My life partner, Jullia, and I have decided to embark on a journey to check out different places where it would be nice to relocate for a while. We got in touch with different people from different parts of Europe and decided to pay them a visit so we get a real feel of life in those places.

After many changes of the initial plan, it went like this: London, Carmarthen and Bristol (UK), Momjan (Istria, Croatia), Venice (Italy). We also ended up spending a day in Cluj (Romania).

The land of liquid sunshine

London, we hated it. Me more than Jullia. The noise is almost unbearable. However, spending time with Roy, an artist and a good friend of Jullia, was really lovely. If our whole experience of London would be based only on the time spent with him, we would sure want to get back there. 

But it wasn't. :)

I can see now why London is considered a vibrant city where everything happens but I can also see how that is mostly valid if you have lived there for some time now. For newcomers, most of the good events are just barely visible. 

Our second day in London was reserved for the free museums, which are most of the big ones. Total disaster. They have just become museum malls. The noise and agitation inside the museums is sometimes even greater than the one out on the streets. Yep, even inside the art museums.

Another failure was to see inside the Science Museum the section dedicated to Atmosphere which was sponsored by Siemens. One of the main topics in the exhibition was how clean is nuclear energy (which is so false). Of course, Siemens builds nuclear reactors. Now, that is everything but not science.

Something I really wanted to do in London is to taste some good indian food. An old friend of mine, Cristina, invited us to one of the best indian food places in London. She just warned us that we might stay in line to enter the restaurant. Definitely, a new experience to try. We waited inside the restaurant around 90 minutes to get a table but it was worth the wait. The food was awesome. The youth memories tales with Cristina and her partner were priceless.

My favorite phrase of londoners: liquid sunshine. That's how they call rain. Ain't it in good spirit? Some people hate rain but if we loved something about London, that was the weather.

Enough of London

Next day, Carmarthen where Roy's brother was very kind to host us for 2 nights in his home. And what a home! This part has been my favorite part of the whole journey. Mike's family is one of the most beautiful families I have ever seen. A big and united family which clearly enjoys spending time together (and not only for holidays).

For the last 10 years Mike spent his free time to build the most awesome garden I have ever seen (more than 600 trees and half a hectar of flowers). When we'll have our own place, I'll definitely challenge him with a garden of our own. We really enjoyed spending time with Phillipa, Craig, Hanah and Viv, all proud members of the family.

On our second day there, they gave us a great tour of a small part of Wales and I was really glad to introduce them to Geocaching. It was one of the best days of our whole journey.

Carmarthen seemed like the best places to live in. Quiet, small and beautiful with a great community around. However, Mike's family, unknowingly, gave us a very good reason on why we shouldn't relocate from Romania: having a big family to count on. If we move, we'll just be alone and it will take at least a generation to get to enjoy life as they do. In the meantime, our families here will not be the same with us being away. Not moving though, means being stuck in the same political and identity crisis we face today. We'll just have to put everything in balance and take the best decision when it comes to going or not going.

On a beautiful Tuesday morning we left Carmarthen for Bristol. Way too noisy. Way too expensive. However, seeing Banksy works in real life was worth it.

We also got acquainted with how the UK system works. Just like the US one, it is very much based on credit history. I find that sooo wrong. We struggle here on how to do things without being dependent on banks, and when you look at systems like this, they just make no sense at all to us. Our only chance of moving to UK and rent a place is to pay one year in advance. ?!?!?

More to the East (and South)

Anyway, the next day, around noon, we found ourselves in a bus towards Pula somewhere in the beautiful Istria of Croatia. We met in Buje with Rand, my former "boss" and one of my best friends ever, from BalkanSunflowers in Kosovo. We stayed at a friend of his, Michael, an american who is more of a balkan (and proud of it for the good reasons) and has a house in Momjan, around 30 km from the sea side.

The whole istrian experience has been, again, amazing. Great hosts (Michael and Marjana), neat cave adventure, long walks between beautiful landscapes, cycling on the coast, good ice-cream, great sunsets in old towns with Venetian arhitecture, truffles, pasta and good balkan movies. Let's not forget political debates on world issues that could just go forever. :)

Almost 4 days spent in Istria, a region we might want to go back again, but probably in the winter when the the sun will be a little bit more forgiving. :)

Our next destination Venice. Won't talk much about it cause we didn't really enjoyed it as much. Lots of garbage, lots of boutiques, lots of buildings in a bad state and advertising banners in the biggest square. Nope, not really our style.

