Tom Bean

Sziasztok, Jánó vagyok. Közép-Európa első világra szóló podcast csatornáját hallgatjátok Magyarországról. Ez a Budapest.fm. Hi, my name is Ray, and you're listening to the number one podcast station in Central Europe, Budapest.fm, podcasting to the world from Hungary. I can't see you, Tom, but I can hear you, and your voice is very powerful, and it's conjuring up all sorts of images of the past. What have we been apart for a month now? Feels like a lifetime, but yeah, I guess it's been a month. It's been a month. When did you leave for Croatia? You left about middle of April or beginning of April, no? I left, yeah, I guess March, end of March, end of March. It was like March 30th or something. And what did you guys do down there? How was it? It was great. It was great. We stayed in a house, a little off-grid solar house in a village in Croatia called Vraschane. It's in Dalmatia, which is kind of like central coastal Croatia near Zadar. And yeah, the house was literally off-grid. We had water, and we were powered entirely from solar panels. It was a little olive orchard, and yeah, heated by a little wood stove. It was spectacular. That sounds amazing. It was an olive orchard. Were the trees, they have olives on them? Not yet. I think they might be starting to fruit soon. Like they harvest in late fall, so in November. But yeah, there were no fruits on the trees. It's really cool. I really liked the olive trees that we— the one orchard we were in was like five to ten years old, but just like with olive trees, olive trees are really evident how old they are, which I didn't really realize until I was there. But, you know, I'm spending a month there. I started to become a pro in all things Croatian, like olive orchards. And the older olive trees get, like the more they start splitting at the stalk, kind of, and so you can tell. Like there are some super old, like hundred-year-old olive trees have like ten different trunks coming out of the same ground, and it's super cool. I never knew that before. Hundred-year-old olive trees? That might be a little aggressive, but I saw definitely some like 55-year-old olive trees, 55-year-old olive trees. And yeah, there's like ten different, looked like ten trees coming out of once, like medusa style. That's amazing. Did you have a favorite tree on property? Ooh, good question. No, I did not. But I did, never really did this—I was actually, I was telling you in a voice message that you taught me how to pace. I think you taught me the value of pacing. There's Willie. So yeah, you taught me the benefit of pacing and how meditative it can be. And I did pace through the olive orchard, like every morning, and I tended to do it in the evenings as well, just like having a glass of wine and just kind of walking and thinking. It was just really fun. Really nice companions, these olive trees. Speaking of glass of wine, I got here a leather wine bota. It's called a la bota. I think it's like the boot in Spanish, and it's a leather wineskin, and it's filled with sweet Málaga wine, and you just sort of like give it a little suckle. Don't you squeeze it from like a distance? Yeah, you can. I was doing that before. Let's see it, let's see it, let's see the distance. That's pretty, that's pretty small distance there. To be honest with you, I enjoy sucking on it more. It's like a nice little, like, sippy—it's like a juice box. Yeah, yeah, like little two spots. Yeah, my, I've always wanted to have one of those because my brother used to live in Spain and he went to, where is it, the running with the bulls in Pamplona. Pamplona. Yeah, so he's been there a couple times, and he always sends me pictures, and everybody wears white, and everybody's carrying around those little wine skins, and they're just like, apparently everybody's just like spraying people with wine, and so your white shirt just gets all red because of, like, the blood from the bulls and everything, and it just looks like such a fun party. Like, everybody's got a wine skin. It looks so fun. I've always wanted to drink. Yeah, well, that's The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway is one of my favorite books, and he goes to Pamplona, to the running of the bulls, and he talks a lot actually about, like, the Basque men when he's riding on a bus. They give him the leather wine skin, and he talks about it so romantically, like the fat jets of Valdepeñas wine streaming down the back of his throat. It just sounds very, you know, nice and authentic and whatever, Hemingway, his whole hardo shtick. But yesterday I went to this wine store. It's called the Licorería Antonio Muñoz, and basically it's like a local wine shop, and the lady just said, Do you want this wine leather thing? And I said, Yes, of course. And she communicated this all in Spanish, but somehow or another the point was made. And she gave me this leather wine skin, and she also wrote out, like, handwritten instructions on how to use it, fears that I would improperly treat the wine skin. So anyway. I was wondering what those instructions were that you were flaunting about on that story. But yeah, she wrote out, like, a whole handwritten note. I translated it, and then somebody else translated it for me. They're pretty, like, simple. One of the things is, like, don't put it in the fridge because it's, I guess, not good for the leather skin. And another thing was, like, when you store it, you have to store it on its side like this, because if it's stored vertical, then the wine will eventually, like, ruin the seam. And the final, there was two more things. The other thing was like, wash it with a damp cloth, not with chemical products. And the last thing was like, at first the wine may taste slightly like animals because it's leather. So there you go. But is that going to be something you can keep the rest of your life if you properly care for it, or what's the lifespan of that thing? Yeah, I mean, I think knowing me, it will last probably like three years, but it will have an extended lifetime for sure. And I think theoretically it could last the rest of my life. I mean, the rest— Knowing you, does that mean its life expectancy is less because it's with you or more? That means that it's less. I would say that I don't have a good track record of, like, protecting precious things for an extended period of time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you're putting faith in me, but— I mean, yeah, I was going to say, I actually think for something like that would probably live a long time with you. It's almost like a puppet, but it's a puppet you can drink things from. So, and I know that puppets have long lives with you. Yeah, that's true. If you're going off my track record with puppets, they actually have had quite the extended time period, so that's good. You should maybe just, like, turn your— get a phone case that, like, makes your phone a puppet and you might not lose it very much. But I don't know, you don't lose your phone that much. Yeah. And this wine, so this wine is, like, really sweet. It's called—the grape is called, like, Pedro Ximénez, or Ximénez, and in Spain they have a lot of, like, sweet wines. And the most famous one is, like, Jerez, or sherry, as a lot of people call it, and that's also in Andalusia. But then Málaga province also has its own dessert wine, and it's just called Málaga. So this is a type of Málaga. And in the store they had all these different barrels in the front that you could fill into the leather wine bota thing, and one of them was Pedro Ximénez, and there was a whole range from, like, super, super sweet to medium sweet. And this is actually the sweetest one. It wasn't my favorite, but the lady, when I asked her what her favorite was, she said this. And, like, I don't know, I just kind of wanted to get it. So I also got it a little bit for Alexa because she loves sweet wines, but Alexa didn't like it, so now I just have a liter of dessert wine in my little Spanish leather thing. You're talking so much about wine, I gotta get some wine. Can you riff? Yeah, I can riff. I can always riff. Okay, and I also got some—not like, outside. I'll be right back. Also, this is a good time to say that I'm in Andalusia, Spain right now, near Malaga, in a little town called Rincón de la Victoria, and it's in the Malaga province. There's eight provinces in Andalusia. Andalusia is a very large autonomous community in Spain. In Spain, instead of states, they have these things called autonomous communities. Some of the more famous ones are, of course, places like Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, and then you have the big one in the middle like Castilla-La Mancha, León, Navarra, all these sort of historic places. The Basque Country is another historic autonomous community, even the Canary Islands. Actually, I was looking in the Spanish geography the other day, and there's two cities on the coast of Morocco in Africa, literally like on the landmass of Morocco, but Spain still holds dominion over them. And those are Ceuta is one, and I think the other one's called like Melilla. Did you know that, Tom, that there's two cities in Morocco under Spanish dominion? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the port town that the ferry arrives to from southern Spain in Morocco, it's like a Spanish region, and you have to, like, you could go there and then check your passport, like, once you cross out of that region. Yeah, so that's like a historic thing, and I've been reading a lot about the history since I've been here about Spain and that strait of water in between the Strait of Gibraltar and the Rock of Gibraltar, and it's just interesting that Spain still to this day has like two random little enclave cities. On the Moroccan coast. Have you taken that ferry ride? Is that how you know that? Yeah, yeah. In high school, I went on a trip to Spain with my—it's not even my Spanish class. I went when I was a senior in high school, and I stopped taking Spanish when I was, I think, after my freshman year or something. But I was pretty good friends with the Spanish teacher, and she was telling me, like, Yeah, we're going to Spain. You should come with us. I was like, Okay. I joined the trip, and it was pretty fun. It was like 14 days on a tour bus with a bunch of high schoolers from, like, six different high schools around America. And I had already been to Spain like three or four times to visit my brother who lived there. So it was really— it was almost like I did it backwards. Like, I did the very touristy version of Spain after I already knew it pretty well. And it was still, like, completely worth it, actually. I would suggest anybody to do a trip like that. Nice. That sounds great. What kind of wine you drinking there? This is a Chardonnay from a Vesak winery. I believe it's some kind of bird. It's Croatian. If, thank God, we didn't get checked at the border, they would have surely thought I was an alcoholic. I just brought back a box full of Croatian wine. Cool. Did you go to, like, a vineyard, or you just got that from a store somewhere? No, just got this—picked this up from a store. There's a ton of Croatia. I don't really know what it is, but, like, it's similar to Hungary. Like, Croatian wine game is so strong. There's, like, so much Croatian wine. Even just—so we were in Dalmatia, which is one of the regions in Croatia, and, like, you go to a grocery store, like, the biggest wine section by far is the Dalmatian wine section. I think that region is notorious for wine, so it might just be that I happen to be in the best wine region, but— Yeah, there's just— and there's 92 official grape varieties that can only be found in Croatia, which is also quite cool. How many? 92. 92. Like, grapes that are only grown in Croatia. I feel like that's something that you kind of learn as you get, you know, further into the world of viticulture and wine, is like every region is actually a wine region. I mean, obviously at a certain temperature point, whether it's in the northern direction because of frost or in the southern direction because of humidity, most grapes do not do well. But even in, like, Vermont, where we went to school, I got this email from Middlebury the other day, and it was like one of Vermont's exclusive, or one of Vermont's best wineries. The lady was doing some talk for the students or something, and I never knew that they had wine in Vermont, but apparently they do. So, yeah, it's like, you know, when you're growing up, you think, oh, like, you hear Italy, you hear Chardonnay, you hear France, you hear Spain. You don't really think about how wide of a spectrum the wine world actually is. But now we know. And now you know. Yeah, that was one of the things that I loved so much about Croatia is— and it's similar to Hungary— just it felt like there's so much agriculture in Croatia. Like, like I said, every pass pretty much has either an olive orchard, a cherry orchard, a vineyard, a vegetable garden, or a combination of all four, especially in the region I was. It's just crazy, you know? And it's all pretty diverse because I'm from Iowa, or where I'm from in Iowa, it's like there's a shit ton of agriculture, but it's exclusively corn and soybeans, and it's just like, it's beautiful in its own way because it's like a crop. Ocean, and you can just see forever and like so little changes, and it's fascinating in the same way the ocean is, I say. But yeah, the variety in Croatia and the amount of agriculture is impressive. That's nice. I'm gonna move this table slightly. Have a nice... How's... How these two nice, like, jellyfish and ocean paintings. I feel like it sets the mood a little bit more for Spain. Oh yeah. So how is your house in Malaga? Seeing you've been swimming quite a bit. Yeah, our house is great. It's like a two-minute walk from the beach, so I go swimming twice a day at least, usually in the morning. How do you like these shits? Oh, pretty sick, pretty loud, pretty blue. Pretty loud, pretty obnoxious. Usually in the morning, I wake up and I go for a nice run along the beach, and there's like a little tower on top of a hill, and that's sort of my end point. I go along the boardwalk where all the restaurants and bars and chiringuitos are. The chiringuitos are like the Spanish beach bars. And so usually I'll run up to the tower, and then on the way back I invented this thing called like the chiringuito sprinting challenge, and I sprint from chiringuito to chiringuito, and then I walk, catch my breath, usually like on the verge of passing out by the end, and then I run. You do a beach one? No, no, no, no, no, no. They're just, it's just like my mark point. They're fairly equidistant from each other on the beach, so I should do that one day of the other type of chiringuito challenge where you just have a beer at each one, but that's sort of the opposite goal and intention. And you have to sprint. You have to chug the beer to each one. That's a really good idea, actually. I mean, it's been great being here for fitness. I've gotten in so much better running shape because I'm going running every day. And then I usually strip down almost to nudity. I keep on my underwear, and then I run into the Mediterranean Sea, and it's freezing cold, but it's so refreshing. And somehow I'm like the only one in all of Spain who's been swimming, because I think for the Spanish, they kind of think of this period of the year as like, yeah, it's warm, but it's not really summer, it's not really beach season, it's not really time to swim. But for me, yeah, I don't know. I love it. I just love going, you know, even in the middle of the day, instead of taking a siesta, I prefer to like go wake myself up by running to the sea, because it's just so refreshing and revitalizing, and it just makes you feel healthy. Yeah, that's all I got to say about the sea. And also I know now that it's not the ocean, because for the first like week here, I was exclusively saying, I'm going to the ocean, I'm going to the ocean, I'm going to the ocean, and I was corrected several times. So we're on the same page, dude. I was going to bring this up when you talked about the Straits of Gibraltar—or no, is it the... whatever. I think it is the ocean. I mean, it's not because of semantics, but I don't know. I have problems not calling it the ocean. No, but that's a little bit different, because that's literally the point where the ocean meets the sea. So that's a little bit different. I know. Okay, but let me ask you this. Is that what you're saying, that because the ocean floods in through that point, then this is the ocean as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say, yeah, I'm swimming in the ocean. Like, it's a saltwater thing, but yeah, okay, it's the sea. I understand. It's just hard to imagine. Because it's so vast, it's so much water that actually the fact that the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean is separated by such a small channel, respectively to how big the bodies of water are, it actually has, like, a significant change to, like, everything. Like, it's actually a different, I don't know, like, ecosystem in the Mediterranean Sea than it is in the Atlantic Ocean. Like, they're very different. And on this topic, do you know which ocean is higher, the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean? Which ocean is higher, or if they're the same level? Like, how would you measure the height of the ocean? Are you going to the ocean floor, or from, like, where it starts? That's kind of a good question. It's, like, the fact is that, like, one of them is higher than the other one. Like, there's more water on one side. Like, they're not at the same level. I'm gonna say the Pacific Ocean is higher. The Pacific Ocean is higher. I think you're right. But, yeah, like, at the Panama Canal, like, it slowly raises—like, when you go from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, or vice versa, like, you're slowly changing the height of your boat. I think it's like five centimeters. Like, it's not that big, but it just goes to show that even though they are connected physically, like the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, there is a significant difference. Like, there's so—it just shows how much water is moving. So if there's more water in the Pacific Ocean, it just means there's a shit ton of water, like, flowing downhill into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. It's crazy. Okay. I buy it. I buy it. And speaking of seas, the Black Sea. What do you think about the Black Sea? I don't know much about it, and to be honest, it always scares me. I mean, the fact that it's called the Black Sea, it's, what do you call it, it's ominous. Or in Hungarian it would be the Fekete tenger. I don't know. I assume that it's very black and foreboding in places when they name these things. I mean, it seems like they used to just be a little bit lazy with naming stuff, and also not that accurate. Like the Red Sea in Egypt, maybe parts of it are red. I don't know. That might be a bad example. But they always, like, they take just, like, colors and they say, This is the Black Sea. This is the Red Sea. But the Black Sea, the real reason I was asking, I was hoping that you would pick up on my scent here, but we're going to be in striking distance of the Black Sea in two weeks' time when we're in the Republic, or I don't know if it's a republic, but the country of Georgia together. Hell yes. I did pick up on your scent, but I wanted to see if you had something more planned about the Black Sea. But yes, Georgia, Republic of Georgia. We'll be there in 32 days, if I believe I'm correct, and I can't wait. I'm not even sure that the Black Sea is necessarily a destination for us. I mean, there's so much to see in that fine country. Who knows if we make it to the far west. That's one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about today, actually, because now is as good a time as any, is for this trip, like, we're going to go to Tbilisi in the capital, and then there's a whole marvelous, miraculous country of Georgia over a two-week period for our forced quarantine slot, not really for us, but more for our significant others, so that they can eventually make it to the U.S. safe and sound on foreign soil. We've been burdened with the heavy penalty of having to go to Georgia, and during that two-week period, obviously we're going to spend some time in Tbilisi because that's where the flight gets in and that's where the flight gets out. But then other than that, do you have any ideas, any places that caught your fancy of where you'd want to go? Honestly, this trip to Croatia has maybe nudged my perspective about going on a trip, especially because of COVID. So it's kind of harder for us to go places for, you know, the aspect of anything social. But then again, it's not like I would be wanting to go partying anyway. So I'm really excited for Tbilisi, to be honest, because, I don't know, just Georgia itself is a fascinating little adventure. When we were just seeing the monuments there and, like, the difference in these post-Soviet and, like, kind of, I can't remember how you described them, but the— oh, fuck. I think it's like communist-era monuments that instead of— that they make the human object or the human symbol is really prevalent, and, like, they're giant statues of people. And, like, I don't know, I love that, and I just want to see a bunch of that. I want to see a bunch of cool nature. That statue that you're talking about, it's social realism. Social realism was, like, the big art movement in the Soviet Union, and that was, like, a depiction basically of, like, Superman and Superwoman, but in the Soviet ideal. So it was all very ordinary, but usually, like, the strength of the person or the courage of the person was, like, hyper-idealized. I mean, a good example of it is the Szabadság Soviet, the Liberty Statue on the top of the Gellért Hill. That's one of the only remaining examples of Soviet realism statuary that they've kept in Budapest, partly because it's just a magnificent statue, and partly because the name Szabadság Soviet, Liberty Statue, can be obviously re-idealized in a post-Soviet context. But either way, that artistic movement is very prevalent in Georgia. I mean, they have their own, like, Miss Liberty statue, Liberty statue, that honestly, I'm going to call a spade a spade, it kind of knocks the Hungarian version out of the water. I mean, that statue that we saw, it's huge. It's amazing. But what's cool about that is, like, it's entirely and completely human. Thing, the only thing I remember is like the seven-headed dragon that the guy is slaying. Like, that's not very human. It's very fantastical. And, you know, it requires a certain amount of faith to see some sort of value in that, like faith and fantasy. But what's crazy about the thing in Georgia is like, yo, this is just a normal person that's just 150 times scale, and I just think that that's so cool. Yeah, large statues are quite magnificent. I mean, there's all sorts of different