Budapest bits

The Art of Naming

2011-11-30T22:10:00.001+01:00

I have always liked noting the names of boats and yachts Recently I had the chance to visit Zanzibar. Interestingly this guy did not name his boat after his beloved but after the degree of feeling to her - too much.

Too much love will kill you

For several days I used to sit for hours on the beach and observe life there. This ferry boat used to bring several cars, TVs and washing machines. After what happened to Egypt recently one would expect that the name Mubarak would be painted over and that Ruaha (whatever this means) would be the new one.

The names of the dictators...

This hair hairdresser is located next to the crazy market. The name is obviously a translation from Swahili but I can't think of what it might mean. The owner invited me for a haircut. I refused.

Ready for surprises?

This summer we spent a dozen days on the island of Hvar in Croatia. There is some extremely kitschy fashion for the names of these boats. Ecstasea is a perfect example.

Those modest boats

Fortunately there are still some modest local boats. This one bears the endearing name of Little Ivo - Mali Ivo. I imagine that it was named after his newborn son Ivo.

Little Ivo in Jelsa


Libido Bar

Last drops of honey

2011-11-29T21:16:00.001+01:00

Today I thought it would be a pity to miss the sun and warm air so I took the bike for a 2 hour tour of an area I liked in October when we went there to an apple festival and a futile mushroom picking. This outing was a kind of an unexpected gift as I already starting thinking of all kinds of skiing exploits. It was a joy to feel the warm air on my back as I was slaloming between cows.

Today I covered the distance from the village of Mourex to Divonne-les-Bains and from there to Vesancy and back to Mourex where I had parked the car.

I took out the camera only in Vesancy although Mourex would have deserved some pictures.

For some reason I am fascinated by old barn gates and I often take pictures of them. I imagine there was quite some life around these gates several hundred years ago. Today I noticed that the shadows play merrily on the gate.

Shadows playing on a gate, Vesancy

These trees are incredibly beautiful in the sun and I wish I knew the name at least in some language.

I wish I knew the name, Vesancy

Apparently not much is known about this castle. It is from the 12th century and first used to be a fortress but later became a simple home of the 'noble family of Vesancy'. Only now I noticed that the church cross is reflected on the left tower.

Le Chateaux de Vesancy

The castle was bought out by the commune in the 19th and 20th centuries and now shelters the town hall. When seeing the RF (Republique Francaise) sign one is once again reminded that the French Revolution took place some 222 years ago.


La Republique Francaise where nobles once were Somehow I like this picture as the dead leaves look like a river of honey. That's how the nature was on this warm 29th November.

A river of honey

These dry leaves are quite nice from close with endless curly forms. They were quite fine in the afternoon sun, I think better than when they are wet and slippery, glued together.

Sunbathing leaves

Provincial

2011-06-15T21:41:00.000+02:00

Just a facade - Aix-en-provence

Coucou

The happy shepherd (out of the picture)

Instead of flowers - Gorde

Savon de Marseille - here, there and everywhere

I hope the right hill

2011-06-13T11:52:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking lately of the Sisyphus myth and the fact that it has almost become acceptable for the stone to return.

Titian, Sisyphus

However, what would really be unbearable is pushing a returning stone on the wrong hill....

Franz Stuck

Price or value

2011-05-24T09:24:00.005+02:00

Last Sunday I was lying on the ground in the local park. The grass was slightly wet from the short rain but pleasantly warm from the scorching sun. Boris was making frantic circles with his new blue bike, immensely proud that he had just biked with me on the street, giving priority, taking priority, careful when there is a 'Stop', keeping a straight line, giving a hand sign when turning.

Little brother Andrej ,keeping a niche activity, was deftly flying on his 'Micro' scooter which recently replaced a low-quality Chinese brother.

Then I saw it. Boris was tired, red and.....thirsty. He simply went to drink water from the beautiful metal tap in the park but at this moment I realised how important this water-drinking business had been to me for many years.

Of course, we do all kinds of banal things every day and usually we do not attach a special contemplative value to them as otherwise it would be too difficult to go through the days. But this time I somehow thought of the magic of it all: what else could one do on a lazy Sunday afternoon but think of taps?

I remembered different taps from the past and how it feels to drink from them. I can remember the tap in my secondary school (5th school in Sliven) toilets and drinking litres of water there heart beating violently after hours of football in the heat.

I can remember so vividly the tap in my grandmother's yard (23, Asen Zlatarov street, Sliven) and the time when it was too big for me. I tried to reach the metal nuzzle but somehow fell in the stone basin and cracked my head. This was soon after the same head was cracked by a stone kindly thrown at me by a friend and a bit before I cracked a classmate's head with a piece of wood which I tried to throw like a boomerang.

I also remember the fountain somewhere in the middle on the road from Shiroka Laka to Solishta (Rhodope Mountain, Bulgaria), those 5 kilometers that looked endless on an August afternoon. The value of water was so high for us then.

This reminds me of the difference between price and value and how it was illustrated somewhere by an example of water in the desert: there is no price or it remains the same, value is infinite.

I am thinking now that different people surely drink in a different way like different people jump in the swimming pool differently.

The difference would come from:

- the way one keeps one's lips: a small pout or a wide-angled approach gulping larger quantities of water;
- drinking straight from the nuzzle or not: sometimes there was no time to kid around so I had to drink straight from the nuzzle. This speaks of strong thirst and kind of voracity.
- the way one puts one's palms: drinking elegantly from one of them or dipping one's mouth and nose in a basin made by both.
- naturally the angle of the neck relative to the tap is also revelatory of one's innermost sexual desires.

Naturally, entirely different skills are required when one drinks from the river or from a puddle (I haven't but one never knows).

Let us not forget of the water either. This is of course a topic for a different blog post but see how playful it is on the picture below: shooting out in a relative straight line, reaching the point where its kinetic energy turns into static and then tiredly falls down into semi-random pattern.

Boris, Alfama, Lisbon

It is obvious how different people (Boris and Andrej) drink in a different way. There is the playful, naughty, theatrical drinking of Boris, almost licking the water, ready to please.

On the other hand, there is Andrej's ferocious approach to the act. He attacks it as if he wants to drink it all or as if this water has just eaten his ice cream.

Andrej, Alfama, Lisbon

Balconies: best of both worlds

2011-04-08T22:01:00.015+02:00

Balconies have always fascinated me. I realise that wherever I go dozens of the pictures are from balconies. It's good watching balconies but also being on balconies. I got the taste for sipping wine or beer in fresh air especially after spending hundreds of hours on the one below, the beloved Tulipan street, 16 in Budapest.

Somehow on a balcony one has the best of two worlds: the security of home and the clear sky: the fridge is never too far and Venus is there for you with your first glass of wine. Balconies are even better if you can play music in the background or even if the only music is the one of the cicadas.

View from Balcony on Tulipan street, 16 (Budapest)

Poruguese balconies are a special breed: there is rarely place for a small table or chair. It's a balcony to lean on and greet your neighbour or an observatory balcony. The one below is a thought over composition: the scarf and the flower match perfectly well.

Central Lisbon: composition

The balcony below would be lovely in summer when the tree is in leaves. That's in Alfama - a magic place with an Arab history and feel.

Balcony in Alfama: old Arab part of Lisbon

Fortunately, it is still not forbidden to dry one's clothes in Portugal. Who was the one to decide that this was ugly.

The balconies below are on the hill symmetric to Alfama - Bairro Alto. Writer Fernando Pessoa was living not far from here. One can see that buildings are better taken care of. And....no clothes, maybe drying them here is forbidden after all.

Bairro Alto (Lisbon)

The one below is in Bairro Alto too, the ex-resident is back, transformed into a dove. Balconies are also the life behind them. Remember La Vie, Mode d'Emploi (Life: A User's Manual) by George Perec.

Abandoned house: Bairro Alto

Somehow, the is the most hopeful balcony. It is right above a Fado place in Alfama. I imagine that this tree throws a lovely afternoon shadow in the room and the light plays endless games on the white bed cover.

Balcony over a Fado place (Alfama, Lisbon)

The balcony below is a small rooftop garden, ideal for watching a World Football Championship or a good movie in the open air.

Rooftop balcony

And there are a couple of balconies outside Lisbon too. Like the one below. Maybe.

Corner balcony: Coimbra

Even trivial things so used and tried

2011-02-21T20:36:00.007+01:00

Today I was fully under the spell of Andrey Tarkovsky's Mirror. A month ago I had the urge of watching quality Russian cinema again and we started by Mirror and what a good choice.

I was thinking today why I liked it so much and what makes it different. I know it sucks a bit to demystify beauty but a bit of rationalism wouldn't hurt after all. I live in France after all, 200 m. from the place where Voltaire spent the last 20 years of his life.

One of the things that I really liked is the dream-like character of the shooting. Tarkovsky kind of invites us all to dream with him of his childhood. I don't know how he does this from a cinematography point of view but it seems to me that it is mostly through the long takes. I like so much these long minutes when the camera roams in forests and meadows, looks into the eyes and then away into the distance. Good life is a long take, isn't it? Today I have been thinking that a long take shows a bigger respect to the viewers, there is less trickery in a way. Long takes slow down time and free space for thinking.

This is the second reason I liked it so much - the free space. Mirror is a movie where there are lots of free spaces for thinking and living-with in a compassionate way. By free spaces I don't mean clumsy gaps but silences which one can load with emotions or let go in a Buddhist way. It's again about respect for the viewer, about giving him/her a share of authorship.

Dealing with time in this movie is phenomenal. Tarkovsky shows so well that one is the child one used to be. In a way time is one, times merge together and childhood is not left away in a dusty attic. Indeed, it is reflected in a mirror and often swims in white haze but it is still there, just a dream away.

Mirror is a also a movie about the father, the missing father. Arseny Tarkovsky, an important Russian poet, left the family when Andrey was five. The father who used to appear on the horizon came no more. Arseny's beautiful poetry is read throughout the film. There is no judgment there. Things are as they are, beauty is all around.

This is a link to the First Date poem which is about love, of course. Both the Russian original (very beautiful) and the English translation are there.

And suddenly all changed, like in a trance,
Even trivial things so used and tried.....

And....if you are curious about it, just watch at the scene I embedded. It's seven minutes but it is worth it. It's a scene of intense beauty where one finds all: the longing, the endless sadness, the mysterious wind.........And among all this the amazing stranger who comes by mistake, quickly understands all about her loneliness, falls with her and then surprisingly throws this pantheistic idea about the plants which feel, know and comprehend. All our problems come because we refuse to trust the nature which is in us, because we don't have time to think....

From Village to Village, Violin in Hand

2011-02-20T14:41:00.006+01:00

Yesterday, at dinner, when asked what he wants to be in life my elder son Boris replied 'I want to be a Gypsy'. He clarified that he wanted to be a Gypsy in order to play his violin all day long, do gardening and wonder from village to village.

Gypsy girl with a mandoline,
Camille Corot, 1874

I think this is not such a bad choice at all although we tried to explain that you don't become a Gypsy, you are born one. We also mentioned that you can play violin and do gardening without necessarily being a Gypsy. However, he insisted on the choice of profession for some time. It is possible though that you can play violin, do gardening and travel from village to village only if you are a Gypsy.

Gypsy in reflection, Courbet, 1869

I don't know from where Boris gets his fascination about Gypsies. When asked how he know that Gypsies wonder from village to village he answered with his usual matter-of-fact air 'I just know, it's like that'.

