you only live twice.

Addiction is a decision. An individual wants something, whatever that something is, and makes a desicion to get it. Once they have it, they make a decision to take it. If they take it too often, that process of decision making gets out of control, and if it gets far out of control, it becomes an addiction. At that point the decision is a difficult one to make, but it is still a decision. Do I or don't I. Am I going to take or am I not going to waste my life or am I going to say no and try and stay sober and be a decent person. It is a decision. Each and every time. A decision. String enough of those decisions together and you set a course and you set a standard of living. Addict or human. Genetics do not make that call. They are just an excuse. They allow people to say it wasn't my fault I am genetically predisposed. It wasn't my fault I was programmed from day one. It wasn't my fault I didn't have any say in the matter. Bullshit. Fuck that bullshit. There is always a decision. Take responsibility for it. Addict or human. It's a fucking decision. Each and every time.
-james frey

| chaos is a friend of mine.

gravity pulls so many men down.

The rumour says Karma's dead, but it's not. With the broken camera and not even one booked plane/train/bus ticket I felt like there's not much to say. Plus, lately I've been somewhat confused and busy thinking about so-called real-life-problems. When I was a kid, I had a perfect idea of the 25th year-old version of myself. Everybody would tell me how education will make my life better and easier. How everything is gonna be just amazing when I would be an adult. Well. Graduation makes me think. Re-think. Over-analyse. Being on the verge of finishing my studies and just before my twenty-fifth birthday, I figured out I am nothing like that person I thought I would be. That things are not as easy as they were supposed to be. All the plans that I made, just turned out not to work. I feel like I got stuck with pretty much everything. I sound like Capitain Obvious, but this is the kind of a discovery you have to make for your own in order to grow up and mature. So my mood is somewhere between this and that, which clearly means pretty depressive.

I do not know if things happen for a reason. Who knows, maybe that is for the best, that is exactly as it should be. I just feel like life is all about learning to accept the fact that you are loosing things you care the most about.

On the bright side, I had an incredibly awesome reunion this weekend with some good people around, who came from really-far-away. And K. came with her father's Zenith and I snapped almost one whole roll so if that thing worked, there might be some pictures finally soon. Aaaand my Zenith's going to have the heart surgery, which should bring him back to life.


For now, I just want to fly somewhere far away.

protect me from what i want.

i want a piece of chocolate cake. a never-ending bag of altromercato cookies.
i want to go to a Pearl Jam concert. that one.
i want to go to Argentina. Uruguay. Chile.
i want the summer back.
i want to see New York, Havana, Barcelona, Dublin, Sydney, Anchorage, San Francisco.
i want to sit on the freshly-cut grass in Agape.
i want the beatles t-shirt.
i want my own flat. peace. and quiet. lots of books.
i want to have a dog. and a furry llama.
i want to meet Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Robert Downey Jr and possibly grab a beer with Zach Braff.
i want to learn how to timetravel. be in two places at the same time. walk on the water.
i want all the earrings of the world.
i want to go shopping with Zooey Deschanel. Rachel Bilson. Marion Cottilard. Anna Dereszowska.
i want a piece of parmigiana. salmorejo. párek v rohlíku. pastéis de belém. milka with oreo. guiness. łazanki. 
i want a surprise bday party. for once. with all of my friends. all of them.
i want to learn portugese. french. czech. korean. swedish. swahili.
i want a new bicycle. a ride on the camel. and a car.
i want to learn how to iceskate. bake muffins. touch my chin with my tongue. play the guitar. piano. saxophone.
i want that kiss back. and i want things to be less fucked up than they are.
i want to graduate. move on. move out.
i want all those fucking pandas to survive the next 50 years.


and i want my camera back.








and who's to say this isn't what happens? who can tell me that my fantasies won't come true...
just this once.

| starring Karo in the city of Cracow.

one more for the stars and the eyes of the walls.

It's been more than a month. But I'm back. I'm alive. Just so incredibly confused after all that journey.

If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?, asks Jack from Fight Club (ay, yeah. read the book for-god's-sake). Well, I woke up in Turin. I woke up in Pavia. I woke up in Seville. I woke up in Lisbon. If there's something better than opening your eyes in a new place, it's the fact of learning, rethinking, exploring, maturing. Things you're supposed to do precisely because you're in a new place and everything is new, strange, unknown. So you learn, acknowledge, get use to memorize and then just try not to miss. Travelling changes you. And you can never go back to your old-self.

So here I am. Back home. Those four months gave me so much. But my head is full of stuff that happened to me and people that I randlomly met. Everything's familiar, but also strange and distant. Anybody knows how much long it take to get used to being home again?