regions in Georgia to go to. There's like the region right next to Tbilisi, I think it's called Tusheti, or there's maybe another name for the whole region, but there's a city called Tusheti, something like that, and that's where a lot of the wine is grown. I mean, Svaneti is somewhere that I'm very attracted to. The Svan people, S-V-A-N, they're a whole separate little ethnic group that speaks a similar language to Georgian, but it's slightly different, I guess. And they've had their own little enclave of sociological development over the past, whatever, three, four thousand years because they're just tucked up in this little beautiful mountain valley, sort of separate from the rest of the country. And then obviously we have all the Black Sea provinces, which we mentioned before, which is more like resort towns like Batumi, which looks great, and Batumi is very famous and it's very recommended and everyone says go there. But again, that might be more of like a place to go when there's people there and it's a little bit more of a social environment. I don't know, it seems kind of flat and like maybe not the most dramatic, but, you know, going to the beach on the Black Sea for a couple days in June might not be the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I mean, twist my arm. But okay, so if I will say, if I had my way... Let's say my goal is to get in as many Georgian backyards and have as much homemade food as possible. That is my goal of the Georgian trip. That sounds like a good plan. Actually, it might be, you know, the Anthony Bourdain episode of Georgia that we watched, when he gets invited to that, like, backyard plastic patio table feast, and they do the rule where, like, everyone makes a toast. And I think, to be honest, he was, like, right on the border of, like, the Russian separatist zone where a lot of people have died recently, kind of tragic. But every toast got more and more meaningful. And the rule with the toasts also in Georgia is that you have to finish the entire vesicle or the entire glass that the toast is made with. So if it's like, you know, I can't—it's a little bit early in the podcast to do it with the entire boot because I'll be on the floor. But you can finish yours to show the people how it's done. But every time they do a cheers and they do a toast and they— I'm going to toast to reconvening soon and to eventually being in Georgia and doing some more toasts. All right. And you have to finish the whole wine. I'm going to just take a swig. So that's how you do it in Georgia, apparently. Anyway, that would be great. To get into backyards, as many as possible would be a nice thing. Did you manage to get into any Croatian backyards? Was that something that you did while you were over there? I think this is one of the perspective changers for me, because when we arrived there, I think when we were driving in, like off the interstate, just kind of driving through villages on the way to our house the first time, when we were a little bit nervous because we were coming from Budapest and we were going to stay in this little off-grid house in the middle of nowhere with, like, no friends and everything, and we were like, shit. This might be kind of heavy. And I was just like, you know what? I bet you within a week we're going to be in a Croatian backyard somewhere having a bonfire, eating grilled fish, and it's going to be dope. And it turned out that weekend, we did a sailing course on the first weekend with a friend that I met last year, and he found out that we were living in this little Raštane village, which is apparently notorious for just having nothing going on. And he was like, Wow, I feel bad for you. Come on over on— because it was Easter. He said, Come on over on Easter Monday and, you know, hang out with me and my family and we'll just have a good time. And it was amazing, super fun. And we, yeah, just had a wonderful time, little grill out, family Croatian grill out, and saw some amazing views from an island off the coast, and it was just, you know, a dream. Nice. That's really, really good. So is travel back—is travel back, is that the takeaway here? That we are back into a travel-based world again? I mean, it's hard to say. So for places where tourism—because Croatia is, like, absolutely driven, for a large part, driven by tourism, at least the coast. So for—and that's, I was—where I was staying, my friend works basically in tourism, and all of his family does. And so, you know, they are embracing tourism to some degree because, you know, they want their normal lives back. And I think in Georgia, I don't really know if that'll be the case necessarily, but, I mean, people are—it's nice to be on the cutting edge of this, right? As long as we approach it with, you know, a good amount of class and— What are you, like... you know the word. Sensitivity. Sensitivity that people will... people will embrace this breath of fresh air, you know? And I think, yeah, tourism is coming back. I'm starting to go in the direction of, like, less and less sensitive by the day. I know that it's not really, like, a vogue thing to say, but I'm just over the coronavirus. Honestly, like, you know, case-by-case scenario, obviously you have to be more careful in certain places. Obviously you have to respect the fact that other people might be a little bit more neurotic about the germs. But at this point, honestly, most people, if they're scared, they should be able to get a vaccine. And that's all I got to say about that. I'm not gonna really be... What's up? Notice why I said backyards, you know, if we're outside. Yeah. No, I know, but just in general, I'm just, like, proclaiming that coronavirus is over. I mean, I don't live in New Delhi or Bombay in India, where apparently it's running rampant, and I know that the numbers are still, like, slightly concerning. But I'm just gonna go out there on a limb and just proclaim that the pandemic has been defeated. Hey, we got a... there's places for everybody in the world. I love it. We need some optimism out there. Yeah. Also, in Spain, it's very easy to get deluded into a sense of just, like, complete... Well, I don't know. Actually, because to be fair, like, in the Spanish context... Everyone is wearing a mask. Like, everybody is wearing a mask on the streets. You're very much supposed to, unless you're going for a run, and then you don't have to. You're doing sports or you're swimming. Anything where you, like, common sense, shouldn't wear a mask, you don't have to. But everywhere else, everybody's wearing a mask. But that being said, all the bars, all the restaurants, everything's completely open, and it's kind of beautiful to just, like, be able to sit out on the terrace and have some drinks and have the people and the Spanish conversation, even though I don't know what anyone's saying. Just to have that sort of, like, bound around is a very nice thing. And I don't want to be too flip. I mean, I was being facetious before when I said the pandemic's over. Obviously that's not true. But I'm also sort of getting to this mood now where, like, the summer is reclaiming my soul again. And I think Hungary went through a very, very difficult period immediately before I left, and it's just starting to poke its head out of the clouds now. And so it was kind of like, I don't know, it was a nice sort of relief to be in a context where the per capita death rate wasn't the highest in the world for once. Sure, for sure. I would say that the nature of things, the nature of life is changing a bit. And that's all I meant by, like, being sensitive and being aware of this. So, like, you know, I don't foresee, you know, giant—I don't foresee myself in a big closed club. You know, partying like shoulder to shoulder with other people, like I was, you know, a year and a half ago today. Like, and yeah, I mean, while you're in Spain, you're living a different, like, tourism experience than you would have in other times. Like, you're staying in one house for a month, and you're staying in the region you are, you know, and you're hanging out with your friends. And yeah, you're going to bars, but you're mostly outside. You know, there's a difference to the way we're approaching life now. And I think, in some ways, it's probably good, and I hope that some of these aspects, like, stay for good, hopefully. Well, you just made mention that I'm in the same region. Actually, though, because we were—we're in a city, it's called the Rincón de la Victoria. Rincón de la Victoria, it's like a long name, and it's right next to Málaga, right next to Málaga. It's like the city adjacent to Málaga. Málaga is a big city, big historic city on the coast, beautiful city, went there for the first time the other day. And Málaga is also the name of the province that we're in. The region, as I mentioned before, the autonomous community is Andalusia, and then Rincón de la Victoria, our city, is in Málaga province. It's one of eight provinces in Andalusia. Another province in Andalusia, for example, would be Granada, which is also a city, but that's also the name of the province. There's also Jaén, there's Córdoba, which is also a city. Anyway, there's eight of those provinces. And where I was trying to get to with this is that until yesterday, you were not allowed to travel between the provinces. You had to stay within your own province, and within the province, most things were open and you could kind of live life as you wanted to, but you couldn't go to Granada, you couldn't go to Jaén, you couldn't go to Sevilla. And this is not, by the way, a Spanish rule. This is an Andalusia rule because the autonomous communities like Andalusia, they have a lot of autonomy, as is in the name, and they sort of make—so there's a general... Spanish state of emergency that's ending May 9th, but within Andalusia, they had their own special restrictions, and one of them was that you couldn't go outward from the province. Anyways, breaking news as of yesterday, that rule is put. Starting tomorrow, you can travel province to province. And tomorrow I will be heading to Granada to stay in the Hotel Washington Irving beneath the Alhambra. It looks like a beautiful five-star hotel that is on, like, a massive, massive sale because there's, like, not a tourist within 300 miles of Granada right now. So I'm very happy to reap the benefits of that. Dude, that sounds so incredible. Can we plan some sort of, like, synchronizing experience? I don't know. Maybe I need to read some of that, and maybe you can read some of it on a video call while you're in that, because I've told you this before, but the Alhambra by far and away is the most enjoyable, like, monument experience I've ever had. And I've been there three times, I think, and it's just, each time it's so beautiful. I don't really know what it is about it. It's just such an awesome place to go walk through. Yeah, I've heard that from you, and I've heard that from pretty much everyone that's ever been there. And I've only been to the Alhambra in my dreams. I've been reading this book, rereading this book, which I found on my first time in Spain, called Tales of the Alhambra, and it's by Washington Irving. I can't point when the thing's backwards. It's by Washington Irving, another New Yorker, a 19th-century New Yorker named after George Washington. Kind of a ridiculous move, actually. His parents just named him after George Washington, Washington Irving. Pretty funny. But he stayed in the Alhambra in the 19th century while he was researching about the conquest of Granada, and he was researching the life of Christopher Columbus because it's kind of funny, but not really funny, but just kind of coincidental, ironic. Christopher Columbus, he sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and 1492 was also the year that Isabel Fernández, Ferdinand and Isabella, finally reconquered Granada, which was like the last holdout kingdom of the Moors, the Moors being the Islamic conquerors of Spain who had ruled in Andalusia for 700 years since the year 711. 