The truth is out there

One of the most amazing thing about having great friends in different locations all over the world is that they also have a lot of great friends in other locations all over the world. It often works out to have them shared with you. It happened to me a few times.

In December last year, I was introduced to the mother of my American-British-Belgian friend Noellie who lives in Morocco. Noellie's British mom, Jennifer, lives between Mozambique and Brussels. She is a great person who thanks to her skills, education and her two husbands - first the American working for CIA and the second Belgian working as UNDP Ambassador - managed to live her life all over the world - mostly in Africa. Although she is forty-something years more experienced than me and we are different we managed to find the common language and a lot of things that make us alike.

She was born in a loving and caring family somewhere in the countryside or suburbs deep in Wales. She spent her twenty-three years over there. Although her life was decent and good she always wondered how come she was born in that boring environment where everything was predictable, not interesting and simply dull. She did not feel she really belonged there. She even said that the stork bringing her to this world must have confused the directions and instead of ending up in some exotic destination it carried her to boring and predictable Britain. At the age of twenty-four she decided to leave the UK for good and she has not lived there permanently ever since.

I guess I can totally say my story is (or will be) pretty much similar. I was born in a decent family in this hardly exciting or interesting part of Poland. I was always excited about being abroad or at least in a different city - far from my hometown. Although I love my family I have been always wondering how it is possible that I am so different from most of the members of them. Where did I get my dreams, values and desires from? It does not look like it is genetics (no no I am not adopted - the physical resemblance is too obvious) and I do not know whether this is an example of someone else from real life or from TV.

The fact is that at the age of twenty-three I left my homeland and decided to live abroad. Back then it was just temporarily for one year but I guess that subconsciously I knew I would never return for good.

So far this is really great and despite my occasional outbreaks of neurotic nature I am loving it.

As I was told last night - it is never going to be perfect but most of the times it will be better than anything else.

land down under (aka. Southern Turkey)

Having come to Istanbul for the third time in my life (and counting) I knew I could not stay only in the city for the whole 9 days. So with my habibi last Sunday morning, we decided to have a look at the flights to various destinations around the country. God bless Onur Air airlines. We found a 50 EUR per person, all included return ticket to Antalya in Southern Turkey and a few minutes later we booked the trip for Monday-Wednesday. A few minutes later I asked 'so where actually is it that we are going to?' Although I travel by planes a lot I have never managed to find that cheap flight just one day before its departure. The fact that it was the low season helped a lot.

We woke up Monday morning at 5.30 AM (for me it rather felt like the middle of the night) and went to Atatürk airport. Two trams, one flight, two buses and one minibus later we were enjoying the noon sun of Olympos - a small village by the Mediterranean where you can admire the old ruins of an ancient Roman city. Beautifully located by a stream, surrounded by the mountains on the West and the sea on the East it looks like a paradise. We explored the ruins, climbed the hills picturesquely overlooking the valley, the mountains, the beaches and the sea. Simply amazing. People were extremely nice and generous. We took a tree house as our hotel room and once when we realized that it was a bad idea to sleep in the freezing cold of the night and that the light did not work we were given a nice room with TV and bathroom. No extra costs. The next day we walked to the neighboring village of Çıralı and stayed in a hotel there. The price was pretty low and it included dinner and breakfast. Our breakfast was amazing - delicious eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, cheeses. We enjoyed that in the warmth of a morning sun while sitting at table on the beach and admiring the snowy peaks of the mountains and the turquoise blue of the Mediterranean. It was like a dream. The last night, we went to the forest of Chimaira where in the middle of a meadow located on the hills of the wood we could discover a never-extinguishing fires that apparently have been burning there for centuries. As it was a cold middle of the night and we were tired after walking in complete darkness through the hills of a forest, we laid down by the fire and fell asleep for a few minutes .

The last day, in order not to miss the plane from Antalya back to Istanbul we had to hitch-hike until the highway to Antalya to later catch a minibus to the city. We were given a ride by two guys driving a tractor and since there were no more free seats they carried us on the trailer. Getting a lift on a trailer driving through a gorgeous valley surrounded by the mountains? I cannot imagine a better adventure. After a quarter on the trailer, then another car, an hour on the minibus and twenty minutes on the urban bus we were in the downtown Antalya. We could not believe how beautiful the historical centre was. The ancient Roman walls and the old Turkish wooden houses mixed together and tightly packed between the narrow streets of the downtown - different centuries or even millenniums, two pretty far from each other cultures but one perfectly filling another. The quartier was situated on the hills just by the sea and one could see the mountains in the distance. We found an open air café near a garden - the memories of a similar place in Rabat (unforgettable les Oudayas) came in a flash. We wished we could stay there forever. We took advantages of the views and the ambiance as long as we could and later we grabbed a cab that drove us off to the airport.