Anyhow, Seville part two.

Frankly, I expected the pics from Alcazar to be a waaaay better. The fault is undeniably mine, cause I just didn't feel like taking too many of them, while the guide was telling all those interesting stories about the place. Plus, there were simply too many people.












A year feels like a minute. Seeing a good friend unchanged after such a long time: priceless. When we finished sightseeing, I asked Rafa if he wasn't bored with showing this to me, hearing the same stories from a guide for the tenth time or so. He looked at me and said: 'Well, you know. I already know if by heart, but that's the first time I did it in Italian'. Conclusion? Never say no to sightseeing, even if it may seem boring, you may always learn something new.   (;



The most original bill ever. By the way, one thing that I'm definitely going to miss is eating at the bar. Montaditos and small beers drunk in a hurry, that you order just because it's too hot outside and you really need some cool air (god bless air conditioning). In that particular bar, the bartender would write everything you order with a chalk, right in front of you and wipe it out after hearing the magical phrase 'La cuenta, por favor' and getting the money. We stayed there for a while and had a few nice beers, for all of our friends, whatever we saw and life.



| this week's discoveries:

#1
Tola, because of the pics and because of some very cool places to recommend in Warsaw.

#2
The Head and The Heart, because of the decent music.

climb up to the tree top. watch it all just drift away.

My last week in Spain. I keep thinking about Poland all the time. Obsessively. Overenthusiastically. 

I'm in the middle of the motorway to Islantilla and I'm thinking about Polish crappy roads.

I'm on the beach and I'm thinking about the smell of the fish in Sopot.

I'm in the beach bar and I'm thinking about the food you get to eat in all those looking-like-80's, small-price bars in the little villages next to any lake.

Cause I miss Poland.

Yep. That came to this. I miss Poland like I have never missed it before. That's the first time in my whole adult life, whole so-called-travelling-life, that I actually want to come back. 

My grandma's pierogi. Pickles aka ogórki konserwowe. Lech. Żywiec. Cortes. Prince-Polo. Bicycle. Rain.

And I kinda miss living in the city. 

Pubs. Bars. Streets. Parks. People. Cinema. Life. 

Even coming back to Wroclaw doesn't seem to be such a bad thing this time. 

Przedwojenna. Czeski. Slodowa. Ostrow Tumski. Odra. Street musicians. Good people. K's flat, M's garden. Di's sweetest smile. And so many more.

On the other hand everything here seems to be just drifting away. I cannot even remember my first days here. I cannot remember how it was not to understand something. To feel weird here. But in a way, I want it to be this way. I want to come back home and live a different life again, far away from Spain. I like it here, sometimes even love it here, but it's not 'my place'.

So I was thinking of all those moments when I really enjoyed being in Spain and my first choice was Seville. I-love-Seville. Seville is what I wanted Spain to be, in my head, before I ever came. Narrow streets, people, bars, hot nights and feverish mornings...

I went to Seville to meet my friend, Rafa. We used to hang out a lot when I was on Erasmus and in this way we became really close friends. The funniest part is that Rafa, all Erasmus long, used to keep telling me how Seville's the first city I should see in Spain, but I was never particularly into that idea. I was thinking more of Barcelona or Valencia, just to finally end up in Seville. Karma's sense of humour.





One of my favourite places, the so-called Mushroom is Seville's most famous observation deck. It's made almost entirely from wood and it was announced the world's biggest wooden structure. The level ground is kind of the Acquarium with some kind of the Roman ruins that keep the company to the fish (or whatever this Acquarium contains). Frankly, I've seen the countless number of Acquariums in my life, so seeing just one more wasn't even tempting. Not to mention 'the Roman ruins' (Yes, I'd lived in Italy. No, thanks). But the view from the top is absolutely amazing and really breath taking so having a drink over there was just a must-do.









I was standing there for a really long time. The flow of thoughts. Overanalysis. Flashbacks. Something I do a lot. Too much, maybe.

now let us drink the stars.

I've just bought the last flight home.
The-last-flight-home.
Buying flights and coming back home always makes me think.
About the people I met.
About the stuff I learnt.
About the things I saw.
I will never regret any trip, for sure not this one, but three months is definitely too much in a place like this and for the first time in my life I'm thinking of Poland. 

I feel like coming back home.

This time it's just more complicated than ever, cause there's still a long way ahead of me.
Mazagon. Huelva. Lisbon. Porto. Madrid. Poznan. Wroclaw.
7 stops in less than two weeks. What I feel is a mix of the excitement and the fear that something may go wrong. But this is what I love the most about travelling: being totally on your own, totally independent, free. And ever since the atmosphere here changed from fantastic into unbearable I've actually started counting down the days. 

