Sipping a coffee in Genoa… July 29, 2009

It’s been a long time since I wrote last time. I have been going through a period where many thoughts were diving through my mind. After a lot of hard work this spring, we decided to take a 1-2 months break. We bought a one way ticket to Milan and from there we went to Genoa – a place where we have lived before and we fell in love with. We have been here for 16 days now and we love it. It’s no wonder people here live up to 100 years old. We have already done the Cinque Terre track 4 or 5 times and seen the French Riviera about 4 times, together with Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino…

I just can’t get enough of the typical icecream…the best I have ever tasted. I would fly to here once a  year just for the gelato from Boccadasse. It is faithfull love – i don’t really eat other icecreams even though I am in love with it – because nothing compares with it. Sometimes I cheat and buy a Hagen Daz where it is available…as a surogate cause nothing compares with the Boccadasse icecream from Latteria Antica.

I love watching people on fitness bikes on a terasse on the rocks in front of the sea. The trainer plays this wonderful music that makes you paddle some more and gain speed and you are biking and biking and watching the sea…that’s sports!

For me, there is nothing more beautiful than a rocky edge you look over and see the sea…and possibly there will be people sunbathing on the rocks, just like seals do….Mountains and the Sea! Both in the same 50sq meters!

Amazingly enough the business goes just fine with me and Daniel in a holiday. I don’t know whether we are great managers or it’s just some luck, but it works. We can actually be in a holiday for half a month and the “machine” keeps running just as well.

Also amazing is the fact that my Italian has never been better. It seems it improved more from making translations than from actually living here. I have been living here for 1-6 months a year since 2006 and I gained another language skill without even opening a book…I even make money from translations…why go to Harvard? If you have a brilliant mind and want to keep it that way, don’t choose education means and institutions that will make you lose the ability of your artistic and dreamy side of your brain! At least this is how I see things. To evolve, we need to use more of our brain, more of our both sides of our brain…which we thought is not quite identical with becoming a senior business analyst in my case or a senior system engineer in Daniel’s case.

We have no plans for tomorrow and this gives my mind so much freedom and imagination started running loose again. The best thing to do if you want new ideas is to “disconnect” and travel. I have a great business idea. I am sure others have thought about it but well, many have thought about outsourcing, too, but few do it properly. So I am sure that in time, with work and patience I could put this idea into practice and it doesn’t matter how many competitors are there, I know I can do it better and if Daniel helps and Luxi also, we could all have the best “special” travel agency – of course it will be special…what did you think? that we will have “just another travel agency”?…We have always loved the travel industry so this might be the place to actually be since we weren’t quite happy as “multinatinals’ employees with pretty good salaries”.

There was a month when we thought the dream of owning a studio could become reality since prices were going down in Romania. Now they ar up again…and most of our friends say “take a loan and buy the damn studio”…well for us being in dept means loosing our freedom, which is priceless!

From here, on the 4th of August we will fly to Brussels – going from an old town to a more 21st century-like city. We were invited there by our dear friends and we will stay for an undefinite time. We still have the rented flat in Romania but don’t feel like running back there. We are quite disapointed of the guys who run the country and the mentality of the people. Last autumn we were so anxious to go back and thought that so many things would have changed to the better…we were so wrong. The clowns who have the power are the same, just where different make-up depending on the party they left and the party they joined and things aren’t any better. To live there and not be affected by what happens around you, you either need a crazy dosage of optimism and struggle everyday to do things better and motivate others to do so, too (like Musat for example), or you need to be totally senseless…which is hard because we are “souls” people…we went back for our families and friends…to be closer to them and hoped that living there might be better. Instead, to make sure I won’t become a “anger monster”, I had to think of some mind tricks: I almost never watched the news, I visited my parents and went out with my friends as much as possible. I watched only Discovery and Travel & Living became the “most watched” TV channel in the house. Once in a while I asked my mother to tell me the news…she got used to watching them everyday as it it was a soap opera and in the same time to be detached. She also puts some humor in the story so it works for me.

Adina came back to Pitesti last month. After living in the Western Europe for about 4-5 years she thought of coming back and starting a business with her husband. They were sooo optimistic and full of energy. They reminded us of ourselves last autumn and we thought we got to get them back to their senses because this “folie” will only make them invest in things that will eat money and soon they will be just as dissappointed as us. Now they are back in Brussels and think about their “folie” more realistically. Just like us, they were puting their hopes into “living in Romania”…might not be the best idea ever…

Thank God for cheap flights…not that I believe in God…but it’s a good way to express the fact that cheap flights are great and help feed our freedom thirst.

More with the next coffee…maybe…