September 19, 2021 • 23 mins
Question of the week: When you visit a country, do you ever actually really experience that country? And, does it matter?
This is what I address this week and I use my experience in Ukraine, first as a tourist, and then as someone who lived there in Lviv, as the basis for this discussion.
I find this topic to be quite interesting to explore and, as I learned in Ukraine, often our experiences as a tourist are more akin to that of Disneyland than reality.
A famous comic book villain once said, "Reality is often disappointing."
To leave a comment or ask a question, go to: https://nofairytaletravels.substack.com
This Week's Wine: Pianerosse - Nero di Troia - Puglia - $8
Correction:
Apartment Price in Lviv: ~275 euro/month
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello.
Hello and welcome back to nofairy tale travels this week.
I want to pose a question to youwhen you visit a country, do you
ever actually really experiencethat country or is it sort of
like a fairy tale version of it,a Disneyland, a version of that
country and not really the realdeal, the real thing.
(00:24):
And then maybe even moreinteresting than that is,
regardless of the answer, doesit even really matter?
So that's what I'm going to talkabout this week.
If you have any questions,comments, or thoughts, go to no
fairy tale travels dot substack.com.
Find the post for this episodeand leave me a message now.
(00:45):
All right.
What am I drinking this week?
PN, a Roseau narrow de Troya.
Gosh, darn.
I have a great accent.
Anyway.
Point is I got some new wine,not just the Illuminati, two
bucks cheaper and not so bad.
So I want to start this one offwith a little story about how I
(01:06):
started to think about this,which is when you go to another
country, do you experience thatcountry?
So I'm sitting in the centralsquare of Levine, Reinach square
and Ukraine, and I'm around atable with a few other guys, a
few other foreigners, and we'rehaving beers in the middle of
the day, chatting and having agreat time.
And one of the guys, there was along-term or in Ukraine and
(01:30):
long-term ex-pats in Ukraine.
They always have an interestingstory or many interesting
stories to tell you, especiallyabout how they ended up to come
there in the first place andlive there, but we're all
drinking.
And as we start to drink alittle bit more and more, he
gets a little bit annoyed withus and he says, you guys, you,
you keep talking about how muchyou love Ukraine.
(01:53):
You don't even know Ukraine,this little area where we are
right now.
This is Disneyland.
This is fake.
None of this is real.
This is not Ukraine.
What you love is not Ukraine.
And I thought that was a veryinteresting statement.
(02:15):
And I started to think about itand think about it and where we
were was a central area.
That was all pedestrian zone andvery, very nice, very peaceful,
very fun, lots of interestingthings to do.
It is still maybe one of myfavorite places ever so much so
that I almost don't want to tellanyone about it.
(02:36):
And there's so many interestingjust experiences that you can
have from the different types offood, to the drinks, to the
theme, to restaurants and barsand cafes.
And in the summertime, you havelocal musicians from the music
school playing the violin orsinging opera or the guitar, or
even little bands on almostevery corner of the street.
(02:58):
The women are just they'd putany Victoria's secret catwalk to
shame, and they have abeautiful, bubbly personality
that is quite difficult to matchon any large scale.
I mean, it is a terrificallyamazing place.
It really is a Disneyland Disneyland for tourists.
(03:22):
And it's so much fun, but it'snot Ukraine.
He was right.
I would end up spending many,many, many months in Ukraine
after that.
And the moment that you leavethat central area, where as a
tourist, you are going to spendyour entire time.
So the moment you leave it,everything changes.
(03:43):
It's not all for the bad, but itis just completely different.
It is not that fairy taleexperience that you just had.
It turns out that in normallife, the girls dress a bit
more, normally a bit moremodestly.
It turns out that they aren'tall walking around smiling at
everybody because they'reprobably going about their daily
(04:06):
life and not just on some sortof catwalk strutting mode,
walking in the kind of highstreet of Leviev and normal
life.
You're not always just bouncingaround in a great, great mood,
you know, happy, filled withlife as the giant yellow buses
from like Nazi Germany drive byand throw so much smog in the
(04:30):
air that you can't breathewithout choking.
I mean, I feel like Corona virusis the least of the worries
sometime there.
One of the apartments that I hadin a local neighborhood, at some
point it was on the secondfloor.
So first floor, if you're insome European or many European
countries and it was facing thestreet, it was a very nice
(04:52):
apartment.
