Strange World

• Location: Tirana, Albania
• Date: December 2009

I am in capital of Albania. Temperature is close to zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). I am here for few days already. Till now it’s raining everyday most of the time. It wouldn’t be such a disaster if you can come home (to a hostel in my case) and dry your cloth. But that’s impossible, because there is no heating there. And it’s damn cold there. I thought it’s just my hostel, but heating is missing almost everywhere. I visited few friends at their homes, university, some governmental buildings and it was the same everywhere. They have no heating in many restaurants and cafeterias as well. Only better restaurants and bars in fancy part of city called Blloku are well heated. Interesting but understandable is that people don’t put down their jackets and coats until they feel warm enough when they come inside. It looks pretty strange when there are people in restaurant wearing coats (sometimes even waiters). Reason for all this is obvious. There are just two or three months of cold weather in Albania each year and they think it’s not enough for having heating. If you think it has something to do with the fact that Albania is rather poor country for Europe, it’s not true. The same situation with heating is in south Spain, Italy and so on.

• Location: middle of nowhere, east of Jyvaskyla, Finland
• Date: August 2007

I am to a cottage far away from civilization. It’s in deep forest next to a lake. The cottage has no water, but it has electricity. You have to pump the water manually from a well. The cottage is very plain, but there is one thing that astonishes me. In the kitchen is automatic sensor paper towel dispenser. You wave your hand in front of it and it gives you paper towel. Why there is such a sophisticated and in a way totally useless machine on a place where everything else is simple and in harmony with nature remains a mystery to me.

• Location: Georgia
• Date: August 2009

When you come to Georgia first thing you will notice is writing. They don’t use Latin alphabet. They have their own Georgian alphabet. All letters are totally alien to English speaker. It’s little bit strange that a nation of less than four million people uses its own alphabet. There might be few more thousands of Georgians living abroad who can use this wring system, but that doesn’t seem enough. I am not mentioning that there are actually three totally different Georgian alphabets, because only one is used nowadays. Of course there will be much smaller groups of people using their own writing systems, but Georgia is well developed country.

• Location: Riga, Latvia
• Date: September 2006

I am on business trip in Latvia. I am visiting headquarters of Hansabank (now rebranded to its owners bank name Swedbank). They reside in very fancy skyscraper in Riga. I got a tour of a bank, I got to know how it works and what they are trying to achieve. From my point of view it’s just an ordinary bank. However there is one irregularity. Everybody working in a bank is very young. I am explained that the average employee age is 25. Latvian board’s average is 30 and there is no one older than 35 in the board. I ask for explanation how is that possible. I am told it’s because the old generation has stigma of communistic history. They were part of Soviet Union. On the other hand the new generation already studied after fall of communism and is supposed to bring new methods and new point of view. It sounds logical, but I still have feeling that these guys are missing experience so much. Will you let graduates administer one of the biggest banks in your country? I am also told it’s not just this bank. Young people are ruling many businesses and institutions in Latvia. Does this have something to do with the fact that Latvia was influenced the most of EU countries by financial crisis?

• Location: Baku, Azerbaijan
• Date: August 2009

In different countries you can buy different food and drinks outside from street vendors. Variety ranges from ice cream, pretzels, nuts, candy floss to pop corn, fried anchovies, pancakes or melons. Azerbaijan is different though. You can buy lemons. I wonder what I should do with a lemon. Maybe squeeze it into my mouth. That sounds very refreshing especially in azeri weather. I asked one seller what is a lemon good for. “You can use for your tea, also very good for salad” I got to know. Still I don’s see anybody in streets walking around with a cup of tea or bowl of salad.

• Location: Paris, France
• Date: July 2009

I am in Paris walking down Boulevard de Clichy. It’s the street with cabarets, sex shops and famous Moulin Rouge. There are quite many women at the street trying to attract guys to go to cabarets. If I leave aside that they are annoying, most of all they are incredibly ugly. I wonder how is that possible. If I see very bad looking middle-aged woman I am definitely not attracted to go to cabaret she is working for. I would be afraid that there will be same kind of women in the place itself. Or maybe they are all focused on men with some kind of deviation.

• Location: Finland
• Date: March 2009

Sauna is almost a holy place in Finland. I knew it before going there. But I didn’t really know how important it is before I have actually seen it in Finland. There are rules what you should do and shouldn’t do in sauna. E.g. farting is forbidden, drinking alcohol is questionable. There are rumors whether you can have sex in sauna etc. Sauna played an important role in Finnish history for long time. It was place where people washed themselves and where women gave birth (that time the sauna was cold. It was just the cleanest place in the house, because it was disinfected by the heat all the time). Nowadays there are more saunas in Finland than there are cars. And there are many cars. Sometimes you can find small one in student dorm room. It’s so small that only two people can fit in, but did you have the luxury of having your own private sauna when you were at the collage? They go as far as having saunas on army submarines, in some restaurants and so on.

• Location: everywhere in Azerbaijan
• Date: August 2009

I am in Azerbaijan already for few days. I came from Georgia by train, travelled by bus to Seki, Quba, Qobustan and other places. I have seen quite a lot from Azerbaijan. Everywhere out of cities and towns I see walls. I see walls around nothing and with no meaning. There is always a piece of land with wall around it. It’s in semi-desert. There is nothing behind the walls. Just sand and sometimes garbage. There is always a gap in the wall making a place for gate allowing you to go in and out freely. And there are many such places with walls very often next to each other. All of them are abandoned. Explanations about this phenomenon from local people are so irrational that I don’t even cite them here. Does anybody know what are they good for?

• Location: Izmir, Turkey
• Date: August 2006

I just came from Istanbul to Izmir to bus station which is little bit out of the city. Major long distance bus companies have so called servis, which is a small bus that takes you downtown upon your arrival. I find a servis bus and ask the driver if he goes to city centre. He says yes and I get on the bus. After already a long drive which doesn’t seem like going in direction of city centre I take out a map and ask the passenger sitting next to me where exactly we are. He studies the map for a while and then points a place in the air far away out of the map. I try to communicate with the driver, but he speaks no English and we have difficulties understand each other. Eventually I find another passenger who speaks both English and Turkish. Of course the bus is not going to the city centre. The driver knows he told me goes there. Asking why is useless. After some negotiation he agrees to take me there, but first he wants to stop at home and have a dinner. I have no choice and we go. We stop in ghetto. He leaves me in the bus and goes to grab some food. After a while two gangs of kids twelve to eighteen years old appear in the street in front of me. There are approximately fifty people there. First they shout at each other. Then somebody throws a stone and fight begins. They are equipped with bats, wooden sticks, stones and fists. I feel urge to take pictures, but don’t want to cause any attraction. So, I just sit and watch. After ten minutes the fight ends. There is no winner. Each gang goes back the way they came. Some of the kids are injured and bleeding. Later on the driver comes and takes me to the city center.

• Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
• Date: August 2009

If you drive in Tbilisi you will notice high occurrence of police cars especially at night. There are literally everywhere. That’s not that surprising. What is odd that they have the red-blue flasher on the roof always on. When more police cars accidentally appear at one place (which is quite often) there are flashing lights everywhere. It looks there more like a disco than ordinary street. I wonder how you should know when they have it on just for fun and when it’s for real and you should get out of their way or stop. Maybe the hooter makes the difference.