This time around Christmas + winter itself, makes us buy more. The gifts, warm jacket, new ski equipment… I have a feeling that there is much more shopping in winter than in summer. And you know what? We do the shopping very rarely. We like this using until it’s used. And it’s not about a big, deep ideology that the consumerism is bad, that the money is something. No no.

I just hate doing shopping and I do it only when I really have to. Like when the girls don’t have socks anymore ;) Then: sure! Socks shopping. Or when our photo camera is dead. We need to find some parts to change. But the fact that a piece of clothes have a hole in it or that it’s old…, it’s not an argument for me to put myself together and go shopping.

All in all: what is a hole? What does a hole in a sock mean? I understand, in the rain jacket – it might end up badly. Or in a shoe – this might be simply uncomfortable. But should a little hole disqualify a sweater? Somehow it’s a common thing. My mum gets angry when I wear holyyyy clothes. Or – oh my god – when my kids do. What parent is it, not to make his kid beautiful and ironed? Somehow I do not feel that.

We were thinking about it a lot in Vanuatu or Tonga. We felt a bit in a right place, in – all the time the same, cut with scissors or with holes – clothes. At the islands there was nobody hole-less. And they do have needles or ropes, everybody could fix a hole. But what for? What does it change?

Berlin is slightly like this too. That the way you look (clothes, hair, make up or no make up) – don’t say much. Or at least much less than in Poland. That when you talk with a stranger in the metro, you might not get if he is homeless or an university professor. I like it very much. This little wind of freedom and less putting people into the boxes.

That I can do my make-up, when I feel like. Not – like I noticed in Warsaw for example – almost always, when I leave the flat. In Warsaw, there is not way to visit a serious theatre just like that, in jeans. In Berlin – possible. Holes in your trousers or even a bottle of beer in your hands, is not a big deal, when you visit a gallery. It’s not a sign of disrespect. It only means there are more important things in your life for you than fixing the hole. And that you like beer.

All those thoughts came to me during the Christmas shopping. When I was looking for gifts for my friends, I checked in my head: anything important still needed for the girls? But lately they have got a huge bag of clothes from friends, whose kids are a bit older. Tom lately bought the socks. The wellington (from the picture above) was lately fixed with the duck tape. And, just to make it clear, we have the money for a new wellingtons. But what for buying the new ones, if those are still totally ok..?

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Our first book is out!

We have published our first book (for now just in Polish:) about our Central America Trip.
See, read and order here »