From time to time we encounter a person who has a significant impact on our quality of life and perhaps our standard of living.
Socrates grandson was such a person. Now I don’t know whether Socrates had any children and I haven’t done any research but I have done the mathematics and in the 10,000 or so generations since Socrates time there has been ample opportunity for the impact of his seed to have spread far and wide. The prospect adds mystique to the aura of “Okarina Tours”, a man who each year is thrust into the lives of hundreds of people and believe it or not, has a significant impact on their quality of life.
I first encountered Okarina in an unlikely but prearranged location in Istanbul wearing an unexpected but perhaps explainable dark suit with white shirt and tie, those around him casually dressed, talking excitedly. Okarina’s dress suggested a businessman, in contrast with his more intellectual face, hiding behind his cultivated greying beard, bathed in a tan from years in the sun, against a backdrop of thick wavy greying hair. A misty voice, a melodic accent. Often as he spoke his face formed with a smile suggesting contemplation before finding the most uplifting way to make his point. Okarina’s first words firmly planted him as the person who would control the general direction of the collective lives of we thirty-eight persons for the next two weeks as we journeyed from eclectic Istanbul via the metamorphic Balkans to Vienna’s glory.
Okarina was to be our Tour Director. Okarina is not actually his name; it is the name of his company. The dictionary tells me Okarina, spelt with a “c”, is a small egg shaped, terracotta, wind instrument. Small is right, not much bigger than a twenty cent piece and our man Okarina wears one round his neck on a thin strip of leather. It is also the logo of his company or at least part of the logo which comprises the leather strip stylised as a treble clef with the Ocarina as the base of the stem. It is also the instrument he takes to his lips to tunefully attract our attention or to call us to join the coach. We respond as children to the Pied Piper.
Okarina is the man who offers to “take you where your soul is”. What of his life before? A philosopher, or as he expresses it, “a student of philosophy”, five years of which were spent in India. For twenty-five years he has lead tours through these lands. I sense he knows these lands, he suggests he continues to learn of these lands: lands with long and ancient history, lands of many cultures, sometimes drawn together, sometimes torn apart. Okarina seeks to expand our understanding. Then with wit and exquisite timing creates a counterpoint as he conjures from the depths a tale that turns the coach into a load of laughter. We pass a train climbing a mountainous Albanian track:
“You know there was a couple who rented an apartment, they had rented it for many years, it was ideally located for them and right next to the rail line. The only trouble was when the trains went by the vibration was so severe it knocked the wife out of bed.
“One day, whilst the husband was at work, the landlord called for his first inspection for many years. The wife commented how ideal the apartment was and added the only trouble was the vibration of the trains knocked her out of bed. “The landlord responded in disbelief. The wife, who over the years had learned the timetable off by heart said, “there is a train due soon, come and I’ll show you”. She lay on the bed and suggested the landlord also lay down to appreciate the impact of the train.
“Just at that time the husband came home. “What’s going on here?” Landlord, “you won’t believe this, were waiting for a train”.
Then, from under the grey wavy hair, through the mouth in the smiling face: “He, He, He!”
Before dinner at the hotel at Plitvice Lakes, Croatia, Okarina hosts a cocktail party. We have a couple of toasts; Okarina proposes a toast with words from Slovenian poet France Presern: