Madrid

I'm in Madrid!!!!!

Non-stop chatter on the plane here, and then Almu and a group of her friends picked me up from the airport at exactly midnight. Everyone is so awesomely sociable and Spanish! I have already experienced the craziness of the Spanish roads on the way to the standard Maccas run, where I ate a "Filipino" flavoured McFlurry.

Tomorrow (well, later today) we're all just having a lazy Sunday. You know, gonna eat some tapas; go casually to a corrida de toros - a bull fight. So glad I've come here early, this is just what I need.

It's 2:30am. Buenas noches!

Dear Jess

Writing from my layover at Brussels Charleroi airport. Eight hours long wooo! With so few deadlines and having things to write about, I've strangely grown to love waiting. I'd imagined it all in my head the night before too. Me eating delicious Belgian waffles and drinking Belgian chocolate whilst sitting next to really cool Belgians… I've missed the airport feel a bit. People are having a quiet chuckle about the weird shape of my standard Australian electrical adaptor. Asking me if I'm writing a book. Everyone here is up to something, and it's nice to just sit and watch everything.

Now that I've been in Europe for a while (going on 11 weeks!), I think it's best to do short stays in each city because you need to keep yourself busy when everything is sort of starting to all look very similar, and the initial infatuation is fading slightly. You also manage by getting excited for seeing people who are also excited to see you. I am so ridiculously excited for Spain! Just a few hours. Anyway I've spent the last two nights in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Staying right at the heart of the city and seeing tall, skyscraper buildings of a modern Eastern European city brought me slightly back to life. It's not bustling with tourists - by now I think they've mostly gone home. But it had the more familiar, lively city feel that I realised I had sort of missed. It was different doing it all by myself too. I actually loved it and was exactly how I'd envisioned the "traveling Europe feel". I went shopping. I didn't skimp on food (it's freaking cheap here). I went out at night, explored the streets and alleyways of the city and didn't care so much about where it led to, or about being lost. I'd be the only person who would know it if I was.

Warsaw. Such an appropriate name. There is an older part of the city that still showcases the wounds left from both world wars, the Nazi bombs that completely ravaged the place. You can see its history in the city walls, and has now been declared a UNESCO World Heritage listed site. I've found that my favourite way to explore Europe has been by bike. A lot of locals use them, and you can hire them from just about anywhere and for the whole day, and I never realised how awesome and efficient bikes were till I got here. For me, it makes parks even more beautiful. With bikes, you also become wary of going into shops or buildings because you don't want to leave the bike outside, so it's strictly for outdoor exploration, which has its pros and cons. At times the cobblestones just get too bumpy and I've had to jump off the bike and continue the journey by walking it along with me, ice-cream in hand, but I don't mind. I love it all.

I did some random small talk with fellow travellers at my hostel. They're not so bad and reminded me a lot of Scotland and Ireland tourist days. They're actually kind of interesting, if not a bit mind-boggling. People who have quit jobs, deferred uni just to get here. Taking it one night at a time; not even booking the next night's hostel. Do you ever have real-time dreams though? Like the event is happening at that moment, and you sort of fall asleep halfway and imagine the ending yourself? Then waking up wondering if it was real?

Fellow travellers give you tips too, and I discovered new capabilities of my iPhone for traveling and navigating. I also discovered that I hadn't been wearing my backpack at its most comfortable position (there are so many little straps that I hadn't bothered to work out the use for all of them). Both these things are minor details, but would probably have prevented a lot of arguments before. Backpack + me + navigating + heat (triangle sign) = worst combination ever. Traveling by myself also forced me also to do my homework. I looked up a bit of the information the night before and played it smart getting to and from cities. It really does make a difference. You can't just assign someone else to do most of the work, and then get angry when they do it wrong. Do it yourself. Being lost, and with all your annoying luggage is not something you want to do in foreign countries.

Nonetheless it's inevitable to have some hiccups. Somebody tells you the wrong location to take your changeover coach, and you're sitting there for an hour before realising you should ask someone. I finally asked some teenage girls ten minutes before mine was due to depart from Kielce, Poland. Turns out I was in the wrong place and so what did they do? Lead me there themselves! It was literally ten minutes of absolute sprinting, with over 25kg of weight strapped to your body. It was such a close call and I got there at the very last milli-second. Don't know what I would have done without them. True angels.