I think it was a 200 euros amonth, which was actually
overpriced, but that's okay.
And it was a very nice apartmentand the windows you'd open up
the top.
They would fold in just a littlebit like standard European
windows.
I don't know how to describethem.
I don't know, windowterminology, but whatever you
could sort of crack the top openand lean the window back towards
(05:14):
you and get some fresh air inthere during the day.
The problem was that the buseswould go by four times an hour
and shoot Smaug up into the airand it would just come into the
apartment and fill it up.
And you're just sort of choking.
So you have to remember fourtimes a day to run to the
windows and close them.
You don't get that in thecentral square area where all
(05:37):
the hotels and hostels arebecause everything is made very
nice and new and clean and, andthe streets are pedestrian
zones.
So there's almost nobody drivingdown them.
Certainly no buses, certainly noNazi Germany, era buses.
(06:00):
And as you go farther away fromthe city center and you live
closer to, or you go closer tothe train station, which is
where I also lived.
At one point there, you start tosee more of the reality.
You start to see the babushkas,the grandmas selling all of the
stuff, the clothes, the shoes,the coats, and the knickknacks
outside the train station.
(06:21):
I believe that now they'retrying to clear that out.
They may have finished clearingthat out because they want to
make the city look nicer fortourists.
But when I was there just a fewyears ago, it was still there
and still functioning.
And I remember some of my localfriends and they were telling me
that, yeah, as they grew up,that's where they would go and
get their clothes.
(06:41):
So that was their experiencefor, it's almost like getting
hand me downs.
I don't know if you've ever hadhand-me-downs.
I remember as a kid, I used tothink about how awful they were.
I hated getting hand-me-downs.
I wanted my own thing, but now Ithink that if I have kids, I'm
going to ensure that they gethand me downs so that they can
appreciate the new things thatthey have as much as the people
(07:06):
who I knew and do know incountries where they never had
new things until they were olderin life.
And we take a lot of that forgranted in the west and the
states, especially.
So reality is not a fairy tale.
And I want to tell you one ofthe funniest things about
reality as well.
(07:27):
I was thinking about, which iskind of a funny thing who are
the most horrible group ofpeople to meet that you can
think of in the world.
There's all sorts of funnystereotypes.
And they all are based inreality to some degree, some
more than others.
Let's talk about Brits in Spain.
(07:49):
Although I do think that they'regood, fun, but you have to be in
the partying mood to, to nothate that.
Um, but aside from those, canyou think of just another group
that's kind of annoying.
A lot of people will saygypsies, but there's one group
that's not just annoying, butstraight up terrifying.
They're like the gangsters ofthe supermarkets.
Okay.
(08:09):
And it is a babushka in EasternEurope.
You get in the way of that womanand her onions.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Or God forbid, there are twocheckout lines and one goes
faster than the other.
And this babushka sees you.
And she knows that she has powerover you.
She has babushka power.
(08:31):
She better not say anything ordo anything because there's a
gang of babushkas and what'llhappen is they'll yell at you,
but then they'll yell at eachother.
And then it's like a little, Idon't know, it's like the honey
badgers of the human species.
They are ferocious monsters inthose grocery stores.
(08:55):
And you encounter them a lotwhen you live in more normal
areas, uh, of Ukraine, at leastbecause you have to go to the
store to fill up your waterevery day so that you have water
to drink.
So you go there and you fill itup for 25 cents or so, and then
you come back home.
So you encounter the babushkas alot more regularly when you're
(09:17):
in the city center, you don'treally encounter them that much.
Who do you see drunk touristsmostly.
And those people are pretty easyto handle for the most part.
Just make sure you Dodge thevomit.
And now you don't have to worrythat much about that unless
you're in a L K F in Hong Kongat 11:00 PM.
But my point is that the, itchanges you go from just seeing
(09:39):
a relatively young people, um,having a good time and, and just
buying their stuff in the shopsand being very quick and, you
know, getting through it and allthe food is clean and sanitized
in a way that it's not in themore real markets, right.
Where you have dirt on theonions still, which isn't a
(09:59):
problem it's just different,right?
So you get a sanitized fakeDisneyland version versus
reality.
Reality who Mickey mouse, Mickeymouse becomes Honeybadger
babushka.
(10:20):
Oh my God.
