New Year’s Memoir – 2024 Edition

May

Next I planned to do some “working from hostel”, which worked well for me in the past. I also had the idea to flirt with cities to see if they can seduce me away from Prague. Spoiler: they didn’t. The first stop was Verona, Italy, home of Romeo & Juliet. Berberè had quite good pizza. The Italians seemed quite cutely prosocial in how they maintained eye contact. Overall, the city didn’t interest me much in terms of habitation.

I really wanted to check out Zagreb for some reason. On the way, Ljubljana in Slovenia also seemed like a rad stop. I fell in love at first sight with the beautiful layout of the city; once going up on the castle’s tower, I could see the proportion of green:city increased smoothly out to the hills. There were many beautiful people too 😍. 

Metelkova City Autonomous Cultural Centre is fairly cute. They’ve squatted in the former military headquarters from 1993¹See Wikipedia. Unlike Christiania, I got the impression that it’s just a hangout and people don’t live there much. During the day, it was infested with drug dealers. On Friday night, May 5th, I went to Channel Zero for their event, Cosmic Sex, featuring a Jordonian DJ. The atmosphere at Metelkova was stellar: it appeared as if half the young nightlife in the city gathered in one place due to the concentration of clubs, so everyone hung out among the graffiti together when breaking from dancing. The music and club interior were good.

Little did I know, there was a West Coast Swing festival this weekend. I attended the intro lesson and ball on Friday before indulging in some cosmic sex. The atmosphere was stellar, too 🙂😉. 

On Saturday, after some working and strolling in the park, I attended a cute group called Deeper Conversations‘s event. The idea is to have 15-20 minute deep talks with people as rotating; similar to speed dating/friending. The prompt cards weren’t always needed and the conversations were amusing²With the caveat that one person sort of shallowly ranted. Not bad, I’d say 🤷‍♂️.. I joke that the event is an exercise in “talking like a Zar”. As an aside for the popssibility of being a regular in a matter of days, one guy was at both Deeper Conversations and the Swing Ball 😎🤘.

Aaaaaand then when the time finally came for Zagreb and Croatia, I got sick 😂🫠🙈. On the way to the hotel, I was greeted with, “I am you; you are me”. 

Next, looking for a tunnel, I found a strangely positioned work of graffity art next to a wire noose 🤔.

Zagreb has a cute Museum of Broken Relationships, which was interesting and grew a bit tiresome by the end. The below Mini furniture is a good example. Cutely bittersweet. One needs to read the story to get it, so the museum is primarily a curation of stories with curious props.

I like the moral of this wooden wand to learn from the twists and turns of every relationship. Quite aesthetic.

The sweater of indecision is one of my favorites: fuck it, let’s see our cute dreams to completion even if we’ve separated!

Overall, my time in Zagreb was pretty chill and I got some work done. I remembered ye olden days of travel when I didn’t mingle with the locals and simply enjoyed nature, museums, etc. There was this absolutely peculiar concrete park with dashes of grass in the middle of a highway. The Nikola Tesla Technical Museum was fairly amusing; I hadn’t been to a technology museum in a while. The cards for guided conversations to get closer seem like a really neat idea.

That’s all for Zagreb³I had a disturbing experience where I received death threats at the hostel, which I’ll leave off for now. Curiously, I’m still grateful for the learning experience.. Next stop: Budapest!

I chose to stay at the Hive Party Hostel, figuring it’d be nice to have the boisterous atmosphere at home. Totally right! Returning at 23 to see a lively crowd of people enjoying themselves felt great 💛. Moreover, the hostel room on the 2nd floor was sufficiently quiet by my own standards. 

One morning, this cute grizzly guy’s alarm kept going for over an hour. A friendly girl reported trying to wake him to no avail already. I gently succeeded and asked him to turn the alarm off; he snoozed it and went back to snoozing himself. The song is super gently cute; it’s no wonder he didn’t wake up. The sound is as of floating on cloud 9. Spotify recommended it to me soon after and it became my #2 song of the year. My own alarm is Good Beat by Deee-Lite if you’re curious.

And it will come as no surprise that one highlight is a psytrance party! :D. Ironically, the Digital Forest Festival’s Promo Party took place by a lake 40 minutes from Budapest. I finally got a trippy psychedelic shirt from BarbArt Design. Barbara and I became friends too; especially in the I & Thou spirit, I find it really cool to intimately know the person who made my clothes 😎🥳.

I love the sound of Hungarian, too. I can understand how as a kid, I made up my own language: Zar Hungarian. The people seem especially huggy and friendlily warm. It was clear that overall, English proficiency is significantly worse than in Czechia (which isn’t that great, either). I think enjoying this environment and talking to some people who will be at Ozora helped catalyze my choice to attend more festivals in 2023.

I also met up with a friend from Steve Pavlina’s Submersion course, which was cool. She recommended this ruin bar, Szimpla Kert, which looks stunning 🤩. While adoring the beauty of the streets in the rain, I discovered this cool song: “Hobo Don’t Mind a Little Rain“. 

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I must interlude to introduce a new love of mine: balfolk. I began on January 24th at an event with live music and an introductory lesson⁴And even invited a girl as a quasi-date; she didn’t like it so much.. The idea seems to be to have a ball of folk dances. The Czech group does relatively simple renditions so that it’s easy to learn, and my understanding is that likely other balfolk communities will do similar repertoires⁵I attended a balfolk event in Innsbruck, and the atmosphere was similar, albeit with a heavy skew toward the 60+ age range.. 

One of the dances feels like playing human snake and is called Hanter Dro. Then there are mixers such as Chapelloise where (almost) every lead and follow dance together. The core steps are very simple and fault-tolerant so that anyone can jump in and have fun. Experienced dancers can improvise in various fashions. We also do pair dances such as the schottische, which some claim originated in Bohemia 😯, waltz, and mazurka. 

I especially love the socially open, friendly environment where people are welcomed to join in on the dancing even if they don’t know the steps well yet. Moreover, there are so many folk dances and variations from different countries that even those who’ve danced for over a decade may not know them all. So far, most women at the events can lead, too. I’m learning to dance from a place of connection with the partner over a fixation on doing the steps correctly. About 6 weeks of Argentine Tango lessons also helped with this skill and mindset shift.

I can see how many of these folk dances help foster community spirit. Unlike at a club, most people will actually dance with most other people. (Human) physical touch and mirth are also psychologically beneficial. I’ve been going almost weekly when in Prague for almost a year and am becoming somewhat comfortable with the basics. I seem to overall feel better when getting the dance cheer in, and some others have reported similar benefits. 

I’d love to introduce balfolk to the psytrance festivals, especially those aiming to foster a sense of solarpunk community.

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This worked really well. Some people gave interesting responses and most enjoyed the game. I got to know some acquaintances better 🤓. I took the symbols from a friend who is learning the Fae writing system, language, and cosmological philosophy. I also recommend his music. 

The festival was super intense: discussions, dancing, contemplating, or sleeping from Thursday to Sunday. My previous festivals had been much more chill, Psy Kemp in 2021 and Yaga in 2017. Due to a combination of my own development and already lightly knowing many faces at Fenix. I had my first or second taste of ecstatic dancing. Some organizers claim that this year, they’ll have more English workshops⁶And maybe I’ll be a part of making that happen.. I don’ have many photos.

I highlight was Økapi‘s set Saturday night. Due to a lack of videos, I’ll point you to eir set from Tribal Gathering 2017. The music is fast-paced and super cheery! Moreover old-school video game tunes get mixed in 🥰. I love fast, heavy, and hard music — yet also like it light and fluffy, which is strangely a rare combination.