Well, we are somewhat glad that it is coming to an end, glad that we decided to go with a tour instead of on our own and now know that once is enough.
They are all beautiful cities and country sides. All are filled with very hard working people who are just as we are in trying to grab onto and maintain a good quality of life.
Everyone, at least once in your life, should make this excursion into someplace that has a history so large pand affected and that is totally foreign to us. This part of the world, including Russia, Turkey etc. are so old that they contain a world of items so big and ornate that it is hard to imagine having been alive in that time or to still live amongst them today.
Indeed the architecture of the cities is high maintenance and so is in poor repair due to high cost and even less desire of the government to want to even start the projects. So when you walk through the streets, it is with disbelief that so much is crumbling and awful looking in its ignorance.
Real people live in these areas and I suppose they just ignore it - crumbled parts, smelly bits, graffiti and all.
The people are of two sorts: those who remember and then those who don't. The younger crowd - clearly the more happy of the population, move and live with a smile, ready to help if they can and want more out of life - just as our younger population in our own countries do. It is right and the way of those taking their place as a contributor to society. The older group - may they find more peace in their lives, still feel the confines of their communist past and are withdrawn, stoic and want nothing to do with tourists or anything other than what they know.
Their thinking is still pretty backwards and shortsighted. These countries, much as Spain was, had no necessity and were not even allowed, in fact, to learn another language - never mind English but not even the language of the country with which they have so much connection. Just in the last years since the end of communism were they allowed to learn a language of their choice and now they cannot graduate from university unless they test for two languages.
Still on the whole these people are stuck in a lack of self efficacy. An example: in the public toilets, where a lady or man sits all day to collect money for use of a human function, they will not accept anything other than the coin that they ask for. Not even a combination of coins that might add up to the correct amount, no, nothing, nit, nein, non, nay, ni. How stupid. They would just shake their head and yell at you.
Okay, I get it. They never had a say before and they have spent their whole life doing what they were told so now even branching out to something different or imaginative is hard for them. Even harder is for them to watch us demand a better way because we are so used to making our world work for us. Too, they seem to have found a way to deal with their world which is noisy, crowded and filled with us, the unwanted visitor, and manage to carry on with their day. I can't imagine living like that - but then I wasn't raised to feel so helpless, nor to accept such a state of helplessness.
