COVID 19
Updated: Mar 5
For some of us the sixth of June, is a date of significance but at the present it only marks the end of the workshop, and my Nadedet camper van is energetically making its way back down the hills to Valencia and then to France and Germany. I want to get to Germany as quickly as possible because I want to take Nadedet to the garage that will give her the attention and love she needs and hopefully bring back into our world the lost sixth gear.
I dictate my desired destination to the camper van app and soon we are back on a sunny highway heading to a nighttime parking area on the outskirts of Valencia. This place is a combination of wooden cabins and surrounding parking spots for campers, where you can connect to electricity for a fee and walk fifty meters here or there to the public restrooms and showers.
Let’s say that I already have some experience, so I reverse quite smoothly into the special facility where I will empty my gray water and fill my water tank with fresh Spanish water. There’s no doubt that the expertise I’ve developed since I left Erlangen just a week ago gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction. I open the valve at the bottom of the chassis and a stream of gray water flows into the sewer. While the gray tank is emptying, I take out the rubber hose from the camper's backside, connect one end to the faucet, push the other end deep into the opening of the fresh water tank, and turn on the water. Oh, how professional I am.
When the water water business is finished, I find a shaded parking spot under a tree. When you live in a camper you learn quickly about sun and shade. Everything is fine. I am not thinking about the workshop even for a second, and only a few WhatsApp messages remind me that there was something related to the movement and empowerment of bananas and avocados.
The shower room is a bit gross, but the nakedness, the hot water, and the shampoo and conditioner in a private space are definitely uplifting. Freshly showered and fragrant, I hop over to the not-so-far supermarket and buy my favorite foods - eggs, sliced bread, and cheese. At the checkout, exhaustion hits me. I think to myself: "this empowerment workshop has drained me of all my energy," and by eight in the evening, I close all the windows and doors of Nadedet, do the dishes, brush my teeth, and curl up in the most comfortable bed in the world. It seems that before my head even touches the pillow, I’m already deep in sleep.
Around eleven at night, I wake up feeling I am suffocating. I mean, air is coming in, but it feels like there’s no Oxygen in it. It’s very, very, very scary. And all of this in a strange parking lot with all kinds of sleazy campers and various couples coming to spend the night in the wooden cabins, and only God knows what really is happening in them. In fact, since I’ve passed through a few of those camping parking lots, it has become clear to me that the world of camping and its visitors is a complex world, but this isn't the current story, so I won’t delve into it. In any case, tonight I realize there’s no one to rely on but me and my father in heaven, and so I say to myself: "first of all, let’s calm down." How in the world do you calm down when no air is going into your lungs?
You meditate.
I sit up straight on the bed, focus on my nostrils, and inwardly follow the air entering through them and exiting through my mouth. Again, air comes in, passes through the hairy nasal vestibule, over the conchea and I feel it going down into the trachea and branching out into the bronchi. And so, for about half an hour, my entire being is air that is inhaled into the lobes of the lungs and exhaled into the Nadedet's interior space. Gradually, the oxygen is absorbed again into the red blood cells. A nourishing, relaxing, healing amount of Oxygen enters my body, and I slide back between the sheets and sink once again into deep sleep.
A headache that is splitting my head wakes me up. I feel I weigh a ton. Getting out of bed requires a complete utilization of all reserve forces. A blue flame is boiling coffee grounds. I pour the hot drink into a cup and sipping it slowly slightly alleviates the pounding in my head. I want to go back and just lie down and not move, but I'm clinging onto the belief that I must get to Germany. The camper van urgently needs to be looked at by a gearbox expert, and while swallowing a couple of painkillers and drinking 750 milliliters of water, we set off.
Inside Valencia, in urban traffic, at traffic lights and intersections, I manage to stay alert, but when I hit the highway, the weight of my eyelids doubles, and I guess that for a few moments, my dear late father is holding the steering wheel while my eyes are closing. Not smart, not recommended, very dangerous, and completely foolish.
At the first rest area, I park the car, collapse onto the bed, and through the slits of my eyes, I see there’s some group chat going on about something. Everyone is feeling unwell, and one of the girls confirms she tested positive. “You’re always positive!” writes some avocado smart-aleck. Hahaha everybody laughs. In short, the workshop has given us all a virus that no strength or potential has yet succeeded in conquering.
However, I must deal with the mechanical health of Nadedet, so on the way from Valencia to Girona, the city of Saint Francisco, I take it in stages. I drive for an hour and then sleep for two. The progress is very slow. The good news is that European June days are quite long, and daylight lasts until around nine in the evening. According to the algorithms, I should reach Girona before dark, find a parking spot, and rest until the storm passes.
The parking lot I arrive at is indeed an urban parking lot—one where anyone can park—and somewhere there are stairs leading down to the underground parking. There, on the stairs, are restrooms and a sink typical of parking lots, and there’s also an electrical outlet where I can connect the camper. I’m a mess, but I still manage to park the van at a relatively decent angle, and to my delight, not far from me, I hear the owners of another camper van speaking German. If there are German speakers here, it means the place is relatively safe. I’m going to sleep.
The "Vayreda Autocaravana" parking lot is located on Massaguer Street (Pasaje de Massaguer) right at the edge of La Devesa Park in Girona. It’s one of the best locations in the city, and when it comes to its cultural heritage, everything is right here, just meters from the parking lot: the cathedral, the Jewish quarter, the Arabic baths, the Rambla de la Libertat, the wall, and Devesa park in all its glory. I almost feel as if I am in Jerusalem. But I only learned all of this in retrospect because during this whole second visit to Girona, for about sixteen hours, I was battling my brave battle against the COVID 19 and my body threw me time and again into a deep, breathless sleep.
I don’t know why, but the next day when I woke up with the same headache, I felt I had to find a laundromat and wash my clothes. At the same time, I thought it might be a good idea to pop into a pharmacy to buy a testing kit, masks, and some recommended medicine.
On the map, I saw that there was an automatic laundromat not far from the parking lot when I feverishly gazed at the map. I stuffed all my clothes and bedding into a mesh bag that must have weighed at least ten kilograms, and burning up with fever, I started walking through the park toward the laundromat. Well, what looks close on the map is not necessarily close on the ground. The path just wouldn’t end, and with every step, the bag became heavier and heavier. I told myself, that's it; I am going to die in Girona.
Of course, I arrived safely to where I was headed, and not only did I arrive safely, but at the laundromat, everyone helped, and there was a pharmacy right across the street. The pharmacist was so stunning that I had to restrain myself from proposing marriage to her. She gave me the masks, sold me the testing kit, and the painkillers, and made sure I took one every five hours and didn’t forget to drink, drink, drink. Water. Okay? Yes, yes.
I stayed another night in the urban parking lot. I swallowed a pill every five hours, drank non-stop, and slept, slept, and slept. The next day, I was healthy. Good-bye, Girona.
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