During my years when travelling was a major part in my life I made sure I always had a deck of cards and a game of backgammon or scrabble in my backpack.
I remember once in Madeira, I hooked up exploring the island with a British girl named Lucy. We used to play a special type of backgammon on my homemade gameboard (that I had made out of pieces of driftwood found on the beach. It was beautiful, if I may say so myself). Lucy told me she had learnt the rules whilst in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, where she had been stuck for a couple of months without money:
This old woman had let Lucy stay at her house whilst working on a closeby farm to earn money for a ticket out of Mexico.The old woman didn't speak any English and Lucy not a word of Spanish. So they spent their evenings playing Mexican backgammon and drinking tea, mostly in silence.
I remember thinking Lucy's story being amazing and exotic. But the more I travelled the more I got to see for myself the connection a game of Gin Rummy can create. I found myself pretty much washed away when it rained (!) in the Atacama desert once. I was travelling with only a tent and a gas cooker, and soaked to the bone I took shelter under a wall nearby. Where another traveller did the same. We shared his cigarette (as mine were soaked as everything else I had) and then he invited me to his room in a hostel nearby:
He was French. His English was bad, but not close to as bad as my French is. So we played cards, smoked cigarettes and drank coffee until the rain had eased off. It is one of my fondest and strongest travelling memories.
I don't get to play many games these days. But today I realized there's nothing stopping me, is there? So if you fancy an evening of Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Scrabble or a game of cards let me know. Because an evening of games and food is happening in my flat soon. The more the merrier!
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