I obediently follow the instructions of my navigation device. What else can I do in a country where I can not even read the road signs because the place names are Cyrillic. At least where I need it. They are also familiar in the main traffic routes. Like an illiterate one feels there, and the only thing one can hold on is the nice voice, which sounds joyfully from the loudspeaker. I follow. Turn left. The road is getting narrower, more bumpy, louder. I am sent through a village.
All the villages look the same. A road, to the left and right, a wide green tire, on which pick donkeys, horses, cows, goats or sheep graze, chickens picking. A horse-drawn carriage comes to meet me. A mare is tense and the foal runs alongside. Suddenly, a sheep stands on the street. It does not want to go away. What should I do? I’m horny. Then finally it sets in motion, and only then do I recognize that on the other side a lamb is. The mother does not go until the lamb goes with her. She has protected her child. And I’m slowly becoming skeptical. Is there a road leading somewhere? But perhaps it is an abbreviation. But then the cobbled street ends. I should seriously turn to a dirt road. In short, I pause, but then I get up and follow. Between the fields, uphill, downhill.
“Somewhere it’s going to lead,” I try to persuade myself, “Every way leads somewhere.” And he leads where, to the end.
I get out of the car. The dirt road has just been off. In front of me lies a lake. Dogs are running towards me. They are followed by an old man.
“Great, now I get trouble. He’s certainly complaining that I’ve been here, “I think, as I’m already making an excuse. He does not look angry at all. More lenient. He smiles at me. I try to answer the smile. A little unsafe because I do not know what comes. Then I make my excuse. In English. He does not understand English. German anyway not, and Bulgarian, I cannot. But there is something like a universal language. He takes me by the hand. The dogs jump around us. Curious, playful. Then I see it, the little cottage next to the lake. The man lives here, with his dogs. Puppies jump up on my legs. The mother has her in view. Nothing but a cottage, the dogs, the lake and the obligatory vegetable garden. Just living can be good living. Living well is where we see the good, and not, as Frau Ilsebill in the fairy tale of the Butt, ever more and more. He takes me to the cottage. Offer me a glass of water. I am accepted and accompanied by the dogs, as if I were not a stranger, an intruder. The man takes me. Then he shows me how the path continues. I would not have seen it if I had stopped there, in my car. Sometimes you just have to change the location to see. I had to go back. Then the path agreed. So I arrived safely at my destination. That would have done me also without the detour. But without this detour I would not have received this gift, this gift a different perspective.
Detours can give us so many experiences that we would not have done without him. Circumstances enrich life, and who knows already what is the purpose of our life is not the real detour, and what we think for a detour, the actual determination. Life has no use instructions. We should not tinker ourselves.
