>>>Ugly things: computer housing (for the last 20 years, 99% of the boxes are gray, drab boxes; black is a color). Stoves. TVs (can't blame them, though, there are no US made ones anymore). Cars all looking the same, in 50 shades of gray. Furniture. Flatware and stoneware (either plain ugly or a kitsch imitation of whatever the fashion was in richer houses a century or two ago). Advertising (mostly too loud, too glitzy, too fast). Movies (too much Hollywood, too little author, too many cliches). Shoes (try to find something that's not in fashion).
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>>You have been sounding a lot like a homesick guy lately. Starting with your regular use of the word "home" to refer not to where you live but to where you used to live.
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>>Or maybe Eastern Europeans are just natural sourpusses ;-)
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>It's Walter... he knows how to (inadvertently) water my nostalgia so it flourishes. Though, amazingly, it's not Serbonostalgia, it's Euro-.

Ah. But we all feel nostalgia for things that remind us of home and when we were young. Still, I wouldn't want to be back shoveling snow every morning in Wisconsin or working the farm :o)