We were back in Istanbul. I still keep insisting on the fact the city is rather ugly. But the country is definitely fabulous. It is magical.

in the ‘World’s Hippest City’

Here I am again, in -according to Lonely Planet and others but definitely not me- the World's Hippest City on the frontier of many different cultures, in the former capital of former empires, in the commercial and cultural center of the country, in the city built hundreds years ago and larger and more populated than Moscow or London, the only metropolis located on two continents - Istanbul.

And I am not really excited or astonished by the city. Ok, it has the great monuments like the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazzare, Aya Sophia etc but still I find the rest of the city ugly. The architecture is a mix of old buildings from different centuries and a lot of 'once-upon-a-time new', concrete'n'glass'n'steel, shabby buildings mostly from the second half of the twentieth century. A mix I truly hate and that reminds me of what communism did to Poland and how it made cities like Warsaw, Gdansk or Lodz ugly.

I went to Istanbul for the first time in summer 2007 and back then I did not feel the vibe of the city. Maybe because I was coming from Morocco with whom I had fallen in love by that time. Luckily, there were places like the picturesque Princess Islands that made up for the rest of the huge metropolis. And I am sure that there are places I have not discovered yet and that I will surely fall in love with.

So clearly in my 'people versus places' never-ending dillemma Istanbul is losing as 'a place'. The people part makes up for it and it is not only about the hospitality and the politeness of the locals (which is for me considerably better than i.e. in Morocco).

Last night, we went for two house parties thrown by two different expats living in Istanbul and working as English teachers. I felt as if I were at home. Dozens of interesting individuals, mostly English native speakers, a few Europeans and some Turkish who traveled around the world or lived abroad and all ended up in Turkey. People for whom careers or money are not the supreme values. People who love traveling around the world and being more than some tourists. People who love learning languages, meeting new people, discovering new cultures and sites. People who like enjoying their lives, challenging it and who are sometimes slightly neurotic. People like me. Yesterday Istanbul -the city I am not too excited about- gave me it all and made me very happy. After a few glasses of unbeatable red and several people I had the pleasure to talk to, walking down the stairs of an old, funky, dark and spooky building on the last floor of which my friend's apartment with a magnificient view over the city is located, I praised my life, people in it, travels and all I love and happen to have.

Does it then deserve the ‘World’s Hippest City’ title?

happiness is not only a destination, it is a journey...

Yes, I have been really upset recently. Too many confusions and thoughts on the future, two not really good weekends and boom! I am in a weirdly bad mood.

But hamdullah! (thanks God!) I still have the power to drive myself out of this shitty road. A few phrases from good friends or from ‘The Secret’, a few thoughts on who I am, what I have, where I live and travel and most of all whom I have in my life and right away it makes the view on my life and this world much more positive.

Life is great! Do not be afraid of taking certain decisions, especially those ones that you think will make you happy. Even if you are afraid of taking them. It is better to risk than to regret. The future is unpredictable and certain events are inevitable.

You do not need to know all the answers. Things around you change constantly and the ones that are unattainable now will not necessarily be this way later as time goes by. A lot of answers will come up themselves in the right time and they will be the good answers.

If you had a lot of successes by now why shouldn’t you have more of them later? It is not only about the luck but also about who you are, how you behave, what you do or who you are with. No matter where you are and what job you do you will always be you. Prepare a short plan but do not try to answer all your doubts. You will achieve what you want.

Truman sleeps

So here I am - almost 25 years old, sitting at the office of a well-known and world-wide recognized company, starting great career and earning good money while the storms of financial crisis destroy the reality around, taking advantages of the health insurance and the retirement plan, having experienced life in various destinations, being able to travel a lot, go out, socialize with people, not to forget - being in a great relationship, living an international life, having many friends all over the world and perspectives of living where I want to ...

The world is mine then, isn't it?

So why do I feel it is not mine? Why am I depressed and neurotic? Why do I feel that the financial crisis has transformed and is taking over me? One day I am happy with all I have and feel blessed the other day (like today) I curse it all? The job that, I do not think, is for me, the other job that, I think, is for me but I do not know what it is and whether I will be able to find it, the relations I am not sure will survive the distance, the will to live in different countries that, I am afraid, will destabilise and ruin my life and the will to stay in one place and settle down that, I am afraid, will kill me too. Recently, I do not have even willingness to try to figure things out and be strong to strive for what I want (what is it actually?). I fought persistently to achieve what I have just achieved and now I even do not know whether this is something what I want. Maybe I believed I needed that but 'what one wants is not necessarily what one needs...'

