Oh to be European, not everyone can say it, yeah know?

I stayed in one motel/hostel in some town i can't pronounce, the owner told me he would like to live like a European, which is strange, because we were in Europe?

He told me, he would need three jobs to live a good life, which seemed strange?

He seemed to have a good life half the refurbishment of the hostel was paid for by the European union, there was a European union sign pinned to the house, who else gets that i wonder? It would be like winning the lottery in Ireland

 How much do you need?

He told me, Europeans want to see things, experience things, this is true and i am currently seeing it and doing it and the sun is shining too!!

Polish people are hard wired to save money and own stuff, they see things like travel as unnecessary.

A guy I worked with Tom, told me when Polish people live over seas, their main objective is to save money, so much so that they miss out experiencing the culture where they work.

Another guy told me pretty much the same thing, a guy he knows worked in Japan for years and all he did was work and save, he saved enough to open a clothes shop. Which is funny, that's an experience I would hate.

Art or Sandwich?

A woman in an art gallery told me pretty much the same thing, locals don't really buy art, they see it as unnecessary and extravagant. You cant eat it, you sure cant, but has he seen the sandwiches I make?

 What do you need?

Maybe this could be related to Maslovs hierarchy of needs, in a society that is geared to work, people just haven't the time to stop and smell the roses?

Three Euros here is the per hour rate in Poland, in Ireland its €8.65, its one of the highest in the world and the guy was going to be finished working about midnight, his choice, not mine.

Are you rich?

To me, being European means helping each other, everything is connected, a traffic jam in Paris impacts Germany 

I ended up telling the hostel owner he was rich and it doesn't matter how much money you have in Ireland, you wont be able to buy a house, the banks suck up all the money.

Europa seduced by a bull, why not?

In Greek mythology Europa (/jʊˈroʊpə, jə-/; Greek: Εὐρώπη Eurṓpē) was the mother of King Minos of Crete, a woman with Phoenician origin of high lineage,^[1] and for whom the continent Europe was named.

Oh Europe and he go half a house paid for by the European Union, good work if you can get it, huh?

I got the train and back to Oświęcim, you know it as ...Auschwitz

 Location is everything, Oświęcim was the centre of Jewish Europe

Auschwitz is the German version of Oświęcim, Oświęcim was a Jewish town, it was the centre of Jewish Europe.

This is why it was chosen, it has great train connections and this was important to the Nazis, they used IBM solutions to keep track of the numbers, hey business is business, right?

I got the train there after deciding that an organized tour wouldn't be the best thing for me, somehow being herded from point A to point B and back is not my cup of tea, maybe one day?

Adolf Eichmann was one of the pivotal forces behind the deportations, they even had plans to deport 5000 Jews from Ireland, also other neutral countries?

 First impressions are everything


In the town


Just in the gate


Bike ride later


Happy family's at Auswitz


Sunset in Oświęcim


Coming back on the train

From Warsaw to San Francisco, i love you baby...

I couldn't agree more...

I was in Warsaw, going somewhere one afternoon, when i spied a woman in her late 40's, in red stilettos, good looking, trying to open the door to her building, with a big fat cigar hanging out of her mouth.

I wanted to give her a thumbs up, but she did have bags in her arms, and looked rather pre-occupied.

And I began to think of my times in San Francisco,  one of the famous ladies that lived in San Francisco, liked to smoke cigars, drink whiskey, hang out with firemen and chase them to their place of business, fires.

When she died, Lillie bequeathed one-third of her estate to the City of San Francisco

 "To be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved"

They built a tower for her on the land she donated to the city, it looks like a fire mans nozzle

Apparently its not supposed to, but it does, she had a thing about firemen, she would have approved, no doubt?

Coit Tower, what do you think?

Lillie Hitchcock Coit, that is who I was thinking of when I saw that lady.

'Firebelle Lil' Coit was considered eccentric, smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. 

She was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the male-only establishments that dotted North Beach.^[2]

 I've got great memories of my time in San Francisco, and that is what i was thinking watching the woman in Warsaw with the big fat Cigar

 Hail to the mad cigar women who love firemen.

 After all someone has to...

A few things i want to remember...

I have a few links of things i want to remember, handy to know, its funny how you forget stuff, happens to me all the time, so what better way to remember than to write it down

Feeling bored, or have ten minutes to spare? Do one of these

Quite ofter i find myself getting off track, like the practice of Yoga, its all about coming back to the pratice, and keep it positive

Profound words from John

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 

Profound words from John Lennon, as recorded by a very switched on fourteen year old and fair play to Lennon for giving the kid some serious answers


I heard this Charles Manson video today, i dont know much about Charles Manson, but what he says here makes a lot of sense

Charles Manson, makes sense to me?