Departing thoughts on Pinczow

Pinczow (pronounced Pinchov): A small town in the south of Poland, difficult to get to by public transport, and one that no one would really attempt to reach anyway unless they lived there or had friends/relatives. Certainly not a place catered for tourists.

It was the first time in a long time that I had stayed in any house that was not connected to the World Wide Web. No, not even dial-up. At times, I found myself completely at loss as to what to do. The men usually rose early, worked, and spent much of the later afternoon in something like a shed. I can't pronounce the Polish word for it, and even if I could, Polish spelling completely blows my mind. This shed functioned as a sort of garden patch for home-grown fruits and vegetables. Furnished too with a couch, and a refrigerator for the standard beer and vodka. Pinczow had that small town feel that I fall in love with every time I'm in the Wagga-Albury region. Everyone seeming to know each other, and people having just enough to get by. 

When I'm in these places, it feels like you don't need any more things. You have it all. You forget the materialism, and you don't create needs for yourself, either because you don't have the temptations of large restaurants or shopping districts, or because (as I prefer to think of it), you feel the money you would be wasting could actually go a long way on important things better spent by the surrounding locals. In Pinczow, it's common for people to live in the same place for their entire lives. In the same house even, growing up and later even raising their own children there. 

The other day, someone came inside my room speaking Polish and started drawing the curtains. I thought she was just showing me how beautiful the day was, so I smiled and nodded and continued about my business. Then she switched the lightbulb off, and the lightbulb in my brain turned on (ha). How inconsiderate of me. It just didn't occur to me to use solar power on a beautiful morning. There's this automatic inclination to using the switch for electricity because that's most convenient for me, not taking into account the waste of energy and money.

It's one of those lessons you need reminding of constantly. And by reminding, I mean you have to see these people and walk in these streets. They're so simple about life and so happy. Back in the old shopping spree days, I'd roll my eyes whenever Dad said that I might as well have thrown  my coins straight down the gutter. By no means are Pinczow, Wagga and Albury developing towns. It just makes me slightly nostalgic of the real poverty in other places that I have seen. It's induces a similar memory and makes me feel a bit stupid for having spent so much on this big Euro trip to begin with, but I've resolved to do a big service project this summer to make up for it just a little bit. 

Simple lives, yet not simplistic.

I'll say it again that I love public transport. You can just sit there and think but you're still being productive because the train is moving distances for you. Moving forward!

Last night I was looking through old black-and-white photographs of families not my own. They're such a different culture but I can still draw so many similarities between their photographs and that of my own family's. They just show human beings. Normal people who used to live their lives on this world, working hard and keeping themselves occupied doing the day-to-day things. Growing up and changing a bit. 

The photos depict them not necessarily traveling or drinking or any other modern "must Facebook status" event. These people are in the local parks picnicking with their girlfriends by the lake. Ex-boyfriends. Boys pose stoicly with their fellow army comrades. Girls pose coyly by the rose bush. Accompanying the photographs are the equally interesting stories: who married who; what became of them; who they're buried with. 

They're not people I have ever met. I can't even pronounce their names. Yet I get so curious as to how they lived their lives and what was said or remembered about them. How did they play their part in the world? Did they make their community "a better place?" Our bit is so small here. The world still revolves without you but you can still make an important impact despite your brief stay.

People didn't travel as much back then. Their influence covered a very small portion of society, compared to our global capabilities today constantly being enhanced by globalisation and cheap travel, etc. The smallest community unit is a family, and that's the proudest legacy of these people. It's so simple. But if everyone lived with that outlook, it has the most profound implications and the world becomes a far better place, or community. Today people want to change the whole world, but they're forgetting the basic units that make it up. Destroying it even, with relativist thinking that seems to govern everything.

The people in these photographs lived fulfilling lives and fell in love and had many children, with the same spouse. Growing up as one of six children, that point always needed clarifying. The photographs don't show them smiling all the time but that doesn't mean they weren't happy people. The camera captured just a second of their time. There is so much in between that we'll never know about, remaining forever unrecorded. 

At least when the did, it's a different smile. A smile of contentment. They don't force it. I go back to me, as usual. Why do all mine look forced? Why is there this need to look so happy all the time in every shot. It's almost creepy. 

I can't pinpoint exactly what it is that I love about old photographs that just doesn't seem to be there in modern ones. Their children and grandchildren touch them so preciously, and with such care and sentiment. I fast-forward and try to imagine future generations holding a picture of "aunty Rochelle". Is it going to be my Eiffel Tower pose? Or my mugshot-style passport photo? It just doesn't carry the same value. You don't even have to handle it with care. It's not delicate. It's pixelated. Replaceable. Nothing more than colourful small dots on a plastic screen. Not affected by an old wine stain or tear in the film paper. Just take care not to drop the precious computer.

