We came to Torrellas to cook.
Not figuratively.
Really.
After a day in the car, after the motorcade, after a 40-degree Aragon, hundreds of miles, after sweat, salt and sand, we only needed two things.
Water.
And a shadow.
Torrellas looked like a small village under Moncay on the map.
Actually, it was more of a mountain village. Beautiful. Quiet. Oddly empty. It took us a while to meet anyone.
That's what caught us off guard.
You come to a place that doesn't lie on the path of anything big. A place where it is clearly not expected that four men, a blind stick, four guitars and a Czech flag will get out of the car somewhere in between.
And yet you're there.
Houses.
Narrow streets.
Quiet.
The mountains.
And above all, the highest mountain of the local mountains.
Mountain Moncayo with a tip in the clouds.
We looked at her, and we knew we were in a totalitarianism belt.
This was important.
We weren't just on the road anymore.
We've already been there.
Not at the final observation point. We haven't had that yet. We didn't know where the eclipse was coming from. We didn't know if Moncayo would be in the clouds or clean. We knew almost nothing.
But we knew when the eclipse came tomorrow night, we'd be there.
The first miracle of Torrellas was water.
Cold river with fresh water.
On the salt sea, on my own sweat, on the dust and sand, it seemed like grace.
We had a quick refreshment.
There was no big bath. More like a return to the body.
A man puts his hands in cold water and suddenly finds out he still exists.
Then we went to the square.
According to the map, there was supposed to be a restaurant.
The square was small. Almost a square. There were about ten young people at the restaurant. They seemed to be local, or at least they belonged in that place a lot more than we do.
But it wasn't cooking. The cook was somewhere by the water, and he wasn't supposed to be here until 8: 00 and 21: 00.
Which made us a little sad all day, but it didn't surprise us. On the road you quickly learn that hunger is not an argument. Hunger is just a state to be negotiated.
The young told us that right on the other side of the square is a small swimming pool.
And we could dip in it.
Then they almost apologized for the two and a half euros.
That made us laugh.
Two and a half euros.
After Czech swimming pools, where you sometimes leave 500 CZK just for being able to lay on the grass next to someone else's blanket, it felt like free.
Robert and Mirek went straight to the pool.
Lego and I went to deal with the base.
Park the car in the shade.
Put beer in cold water.
Take the guitars.
Because if you're halfway across Spain carrying four guitars, it would be an insult to civilization to leave them in the trunk.
I found a place to sleep on the way.
Behind the historic hospital.
There were three big desks. Drinking water. A shadow of trees. And next to the children's corner with a soft rubber mat.
I had a plan in my head immediately.
You can sleep here.
This is the place.
We put beer in a plastic bag and a plastic bag in a water channel by the car. We tied her behind the ear to the steel rod that was there.
That's a thing you're proud of on the road.
Not because she's brilliant.
But because it works.
Cold water. A plastic bag. Beer. Stick.
Expedition fridge.
At least we'll make someone happy to find it.
Then Leg and I went back to the pool.
With information that we have found sleep.
With guitars.
And feeling like everything's suddenly fine.
Two hours rest.
Water.
Beer.
Shadow.
Guitars.
And then dinner when it starts cooking.
The swimming pool was small and beautiful exactly the way it can be beautiful places that don't try to be an attraction to anyone.
There were maybe 15 people there.
The boys told us they probably heard Czech.
That surprised us. In Torrellas, in a village where we couldn't even meet a local person for a while, Czech would be almost a statistical error.
When Karl and I arrived, we never saw or heard from any Czechs.
Maybe they were there.
Maybe not.
Maybe in places like this, the language can sometimes bounce off the wall and you just want to hear it.
The pool water was just right.
Not ice. Not gay. Just the one you need after the day you've bathed in your own sweat.
We sat and rested and described to Mirko what we saw.
Mountains and girls.
Clouds on Moncaya.
Local.
Water.
Light.
He told us how he felt in return.
And somewhere around here, one of Mirko's great sentences of the expedition has come up.
"I smell women."
He said it with absolute certainty.
And he was often right before we ever saw anyone.
It was another great line for us.
For him, the way of orientation.
And for the whole expedition, another reminder that the world is not just what you can point your finger at and say, "Look.
Mirek was tired after a long trip.
He wasn't quite well. Knee, heat, road, all together.
He didn't come to dinner with us.
He went to lie down in peace in the place we found behind the hospital. That's where he waited for us before we got back.
And something important came up.
There was no dramatic scene.
No "what now."
We just knew he needed peace. He knew we were coming back. We knew where he was. And the expedition worked.
This is exactly what trust in practice looks like.
Not like big words.
But like the fact that a tired blind friend can go to bed behind an old hospital in a small Spanish village because they know the gang will come back.
And the gang will come back.
He had a strange softness in Torrellas last night.
The locals didn't look at us funny.
No one was driving us out.
Nobody asked what we were doing there, why we had guitars, why one of us had a blind stick, why we looked like a wandering Czech band after a minor natural disaster.
We were treated as part of the day.
Maybe as part of the city's colorful history.
Maybe just like the four strangers who came in, paid for the swimming pool, had a beer and didn't bother anyone. As a gift, they gave us eclipse glasses.
But it was more than that for me.
After Barcelona, after the highway, after the heat, after the search for water, all that day, Torrellas accepted us.
No talking.
No form.
No suspicion.
No reason.
We hid behind a historic hospital for the night.
Mirek and Lego slept on a soft rubber mat in a children's corner.
Me and Robert on the bench.
There was a little noise from the local youth. It wasn't a noise that bothered him. It was the ordinary joy of young people on a pleasant Spanish night.
They were quiet around 12: 30.
And we fell asleep, too.
Under the trees.
By the drinking water.
With beer chilled in the sewer.
In a small mountain village under Moncay.
We had sand everywhere this morning.
But by the end of the day, we were in a totalitarianism belt.
