Being a travel addict, I can’t help myself to constantly not research new places to explore and new opportunities for traveling. I have already established fairly wide network of travel experience, but as any addiction known to men, you simply always want more.
So here are few of my travel ideas for the future.
República de Cuba
As much as I hate commercial resort destinations, the more I want to go to Cuba. This Caribbean pearl has fascinated me for years, with its colorful, brutal and tough history, bohemian spirit, communist regime, jazz and cigarettes. There might not be a lot to see in Cuba, when it comes to the typical things that we seek as tourists, but Cuba is not about seeing, it’s about feeling it. The rhythm of Havana, during the hot summer nights…tempting, isn’t it? In order to be a tourist in Cuba you need more than just a passport, money and a rucksack – you need to be flexible, creative with good sense of humor and probably some level of Spanish fluency, just in order to experience Cuba way better than an average tourist.
The only expensive aspect of this travel (especially for an European) is the plane ticket – once you get your foot through the door, the prices drastically drop down. For someone living in Denmark, this is utopia – low prices? Of anything? I forgot that such thing as low price exists.
Ayahuasca tripping in Peru
There is a specific reason, why I am willing to pack my bags and fly all the way to Peru. You see, I am entering a new stage of my life, where I feel ready and responsible enough to involve myself into the world of psychedelic drugs. And from the wide variety, there is one that is mandatory to try at least once in a lifetime – ayahuasca. Actually the reason to go for a psychedelic drugs in a first place is because of that specific drug. The thing is that it’s recklessly irresponsible to consume the strongest psychedelic on the planet (right after it it’s the pure DMT), without having any previous experiences with drugs of such nature (like LSD, magic mushrooms, morning glory etc.). Those I can trip on with in Amsterdam or Prague, but going for ayahuasca has to be better planned. I’ve read a lot of experiences by trippers and all of them recommend the safe and spiritual environment of Peru. There are whole groups of trippers attending carefully planned ceremonies by shamans over there and every single one of them, testified that tripping on ayahuasca in Peru is the ultimate spiritual trip. Life changing experience. So as I love to say – if its worth doing, its worth doing right!
My father always used to tell me that I was born with the democracy. This term was introduced to me in a very young age – most of our family friends were referring to me as the “democracy child”, since my date of birth implied the events that took place in Berlin in the autumn of 1989. So when I grow up I started questioning this term – and this is how I found about 10th of November 1989 – the autumn of change, the fall of the Berlin wall.
And now, since 20 years passed from those events, I asked myself the question – was it worth it? Is this the change that the people tearing down the wall expected?
The answer is inconclusive – there was a change, that’s for sure, but how much of it was for a greater good is a different matter. Personally, looking back at the documented history and at nowadays modern society and system, I believe that we switched one hell for another. What I recognize today in the modern capitalist world is the very same system of control, manipulation and exploitation, that some people remember before the autumn of 89′. We are the very same slaves for the very same people now, that we were back then. Nothing truly changed - politicians are the same talented actors, who’s only role is to convince us that we have freedom of choice. We don’t. We were given some freedoms though – like the freedom of speech for example. But even with such freedom you can’t achieve any success, when the people, who ought to be your target audience are sucked deep into the system of general consumption and mass media propaganda. People will stay quit and happy as long as they have enough money to continue their process of consumption.
There is a reason, why nobody ever teaches you in school or any other state institution of critical thinking. There is a reason, why different and even excessive points of view are not introduced to people. There is a reason why the politicians are corrupt and the media is manipulated. No government, nowhere around the world, wants people capable of critical thinking. The only thing they want from you is to be just smart enough to do your job and dumb enough to not ask any questions. Every single country, every single government and system around the world is the same as it was before – only the design gets better. Even in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway etc. once you peel the surface of their perfectly looking systems, they all look as rotten and corrupt as any other country around the world. But in their own way.
For me 10th of November is not a day for joy. No. Not a day on which I remember a fall a fanatic ideology. It’s just one of those days on the calender that reminds me, that we switched one evil for another. And we traded, yet again our freedom for the fake glamor. It’s a sad day for me. Not a day, when communism failed and democracy arose. 10tf of November is a day on which I remember the photos, live reports and eye witness testimonies of what people thought was a change for good. A day in which I remember captured by photographs, journalist and civilians, faces of happy people, that held such great expectations for the future, only to be disappointed 20 years later. A day, when nothing really happened. Nothing really changed. A day on which a wall fell, but we still remained spiritually separated.
