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Look, here comes the Intro—slightly strange and distracting from your main goal: “to find out what’s going on with those people from the gray and boring world.”
It’s more of a literary-artistic sketch, while the following narrative will be descriptive (just the way you wanted). So feel free to skip this beginning, fast-forward the “video” to the next episode, and that’s where you’ll learn exactly what you came for.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
In the center of the metropolis towered a cyclopean restaurant, the size of a thousand “Michelins.” Next to it crouched a couple of other skyscrapers—like the president’s residence, city hall, and other insignificant institutions not even worth mentioning.
Inside this luxury drinking establishment, everything stood empty, for its owner accepted no clients, maintaining the restaurant solely for his own purposes. Of course, he had staff, and in great numbers, so that employees scurried through the enormous hall, serving only their boss.
He himself was perched at the bar counter, consumed by exhaustion after a hard day’s work.
At his feet stood a painted bowl from the Mycenaean era of Crete, where he soaked his legs in lactose-free soda, lazily wiggling his toes. From time to time, leech-therapists clung to them—shipped in from his favorite lake in Algeria. After a long first-class flight, they finally got to do the job they were paid for. The oldest leech had only one day left before retirement and was already planning how she would go fishing with her grandchildren on the lakeside after fifty years of service as a detective.
The boss’s body was also steeped in bliss, since he had recently given up the outdated chocolate body wrap and now preferred exclusively the garlic-mayonnaise wrap, otherwise known as the “Salad of the Soul.”
From the numerous subwoofers built into the walls came the easy, loungy melodies of Slaughter to Prevail, and his heavy eyelids involuntarily closed, ready to slip him into pleasant drowsiness. On a small stool beside him sat his brother-in-law, frozen in place while holding a glass of Italian liqueur, Limoncello Supreme with a topping of lower-back cream.
Combining pleasure with practicality—that is the foundation of any successful man’s lifestyle, provided he cares about his health.
The eyelids had almost fully closed, when in that small slice of still-visible space, the chef noticed the saloon doors slide open to admit a certain creature.
A surprised murmur ran through the staff, and the boss groaned, forced to interrupt his moment of tranquility.
The more his gaze focused on the intruder, the more astonishing details of its appearance came into view. The running figure (most likely a human, though the boss was reluctant to acknowledge such kinship) looked truly extraordinary.
He was very tall, with broad, sloping shoulders draped in two snow leopard pelts that hung down to his knees, concealing his loins. The guest himself, much like those departed predators, often bared his teeth in a grin, and from his mouth jutted sharp fangs that hardly resembled anything human.
A wild mane of hair spilled down to the middle of his back, while a slightly curly forelock fell straight into his eyes, practically covering them completely. How this creature could see at all was a mystery—but apparently, it navigated the world just fine.
How else to explain the fact that, with a snort, the guest headed directly for the bar counter, leaving filthy footprints from his bare feet across the immaculate floor?
The boss instantly lost his calm and shrieked:
— Get him out of here! In a building that contains every artistic style—Baroque, Empire, Wright, and Rococo—there’s no place for such an ersatz version of a human being!
By cruel irony, the grim security guards had just left for the nearest shop to buy new e-cigarettes, so there was simply no one to escort the intruder out.
The guest crashed heavily onto a nearby chair. The material cracked under his weight but, heroically, it held. What followed was a one-sided staring contest, since the stranger’s eyes never appeared from beneath his hair, while the boss couldn’t stop studying every scar left by claws or cold steel across that battle-worn torso.
— Okay. Let’s assume you sit here for a while, until my staff call the authorities. Who are you, and why did you come here?
A string of incoherent growls followed. The boss shook his head in confusion.
— Ohh, this is bad! Kid, you’ve gone way too deep into those LARP or reenactment games of yours. You could’ve chosen a more civilized era, like the Renaissance. Instead you’ve gone nuts, overcommitting to this barbarian act.
From the guest’s lips slipped some sounds—faintly resembling words. The astonished boss leaned closer to check if he wasn’t just imagining it (keeping his head carefully out of range, in case those sharp fangs went for his earlobe).
For a while the intruder only whimpered, growled again, and then finally forced his tongue into articulation, muttering in a rough, uneven voice:
— All this… reminds me of a strange episode… from Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee and Cigarettes”… rrr… or any other stereotypical movie, where two strangers… rrr… meet in a diner and share their stories.
— A diner?! How dare you?! — The boss’s brows, which had sat like a humble rooftop, now rose into the shape of the Taj Mahal. He roared bear-like: — What nonsense is this?! This is the finest establishment in the world!