1492, they conquered Granada, and Columbus came to beg for their patronage in the city of Granada, in the Alhambra. Columbus said, Ferdinand and Isabella, give me money, let me go discover the New World. At first they said no. Columbus held his head in his hands and made his way out of Granada, and while he was on the way out, Dejected, going to look for another sovereign to patronize his voyage, Isabella sent a rider. He came out and said, Columbus, come back. We're going to give you the money. Long story short, America was founded later that year. Wow, that is fascinating. Never knew that. So wait, how does it connect? So Irving was there. How does it connect to 1492? He went there to write a book about the conquest of Granada, which happened in 1492, and also to write a book about—his main intention actually was to write a book about Christopher Columbus's life. He was researching about Christopher Columbus's life because Washington Irving was very interested about, like, the American origin stories and all this stuff. And while he was researching, he got invited to stay within the Alhambra Palace for like six months, and he lived there in the decadent decaying palace. And he just, like, wrote this romantic book called Tales of the Alhambra because he found about all these legends and all these stories and all these beautiful, like, Moorish myths, and just he wrote this, like, really, like, magical book. He also ended up writing more stories about Spain. One is called, I think, The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, which is all about the lead-up to this big clash of 1492. And he also wrote, which I'm reading now, Tales about the founding of Spain when the Moors came—or not the founding of Spain, the original conquest of Spain—when the Moors came over from Africa in the year 711 and subjugated the entire Visigothic Christian kingdom that was beforehand Spain. So are these nonfiction books? I thought Washington Irving was more of, like, a novel writer. Is this kind of— That's the beauty of them, is that he writes them in, like, a fictionalized nonfiction. It's sort of like a genre that doesn't really exist anymore because they're very historically accurate and they're very well researched. But they're also, like, woven in is, like, myths and legends and tales. And so I wouldn't call it historical fiction, because it's not like, you know, historical fiction now, you take, like, a Revolutionary War novel and you, like, make up stories about George Washington and, like, random carpenters in the countryside or whatever. But what Washington Irving does is he takes myths and legends that have been passed down, like, via oral history for generations, and he tells them in his sort of own special sense of the way. Or also, for example, like The Conquest of Granada, he makes the narrator this fictionalized Spanish friar who was supposed to have lived during this time, and the Spanish friar is the one that writes the firsthand account of the conquest of Granada, and he does so with all of his own, like, biases and things like that. So it's very inventive and sort of like a ahead-of-its-time narrative skills that he uses. So, yeah, there you go. It's funny, dude. This kind of sounds like in the direction of where I would say your writing would be going. Just based on, like, I mean, both of our loves of myths and legends that are based in truth and also just, like, your deep strength in history and everything, it just sounds like you can revitalize this genre if it's truly dead. Yeah, I think—I appreciate that. That's a massive compliment. I would say that I almost said, like, hopefully that it was dead. I'm sure there's plenty of people that sort of write in this genre. But at the same time, you can't, like—one of the beauties of it is, like, nowadays, like, to write a book like this or whatever, like, I don't know, you look stuff up on the internet, like maybe go to Granada and have, like, a little experience there and it inspires you. But Washington Irving, he literally got invited by, like, the governor of the Alhambra to live within the, like, chambers of the palace for six months. And it's sort of, I don't know, that type of, like, romantic experience to me, it almost seems, like, impossible to recreate. Obviously, in other contexts, you definitely can, but there's something about, like— The Age. But then again, that's also like a relative perspective type thing, because I'm sure there's experiences that we can have today that will seem in 200 years' time like, wow, that's sort of a dead thing that can never happen again because the world has just moved on. And that's the beauty of literature, is that it sort of captures a time capsule of a perspective and a place. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just happy to be able to stay in the hotel bearing his name. I'm excited about that. There was actually, there was like four hotel choices, and when I saw that this one was called Hotel Washington Irving, I just felt like I had to stay there. You got to do it. Just got to do it. Got to do it. So yeah. Anyway, I'm going to go get another Spanish drink, which I bought yesterday, and I will be right back. Give me one moment. Sounds good. I'm trying to— there's two things that I wanted to say. The first thing, for those of you listening, the word I was trying to think of, for any listeners, is that Hermione always, in Harry Potter, Hermione always blames Ron for not doing this because Ron is not, like, socially aware, and so she always blames him and says, Ron, you should— I can't remember the word. Never mind. I'm trying to remember the other thing I was going to say about Croatia. Oh, ah, when Willie comes back, we will cover another topic about Andalusia, which is a book called The Alchemist by a guy, an artist, an author. that I cannot remember the name of for the life of me. Paulo Coelho, Coelho. And the alchemist is— is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. So I'm, as you know, an audiobook hardo, and my girlfriend Vivian is not. But I love audiobooks, particularly on car rides, because it's one of the best ways to drop into a focused meditative state while driving that just makes time fly away if you can get interested in a book. Because unlike music, in my opinion, audiobooks can get you into this focused state that just makes time just zip right on by. So I love to listen to audiobooks on car rides, and I convinced Vivian to start this book, The Alchemist, because it's, like, relatively short. It's only four hours, and it's a fun little story, relatively simple prose, but a very fun experience. And I just didn't even— I didn't really remember the details of the book that well, but it was based in Andalusia. And, yeah, when I learned that, I was like, wow, we are in some kind of sync with life right now because you and I have been talking a lot and all this stuff, and you were in Andalusia, and it just felt connected to you, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this book. Have you read The Alchemist? I've read The Alchemist. I actually, I read it when I was living in South Africa. Jack Clancy, my friend who I lived down there with, recommended it to me. And when I read it, to be honest with you, I loved it. I thought it was really transformative, like, story almost, and, like, embarrassingly enough, I remember when I finished it, I, like— Oh my God. I might have been hungover or some sort of damaged mental state, but I went downstairs to the bathroom and I think I cried at the end of it. And I really thought that it was like an inspirational story. Now, subsequently, Alexa has like mercilessly made fun of me for that, and also opened my eyes to the fact that, well, I kind of knew this at the time. I mean, The Alchemist, like it is, it's sort of one of those like soft, core, like pop-culturally feel-good books where you're kind of like an asshole if you hate it, but you're also like maybe a little bit naive if you like just believe in it. But I also don't really know why. I just feel like that's sort of the general sense that I get of other people's feelings about it. Yeah, I get that. I get that with this book. And like, sure, I support it and I understand where people are coming from because it takes so many liberties and it's just like so fucking, I don't know, meta for the sake of being meta, and all, you can poke all these holes in it easily. But I mean, just like with everything, to some extent, just like take what's useful and take what's fun about it and just embrace it for what it is. Like, yeah, I'm not gonna like let it define my understanding of life or anything like that. But I don't know, this simple point of like realizing your personal legend or whatever, I don't know, I support that. I support this idea. I think it's been so enormously successful that obviously people are gonna look for, like if it wasn't successful, no one would like ever say something bad about it. It would just be a book. But because it's been so successful and meaningful to people, then there's a place to like poke holes at it. And like it obviously does paint a little bit of like... Maybe a false perception of the world, like where everything just happens and it's, like, magical and you go up. But then again, like, that's a message that some people need to hear. So it's, it's... And also, I will remember that the original edition of The Alchemist that I read, my favorite book, like little, like, Easter egg of all time—it's not really an Easter egg—but on the back of the book cover, there was all these, like, reviews, and they were all by celebrities. I think one was, like, maybe by the queen—maybe not the queen, but someone of that stature. One was by a famous actress, maybe it was like, I don't know, Cate Blanchett. And then the last one was Will Smith. And Will Smith, like, they were all, you know, on a book review, you see, Oh, this is a great example of writing. This is a wonderful story transform. Usually it's like a little bit of a spiel. And Will Smith's book review was just one of my favorite books, Will Smith. I just love that. I don't know why. And no, Will Smith, I got this stuff today. It's called anís Macaquico or something, and it's anís. Anís is like—do you know anís? I love anís, dude. Rocky, Rocky, like the Turkish anís drink, and also maybe it's just, like, generally Middle Eastern, but Rocky's awesome. And Spanish, apparently, because the Spanish, they always have this, like, out old man coffee kind of a classic thing you see on the table. This one is 55 fucking percent. 55 percent. I was gonna say, with that cup, Willie, I think we're gonna see drunk Willie today. Well, drunk Willie also has an engaged mother. What's that? I mean, with pastis, and I think with raki as well, you mix it with water. Yeah, it turns it white, but, you know, I'm just going to drink it straight. Well, enjoy. It's good. The lady at the store, she told me that the Spanish old men and old women, they have this when they wake up at 7 a.m. A little bit of water down the gullet, maybe with a little bit of coffee. That's another thing you traditionally see on these drinks with, like in an Italian restaurant. The Italian restaurant that I used to work at, work with, one of six, half a dozen of the other. The old men, after the meal, they would have a coffee with, like, an anise and, like, three coffee beans inside the anise glass. So that's a traditional thing. But the lady told me that the old Spanish men and women literally wake up and they drink this in the morning. So it sounds to me a little bit like Spanish palinka. Sounds like it. I wish I had some palinka to spiritually join you. Yeah, I love anise. I love these kinds of drinks. What is it about, like, being in a foreign place that you just... I feel like I'm... it's such a false... You're awesome.

