Mad night ramblings from Prague

1 AM

At the end of the day, it boils down to writing the story you want to write. What I’ve come to realize is that every life has magic in it. I still vividly remember the time I ran away from my home in Belgium, to arrive in the South of France, with the rain coming down. Without knowing it, I arrived during the time of the film festival. Famous actors, walking along the red carpet. The day after I was laying in the sun on a pebble beach. It was my first time traveling solo. I haven’t stopped since. On all my adventures, I seem to fall in love over and over again. And I wouldn’t change it for the world. There is something about discovering a new place, new people a new walk of life. Hell, I’m sitting here, stupid tired as I’ve for the first time arrived in Prague, and as it’s a public holiday I’ve been unable to find accommodation. Scary? Not really. Exhausting, sure. But I am alive. I feel it in my bones and wouldn’t change it for the world.

I can’t remember where I lost living right now. Nowadays it seems as if I’m always in either the past or the future. “Oh, how I miss the time I was living in Costa Rica.” Or how about, “and maybe two years from now I’ll be able to really break through with this social media platform I’m developing”. Fuck it. That’s what I’m telling myself now. It’s not about meandering over the past. It’s not about constantly struggling about how your future should be. It is about the here and now. Sleepdrunk, high on caffeine and with an empty page in front of me in an overbooked hostel in Prague.

Life will figure itself out I reckon. Like my last ride up here told me, don’t pressure yourself too much. Just be you and you’ll be fine. Even writing this a part of me is unwilling to accept. I’m currently chuckling away at my own irony as I had some thoughts pop up about how it was easier in the past. I guess we’re all just human in the end, right?
God but do I wonder how this moment came into existence. The first time I left home, you know back when I was 16? When my parents divorced when I was eleven, causing me to run away? Damn, maybe, when I was born. When two people fell in love with each other and decided to have me. Or when my dad had to leave Bangladesh, as to why, I can’t tell you the whole story as I don’t know it myself. Another thing I promised myself to take care of at one point in the future. How did it all become so intertwined. I guess by now you understand we can keep going back all the way in time, to before the existence of humans, before the existence of the universe. It leads me to believe that the whole past, is what makes your now. With this much of baggage you’re carrying, you can imagine how important your now is. Every decision you make alters a whole lineage of futures. The crazy thing? Only one future will exist, out of the trillions of possibilities, only one. So in all this vastness of time, we come to the contradiction of our existence. We are so important, yet not at all.

Something tells me this rambling is not going to make much sense to any readers. The mind of a mad man at work? I am not willing to stop my fingers from flying over the keyboard. Obviously, that is the moment they stop.
But how about you, do you still think about the past, the future? How about you, do you still think about me? Should you? Should I?

This was supposed to be a piece on magical moments, guess that got messed up along the way. But talking about those. A few more come to mind. A night next to a campfire with dozens of shooting stars. A hidden free festival in the Moroccan desert. A night in a tent on a beach in Costa Rica. Hmm, I guess I do really like camping somehow.
Sometimes I traveled without my tent, always ended up missing it. For some more irony, now that I am traveling with it, I haven’t used it. Even not now, awake in an overbooked hostel in Prague. I don’t know the city well enough to feel safe setting it up in a park here. Decisions influenced by my past, and with an outlook for the future. Instead of letting my overtired self sleep a likely proper night in my lovely tent.

2 AM

One hour has passed by, three more to go. Apparently I can see an amazing sunset from Charles Bridge here. Shit, if I’m going to be up all night, might as well make it worth my time. I guess that’s what has caused this writing as well for all it matters. It’s a real good time killer, next to reading, gaming and developing. Well, for me at least. Oh, how the many sleepless nights I’ve willingly spent now come to haunt me.

It seems the hostel around me is quietly ebbing out. The occasional tourist with the same problem as myself walking in. Two apparently got lucky before I got here, getting hosted by one of the staff members. Shit, I am starting to get hungry. Actually bought some, what I assume is, Czech cheese and bread. Super strong taste, kind of nice, but not something you want to munch at the whole night kinda thing. Remind me of my first run away adventure. At the time I was pretty much surviving on water and bread. Sixteen-year-olds (usually) don’t have a lot of money to spend.

Managed to change that for a few years with an internet store I started up and eventually a few years later sold of to keep living in Costa Rica. Good times man. Good times. Oh, here we go again. I guess it makes it easy to keep grabbing back to the good things of the past, or the thing you want to reach in the future. I am going to blame human nature for this one. Than again, I do believe kids are better at enjoying the now. It feels as if the older we get, the less we enjoy. I strongly believe that it is due to things becoming less and less exciting. It’s a problem that we also face in our age of information. We can know everything about everything if we want to. But this kind of information comes at the cost of discovery. Imagine you would kind of BUMP into Angkor Wat. You’d never seen a picture. Barely knew it existed. And then BAM, there it is. But now, even though I have never been, I am quite sure of what to expect plus some extra crowds. I still somehow manage to underestimate crowds before I go somewhere.

