Bruno’s twisting and turning wakes me up. He’s not in pain like a child in Gaza with alarmingly inflamed skin. It’s his way of saying he wants us to get up. Bratislava is windy today. There’s something cleansing about it. Not ethnically, but psychologically. A bit of Gone With The Wind romanticism.
He has breakfast. I eat two Zott protein puddings. A perfect fit cause ‘zot’ means lunatic in Dutch. One has to be a lunatic in this world to be affected by suffering you didn’t cause, can’t alleviate, can’t stop and is not even in a holiday location.
The non-lunatic people I met yesterday racked their brain over where to go this summer. Gdansk? Nice for the cooler temperature. Italy? A bit more expensive, but better service and more things to do for kids. Croatia? Cheaper accomodation.
The middle class faces tough choices.

Before lunch we take our bikes. I forget the keys to our bike locks. We park them in front of one of many shopping malls here. We rush to the toy store. All shops being open on a Sunday still feels surreal to me. Growing up in Belgium almost all shops were closed on a Sunday. We buy ammo for his pop guns. I have mixed feelings about that, but I played with toy guns way, way more than Bruno and I didn’t become a proud triggerhappy violence loving macho who treats guns as a necessary extension to his dick. I’ve never owned a real gun. Bruno isn’t even interested in the pop guns. He’s just excited about us having some goal. By the way, pop guns today are way, way more silent than the pop guns I remember.

We go to a lake behind the hospital where Bruno was born. Barely a soul around. We find children’s clothes strewn about in the bushes. I have seen so much aggression towards children my mind immediately scans if there are corpses floating around in the lake. We also find some kind of little shrine. I assume in memory of someone who commited suicide in the lake. But who knows? The world isn’t always as dark as my mind says it is.

Bruno has fun. Throws rocks in the lake. I look for the biggest ones for him. Good to be out. Serene. Windy, but sunny and sultry.

Lunch is boiled potatoes and chicken for me and some Slovak beef stew for Bruno.

He gets half a glass of a sugary drink called Vinea. Sugary drinks are evil. Not so evil the IDF hands them out to children, but evil enough.

Now we’re getting ready to watch a fairy tale.

And here is something few will state so openly:

All of this is overshadowed by two things. One being the disgusting state of the world, even though we live in a speck of the world where nothing happens and the only assault here is an occasional assault on my hormones. Slovak women like to signal the market value they think will get them their big white SUV: their often long shapely thighs, often with the lower part of their butt left naked too, combined with a weird rugged facial expression a man’s nervous system gets in a bind: why does she flash about her legs when her face says she hates the entire world? Few people ever figure out it’s filter: only approach me if you can defrost me. Slovak men respond by staring at the ground and finding ways to put down any woman’s looks. What you tell yourself you don’t desire can’t hurt you. Serbian guys you have to hold back with a team of six horses cause they go: ‘Hey you, stop. Give me your number.’ Neither approach works. Slovak guys tend to marry the first woman who happens to see a path to babies in him and a steady provider she can easily control. I don’t know enough Serbian guys here to know how they end up. They end up in Vienna eventually, I think.

Sorry that was an unintended long detour.

The second thing always overshadowing everything is finances.

For the past 20 years worries about keeping up with rising prices have haunted me. Like they haunt almost everyone else.

And coupled with that is the obnoxious never fully switched off quest in brain for doing more, working more efficiently, earning more, feeling guilty and dumb for putting time and energy into things that rarely lead to any money.

This then becomes a clash of competing tornados in my head.

I need more money.

No, you have it good.

I need to work more.

No, throwing rocks into a lake with Bruno and holding his hand crossint a street is what will bring tears to your eyes when it’s time to die, not more work.

I have to do more things that get money, and fewer things that don’t bring any money.

No, but you are just going to suppress knowing about how a western allied country turns a strip of land with 2 million people into a laboratory for peak human suffering. Like how it created the ideal circumstance to inflame the skin of a baby boy like your Bruno once was? Really? You are just going to look away and make a little more money babysitting the European middle class? Chatgpt calls some of my work babysitting adults.

This is today’s excerpt of my Notes From The Mountain Fortress.

Think of it what you will.