I think in Kiev, just, I justwant to say, I think in Kiev is
where I saw like a Honeybadgerbabushka little fight in the
store.
It was terrifying.
It was terrifying.
It, it devolved into just abrawl of like onion flinging
swinging in the little bags andeverything.
It was, it was very, veryterrifying for all of us, non
(10:41):
Honeybadger, babushka types tosee them fight, to get into the
faster line at checkout.
But anyway, what the hell am Italking about?
Okay.
So, so I had this fakeexperience in Ukraine for such a
long time.
And then as a result of stayingthere longer, I was able to end
(11:02):
wanting to save some money.
Cause it wasn't exactly a greattime for me financially.
I started to live in more normalplaces with more regular people
and experienced the life thereand realized that it was
dramatically different than whatI had experienced when I first
came.
And then what so many otherpeople, pretty much every
tourist experiences when theycome for a weekend or a week or
(11:25):
any short period of time whereyou just want to go and have fun
now, is that really a bad thingby the way that some people have
the fake experience and somepeople have the real experience?
Well, it depends on yourperspective, I suppose, because
an experience is an experience.
So it's nice to have one.
It's nice to have some differentexperience of then that, which
(11:50):
you have every single day'causeI can tell you that is not
exciting.
Monotony has never been adescriptor of excitement.
So I would say on aphilosophical level, which this
entire discussion really is thatit's good, that you had that
(12:12):
experience, which is different,but then you get some people
that were, that could be upsetby the way, if they have the non
fairy tale experience in thereal experience, as you do get,
you can be upset because youdidn't have that fairy tale
experience.
And then you get people who havethe fairy tale experience who
tell everyone how amazing thatcountry is based off their
(12:34):
fairytale experience.
We're not just the countrynecessarily, but that's their
frame of references.
They define that experience asthat country.
So my had a great time inUkraine and Ukraine is amazing
because I had a great time incentral[inaudible] Reinach
square, where in a day I spentwhat a local would earn in a
week and a half, that kind ofthing.
(12:57):
So there's many different waysto look at it, but what upset
the guy in the central squarewhen we were all talking is that
last one where we were sayinghow much we loved Ukraine when
we didn't know a single thingabout Ukraine who, oh, okay.
I didn't have too much wine.
(13:17):
I'm still standing, almosttripped there.
Um, we didn't know a singlething about Ukraine at that
point.
And it just upset him.
It upset him because we werepraising something that might
not have been in his mind.
(13:37):
I don't want to say it wasn'tworthy of praise, but it was
worthy of nuance.
It was worthy of perspective, aperspective that we lacked
perhaps in his mind, at least.
And I am inclined to agree withhim.
And I don't know, it just reallygot me thinking once again, I
(14:01):
don't know that any experienceis better than another so long
as you have an experience.
Although if you don't have theone you want you to get upset.
Yes.
But I think he wanted us tounderstand the whole picture and
not just our overly myopic viewof reality.
(14:24):
Maybe he felt it was selfish.
I'm going to agree with theselfish thing, by the way,
that's a little bit ofprojection right there because
of something I experienced laterwhere I was in a similar
position to this guy.
So maybe he felt it was a littlebit selfish that we're praising
this thing without knowing anyof its negatives.
(14:52):
You know, I was thinking thatwhen I started this discussion,
this monologue, it's not adiscussion this monologue that I
was just going to say that it'sbad, that we don't have a
complete view of the places towhich we travel.
And then it's bad for us to comeback and say, I love this place
because of my fake experiencethere, or is a real experience,
(15:14):
but it's not representative ofthe place, but now I'm really
not so sure.
I mean, I can understand why hewas upset, but you can also
understand from the most logicalof perspectives, how a, you can
have a really good experience ina place where you can actually
(15:35):
afford to do what you'd like todo and where those things that
you'd like to do are made reallynice for tourists.
So it's really easy to have thatexperience so I can understand
how that's such a positiveimpact on someone and then how
they would associate that withthe country, especially if that
(15:58):
is their only experience withthat country.
Our brains are patternrecognition machines, and that's
the pattern that we haveestablished for that country,
regardless of whether or not itis in the whole accurate on the
whole, in the whole, I almostsaid ins gazumped and dissolved.
