Memory.

A street called Straight, Damascus

When people come back in their minds to the places they visited, they usually find only a nice vestige, the recollection of happiness. A drink with a palm, a delicious kebab from Latakia in this street, the third right from the market and then 20 meters left from the man with an ice cream. These thought vestiges, the idea of the world which was, or is sometimes the escape from boredom, daily life, are the mental fuel providing us with energy every day. At least usually. Because sometimes, although seldom, if one is fortunate enough, they become the only testimony of the existence of certain places, cities, and people who aren’t with us anymore and the destiny of whom no one can guess.

 

Unfortunately, it happened with our memories from Syria. A coincidence, or maybe my own technological underdevelopment at that time, made me write e-mails from this country. I wanted to provide them with a commentary, compare them with the current situation, but I don’t have appropriate words. Because I don’t understand it.

So I would like to present you with my e-mails in an original form, only a bit shorter and in English.

Poverty.

When people arrive at one of the poorest countries in the world, they try to prepare for it somehow. They imagine hundreds of beggars in the streets, hungry children with large stomachs, who make a desperate attempt to reverse the unfortunate destiny by reaching out hands to newcomers from the West. People start even to consider the moral aspect of their decision on travelling to this particular corner of the world, where the enormity of hopelessness seems to have no end. 

 

In place of socks – we set off!

Dear readers,

 

we have decided to create this blog in order to share with you our joy of travelling. This joy is sometimes, paradoxically, difficult or even depressing, but still fascinating.

However, this is not going to be a classical journal, the catalogue of interesting places to visit, or the monument of vanity*. We would like to invite you to sit with us at the bank of Hoi An channel and discuss modern economics.

Come with us and smoke shisha with half-Dutchman, half-Bedouin, who talks to his friend about religion. Feel like conquistadors while watching birds in the neighbourhood of the Devil’s Throat located close to the border between Argentina and Brazil, considering at the same time the system of these famous missions. 

Or, if we are lucky enough in the following days, see with us life in Burma through Orwell’s eyes. So, we don’t offer you the journey in the interior of unknown lands, but inside yourselves. In literature, art, beauty. 

We offer you reflections “in place of socks”.