The beast-man bounced several times on his chair, like a baboon on ecstasy, and yet the chair, noble warrior that it was, endured. Then he spoke again, with visible effort:
— And you—are the Archetype of the Typical… Successful Western Bourgeois. Rrr! Boring!
— You’re boring! — The boss flared up for real. — You’re not all that funny yourself. So, where are you from?
— Rrr… I come from the faraway North… Hyperborea.
— Never heard of it. Is that in Oklahoma? Whatever. Why did you come here?
The guest began to tremble, his features slipping further from humanity. He scratched his chest with long, crooked nails, and the boss recoiled in horror, just in time to hear the phrase:
— Lavender latte… the last thing… that can save me…
Fearing for the safety of his property, and realizing both guards and police were running late, the boss ordered the nervous waiters to fetch several double-cups of the requested drink.
Snatching the cups, the beast-man bent down and slurped the liquid greedily with his tongue—and then, something incredible began to happen.
The pelts shifted into ordinary clothing, the hair shortened and grew cleaner, the fangs and nails receded. After a few more gulps, in front of the boss sat the most average human being—one of the countless everymen this world mass-produces.
At that very moment, a squad of cops burst into the hall, rushing up to the two companions. But the bewildered boss waved a hand for them to halt. He saw that this newly-minted—or reborn—human was staring unblinking at the ceiling, speaking in a deep baritone voice.
The resonance of his voice, as well as the story itself, was mesmerizing. Waiters brought mats, and the cops sat down cross-legged upon them. The boss leaned back, once again drifting into drowsiness, lulled by his brother-in-law blowing a cool breeze into his ear.
And the ex-barbarian himself marveled at the words spilling from his mouth:
— Now I will write a book with spoken words… what kind of madness is this?!
Let’s Get Acquainted, Since We’re Here
Aloha, Earthlings. Good evening, gentlemen. What’s up, dudes.
Pick whichever greeting feels closer to your heart.
When you decided to open a book with such a loud, clickbait title—more typical of Shorts or Reels on social media—you probably expected a kind of travel guide. Either one where I brag about Europe’s glamorous life, or the opposite—where I complain about how unbearable it is to live in the lands of the former Eastern Bloc. You know, the place where everyone suffers eternally and dreams of reincarnating as a little frog in a dumpster (where at least there’s some moisture) next to a KFC in Idaho.
Such a person, not yet blessed with the desired drag-queen reincarnation, sits on a bench outside his peeling old five-story apartment block and daydreams. While he dreams of holding a real designer item, not a knockoff, he broadcasts his thoughts into the global information field—or what I’ll call the Sad Blogosphere. There, Western readers see these legendary “Khrushchyovkas” (grey freakin buildings) and make protective signs over themselves, praying never to end up there.
In this dead-inside decadence, colors are unnecessary, because they’re useless for someone who stares grimly at reality and refuses to see tomorrow.
Today’s retreat schedule is fully packed: a trip to the store for stale bread, walking a dog with the face of a heroin addict, then going to work—which, of course, is a Soviet factory eroded by decades of wind, where wooden surface-to-air missiles are still carved on lathes.
And afterward? Coming home with groceries for the week: a bottle of milk and a bag of buckwheat. Then a fight with his wife using frying pans welded together from kryptonite and fragments of Lenin’s bones. Playing “criminals” with his kid, using light-version RPGs made of Play-Doh. And finally—a well-deserved sleep on a clay bed purchased from post-apocalyptic IKEA.
But hold on—I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even introduced myself. There has to be some order here, otherwise next to your big natural head will appear a smaller, dumb, clueless head, like in Men in Black 2.
My name is Ivan. Because that’s how I must be called, even if I were born with the name Clavius. If I had a wife and a child—they’d also be named Ivan. Same goes for my aquarium fish.
So, your humble servant (and I truly am one, dear Sirs) will carve this proud name into his destiny from here on out. I plan to live through every page of this book with it, and I wish the same for you.
Chapter 2: Who Are You, Anyway?
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Who Are You, Anyway?
Your image of some fairy-tale Eldorado is shaped almost entirely by cinema and music.
Even though our world no longer resembles the maps of Piri Reis, or the old guides written by Herodotus—where in one tribe lived one-eyed Cyclopes-Arimaspians, in another dog-headed men, and in a third, Amazons galloping on wild horses, fighting Krakens in the name of third-wave feminism—we still don’t know a damn thing about each other!
Sure, the world has supposedly become incredibly globalized and open. Anyone today can travel wherever they please (except for a couple of charming totalitarian states), take photos, shoot videos, and capture the details of any country to share with their people back home. We’ve got the Internet, tons of media and literature, travel blogs, and TV shows introducing us to foreign cultures.
So what more could possibly unite us, help us know each other better? And yet, two key reasons remain why we still know almost nothing about what’s happening across the ocean.
1) Hardly anyone in Eastern Europe knows English, Spanish, or any other international language.
That makes it tough for us to connect with your population, to gather reliable info about you. Aliens would honestly have it easier—they’d probably land with language modules pre-installed.
At the same time, hardly anyone on your side knows our languages either. So we hit the same damn problem of the cursed Tower of Babel, from which arrogant mythical linguists from Duolingo threw us down one by one.
2) And, as always—nobody really gives a damn.
Which is perfectly understandable. Because let’s be real—you’ve got your own ground under your feet, your own city or village before your eyes. We do too. And who cares about distant lands while your own life is bubbling right around you?
So, since antiquity or the Middle Ages, basically nothing has changed. Everyone still sits in their swamp, their forest, their polis, their megapolis, thinking only about themselves and their country. We only start caring about faraway lands in three scenarios:
When some random country looks like it might trigger the next Nuclear War. Your pulse spikes, and you go Google what the hell that place even is.
When something mysterious and alluring happens there—like Nessie throwing a chill barbecue-and-croissant party with tourists on the shore of Loch Ness. Greetings to Scotland!
And, of course, when we dream of changing our lives according to some exotic regional vibe. Some downshifter suddenly wants to quit being a bank actuary and become a jaw-harp player in the frozen Tundra. Or move to a tropical island and take health baths inside volcano craters with a cockatoo perched on his shoulder.
But most people, naturally, are interested in just one thing: the material and infrastructural side. Where can you move so you can live like all those celebrities who sell us envy through the screen? Where money flows, parties never end, luxury cars are handed out at the border upon registration, and you can switch straight into your personal submarine.
This worldview is fueled partly by relatives’ stories, sure—but mostly, here’s where the unforgettable factor of Cinema kicks in.
You managed to sell us the “American Dream” (European, Australian, whatever)—investing a single cent—while we gave you box office returns for decades. And though most people in Eastern Europe openly dislike the Western World and roast it for a hundred reasons, if you dangled a Green Card, they’d have the language module installed in their head instantly—complete with the lyrics of your national anthem.
This isn’t mockery or underestimation—it’s a long-standing practice, impossible to deny. Though… go ahead, deny it if you want. Ivan doesn’t mind.
You showed us things that completely deform our perception of dull reality, in sharp contrast to penthouses, palm trees, cocaine lines across a businessman’s navel, cash falling from the sky, and other essentials of being a decent citizen and good human.
I’ll even pose the question on your behalf, reader—because if I actually heard you ask it out loud, I’d probably need to check myself into a clinic:
“Wouldn’t you want to live in our luxury?”
Answer: No. But I’d say the same about life in Eastern Europe, because the life philosophy—both here and there—doesn’t fit mine.
There are plenty of reasons for this. My own country doesn’t suit me, since I’m a “white crow” there (no racist undertones—my apologies to all respectable crows).
And in the West, I don’t want to feel like one of those Tatooine sand-people from Star Wars, ambushing travelers. Meaning, I don’t want to feel like some Third-World (or Tenth-World) native who either hates enviously or bows submissively, thanking the Lords and Masters every time they let me live in their blessed land.
Barbarian pride? Stupidity? Probably both.
So, for the next section, let’s end with a nice, loud cliffhanger headline:
“Both You and Us—you piss me off.”
Chapter 3: Who are We?
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Who Are We?
We are Gloom.
That’s right. The absence of genuine laughter and joy is our business card, stamped with zero emotional credit. Here, showing your feelings is considered somehow wrong.
For men, it comes from those ancient masculine codes, where a man must be tough and grim, because only then is he a worthy son of a “manly people.”
And yes, we’re genuinely irritated by your bright, toothy, sun-powered smiles—always flashing for no reason. To us, that makes you look like the beta version of a ChatGPT update that hasn’t even been released yet.
In a way, there’s truth there. When you’re not happy, you’re not supposed to smile—just because society says so. You’re not obliged to say nice things to someone who annoys you, or worse—hurts you.
In the West, there’s this corporate practice of keeping your face in “Pseudo-Optimism x3” mode. It has its pros and cons. Sure, constant insincerity and staged friendliness can feel overly synthetic and off-putting for those who aren’t used to it. But on the other hand—when you’ve lived all your life in a place where smiling is almost shameful, it gets exhausting.
Because constantly staring at gloomy, sour faces is unbearable. You start craving lightness, joy, the sound of laughter—not suffering for the sake of suffering.
And personally, it’s hard for me to pick a side in this duel, because Falsehood vs. Bitterness doesn’t strike any chord in me. It only fuels my restless search for some imaginary land where balance exists.
We are Poverty.
According to your glossy reports, problems of corruption and poverty have been pretty much solved in your world. Everyone lives happily and carefree, carefully angling the camera away from Skid Row in LA or Porte de la Chapelle in Paris. Maybe that’s true—I’m no journalist investigating bribes among officials, no member of an anti-corruption bureau. I can only assume, not know for certain.
What I can speak about with precision is my own land, the one I was born and raised in. And here, our pensioners aren’t bronzed beauties in shorts with model haircuts, hugging on a cruise ship like in that scene from Titanic that everyone’s sick of by now.
No. Pensioners in Eastern Europe mostly save for one thing—their own funerals. And maybe they also worry about which family member is the slightly lesser asshole, so they can leave them the apartment. A sad truth. And it fits neatly into what I call “The Cycle of Grim Eastern European Experiences.”
Yes, we have oligarchs (magnates who built their fortunes illegally), massive corruption, politicians drunk on power, and much more. Every beast has its pair, and no matter where you point your finger—you’ll hit a problem.
We Are Survival.
Let’s take the U.S. as an example. In your country, the gold standard of marginal danger are armed gangs—like Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha, white biker crews like Hells Angels, or Black gangs like the Crips and Bloods.
Here? On our turf? The level of danger can be matched by any random pensioner going out for butter, or a kid playing on the swings.
Yeah, in some twisted way, we are that community of semi-civilized barbarians you imagine us to be. And there’s a kernel of truth to the stereotype. Because if you saw someone getting their eyes cut out after a fight, or a mob raping some weak kid in the ass in a cartoon (I write it this way just to dodge the fucking publisher platform algorithms, so they don’t insta-ban me), you’d first run to your CBT-therapist to share the trauma—and then you’d both load up on drugs and commit seppuku.
For us? That’s just another piece of everyday content. Not marked 18+, but 18-.
And no, that’s not pride talking. Honestly—I’d much rather live that blurry, numb kind of life you have, if only I wasn’t so goddamn reflexive about everything. I’ll even dedicate the next section to this thought.
But the point here: our life is harsh from the get-go. Nobody’s thinking about ramps for people in motorized wheelchairs. The real question is—will you even survive until the ripe old age of twelve?
Of course, I exaggerate (again) and joke around—but Eastern Europe has always been a cluster of poor countries with low living standards, almost zero sense of social morality or responsibility, and still overpopulated with living fossils of the Soviet Union (who haven’t all checked into heavenly communism just yet).
I always fucking marveled watching foreign movies, where even in prisons guys stroll around rocking dreads—while in many parts of Eastern Europe, until very recently, you could literally be killed just for the “wrong look.”
And the “right look” for a man, according to the wisdom of those years? A short haircut in your natural color (straight out of North Korea’s approved haircut catalog), no piercings, no flashy clothes, nothing.
Sure, omnipresent zoomers with their TikToks and pink hair have shifted things a lot, along with, of course, the passage of time itself.
So yeah—those Adidas tracksuits and shaved heads of the “Slavic mafia” from your stereotypes? They can fuck right off.
Oh, and speaking of them. Let’s clear up the big one—your main cliché.
No, not every guy here looks like that. Not even every second one. Those criminal archetypes were mostly a thing in the 1990s, right after the Soviet Empire collapsed. What rolled in was pocket-and-stall capitalism, where money came through extortion, racketeering, contract killings, drugs, “protection” rackets, turf wars between gangs—all the same shit you had in your countries too, in one form or another.
Banditry didn’t disappear, of course. It just took on quieter, less flashy forms. The “look” changed a lot too. Sure, plenty of those cartoonish stereotypes still exist, like the ones you see in movies, but mostly—guys now look however the fuck they want, not how some screenwriter in another “those Russians or whatever” flick demands.
Still, even a coked-up Hollywood writer sniffs the truth once in a while. Because yeah, the trash is real. Step outside and you’ll see it.
