"The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner

This book has been recommended by a friendly passenger on my ship and trusting this recommendation I have dived into it, just to find it extremely funny, witty and humorous - I actually started another book already, so right now I am reading two at the same time. It is a sort of travelogue, where the main protagonist (author himself) travels around the world in a search to find out what exactly happiness is - as Institute for Happiness (based in Rotterdam, imagine that - what a blasé country, where people enjoy hobbies as something actually worth pursuing as profession!) claims, there are certain places in the world happier than others, so Weiner roams the planet in order to find out what exactly it is that makes people happy.

His story starts, naturally in Netherland and this notorious Institute for research of Happiness. Everything is permitted here, drugs, prostitution, so could it be that all this tolerance means happiness? Weiner is not so sure and he correctly concludes that there is a very thin line between tolerance and indifference, which is sometimes I noticed myself when I lived in Netherland myself. Nobody would blink an eye if you walk around naked, but nobody would blink an eye if you drop dead from heart attack as well. Talk about tolerance! The very next chapter brings him to Switzerland, another happy country but here everything is prohibited and locals are obsessed with rigorous laws, rules and strict prohibitions. No flushing toilets after 10 p.m. and no laughing out too loud in the evenings of neighbors might leave notes at your door. And no dusting carpets on Sundays. Is this happiness, than? Yes, for the locals. And so his journeys lead him to different parts of the planet, always funny, always immensely likable and with a sharp wit and eye for a ridiculousness of anything that might be fake - so far I am enjoying it very much, although I can clearly see that between the lines, somewhere wrapped up in a humorous cellophane this little books actually has some serious questions like for example, what happiness actually is and does it necessary depends on outside things (money, place, people?) or is it something we need to find in ourselves. Myself, I am aware that is not the particular place - the moment of realization "this is a perfectly beautiful, happy moment" usually comes out of the blue and it has nothing to do with material, last time it happened was when I was standing outside of the house on a sunny day and playing with my dog. The good thing is that older I get, the more I understand that material is actually of no importance at all, its the small moments. Another interesting observation in this book: the wealthier we get, the more we distance ourselves from other people. In author words: "So the greatest source of happiness is other people—and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house and, if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling off ourselves."