Mr Darcy

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us."

Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)

So I remembered this quote and realised that the better word for yesterday's post was pride. And I'm really really humble that I'm proving my own self wrong.. 

Vanity of vanities

Jokes, I don't hate being alone. I love it. Oh loneliness, why would I ever deny you? You're the reason I stay up all night, because that's when I have you all to myself. Selfishness? I think so. The occupation of your mind for the entertainment of useless thoughts about your own defects is an act of selfishness, should faith and hope be lacking. So much so that I've come up with a better word for it: vanity. In an unconventional form. 

Some old notes.

I'm becoming the intense kid I used to be growing up, before I got all relatively laid back in senior and at uni. Which is the real me? (Ha) I'm the same person, with my funness rating in direct proportion to the quantity of people in my regular friendship circle. So, is my want of loneliness the cause of all this, or the effect? Lol I'm actually serious, I'm aware of how lame that all sounds. Now I'm a polar opposite in terms of interests, but no one seems to see it as clearly as I can, so it makes me question the veracity of the statement. It's possible that it's all just internal. 

I'm reading into it too much, I know. I used to compare myself to other people. It's a more normal thing to do. But now, for every move and motive, I'm constantly comparing myself to myself before. How I used to like certain things. I still remind myself in dramatic whispering voice that "I've changed". It's these discrepancies between my own previous and current interests that I'm constantly looking out for and analysing. These discrepancies are what have actually been working me up more than anything else, I think. More than anything real. Not being able to cope normally with it because I make myself far too self-aware of it.

Queue dramatic voice again. "Acceptance is the answer". Accept that you've changed, but for the better. And leave it at that. Be comfortable with that change. Everyone changes, not just you. Humans constantly grow and evolve with age and experience. You hate the person you used to be. She was materialistic and even more (conventionally) vain and restless, but less aware of it or otherwise simply indifferent. Compare yourself to someone better. 

Polska

Poland is great! I'm absolutely loving the really different culture and home environment here. I really prefer the "living" in Europe as opposed to merely "traveling". The families are so happy to have us and there is always vodka in celebration. The food is absolutely fantastic. Everything I've tasted for lunch and dinner has been new and delicious to me, and they force you to eat at a more regular timetable, which is something to get used to after months of traveling. I'm slowly getting back into it. 

The funny thing is that if you decide to sleep in (which we usually do, given that we seem to celebrate every night), you have a late breakfast as usual, but you literally eat your two-course lunch at exactly the normal time, no matter how full you still are. It's the main meal over here. No whinging. Eat it all.

Yesterday we had a dish of raw mince meat and raw egg yolk with onions and gherkins. You mix it up on the plate, season it, and then serve it with bread. We've also had some pickled cucumbers and pickled mushrooms - they'd been pickled for three years! Not the normal mushrooms we have in Australia - these were big and slimy. And satisfying! I love trying new and exotic foods.

We went on a day trip to Krakow the other day. It's about two hours away via bus and I made a joke that we had to wake up "at the Krakow dawn" to get there. Haha. I Krak myself up. It's an awesome city. We went into the castle and got to see the armoury and weaponry section, as well as getting a guided tour of some of the private suites. It's all very interesting and so beautiful, given the fact that it's a side of Polish history we never really learn about. I didn't know it used to be a monarchy, and all we ever learnt about in school was the sad history of Auschwitz. The cathedral there was really beautiful of course. The crypt housed a memorial stone for Chopin, who I think is awesome, but never knew was actually Polish. His music actually incorporates Polish waltz themes.

The rest of the time we are chilling all day around the house. The other day I was at the door ready to go for a little walk about town. I made a joke to call the police if I was gone over two hours ha. It's hard to get out of the house if nobody understands English and think you're set to run away. But anyway I ended up getting some chaperoning by going with Agnieszka and Victoria to take the dog out. They're awesome, I swear we'd all get along really well if they spoke English. Alas, they didn't, but it was so interesting trying to communicate all the same! Lots of laughs, and failed attempts at interpretation whilst labelling restaurants and gymnasiums and shops.

I get along best with the dog, Mika. She doesn't bark at me. We're actually the same age, Mika and I. She's 3, so that makes her 21 in dog years. We're on the same level you know.