Semester 16 Chapter IV: Chilling

I really appreciate what I do. And every time I feel I wanna bitch about it, I remind myself of it. I mean yeah, sometimes I miss some of the good old benefits of regular employment like paid vacation, sick leave, bonuses and shit like that but the current pros definitely outweigh all that. For the time being. First of all, I see sense in this. I teach and if I do it well, I feel happy, students feel happy, you see the outcome, there’s very little bullshit involved. And you cannot say that about many other jobs. Furthermore, I have no boss. My track record has shown that I don’t deal well supervisors (which is probably somewhat connected to my heavily limited ability to deal with bullshit) and not having any suits me beautifully. And on top of that, I get to do this. I can just pack my laptop and fuck off wherever I want for as long as I want and do it as often as I want. So yeah, checking back in from The Hague.

 

This blog is not gonna be very long. Hague is a nice city but it’s really not that big and at this point I don’t feel too motivated to just roam around. Especially knowing I’ll probably gonna be back couple more times. Sure, I go for my little walks, I have my running route, I get out couple of times a day but there’s no pressure. And both me and my friend work full-time so there’s that. Over the week, we spend some quality time together, had some really good talks, we ran together once and we also stopped by to this vegan burger joint not too far away. It’s all been very positive and smooth. I feel good about being here.

 

It’s Monday morning and I’ve gotten couple of cancellations for today which isn’t really a big deal. I’m gonna take up some more classes starting April which is gonna make my schedule a bit insane but then again… There’s summer approaching and that always gets a bit quieter. So working some extra hours before that might not be the worst idea. Anyways, enjoying the time here and hope you guys are doing well too. Sending love to everybody out there. One!

 

Highlights:

• The Hague.
• The sea.
• Running.

Semester 16 Chapter III: Still On The Road

Hello world, this time a day later than usual but we’re back on this thing. It’s Monday morning and I’m sitting in an apartment in The Hague once more. Just finished coffee, getting ready for the first class of the day. Feels good to be back here, energy levels are okay, hope y’all good too.

Last week was kinda back to normal. Again, our little vacation in Turkey wasn’t bad at all but I needed couple of days to recharge. One of those situations where you feel that the energy invested doesn’t necessarily reflect the energy obtained. It went well tho. I got back to running on the daily, I got back to my pull-ups, walking the doggit felt good getting back to work too. I was pretty social too. My Canadian connect was in town once more so I had a chance to catch up with her twice and I also hung out with some of my other favorite people on couple of occasions. It was a cool week.

 

Friday after lunch, I hopped on a bus to Prague and around 4pm, I was in my favorite tattoo shop to finish my head piece. Session took about 2 hours and it’s all done. We did the first one last May so it took nearly a year and it’s fucking epic. Major shout out to my tattoo artist (I usually don’t name people but fuck it, go check out LuccyBern), she’s absolutely epic and I’m sure she’s got big things coming in the future. You can’t deny skill and talent. After we got done, I took her out for some vegan dinner to Shromaždiště (shout out to those fuckers) and then we got one more drink at UniJazz (shout out to them too). At 11pm, I was on a bus once more.

 

Got to The Hague Saturday around 1pm, reunited with one of my favorite new people over here and it was just all smooth and pleasant. Good food, chilling by series, walks around the town. Getting more and more familiar with this place. Who would have thought… Anyways, sending love to everybody reading. Stay safe, stay dangerous, keep it real, keep it positive… You know how it goes. Shout out to all my readers. One!

 

Highlights:

• Ink.
• Prague.
• Hague.

Semester 16 Chapter II: Subcultures & Crackhouses

Okay, this is gonna be one of the long ones. Over the past couple of days in Antalya I was thinking about the whole dynamics of the city. See, Antalya is actually pretty fucking big. We’re talking like 2.5 million people. The thing is tho, couple decades back, it was merely a small fishermen town. It’s one of the cities that exploded super fast, literally going from like 50 thousand all the way up to this within half a century. And it all kinda works. The infrastructure is here, public transport kinda works too, you got all the supermarkets, restaurants, gyms… It’s all here. The fascinating thing to me is culture tho. How do you turn a small town (with a small city center and mentality) into a megacity? How do you culturally accommodate all the new people? How much time has to pass for all the subcultures to emerge, get established and turn the small city vibe into an an actual cultural scene? One of the evenings, we were hanging out with my sister’s friend who is based here and she gave me some of the answers. So apparently it has already started. And since it hadn’t been around when I used to live here, it’s all pretty fresh. But there is a techno club where actual techno happens. There are people doing ayahuasca ceremonies in the area. There is a cool authentic place for jazz and blues. It is slowly popping up. I feel these things are still going to take some years to get fully embedded but it’s cool knowing that the process has started. Cause at the end of the day, if you look at this many people… Even if the percentage of active ones might be small (as anywhere else), sooner or later, you gonna have enough to make some cool shit happen. No matter the location, no matter the predominant religion, no matter nothing. This family trip is neither time nor place for me to explore any of that but if I ever make it back here under different circumstances, I’ll definitely give some of it a shot.

