unexpected view from a car window

I sat in the back seat of a car travelling north and could easily imagine everything I saw from the perspective of a foreigner from central Europe or North America.

Small towns, even smaller towns - nondescript, unassuming, roadsigns in two incomprehensible languagues. Endless forests, tiny fields, flat landscape, cute little villages with houses far apart.

Myself: one who has travelled the world but now is content with her job in a small shop, speaks both of the incomprehensible languages, lives, works, gets around on a bicycle, is one of them.

The foreigner him/herself: when homesickness and loneliness weigh heavily on the mind, the joy of seeing something familiar. A sign in English, the yellow M of a MacDonald's, another tourist like yourself, a familiar type of tree - but these things are so far apart. Or something that has been put there for the benefit of you as a stranger (a welcoming) - something written in English, an international traffic symbol, a hotel, a tourist site.

These quiet people who lack grand gestures and dramatic manners, who usually turn out to speak at least some English but who are careful and reserved. This country, so far away, so sparsely populated, often so cold.

I saw all this, as if from a great distance, through the grimy car window.