Yesterday, my sister and I went on a little outing. We were going to look at some land we were thinking about buying. We thought it would be a fun outing and that there would be no complications. After all, we’d just get on a train and get off after about an hour. In a way, things worked out fine. We got off on the right station, only to find that there was no actual station – just an old station building that was closed. That meant we’d have no way of buying our return tickets.
Since there was nothing else we could do, we set off to take a look at the land. Unfortunately, it didn’t suit us all. It was just a slope, no flat land anywhere. Building a house there would be difficult, if not impossible. On the bright side, it was far closer to the railway than we’d thought. It took us five minutes to get there, at the most
The village itself was eerie. We saw a very odd cat walking some distance away. At least we think it was a cat. In fact, in the half hour we were there, we hardly saw any people at all. There were two girls going to a bus stop – probably going to school. It was eight in the morning. We saw a woman on a bike who almost fell off, when she caught sight of two strangers. There was another woman, walking her two very odd dogs. We’ve never seen any dogs like that before. They were sort of like border collies except much smaller and thinner. About the size of miniature schnauzers or pinschers.
Then we walked back, and noticed that the tiny store was open (not ‘open’ for customers – just open).
I went inside and talked to a very nice guy who was putting out produce and setting things in order before the store opened. He was very polite and sympathetic but there was nowhere in that tiny village/town where we could buy our return tickets. Which was discouraging. How on earth would we get back without tickets? The staff on the train have taken to turning unpaying travellers out at the first possible stop, even they’d have no way of getting home on their own. Children, old people, anyone.
Fortunately, for us, that never happened. We discovered that since we only stayed barely half an hour, we could ride back for the same fare. It was good for three hours. So we managed to get home, but apart from that we were back to square one.