Sense of romanticism, but I just feel like I'm drinking, like, the lifeblood of the country when I drink the wine or I drink the anis or the palinka. It just makes me feel like I'm in the place. I don't know. I don't know. So to me, I think that it's, like, it's useful to create these, like, processes for yourself because, yeah, I mean, I mean, if you think about it, technically you are. I mean, that was produced in Spain. It's consumed largely in Spain. And so, you know, if you squint your eyes, you can imagine that you are, like, experiencing Spain when you drink that, and you can, like, when you taste it, you can taste the taste to some place in Spain and just make it seem like it's enhancing your ability to travel through the region. And, yeah, they're just the same thing with the opposite. People who could easily and strongly argue against that validity, but at the same time, like, why not? I mean, it's a beautiful way to travel, and it's, like, a great way to, like, immerse yourself into a country in one of the best ways. Why not? Yeah. I think also, like, wine and liquor is, like, a little bit better than beer in a way. But the first week and a half I was here, I was just, like, sitting on the patio, kind of adjusting to life down here, and I would just start to drink beers at maybe, like, 12:30, slightly afternoon, just to keep things somewhat civil. And it was nice for the week, but at the end of it, I was like, oh, I really, like, this is not a way to live habitually. As relaxing as it is, I just have this sense, like, after I finish my run—and, like, to be fair, a lot of the runs I'm working super hard, and, like, it almost feels like I just got to the end of, like, a torturous experience that then fills me with endorphins and it feels good. And I just have this sense of, okay, now I can do whatever I want. I can drink beer. I can eat shitty food. You know, it's almost like a three steps forward, one step back type of thing, where maybe it's like a little bit better to just, like, take a couple steps forward every day and no steps back. But what are you gonna do? But it doesn't have to be. I mean, within, I mean, even, like, moderation is a flexible word, right? I mean, you can pound—I mean, I'll be careful with what I say here—but depending on how you approach it, like, if you can... Sometimes I get in a frenzy when I'm drinking, like, a bottle of wine. I can drink a bottle of wine and just be in a creative frenzy and, like, actually do some really impressive shit. And sometimes I can just be like, no, I can't drink wine. I have to try and be productive. And then I just, like, do nothing and I end up being more upset with myself than I was before. And, like, so it doesn't—like, the steps forward and backward to me aren't associated with what you're ingesting or anything like that. It's just, like, what vibe you've caught. And sometimes, you know, a bottle of wine helps you catch a vibe. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I was also thinking maybe slightly in, like, a directly in-shape physicality sense of the word. But honestly, it's just been so nice here. Like, I've gone running every day, every single day except maybe one, and that just is, like, for me in Budapest, I was not on that schedule, so that's a nice feeling. And then you can still be in shape and drink a lot. Yeah, for sure, for sure. That's true. You're right. Yeah. Salud. There's a really cool—in college I was in an indigenous peoples class, which is, like, just the research of all the indigenous people in the Americas. And I wrote my final paper on the Tarahumara, which are the running people in central Mexico in the Copper Canyon. It's, like, the second biggest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon, and it's, like, this crazy story of these indigenous people where running is a huge part of their culture and life. And they're just, like, these crazy long-distance runners, and... They party like crazy. It's like this insane group of people. They have this crazy competition where it's like two tribes compete with each other, and like ten members of each tribe are on a team, and each team has a small wooden ball, and they run like a hundred miles, and they have to bring the ball from one point to the other point, like from one tribe village to the other, super far. And they like train for this all year round, and they have one of these competitions every year. And they just apparently every night they just like run a lot, and then every night they just drink this crazy like corn distilled liquor and smoke tobacco and just like go crazy. And then to me, it kind of emulates what I'm saying. It's like work hard, play hard kind of thing, and like catch the vibe and all that stuff. And they're shit, like they kill everybody. Born to Run is a book, and it's a story of a guy who takes members of these tribes to traditional Western running competitions, and they just annihilate the records by like hours. And these people who are, you know, yeah, crazy. They go to this race called the Leadville 100, which is a race in Colorado, and it's run at an incredibly high altitude. It's like higher than Denver, so like above a mile over sea level, and it's a hundred-mile race in the mountains with like crazy elevation change. And he brings these native people from the Copper Canyon, which is like almost at sea level, and like flies them in, and two days later they run this race, and they don't even wear shoes. There's five of them there, and the first four finishers in the race are four of the people from this tribe. And the only reason the fifth guy didn't finish is because he, I don't know, he like hurt his foot or something, and he couldn't finish at all. But the first two— beat the previous record by two hours. And it's like a, wow, I don't know, like 18 hours or something. So, like, annihilated the record. It's a crazy, crazy story. And the moral of the story is they drink like crazy. That's a great story. I also, to slightly shift gears here, I watched the Joe Rogan podcast this morning, and I've been, like, a little bit disappointed with his recent podcast. Since he moved to Texas and, like, switched over to Spotify, I don't know. I've tried to be fair about it. A lot of people were just, like, being haters because, like, oh, he moved to Spotify, sold out. But really, I haven't loved his podcast as much as before, just because the guests haven't been as good. But this morning's podcast was, I mean, it was this morning for me, I guess, whenever he posted it. But the one that I listened to this morning, the most recent one, was fucking fascinating, terrifying, and probably, like, one of the best podcast episodes I've ever listened to in my life. And it was with a guy, funnily enough, his, like, it's Joe Rogan, and the guy's name was Josh Rogin, spelled with an I, which was just, like, interesting. But Josh Rogin is a journalist with a specific focus on China, and he's written a book recently called, I think, Chaos Under Heaven. And it's all about, like, the infiltration of China and the CCP into American culture and financial institutions and academia. And basically, it's about, like, the Trump era and how the Trump-China policy was, like, very badly mismanaged. But it wasn't—definitely this guy is not like, Oh, I hate Trump, I hate Trump, I hate Trump type of thing. Not at all. He is just, like, knows a shit ton about the connections between... Anyway, this podcast was fucking crazy, terrifying. I mean, China are nutjobs. The Chinese government is, like, literally just—not the Chinese people, not Chinese culture, none of that—but the CCP, it's literally like a mafia organization running the biggest country in the world with vice grip over power and, like, currently perpetrating outrageous human rights abuses everywhere. Not to mention, like, the rapid speed that they are surpassing us in terms of, like, global influence and domination. And, like, constant— Where is this coming from? This is coming from American journalists. I mean, how can we—I don't know. I'm afraid of our misunderstanding of Western culture, to be honest. I mean, Eastern culture, sorry. But the Chinese stuff is pretty inarguable. Like, they literally have, like—for instance, China last year shipped over 17,000 pounds worth of human hair from Uyghur concentration camp victims into the port of Los Angeles. So when they have— They have concentration camps of Muslims in the Uyghur territories. It's undeniable. It's like an undeniable fact that they have these. So, and then, so this is what the UN is for, right? So the United Nations is for policing the globe and making sure that no gross, like, I don't know, violations of human—what do you call it?—human ethics are occurring, right? Why is the UN not cracking down on that shit? Because the UN has five members on the Security Council, and you can't do anything without—every member on the Security Council has a veto to do it. Basically, there's five members on the Security Council. I think it's America, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China, I believe. And each member of the Security Council has a veto on any action by the UN. So China owns the UN. China has as much influence as they want in the UN. The UN can't take any action against those five nations, more or less. But, I mean, the Uyghur concentration camp thing, that is, like, as abhorrent and as terrible and as, like, disgusting as it is, that is just like a small drop in the ocean compared to the existential threat of, like, China has infiltrated our society and every institution in our society over the past 30 or 40 years, like academia, finance, Apple, technology, all of the American commercial structure is just basically owned by the CCP now, or at least not owned, but, like, heavily influenced by it. In some way, though, like, weren't we—wasn't USA, like... Weren't we on the other side of that stick for the last, like, 100, I mean, well, 50 years basically? Like with Hollywood and, like, I don't know. We've done our fair share of injustice to Eastern culture and how we portray them in, like, Hollywood and all this kind of shit as well. It's almost like we're getting—I mean, that's my understanding. I don't know. I mean... But that's also, the initial thing that I started out with here is this is not against Chinese culture. This is not against Chinese way of life. This is against the CCP, is literally taking people off the streets, monitoring them with facial recognition cameras, and perpetrating a totalitarian authoritarian system where you can't have any sorts of disagreement with the party. And if you have any disagreement with the party, you will be subject to a life of pain and torture and subjugation and elimination and