Talking about crowds, I used the ladies restroom here. As even with the hostel being completely empty in the common area now, the male bathroom was taken. When I walked out six girls were giving me this confused, what-are-you-doing-here-look. Shit happens. I’m going to be great a dad jokes.

On a total different subject. When I was hitchhiking here I met a fellow hitchikee (I like the sound of that word, so it stays in), and she invited me along to go with her. She was going to go camping near some caves. Guess I should’ve said yes. Damn you past me, damn you. Than again, it might have meant one amazing night somewhere in Germany as opposed to one insane rambling I can read twenty times over and chuckle away at when I’m seventy or so. Not that I think that’s likely. Not the reading part, the me making it to seventy. Intense lives don’t last long but have twice the impact! Or at least I like to think so.

Actually, I had another cool insight whilst hitchhiking today. Think of all the great people from your time, the ones you admire. Now dig into their past. You know, it’s easy with Google nowadays. They all did crazy stuff. It kind of puts my mind at ease, if I am going to do something great, I need to be crazy first.

Overthinkers rule the world, yet can’t rule it nor themselves. I guess that’s why we all escape in one thing or another. Drugs, traveling, gaming, reading, you name it. Everyone has something they escape into. Some just do it more frequent than others. For me it has caused me to be great at useless things, and has made me the best responsibility dodger I know. One of those other things I am working on for my future. Which makes me think, maybe it’s not so bad to work on your future nor remember your past. As long as you can still enjoy or at the very least realize your now. Am I still making sense? More importantly, are you still reading. Shit, that is impressive.

I am slowly getting too tired to keep on writing. It has been a great time-killer though. We’re pretty much nearing 3 AM now, which means I have a little under 3 hours to go before the sunrise. Hmm, beautiful sunrise over the river and then beautiful nap time in whichever park is closest by. Yes, please. I am currently having an inner debate between more coffee or less coffee right now. With three hours to go, I think taking it slow on the coffee ingestion is probably the wiser choice. But a good cup of coffee would be damn great right now.

Oh, I actually have another magical moment from this trip. In Berlin I met this really interesting and talented girl. We met up in Friedrichshain Volkspark and talked until late at night with a bottle of wine. It wasn’t as late as it is now though. Fuck, this writing is becoming even more of a mess than I had intended it to be. Sorry readers, you’ll just have to see it through. I promise I’ll try to end with something that was remotely worth your time, but first I’m going to go for a cigarette… and a coffee?

Okay, I didn’t go for a coffee nor for a cigarette… yet. I did have a chocolate bakery thingy, I still don’t know the proper English term for it. It was old, soggy and tasted soooo amazing as I was totally starving. Food is good people, food is good.

On a totally unrelated subject again. One of the drivers gave me a roll of toilet paper with Trump his face on each piece. God I love people with a good sense of humor. I already totally pulled it out to impress a woman I met at the hostel. I think it worked. Okay, going to smoke now. Bye… for a bit. Just realized that doesn’t make sense, you’re still going to read on while I am smoking kinda thing.

3 AM

Well in truth it is a little over three now, but whatever. I just made an amazing discovery outside! There is a kebab place right around the corner from here, and they were still serving. I have no clue why as the entire street is deserted at the moment. While the first bites were freaking amazing, I eventually had to toss it about 65% through, my stomach was like “NO NO MY FRIEND!” After my initial happiness, I also noticed it didn’t taste quite right. Than again, I might’ve just gotten spoiled by the amazing Gemusse Kebabs I had in Berlin. Like for real, if you ever go to Berlin let me know and I set you up with like an amazing kebab place! They put like these fried vegetables in there and they give you free black tea, damn, you’re going to love it. First place I head to for dinner when I’m in Berlin. Also not far away from there they make these Steinofen Pizza’s, they’re good as well – I wouldn’t say amazing though. But for 4 Euros, you can hardly go wrong. That’s for a full pizza.

Alright, I’m tuning out for tonight’s mad ramblings. Laptop battery is going to die and I can’t be bothered to look for my charger right now! I hope and doubt you have enjoyed this little piece of work. Sad fact, this is now longer than the novel I’m trying to write.

In order to try and make it worth your while this is Charles Bridge in Prague during sunrise: