Excuse me?

Acclimation is difficult. I'm being braised and steamed in my own sweat right now. You're alright. I generally handle heat well (in dry ass Estonia) but the weather forecast predicts heavy rain and thunder for the night, and it fucking feels like it.

Those that post more than 'parfait' have left concise and lovely reviews. And you know what they're right. I don't like to haggle, the seller put up the price tag for a reason, andI'm not buying a nevessity, I'm buying luxury, if a price doesn't seem agreeable, I simply won't buy.

Sometimes there's hiccups with shipping, either because they run into issues, or because it's holiday season and post services are backed up, a parcel goes missing in transit, or because it took so long to arrive due to aforementioned backups that I was out of the country and couldn't retrieve the parcel on time.

I always default to very pleasant and enthusiastic problem solving, and one time I because there was an issue on my end with retrieval and the parcel got shipped back I was like 'keep it, re-list it if you like, fault was on my end, I won't ask for a chargeback, I'm willing to press 'all is OK' button, don't want to inconvenience you and the fella on the other end was like 'nah no biggie, you'd have to cover the shipping fees again but I post parcels so often and yours is already labeled, I can just ship it again', and that's how I came to own one of my most precious books I have.

I've heard horror stories especially on sellers' end, and I just can't be that person. This is why I'll never have complete financial security, lol.

Why I was thinking about it just now is because, again, easy to feel isolated here, and our self-image is always, to a degree, constructed with feedback from others.

And I'm like yeah I'm being an intemperate, insufferable person on tumblr which I just use as a public journal at this point, but at least I'm not trying to haggle an already ridiculously cheaply priced antique down to coppers, or ruin my parcel just so I could get a refund and keep the item, too.

And frankly I'm a discerning and careful enough a customer, I appreciate a thorough listing. The only disappointments I've had are items that seem to be doused in fragrant detergent. I have a fantastic cashmere winter dress I ordered for a good amount of money. I've given it a vodka bath teice and it's been hanging on my balcony in the sun for what amounts to weeks, but it still reeks of synthetic flowers.

Please, sellers. Indicate if an item comes from a smoker's home instead of trying to mask the smell of mothballs, tobacco or just 'old clothes smell' with detergent. I can get all of those smells out very easily on my own, but detergent stink simply will not come out of wool. Just indicate previous odours in your listing and price accordingly. Antiques and vintage shoppers especially are very used to getting old odours out of clothes and restoring pieces. We knew what we were getting into when buying old stuff. Just be thorough in your item description, we know someone else wore it before, we know the conditions the item has likely been stored in, we know people smoke. It's fine. Indicate it as damage and all is fine. Those who really want it will still buy it even at a moderate to high price. And most of us won't be shitty about it, eapecially when we're informed.

I was practically raised in a sauna, but I want you to know: I have never ever experienced temperatures higher than 36 degrees Celsius in a natural outside environment in my life. I've travelled to warm places, but always out of season.

Last year I had to walk to the car service part-ways in 35C, and my eyes were literally drying up as I walked, though as long as I kept moving at a slow, steady pace, I actually tolerated the heat well.

As of now the weather forecast for monday oscillates between 35 and 39C. My husband will be fleeing to his air-conditioned office. I deliberately keep my east-facing room's blinds closed for days on end not just to protect my antique junk and clothes, but now to keep the temperature down. There's a fan.

I'm feeling very intimidated.

Oh yeah and I'll be on Graspop fest iver the weekend with 30+ degrees in humid old Dessel, Belgium. The last time I had to endure those temps during a festival was in Ozora, Hungary, and it was agony, even though the air humidity was significantly lower. I drank hot beer. HOT BEER, because the aluminium cans in my tent just did what they do when baked in a tent in direct sunlight in 30+ degrees.

A city, a country, a people do not follow a script for the actors and layout for activities. It will simply have to come down to you, your preconceived notions, your willingness to observe and blend in, your unique life experience, and your ability or inability to understand that you are visiting other people in their house, and they will often be very different from you, and should not be expected to behave in ways you think are proper, or what you're used to.

What I dodn't have as an expectation was 'Parisians are rude.' you know the stereotype. Again maybe I'm too Estonian, but Parisians seemed like ordinary folk going about their business to me. The good, the bad, the weird, same as it ever was anywhere else. Didn't really cop a lot of rude. But then we also took care to blend as 'locals' too. We jaywalked when they did, and stayed put when they did.

The 'Stalkers' of Pripyat in Ukraine, lol, those were a thing for a while before 2022, I just...

I don't know. It's fine to have your curiosity sparked. Absolutely fine. But the 'entertainment tourists' are living in their own cringe fantasy there, they are not going there to appreciate the country or location for what it is, a real life thing, they're always going there to relive their entertainment experience, and walk away disappointed because real life, real people and real places often do pale in comparison to whatever vidya game fantasy you're living in.

Which is such a pity. All of these places have merit of their own because of what they are right now, today, this second, independently of whatever media used them as a setting.

And I'll say this, Scottish highlands are an infinitely more beautiful, flawed, rich and whole rounded experience when you don't view it through the lens of 'this is where my favourite fictional Scottish Superman fucked his English wife.'

I hold a mean opinion based on some experience. If you visit a country because of some piece of popular entertainment you love so much, you are practically doomed to fail to have a good experience, because you've already built the destination up in your head as some sort of a fantasyland, your personal video game/tv show theme park where locals trying to live their lives are just NPCs in your real life version of your video game/book/tv show experience. Kind of like outlander fans touring Scottish highlands, or fucking hell, even foreigners with 1/8 local ancestry thinking he'll be received and embraced as a brother by locals doing some folk dance as a greeting.

You've built up a fantasy based on a piece of media you really enjoyed, and real life didn't live up to it. Czechia's larger cities get a ton of tourists. You need to remember that you are a guest in your host country's house, and ordinary locals' lives don't grind to a halt just because you've arrived to live out your witcher/kcd/STALKER/outlander fantasy irl. They're tired. They have shitty days. They are trying to weave between gawking tourists standing in the middle of the street to get to work. They're losing housing to wealthy opportunists selling airbnb stays to your ass, and you buy it. Some will be nice. Some ignore your existence, and some will simply never like you. And none of them want to play a npc part in your entertainment media tourism unless it pays well, and usually it doesn't.