Whenever I travel anywhere, I am astounded anew by the ugliness of everything humans have made. Nay, touched. This happened yesterday in Italy, and it is happening again in Croatia. I found Monfalcone much more ugly than I expected. Although I know Rijeka and Karlovac pretty well by now, I cannot believe how ugly I find them once again. Relentless ugliness of everything in sight makes me cringe on occasion. I feel like closing my eyes and keeping them shut, but my curiosity is too strong for such a simple way out of my misery. And so I keep looking at everything and shaking my head in disbelief. Ugly highways. Ugly bridges. Ugly buildings. Ugly fields. Ugly riverbanks. The only sort of ugliness I find acceptable are engineering structures designed without beauty in mind. Not that I find them beautiful, though. That would be going too far. Their only virtue is the absence of misplaced pretense. If I would have any advice for my fellow humans, and especially for architects and urban planners, it would be that beauty should be avoided like the plague. Fuck beauty, that is. Unfeigned ugliness is our species’ best bet.