Once upon a time in Dublin

There was a time in Dublin where a bunch of colleagues were not only a bunch of colleagues...

Bratislava


Sometimes it's good to have low expectations about a place you are gonna visit because reality can clearly top them and make you happy when you are there

Köln

Köln is a nice city which proves if you are comfortable in your own country you'd better live there than abroad.

Köln is cozy, cute, gives you the impression of being very secure, something in between a Dutch and a Swedish city, very tranquil, where you can lead a regular life.

If you were born there, you are familiar with the local culture, with lifelong friends and your family living nearby what can you demand more?

If you are a tourist you can also enjoy a holiday in Köln: eating relatively cheap, trying real kebab or some other specialties, having (many) 0.2 cheap beers of good quality, enjoying the cool squares, the pubs where people of various ages go, checking if you come across someone who speaks a decent English (it can happen if you are lucky).

The problem arises if you go live there without roots, it may become a kind of rubber wall. Everything works properly, you can even get a decently paid job, a good unemployment subsidy in case they don't keep you after 6 month probation, one of the best welfare systems in the world.

Still it would be very hard to penetrate that culture, to become part of that environment.

Life is hard everywhere, but sometimes it's harder where at first sight you would asses it as "the almost perfect place"

Montenegro

Many of us look for "cool places"
to make our holidays unforgettable: in order to do so we are ready to go thousands of miles away and spend loads of money.
Sometimes it takes only a short trip and an open mind to realize that what we look for is very close to where we are...

Italianism

They could write, as in fact they did,  many psychological and sociological essays on what being Italian means. Wasted time. Attempting to analyze the inexplicable is impossible. The study of other nationalities  can help to clarify what a Spaniard, a German, a Scandinavian, even a Japanese person is. Not an Italian. The Italian is a mixture of Dante, Riina, Berlusconi and Benigni. They could display cowardly qualities like Schettino or super courageous ones like Quattrocchi or Calipari. Or all these things together! The element that unquestionably distinguishes Italians is their adaptability to different situations. A change from the worst to the best in beat of an eyelid. When asked "Are you proud to be Italian?" The answer can only be "the point is not whether to be proud, but to understand that ... I do not know if I am anything, but if I am something,  that bit I owe to being Italian". This is demonstrated by the "Azzurri" managed by Prandelli and before that those managed by Lippi and Bearzot: Gentile, Oriali, Grosso, Gattuso, Balzaretti, Bonucci, Barzagli. Not the most physical, certainly not the most technical,  not even the most sympathetic. Simply Italian

For anything else... there's Facebook

Never forget

Real life is one thing.... for anything else there's Facebook

Warsaw

Warsaw is not like foreigners expect

Warsaw is something else: better and worse

Desperate times call for desperate measures

If you are with a friend who's temporarily not in posses of
his mental faculties, you don't have many options.

Desperate times call for desperate measures....

The duels and my preferences

This is just a game and way to reveal part of your personality: obviously nobody will agree with anybody else on every single choice....

-Beatles or Elvis?                                                         Beatles

-Messi  or Cristiano Ronaldo?                                      Messi

-Dublin or Cork?                                                          Cork

-Listen or Wait to talk?                                                 Wait to talk (unfortunately)

-Marylin or Brigitte Bardot?                                          Brigitte

-Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino?                            Sergio Leone

-Pearl jam or Nirvana?                                                 Nirvana

-Stanley Kubrik or Ingemar Bergman?                          Kubrik

-Ramones or Sex pistols?                                             Ramones
-Kant or Hegel?                                                           Hegel           

-London or New York?                                               New York

-Alice in Chains or Soundgarden?                                 Alice in Chains

-Pele’ or Maradona?                                                    Maradona
-Aristitle or Plato                                                          Plato                             

-Barcelona or Real Madrid?                                          Barcelona

-Irvine Welsh or Isabelle Allende?                                 Irvine Welsh

-Robert De Niro or Al Pacino?                                     Al Pacino

-Leonardo Di Caprio or Johnny Depp?                         Leonardo Di Caprio

-René Zellweger or Julia Roberts?                                 René Zellweger

-Jordan/Pippen or Stockton/Malone?                            Stockton/Malone

-Federer or Sampras?                                                   Federer

-Djokovic or Nadal?                                                     Djokovic

-Graf or Seles?                                                              Seles

-Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel?                         Angela Merkel

-Napoleon or Lenin?                                                     Napoleon

-Mikhail Bulgakov or Louis-Ferdinand Céline?              Mikhail Bulgakov

-Cranberry or Skunk Anansie?                                      Cranberry 

-Milla Jovovich or Monica Bellucci?                               Monica Bellucci

-Brad Pitt or Javier Bardem?                                         Javier Bardem

-Boston or Los Angeles?                                               Boston 

-Kathryn Bigelow or James Cameron?                           Kathryn Bigelow

-Hole or No Doubt?                                                      No Doubt

-Europe or Van Halen?                                                  Europe

-Iron Maiden or Metallica?                                            Metallica

-Madonna or Micheal Jackson?                                     Madonna

-Schumacher or Senna?                                                 Senna

-Northern European Girls or Southern European Girls?  Northern European Girls

-Northern European Guys or Southern European Guys?  Southern European Guys

-Chinese or Japanese?                                                  Japanese

-Putin or Eltsin?                                                            Putin

-Chavez or Obama?                                                     Chavez

-Berlusconi or Monti?                                                   Monti

-Paris or Berlin?                                                            Berlin

-Australia or South America?                                        South America

-Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg?                          Martin Scorsese

Three meters down the hell

Can a person live without rules? 


Without roots? And what sort of life is that?


'The unquestioned respect of the rules lead to sad life styles, without any rule we are nobody' is my typical quote


"Three meters down the hell" tries to give a 15 minute perspective about how this rootless life is, with no intention of teaching anything. The story takes place in  Dublin but it could be based anywhere

Modern technology

These days modern technology allows us possibilities which where unknown a few years before.

With an internet connection you can watch the final of the Australian Open on a laptop.

Even without an internet connection you can see a football match on a laptop, simply using a HTC mobile as a modem

And finally, if you are on a bus and you only have a mobile phone, you can watch your own football team on that micro screen.

Who knows what technology will allow us tomorrow...

London: the city of everybody and nobody

Of the city where I used to live

London is definitely the one I least think about.

I never felt London like home or my place, but I'm sure many people can say the opposite.

London seems to me the city of everybody and nobody.

However none can deny it is a charmy city