How beautiful dreams can turn into nightmares

There is no certain receipt saying that, when you choose to add an ingredient in your life it will make you sweet or sour. This receipt is not written in books and cannot be easily made by following certain steps. You only find out if you added the right ingredient after you taste it. If you close your eyes after you taste it and pleasant feelings go through your body (just like in Ratatouille) than you go it right.

Sometimes what we think is right for us turns up to be nothing but agonizing pain. Still our huge egos don’t let us give up, wanting to prove something and trying not to disappoint anybody, including itself. Long term decision can be even more dangerous because as time passes we change. We change our minds, we change our perspective or we just grow and realize that this is not what we want. Still, the ego steps in and forces us to peruse what used to be a beautiful dream even though it easily turns it into a nightmare…a nightmare, that turns into every day routine and from which we try to escape with small, insignificant pleasures. And when the pain lasts longer than it should we get used and don’t feel it anymore, until we get reminded about how it shatters other beautiful dreams and turns them too into nothing but nightmares.

Why can't it be easy?!

Traveler's bag

I have a new apartment mate. Her name is Edita (nice name) and she, just like Marketa, is from Czech Republic. She studies molecular biology and came here because, she says, Aarhus University offers the best research in this field in Europe. I don’t want to be arrogant and/or ignorant so…I will just let myself discover her in time and not put a mark on her forehead before knowing what she’s all about. Playing smart-ass is not for me anymore.

Discovering the things she brought with her, in her bag, from home…made me think how responsible we, as travelers, are, and how our inner comes out in objects we choose to put in the never too big bag we take with us. I was very surprised when Marketa told me that Edita brought with her a pot from Prague. A pot made by Ikea, which is a multinational company and Scandinavian based. What is striking is how, even if the world gets smaller and smaller with all these globalization processes, we still tend to get stuff in our bags which could be bought wherever we would go, made by the same brand and most probably at the same price (especially in the EU).

Than I started to think about my bag…and Marketa’s bag…and other people’s bags…Me, for example, I only take clothes, cosmetics, medicine and a book or two (not to get bored). I never take survival stuff, not even towels…unless my mother would remind me. I don’t know why I do that. I always buy other clothes where I go and wear those, not the ones I take with me, and I always have problems packing. Another example is Marketa. When she came to Aarhus, she came with an empty big trolley. At the begging I didn’t get it, but than it all made sense. Because she didn’t want to have a heavy bag when arriving for the first time in a city she didn’t know anything about, she just took an empty one, which would be filled when she would return. Her parents sent her everything a few weeks later by post mail. On the other hand, Mara came with a bag bigger than mine, twice as big. But I never knew what she had in it. She didn’t have so many clothes, no food, no books…it’s a mistery. The second time we came here doesn’t count…it only counts what you get with you the first time you go to a place you’ve never been before.

I was thinking about making a survey just for my own personal amusement.

So what does your bag look like?!

A new year, a new month, a new week, a new day...

Feelings:

I'm half way in my winter holiday and basically starting to think about how to pack and what to get with me back. My long to do list, made just a few weeks ago, is almost covered. Some things happened exactly as planed, others even better...nothing worse. This can only mean that I'm on the right track and the confusion my mind fought with is starting to lay back and watch as I make my way on my path. Since I got home I feel that I am alive. I was starting to become a cold traveller without any notion of stability...a thing which does not define me at all. I was overwhelmed, I still am actually, to discover that I didn't care about a lot of very important things and people (even my parents became just someone I knew and gave me money now). I don't know if this is the age for it, but this is the period with the biggest shifts in my life, and it all started with my decisions in 2008, which broke my regular path and left me unable to make decisions in important situations and allowed me to get carried away. I felt like I should have never returned, than I switched to not wanting to leave anymore and so on :)...all in all I feel that I can't afford to miss other things.

First impression:

The narrow windows of the apartment made me feel like in a match box. The claustrophobic feeling passed fast, when I realised that this is just a matter of "getting used to". I was surprised to find a slightly different Bucharest…one where things look better, cleaner and better organized. The social scene is mostly the same, but now I am confident. There is still a great ocean of black and grey winter jackets, lack of colour, sorrow faces and people that don’t deserve to be sad and broken. Though it makes my pulse go higher and higher, I think I am getting better and tempering myself when things that could be avoided happen, because some people are just too rude, stupid and ignorant. Still, I love the crowed I missed so much.

Holidays:

Christmas was confusing for me and it felt like Christmas only thanks to my family and their/our traditions. Pigs slaughtering...Christmas tree buying...food shopping...gift shopping...Christmas fooding with friends...and at the end of the day my own special - clubbing with Ana :)

It sucked because it could have been much better...but I got drunk as planed...was with my best friends at the passage of the years and woke up with my favourite person on the first day of the year. In the end, this made it better than it sounds :)

Out with the old. In with the new

I could write a thousand lines about what I am doing and what is going on, without catching the essence of things, by being superficial and fake...and I have the feeling that this is what I have been doing. I slightly forgot to enjoy, though I’m trying really hard to remember, and this is sad.

Great achievements in 2008;

I don’t know whether to priorities them by importance or timing…I will just put them however I remember them:

- finished University with a good grade, though it wasn't very tough, it was stressful for me;

- got accepted to a master’s program abroad, which for me means that I can and I will;

- grew up enough to have the courage and shift my life professionally and emotionally, it took a lot of guts from a person who likes stability and roads without bumps and humps, ups and downs;

- decided to live by my age and stop acting like I shouldn't be now – maybe I got a little bit too carried away and now I do/say too many stupid stuff;

- finished driving school, but didn't pass the exam … a thing which I don’t regret because I did something more pleasant than learn;

- saw the most beautiful sun set (on Danube) and the most beautiful sun rise (on the plane to Vienna);

- survived in the great Danish social jungle;

- survived through the greatest moment of confusion in my life – now I will know what to do what it kicks in again;

Resolutions for 2009

Again, as they go through my mind:

- increase my Danish knowledge, because even if I will forget it in less than a month after I'll leave Denmark, it will be somewhere in the back of my mind forever;

- get my driver's license, because I have to finish what I started and it makes me feel handicapped;

- try to keep what I have because I have what I need;

- find a good internship, that my assure a future job for me, that may turn into a career at some point;

- work on some of my body parts - getting fit not loosing weight;

- get a job after I hand in my internship project and start raising money for some slight adjustments;

- learn when to shut up and what is actually important and not (stop getting carried away);

- stop being lazy and start focusing;

- give my best in everything;

- start being social again, because it helps me be me.

All in all, this year I have to learn to be wise.