A big one to remember, one of the biggest focuses i have had in the past few years was getting fit, then i kinda went from being really fit to being not fit at all, thinking it was no biggie.

Well, i was completly wrong there, if you are really fit and you become very unfit, its a roller coaster for your body, its bad and dangerous, I'm bad a and dangerous, and now you know it, this is what happens to your body when you stop exercising

I was watching a video of a body buider coach, he said when you exercise, you should do it until you get a high from it, like a drug anything can be a drug, do it and dont stop!!

Destroying is also a form of creation...

The first thing i learned in Physics, its just all the other stuff that didnt make sense

Arghh...what was i going to say again? I had a great story lined up, it was all lined up in my head, it was going to write itself. After a trip to the bathroom, my inspiration has upped and departed, maybe to the sea?

Fuck, its amazing how things come in to your life and leave?

But i remember...

I remember a few years ago walking under a bridge in Melbourne, there was a tag/graffiti that read

Destroying is also a form of creation

Its been in the back of my mind as something interesting, that i had no idea what it means, until last week, now it totally makes sense!

Donnie said...

Its a topic in the movie Donnie Darko

From the moment i got to Warsaw, i had a good feeling, i liked the place, especially the public transport system, its fantastic, trolley buses, trains the works. The place has the capacity to grow, it didn't happen by accident and i was thinking of Cologne in Germany and the reason hit me.

World war two Cologne

The reason i like Warsaw, Poland and Colone, Germany is because they were completely destroyed in the war, i leaned about the destruction of Warsaw in the resistance museum.

Logical?

The German devised a plan and carefully destroyed the whole city, they even wrote instructions on walls to destroy the parts they did not get to, sounds German or what?

So people got back to their homes, and just started all over again, like ants an the results are fantastic.

Warsaw, world war two, looks a lot like Syria

I was thinking this could be a solution for all the traffic chaos all over the world, just drop lots of bombs everywhere and in about fifty years, you'll have everything sorted, are you listening city planners in Dublin?

I don't know if you watch the news, but a lot of countries that the Americans have been active might have great transport systems in the future, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria the list goes on

Poland on the move, i like your style!

Stuff you need and dont need to know

I dont know if you are dyslexic? Maybe its something you grow out, I found ths pic which explains a few grammer basics and if you write, worth remembering

What to have?


Lesson two, make not of this, it might one day save your life, your....adverb life?

Hangin in Lublin


Sound as Art


Ladybirds makin bacon


Tourist information gave me a choice between Church music and this...Excellent!!


I remember ths verse from a poem in secondary school

I also remember this one

Now get back to your life...

End

Tarot cards and me...

I had my Tarot cards read last year with my mother, hers has come true, mine too? Funnily enough?

The funny thing is, i wasn't planning it, it happened, or maybe it was all in the cards? 

Who knows. Anyways after a successful contract in Galway for 4 months, I have been on a journey around the Baltics (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia), Helsinki and Poland, going ever so slowly to Italy and now that i think of it, its all been true.

I will have to go back to see what the coming year holds.

These are the notes i made from the Tarot card reader... 

Money coming, journey wealth 

Work paid 

Be sure my ideas don't get stolenLots of support, think carefully about those supporting you, be unavailable 

Improvements in life, emotionally and mentally, life balance 

Travel overland, new beginning 

Take time out for myself

Change direction if that's what I want to do

Money improvements, look at the people that can help you

Go for what I want to do, save cash for it 

When I change direction,  money will come and I will go far 

Test the water, before I go for it

Anyways, its all good, hurrah for the Tarot...

The Miami Connection, Mark Twain and Conceptual art...

I watched a Vice movie recently called "The Miami connection", a 80s movie by Y. K. Kim that originally flopped, and many years later received huge recognition.

Y. K. Kim spent a million dollars to make it, mortgaging his house and he had no movie making experience, and being told it was worthless, Y. K. Kim had to get on with his life, and it wasn't until some guy bought a copy of the movie more than twenty years later, not knowing what the movie was about, did he start to get recognition for his work


And its got a great story line...

"TaeKwonDo Rockers vs. Cocaine-Dealing Ninjas", sounds interesting?