A sweet-looking mom with a stroller? If she doesn’t like your vibe, she’ll immediately call you a word starting with “f” and verbally fuck your mom for dessert. Grandmas? They’ll slam into gear instantly and start a fistfight over an empty bus seat.
It’s funny—right up until you get fucking sick of it. Knowing damn well that at the same second, somewhere else in the world…
Chapter 4: Parallel Reality
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Parallel Reality
Hello there, old fella —Envy. That annoying bastard I’ve been battling inside myself every time you crawled into my head, fueled by shock and disbelief.
Every single day of mine (yeah, talking about myself here) is a struggle just for the right to breathe—and not always figuratively. And you just want to get the fuck away from it.
Your throat tightens, your guts twist, and you start swiping through Reels and Stories.
And what do you see there? Endless debates about inclusivity and diversity, diversity and inclusivity. People tearing each other apart over “important issues”—like whether white girls have the right to wear too many braided hairstyles, or whether some Sweeney in Clint Eastwood’s denim jacket is basically a fascist sign of “white supremacy”!
Fine… you keep scrolling. New trend: a dance-fart challenge with somebody chugging their own piss mid-backflip.
Oh… you’re still going? You sure, man? I ask myself the same damn thing every time, planning to put the phone down—but then, stubborn and stupid, I keep doomscrolling. Next up: a brutal contest over who can blend their makeup better using the latest concealer with a built-in GPS navigator.
And that’s when you start howling at the moon, thinking:
“MOTHERFUCKERS, HOW I FREAKIN HATE YOU AND LOVE YOU AT THE SAME TIME!”
That ambivalence just breeds inside me—because you’re busy with absolute bullshit, under the illusion the world is safe and civilized. So you’re ready to argue over every micro-issue and waste time on this circus—while some modern caveman’s club, straight out of one of those “dangerous” countries, could smash down on your head any second.
And yet—I love you. Like I said before, I love the very idea of living joyfully. To see the light not just at the end of the tunnel during a coma, but every damn day in normal life.
I kind of admire your hedonistic rhythm of living, where survival isn’t on the agenda, and your biggest problem is—Boredom.
That boredom births all your diversity wars, your never-ending TikTok trends, your junk content. And I can’t lie—sometimes I want to slip into that Safe Boredom too.
Even though my brain knows—that same Safety and Spoiled Comfort might become a tiny problem…
When the uninvited guests finally come knocking.
Chapter 5: A Little About the Safety of Your Gaming Console
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A Little About the Safety of Your Gaming Console
War—and all those other lovely life-or-death perks—sadly, hasn’t been canceled yet, no matter how much you’d like it to be.
And Slavs, with their natural indifference to chaos, could probably outlast a horde of any (well, not 100% of them) 21st-century Huns. Simply because we don’t lose our shit over atrocities—we never lived in some caramel-coated reality to begin with.
This isn’t about divine bravery burning inside some warrior’s heart. It’s about what you grow up seeing: ruins or palaces.
And since all you’ve seen of war and carnage is on a Call of Duty loading screen or in some shiny Netflix drama, my only advice is: clench your asshole tighter—’cause it might be in danger. A decent survival guide, by the way, was laid out in the movie Big Stan.
Or maybe start plotting your escape routes in advance, so you can dip out gracefully once the bloodbath hits your own streets. Alternatively, switch on your inner DIY killer-robot mode and purge yourself of all those sweet democratic illusions in your head. Don’t get me wrong—I’m totally against violence, not for some “agenda” or cosplay of Mahatma Gandhi, but because I fucking mean it.
Or just pray the NATO joint army turns out to be more than a fiction (something a lot of folks in Eastern Europe doubt) and will actually put up a real fight.
But hey—time will tell. And honestly, I hope all this shit never touches you at all.
Even my sworn enemy (and I don’t have any real ones, except myself) doesn’t deserve the fate of those who get thrown into merciless wars.
So… what’s up with colonizing Mars, dude? Sounds like a dope plan! Same for nanobots and all that high-tech candy. But don’t forget—those modern Neanderthals and Flores People might just stomp your backyard with their stone axes and war drones.
And your gluten-free fasting won’t save you.
So, sissyboy (no, not that meaning—just “timid kid,” chill out; yeah, I’m hammering the fourth wall here, talking directly to you, my bold little cyber-reader, already wearing your imaginary exoskeleton of bravery)—don’t fuck around. Turn off the Netflix show in your head where you’re the hero beating everyone, because your dick is the only gun you know how to shoot—and the only ammo you’re not afraid of.
Sorry I came at you like that. Guess I really am an unlicensed therapist.