The long way home

The next day we arrived in Romania, more exactly in Cluj. Alexandra from urbangourmet.ro (of which she is really proud and should be) invited us to a great place called Qui One Quint. In a couple of words: old furniture, great host, amazing tea. We'll go there again one day.  Long chats with Alexandra who was a guide for us for the short time we spent there. We definitely promise to go again one day and stay some more :)

From Cluj we took the train to Brasov. The experience was a great reminder why we want so much to move from Romania. 7 hours spent in a double deck train with long distances on which it went with just 20km/h, no or very little air con and bad smells.

Anyway, we are home now. Tired bodies but rested souls. The whole journey is definitely something we will remember about. As for pictures, you know I don't like to take any, but Jullia has some. :)

Long time ago, the west had its factories and the east had the commies. Both wanted one thing: more working hands. Yep, they were paying for the hands not for the brains.

The good thing about the west is that factories and businesses adapted to the new times and starting hiring people for the brains. The bad thing is that the commies were really stubborn so, in the east, we got stuck with them for a long long time. The commies changed mentalities: most of the people feel of themselves being nothing more but 2 working hands.

When the commies left, the world needed our brains and all we had to offer were 2 lousy hands… 

There is a secret that they forgot to tell us: Work is investment. One can invest in 2 different ways:

• low risk - low margins (or the hand working style). You make sure you get a job and that you slowly get promoted in time. Part of the money you earn goes to a retirement fund so at the end of your working life you get to be able to live some more. You spend 5 to 7 days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day all your life just to make sure that you won’t run out of money.
• high risk - high margins (or the brain working style). You put a lot of effort in building something new and create things that people will use and buy. You work with passion (sometimes like crazy) and you make sure that everything you do will have a return on investment. When things turn out well, you never have to worry about the security of your future. If things turn out bad… well, they don’t. I’m betting on it!

3 months ago, me and my life partner, decided to take the second path. We’ll let you know how it turns out. 

Hand working is measured by working hours. Brain working is measured by profit. 

PS. At PadiCode, the company I co-founded not long ago, we launched today our first paid product: PadiAct - Increase Email Subscription. 

I started an undergraduate program 3 times by now and never completed it. It wasn’t me who failed but rather each faculty I started failed me. Each time by not attending classes I was learning more. I’ve seen it all: corrupted professors, superficial or with questionable values but most importantly, highly uninterested colleagues. In two words: no community.

In fact, not being able to find a community where I could find students at least as interested as me in studying and researching has been a huge frustration of mine. So I went and looked for passionate people in other places and each time I was lucky to find them. I guess the education I got is thanks to all those small communities of professional people that allowed me to be part of.

However not everybody is as lucky to get to be part of such groups. Formal education should provide it and where it doesn’t a revolution should start as of now.

One student should not be judged by the school he finished but by the accomplishments of the group he was part of during studies. Teachers should play the role of mentors, not judges.

The good news is that more and more interest goes in the direction of formal education as more people realize it is flawed. Seth Godin, has been advocating for ages changing the status quo of formal education. The other day Jason from 37 signals wrote a great article about The class I’d like to teach.

There is hope…

True insights come though from Sir Ken Robinson: he should be placed as minister of education for the whole world. Sugata Mitra is another great example of leading change into formal education world wide. Enjoy:

The chances are that for almost  every idea you come up, there is usually a person, a group or a community that already does it somewhere else in the world. I guess it doesn’t really matter to be the first as it matters to do it right, improve it and spread the word about it.

Me and my girlfriend decided to move away from the noise, stress and dirtiness of big cities to somewhere quiet, beautiful and with pleasant and smiling neighbors. We will move soon to the historical city of Brasov in a beautiful house with a mountain view.

When we decided to do this we thought that it’s crazy enough for us and even if it doesn’t work, we should give it a try. However, today I stumbled upon the following Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downshifting

So it does work, it is possible and it isn’t really that crazy. It’s actually a trend :) A good trend (tribe) to be part of.

For some people a project is successful when they present it to their manager or CEO and get in return a “Good work” reply. For others, a project is successful when they have the metrics to prove it.

Today I went into a meeting with the first kind. It didn’t matter what was in the report we gave, what mattered was that it wasn’t in the format they can present it to their “president”. The content didn’t matter.

This reminds be about one of my first projects as a free lance. After finishing the project I called the client to notify him. He invited me to his office and asked me to invoice him. That was the good news. I asked him about feedback about the website I just delivered. He said he didn’t see it.

Never before (and after) have been so offended. However, today was close.