Quote: (09-07-2015 03:02 AM)Lord Tito Wrote:
Quote: (09-07-2015 12:24 AM)The Ligurian Wrote:
It's easier now or at least if you put in the effort, as easy.
I was first in Moscow and Kiev in early 93. I was there for 2 months. I remember exactly what it was like as I wrote a meticulous diary every day. It was not quite the paradise people imagine it to have been in terms of women although we have to take into account my younger inexperienced self.
Fast forward to Kiev 2015. In the last 2 weeks I have slept with 5 different women, ( 4 new bangs and 1 a regular ), along with James Rodri pulled 2 girls for a immediate semi-orgy, had a hand job in the street from an ex professional rhythmic gymnast and number closed a model who has appeared in Russian Vogue. If I had not flaked twice on two other women it might have been more lays. I'm the other side of 40.
How good do people want it? Put yourself out there and it's as good now as ever. I recently read a book about Grand Tourism in the 1800's Europe. Those Victorians cursed the tourists of the 1700's who had seen the 'good old days'.
These are the good old days.
Bingo!
There is a tendency from people to don the glasses with a strong tint of nostalgia and look back at the 'good ol days'. It's natural. We try to imagine what it was like in the past and perceive it to be better. My parents and those of their generation (1st generation post WW2) speak fondly of the 1960s, a period which saw not only a social but also an economic revolution. I often hear these people speak about 1968, a pivotal year which saw great political upheaval from Peking to Prague. My grandparents remembered the 1920s & 30s as a period of relative peace where everyone was poor but happy. Life was more simple and innocent back then they said.
My sister in law's parents from Russia, regard the 1970s as perhaps the happiest times in their lives. They point to 1973-77 as the high point for the USSR. High oil prices in the wake of the Yom Kippur War left the USSR flush with cash for a short time. We in the West know it as the period of Brezhnev's Stagnation. I saw the black and white photos of the village kholkoz from the 70s. Lots of smiling and happy faces, filled with hope. Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, Victory Day, May Day etc. People looked well fed and content. Tables filled with food and vodka. Musicians belting it out for the war veterans who paraded down the main street, medals bedecked, faces filled with pride. Children played in the background. The village looked really a sight better than the grim and sad place it is today. Flowers in every garden, the place festooned with colourful banners, flags of the USSR and RSFSR fluttering from lamposts and from school No. 51 on ul. Sverdlova. Balloons stuck to the porch of every home. Three generations of a family, Mum, Dad, kids and babushka jam packed into a dinky looking Zaporozhets off for a Sunday jaunt down to the local river or lake. The nearby city of Sverdlovsk(now Ekaterinburg) then a closed city, looked orderly and clean. Glancing through the photos, I can see why these people, haggered and worn with age and a decade of severe economic hardship recall these times with sadness when the photo album comes out after dinner.
There is a lesson in these examples for all of us. As the Ligurian said, there is no point in looking back at the past and imagining that things were better then. Take a leaf from many modern day Russians' book. Life life for the NOW not back in 1993, 2006 or whenever. I have been guilty of that. I lived for 18 months on and off in Bulgaria about 10 years ago and had a blast there. However those days are gone. Only the memories remain and they will stay exactly what they are, memories. Now I'm in Belarus experiencing a way of life and culture that 99.99% of my contemporaries back in my economically depressed shithole will never witness. I don't regret getting away from the Dickensian drudgery, greyness and melancholy which hangs over my home town. I have identified areas to work on personally but I intend to live life to the full, the way I want it.
Don't be the 50 year old sap in suburban DC or wherever who wakes up one grey Sunday morning, alone, walking around the parket floors of his 4 bedroom house, staring out the window of his fully fitted kitchen onto the driveway where the Lexus beamer is meticulously parked, wondering where all the years have gone before being filled with a stinging regret of what could have been instead of pursuing the dream burdened by a quarter of a century of a 9-6 Monday to Friday grind and commute, speckled with weekends with your dwindling number of likewise single friends at one of the many local bars selling piss that passes for beer or down at the tennis club hopelessly failing at flirting at the fit 20 y.o. fit blonde Ukrainian bar maid doing the summer shift on her J1 visa. The good times are NOW. Live it. You wont get another chance. We could all be gone tomorrow.
Sir or Lord.
+1 from me.
This was so spot on I had to laugh out loud.
I have friends in that age range and they are defeated, despite all the "luxuries" they have in life.