In the Country of Begonia

As a traveller I once had to cross the country of Begonia. They really have a very strange custom there.

That is to say, on the streets and pathways of the country they don’t have any signs which could help you to find your way from village to village or from one town to the next. But at every crossroad there are flowers which you can ask in order to get directions from them. According to the way in which they give directions, one differentiates between point-around guides, point-away guides and point-toward guides.

The point-toward guides are especially pleasant for all those travellers who simply want to get to their destination as fast and as comfortably as possible. They tell you kindly where you should go.

The point-away guides are often crude and blunt in their speech. They can sound very spiteful. Nonetheless, they can also be very useful. They tell you where you should definitely not go, so that you will keep misfortune and trouble at bay.

Last, but by no means least, are the point-around guides who speak to you in a peculiar way. They speak in riddles. They start to advise you to go one way and then continue with the other direction. They tell you about the destination, but not how you reach it. They ask you questions rather than give you answers. They tell you things, the sense of which you will not understand until later. Some travellers see what the point-around guides say as useless stuff. Yet others only find their destination through these guides.

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