Am I just unable to appreciate what I have or really what I have is shit and I should change it for something better? Did all those years I fight for what I wanted without realizing it was something that I did not really need? Do I just have a bad day, bad week, bad year or maybe I simply manage my life badly? Do I make myself unhappy with the wrong choices or with not being able to appreciate the good choices and the great achievements.

This is so confusing... I need a good film.

Paris, Paris

Last weekend was just supposed to be a normal weekend in Brussels. No plans, no expectations. I was actually thinking of spending it to work on my thesis a bit, maybe cleaning (finally!) my room or doing some other boring stuff. I was thinking of spending February only in Belgium.

It did not work out. My boring plans were replaced by something way more exciting - Paris.

I was eating and getting ready (in the same time) for the ritual Thursday party at Havana when I got a call from Carolina, my Italian-Parisian friend recently living in Morocco but being in Paris for a few weeks. She was planning to see me in Brussels but eventually could not make it. So she invited me to Paris for the weekend. She said she would call me back on the next day to get the final decision from me. I had already known what I wanted to do but it remained unsaid. We spoke the next day and I said I would come over in the evening by car. She said 'by car? You're gonna be exhausted after driving for at least four hours' and I replied 'but it's cheaper than taking the exorbitantly expensive TGV and moreover I did the highway a few times and it's ok'. But she would not listen to me and decided to sponsor my trip by train as according to her 'she would pay the same amount if she decided to come to see me in Brussels'. Well, I agreed although I felt weird to let her pay that much...

After our conversation I went straight to the website of TGV and tried to book the train for the evening. For some reason I could not do that. There was an error popping up when I wanted to get the ticket for the train that was leaving three hours later. I was furious. I found their call-centre number and dialed it immediately. As usual a machine answered the phone and after annoying seconds (seemingly ages) of pushing some random button numbers I managed to be put through to a human being. I explained her the problem and she said she would book it for me. I was expecting to pay for the ticket at the train station but she asked me to give her my credit card number. I did that. It only later occurred to me it was not very smart but there was no time to waste. Luckily for me, it was my Polish bank account and it is always almost empty. I rushed home, packed, had a shower and watched one episode of SATC (to calm myself down). I left home at around seven PM, took metro, took the train (only one hour and twenty-two minutes!), took another metro and voilà! - I was at my friends place. I could not imagine that it can be so fast, simple (and expensive). When I arrived I had a dinner with Carolina, her boyfriend Philippe, his family and some more friends. It was nice but also hard for me to follow all the conversations in French.

The next day we all went out for a dinner to some of their friends. It was an uncommon experience. The dinner was hosted by a forty-something, devoted Catholic woman who wanted to celebrate the first free choice in her life - being able to decide what to do with her professional life without considering what others think or suggest which had normally been the case. I was very surprised that that warm and pretty extrovert person took her first step being twice older than me. The other guests included a priest (a former architect), a painter and a gospel singer in one and some other decent Catholic people. The dinner included a few hilarious moments e.g. the priest asking the singer to sing a prayer song just before eating. She started but she forgot the lyrics in the middle so we did not finish that. There was also a lot of talk on different saints, canonizations and beatifications. I could not stop laughing when Carolina's atheist boyfriend Philippe was asked some question and not wanting to be rude he just started replying something with a face expression showing a mixture of confusions and forced but polite understanding. Although the dinner included totally different personalities and people living different lives there was no clash but rather mutual understanding and respect. It was a great feeling to dive into that kind of uncommon to me and unknown reality.

On Sunday, the last day I got the chance to meet up with an old friend (a Moroccan guy I know from Rabat who lives now in Paris), then wander a bit around La Defense, have a drink at Carolina's and Philippe's friends' who just moved into a new loft outside Paris in Saint Denis and then spend some time just with her talking and catching up. Then, one metro, one train and another metro (two hours in total) later I was back in Brussels.

Another trip to Paris on the last weekend of March! :)

changing vs. fighting

The challenges are a daily part of our lives. The problems show up and disappear. Sometimes they get settled themselves and sometimes we need to work hard to solve them. However, sometimes they are inseparable parts of our lives for a longer period. Sometimes they keep staying in our lives and no signs of them leaving us – problems inside the family, with a job or in a relationship. But what do we do then? Do we fight them? Do we try to improve the situation? Do we try to change the others? Do we try to change ourselves? Are we change-driven or are we resistant? I admire those people who embrace change and try to work things out themselves. They are not afraid of doing risky steps in order to achieve things and ameliorate their lives. I think that sooner or later they always succeed and get what they want. But there are different ways of implementing a change. We can fight strong to change something into a better thing or we can simply dispose of it from our lives. Both ways are surely better than doing nothing but which one of them is better when you compare them between themselves?

