A cautionary tale.
At the hostel, I share the dorm with one guy, a fellow Frenchman. In his early fifties, he is a pioneer of the retire early strategy, and I understand he hasn't worked for the past twenty years. On a side note, he's living proof that passive income is not all that great. Without external pressure, the guy has slowed down a lot, it takes him two hours to wake up and take a shower in the morning.
He tells me he's been in the dating agency game for about fifteen years. Met with girls from every eastern country, Romania, Belarus, at a time when telephone calls were super expensive, and there was only regular mail. With the same energy amount, he'd already be married and divorced twice, in the west.
Never sealed the deal, probably because he has unrealistic expectations. He lives full time in a hostel, and believes flashing his passport will be enough. He dresses and lives cheaply so as to stay within his passive income. He complains girls are too interested in money, but at fifty, what does he expect the girl will be looking for with him? After all this time he never put in the work to learn a local language.
As he's cooking his daily spaghetti in the hostel kitchen, I offer him to go out. He tells me he hasn't been out at night for the past month, since he arrived in kiev. But tonight he's willing to give it a go.
At that moment, I see girls arriving in their dorm.
I knock on their door and tell them, I will go to have a drink with my buddy in ten minutes, if they want they can join us. They say they will think about it, then they say yes.
So here I am with four girls and a retiree, looking for a bar in kiev. A few blocks away from the hostel I see a bar, there are people outside so it looks a bit lively, I say we go there.
The girls are four Russians, in their early twenties. One looks like a plump American male teenager, with no makeup, mid length hair and a black hooded sweatshirt. She/he said nothing the whole time and was staring her smartphone. Next girl had the double skrillex haircut with both sides cut short and length only at the top. She has a weird tribal tattoo on the neck. Third girl has piercings all across her face, dressed in black looks a bit like marylin Manson. I'm thinking, if this is the new generation of Russian girls, hard times are ahead.
Last girl is normal, and, dare I say rather cute. So now I am faced with a problem, how do I get rid of the three monsters to isolate the cute one?
The girls were speaking Russian, so the French retiree said nothing and went back to the hostel after twenty minutes. I was hoping he could entertain the friends a bit but no.
The bar was a dive bar. There were some local Ukrainian dudes and girls. Some were totally drunk but others looked normal.
I decided to apply a bit of mystery style group theory, and try to put the monsters with Ukrainian dudes, so that they would be busy.
I talked to normal looking Ukrainian dudes and we chatted a bit. I said Ukraine would be better off out of the European union, and that to bridge the gap they should talk with the Russians. This totally backfired.
One Ukrainian guy got angry and wanted to get in a fight. He was angry because of what I said about the eu and Ukraine. It was time to leave the place before he brought all the drunk Ukrainians after me. The girls were getting nervous.
The other Ukrainian seemed friendly but asked if we had hotel. I didn't get what was his point but told him, yes we have everything we need, thanks. As we were leaving, he said he wants to come with, just to wait a minute.
I was thinking ok, maybe this guy can offload a bit of the weight. So we wait for him outside. He comes soon, with a girl.
He tells me : you have nice beaches in France? Yes in the south, I reply, near the sea.
He shakes his head and says: no, these whores with you, like in France?
I finally understand. The woman with him is his wife. She looks angry. She does not want to let him go. That are both in their early twenties, but I remember in Ukraine they marry young.
So the guy thought I was a pimp, not as in, a guy who gets girls, but as in, a criminal who offers prostitutes for money.
Now I had to convince him to go away, he was very stubborn, thankfully, his wife helped pull him away. Crazy shit.
Both relieved and disappointed, I went back to the hostel with the girls and that was it.
At the hostel, I share the dorm with one guy, a fellow Frenchman. In his early fifties, he is a pioneer of the retire early strategy, and I understand he hasn't worked for the past twenty years. On a side note, he's living proof that passive income is not all that great. Without external pressure, the guy has slowed down a lot, it takes him two hours to wake up and take a shower in the morning.
He tells me he's been in the dating agency game for about fifteen years. Met with girls from every eastern country, Romania, Belarus, at a time when telephone calls were super expensive, and there was only regular mail. With the same energy amount, he'd already be married and divorced twice, in the west.
Never sealed the deal, probably because he has unrealistic expectations. He lives full time in a hostel, and believes flashing his passport will be enough. He dresses and lives cheaply so as to stay within his passive income. He complains girls are too interested in money, but at fifty, what does he expect the girl will be looking for with him? After all this time he never put in the work to learn a local language.
As he's cooking his daily spaghetti in the hostel kitchen, I offer him to go out. He tells me he hasn't been out at night for the past month, since he arrived in kiev. But tonight he's willing to give it a go.
At that moment, I see girls arriving in their dorm.
I knock on their door and tell them, I will go to have a drink with my buddy in ten minutes, if they want they can join us. They say they will think about it, then they say yes.
So here I am with four girls and a retiree, looking for a bar in kiev. A few blocks away from the hostel I see a bar, there are people outside so it looks a bit lively, I say we go there.
The girls are four Russians, in their early twenties. One looks like a plump American male teenager, with no makeup, mid length hair and a black hooded sweatshirt. She/he said nothing the whole time and was staring her smartphone. Next girl had the double skrillex haircut with both sides cut short and length only at the top. She has a weird tribal tattoo on the neck. Third girl has piercings all across her face, dressed in black looks a bit like marylin Manson. I'm thinking, if this is the new generation of Russian girls, hard times are ahead.
Last girl is normal, and, dare I say rather cute. So now I am faced with a problem, how do I get rid of the three monsters to isolate the cute one?
The girls were speaking Russian, so the French retiree said nothing and went back to the hostel after twenty minutes. I was hoping he could entertain the friends a bit but no.
The bar was a dive bar. There were some local Ukrainian dudes and girls. Some were totally drunk but others looked normal.
I decided to apply a bit of mystery style group theory, and try to put the monsters with Ukrainian dudes, so that they would be busy.
I talked to normal looking Ukrainian dudes and we chatted a bit. I said Ukraine would be better off out of the European union, and that to bridge the gap they should talk with the Russians. This totally backfired.
One Ukrainian guy got angry and wanted to get in a fight. He was angry because of what I said about the eu and Ukraine. It was time to leave the place before he brought all the drunk Ukrainians after me. The girls were getting nervous.
The other Ukrainian seemed friendly but asked if we had hotel. I didn't get what was his point but told him, yes we have everything we need, thanks. As we were leaving, he said he wants to come with, just to wait a minute.
I was thinking ok, maybe this guy can offload a bit of the weight. So we wait for him outside. He comes soon, with a girl.
He tells me : you have nice beaches in France? Yes in the south, I reply, near the sea.
He shakes his head and says: no, these whores with you, like in France?
I finally understand. The woman with him is his wife. She looks angry. She does not want to let him go. That are both in their early twenties, but I remember in Ukraine they marry young.
So the guy thought I was a pimp, not as in, a guy who gets girls, but as in, a criminal who offers prostitutes for money.
Now I had to convince him to go away, he was very stubborn, thankfully, his wife helped pull him away. Crazy shit.
Both relieved and disappointed, I went back to the hostel with the girls and that was it.