[Life] Days gone by... - Memories & Nostalgia club

Some shows I remember as a kid include Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Veggietales (Parents and my dance studio had some episodes on DVD), Barney, Teletubbies and even had rented a DVD of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show for a sleepover with a family friend after my brother's birthday party.

I also watched some memorable shows of the 2000s including the original Teen Titans (I dressed up as Raven one Halloween), Pokemon, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (I blames Raven, Billy and Mandy and Courage for my interest in spooky stuff).

Some obscure stuff that isn't a cartoon, but I remember watching as a kid included The Othersiders (Ghost Hunters but with teenagers), Silent Library (Based off of a Japanese game show segment), Dude, What Would Happen? (Some sort of mythbusters for kids), Destroy Build Destroy and some Travel Channel series known as Ghost Stories (In hindsight, some of that stuff wasn't exactly kid friendly).

What's your name?
KetsuekiR (Ketsu)

Which era did you grow up in?
The 2000s.

Favorite toy(s) as a child?
I used to have this unbranded (probably bootlegged) firetruck when I was really small. I loved it a ton. When I was a teenager, we gave away all the toys me and my sibling used to play with but I refused to give this one up. It's all broken and messed up now though.

Share a memory or 2!
This actually a pretty cool coincidence because I found this club as soon as I came back to PC. I used to be really active here, mostly in the Off-Topic forums (back when Mafia and Debates were a thing, I guess). I had tons of people I loved hanging out with some of whom I'm sure are still here, and all of whom I hope are doing really well. This place has changed a lot since those days but I'm sure it stays true to the things I loved about it. I suppose this isn't much of a specific memory so I don't know if it's a good answer to this question but those days were good ones and every now and then I think of them and remember how nice it was to live that life!

This weekend I suppose you could say was a trip down memory lane. I completed my save file on the virtual console Pokemon Yellow.

Though gen 1 is far from perfect, I still got that excited anxious feelings of butterflies in my stomach that I get in every pokemon game when I go to face the elite four.

I always like solving the mystery of Pokemon Tower and think the Lavender Town theme still holds up well. Awaking Snorlax is also fun. I also miss these days back when there was a Game Corner, and I found the lucky machine in this play through so I was able to get a lot of coins so I could save up for the Vulpix I coveted. It's my preferred fire pokemon in RBY.

I also made sure to regularly talk to my Pikachu and check out all of its reactions. It makes me smile when it falls asleep when the Jigglypuff sings to it in the pokemon center. It's also cute when he is scared of the ghosts. I played the surfing mini game with Pikachu too, and it brings back old memories of when I had a pokemon yellow cartridge on a clear game boy color.

I forgot that Jesse, James and Meowth appear in this game so many times, and I got a kick out of seeing them.

Being on the SS Anne is also a highlight. It reminds me of watching the Battle Aboard the St. Anne and Pokemon Shipwreck episodes as a kid, and they were some of my favorites.

I had fun doing glitches like the long range trainer one to get a mew.

It took me around a year to finish the game because there are times where RBY slow down and kinda dead compared to newer games. The most tedious parts would be that I would quickly run out of people to battle so I would have to do a lot of level grinding with wild Pokemon. Catching legendaries was also a pain with the "You miss the pokemon!" message.

I would get bored and stop for awhile, and then start again, but I ultimately did see the game through, and am glad I did. I have a nice little team of hidden ability pokemon that were transferred over to my copy of Ultra Sun yesterday, my traveling companions throughout Kanto. It is important for me to interact with them. They were good pokemon who worked hard, and I would miss not having them with me. Even if the friendship mechanic only applied to Pikachu and there was no affection mechanic back in the day, I still loved my pokemon. I took a box full of pokemon with me, including the legendaries, the gift starters, gift eevee and Lapras, but the pokemon I was most looking forward to reuniting with was my main team, Pikachu, Ninetales, Venusaur, Nidoqueen, Gyarados and Dragonite. They have some new moves to learn because moves that were effective with the mechanics of gen 1 would not be today. My Gyarados was a mixed attacker with ice beam, surf and thunder bolt since his special attack was as strong as his base 100 special defense today with them both being one stat at the time. He electrocuted Lorelei's team and iced Lance's. His hyper beam was also op since there was no recharge if you landed a k.o.

My Dragonair had wrap that could immobilize you for up to 5 turns, plus it had thunder wave to make matters worse. You could never get away from it. Ninetales could also do trapping with fire spin. She was a troll that I would run confuse ray on, then later replaced that with toxic. I'd add insult to injury by using dig to make sure you miss me for a turn even if you break through confusion.