(16:20):
Um, but the point is, so itmakes sense, but I think those
of us, and I'm now going to putmyself in this man's position,
not for Ukraine, uh, but forplaces where I've spent a
significant amount of time, whenyou have spent a lot of time
there, and you have experiencedoing things on a more local
level away from tourists, andyou have experienced dealing
(16:43):
with the difficulties of dailylife, maybe not as much as a
local person, who's born andraised there, but a lot more
than a tourist who's inDisneyland.
When you have those experiencesand you do hear somebody who has
only been there and onlyexperienced the stuff that only
the rich people can experience ano local can really experience
(17:05):
that on a regular basis withoutbankrupting themselves.
And you hear them tell you howamazing that place is when they
have no idea how hard life is inthat place for a regular person.
And they don't know anythingabout that place except for
their fairy tale experience.
It does really, it does upsetyou.
(17:28):
It does just feel like thatperson is being selfish.
It, you want to give themperspective because maybe, maybe
the psychology of it.
I think this is kind ofinteresting to think about.
Maybe the psychology of it isthat if they say this place is
(17:49):
positive, you just internallyassume that they understand all
the negative things and thatthey are also saying that those
positive things include thenegative things.
Maybe that's what's happening,psychology psychologically.
And then that's what upsets youbecause you know that those are
negative things.
(18:10):
So how could they ever bepositive?
I don't know.
Or maybe it's just that.
So this is getting up to thenext level, not lower because I
don't actually know thepsychology of this.
I'd love to know the psychologyof it, which is why I'm reading
a lot of interesting thingsthese days.
But anyway, on one level, it'sjust, Hey man, you're saying you
(18:31):
like stuff, but there's a lot ofbad stuff about it.
You should take that intoaccount as well, because you're
completely disregarding all ofour horrible experiences.
And you're glossing over all ofthe bad things, which in a way
makes it seem like you arediminishing the hardships of
someone who is forced toexperience all of these
difficulties.
You're almost diminishing the,the toughness, the mental
(18:58):
toughness that it takes for thatperson who has experienced hell
maybe to go and serve you inyour rich foreigner person,
restaurant, and put a smile onfor you and pretend like they
haven't been working for 12hours for pay wearing clothes
(19:20):
that were bought at the trainstation while you're wasting
food and throwing around money.
Like there's no tomorrow.
Maybe that's just what it is.
We just lack of empathy can bereally upsetting.
(19:41):
I'm not sure why, but I find itupsetting.
I found it upsetting somethingsimilar to me happened to what
happened to this guy in Ukraine,the guy I talked about.
So I was the, I guess you couldsay perpetrator in Ukraine and
the victim when I was in Kosovoand I was at a restaurant where
(20:03):
only wealthy locals, verywealthy locals and foreigners
go.
And there was a foreigner whowas sitting there.
And I had been there many, many,many times before spent a decent
amount of time in Kosovo.
And the girl was telling me howmuch she loved these countries
over here.
(20:24):
She was talking specificallyabout Kosovo and Albania, and
she rattled off a few thingswhich no local ever gets to
experience.
And she talked about meetingsome locals and I know the
locals that she was talkingabout and what she didn't
realize is that when she seesthem, that's a of their reality
(20:49):
and all these experiences thatshe has are only available to
rich people, very rich peoplewho don't associate with lower
classes, their lower classes asdefined by the cultures there.
And certainly, actually thepeople in those restaurants
don't want to associate withforeigners or maybe to some
(21:11):
degree they do, but the onlyother people there are
foreigners.
So she didn't realize that herexperience was fake.
And she was talking about hownice these places are, how nice.
And it was so upsetting from myperspective, for her to not
(21:32):
realize how God difficult it isfor people who are living there,
born and raised and can't getout.
Yeah, it really me off.
I'm happy that she had that niceexperience there.
I'm happy that she got to go toall those rich person
(21:52):
restaurants, but I do wish thatshe had a bit more of a complete
perspective before she startedspouting off about how great
these places were without beinga bit more nuanced.
(22:12):
So I guess I have become the,uh, I don't know, the grumpy guy
in Rhino-Rack square that Ibegan this story with, who
chastised us for saying thatUkraine was the best place on
earth because of our Disneylandexperience.
(22:33):
I think that's a good place toend this it's kind of come full
circle.
I don't blame this girl for herexperience, by the way, which
you should know if you listen tothe first half of this podcast,
because I was one of thosepeople.
And I talked about how I believepsychologically.