oftentimes murder. You know, this isn't like, oh, the Chinese people, they do things a little bit differently. This is like there is a mafia organization running a country that doesn't allow any disagreement within their country. Otherwise you die or have your family torn apart or face abhorrent financial penalties or live a life of, like, slavery factory work. You know, I mean, the U.S. has its own transgressions, but if you're going to ask me who I would rather have be the leader of the world, it's going to be a country that allows some sort of individualism and free choice. For sure. But what is to be done about this? Shouldn't there be something being done? Yeah, but the problem is that, like, American—for example, American pension funds, they invest into companies that are very dependent on China. So now we have, like, an American pension fund, for instance, something that, like, a 60-year-old person has invested their life savings into, and they trust the Wall Street financial advisor to then invest this responsibly so that it grows and that they have something to live on after they retire. A lot of these companies, for instance, are investing into companies that are dependent on China. And China is like a communist country, but it's really capitalist now. And all of the decision-making of these capitalist companies in China are dependent on the dictates of the CCP and what the Communist Party wants to do. But long story short, now all these American financial firms are invested and have their hands inside China, and they can't do anything against China because China won't let them. If you breathe one word of dissent against the Chinese government, you are done. They wield like a hammer against any sort of anti-Chinese sentiment. Anyway, I'm going to get a... You might get attacked. Are there movements to, like, move funds out of these companies? I mean, what the fuck? I don't know. What is the course of action? Listen to this podcast. This guy articulates it far better than I could, and one of his main takeaways was like, I don't know what the course of action is. All I know is that in the past, when societies have been allowed to sort of keep eating, when malignant societies have been allowed to keep eating, for instance, Germany before Hitler actually went on a genocidal rampage, but there was a stage where people just, you know, allowed... The Germans to keep going. And they said, like, Neville Chamberlain, Czech Republic, okay, Hitler invaded them. Munich Conference, it's okay, we're gonna hold back, so on and so forth. And so, you know, I'm not saying China, I don't know if they have the same sort of profile that Hitler does. I think that's probably unfair to say. It's sort of like a Godwin's Law type of thing. Hitler always comes into the conversation at some point. That being said, the Chinese government, which, you know, Cultural Revolution, Mao, literally 50 million people died from famine. Tiananmen Square. They ran over their own citizens with tanks. So this is not like some conspiratorial thing where we're saying like, oh, like the Chinese government might be doing evil things. It's more like they are doing, and they continue to do, and they will continue to do. And what can we do about it? I don't know, but I think that the U.S. economy should try to maybe become not so dependent on China. Masks are a great example. During the coronavirus, we, for the first six months, didn't have our own masks because all of the cheap manufacturing has been exported to places like China. And so, like, if you're in the midst of a global pandemic that the Chinese, you know, created, whether it was through ignorance or intention or whatever it is, the moral of the story is that we can't be so reliant on them. I've said my piece. We can shift gears. Isn't it kind of sad that— so, fuck, yeah, I mean, you've incited— you've woken the beast, dude. I don't know. You've incited too many thoughts. So I see a problem here because, yeah, like you said, I mean, there's so many American institutions are based and just like shit that everyone in the world does is based on cheap Chinese manufacturing and cheap manufacturing in the East in general. I don't know much, but I think that's the case. And... If it's only possible because of this super corrupt system, then it's time to accept that, like, that level of production is not possible while being humanly ethical. So, I don't know. Fuck it, dude. Capitalism is a bit scary because we're basically asking people to accept that the margins are going to be changed, like, for the worse. And that seems difficult to convince. Capitalism. What do you mean? What do you mean the margins? But China is not really a capitalist society. They have, like, a sort of crony oligarchic communist capitalism. I wouldn't say that they're capitalists. They are very much in our system of capitalism, like you say. So, like, so many American industries have parts of China in their supply chain, basically. And, like, the reason things cost the way they do is because they can outsource things and reduce the— I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. But yeah, maybe we can, yeah, move more production outside of China. I don't know. We're getting into, like, waters I'm not familiar with. Yeah, no, it's fine. The main point was, like, listen to this podcast. It's very interesting. Josh Rogan, Joe Rogan podcast, and he's very, yeah, he puts things very well. But anyway, shifting gears, shifting gears to less terrifying subjects. I don't know, what's it like to be back in Hungary? Ooh, really set myself up for failure, let's say, because, I don't know, you know, we went to Croatia for several reasons, you know, but... One big one is just to experience what it's like to not live in a city. Yeah, I know we didn't need to go to Croatia, but hey, why not go to the sea? We wanted to spend an extended period of time living outside of the city and see if we really enjoyed, you know, the fact that you're separated from instant interaction with other people and, you know, you're much more solitary and all this kind of stuff. And it ended up being something we really enjoyed. And, you know, I could wake up in the morning, walk outside, pace through the olive orchard for the first 30 minutes of the day and just feel relatively fulfilled, and then came back to Hungary and shablam, stuck in a fucking tiny—not even tiny—stuck in a large apartment because I'm fortunate. But no, just stuck there for like four or five days and just, you know, couldn't go for a run and, like, just kind of solidified this fact that, okay, maybe city life is not for me. And so, yeah, being back in Hungary is great. We went for lunch today, but I think we will be not living in the city in months to come, hopefully. Yeah, well, that's good. Yeah, I don't really think that I want to live in the midst of a city. I want to be in touching distance of a city. I would like to have a nice, like, peripheral location to a big city, but not necessarily in the throng. Even, like, where I am now, it's definitely not a big city, but I still—it's like a slightly urban environment. It's definitely not rural. But being by the beach alone is, like, enough to just, like, energize the soul. So I think it's also, like, Budapest is, like, my favorite city in the world in some respects, but at the same time, one of, like, the points against it, I guess, is, like, yeah, like, you are in a city and, like, the air quality is just not as good. Like, my runs here along the beach, I'm running, I might feel like I'm an iron lung, although that would mean that I probably had tuberculosis. I'm on, like, the verge of death. But that being said, I feel like I have a lot more lung capacity and can just run for miles, whereas in Budapest I was wheezing and huffing and puffing. Being an asthmatic, that's the main reason. It's not that I'm, like, terribly out of shape, but the air quality in Budapest definitely triggers a little bit more of an asthmatic reaction in me. So, you know, there's a lot of cars. So, a lot of cars, yeah. Access to, you know, a little space, have a little garden, tend to little plants. I mean, I could have fucking potted plants, I know, all this shit. But I don't know, man. Too many people around. I can see so many windows. There's so many lives around me. Like, just right now, there's like, I can see 50 lives across the street. And I don't know, that has, that has something to the subconscious. I don't know what it does, but I'm feeling strange. Anyway. So anyway, I feel like, in terms of plans, like we're both, I'm gonna be back in Budapest May 15th, and then we're going to Georgia, what, June 1st? Yep. Yeah, June 1st, two weeks in Georgia, and then we're heading back to America for around three months. Are you going back to America also? We're going back for about a month. I'm gonna see my whole family in Iowa on the farm. And then we'll, at the moment we're just staying in Iowa for a month, but we might tool around the U.S. a little bit to see what opportunities there are. And then we'll come back to—I mean, it's flexible, but like at the moment we're coming back to Hungary. Maybe we'll like get rid of this apartment and get a house outside the city if we found a pretty epic spot. If you want to come back to Hungary, but I think that we're kind of at different stages. You're more ready to like branch out and explore. But I'll definitely be working for Prezi for the next six months to a year because of the spot of the company, you know, working for a presentation company in the middle of a pandemic that sent everybody online. Leaves, you know, leaves you in a pretty poised position for some positive, positive growth. So that's what I'm anticipating. Good. Sounds great. Sounds very, very great. So after the U.S., back in Hungary, and then maybe touring around Europe for a little while. And yeah, like maybe staying a month here, staying a month there. You sound like you're pretty interested in the world of, like, what you were saying you had an opportunity to buy a house in Croatia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bigger idea surrounding that whole project. And yeah, there's a pretty cool opportunity to buy a nice little cottage with a small olive cherry orchard in Croatia, just across the street from where we were staying. And I'm intrigued by the idea because I've been looking for some more diverse investment opportunities. And this certainly offers an interesting plan that I have had in my mind for some years, but I have never realized to such an extent that I have when I was faced with this opportunity. But we'll see, we'll see. It needs more thought and more thorough planning to really go forward with buying a house in Croatia. What's the idea, though? I'm more interested in the idea than the house. So the idea is—let's call it, to make the name confusing, let's call it a summer house. The idea is called a summer house. And I've always had this dream of not really living in one place, but just, like, not having one big house that I live at, but having, let's say, four smaller properties in different parts of the globe, and just living a semi-nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place throughout the year. You know, three places here, or three months here, three months there. You know, that would be beautiful. But to own four properties where, I know, eight months of the year—or I can't do math—nine months of the year they are not lived in is a challenging prospect. So the idea is to sort of