Venusaur had razor leaf even at the end of the game because critical hits were calculated based of speed stat, and this move was always a guaranteed crit, so it was really strong.

It will also be cool to have a seismic toss Pikachu because that move was a tm in the first gen. I didn't think the poke transporter would let me keep that move on it since you had to delete dizzy punch on the odd egg baby pokemon in Crystal. I'm glad I could have it though.

My Nidoqueen actually had kinda normal moves that you would run today like Earthquake, but she will have her hidden ability Sheer Force, which is awesome.

All of these pokemon get good get abilities, lightning rod for Pikachu, Chlorophyll for Venusaur, Marvel Scale for Dragonite, Drought for Ninetales, and Sheer Force for Nidoqueen. Gyarados gets Moxie, and while I prefer intimidate, moxie is still cool and I will build a sweeping set especially for it instead of the bulky ones I typically run. I may even scarf it.

All of these boys and girls I made sure had good natures by adjusting the exp until I got a favorable one. These pokemon were worth it.

Oh my goodness, this club was made for me, how come I haven't seen it before? And started by someone from the same country and of almost the same age, who had watched many of the same cartoons on the same channels, and had heard of many of the same toys as me when I was little? Go figure!

On that subject: Yay Flying Bears! And bringing gifts to birthdays! And god, the sticker album! That was all the rage in kindergarten and first grade! You actually completed it? I didn't, I was so obsessed with it at one point that it was taken away from me for a while - certainly long enough for the stickers to largely stop being sold by the time it was returned. I never got the Oran and Tamato Berries, Treecko, Milotic and the rainbow background Blaziken on the red pages of the "Who's that Pokémon?" section in the middle of the album. You were supposed to write their names underneath the place for the sticker, without which there was only an outline. I remember writing that during a regular yearly visit to my mother's aunt in Split - about half the Bs and Es came out backwards (I must have still been illiterate since that was summer and you learn to write in first grade, so that would be the summer of 2005, the one between kindergarten and school...) And maybe I had missed a few other Pokémon, but I think I would remember that. Also I wrote in a few corrections of typos I think? Haven't seen it in a while, but I still have it, stored and handled very carefully like the childhood treasure it is. I put some of the spare stickers on my school notebooks at some point, that way it was easy to tell they were mine.

What's your name?
NikolaP (you can omit the final P - it's my name with the P added to the end)

Which era did you grow up in?
2000's to early 2010's (being 12 and above counts!)

Favorite toy(s) as a child?
Plushies galore, which my sister and I used like actors and played out awesome games that were like children's adventure comedy TV shows (with singing!). We had a whole huge bag of them suspended on the wall, so big that you could get inside it and bury yourself in plushies. They all had distinct characters and personalities - one of our main style choices was that all but a few very grown-up and honourable toys spoke in cutesy voices and babytalk (widdle etc. for you English-speakers, r to j and removing all ticks for those who know my language). We had some of those toys since we were born, and over the duration of our childhood accumulated all species we could find - a dolphin, a frog, a stingray, a baby deer, a large white tiger with gaping jaws that were at some point taken out and her mouth sewn shut, a large leopard with a cub - the cub got lost in kindergarten so we got to take home the baby deer, a huge vaguely Dalmatian dog (a ridiculous character, haha - she was an army general who drove a tank to work, driving over the traffic jams, and would open the skin on her chest like a coat to show medals underneath; her collar was called Comrade Collar - WW2 partisan movies were on TV back then, haha...), a pink cockatoo (such an accomplished artist that the wipes he wiped his paintbrushes with were sold for huge amounts of money as modern art)...
The vast majority is still in a box at home waiting for a new generation.

Share a memory or 2!
...If I started, I wouldn't stop? I have the memory of an elephant. Seriously. My earliest memory is a few vague scenes of laying down on my back with a mirror in view.
That was my diaper changing station.
Another is a few scenes of the Kutina department store, shopping for a teddybear for my not-yet-born sister which I was picking out, at which point I was under 2 and a half. Also from the Kutina department store, so I was 3 or 4 at most, I used to sit in the shopping cart and mum would put items around me (they didn't have the carts with the unfolding children's seats there yet). The checkout ladies there remembered that when me and my grandma were talking about that some 10 years later - probably they recognised grandma, not me.
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Boy, do I have memories to talk about (and I've barely scratched the surface of Pokémon-related memories)! Love this idea, great job! What are we grown-up Pokémon fans if not suckers for nostalgia? I had a similarly nostalgic thread for memorable individual Pokémon people had over the years here: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=426749.

