I <3 CEE

It is true love, now go awwwwwww.

It all started at the ripe age of 7 when the Eastern bloc was falling apart but Yugoslavia remained in one piece. The encyclopedia had a picture of a field full of sunflowers somewhere in Yugoslavia, suddenly something called the CIS appeared in the winter olympics of Albertville and there was a film on tv, apparently the first film ever made in independent Slovenia. And then there was war... a lot of it. The Balkan was bleeding and life was fascinating. That eastern part of Europe was mysterious, wild, beautiful. Russia, I'm sorry to say, was only odd at the time, and in Riga they had plenty of toothpaste but no bread. And you weren't allowed to bring any roubles back from there, but we did anyway.

A very wise friend of mine once told me that I'd end up there, that it was some kind of a strange joke that I was born in Finland instead of some random Ukrainian village. We will see about that, but I feel a certain attraction and I doubt that it will ever disappear. I have lived in or visited some of these countries (Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary + the Baltic countries), I am studying some of the languages (Russian, Polish & Hungarian), I love the literature and am hooked to the music. At the same time, it is a journey that I'm afraid to embark on, a bit like a love affair. Sometimes you are too afraid to lose you heart, it might get broken in the process. But hey come on... we are talking about a geographical entity, not a person, so maybe this is another fear I need to face in 2010. Instead of dreaming, maybe I should give it a real chance?

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I know this makes very little sense to anyone. Imagine having someone or something in your head, calling your name without stopping. That's what this strange relationship is like, even if it will make even less sense now.
The picture, by the way, is from Kosice, Slovakia.