Um, it makes sense that we cancome to these conclusions and we
are all ignorant of a great manythings.
(22:57):
The problem oftentimes is notknowing that of which we are
ignorant.
And sometimes it upsets otherpeople.
Why does someone else'signorance upset us?
I'm going to leave it with that.
So cheers.
(23:19):
And I hope you have a greatweekend.
Hello.
Hello and welcome back to nofairy tale travels this week.
I want to pose a question to youwhen you visit a country, do you
ever actually really experiencethat country or is it sort of
like a fairy tale version of it,a Disneyland, a version of that
country and not really the realdeal, the real thing.
(00:24):
And then maybe even moreinteresting than that is,
regardless of the answer, doesit even really matter?
So that's what I'm going to talkabout this week.
If you have any questions,comments, or thoughts, go to no
fairy tale travels dot substack.com.
Find the post for this episodeand leave me a message now.
(00:45):
All right.
What am I drinking this week?
PN, a Roseau narrow de Troya.
Gosh, darn.
I have a great accent.
Anyway.
Point is I got some new wine,not just the Illuminati, two
bucks cheaper and not so bad.
So I want to start this one offwith a little story about how I
(01:06):
started to think about this,which is when you go to another
country, do you experience thatcountry?
So I'm sitting in the centralsquare of Levine, Reinach square
and Ukraine, and I'm around atable with a few other guys, a
few other foreigners, and we'rehaving beers in the middle of
the day, chatting and having agreat time.
And one of the guys, there was along-term or in Ukraine and
(01:30):
long-term ex-pats in Ukraine.
They always have an interestingstory or many interesting
stories to tell you, especiallyabout how they ended up to come
there in the first place andlive there, but we're all
drinking.
And as we start to drink alittle bit more and more, he
gets a little bit annoyed withus and he says, you guys, you,
you keep talking about how muchyou love Ukraine.
(01:53):
You don't even know Ukraine,this little area where we are
right now.
This is Disneyland.
This is fake.
None of this is real.
This is not Ukraine.
What you love is not Ukraine.
And I thought that was a veryinteresting statement.
(02:15):
And I started to think about itand think about it and where we
were was a central area.
That was all pedestrian zone andvery, very nice, very peaceful,
very fun, lots of interestingthings to do.
It is still maybe one of myfavorite places ever so much so
that I almost don't want to tellanyone about it.
(02:36):
And there's so many interestingjust experiences that you can
have from the different types offood, to the drinks, to the
theme, to restaurants and barsand cafes.
And in the summertime, you havelocal musicians from the music
school playing the violin orsinging opera or the guitar, or
even little bands on almostevery corner of the street.
(02:58):
The women are just they'd putany Victoria's secret catwalk to
shame, and they have abeautiful, bubbly personality
that is quite difficult to matchon any large scale.
I mean, it is a terrificallyamazing place.
It really is a Disneyland Disneyland for tourists.
(03:22):
And it's so much fun, but it'snot Ukraine.
He was right.
I would end up spending many,many, many months in Ukraine
after that.
And the moment that you leavethat central area, where as a
tourist, you are going to spendyour entire time.
So the moment you leave it,everything changes.
(03:43):
It's not all for the bad, but itis just completely different.
It is not that fairy taleexperience that you just had.
It turns out that in normallife, the girls dress a bit
more, normally a bit moremodestly.
It turns out that they aren'tall walking around smiling at
everybody because they'reprobably going about their daily
(04:06):
life and not just on some sortof catwalk strutting mode,
walking in the kind of highstreet of Leviev and normal
life.
You're not always just bouncingaround in a great, great mood,
you know, happy, filled withlife as the giant yellow buses
from like Nazi Germany drive byand throw so much smog in the
(04:30):
air that you can't breathewithout choking.
I mean, I feel like Corona virusis the least of the worries
sometime there.
One of the apartments that I hadin a local neighborhood, at some
point it was on the secondfloor.
So first floor, if you're insome European or many European
countries and it was facing thestreet, it was a very nice
(04:52):
apartment.
I think it was a 200 euros amonth, which was actually
overpriced, but that's okay.
And it was a very nice apartmentand the windows you'd open up
the top.
They would fold in just a littlebit like standard European
windows.
I don't know how to describethem.
I don't know, windowterminology, but whatever you
could sort of crack the top openand lean the window back towards
(05:14):
you and get some fresh air inthere during the day.
