Intuition is your soul whispering the truth to your heart and hoping that you hear.

Kate Spencer

The cab driver has won my heart.

I'm making good time. The traffic in San José in December is indescribable, you have to experience it. Everyone is out and about spending their 13th month's salary. No, I'd rather not have air conditioning, we can open the window a crack, I prefer that. He understands me and tries very hard with English, as my Spanish hasn't really improved in the last few weeks, much to my regret. The streets are colorful and lively, catastrophically crowded, but this man lets a long queue of waiting left-turners through directly opposite after only 100 meters of stop and go, if only everyone were like that. Laughs and waves with a grand gesture from behind his wheel, gives an old woman a coin at the next intersection, and even stops so I can take a photo because the setting sun is shining so incredibly golden in my window, and even my plane behind it. I mean, the kid is 23 and an Uber driver. So it goes on happily for the next 45 minutes. 

As I sit in a gray cab in Düsseldorf 20 hours later, I think back wistfully to this fun-loving young man who juggled through the chaos like an angel and was loving and courteous to other road users everywhere, without losing sight of the fact that I had to appear at the airport at some point. I'm sure that if he had driven as recklessly as this cab driver here in gray Düsseldorf, we wouldn't have arrived a second earlier. 

I have to think of the tortoise Cassiopeia in Michael Ende's Momo, this tortoise that creeps very slowly, sometimes even backwards, towards its saving destination - after all, it's a matter of life and death. And while the gray men are rushing along at breakneck speed and never get there in the end, she always manages to be in the right place at the right time to reach her destination and save the world.

So Costa Rica leaves me with the best impression, and puts another magical stamp on my heart.

All encounters become Cassiopeian magic. 

On the short flight from Paris to Düsseldorf, I see the same setting sun in the window opposite as I did last night in San José. I briefly think - what a pity I'm not sitting on that other side, it would have made a great photo. Nevertheless, I feel a sudden craving for my camera. With the slowness of a tortoise and the courage and intuition of Cassiopeia, I get up regardless of the flashing seatbelt sign and fetch my large camera from the overhead compartment. As I sit down again, I realize why I have done this: The plane flies a wide turn and suddenly, for a very brief moment, the setting sun shines incredibly golden through my window, and next to it you can see the moon, and even an airplane, what a deja vu. 

We end up in a dramatic gray. I've missed it, this homely atmosphere. Now it warms my heart. I am a winter woman. 

"Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In her gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future." Patricia Monaghan