The Fiat is running good so far, but after getting lost and going deep into the Czech mountains the engine now makes a loud rattling sound. I will write more about the road trip soon when i get some free time. Tomorrow i leave for Warsaw and then into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Best $120 i’ve ever spent! from Jimmy Swift on Vimeo.
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Due to the ridiculously high train prices here in Europe, I have opted to buy a $120 Fiat 126 and drive to Turkey or as far as I can. It’s only been two days of driving and the stories are stacking up. I will write a nice long story when I get some time in Budapest.
But for now it’s back on the road in 98f (35c) weather in a car with no radio and no air condition! I am looking forward to the famous Budapest bath houses… just hope they aren’t too crowed!
I also want to thank Slawek the owner of the ars hostel in Krakow Poland for sponsoring the trip.
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Being in the now is a hard thing to do. Before I would stay 3 or 4 days at a place and I couldn’t wait to leave for the next place. The “now” or the place I currently was, never seemed good enough. The ideas of the future always seemed brighter, always seemed more fun. I feel I have wasted some many good years traveling and some many great places lost because my head was somewhere else. I never really gave the people/place the time they deserved.
It seems now that I have found the key to enjoying it, but with that there comes new challenges. I now find that I don’t want to leave. I am having such a great time in the moment that I wish I could press pause and that the future would just chill out for a second and spare me a few more minutes to just be where I am.
They say some people find themselves while traveling, for me I now almost feel as I have lost myself or maybe I have lost the Jimmy I once thought I knew.
I think we grow up learning/wanting to be different. We build up these walls that say “I’m Irish your Chinese, we are different.” “I am Jewish, you are Muslim.” “I’m fat your skinny” “I’m white your black”. There are thousands of things that you can find that makes you different and that will make you feel like you don’t connect with someone. I try to look at the other side, I try to find the things that aren’t different, the things that make us human. So maybe I have just let go of some of those things that I thought made me who I am and let the wall around me be knocked down.
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Poland…. WOW what a place! In the last few days here in Krakow Poland I have witnessed with my own two eyes the true horrors that the human species can inflict upon each other and also the beauty in life. This city has not been all about death, it has actually been the complete opposite. The Polish people have been some of the most friendly, warm and loveable bunch I have ever met. The women here are drop dead gorgeous and they seem to out number the guys 5 to 1. Krakow itself is a beautiful city very much like Prague but filled with nicer people and less tourist. The food is great and the beer gardens are by far my favorite. I’m not sure if the fact that I’m 50% polish is making a difference in my love for this city or maybe it’s just truly is an amazing place.
I have also been spending some time trying to research my family tree. It seems that my dad’s side is %100 polish or at least that’s what we think. I have my grandmother’s birth certificate, which shows that her parents “My great grandparents” were born in Poland. Unfortatally it doesn’t say where they were born so it is making it difficult to find any info. It seems when people came over from Europe to the US via els Island, last names seemed to have been screwed up and the proper spelling and translation was lost. Some of the first bit of advice I got was that maybe they were Jewish, but after deeper research I might now come from a noble background with the surname of “Odrowaz”. The Odrowaz name dates back to the 10th century and comes from the area now known as the Czech Republic. Finding my roots is proving harder then I thought, but I feel I will leave here with some sort of idea… they might not be big deep roots but it something.
Most people don’t leave Krakow without visiting the famous Nazi death camps of Auschwitz. Learning about World War II in a history book is one thing, visiting the concentration camps is another. It truly is hard to express the feeling of being at the camps. It almost makes you lose hope in humanity, and the sad fact is that unspeakable things like what happened here 60 years ago are still happening in parts of the world today, like Sudan! I don’t want to end this on a down note but out of respect for the millions of people that lost their lives.. here are some picture from Auschwitz so you’ll never forget!
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Freedom - ‘The state of being physically unrestricted and able to move easily’, ‘the quality of being independent of fate or necessity’.
I flexed my freedom muscles today and did absolutely nothing! That’s right… I know I am in Prague and on vacation and I should be out seeing the sights etc… but the truth is even writing this blog entry was almost too much. I read in a book somewhere that said if you feel lazy don’t fight it, be 100% lazy, be the laziest person in the world, be good at it, enjoy your laziness… cause like everything in life… it will soon pass and you will be motivated again to go explore and see new things. Today was a day of rest, kind of like the last 3 or 4 days, but who’s counting.
Being lazy is all part of the plan. I found when traveling for long periods of time you need to learn to take days off. It’s a lot different then a 1 or 2 week vacation where you cram it all in and go as fast as you can and see as much as you can because its going to end in a few days. The last 3 weeks have been go go go, and I am now in need of a break. Prague is a sleepy little town that makes you feel calm and what do you know… sleepy!
Today I laid around, ate lunch, slept, read a book and slept some more… but it couldn’t have been a better time to relax because now I’m off to a dance club with some friends… so all this rest will come in handy tonight!
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