Also: yay Teletubbies! We loved them when we were little, and to this day Probopass reminds me of Noonoo the vacuum cleaner.

Since the 4th was yesterday, I think I'll share a story related to fireworks. At the time of this story, I had graduated high school for about two months. The main graduation party had ended and we had a smaller after party with relatives at the house of a family friend (he had a little bar area in his backyard). It was getting dark and we were having a good time when some fireworks were brought out. I would like to say in advance that my family was pretty responsible with fireworks, so I don't know how this happened. Somehow, a firework had fallen over (we light them off in a fire-pit area) and flown into the bar area. No one was hurt, but it was a bit of a shock.

Lesson learned, don't light off fireworks close to a crowded bar.

@VisionofMilotic seems like you had quite a nostalgic trip :) I went on a similar trip with Emerald a couple of weeks ago. I decided to play the German version though because... why not. I did not finish that playthrough yet as it's the exams time, but I tried to catch some Pokemon I don't think I ever used lke Whismur, Makuhita and Shroomish.

Miss Wendighost said:

Since the 4th was yesterday, I think I'll share a story related to fireworks. At the time of this story, I had graduated high school for about two months. The main graduation party had ended and we had a smaller after party with relatives at the house of a family friend (he had a little bar area in his backyard). It was getting dark and we were having a good time when some fireworks were brought out. I would like to say in advance that my family was pretty responsible with fireworks, so I don't know how this happened. Somehow, a firework had fallen over (we light them off in a fire-pit area) and flown into the bar area. No one was hurt, but it was a bit of a shock.

Lesson learned, don't light off fireworks close to a crowded bar.

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Oops. It's not necessarily a nice thing, but I love this. Specific memories like this is what I hoped would pop up in the club.

NikolaP said:

Oh my goodness, this club was made for me, how come I haven't seen it before? And started by someone from the same country and of almost the same age, who had watched many of the same cartoons on the same channels, and had heard of many of the same toys as me when I was little? Go figure!

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Welcome aboard!

Yea, I feel Croatian childhood (at least at that time) is a pretty uniform thing. Limited internet access on top of not having as wide of a selection of anything as in, say, the US. If nothing else, I always found it to be a great conversation topic when you meet someone new :P
The last sticker I was missing in my album for a long time was Nosepass. I also remember not having Zigzagoon for a long time as well. My poster is lost unfortunately. Through that thing I was spoiled that May would have a Skitty. And then they never aired it on TV.
Speaking of TV, I assume you'd also remember things like Žutokljunac, Bembo (both children's live action shows), Učilica (TV quiz for students where you participate over the phone), Kokice (movie showcase/review show) and Nora Fora (this one's a bit weird, the closest thing I can think of is Vtubing. Hosts talk and animated avatars talk in their place. The animation had sort of an Ed, Edd & Eddy vibe. There was usually some sort of story each episode and you could be a part of it by calling in or participating in games, again, over phone). While I never called any of these, I did send letters/drawings to both Žutokljunac and Kokice. The Žutokljunac drawing was never shown unfortunately. For Kokice, they asked to send in drawings of a dionsaur and my drawing ended up being in the episode :D
I'd reather not derail the thread but... jesus, Rijeka - Split - Kutina is anything but close together. You sure traveled a lot as a kid.

LucarioBread said:

@VisionofMilotic seems like you had quite a nostalgic trip :) I went on a similar trip with Emerald a couple of weeks ago. I decided to play the German version though because... why not. I did not finish that playthrough yet as it's the exams time, but I tried to catch some Pokemon I don't think I ever used lke Whismur, Makuhita and Shroomish.

Click to expand...

I'm thrilled that you're replaying Emerald. For many years it was my all-time favorite Pokemon game. I wish that the GBA games were on the virtual console like the game original Gameboy and Gameboy color ones, because I have longed to revisit Emerald for so long. For the last few years I have only had the remakes to replay, which are my favorite games, but as much as I think Oras is just beautiful I still really love Emerald and would like to look back in fresh detail at how gen 3's Hoenn and gen 6's Hoenn compare with eachother. I have been able to have this experience with HGSS and Crystal, and see the best of what each version of Johto have to offer more recently. Now I want to do this with Hoenn, My favorite Pokemon region.

What I loved about playing Omega Ruby was the further development of the characters--how Steven's role was increased especially, new mega evolutions for Hoenn like the starters, and the post game plot with the Delta episode and the Draconids. I think that did a lot for the world-building of Hoenn, and expanded on the back story of the weather trio. Using the Dexnav to hunt shinies and dream would ability pokemon was also awesome.

However, as I remember it Emerald had a stronger main story where both Team Aqua and Magma are villains, and this power struggle between the sea and land takes place. Also though I think the remakes had a nice new post game quest, I miss the battle frontier that Emerald introduced. The battle Maison from gen 6 isn't very good by comparison. My favorite post game battle facility was the battle factory. I was really fond of rentals because they got me to try a lot of pokemon i hadn't used before and I liked having to improvise with whatever set you are randomly handed.

I want to go back and conquer every post game facility on the frontier with no less than a silver star for each.

So I like a lot of the features that Emerald had best. It's been a long time, but I want to say that you could also rematch gym leaders and register trainers who could call you like in the Johto games.

The game corner was still there too, and I liked gambling in the minigames to earn coins for rare tms and pokemon.

Because I have been feeling lonely for the old Hoenn I actually bought a copy of Emerald last week, and am waiting for it to arrive. It was really expensive, but I wanted to play the physical game, and not just emulate. You can't put a price on memories and nostalgia.
I'm anxiously looking out for it in the mail.

I wish you well on your exams, and said all this to say enjoy your stay in Hoenn, and I am booking a voyage there too!

You have a neat idea to play with pokemon you haven't made a team around before, and I might follow suit. I usually get Treecko for my starters in Hoenn play throughs, but this time I'll probably get a nice Torchic instead. That'll be my way of jazzing it up. Maybe I could even do a monotype or make a travel journal. We'll see...

Since there seems to be a little increase in the club activity, let's throw in a new Memory Trip™. With the summer approaching, a lot of us will be planning a vacation... is what I would be saying if it wasn't for a certain situation we're currently in. So let's reminisce about it instead: Which vacation/trip you were on has a special place in your heart and why?

For me, several come to mind.
One of them is a family vacation in Sveti Filip i Jakov on the Adriatic coast. I was around 9 at the time I think? It's scattered memories: bathing in the sea and almost stepping on a an urchin, eating Cola-flavored ice cream, drawing my own Pokemon (ones I can think of was a generic early game bird evolution line, deep sea fish and some sort of rock spider thing), playing boules for the first time, playing UNO with my brother in our room on a hot summer afternoon, going for half-submarine ride and looking at all sorts of marine wildlife (I vividly remember seeing a catshark), trying to get all the billiard ball painted marbles from the machine when we'd go for evening walks and watching TV which had German Nickelodeon. I remember watching Jimmy Neutron and Danny Phantom, as well as seeing a commercial for Pokemon Platinum.

I feel my first ever visit to Vienna when I was 10 had a major influence in my affinity for central European culture. My understanding of history was vague at the time, but I was aware that we were once part of the same country. The guy that took care of the garage where our car was parked was a Bosnian immigrant and we'd usually have a chit chat in the morning when we were leaving. We went to the Zoo, we had a tour through the palace of Schönbrunn. Overall just walking through Vienna was very pleasant even to a 10-year old me. I remember thinking it's a shame we're separate nations now so we can't visit more often (a can of worms I'd rather not open). I went to McDonald's for the first time and had the worst fries I've ever had up to that point in my life. We went to Toys'r'us (which we don't have in Croatia) and we bought some Pokemon figures. I remember seeing Feraligatr and Typhlosion prime tins, as well as Super Mario Galaxy 2 posters all over the place, One night we went to dinner at my dad's colleague's place where I had tasted curry for the first time. We took a ride in the subway which was an amazing experience for the younger me. On our way home, I was playing Explorers of Sky on my DS and around the Slovenian border, I ran into a monster house led by a Chingling (if you've played it, you know which one I'm talking about -_-).

Last one I'd like to mention is a trip with my Wind Band to Piran on the Slovenian coast. It is the single most beautiful place I've ever been to (I sometimes joke that once I grow old and rich, I'm packing my bags and moving there). We had a concert at the Giuseppe Tartini square and we played various arrangements and medleys of popular songs. When we were playing an ABBA medley and since it was everything but a formal concert, a group of people started dancing and singing. Rarely do I have the same satisfaction when playing music as I did at that moment. There's this guy that's a bit older than the rest of us in our friend group in the orchestra, and he brought his laptop with him. That night when we returned to our bungalows, he started up Heroes of Might and magic V and him, 2 other friends and I played it almost until 5 AM. I was already into birds at the time and I remember a Cirl Bunting starting singing from a nearby pine by the time I went to sleep.