build a system with like-minded people who want to live a semi-nomadic lifestyle like this and basically share the price. I know this kind of already exists with, like, timeshares and everything, but I don't know, the idea is a bit broader and a bit more complicated. I would need some visuals to explain. No, no, it sounds—you explained the idea the other day, and I was thinking about it a lot, and it sounds very interesting. I don't think it's necessarily anything groundbreaking. It's more like the—if you were going to do this, it would be like the places that you would pick and the type of involvement and engagement that you would want to have, where it might not necessarily even be, like, people that are buying 50 percent of the house, but maybe they're staying there in exchange for putting some sort of effort into the house. Or, like, if you had—you were mentioning that you wanted to have some sort of organic farming or food production built alongside of that, and that could be cool. Right? Or am I misquoting? Yeah, absolutely. So there are pillars to what makes a summer house. So this, like, summer house—copyright, whatever, TM, trademark—is there are properties, four pillars of what makes a summer house. And the first two pillars are relatively expected. One, it's fully equipped, so you can just arrive at one of these houses and you can just come with a backpack. Pretty much everything is ready for you. You have a fully equipped kitchen. You've got bikes in the shed. You've got a fully equipped workshop where you can start projects immediately, and, you know, you've got a good workspace, all this kind of stuff. It's fully equipped. The second thing is just that it's an enjoyable place to be. Maybe there's a pool, maybe there's a basketball hoop, maybe there's a dartboard. There's all kinds of stuff to keep you entertained and to keep you in a successful flow. But then the other two things that you mentioned are the things that I think make this idea somewhat special. And one of them is that there's a backlog of tasks that can be done. That's one of the beautiful things of having a summer house, in my idea, is that there's projects that might be the whole reason you're going to your summer house is because you want to fix up the fence. And there's nothing better than just completing a small little physical task like that, like cutting up some wood and patching up the fence. It feels great, and people really crave this kind of work, especially if they spend most of their time in a city. Getting your hands dirty, there's nothing better. So that's the third pillar. And the fourth pillar is some aspect of food production, and it very well could just be a vegetable garden. And because I think that we can work as a people to make food production closer to our lives, like we don't need to just get lettuce from the grocery store or, you know, buy— you know, there's many ways where you can bring food production closer to our everyday lives, and individuals can do that more. I don't know. This is a bigger, bigger topic that I honestly don't know a ton about, but I would just like to support this movement. Yeah, go ahead. It's, you're hitting upon like some very, very prescient, cutting-edge, important salient, whatever word you want to use, trends here. One of them is digital nomadism, which a lot of people have these careers that allow them to work not necessarily harnessed in one location, but living in many different locations. Another one is obviously tourism and integrative authentic tourism, not necessarily staying in like a hotel, but staying in a place that makes you feel more connected, like we were talking about before with the liquor and the alcohol, but more connected into the land itself. And then what you're saying about sustainable food production and also like eco-responsibility and things like that, that's probably the most attractive idea about this whole conception, especially in the sense that, you know, you think about this idea as a standalone, Oh, I want to live in like really cool places around the world. It's a great, it's a great ambition, but it's also like a little bit selfish in a sense. Not in a bad way necessarily, but just inherently like a little bit like selfish. Whereas like this idea of sustainable food production and eco-responsibility and things, that is a more universal ideal that also is good in terms of setting a trend of responsible tourism as we step out and emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, not necessarily, like you said before, going to a place and going to like all these amazing clubs and partying or doing whatever, but actually doing something that can like give back to the community, because maybe you have multiple properties and then people can work there and things of that nature. I don't know. There's a lot of carrots to chew on, but it all sounds very... Yeah, but so this is an idea that I've like talked about. I get frustrated when we drop into the, in my family, we drop into these like, I don't know, philosophical or political discussions where we're trying to talk about like how to change the world or some bullshit like that, and just like, it's an impossible task to like make a grand change like that. And so I've developed maybe this belief that you can affect your circle and the people that you're closest to, and you can try and influence their understanding of the world and try and, you know, push them in a certain direction. And this is what the food production part of the summer house is about. It's like anybody can come visit. This house, and, you know, spend a few weeks there and just see. So the food production would be somewhat separate from the house. It would have to be managed year-round by someone local. And this would be what you're saying by, like, trying to support this idea of, like, supporting the places where I have these houses and, like, adding to the food production there. But—and that's, like, a very small drop in the bucket to, like, how much food is needed. But the broader impact is the ripples that it could cause to everybody who visits. So, like, everybody who visits can see what a little small-scale food production looks like, and when they go home, they might be inspired and, you know, just have the hands-on knowledge of, like, how it's done. And maybe they can, if they're not doing it themselves, they just start spreading that idea to their friends, and slowly this ripple effect spreads and, like, could eventually make, like, positive change if more and more people, you know, are touched by this idea in a tangible way. Yeah, I mean, especially nowadays, I mean, look, there's probably going to be, I think, seven and a half billion people now, maybe eight billion already. There's going to be, like, eleven billion people in twenty years' time. To suggest that you can change—I'm not saying that you're doing this, by the way, but I'm just saying as the, like, counter side of the thing—to suggest that you can change the habits of that many people is, like, delusional. So I think that all you really can do is try to make your own positive impact in the world and hope that that's how we overcome some of these collective action problems that we're currently faced with. And, you know, human beings, for all their faults, like, we are a very survivable species, and we always come up with a way to meet the challenge and meet the crisis at hand, and that's sort of one of the beautiful things about the human condition. So if you yourself can be one of the wheels of change that allows us to step into this next evolution of society and avoid the apocalypse, then I think that that's a fairly noble way to spend this. Era of your life where you're growing into yourself and you have the capacity and the intelligence and the wisdom to actually affect some sort of change. And in some way, this whole idea of, like, only affecting your ripple does not stop the apocalypse. Like, what you're doing is just making sure that your circle is safe. And, I mean, yeah, this is super selfish, but my idea is that, like, the more people you can get to think like that eventually makes a big change. So, like, trying to yourself make a change for 8 million people or 8 billion people makes no sense. It's just never going to happen. But if you make change to your small circle of community and friends, like, everybody's circle is different. So, like, if you make it well enough and convince them hard enough, you create this community of sharing and, like, teaching. Hopefully that becomes a viral thing and just spreads, just like COVID did. Right. I think an important caveat is to not limit the circle to, you know, your conception of the circle doesn't necessarily have to be the friends that you've already made or even friends. It can also just be, like, if this idea did come to fruition and you were talking about these potential houses in different regions of the world, your circle would come to include the communities that the houses were involved with and hopefully making a positive change in communities. Yeah, that would be the foundational aspect of it, obviously. I mean, yeah. I'm completely—I think the idea is great. I think it's something that you should definitely continue to flesh out and be energized by. Why the name Summer House? That's one question that I have for you. The first one, that it's so not set in stone, and it's so confusing to use that name. So please, please suggest another name, because it's, like, not really reflective at all. But right now, it's the best name that I've got. I think Summer House is, like, a nice name for maybe something else. I just, to me, it seems like almost a little bit too, like, jovial. Like, it's almost too—it misses the, like, social responsibility or sustainability, or it misses that side of the hub. The hub. I like—I've been using hub. I've been wanting to use hub. I don't know. We can go into a naming ceremony, you know, over some shrooms later, but for now... Oh, that sounds good. Okay. Let's do that. I like where your head's at. And perhaps a property in the portfolio lays in wait in the mountainous regions of Georgia. There we go. And that's another reason we're headed there. We need to start—I need to start scoping some properties, actually. That might be educating our route. Also, in order to afford all of these potential properties, I've been very interested in finally stepping my toes into the cryptocurrency waters, because the friend of Alexa that lives here, Kata and Mickey, they're a Hungarian couple, and that's the reason that we came to Andalusia in the first place. And Mickey is like, he works for a company that's involved with cryptocurrency, and he also is like a cryptocurrency just, like, expert. But he's just been showing me, like, the most preposterous things in the world over the past few weeks, where, like, yesterday I was walked through this whole thing on his phone where he has these multiple currency wallet thing. I don't understand anything, to be honest with you. Little bits and bobs I'm picking up as we go. But, like, he literally was last night, like, trading, like, bananas on this thing called Monkey Coin, and he, like, approved some sort of smart contract, and it was all decentralized, yada yada yada. The whole thing was just wild. Like, I'm watching, like, bananas on, like, a little video game become literal currency, like this and that. And then, like, this whole NFT thing, I think we talked about this in one of our first episodes, or in the episode before and