It is a known fact that Gypsies have long been romanticized as we can see on the Corot's and Courbet's paintings. Unfortunately it is not the case any more in France especially after last years Bulgarian and Romanian Gypsy incursion. At the entrance of Ferney-Voltaire where we live it is written in an euphemistic way that wondering people are not welcome on municipal territory. I am afraid Boris will have to change his choice of career.

Andrej Turns Four or How Pizza Found Pizzo

2011-01-30T15:41:00.018+01:00

A couple of days ago Andrej finally turned four. I say 'finally' as not being four had been a serious problem for him. For him the more, the better. Sometimes when he is angry with me for not letting him eat a fifth sweet he tells me 'You are zero years old' showing his fists without any fingers sticking.

Andrej turned four on Thursday and we wanted him to spend the day with his classmates preparing a cake but unfortunately both his teachers fell ill and I had to keep him home for the day. As the sun dared to peep through the clouds I decided to take him downtown Geneva for a walk to his favourite Parc des Bastions.

Our walk started next to Plainpalais, next to a statue of a philosopher. Who is it, I wonder? Andrej also has a skeptical look as all philosophers should have, shouldn't day? Yes, I turned four and I reached the goal but now my new target is five. Andrej is shooting at a moving target.

Andrej and the philosopher

I don't know why but I have always been attracted by water taps which are used in case of a fire. There was one at the corner of my street as a kid and it was always a silent presence except on the day when an old house burned and the firemen used it as a water source. They can often be beautiful urban objects.

By the water tap

We are already in the Parc des Bastion, one of the nicest places I know in Geneva. The park is quiet now, expectant of the spring to come. Andrej is posing in the next two pictures engaged in a psychological battle with the camera. Will you take a picture of me or will I take a picture of you?

Condensed happiness (1)

Condensed happiness (2)

The park is famous for its chess boards and I thought that Andrej could pose as a pawn at H2, ready to strike the non-existing enemy.

An important chess figure - Andrej

After the Parc des Bastions we went to a little square in the old town overlooking the park. That's a perfect spot for watching the winter sunset over the park. It is also a place where the 'official' chestnut tree is located meaning that the chief botanist of the canton observes the coming of the spring on this particular tree.

The official chestnut tree

This little square hides a set of very appealing old kids' toys, simply different from the standard set of toys one can find at playgrounds. Here is a merry-go-round where you have to pedal. Andrej's legs were not long enough though and we had a problem. Mine were not short enough. Some cutting and pasting of legs would have been needed for a perfect peddling couple.

Virages

Here is a small Trojan horse but no one should be afraid of it and your hard disk will stay intact.

Trojan horse

And, of course, we finally made it to this obscure object of desire - the chocolate muffin. All the suffering, walking, posing and playing was just an excuse to reach this coveted goal - a fresh, warm muffin with a vanilla filling with a hot chocolate in case the chocolate-ness of the muffin is not enough. If I can paraphrase Freud: it is not all about sex, it is all about chocolate.

A well-deserved muffin and hot chocolate

Even a muffin has an end and we had to go. On the way down to the lake we discovered the missing half of Pizza, her partner, her love. This is Pizzo. It is a perfect Yan and Yin, Yin and Yan.

Pizza can finally be happy - Pizzo is found

Killing them softly

2011-01-02T14:54:00.010+01:00

In October I spent some days in Malta. One sunny Sunday morning I decided to go to a fisherman's village Marsaxlokk (to be read Marsa-shlok) mainly because of its name (don't you like the 'x' in the middle of the word and on top of that it is read as 'sh') but also because of the guide's promise that the world's best fish market takes place on Sundays there.

The evening before there was a huge rain in Valletta which actually means Malta as there is little else in Malta outside Valletta. The rain was so serious that coming back from a Saturday outing with Venelina and Dora I was afraid that the water would get into the car and we would drift away direction Africa.