A lot of people, who were born in 1989 were questioned about how they feel and what they think. Most of them were glad of the events, which followed that date. I am not. There might have been some changes in the system, but what truly needed to be changed was us.
We were the once suppose to change – our behaviour, our way of treating each other. In stead of constantly telling ourselves about all the things that separate us – nationality, religious views, political views, sexuality, color of skin etc., why didn’t we think about all the things that unite us? Not as nation, or a commune society, but as people – as species on this planet. Why? The did we let the prejudges, xenophobia, nationalism etc. grow down on us? I am seeking the answers of those questions my entire life. I quit.
And for an end – fuck Greenpeace and all of those brainwashed morons thinking that global warming is the only things wrong with this world! Fellas – the Planet is not going anywhere…we are! And after so much terror, violence, corruption, exploitation, mistreatment etc. I wish…I wish I can see it all collapse! I want to see this world on BBC all going to hell! And do you know what? We deserve it. I do not have any sympathy about human being (including myself) whatsoever. We had chances, millions, even billions of chances to make it right throughout history and we blew it all. Maybe it’s just our nature.
So – what I think about 10th of November? Just another day on the calender.
Rough day. Quality weed. The result is sitting for several hours and thinking about some essential unanswered questions, like for example – why the fuck we eat eggs on Easter? And what the fuck has an egg to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ? And why in some countries they lie to their kids that a giant bunny is coming and bringing chocolate eggs? Have you read the Bible? Where the hell is the chapter with the chocolate eggs? And the bunny? Anyone recalls a bunny in the teachings of Jesus Christ?
Let me repeat…a giant bunny, leaving chocolate eggs during the night! Giant bunny…chocolate eggs. Jesus Christ resurrection.
And then we wonder why we are fucked up as a race…gient bunny and chocolate eggs.
Nothing like religion to cheer you up.
ah, damn…my Polish neigbours from upstairs are having a bad influence on me…
On 6th of December I will turn 20. Yes. After 36 days I will be 20 years old. Do you know how I feel about this? I don’t like it.
The reason why I am not looking forward of joining the club is that I liked growing up in my teens. Yep. Throughout my life, during some not very pleasant circumstances I had to act mature and responsible. And I liked it. I enjoyed the attention that I was getting from adults, who were always astonished by my age – “Oh, you are really only 15?! Gosh you sound so mature!”. It was kind of an egocentric thing to do, trying to act ashamed by such comments, while I really loved them!
There was this cultural evolution in me between the age of 15 til 18, when I dropped all the activities that were socially accepted for someone in my age group and went alternative. Most kids were skipping school, because it was fun to go at someone’s place and smoke weed. I skipped school, because it was fucking boring and useless. I dedicated my time between 9th till 12th grade in reading, writing, watching movies from the 70’s and the 80’s…basically educating myself. Well I also did some socially accepted things for someone my age, like running away from home, hitchhiking, sneaking away at 1 a.m. for a party in a weekday, stealing from my mother’s cigarettes etc. But who hasn’t?
The problem that I have now is that I feel intellectually stuck. I always though that I knew what I want to do with my life and now I realize that I am as lost as a 24 year old Dane, backpacking in Latin America. I am becoming 20 and I am still nowhere! I am in a study program that I don’t particularly like, in a country that became so boring that I have to drink every weekend in order to forget where the fuck I am and on top of that I lost my working habits. I mean, intellectually working habits. It’s one thing to work as a freelance writer and another as a cleaner. Blah.
But I do not regret my decision. I experienced a lot, created much more international network of friendships and pretty much I had a good time. But…I am turning 20. I have no time to start all over. read more…
Steve’s comment on one of my pages, tempted me to reply in a proper way. But since I know myself well enough to be sure that this reply will be with the size of New York Times cover page story I decided to do it as a new post.
Theater it was for sure Bianka. I read in your statement that you don’t exactly trust government. You’re very wise to do so. Of course here in the U.S. there are those left-leaning Americans that trust those in government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave.
The thing about America’s “founding fathers” was for all Americans to have freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. That wasn’t a gurantee that all would obtain happiness, but simply have the freedom to pursue it.
Many people here don’t realize this fact: the more government control … the less freedoms the people have. Of course there need to be laws, etc. But to have the government controlling every aspect of our lives is not freedom.
Anyway, I’m terribly sorry to ramble on, and I should never have intruded on your blog. I hope you and yours have a great week.