after. But now you have all these digital artworks that are, like, verified as unique, and they're selling thousands and thousands of dollars. Anyway, I feel like the crypto anarchy is already here, and I do have a little bit of FOMO, I'm not gonna lie. I have a little bit of FOMO. I mean, at this point, I mean, it's just like having cash. I mean, it's, I don't know. I don't see the, like, giant cash gain, the giant, like, growth in money you're gonna get to being getting involved with crypto right now, because now obviously it's vogue and everybody knows about it. So, like, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. My understanding, if you would have gotten in ten years ago, yeah, you would have made it big. But now it's been— But that's the point, is that, like, yeah, like Bitcoin and Ethereum and all these, like, mainstream ones that are already, like, you know, Bitcoin right now, what is it, 60,000? So you're gonna spend a shit ton of money to buy in, and, like, the chance of you getting above a 2x return are gonna be pretty infinitesimal at this point. But then, if you, like, are very vigilant, there's all these back-alley riverboat gambling crypto coins that, like, pop up overnight. And if you get lucky, you could have, like, literally, like, 100 times return. I mean, obviously this is not that much different than conventional— But there's gambling. I mean, now it's the same as casino. Like, the whole point. But that you can get into— that's what I mean by, like, if you want to turn some of your— like, in my opinion, the best game now is if you have some cash, just, like, buy some crypto. Like, you don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin. You can, like, that's the whole attraction of cryptocurrency, is it's infinitely divisible. Like, you can divide a Bitcoin as many times as you want. It's just math. So you can buy one cent of a Bitcoin if you want. It doesn't matter. So just buy some crypto now if you want. And maybe in 20— But I'm not interested in Bitcoin. I'm interested in Nicky's banana and eucalyptus farms that are, like, these random, like, Telegram channels, and there's all the— the whole thing just seems like black magic made up. I don't understand how it actually translates to money. And there's, like, forks, Ethereum, there's Binance, Ethereum, this thing, that thing. It's like you could spend an infinite amount of— As I understand these, like, new coins and these coin releases and all this shit, it's the same as going to the casino and putting it all on red. Like, it's pretty hard to predict anything about what's gonna happen there. But something you mentioned that is really cool that's powered by crypto is smart contracts. Like, smart contracts— are a very encouraging future empowered by crypto. Because, I don't know, do you know what the principle of a smart contract is? Kind of. I mean, I know that it, like, is un-fraudable, basically, right? Yeah, basically. So it's like, it's a contract. Like, you both, if both individuals of a smart contract sign the agreement, the money goes in escrow. So the money is basically tied to the smart contract until the contract is satisfied. So if I hire you to clean my apartment, let's say, we could draw up a smart contract that is like, okay, here are the— I would love to have the honor to be contracted to clean your apartment. Right. And so if we somehow— this one's a little bit hard because cleaning the apartment is not necessarily, like, a black-and-white thing. But if we find a way to, like, programmatically decide the acceptance criteria of cleaning my apartment, so if we can figure out, like, what is decidable if my apartment is clean or not, and then the deal can start. So we can both sign the contract, and I will put the money in the smart contract. So let's say I agree to pay you $100 if these criteria are met. Then, like, the money is there for you. As soon as we both sign the contract, the money is yours if you satisfy the criteria. And, like, that's not up to me. It's up to the criteria that we agree on. And if you satisfy them, you will get the money. And nobody can stop that. It's powered by math and by just rules. Like, no middleman can stand between you and your money. You just have to do the task. And that's what's cool about smart contracts. What if a terrorist blows up the server that the smart contract is run on? They can't. They would have to blow up every single computer in the world. That's what's cool about, like, this is decentralized. This is what the decentralized chain is. Like, the deal, the smart contract exists on everybody's computer that uses Bitcoin. If we're paying with whatever we're paying on, the contract. That's the reason why it's so enforcing, is everybody who uses the thing enforces that this contract exists. They say, okay, I agree. You started this contract. This money has to go to that person if these criteria are satisfied. And as soon as they're satisfied, and that's what's beautiful. Like, the exchange is facilitated by trustful computers. All right. Well, you know, you trust the computers. I don't know if all of us do. Yeah, I think that you're in cahoots with them. You're working in cahoots to accelerate singularity. Hey, that's true. That's true. We talked about this on day one. You're the guy on the ship that is situating himself very well for the new world order. Wait, I thought that was the cartographer. Who was I on the pirate ship? You're the cartographer. I'm sorry, I misquoted. Maybe I was thinking of another guy. Did we decide who you were on the pirate ship? I'm just the guy that's been chained up into the dungeon, and he's just groveling in the corner, Give me a cup of wine, please. When everybody's drunk enough, we bring you out to sing song on deck. I hop around on my peg leg. I'm a peg-legged pirate with a parrot on my shoulder. Exactly, exactly. All right, well, you know, we've been doing this now for an hour and a half at least. Do you have any abiding thoughts or final questions? Um, I don't know. I mean, like, I think I'm looking forward to what we can create in the months to come, to be honest. Like, I want to think about what we can do in Georgia, and maybe if there's something we can do in the U.S., I would love to see you in Iowa if that, you know, fly lands on the table, if that's a saying. Well, now I've had two Beans invite me to Georgia because your mother sent me an invite last month, so I think if a third Bean invites me to Georgia, then I have a full pod, and I would gladly come. So if you can get one of your cats or dogs or goats or maybe your dad, or even a brother, a nephew, if one of your, like, two-year-old nephews knows how to use a smartphone, to invite me to Iowa, I'm there. That's my only stipulation. I can do a family-wide invite in a few months' time, or in, like, one month's time. But in all seriousness, yes, I would love to come. I think Alexa would love to come also, and we need to see the Bean compound and the Bean machine and the llamas up close and in person to really get a greater sense for who you are and where you come from. Right, and very neat, by the way, the Summer House, whatever that idea is going to be called. Iowa is going to be the primary test ground for that whole thing because I have been wanting to work on building and, like, all this kind of stuff in Iowa, and, like, I want to create a part of our ranch in Iowa as a testing ground for this whole idea. Start creating things, and it would be fun for you to be there, and it can help, like— I don't know. Help me understand the process in my attempt to explain it and all that. Yeah, well, that sounds great. And that also, that parlays back to, like, what the main thing that—I mean, advice that I think I would give to you is that you just, you're on your way to doing this anyway. So I'm just saying, like, the first step is to have a case study that, like, proves that this is an idea that you're actually interested in, that will work the way you think, and also just to learn from your mistakes. But you need to just go and do one. It's nice to have the whole structure, and that's also, like, I'm a big picture thinker. I don't know how you would categorize yourself, but oftentimes I'm thankful to, like, have an immediate task to work on or someone to push me in that direction, because I think sometimes you get, like, attracted to the big scope, which you need, but then the only way that you can actually get there is to have execution in, like, a smaller study. So, yeah, it sounds like what would be a great case study. It's a good point. I like it. Yeah, let's agree to another something like this in the next few weeks, let's say. Yeah. Well, also I'll be back in Hungary, you know, now is April 28th, so I guess we've still got a couple weeks, May 15th. But yeah, let's try to do another chat for sure, if not next week, the week after would be great by me. And I'll have some more adventures to share from Spain, because like I said, we're going to Granada tomorrow, and I'm absolutely tantalized by this prospect. I've really been reading a lot the past two days, especially. It was rainy here. I was kind of locked in the house all day, and the Moorish history is crazy. I mean, that was another thing that you said, which was kind of a fair point, is that we have, like, a misunderstanding of Eastern cultures, and that also goes for Islamic cultures, especially Islamic cultures, because you look at the Moors, they came over to, like, Europe. That, again, this is a little bit of an ignorant misunderstanding also, because after the Roman Empire—Roman Empire falls middle of the fifth century, 460s or so—and then you have this, like, so-called Dark Period in Europe, but that's a little bit of a misnomer, because it wasn't fully dark. I mean, like, the Visigothic kingdom in Spain, although rudimentary compared to the pomp and the circumstance of, like, mid-Augustan Rome, was still a kingdom in its own right with, like, buildings and architecture and some sort of science and innovation. That being said. In the 700s, when the Visigoths ruled Spain, you had this Arab empire and the Moors and the Caliphate, which had just sort of been invigorated over the past two or three centuries by the coming to light of the prophet Muhammad. And now you have this fervent culture that spread across this whole cradle of civilization, whether you're talking about Baghdad and Iraq, which used to be a beautiful, flowering, tropical, climactic city and not the barren dust bowl that it is today, all across the north of Africa, and then spreading into Spain. And these people, the Moors and the Arabs, the Muslims, they were the ones that had the science. They were the ones that had the math. They were the ones that had the medical innovation. And they were the ones that had the poetry, the literature, the art, and the architectural beauty. And without the Muslims coming into Spain during the 8th century, the 9th century, we would have lost a lot of the ancient Roman tradition that was then passed down into medieval Europe through the Renaissance and to today. So that's what I'll leave you on, and that's what I'm sort of excited to explore over the coming weeks here. And as always, thank you, Tom, for adding your insight and challenging me and making me think differently about things. I appreciate that. That last monologue just—I need to hear, I need to hear. I'm so excited. Thank you, Willie. As always, much love. And that's been another episode of Talking with Willie. And now the cool theme song comes on.