The problem was that the buseswould go by four times an hour
and shoot Smaug up into the airand it would just come into the
apartment and fill it up.
And you're just sort of choking.
So you have to remember fourtimes a day to run to the
windows and close them.
You don't get that in thecentral square area where all
(05:37):
the hotels and hostels arebecause everything is made very
nice and new and clean and, andthe streets are pedestrian
zones.
So there's almost nobody drivingdown them.
Certainly no buses, certainly noNazi Germany, era buses.
(06:00):
And as you go farther away fromthe city center and you live
closer to, or you go closer tothe train station, which is
where I also lived.
At one point there, you start tosee more of the reality.
You start to see the babushkas,the grandmas selling all of the
stuff, the clothes, the shoes,the coats, and the knickknacks
outside the train station.
(06:21):
I believe that now they'retrying to clear that out.
They may have finished clearingthat out because they want to
make the city look nicer fortourists.
But when I was there just a fewyears ago, it was still there
and still functioning.
And I remember some of my localfriends and they were telling me
that, yeah, as they grew up,that's where they would go and
get their clothes.
(06:41):
So that was their experiencefor, it's almost like getting
hand me downs.
I don't know if you've ever hadhand-me-downs.
I remember as a kid, I used tothink about how awful they were.
I hated getting hand-me-downs.
I wanted my own thing, but now Ithink that if I have kids, I'm
going to ensure that they gethand me downs so that they can
appreciate the new things thatthey have as much as the people
(07:06):
who I knew and do know incountries where they never had
new things until they were olderin life.
And we take a lot of that forgranted in the west and the
states, especially.
So reality is not a fairy tale.
And I want to tell you one ofthe funniest things about
reality as well.
(07:27):
I was thinking about, which iskind of a funny thing who are
the most horrible group ofpeople to meet that you can
think of in the world.
There's all sorts of funnystereotypes.
And they all are based inreality to some degree, some
more than others.
Let's talk about Brits in Spain.
(07:49):
Although I do think that they'regood, fun, but you have to be in
the partying mood to, to nothate that.
Um, but aside from those, canyou think of just another group
that's kind of annoying.
A lot of people will saygypsies, but there's one group
that's not just annoying, butstraight up terrifying.
They're like the gangsters ofthe supermarkets.
Okay.
(08:09):
And it is a babushka in EasternEurope.
You get in the way of that womanand her onions.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Or God forbid, there are twocheckout lines and one goes
faster than the other.
And this babushka sees you.
And she knows that she has powerover you.
She has babushka power.
(08:31):
She better not say anything ordo anything because there's a
gang of babushkas and what'llhappen is they'll yell at you,
but then they'll yell at eachother.
And then it's like a little, Idon't know, it's like the honey
badgers of the human species.
They are ferocious monsters inthose grocery stores.
(08:55):
And you encounter them a lotwhen you live in more normal
areas, uh, of Ukraine, at leastbecause you have to go to the
store to fill up your waterevery day so that you have water
to drink.
So you go there and you fill itup for 25 cents or so, and then
you come back home.
So you encounter the babushkas alot more regularly when you're
(09:17):
in the city center, you don'treally encounter them that much.
Who do you see drunk touristsmostly.
And those people are pretty easyto handle for the most part.
Just make sure you Dodge thevomit.
And now you don't have to worrythat much about that unless
you're in a L K F in Hong Kongat 11:00 PM.
But my point is that the, itchanges you go from just seeing
(09:39):
a relatively young people, um,having a good time and, and just
buying their stuff in the shopsand being very quick and, you
know, getting through it and allthe food is clean and sanitized
in a way that it's not in themore real markets, right.
Where you have dirt on theonions still, which isn't a
(09:59):
problem it's just different,right?
So you get a sanitized fakeDisneyland version versus
reality.
Reality who Mickey mouse, Mickeymouse becomes Honeybadger
babushka.
(10:20):
Oh my God.
I think in Kiev, just, I justwant to say, I think in Kiev is
where I saw like a Honeybadgerbabushka little fight in the
store.
It was terrifying.
It was terrifying.
It, it devolved into just abrawl of like onion flinging
swinging in the little bags andeverything.
It was, it was very, veryterrifying for all of us, non
(10:41):
Honeybadger, babushka types tosee them fight, to get into the
faster line at checkout.
