The silver Maruti

A small silver Suzuki Maruti suddenly pulled over at the bus station and a blonde woman jumped out of the drivers seat. She ran in the post office and came out a minute later with a white envelope in her hand.

She sat in the car and immediately took off but stopped right in front of me, because of the congestion. She opened the envelope, read the letter and closed her eyes, her face turned pale.

It seemed as the time stopped for a few moments for us; the traffic moved forward while I was watching a desperate woman leaning her head on the steering wheel.

The spell was broken and the silver Maruti disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, left me wondering what the letter said.

100 words: A storm

In a few short moments ominous dark clouds covered the city; they quickly crawled upon us and blotted out the sun. The colour of the sky turned from bright baby blue to a dark grey.

The temperature dropped rapidly and the air turned from hot to cold in a matter of minutes.

It slowly started to rain; at first just a few cold drops fell from the sky but it soon started pouring and a few short heartbeats later the land was soaked.

The storm moved on as quickly as it came; perhaps to another city in need of refreshment. 

Different perspectives

I’ve often wondered, while exploring one foreign city or another, how the locals see their hometown. Do Londoners ever stop to admire The Palace of Westminster? Do Parisians ever go up La Tour Eiffel and enjoy the view? Do Barcelonans ever stop while running errands and admire the architectural masterpieces scattered all over the city?

On my trip to Barcelona a couple of days ago, while sitting on the wall of Castell de Montjuïc and admiring the panoramic view, I caught myself wondering how many times I visited Ljubljana castle. How many times I cared to go up there to enjoy the view? If I remember correctly, the last time was a couple years ago when my friend from the Netherlands was here and I was one of his local ‘tourist guides’. A couple of days later, when we came back from Barcelona, we went straight  to the centre of Ljubljana and I found myself standing in the middle of Kongresni trg, admiring the architecture of a building across the street and thinking ‘What is this’. After seeing the bell tower I realized it’s a church and, to be honest, I was quite disappointed with myself for not noticing the beauty of the city I’m living in.

After thorough consideration I came to the conclusion that locals and tourists see the same city from two completely different perspectives; in fact, they may not even see the same city but two entirely different ones. A tourist goes to a city which is, in some way, appealing to him; he buys a tourist guide or googles the facts about the city, reads about its history and decides which landmarks he wants to see. A local, on the other hand, takes that same landmarks for granted, his local history doesn’t seem so very incredible to him.

I still hope though, that Londoners stop in front of The Palace of Westminster from time to time, that Parisians go up La Tour Eiffel at least once in their life and I hope that Barcelonans are at least aware of the fact that they are lucky to be living in such an architecturally diverse city.