 

The second point I wanna bring up is a bit darker but since it was a pretty intense experience, I’m gonna dig into it. It actually happened at the visit of my sister’s friend, too. Later on that evening, them two went to the balcony to have a longer catch up which left me and my dad alone in the living room along with my nephew and two other kids (aged like 10 and 8). Now, let me paint the picture for you. So there’s some super fast cartoon flashing on the TV making all kinds of weird sounds. You got these two older boys playing some games on their smartphones. Flash flash flash. Shit makes some fucking slot machine sounds. My nephew has his face drowned into a fucking tablet watching an infinite thread of Youtube Shorts (prior to this trip, I had no idea he knows what Youtube Shorts are and how to use them). More flashes, more sounds. Completely random. Cats, dancing people, screaming motherfuckers, gaming videos, people fighting, dressed up dogs, absolute madness...The cacophony was fucking excruciating, too. There’s a reason why they use the word “user” basically only for drugs and IT. Due to the circumstances, I was kinda forced to stay in the situation for nearly an hour and I nearly lost my shit. You just couldn’t escape the noise, you couldn’t turn it off… I tried to talk them out of doing it and suggest maybe at least watching something less aggressive (maybe something cohesive with some story line or play with toys or whatever the fuck) but no. It was like trying to take a needle from a junkie. And this is not me giving parenting advice. I’m in no position to do anything like that. This is me being absolutely fascinated by how different shit is for me and for them. For them it’s like the most normal shit to do. Their brains are hooked, they are accustomed to it, they see (or hear) nothing wrong with any of that. For hours and hours. And my fucking brain bleeds in 40 seconds. I felt physically sick (I was close to actually throwing up), my head hurt, I couldn’t speak for like 20 minutes after we left and I had to do a pretty fucking long meditation to get my shit together. And watching these youngsters with these dead stares controlled by the screens is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. Granted, I’m not in presence of kids too often. It gave some serious crackhouse vibes tho. Point being, that shit is addictive, it is dangerous and if the goal is to get everybody hooked, these companies are doing a great fucking job. But in my humble opinion, we need to be way more fucking careful with that. There should be more mental health education in schools. Even in terms of dopamine, it’s so much better to go for a walk, to talk to somebody, listen to some music, play with fucking Lego or some shit. Pretty much anything. Yeah, it takes more effort but the reward is worth it. And living in times when this shit is like the new norm scares the living hell out of me. It only fuels all the anxiety, depression and incapability to communicate with one another. And I don’t have a solution for this, it really just shocked me. I was mesmerized how affected I was and how much it fucked me up. It felt like we’re different species. Some crazy shit right there.

 

Anyways, back to these incredible stories of mine. We had a car rented for the first two days which allowed us to explore the area. On Sunday, we took it to Kemer, spent some time on the beach, had lunch and then proceeded back to Antalya. The initial plan was to go to the ancient ruins of Termessos but since we got a bit lost, we ended up spending late afternoon in this big ass park with a massive statue of Ataturk’s head overseeing the city. The day after we actually did make it Termessos which marked my second time over there (the first being ages ago during my studies) and it turned out to be one of the highlights. It’s a bit of a hike but there was barely anyone around and even the nephew was enjoying it. It’s all so beautiful over there and the amphitheater with those hills in the background is so majestic. After that we went to the old town and I returned the car.

 

Over the week, we also managed to hop on the Antalya cable car to check the restaurant up the hill and recreate a photo we did 11 years ago. We visited my sis’s friend (which ended up causing me the whole smartphone trauma), we swam in the sea, we walked a lot, we went to an amusment park… I even managed to go for a run twice. Antalya is where I made running a daily activity and it felt super nostalgic doing it again in the same setup. Happy I got to do that. Plus all the great food, Turkish tea... Fucking awesome. To my best abilities, I was also trying to bond with the nephew but I feel he still needs more time to be a bit more comfortable without moms and all. We still managed to spend a morning together (just me and him) and messed around the apartment after waking up most days. The guy was seriously fucking up my push-up and plank sessions.

 

On the last evening, we visited my dear friend who had been my Erasmus coordinator back then. I can credit that woman with sparking the idea of working for an international office of a university. When I finished my studies in Turkey, I started looking for such jobs back home and I eventually ended up working for Masaryk University for about 3 years traveling the whole fucking world while at it. Talk about butterfly effect. Anyways, her and her husband are like the nicest people ever, she cooked tons of vegan food and we had a great chat. On life, on politics, on culture. They kinda gave me the other side of this Antalya boom. Yeah, the city is growing but it’s growing too fast. The infrastructure has hard time catching up, it’s all too messy and it often seems completely out of control. And I get it… It’s very difficult to grasp this pace of the growth. Pretty interesting case study tho. And a great fucking evening. Both me and my dad had a blast and I hope I’ll get to visit Antalya a bit sooner than in another 8 years. I definitely have some kind of relationship with that place.

