Recently at work there was talk about who lived where as a child. Well, I told a bit about my house in Kaluga. The conclusions were surprising, of course.
Anyway, we have an international team. But there's this guy from Argentina, and our whole team has somehow gotten used to comparing Russia with Argentina - well yes, developing countries, probably both a bit worse than Czech Republic.
So I started telling how I lived in an apartment building, close to the river, soon there will clearly be beauty there, because in Prague everything that's close to the river has started to look simply wonderful in recent years. And Kaluga - an ordinary city, not big and not small, there's clearly some business there, people live, youth is growing up.
Well, the guy from Argentina also told - well, I'm also from not the biggest city. Yes, also lived near water, also a nice area. Well nothing special, everywhere in Argentina is like that.
And suddenly I got a wonderful idea to look on Google Maps at our places of residence. And you know what? Remember how I described that I live by the river, all that stuff? Here you go:
And here's poor Argentina, where they shoot, kill and drugs:
And you know what areas look like where they'll definitely kill you and where it's unsafe in the evenings?
And here's the damn thing, what's most offensive - in 5 years in Czech Republic I've already forgotten how it is at home. The human brain is interestingly arranged - it remembers only what's connected with emotions, and mainly positive ones.
So I remembered my home as something green, with trees, near the river and huge potential, but as it turned out, right under our windows they built some concrete monstrosity with a fence.
Most offensive is realizing that it's highly likely everything I remembered as "good" in reality already looks different for a long time.