adventurous future professions such as engine driver, boat
commander, or discoverer. It comes from the fact that man is born to
have adventures, this is proven by what happened with our
common ancestors in the Garden of Eden according to the Bible, as
when something is unknown or forbidden it will not leave you in
peace, even if it takes you into trouble.
I myself have been no exception, as soon as learned to read, I
wanted to do so -- there was no TV, video, for me didn't even exist
cheap movie theatres with a lot of fleas in them that were open for
kids in the capital, as I have grown up in a village where there was
only an open air movie theatre, even that only during summer, in
winter what remained was the light of kerosene lamps for reading.
I have grown out tales except The Arabian Nights very soon,
which had been written for adults in my opinion, and after that
adventure stories and travel books became my main delicacies. I
wouldn't have become anything else than one of those I listed
above, weren't life so hard to them who haven't been born rich, well,
life is not mild in any way, it is a closed cage for people of the lower
layers of society, so, my fate has been written decisively. World
literature discloses many cases of young people dreaming about
interesting futures, who had to take such trades for themselves that
have seemed dullness in itself.
My brother who was my senior by four years has left us in his
childhood because of a fatal accident, and I have been sucked in by
his long-dreamed would be, but never come-true, profession of
mechanical engineer -- he had always had an extraordinary sense
of technical things -- as if by a vacuum cleaner. My parents have ne-
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Canned roaddust
ver cared that I am very far from being another genius for techn-
ology, they only wanted me to become a mechanical engineer in
place of my late brother -- that even had some attraction that time,
today nobody is considered a human being who is no banking or IT
professional.
Well, I haven't become either any skipper, not even a captain on
a river boat, although I was working on river-boats as a machinist, or
a discoverer, although I made trips to Africa and have seen animals
and people not widely known to everyone, even less an engine
driver. I have become a mechanical engineer and later also an
economist. And, just the opposite as expected, this fact hasn't
isolated me from adventures and opportunities to see the world, but
helped me to fulfil my dreams of childhood.
Those who commit the stupidity of taking this book into their
hands, what more, wanting to read it, I ask to excuse me, if they
would not always find what they were looking for. It is similar to that
when you ask for the bill in a Greek restaurant and find another sum
written on it than you expected. I try to talk about events and things
seen and experienced in foreign places not simply to report as in a
diary, but to tell the essence of them in a distilled form. A great help is
the fact in it that some of them are already decades apart. But this
effect is balanced by the opportunity that a reader always has: he
simply turns the pages to the collection of pictures and can see all in
reality what he has read. I have had my photographic hobby since I
was a teenager. The majority of my nearly four thousand photo-
graphs is color slides developed mainly by myself -- although some
of them had so poor raw materials that they were not worth doing it,
but I couldn't afford more -- in my dark room or developing tank.
I did my best to give a kind of description of the visited places
beside pictures, but it is understandable, I hope, that also occur-
rences happening with me and my companions got their entries.
Certain details do good even for historical snapshots as I didn't go to
most countries or towns from my free will, but I was sent there
officially by my employers. And always there was a fair, or on the
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