Vacation memories, part 1: HOMM 5 and my cousins during the summer in Dalmatia

Hah, Heroes of Might and Magic V are in fact a staple of my old-time summer visits to grandma in Dalmatia (the other one, not the one from the Kutina department store - Kutina is a town firmly in the continental part of the country). My cousins lived in the same house as grandma and had HOMM V, which I really liked because of the fantasy creatures. First I remember seeing it, my cousin was playing it on the TV screen and was in a snowy map with the red-haired dwarf riding a red mammoth, which from that angle looked like an orangutan to me. Back then our computer was an XP not nearly powerful enough for those more advanced games, so for that week or two while we were at grandma's, I'd get to play it with them (when not going to the beach right down the street and across the road). I always picked the dwarf with the owl, the older cousin of the two always picked the archer-specialised elf and played with luck tactics and would almost always win everything, while the younger cousin would switch things up ever so often. I remember that I once did manage to beat my older cousin (younger than me, older than his brother).

They loved teasing me and would at times get on my nerves, but we had fun with that game. Once we even got, all four of us - me, my sister and both cousins - to designing Pokémon. My cousins gave all their always Dalmatia-themed Pokémon 600 in each stat... We played Bakugan, did hand shadow theatre with me narrating "The Cat that Walks Alone" by Kipling... Good times. And not even half the story.

The best player of HOMM by far though was their dad.

They moved to Canada several years ago... Hold on, it's been at least 7 years?! Time does fly. So, no more playing Heroes with them for the time being. I did install the game first thing when we got a laptop, so I have it now to give me all the nostalgia it can.

And they went to, like, the middle of continental Canada. No sea, no gulls, snow during half the year, and most challenging of all, very nice, helpful Canadians? Dalmatians are known, among other things, for bring quite passionate and liking to shout, swear, wave their arms about, argue and be generally rough and tough. Canadians annoyed them so much when they got there with such a different mentality, striking them as being a culture of pushovers and doormats - I quote: "These folks appologise to you when you push them!"

For vacations, I would have to say a road trip around my state in 2013. We started off in a hotel around Amish Country. I believe that we went to a restaurant around Strasburg and a day at an attraction in Hershey. At night, we had settled at my uncle's in Carlisle after going around the Gettysburg battlefield that evening (completely different vibe than the day). The next day, we had went to a lake around the area that had a swimming section. When evening hit, we went back to Gettysburg for a ghost tour (highly recommend the company that we used). I remember my brother having soda coming out of his nose over a joke and the guide talking about a creek behind the shop where I got a neat picture. After the tour ended, we walked around town and found this one haunted attraction that no longer exists that had the gimmick of a floorboard that moved a mannequin back and forth. I didn't know this existed, so my 13 year-old self was scared silly by a mannequin (It didn't help that my dad and brother stepped on the floorboard repeatedly to get a picture). We had finished off the trip with a trip to Hershey Park, which was okay except for the downpour.

I can find the picture from Gettysburg if y'all want to see it.

This just came up in my head, but there was a game that kids in my school used to play in 5th Grade known as Marble Blast Gold. I don't know if any of you played this growing up, but it was kind of a popular thing. The main objective was guiding a marble to the end of a stage without falling off. One particular thing that everyone tried to do was beat the last stage that was known as King of the Mountain. There were kids that would somehow beat the stage without any cheats, but off course there were kids that would cheat their way to beat the stage.

Just something that came to my head.

Miss Wendighost said:

This just came up in my head, but there was a game that kids in my school used to play in 5th Grade known as Marble Blast Gold. I don't know if any of you played this growing up, but it was kind of a popular thing. The main objective was guiding a marble to the end of a stage without falling off. One particular thing that everyone tried to do was beat the last stage that was known as King of the Mountain. There were kids that would somehow beat the stage without any cheats, but off course there were kids that would cheat their way to beat the stage.

Just something that came to my head.

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YOOOO, I looked up some images and I have some memories of seeing it on the PC in the children's library. I never knew what it was called up until now. I also remember Captain Claw, Hercules, Tarzan, AirXonix, Paper Boy and Spike the Hedgehog (a Frogger style game that is so bloody difficult I never managed to beat it even in my late teens) being there, as well as some fan made super mario game that I'm trying really hard to find. I actually managed to find the mario game a couple of years ago and finish it after all this time. However... the hard drive got corrupt and I lost it once again. And now I can't find it anymore. Here's the description I posted to reddit a few months ago:


If anyone knows this extremely obscure game, I'd be very thankful for any piece of information you can give.