So I'm seeing one of my best Erasmus friends in Lisbon. From there we're roadtrippin' to Porto. I'm catching a flight to Madrid, where I hope to see another friend of mine and then, finally, catch one last flight to Poznan.

I cannot wait to see J's smiling face. To see the stars over the Porto. To feel the pressure in my ears right after the starting. To have that paella with Luci, we've been planning like for ages. I cannot wait to see the first rain, back home.

it's cold as you fade into the sun.

I already want to get away from here. The atmosphere is unbearable. My job's killing me. My head is full of stuff from the past... In life there are always decisions you get to regret years later. So sometimes I just go to the beach in the evening to think, to relax and to cut off from everything else. It's nice to live ten mins away from the seaside. That's something I'm definitely gonna miss about this place.

 When Asia came we went to the beach and spent all afternoon just talking about life, watching the kids playing and the people fishing.

non è che non ci sia, ma è come fosse andata via.

There are only two places where I'd like to be just right now. And being here, where I am, is killing me.

N° 1.








N° 2.
 

under the bridge.

I don't have much of the free time recently. I don't have it at all. Two more girls came here and we've been incredibly busy ever since. I kinda started having so called social life. I also lost two more rolls so my motivation to post anything dropped to zero. Luckily enough those rolls weren't full of pictures of my friends, my favourite places and memories, like in case of the one from Turin that I also lost. So it's not such a tragedy, but still I'm quite disappointed. Maybe it's just that karma was a bit bitchy again.

Anyhow, I am still discovering new stuff in Spain, stuff I like and stuff I am definitely gonna miss some day. Some places in Huelva are among that stuff. I could never live in a small city for more than one year, but Huelva is magical in some way and I can actually imagine myself being happy over there.

There are two places close to the river Tinto that I particularly like.

El Muelle del Tinto is some kind of a pier on the Tinto River, that back in time was used as a dock. Nowadays it is more like a nice place for a walk, a long chat with a friend or a good viewpoint. There are also a lot of people finishing there.



El Muelle used to be a lot longer. It was shortened when the city authorities decided that there should be the road right next to the river, however the remaining part has never been removed.





The view from El Muelle is amazing. I don't think a picture can actually express it.



I'm reading that post over and over again, before publishing it and I have a feeling that it is barely acceptable. That's just my complete lack of vein. And for God's sake, what happened to my English?! Well, maybe the picture of my friend Antonio will save the day.


Antonio has the most kind eyes I have ever seen in my life.

end of the road.

Antonio called me once and said 'Grab your stuff, I'm taking you to a very amazing place. You're gonna love it'. I wasn't thinking about it too much. Antonio is basically a god of surprises and he always instinctaneously senses the stuff and places I might like. So I took my camera and we went to el Rocio.

I think the late afternoon was actually the best part of the day for visiting that place. El Rocio seems to be some kind of forgotten village, where people just live their lives not paying too much attention on what's going on in the world outside. Many houses are abandoned, pubs and bars have a few clients, just sitting outside, slowly drinking their cold beers and there are almost no tourists. There are no asphalt roads so everything is covered with sand and dust. I was walking around el Rocio as if I was under some kind of spell, enchanted with all those white houses, red roofs, little balconies and patios. I loved that complete lack of civilisation and people riding the horses and carriages, as if there were no cars. At some point, I really felt like in one of those small mexican villages that you only know from the old soap operas.









I loved that 'FOR HORSES ONLY' sign in front of one of the restaurants thinking it was a joke, until that man came to actually park his horse over there.











Zenon's living his own life recently. Shutters get stuck sometimes and he's kinda getting crazy, creating strange effects, but I kinda like it. Well, as long as I am not loosing the rolls.

aromas de un barco.

It seems that some people read that stuff. Some people I don't know and frankly didn't expect them to find this site. So I decided to switch into English, although I feel that my English is a little bit rusty. I just have no chance to use it recently. I miss other languages, but to tell the truth Spanish is all I really need here. Anyhow, I am not really sure if it's a right thing to do, but let's just give it a shot.

My friend, Antonio took me once to the most virgin beach I'd ever seen in my life. There's a national park right next to that place so the local people just want it to remain as calm, quiet and wild as it is. Luckily, the amount of people arriving there is easy to control as the river divides the seashore and the mainland. Getting on the boat is the only way to get there.

The day was weird. At some point, the dense fog rolled in from the seashore. We couldn't see anthing.
And I couldn't help thinking about Noir Désir all afternoon long.

For a moment there, we couldn't even see the seashore, even though it was like five meters away. But then, suddenly, before we left, it all cleared up.