Art, do you really have to suffer for it?

I read recently... 

Artists don't get discouraged and quit when their art is not hailed as a masterpiece.


And i can add, certainly dont go chopping off your ear, no matter how much they ignore you

What it is...

What's interesting about this story is, its not new, as someone does something, gets little or no recognition for it, take the example of Conceptual art, it was developed in response to the idea that artists must work and starve, so that once they are gone. The living may make a fortune form their work.

When I was in New York, I saw a movie called "Is he dead" by Mark Twain, he wrote it when he was living in Austria, after losing his fortune, years later after he died, a scholar found it in a drawer somewhere, no one knew about its existence.

When it was first shown, people hated it, when i saw it, i loved it, so too did everyone in the theatre, the difference? About more than a hundred years.

The play focuses on a fictional version of the great French painter Jean-François Millet as an impoverished artist in Barbizon, France who, with the help of his colleagues, stages his death in order to increase the value of his paintings, and afterwards dresses as a woman to keep his secret safe.  

Combining elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire, the comedy relies on such devices as cross-dressing, mistaken identities, and romantic deceptions to tell its story, which raises questions about fame, greed, and the value of art.

The best play I saw on Broadway, a flop in its day?

I was reading the biography of Annora Brown recently, she was saying

There is something far deeper than surface appearance, subject matter, however interesting does not make art, like the Renasance painters using symbology to tell a deeper story/meaning

Just keep on making your art, its what will save you one day, and it might even make your grandkids rich?

St Petersburg on a whim...

On a whim, i went to St Petersburg, an Australian I met in Estonia liked it or something,  (Hey I'm Australian), So i said to myself, "Why don't you go to St Petersburg?"

And i went, it was that simple, it really was.

What kinda inspied me...



Roof top, my tour...





Leaving Las...St Petersburg


As nice as it was, there was not much fun, as much fun as it was with rich guys flooring their Porsche up the main road, nothing happening here, we are normal

People play by their own rules in Russia...


And there was the mope heads on one wheel. I loved it, and I saw a girl photo bombing two guys on a bridge, they loved it, I loved that even more!!

The Russians, just give them another 20 years for the craic to catch up

In case you dont know what you are missing out on?

Welcome to the British moped model

Frome Russia with love, the whores hustle and the hustlers whore, on Tinder

Hey Sailor, you looking for a good time?

So i have been here for 48 hours now in St Petersburg, you have to do the most with your time and i have been dong as much as i can, walking and walking, and its not over yet.

Reminds me of an Eddie Murphy movie, its funny this clip, later he got caught with a Transvestite after being very anti gay in his stand up performances, but that's another story

Back in those days


PJ Harvey knew the struggle


I don't know, call me a hopeless romantic, i don't know? You start swiping on Tinder, chatting, the other party seems very keen and there is mention of $$$, of course you need to have options, you look at your options, they also want to do incredible things to you and your Parish priest, as long as the collection box amounts to 50 Euro of the massage and sex for a couple of hours.

Fair enough, i guess?

I went to meet another chick from Tinder in a bar, she was a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan for gods sake? We had a drink, i had a glass of tap water, it cost me 200 rubles, about 2.50 euro, its not much, but its like a business for some people.

You cant knock the hustle, that's just the way it is, i remember being in Hungary, if a good looking girl talked to you in a bar, when you went to leave, you owed some mafia dude $500 and you had to pay!


This one thought I was mean to not want to give her 50 Euro, maybe i will live to regret it?

It reminds me of my first holiday in Egypt, i met some old guy, he was talking to me for hours, we had tea, he went off to buy a bus ticket for me, as they would charge me a higher price, I was hanging out with him for hours, he was very convincing, his daughter was doing Pascal and C++ programming in college, whats not to believe?

7000 Rubles (80 Euros) for Oral and Classic sex?

Anyways, i never saw him again, and when i thought about it later. He put on a star performance for about three hours for me, he could have received an academy award, all for about three pounds fifty. It was great value, i still remember it, i knew about the scam too and i still fell for it, it was a cheap price to pay for the lesson, probably saved myself a fortune later too, you do learn the lesson, the easy way or the hard way?


Looking for a massage and sex for a few hours?

I was telling my friend Igor about a guy i know that had a baby with a prostitute, he was saying

Why not? Prostitutes sometimes are the only honest girls you can find!!

Because you cant knock the hustle, you really cant, life here must be pretty hard for some and Tinder is the new Pimp on the block.