But anyway, what the hell am Italking about?
Okay.
So, so I had this fakeexperience in Ukraine for such a
long time.
And then as a result of stayingthere longer, I was able to end
(11:02):
wanting to save some money.
Cause it wasn't exactly a greattime for me financially.
I started to live in more normalplaces with more regular people
and experienced the life thereand realized that it was
dramatically different than whatI had experienced when I first
came.
And then what so many otherpeople, pretty much every
tourist experiences when theycome for a weekend or a week or
(11:25):
any short period of time whereyou just want to go and have fun
now, is that really a bad thingby the way that some people have
the fake experience and somepeople have the real experience?
Well, it depends on yourperspective, I suppose, because
an experience is an experience.
So it's nice to have one.
It's nice to have some differentexperience of then that, which
(11:50):
you have every single day'causeI can tell you that is not
exciting.
Monotony has never been adescriptor of excitement.
So I would say on aphilosophical level, which this
entire discussion really is thatit's good, that you had that
(12:12):
experience, which is different,but then you get some people
that were, that could be upsetby the way, if they have the non
fairy tale experience in thereal experience, as you do get,
you can be upset because youdidn't have that fairy tale
experience.
And then you get people who havethe fairy tale experience who
tell everyone how amazing thatcountry is based off their
(12:34):
fairytale experience.
We're not just the countrynecessarily, but that's their
frame of references.
They define that experience asthat country.
So my had a great time inUkraine and Ukraine is amazing
because I had a great time incentral[inaudible] Reinach
square, where in a day I spentwhat a local would earn in a
week and a half, that kind ofthing.
(12:57):
So there's many different waysto look at it, but what upset
the guy in the central squarewhen we were all talking is that
last one where we were sayinghow much we loved Ukraine when
we didn't know a single thingabout Ukraine who, oh, okay.
I didn't have too much wine.
(13:17):
I'm still standing, almosttripped there.
Um, we didn't know a singlething about Ukraine at that
point.
And it just upset him.
It upset him because we werepraising something that might
not have been in his mind.
(13:37):
I don't want to say it wasn'tworthy of praise, but it was
worthy of nuance.
It was worthy of perspective, aperspective that we lacked
perhaps in his mind, at least.
And I am inclined to agree withhim.
And I don't know, it just reallygot me thinking once again, I
(14:01):
don't know that any experienceis better than another so long
as you have an experience.
Although if you don't have theone you want you to get upset.
Yes.
But I think he wanted us tounderstand the whole picture and
not just our overly myopic viewof reality.
(14:24):
Maybe he felt it was selfish.
I'm going to agree with theselfish thing, by the way,
that's a little bit ofprojection right there because
of something I experienced laterwhere I was in a similar
position to this guy.
So maybe he felt it was a littlebit selfish that we're praising
this thing without knowing anyof its negatives.
(14:52):
You know, I was thinking thatwhen I started this discussion,
this monologue, it's not adiscussion this monologue that I
was just going to say that it'sbad, that we don't have a
complete view of the places towhich we travel.
And then it's bad for us to comeback and say, I love this place
because of my fake experiencethere, or is a real experience,
(15:14):
but it's not representative ofthe place, but now I'm really
not so sure.
I mean, I can understand why hewas upset, but you can also
understand from the most logicalof perspectives, how a, you can
have a really good experience ina place where you can actually
(15:35):
afford to do what you'd like todo and where those things that
you'd like to do are made reallynice for tourists.
So it's really easy to have thatexperience so I can understand
how that's such a positiveimpact on someone and then how
they would associate that withthe country, especially if that
(15:58):
is their only experience withthat country.
Our brains are patternrecognition machines, and that's
the pattern that we haveestablished for that country,
regardless of whether or not itis in the whole accurate on the
whole, in the whole, I almostsaid ins gazumped and dissolved.
(16:20):
Um, but the point is, so itmakes sense, but I think those
of us, and I'm now going to putmyself in this man's position,
not for Ukraine, uh, but forplaces where I've spent a
significant amount of time, whenyou have spent a lot of time
there, and you have experiencedoing things on a more local
level away from tourists, andyou have experienced dealing
(16:43):
with the difficulties of dailylife, maybe not as much as a
local person, who's born andraised there, but a lot more
than a tourist who's inDisneyland.