To make it clearer I will give you an example:
You are in a relationship - it is going very bad but there are some good aspects and days too.
You have a job that you do not necessarily like but has a lot of positive sides too.

How do you know when you should keep fighting for your relationship and struggle to start liking your job and when you should just give up your job or break up with your partner? When is the moment that there is no point in fighting and the only way you can win is by giving up? How can you see the boundary between the two? Is there any way you actually can know it?

I know it is good to change things in your life by removing them when you are not comfortable with them. But don't we go too far when disposing of them instead of trying to fight and change them for better? Isn't it like continuous running away instead of actually facing and challenging yourselves and the things we want to amend?

When should we stop struggling for things, get them over with and go for the new opportunities? Or when shouldn't we give them up but fight for them?

Thursday night fever

Thursday night out is almost like the Sunday service. You feel bad and disturbed when you miss it (well, at least I do!). That is the end of the similarities. When you go to the church you usually do not care at all which one to choose and if you go to any of them you will feel fulfilled. It is not the same with Thursday nights out. You have too many options to choose from and even if you decide on one you will always miss not going for another one. You do not have the feeling of fulfillment.

Havana – a standard Thursday evening / night. There is the ‘Happy hour’ until 8 PM, nice ambiance, good and cozy atmosphere and the fabulous expats all around you. I am lucky to be known by many members of the staff who are responsible for the Thursday after work concept there. Until some time ago they always asked to show the friend card once you are at the door in order to find your name on the guest list and make sure you are ‘a friend’. Some Thursday a few weeks ago I entered and was struggling to find my wallet in the pockets. Before I manage to get it I was already said ‘you are Kamil, right?’ And since then I have no problems with being ‘identified’ by the staff.

Last Thursday, we actually tried to have it all. Verena and I went out to Havana. The party was already starting to kick off and everything was as usual – good music, a mix of interesting people and nice atmosphere. Then Ronny showed up (our dear Ronny – a funny guy whose sense of humor makes me laugh to death). The three of us had a conversation with the manager of Havana after work concept. He was telling us a lot of plans and ideas of what kind of events to organize in order to attract people. Then Ronny shot ‘maybe think of something like the Eyes Wide Shut party?’ I burst with laughing. The manager did not get that. He is a nice guy but he just does not understand our sense of humor. A few weeks ago, a lot of people I know (including me) was invited to join a facebook group called ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. The mysterious creator of the group keeps sending messages about the upcoming party. If you do not understand what I mean, just watch the Kubrick’s movie.

After a while, we decided to break with tradition and tried going to Mirano – an old but still fancy, great and widely known club in Brussels – a kind of a club who plays being hard-to-get. Soon, we were at the door. Although the club did play hard to get, we managed to enter. One thing I love it for is the interior design and the configuration of all the rooms, bars, dancing places, staircases etc. It is pretty spacious, has a few bars in different places and several floors. It actually used to be a theater before. It is not as cozy as Havana though but has its own unique atmosphere that makes up for it. At some point we were dancing in the middle when I suddenly felt I was about to fall on a guy next to me. I managed not to lose the balance and then looked around to see whether people laughed at me or thought I was so drunk (and I wasn’t… that time). Everything around me was spinning so you might think that I was drunk. But what in fact happened was that suddenly the huge dance floor in the middle started spinning around. That is why I almost fell. The dance floor was a huge circle and it started moving. For most of the rest of the night we were literally spinning around on a literally spinning dance floor.

Last night, we also went out to Havana. Although Verena left Brussels for good last Sunday and moved to Maastricht, the Netherlands where she started her masters, she came back for this one Thursday night just to be in Havana. Yesterday, everyone was there – all of my fabulous friends and party-mates. While we were dancing to the music of the cool DJ and the twin brothers playing drums and sax I thought to myself – how many things about Brussels will I miss when I leave the city? Great people I have met, the places I have discovered, the conditions of my work here, the convenience of the life, the proximity of other European cities like Paris or London – quite a long list, isn’t it? Once I am gone from here will I start missing it as much as I miss Morocco? Will I be extremely nostalgic and wishing to be back as often as I can? Or most importantly – will I want to move back here?

There are many similarities between my life in the Kingdom of Morocco and in the Kingdom of Belgium. Both countries provided me with the great lives, some great places to go out, many great ways of spending my time but as well with the moments when I was pissed off, furious or simply cursed it and wanted to be far away. I am going to be the same person anywhere I will live. I will eventually meet the same kind of people and do the same things. I will enjoy it the same way and I will hate it the same way.

I start to think that it is not about Morocco or about Belgium or about any other place in the world – it is in fact about me.