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Saturday 21 November 2015

Daily Prompt: A Tale of Two Cities

If you could split your time evenly between two places, and two places only, which would these be?

Schänzlistr.

I was really not in the mood for writing re-churned old prompts today. Usually I can do it, looking at everything from a different point of view, but today we can be glad that we can travel. The photo? I happened to be in town last week, which is only a 10 minute journey with the local train from our village, and this building brought back memories. On the first floor, the windows once belonged to my home with Mr. Swiss and four children. Living in town was useful. It was near the main railway station and it was one of those old solid built apartments with rooms big enough to “swing a cat in”, although at that time we had too many children to bother with cats as well.

Yes, it was old, but served our purpose. The older children each had their own room and the younger two shared, although at that time my oldest was in a boarding school during the week as he was handicapped being autistic. We had a room in the attic which we shared with a couple of mice and some spiders, although it wasn't too bad: just for storage really. We had a cellar which was more like a dungeon, but useful for keeping the bottles. I remember once someone broke into the cellars and stole our empty crate to transport the wine bottles they stole from the other neigthbours; even then you were not safe in your own four walls.The building originated from the 1930’s and not very much had been modernised, although we did get new windows. I was permanently getting fined for parking my car in front of our garage door, because there were no places free and in any case Mr. Swiss had his car in the garage. I would pay a visit to the police station, explain that if I didn’t park there, someone else would and they would cancel my parking ticket, with a warning that what I was doing was not correct. No, they did not apologise for issuing it.

Anyhow, I have travelled, seen a lot of the world but today I have no real longing (except perhaps one day to meet a blogging friend, but she too is a golden oldie, so we connect online). Who wants to go to another country, it is no longer safe is it? I know it was Paris, but it could have been London, Berlin, even Zürich which is an hour away  by train. We are becoming stay at home people. A Tale of Two Cities remains a book title for me. There was a discussion on our TV yesterday about these terrorists and what to do. One of the guests in the studio was a reporter that I very much admire. He is a German reporter, often is on Swiss TV with his commentaries and has lived in the middle east for many years. He said other powers should never have mixed into countries where we do not understand their way of life. Something I said in connection with the conflict in the Ukraine - it is a Russian problem, we do not understand their ways, let them get on with it, but no: we Europeans had to mix into it - not to mention Iraq etc. etc. So enough, just saying.

And splitting my time evenly between two places is dangerous. I might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we no longer really know what the right place is. 


I suppose not bad for a prompt that I did not want to answer for the second time in any case.

2 comments:

  1. The re-cycling times for these prompts is getting shorter and shorter. I clearly remember my comment to your post last time it appeared, so I won't say it again. I would just add, though, that when the opportunity arises, I will continue to travel. I will not allow myself to be scared into not travelling by terrorists.

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    1. I always write something completely different I hope. Since the last time this prompt arrived a lot has changed and I no longer travel to far flung places. The world is getting too dangerous. complete Brussels came to a standstill because there was a terrorist threat similar to Paris. I am glad my son is no longer there.

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