When you have those experiencesand you do hear somebody who has
only been there and onlyexperienced the stuff that only
the rich people can experience ano local can really experience
(17:05):
that on a regular basis withoutbankrupting themselves.
And you hear them tell you howamazing that place is when they
have no idea how hard life is inthat place for a regular person.
And they don't know anythingabout that place except for
their fairy tale experience.
It does really, it does upsetyou.
(17:28):
It does just feel like thatperson is being selfish.
It, you want to give themperspective because maybe, maybe
the psychology of it.
I think this is kind ofinteresting to think about.
Maybe the psychology of it isthat if they say this place is
(17:49):
positive, you just internallyassume that they understand all
the negative things and thatthey are also saying that those
positive things include thenegative things.
Maybe that's what's happening,psychology psychologically.
And then that's what upsets youbecause you know that those are
negative things.
(18:10):
So how could they ever bepositive?
I don't know.
Or maybe it's just that.
So this is getting up to thenext level, not lower because I
don't actually know thepsychology of this.
I'd love to know the psychologyof it, which is why I'm reading
a lot of interesting thingsthese days.
But anyway, on one level, it'sjust, Hey man, you're saying you
(18:31):
like stuff, but there's a lot ofbad stuff about it.
You should take that intoaccount as well, because you're
completely disregarding all ofour horrible experiences.
And you're glossing over all ofthe bad things, which in a way
makes it seem like you arediminishing the hardships of
someone who is forced toexperience all of these
difficulties.
You're almost diminishing the,the toughness, the mental
(18:58):
toughness that it takes for thatperson who has experienced hell
maybe to go and serve you inyour rich foreigner person,
restaurant, and put a smile onfor you and pretend like they
haven't been working for 12hours for pay wearing clothes
(19:20):
that were bought at the trainstation while you're wasting
food and throwing around money.
Like there's no tomorrow.
Maybe that's just what it is.
We just lack of empathy can bereally upsetting.
(19:41):
I'm not sure why, but I find itupsetting.
I found it upsetting somethingsimilar to me happened to what
happened to this guy in Ukraine,the guy I talked about.
So I was the, I guess you couldsay perpetrator in Ukraine and
the victim when I was in Kosovoand I was at a restaurant where
(20:03):
only wealthy locals, verywealthy locals and foreigners
go.
And there was a foreigner whowas sitting there.
And I had been there many, many,many times before spent a decent
amount of time in Kosovo.
And the girl was telling me howmuch she loved these countries
over here.
(20:24):
She was talking specificallyabout Kosovo and Albania, and
she rattled off a few thingswhich no local ever gets to
experience.
And she talked about meetingsome locals and I know the
locals that she was talkingabout and what she didn't
realize is that when she seesthem, that's a of their reality
(20:49):
and all these experiences thatshe has are only available to
rich people, very rich peoplewho don't associate with lower
classes, their lower classes asdefined by the cultures there.
And certainly, actually thepeople in those restaurants
don't want to associate withforeigners or maybe to some
(21:11):
degree they do, but the onlyother people there are
foreigners.
So she didn't realize that herexperience was fake.
And she was talking about hownice these places are, how nice.
And it was so upsetting from myperspective, for her to not
(21:32):
realize how God difficult it isfor people who are living there,
born and raised and can't getout.
Yeah, it really me off.
I'm happy that she had that niceexperience there.
I'm happy that she got to go toall those rich person
(21:52):
restaurants, but I do wish thatshe had a bit more of a complete
perspective before she startedspouting off about how great
these places were without beinga bit more nuanced.
(22:12):
So I guess I have become the,uh, I don't know, the grumpy guy
in Rhino-Rack square that Ibegan this story with, who
chastised us for saying thatUkraine was the best place on
earth because of our Disneylandexperience.
(22:33):
I think that's a good place toend this it's kind of come full
circle.
I don't blame this girl for herexperience, by the way, which
you should know if you listen tothe first half of this podcast,
because I was one of thosepeople.
And I talked about how I believepsychologically.
Um, it makes sense that we cancome to these conclusions and we
are all ignorant of a great manythings.
(22:57):
The problem oftentimes is notknowing that of which we are
ignorant.
And sometimes it upsets otherpeople.
Why does someone else'signorance upset us?
I'm going to leave it with that.
So cheers.
(23:19):
And I hope you have a greatweekend.
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