This is a blast from the past.

The movie An American Tale is a little before my time. I wasn't even born yet when it was released, but somehow copies of this series of movies about the pioneering mouse family found its way to me during my childhood. My mother, who is an artist, liked Don Bluth's animations, and during my childhood she shared many of his old gems with me like Rock-a-Doodle, The Land Before Time, The Secret of Nimh, Anastasia, All Dogs go to Heaven, Thumbelina and an American Tale. It's been a long, long time, but recently out of the blue I remembered a scene from the sequel to An American Tale-- Fieval Goes West. I recalled Fieval's sister, a pretty little mouse, singing in a saloon to a rough audience. She's nervous and her voice is breaking adorably at first, but she became the belle of the ball. I remember the whole tavern dancing as she belted out the lyrics, So where's the girl you left behind? I couldn't remember all the words, but I remembered that much.

I searched the net to try to find this movie clip because I was feeling nostalgic. Thank you YOUTUBE! This warmed my heart to see again, I still feel charmed. She's cute as her flits across the piano keys, kicking up her skirt. This seemed like a good memory to share for this club.

Ah, we had The Secret of NIMH on VHS in kindergarten. I rewatched it this year (in English, couldn't find our dub online), and it's a very pretty film.

The scene that really stuck in my mind though was one from the single most hardcore cartoon of my childhood: Zira's lullaby of blood from Lion King 2. That song was dubbed incredibly, and parts of the lyrics would come back to me years later even before I found the song online and relistened to it.

And my, The Land Before Time! That was awesome! We'd rent VHS-es of all and any sequels we could find, we adored them. During kindergarten, when I was in hospital for some minor procedure, I brought some sequel of Land Before Time and Balto with me. When the nurse asked everyone what we wanted to watch, a girl said she wanted the little dragons, and I was like "they are NOT dragons, they're DINOSAURS!".
Named my budgie after Cera the triceratops (which sounded just like Sara, so that was the budgie's name). She was a piece of work, but more on her later.

Anyway, Balto is another kindergarten classic. I loved that thing, but never saw the sequels. We also had the film White Fang on kindergarten TV, and that one was really memorable (the snow, the wolves, the Klondike Gold Rush - all of which was then familiar when I got interested in the depths of Scrooge McDuck in elementary school).

I remember watching Secret of NIMH as a kid while my cousin was coming to visit, but I don't remember much.

Since we're talking older animation, I'm going to bring in Boomerang. For those unaware, Boomerang housed most of the older Hanna-Barbera cartoons (Speedbuggy, Yogi Bear, etc.). While I remember watching a lot of it as a kid, I remember something from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? in particular. Kind of a cheesy show nowadays, but I remember enjoying episodes of it as a kid along with later incarnations (What's New, Scooby Doo?, Mystery Incorporated, etc.). While I had enjoyed most of the shenanigans, I remember being terrified of the Space Kook. I guess it was the laugh that terrified me, but by Arceus is it embarrassing to know that I was terrified of a cheesy 60s movie monster.

Vacation memories, part 2: Vienna

In maybe 2015 or 2016, sometime in November for dad's birthday, my family took a very nice trip to Vienna. We stayed at a hostel in the hills out of town - from the parking lot to the hostel building you had to pass under an alley of chestnut trees which were just about ripe at that time and would at times fall to the ground around us. We arrived late in the evening; dad went to the reception desk and said "Good evening" in both Croatian and English... Only for the receptionist to answer in our language, with a poster for the Belgrade hockey team on the wall behind her. 😄
This would turn out to be a pattern, everywhere we went we would hear someone ours.

The hostel was in a smaller auxiliary building next to a fancy castle-like hotel. It was nice, with a good view of Vienna and a rather rural surrounding with lots of squirrels visible through the window.

While I'd been to Austria before on a school field trip, this was my first time visiting Vienna. While pretty and very familiar (especially the 1800s yellow buildings with rounded green metallic roofs), Rijeka being a very Vienna- and even more Budapest-influenced city architecturally during that period, some elements of it didn't feel quite right. See, I'm used to relatively narrow and quite steep streets, built with maximum use of space in mind and with lots of stairs, as is usual for the Adriatic seaside. Vienna, however, is in a valley. Its streets are way to wide, its buildings are also way too wide and not tall enough (they could easily have added a few more floors, come on!) leaving me with an altogether impression of wasteful use of space. Like, "we're in flat country, let's have buildings wider than they are tall because we CAN" - not something someone from the seaside like me can understand. We'd fit, like, two twelve-story Yugoslavian-era high-rises in the space for one 1950s three-floor Vienna apartment block.