As an European I’ve been a witness of all those conversations (both online and offline), where people’s statements are that the American people are stupid. To be honest – pretty stupid statement to make in a first place. I don’t think that the American people are lacking intellectual abilities, but they sure do have some problems they need to overcome. Problems that have nothing to do with the government – it has something to do with their mentality and the way they act.
I always said that people should never trust three things – media, religion and politics. This is problem number one:
- People in America trust the media. But the truth is that the media is having pretty much the same role as religion and governments do – manipulation. The media is just another tool of manipulating the opinion of the masses. The examples of such actions are numerous. Starting with 9/11 and even with this so called economic crisis that was propagandized by the medias world wide in order to spread fear. Which only made it worse. Watch/read news, but always check sources, different point of view and simply try to find the truth for yourself.
- The majority of the American people are religious. OK – everybody needs to believe in something and if that something ought to be religion that is fine with me. As long as this is not blurring your judgments. I am an atheist – which doesn’t mean that I can sit down and prove you that God does not exist, I just admit that I don’t know and honestly – I don’t even care. A person doesn’t need a religion to identify himself, help him/her trough hard times or give him/her a certain way of looking at things. If you think about it most of the conflicts throughout the world and throughout history are religion related. You never hear on the news of 100 people who died when an atheist rebel bombed a Mormon neighbourhood, right?
- And of course, the American people trust their government. They like their Messiahs, they vote for them, trust them and even re-elect them. This is not just naive, its dangerously naive. I was shocked and even scared while looking at peoples faces and actions during the 2008 general elections. I understand their hunger for change – a good change, but putting all your trust in one man, who is nothing more that just a very good, charismatic actor with excellent oratorical skills is a very wrong move.
So we should make a difference between stupid and naive. read more…
1. Poland is the 9th largest country in Europe, which gives you the good feeling of being in top 10.
2. The most famous country from the former Eastern Block – even the local rednecks in Alabama know about it.
3. Most of the ATM’s around Europe offer 5 languages – English, German, French, Spanish and…Polish.
4. There are at least few thousand of your fellow citizens in every country around the world (except for China and Russia, but nobody wants to live there – not even the Chinese and the Russians)
5. There is a high possibility of meeting different people, from different countries around the world, who have at least one Polish relative.
6. If you are Polish and you want to immigrate to any of the countries in the United Kingdom or Ireland you don’t have to worry if you don’t speak English – there is already few million of your people there, who are currently occupying positions in all the major institutions.
7. In some countries (e.g. Iceland) Polish is the second non-official language.
8. Polish people are way down in the list of race related crimes – just after blacks, Arabs, Jews, Mexicans, Persians, Eastern Europeans and gay people (well…maybe not only race related crimes).
There are only few bands/artists/performers that can bring their audience to the kind of an emotional orgasm that Massive Attack did yesterday in Copenhagen.
Maybe it’s their trip-hop sound or their powerful presence on stage, but one thing is for sure – they made every single molecule of our bodies move with the rhythm of their haunting music. Massive Attack are perfect example of that a band does not need 30 stage trucks of equipment and special effects in order to push their audience to the limit of complete ecstasy. They were simple, stylish, powerful, emotional…better than most drugs you could ever consume. Bunch of musicians doing their thing the best they can for the art of it, not for its profit.
When we (me and a friend of mine) walked into the concert hall, Martina Topley-Bird, a pure angel, talented to the extreme was already opening for Massive Attack. She first gained fame, while working with Tricky – another Massive Attack associate. She recorded a song for Massive new album and now she is touring with them as a special guest. Her voice and experimental “one minute songs” were just the beginning of what was coming next.
Unlike most bands that take forever in order to appear on stage, Massive didn’t wasted too much time. Since I am in Denmark I do run once too often to a different concerts and by far, I’ve never, ever seen the Danish audience calling for the band (in the simple gesture of clapping in a perfect rhythm). And they appeared – first their guest musicians (after all Massive Attack is a duo, but they always record and tour with guest vocalists and musicians) and after the opening with Bulletproof love Robert and Daddy G (or in other words – Massive Attack) appeared to perform Heartcliff star.
And the magic begun. I was truly hypnotized by the powerful performances so I can’t really recall the chronology of the songs, but I was impressed by sort of the cover of Teardrop (for those of you not familiar with Massive Attack works, can simply recall that song from the TV series House M.D. – it’s used as an opening song of the series). Since the actual vocalist who recorded the song is not part of the duo’s guest musicians, the song was performed by the incredible Martina. The rhythm was performed in order to fit her vocals and it was live listening to a dub remix of the song. I loved it!
