Civilization, broadly defined as the totality of things making up a certain way of life, as well as the interactions between those things -- civilization is, as far as I can tell, always established within the boundaries of a specific geographical region. This statement sounds like a truism, but when coupled with our age's realities, another observation lies behind its supposed triteness. Namely that "export civilization" isn't really a thing, and that it can't be; because as soon as said "civilization" reaches, say, Romania, it gets distorted through the sheer nature of the local environment. A thing which in practice isn't necessarily detrimental to said environment, seeing how some folks here and there can still speak Romanian instead of this God awful English.
Anyways, said export also generates feedback effects from time to time, so some of the folks in the colonies tend to gravitate towards the center of the empire. This is how in 2025 Indian and Chinese are so commonly spoken in techie societies, and also how some random dude from Romania got temporarily suckered into travelling more than ten thousand kilometers, all the way over to the fucking end of the world. And then the entire way back home! I guess they don't and indeed cannot like me that much over there, do they?
One of the biggest problems with the US and A is that it's such an awfully big place. I can only suppose that the early settlers had observed that if anything, after so much seafare, they then had land, and lots of it: deserts, mountains, woods, pretty hills, whatever, there's land for everyone. So this is how they made huge interweaving roads connecting huge cities hosting huge buildings sporting huge rooms with huge furniture and so on and so forth. Yet filled with large people who need to sit their asses in huge-ass cars everytime they need to do anything. And go figure, I had to deal with this shit for two whole weeks! So, to wit:
A huge junction, photo taken from a huge-ass car:
A huge-ass freeway (albeit not the biggest):
A very big tower:
The biggest bridge I've seen so far, bordering the bay on one side and the ocean on the other:
A huge office building where everything's just business as usual:
Above, a huge... I don't know, you tell me what this is. I suppose that by staring hard enough, the viewer can indeed find some sort of symbolism in the whole thing; that is, regardless of whether there's any substance to it, which... well, say, what do you suppose these guys were selling? Because indeed, someone was selling something, and in a huge-ass mall nonetheless. Feel free to take a guess in the comments box.
While trying to avoid turning this article into a food blogpost, I'll have to confess that a lot of my experience in California was lived through food. I had lots of good stuff wherever I went, and some mediocre items as well, and I tried to avoid the bad variety as much as possible. I wasn't interested in the least in American export brands: why, there are plenty of McDonald'ses here in Bucharest and I bet the junk food over the ocean is at least as junky as the local one. I did however enjoy some Greek fast food down in Sunnyvale, and while the gyros pales in comparison to the one at home in Athens1, it's decent, what can I say. But the Mexicans, the Vietnamese and even Spanish and Indian restaurants that I tried -- thanks to the good sense of some very friendly locals -- were quite delicious.
Which brings me to the most important part of this journey, the people, the end-all of this human existence of ours. I'm happy to say that I've met quite a few of them, and from various social strata, and I can quite see where this industrious American spirit comes from. I've met a lot of techies, a cattle ranch owner, some musicians, some taxi drivers and they all had in common this habit of working their asses off. Funnily enough, I believe that techie Romanians tend to work a lot more than their American counterparts, the counterpoint to this being that the latter are a lot better organized than the former. Sure, the folks that I've met pull a lot of all-nighters, but they seem to shoot themselves in the foot much less often, most likely due to a certain tradition. And maybe that's the same tradition that states that in this business, people don't really make friends, at least not in most places.
I've also been to the local dive bar:
The people there do make friends without any troubles, unencumbered by the trap of financial gains. In other words, they're poor and to top it off, some of them are visibly afflicted by meth or other personal problems. Still, these folks did know how to enjoy life. We went there to watch a jam session unfold, and the whole thing reminded me of my youth back in Big Mamou2; they played Seek and Destroy plus a bunch of blues standards and oh boy, they were quite young, which kinda goes to show that this rock thing isn't really dead. At least not in the places where it came from.
I guess I'll have to make this a multi-parter, since I've already gone past the thousand-word mark.
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Yes, Europe is home, and the Balkans more so, with all their silliness. ↩
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Despite my rant at the beginning of the article, Cornel knew exactly what kind of culture he was importing back into his low-level pub. The pretenses weren't as high back in 2005, so folks just focused on making music, irrespective of how rich they were. And trust me, I don't know if Cyfer's fee covered his train ticket back to Brașov; but he was there every. darn. weekend, and he was making the show like his life depended on it. But most importantly, he enjoyed every darn moment of the stuff he was making.
Where is Cyfer today? I don't know, I haven't had a Zuckbook account for years so I don't know what he's doing nowadays. So if by any chance you're Cyfer, leave a comment below. ↩
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