Vienna used to be the capitol of my country until the end of World War I (most territories that are Croatia today were in Austro-Hungary), the portraits of emperor Franz Joseph I hanging in all official buildings, as can be seen on some of our period TV shows. This leads to by far the funniest memory of this trip: my dad jokingly shouting "Down with the emperor!", in front of Castle Schönbrunn, the imperial residence, and not going to jail for it, which he definitely would have in the old days.

We went to see the Vienna Zoo (on the grounds of Schönbrunn), and it was amazing. I saw a polar bear and a panda in real life for the first time.

Another great thing was a restaurant in the city centre specialising in authentic Wiener schnitzels. They are often eaten in Croatia, and can generally be described as fried pork steaks, but the way they make them in that restaurant was something else. They were very thin, roundish and huge in diameter - they went over the edges of a large plate. I managed to eat mine to the end, and I still have no idea how.

Also: at the bakery, the baker was one of ours. In the shop, the cashier was also ours. While taking a walk, we could hear a man leading a little boy explaining something to him with a Bosnian accent. In the park around Schönbrunn, a Montenegrin couple with a baby; in the zoo, some mum was shouting in Croatian for a little boy to stop running around. At a restaurant, the waiter was Slovenian (and our family friends we were having dinner with were from Serbia, so the whole ex country in one place). Really, we're everywhere in Vienna.

Hello Friends,

I have some rose-colored memories that I would like to share. Those who know me well are aware that I am a passionate doll collector.

Growing up what I collected were mostly toys by Mattel. I had many different Barbie dolls like the Olympic Gymanist one and Ocean Friend Barbie with Keiko the whale, and a doll house where my dolls lived. I would stuff the house with food accessories called Kitchen Littles that I bought with my weekly allowance, and other little trinkets from the dollar store. I had whole Barbie families with baby sister Kelly, her boyfriend Ken, and his brother Tommy. I technically had Christie dolls, but whether we buy ours as Barbie, Christie, Kira or Teresa, we are talking about the same thing really. I also remember the short-lived Generation Girls series, and had a CD-ROM of Barbie games.

What I had the most of was probably the Disney-themed Mattel dolls like Pocahontas, Jasmine, Rapunzel and all the "good guys" from Hunchback of Notre Dame I.e Esmeralda, Quasimodo, Phoebus. I also had dolls released in conjunction with Pixar and Fox like Anya and Dimitri from Anastasia and all the Toy Story characters from Woody to Buzzlight Year.

One doll that I was particularly attached to was Fashion Secret Megara from Hercules. The secret to Megara's fashion was a ribbon that allowed you to adjust the length of her tunic to create the illusion that she was wearing different style outfits. I think you could have up to 6 different looks.

This doll also had a really beautiful and distinctive face that is unlike most Disney princesses. The art style of Hercules is vert stylized to look like Greek art. This doll was a good likeness of Meg from the Disney movie.

This is what she looked like.



I also later snagged Hercules to accompany her and Pegasus the horse so they could fly around with eachother.

I like the character of Meg from the movie. She was not a traditional Disney princess. She wasn't a princess at all, she did not have a charmed life, but was a regular girl from the street. Her beauty was unconventional. She was also no saint. She had made mistakes in her life, she had been hurt and had to fight to get by. She was tough and smart. Fortunately, she still has a caring heart.



Now, there is unfortunately a raincloud that casts a little bit of shadow over these memories. I wish I could say that I have all of these dolls today, but sadly everyone of them has been lost. I took good care of my dolls, but my family moved around quite a bit growing up and when we left New York the dolls I packed were lost by the moving company that my mom hired. So I lost all of the dolls mentioned, and several others like my American Girls dolls that it took me like a year to save for Many stuffed animals disappeared. I lost clothes I owned. They mixed up my bicycle with another kid's, and I had his and I guess he must have had mine. We had just a horrible, horrible experience with United Movers. I wasn't the only one who lost things, my entire family did, they lost music albums, books, art and other home decor, furniture and electronics. It was a mess. And not only that, there was a financial dispute with the company and they had the audacity to charge way more than what they originally quoted by almost 4X after botching up the move! It was a long drawn-out nightmare. I felt especially bad for my Toy Story dolls as a little girl because the whole point of the story was that toys had feelings and didn't want to be thrown away or forgotten about. So I pictured my Woody, Buzz, Rex, Mr. Potato Head and Slinky wandering the streets lost, trying to get back to me.