Another song that made the crowd screaming was of course Angel. Fortunately the actual vocalist, who recorded the song years ago was touring with Massive – the incredible performance of Horace Andy made me feel like I’m in an opium room. I even closed my eyes only listening to the depth of his voice and felt the lights on my face. Truly astonishing performance!
Among the playlist there were familiar songs and personally my favorites like Risingson, Unfinished sympathy, Safe from harm and a very special song for me – Inertia creeps. My first sexual experience was back grounded with that song 
The concert closed with the performance of Karmacoma. With this emblematic peace of musical art the concert was over. Massive Attack alongside with their guest musicians and vocalist stayed for a while on stage to please the visual picture of them standing side by side. While looking at them I was admiring their diversity – people from different backgrounds, color of skins, views coming together and in peace pulling off a concert that I can only call pure art!
Another interesting thing about this concert was its political agenda. The modest visual effects were minimized to effective play with lights, words, numbers and characters. Throughout one of the songs on the background screen there were numbers appearing. Actually – prices. Everything was in Danish (before someone feels special, this is part of the visual effects – in Moscow they did the same slogans in Russian). At the beginning the amounts of money were pretty small – 55-120-235 dollars etc. and above the given amount there were things written that were concerning Uganda, Somalia, Sudan etc. Then the bigger numbers appear, alongside with the explanations – diamond iPod 55,000, yacht in Dubai 45,000,000 etc. etc. – there were just listing those insanely expensive items that some people buy, while others live with under a dollar per day. The final number was few billion dollars and I don’t really recall what was it about.
I always wanted to watch Massive Attack live and yesterday a wish of mine came true!
Here are some videos from the concert:
Are you kidding me? Are you guys fucking kidding me? Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize winner?! What the f*ck people!
From all the people, let me repeat that – from ALL the people in that list the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama?! What did he do to maintain peace? Oh, oh, I get it – you mean his empty promises to the American people and the world, during his presidential campaign? Since when this counts? As far as I remember from my tour in the Nobel Prize Museum those awards are given for actual accomplishments. I didn’t know that “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people” counts as accomplishment.
Damn it – too bad that I can’t pull that off here in Denmark. To get 12 at my final exams, not for my actual accomplished work, but for my amazing efforts.
Before 10th of November 1989 my country was headed by the communist leader named Todor Jivkov. Nowadays our prime minister is his bodyguard.
Do you sometimes just stop for a while and look around yourselves? Do you ask yourself the question – is it really worth it? I do. And as much as I am trying to convince myself that it is worth it, every once in a while even I doubt my arguments. You know why? Because as much as I look upon this world I realize that people never learn from their mistakes. We call it history for a reason – it is not there just to tell us some facts from the past, it is there to remind us where we went wrong and teach us to never repeat the same mistake twice.
When I look back I realize that nothing really changed – the only difference between today and a century ago is the technological evolution. Our minds, DNA, mentality is absolutely the same. We are still those irrational, cruel and greedy human beings. We never really got it, don’t we?
If all the money spent on weapons, military, wars and conflicts for the past 100 years were spent on science, medicine, education, health care, we would have speedup our evolution. Instead of propagandizing racism, fear and hate throughout the world, we were spreading love, compassion and cultural understanding, the world would be much more different in a better way, don’t you think? If instead of spending large amounts of money on advertising stupid and useless products, we were spending those money on feeding, clothing and educating the poor. Instead of killing each other we were loving each other and taking care of one another. Just try to imagine such world…
The vision of such nirvana gives me comfort. The hope that instead of hurting, we can help each other. The idea that instead of destroying our nature we can take care of it and live in harmony. This utopia is the one I wish I would live in…but if people can choose between war and peace, they choose war. If they are faced with the choice of harmony and destruction, they choose destruction.
There is some other thing that gives me comfort – that I live in very interesting times. I am looking forward to see what will happen next…
- What about love?
- Love? Overrated. Biochemically no different than consuming large quantities of wine and chocolate.
- Is this your conception for feelings? Consumption?
- Yes.
And this is how it ended. This is who we are – a bunch of mosquitoes sucking each others blood. Love? It’s a deception – a myth. Like Santa Claus – it gives you some comfort, it cheers you up, but then you grow up and you realize it’s fake.
You learn throughout the years, that love only leads to pain and hope to disappointment. You don’t love – you don’t get hurt. You don’t expect – you don’t get disappointed. Life is that simple.
