The Past is Gone

Recently I was using Google Maps to check out various locations I lived or visited in the past. I was wondering what have changed or not since the last time I have been there. If few things, I actually liked or remembered there back then are still around? For the most part I could not find anything that could give me any sense of nostalgia. Not because I could not find the locations, but because these places feel different now, too different to feel like I have lived there in the past. Buildings still stand, most of them, but they give off different feel and vibe. Instead of nostalgia like "oh, I remember I used to walk or play here" it for the most part "it's all gone now". Different stores, different trains, different stations. Only some infrastructure pieces remain, like that tunnel and that other bridge is still there, but it's too little to matter.

Russia is particularly badly affected. Current KGB rat (Putin) regime hates 90s and probably tries to erase all that might remind anyone of these times. Together with 90s they also essentially erased everything that ever connected me to that country. I am a child of 90s and like to remember these times fondly, no matter what henchmen of KGB rat say. Real bandits are not "bandits of the 90s" whom Kremlin reviles but KGB who stole and renamed what businessmen of 90s build. 

All stores are new and different, all what was there before is gone. Average store vibe is like they were planned and designed by people who hate retail and consumerism and wanted to make it as small and cheap as possible to spend less money on it. In theory they wanted to upgrade trains and stations, but new ones somehow feel even more depressing than old ones. They did not improve them, just changed the signs to make it look more modern. Everything looks even less spacious and more built up than it was before. All streamlined amalgamated and homogenised. All to make it as cheap as possible and squeeze even more people into the same space. Designed by people who do does not care for anything but birthrates. It's despicably ugly to watch.

Even before I never liked Russia or feel at home there, but now there is not even a single thing I care about left to connect me to the country. It's now completely different and foreign to me. One cannot enter the same river twice and one cannot return Yeltsin's Russia back into existence. Only memories of what is once was, remain. But the country changed too much, and I no longer recognise it as a place I once lived in. Its not a motherland.

Karlovy Vary, Cesenatico, Heraklion and Antalya feel better, but they too could not escape trends of the times. Hotels and entertainment feel less cozy and hospitable and more of a weird and outlandish. Ever since 2010s there was this ugly trend to make everything either retro ugly or some grinch level weird. 

I guess escaping current fashion trends in nostalgia was not the most prudent decision. People who like things I do not and hate things I like running the show everywhere across the globe. It's truly sad to see them destroy or change a lot of what I liked.

The excesses are what makes life worth living, without them it's just miserable existence.

I can only hope that we will take power from austerity clowns, who have turned life into circus and are currently running it, sooner rather than later and redirect the money from excessive breeding towards making life cozier and sunnier than it currently is. 

Golden sand, cyan water, golden rays of setting sun, warm nights, pleasant smell of flowers and the sea, glass, brass and lights, tasty food in abundance, boats, many, many boats and planes, and carpets and comfy large armchairs and sofas, art the cozy, not shocking type. That is what we need, I need in my life.