I didn't collect many dolls after that experience for some time. I told myself that I was a big kid now, and didn't need to play with toys anymore. It was also probably my defense mechanism so I didn't feel sad about the memories I had lost. But as an adult I rekindled my interest in dolls fortunately. I would not have told this story if did not have a happy ending!

These days I collect Asian Fashion dolls, almost 98% are Jun Planning/Groove dolls that are made in South Korea. I have over 60 different dolls in the Pullip family like Pullip, Taeyang, Byul, Dal, Isul and a few folks from other lines that Groove doesn't make anymore like the Sasha dolls and Hestia. So my collection rose like a phoenix out of the ashes.

While I no longer have many western dolls, expect a very beautiful porcelain doll I stumbled upon in an antique store, I recently saw something that is tempting me to get back into collecting the Disney dolls. I saw a review of a beautiful Megara doll. This is not the same Megara that I played with as a child. This is a limited edition designer doll from Disney's Midnight Masquerade series that I believe was released last fall. This series has Esmeralda, Megara, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Belle. It's so nice!


Also sets of couples were released with Tiana and Naveen from Princess and and the Frog, Giselle and Edward from Enchanted, and Aurora and Phillip from a Sleeping Beauty.

I know all these Disney movies and their heroines and heroes. They fill my heart with joy. What a trip down memory lane!

That Megara doll is particularly enticing. She is expensive, but I think I might have to save for this Megara. I love this amazing gold mask!



I like that her makeup is very similar to the doll I had growing up, but it's also clearly another doll. I never wanted to buy the same release I had growing up because I didn't feel I could replace the nostalgic memories I had by buying a doll of the same model I had. But this is a doll that pays tribute to what I knew as a little girl, but is also a different doll so it can be unique in its own way, rather me trying to recreate the past. This doll that will have its own story to tell.

I searched the net to see if I could find this, and low and behold, someone uploaded to YouTube this old 90s commercial as a tot for Fashion Secret Megara. My face lit up with a huge smile.

It all came back to me--the memories I had growing up watching Hercules over and over with my cousin and playing with my Megara doll and taking her everywhere with me that summer.



This was a heart-warming moment of my day that just seemed right to share with this club.

^That was beautiful.

Summer is coming to a close and those of us who are still in education will soon return to school/uni/whatever you go to in some way. It's wild to think I'm 3 times as old as I was back when I became a 1st grader. Do you remember what your early days of school were like?

On the first day of school, you come with one of your parents to the first period. I remember sitting in my mom's lap while the teacher greeted us all and gave us all some kind of rundown, but I don't remember what exactly it was about. Parents left after that and the 2nd and 3rd period were mostly introductions, tour of the school and talking.
It was actually my birthday the very next day and (as it is a custom over here) I brought candies to school for my classmates. The class sang happy birthday for me in the first period which was "nature and society" as it's called (basically a mix of science subjects before they become separate in grade 5). Math was the last subject that day and I remember filling out rows of triangles, squares and circles.
At one point during the first few months we were learning about autumn and we had to draw something autumn related in our notebooks. I don't remember what I have drawn, but I do remember it had swallows flying south. Originally there were like 3 or 4 of them. But whenever I'd get bored over the next few months, I'd add another swallow or 2. By the end of the semester, the sky was barely visible from all the birds.

LucarioBread said:

Do you remember what your early days of school were like?

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Ugh.. not something I particularly like remembering. I was always a school bully. I picked on kids all the way up until about midway through middle school. I was insecure and had a terrible home life (my parents were absentee and didn't do the whole parent-teacher conference thing.. or if they did they'd show up drunk), plus I took extremely intensive martial arts classes so I was naturally bigger and more muscular that my peers. I was just a nasty kid who did mean things because I didn't know how to express myself. Other than the few moments of levity I got from putting someone weaker than myself down, my memories of early schooling are so, so hazy. :'(

Took a few years but I made amends with many of those who I bullied, so I like to think I righted the wrongs a little bit. But it's still not a very fun pill to swallow - knowing I was such a devious, truant little jerk.

I think the only net positive that came out of that time in my life was my love of art and animation. Now I like to think I use these skills to make people smile.