The morning after was as fresh as if no deluge had threatened to wipe the island the night before. Sometimes nature is so innocent and oblivious of what it had previously inflicted or at least pretends to be totally innocent. It was naughtily offering people a gentle African breeze.

The only sign of the rain in Martaxlokk were the huge puddles which were quickly evaporating in front of the eyes of Sunday morning coffee-drinkers. Evaporating puddles always remind me of childhood Sliven, the thrill to get out of home after being forced to hide during a summer rain. The only drawback was the fact that the leather ball would get into the water and become really heavy.

View of Martaxlokk port

I find that the Martaxlokk fishermen found a really cute colour combination for their boats. It fits so well the stone of the village houses.

The gentle killer boats

No matter how gentle the boats look like they have hidden killer properties and are actually there to bring those guys below to the tables in a non-living state.

Scampi anyone?

Hecatombe 1

Hecatombe 2

Hecatombe 3

Hecatombe 4

Hecatombe 5

A stone's throw away from Africa - Malta

2010-12-21T23:06:00.001+01:00

Two months ago I was lucky to spend several days in Malta - a place that had always attracted me by its marginal geographical position and its yellow stones seen on pictures.

Just as an orientation, Malta's history is linked to Carthage, Rome, the Arabs, the Phoenicians, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Knights of St. John, the French and the British.

Valetta is fantastic as seen from a boat in the bay. It looks haughty and inaccessible, strangely austere in its warm colours. The trips takes you to a cholera hospital, run down custom houses, magnificent palaces....

View of Valetta from the port

The two pictures below can give you the impression of the many nooks and crannies hidden in the wide Valetta port. One wouldn't have a problem finding a parking place for one's boat which is not the case for one's car.

Valetta or Sanglea or Vittoriosa (they are all linked anyway)

Fort St Angelo seen from Valetta

A place not to miss on Malta is the inner city of Mdina and its suburb Rabat. They say it was built by the Phoenicians who obviously preferred to stay away from the coast. Too vulnerable to the pirates I guess...

Mdina, the old capital

The small towns adjoining Valetta - Sanglea and Vittoriosa - are of particular interest at dusk and before storm when water is motionless.

Martaskala and Marsaxlokk were two happy fishing villages on a Sunday morning late October. The African sun dries the puddles from the evening rain and caresses the men sitting in cafes enjoying the renovated waterside in Martaskala and the cute white benches. Who said EU funding doesn't have an impact?

Martaskala

Although we looked hard for it we couldn't find a nice piece of coast. If I go back to Malta it will not be to the seaside but rather to Valetta. And of course, to confirm the cliche, we immediately ran into a bird shooting party. If you don't know local people are famous for shooting the birds that migrate from Europe to Africa and vice versa. Pretty mean I would say but maybe they also have their justification.

However, imagine that you are a tired bird finally seeing a piece of land. You hear the sound of your brothers and sisters (which are actually recorded), you get closer and you get a bullet.

Malta West Coast

Another disappointment was that no one was spared the 1990s and 2000s building spree damages. The empty apartments are in the thousands and they are simply not nice unlike the great old yellowish houses that were pulled down to make space for the new monstrosities with a sea view. Business and economic growth can't be an excuse here.

Grey Economy of Ourselves

2010-11-26T20:24:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago I stayed at my friends Adriana and Robert's place in Brussels and we had a good long conversation watered with Beaujolais Nouveau and Hungarian palinka. Staying without work for several weeks some years ago Robert was testing people's reaction by telling them that he was taking care of his kids when answering questions on occupation. Surprised reactions made him think how much we are associated and somehow defined and unjustly framed with what we are doing as a profession.

Some time ago I came upon a quote from Nietzsche Untimely Meditations: How we labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than necessary to sustain our daily life because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from herself; universal also is the shy concealment of this haste because everyone wants to seem content and would like to conceal more sharp-eyed observers......."

