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            <<  Byron Bay, 26-Oct-2013  >>

East of Eden

Welcome to the land of Nod. The return to Byron Bay, settling down - attempt 1.

Ta ta da daaaaaaa!!!

Bus Brisbane – Byron Bay and we are here.

Byron Bay.
Whole new chapter of this journey begins, and actually this part of the journey ceases to be journey. We are here to “settle down”. Let’s see how it works out.
After India, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Kuala Lumpur and most of Australia, we are here in the easternmost point of Australia, east from all my previous journey. After all the joys, freedom and carefreeness of the travelling there came a time to stop, and work. And being east from all the previous journey and its paradisiac nature, these words came to my mind:

Book of Genesis, chapter 4:
“16: And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”
(Interestingly, the next sentence in Bible is: “17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived […]”. My dear Irene, are you ready??? ) :-)

Few minutes after we hopped out of the bus I looked at Irene and asked her: “Do you feel anything? Like, some special feeling, vibration, feeling of excitement of being back to Byron?”
And then I added: “Because I don’t.”
Nope, I did not feel any magical excitement of arrival to Byron, no victorious homecoming thrill.
Irene originally said “No, I don’t”, but few hour later, after strolling between all those jugglers of life that dwell here, she said “You know what, I’m starting to feel it”.

Soon after arrival I met Lukas from Vienna, one of best friends of Samo who always goes surfing with him to Bali, and whom I also met couple of times in Austria and Slovakia and who is actually fan of this blog :-) He’s here in Byron Bay (actually he stays in a small township 6km away from Byron Bay) because he’s studying English. That’s the official version, but in reality he just came here for surfing. Crazy little planet this Earth!

We came to Byron Bay without any reservation of accommodation and because the last 2 months we lived and travelled so cheaply we anyway didn’t feel like PAYING for accommodation and so we just dropped off our bags at friend’s room and took our sleeping bags and tent and decided to sleep in the bush behind the town. But before venturing into the bush lands we went to Junction Bar and at around 22:00 Biblical deluge started. It was raining as if Jahve wanted to cleanse the Earth of the sin again, fucking heavy rain which made any idea of going to the bush and setting up a tent there downright impossible. And so we waited and waited and when the rain finally stopped after midnight we went to find a dry place to sleep, somewhere away from eyes of policemen, and after long long time of searching and searching we finally decided to sleep on a platform of defunct railway station.

Everything was OK, until at around 3:00 a group of completely drunken homeless people arrived “back home” and laid their blankets next to us :-) Yes, unfortunately we obviously managed to find for ourselves a first class seat in den of homeless men! The worst was that they didn’t even go to sleep and made a lot of noise. I was so tired that I didn’t give a fuck, honestly I didn’t even looked at them, I kept my eyes closed trying to ignore the noise and I also assumed that the less we are engaged in any communication or contact with them the less trouble there will be, but Irene later told me that she was very scared and she almost didn’t sleep at all.

So was our first night in our new home, in Byron Bay. At railway station with 5 other homeless people.

And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden…


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     MARCEL STRBAK | www.strbak.com | www.facebook.com/marcel.strbak