Luke, around the world.

Ljubljana is welcoming me with open arms, and this time, my first time as a tourist, I cannot escape her charms. She is calling me once more for a proper farewell, not like the previous time when I knew I would not return to the office in the Črnuče district. Back in 2023, it went like this: the bus that was supposed to take me to the airport in Trieste took the scenic route, for the second time in my career. The sun was slowly coming down and we were scudding along the shore, a song by the Polish band Lombard, Adriatyk – Ocean goracy, was playing in my headphones, and I kept looking at the surface of the Adriatic, calm and gilded by the sun. This is a perfect clasp to close my adventure in Slovenia, an ideal moment to sever the ties that bind me to this place. Some two, two-and-a-half years earlier, on a wintry evening, I had been cruising along the Adriatic, too, but in the other direction. I had the most terrible urinary tract infection and was pissing blood, the same song was playing on my Spotify, and yes, I was a bit cross with myself to have agreed to my manager’s demands, come to Ljubljana for six weeks every year, split them however you want to.

It would still take me one more year to leave the company for good, but at least I no longer kept coming to Slovenia, always with an excuse, always postponing my next visit.

While we’ve always had our differences, I’ve been full of admiration for my coworkers based in this little post-Yugoslavia country. The regular and lengthy commute, the cold office inducing unbearable somnolence, the legendary whiteboard sessions, discussing the same thing over and over again, it all requires a great deal of stamina, and a mind of steel. The blind Al Pacino bewails the horrifying state of affairs, there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit, and I think of his words when I analyze my fourteen-year-old career in data, a few logistics companies, an FMCG conglomerate, a big bank, several online casinos. All these moneymaking ventures, they woo you with promises of being a part of the family, they supply you with a salary high enough to survive but never high enough to relax, they offer stability, but the price you have to pay, the price that matters, is just too high.

At some point you get too comfortable for your own good. Your soul, whatever essence inside of you that made you unique and free and hopeful, evaporates. Most of us go one and the same way, and this is not a complaint, how could it be: workers ourselves, we produce more workers, ignorant of the fact that it just perpetuates the cycle and our children will become cannon fodder for the next generation of capital. Maybe Ligotti was right in his extreme version of antinatalism, or, taking aside biological imperfections that at the end of the day create a world of pain for all humans, maybe we are just not focused enough on changing the system that is eating us alive. It was definitely eating ME alive; I was burned out from exhaustion, I could no longer look at the RTPs and endless tables of bets and at yet another alert about a failed inference pipeline, another day of slots jingling and blinking in all colors of the rainbow until someone somewhere hits the 20,000x multiplier and squanders the winnings trying to repeat their unlikely feat. Perhaps there had always been more spirituality in me that I cared to admit, but the nagging question, what am I living for, has intensified in the last couple of years.

A round-the-world trip is just the sort of escapism from mundane reality that I have badly needed. Even though I got used to the constant raillery, even though I added my two cents to a budding culture of symbols and sayings and rituals that excludes managers from its welcoming embrace and thrives not thanks to, but despite of them, even though some of my coworkers I still gladly call my friends, seeing them on the Prešernov trg, A’s hoodie with a huge company logo at the back, I know I’ve made the right choice. We are all smiles and laughs, but their Friday exhaustion is different from mine.

We navigate through the crowded streets of Ljubljana’s Old City, eventually sitting down in a decently-looking Asian restaurant. There is talk of the travelling budget, which I was also privy to during my tenure at the casino. U and A may go to Kazakhstan this summer, and I am already starting to envision a little detour, perhaps I can join them and we will traverse the boundless steppes together. Some of us get a round of beers, then another. It’s been a long time since I had more than one, so I am on the lookout for the initially subtle effects of ethanol entering my bloodstream. None come.

On our way to the pub we have a little stop at the ice cream shop. L refuses to buy anything, and I am painfully aware that our differences will never disappear, he is a pentatonic scale and I am Ornette Coleman, but it’s pointless to get into yet another unproductive discussion about things that are only supposed to fast track us to our retirement. No, tonight is about enjoyment, and enjoyment it is.

The pub is some musty den, the kind I frequently visited during my student years, and in comes another round of beers. The others get into an animated discussion about increasing taxes, the plight of consultants, the skyrocketing inflation. I smile, the unemployed bum that I am, because I will avoid lamenting how expensive existence is, at least for the foreseeable future. I was miserable working, now I am a butterfly escaped from a caterpillar, and it’s definitely not the beers talking, because there is still no goddamned effect. I think of K, studying for his philosophy degree, how that one time in Portugal he was unable to get drunk despite hopelessly trying to.

After all is said and done, U stays with me for a little longer. Our complaining is of a different kind. As we are leaving the pub we shoot some shit about how miserable we are in our dating life, about all the women that do not want to know us, about a Polish businesswoman, that one time in Turkey, and I am slightly smiling, thinking about what may await me on a continent far away; my heart stops for a moment, and then restarts at a much faster rate. We push through the crowd, there is a concert of some pretty decent singer, it’s open air but it’s still stuffy, so we get back to the bar to see all the places occupied. Standing at the bar, we chug our waters/cokes, whatever % I had in my blood, it’s all gone, so as soon as we sense an imminent threat from two girls yawing closer and closer in our direction, we agree it’s time to leave and part ways.

It’s not a goodbye, says U, and I totally agree with him. It’s not. And yet I feel like I am not going to see this city again. Only tomorrow is left: a march to the laundromat, a random ostrich walking on the boulevard along the river, then a hike up the hill to the fortress. I get a feeling of deja vu, a fading memory of a tech getaway I attended a few years earlier, M being the generous skip that he was, so we got a private concert of the allegedly best Slovenian rock band, Šank Rock, and it’s just as ridiculous as it would be the other way around, me trying to explain to M how important and great TSA or Kat are. Unless you’re from that country, it just doesn’t click.

So long, Ljubljana. Given the circumstances, you treated me quite well; except Warsaw and Valletta, you were my most frequently visited European capital. But what a relief to be free from the machine that you have represented.