 

We left our apartment Saturday early morning, got a taxi to the airport, arrived at Budapest downtown around noon, had some lunch followed by some coffee and then caught an afternoon train back home. Which is where I’m at now. And even though there’s been some tensions here and there (as expected from a family trip), I feel positive about the way it turned out. Hope you guys are doing well too, I’m gonna talk to you soon. Sending love to everybody out there. One!

 

Highlights:

• Vegan House. The best restaurant food I had in Antalya. The first spot overall is definitely the home-cooked dinner by my friend.
• Successfully managing the whole thing.
• Driving in Turkey. I feel like I’m one step closer to becoming a Jedi.

Semester 16 Chapter I: Antalya Czech-In

Okay, can I talk my shit again? Let’s kick of the 16^th semester! First of all, let me plug myself up once more. Me and my bro Mickey made this new track, I am really happy about the way it turned out and you can listen to that shit here. It’s been like 5 years since we did a song together. After a really long time, I actually wrote a full song with a hook and I kinda like the message. You see, that’s what I fucking love about rap. I get to be as contradictory as I wanna. Cause contradictions are human. Lightness, darkness, softness, toughness, sensitivity, numbness… It’s all there for us to navigate through. So yeah, make me happy, make my cry…

 

I kinda feel the last couple of weeks have been quite eventful. Both in the sense of traveling and my inner little universe. In a good way. Shit seems a bit more intense than usual which is actually a welcomed change. Predictability is boring, colors are fun. Anyways, looks like I’m gonna do one more trip to The Netherlands in less than two weeks. Who would have thought I’m gonna be traveling there this regularly couple of months back, right?

 

Last week tho. My dad’s partner’s bday party was cool. I didn’t stay long but the vibe was cool, alcohol was flowing (not through my system) and everybody was having a good time. On Monday, I went to my dad’s pub once more to support the old timer at the trivia night. As usual, I contributed next to nothing but we did placed third. And I identified some Daft Punk tunes for them. Harder, better, faster, stronger…

 

On Wednesday, I met up with two of my close ones in Alfa Café once more. Apart from that, I wasn’t very social. It’s been quite a lotta work and sometimes I kinda need some time by myself anyway. Friday morning, I left the house with dad to meet up with sis and nephew at the railway station. We took a train to Budapest. We checked into our accommodation there and spent the evening wandering around, getting some dinner at this random Chinese place and talked some shit before going to bed. The following morning, we caught a bus to the airport and hopped on a plane to Antalya.

 

See, this whole trip is a birthday gift for dad. And a pretty good opportunity to spend some time together as a family. Hadn’t it been for my sis’s breakup, we would have never done this in this line-up. But that’s how life goes, I guess. And even though my nephew can be an absolute nightmare for no reason sometimes (shout out to all the parents out there), it’s been going quite well and it all feels good. Grateful for being able to do it all. Love them all.

 

At the airport, we met up with a guy from this car rental company, got the car and for the first time ever, I got to drive the streets of Antalya. Feels pretty awesome to be back here. Centuries ago, this was my very first experience living abroad. I was broke as fuck, I had no idea where I was going in life, I was maintaining a long distance relationship while at it, I was a mess. Then again, apart from being broke as fuck (knock on wood), not much has changed, right? Hehe… For real tho, it all seems pretty familiar around here. The streets, the mountains, the sea. Makes a motherfucker sentimental a bit… Oh and the driving the local traffic is a fucking adventure. Fast, chaotic, I love every bit of it.

 

I gotta stop at one thing here tho. So look, we are staying in Konyaalti, the same area I used to live in back then. It’s a bit more local part of the city and it has this super long road by the sea. Gotta be at least 6 kilometers. Now, the last time I was here, it was pretty much a highway. 2 lanes each directions, the traffic was super fast and since locals pretty much ignore zebra crossings, it used to be nearly impossible to cross it during peak hours. And it didn’t really feel very safe neither, obviously. Now, check this out. Since the last time I was here (8 years back), they replaced the road with pavement-like surface, put a whole bunch of speed bumps everywhere, turned it into a 40km/h zone and made it narrower. Now it’s just one lane each direction and the rest is a cycle lane and a dedicated strip for running. They pretty much turned it from a motorway into a super slow and chilled area super friendly for pedestrians, runners, cyclists and kids. And it makes me so very happy, I can’t even… Shit should be in a textbook somewhere. I wanna know more… Who came up with it, what was the pushback, who designed it, how much it cost, how long did it take to realize. Like god fucking damn… In Prague, someone suggests that the might possibly maybe turn a parking lot into a park and it causes a fucking mayhem among car owners. And here they’ve done this. My utmost respect to everybody involved.

 

Anyways… It's our first morning here, I just finished my coffee, talked some human anatomy with my nephew, listening to some Led Zeppelin… And shortly, we’re about to a road trip. I hope you guys are well, hope your life is whatever you want it to be, hope you’re keeping it positive and y’all don’t entertain bullshit. Sending love to everybody out there. One!

 

Highlights:

• Life.
• My people. For fucking real.
• Antalya.