Kresnari

Only two stops to go and the architecture’s definitely polarising into the gated gulag pallazi and the run down wooded bungalows of the peasantry. The train, now parallel with a street of these pallazzi (some of which containing elaborately faded frescoes of a great misty garden) starts to screech unusually sharply with the coincidence of the semi derelict platform of the name Kresnar. Lots of things are exchanged and I feel a surge leaving the train. Everyone jumps off and we are all running alongside the train, moving along up some carriages and then jumping on again. But a series of badly placed dilapidated signalling posts block the doors until all has left me but the final kitchen carriage, absolutely rammed with chefs all standing around with stained white aprons, tending to the smoking hotplates on all sides.
They shout at me and flap open and close the long thin vent windows above the hot plate, gesturing my entrance through them. I run and stick myself to the outside of the steaming hot casing of this kitchen wagon. At first I subconsciously withdraw my hand from the window’s greasy metal rim, then I remember dilapidation and my reliance on our pickup. At one point they’re all pulling my one arm, almost dislocating it from the inside. As I stick my head inside, I notice that indifferent to my increasingly detached collision with it, a large, inevitable hot plate below singes my hair from there. Eventually I let go, or try to, as the chef refuses to give up my arm.
All this is superfluous (the train and pickup) now I’m in Kresnar. One side of the train track are these pallazzi depicting low firs of ornate gardens, the other is me on the abandoned platform. I walk along the platform’s end and off into an area of pine trees and mossy stones. There are remnants of visitors I imagined youths from the wood and badly tiled bungalows, old firs, tins and printed papers. I enter what I suspect might be the garden of one off large palazzo and maybe the mayor or duke’s.
I am approached by a man, not dissimilar in his north easterly features to those of the chefs du partie. The garden seems to emanate its own mist, surrounding the firs. I assume he is the gardener as he gives me a tour, motioning. I spot an unusual creature feeding on some dark mauve shrubbery, and its resemblance to rat causes a momentary doubt in perspective. ‘KRESNARI’ he gestured and it scurried towards us.