Here Nessie Nessie Nessie

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INVERNESS Day 93

Nessie here I come! I spent another few hours on trains in order to get to Inverness. It was raining on my arrival but the town is cute and quaint. And even though it is a smaller town it still has the feel of a big city town by having all the amenities readily available and lots of public transit coming and going at all times. I found my hostel quickly and went for a walk around town while I still had some day light hours. I stopped by the tourist office to get info on how to find Nessie.

I went back to the hostel and met some fellow travelers, one very interesting one in particular. MacKenzie has been traveling for the last 15 years, since he retired actually. He is 70 now, born in Scotland and raised in England. He was kind of hilarious and always has some sage advice for everyone no matter the situation. Apparently, he divides his year between Norway and Thailand. And he considers himself to be quite the playboy! He was definitely a good laugh although I wasn’t certain how to respond when he informed me and another guy (a traveler from Oregon) that he had been celibate since early December and had the ‘urge to merge’ as he put it. The American and I shared a moment of ‘wow someone is experiencing a case of sudden need for oversharing’ looks and awkward silence that turned into uncertain laughter. Shortly after, we both found reasons to leave ol’ MacKenzie to his cooking.

Thankfully, this hostel has a good selection of books available for exchange. I have been waiting for weeks to find a hostel that had books available and was thrilled when I found one of the books was by a Czech author that I had learned about through Monika and Milan and I had actually intended to try to find it when I got home to Canada. It is by Milan Kundera and is called ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. It ended up being a really good book that makes you stop and consider things differently. It also gives a good insight into what life would have been like while the Russian occupation occurred in Czech.

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