Living traveling, Tripluca.com

Riga, Latvia, March 8, 2006
In Tallinn, then nothing happened apart from the various business meetings and about 300 photos of the city, made with frozen hands, which were saved only because the battery is discharged due to the cold and forced me to quit. I've never eaten in a restaurant because I was available to the kitchen and so I Take advantage to improve my culinary art with brown bread and smoked salmon washed down with hot tea. At breakfast cereals indulged in milk and yogurt and noon to smoked salmon on white bread. Several times I went to the supermarket to stock doorstep and to study the habits and customs. Interestingly, those nostalgic for the Soviets, when they see you throw a queue and bring you to wait, like the good old days when life was a daily struggle as it is today.
The first day I try but I only see the milk cartons that says something like "Simu", I turn around and ask a girl in Tallinn Estonia:
- "Excuse me. MILC is dis? "
He looks at me and says,
- "Yes." Smile. Two seconds of silence, then said:
- "Chen to elp iu more?" (I can help you with something else?).
- "Yes, of oll in the market" (Yes, in any supermarket).
Ride, I go.
Here, if I SINGLE I boarded the Estonian Tallinn.

Ah, this is beautiful. I just went to buy a bus ticket to Riga and I see a market. I decide to take two shots, the markets are always beautiful to photograph. Within, I walk among the tables of old Soviet selling fruit, vegetables, bread and all these things the people, pull out the Mavica and click "click." Then click again "re-click." Then the screen I see a guy with the mustache from konduktor Pole who looks at me and says:
- "NIETO".
It 'a NIETO, not nyet, or Nyet, Just a NIETO, indeed should be written in bold.
Down with the machine and see it live. The look and say:
- "As niet?
- "Nyet, nyet Music Rineke fotograficzky Ssrws ddd .."
Not knowing what to answer, make a gesture on "but it goes to the sea en de mona" and a second ransom photo.
He raises his hand and covers the lens. I stop. I reflect. I look at him. Ok, I go. He remains standing there the whole burden of his nyet.

After 50 meters I see an old whore who sells cabbage from a jar immense. Ea too good.
I pull out and shoot the darn thing. Then, because I do not know about. And 'behind me watching me! In his eyes I do not read or violence or threat, just an "I'm here, and look at you, you know you're wrong, but you persist in sin."
I am appalled, I'm not sure what to think, and say:
- "Public". He understands what I mean "public place is what it's like in God's name I can not take pictures?". He says
- "From, public, pazaltwo, surkij busbova parakol" and indicates to the other side. I understand he wants to say "yes, and there is a sign indicating that you can not take pictures."
I would ask him who he is, if it comes from another era, if it is realized that the wall is fallen and that if that sign is there really only because no one has bothered to remove it etc. etc. etc. ...
but then I decided that I would not be able to express my concepts of freedom for all and with a dramatically Chapter:
- "To be, ok ok" and I'm leaving. The wind was knocked from the farts of the future is the past.

Last gem. Bus and are close to me there's a guy who talks a lot on a cell phone, and Italian. As is always on the phone did not speak. Then I hear you speak Polish well. Then he starts to speak Russian and can not resist:
- "But oh, how many languages ​​do you speak?"
It follows a chat with fellow esteuropofili and it turns out right in Vilnius, long ago, he met a guy doing a job similar to mine. Tell me the name. And 'my brother.

Final jinx: a friend of mine who lives in Riga in Riga was in London until today, this evening took the plane, had until six o'clock, I arrive at five in the apartment. Missed meetings.

Now is in Riga, in another apartment, with (hopefully tomorrow) wireless and cable TV. I finish the report and shoot myself "Perfume," the book.

Here I am in a TripEst. It must be the TripEst 6 or 7, now no longer keep count. A quick trip, 12 days of work. I almost want to be snubbed, this trip. After all I came up in the air, I sleep in apartments with access, meeting partners with whom I talk about work, I visit places already seen. I thought about this before, but I was going to take some pictures, led pictures of Terzani passing the border on foot and discovers the journey.
But then all of a sudden here is the epiphany, the clear sensation of having embarked on a journey, something I will remember that in the future, and little by little it will color sepia patina that makes the most beautiful in the past always present. They are in Tallinn, and I'm photographing, I do not think anything will happen, but it's just arrogance to believe that everything depends on me, that if they are here to work, will just work. Wrong. Something can always happen, regardless of the plans. Even if he reread these lines between 12 days and will not really happened, however, I was right. Something can always happen.
At a minimum, for example, will return home with a greater intimacy toward these three cities, which will result in a greater awareness on the news when I hear talk about something that happened here. And while someone next to me might not feel nothing, my brain take me back to tonight, when I shot the photographs in Tallinn, and then from there, by association, in Riga and a flood of images that are recorded, dormant, in my brain, always ready to come out and give me feelings. Awareness, perhaps the best word.
It always happens, even reading the newspaper. Each article throws me somewhere, and I'm interested, keeps me awake and alive. And 'as if my soul were spread over all the earth, ready to react when something happens in any place, but also more detached and ironic, because it is less concentrated in one place.
And today I thought, still walking on Via Uus, that having seen so many people helped me to distinguish the basic aspects of existence, than cultural ones. There are things we all do, get up, eat, sleep, relationships. Just. The rest is optional, not mandatory. That set of habits, rules, traditions and preconceptions that we call culture, and that the traveler is able to put in its place, relativized.
The mistake, obviously, is the belief that it is an absolute reference point. The "do it" is actually a "do it ... .. here .. now ..." then, if we let flow the logic becomes "but you do differently in other places .... And here you did or will otherwise "which leads to" ... after all you can do here and now ... otherwise choose. " But often we do not want to choose and cling to the culture, as an alibi, allowing her to choose for us, she is always in flux. We say "you do so and just." And in this way we give up the freedom to do what we feel we want to do, and do what is expected of us, who is more comfortable. And we get up at seven, which is easier to decide to get up at six or eight. And we go to work at eight, which is easier than deciding how to spend the day every day. Freedom is also the responsibility, and if one day you can visit Machu Picchu, you could force the next day to spend the day in a posada with ticks without being able to get out because it's raining.
The price you pay is too high, however. And 'the not become what we become, which is always much more than what we are.
Here, something has already happened on this trip, I became a philosopher.