modern, efficient and professional establishment. There was even an English speaker at the office. Unfortunately, having come in from a windy, icey outdoors, I found myself getting quickly overheated. (Damn Czech interiors!) |