I think Nietzsche got it right: we are afraid of ourselves and the emptiness that lack of haste and full occupation could possibly reveal. Life is easy when we are busy, we have a reference point, a business card, a story to tell. We also have deadlines, direction, schedules, pressure. Where are we? Is our character defined by how well we keep our deadlines, how organised we are to deliver what we produce: knowledge or cars. Is our smartness proven by the quantity of products we sell or our inventiveness by the advertising lines.

Gulag labour

I think Nietzsche was feeling that modern society was speeding up and the faster we go, the more we lose ourselves.

It is obvious that there is time needed for just being, for watching the sky 'that will be there after us', for looking for little gems crystallized in our loneliness and silence or in other words: facing ourselves, the fears, the unpleasant truths and the beauty. There is a need for an entire, legitimate identity outside of the regular economy, a grey economy of ourselves (not to be understood as valuation of house work).

On the other hand, I am convinced that what we do is important. I disagreed with my friends Dimitar and Irina when during a discussion in Greece they stated that work doesn't matter and it is a means and not an end. We should not seek escape in work but it seems to me that those who can should try to prove a point in life through work, to make a little difference. I realise this is a luxury but those who can - should afford it.

Only in this way, a compromise can be found between Nietzsche's constant escape from ourselves and the imperatives of modern society.

Courbet comes to Frankfurt

2010-10-27T22:11:00.013+02:00

Two days ago I was walking in Frankfurt on a warm October evening when I noticed that there is an exhibition of Gustave Courbet. I had seen some of his paintings before and I was quite excited to see a dedicated exhibition.

I went out an hour and a half later quite excited by his paintings and personality. Later I found online those paintings which impressed me the most.

I would start with a theatrical ‘Portrait of a Desperate Man’ which he painted in his late 20s while passing through an existential crisis. One can see that his hands are not relaxed but quite tense as if he wants to pull out his hair. There is a look of desperation and surprise in his eyes by what is happening to him. However, he is defying destiny and his force of character transpires. He is also trying to remove his hair from his eyes as if he is trying to look better and deeper into himself.

Portrait of a Desperate Man

The ‘Desperate Man on the Verge of an Abyss’ is in the same category. This is again a self-portrait from the same period of his life. The posture of the body is a artificial defying the laws of physics. It seems to me that this is a deliberately sought effect illustrating the dramatism of his state of mind. There is a similar look of terror and defiance at the same time.

Portrait of a Desperate Man on the Verge of an Abyss

I liked quite a lot ‘Jo, the Beautiful Irish Girl’ painted in 1866. While very often the female beauty idea has changed beyond recognition during the years this one is surprisingly modern. The woman is watching herself in the mirror but this is obviously not an act of vanity as vanity implies a temporary oblivion of the passage of time and the ephemeral beauty. While realizing the perfection of her traits and the exquisiteness of her hair Jo is conscious of the passage of time – fact that makes her endlessly sad. She might also be missing her faraway beloved realizing that beauty loses its force and fades away if not actively contemplated.

Jo, the Beautiful Irish Girl

The Happy Lovers is a touching painting. Courbet did not have a family and it seems his love life was a series of disappointments. I have the feeling that this painting is more of a dream rather than a depiction of a common state of affairs. Although this is a self-portrait the man resembles strikingly the representations of Jesus. Probably this is a deliberate effect conveying the idea of the ultimate innocence of the happy lovers. However, despite being in a blissful state both of them are in separate universes – a transition phase to primordial loneliness.

The Happy Lovers

At first the Clairvoyant or the Sleepwalker scared me a bit because of her piercing look and her expressive forehead. It seems to me that people with such open foreheads possess extraordinary intelligence or at least sensitivity. Her face has a strange triangular form because of the slightly displaced perspective as the observer looks a bit from above. Her plaits resemble snakes. After looking at her a bit longer the fear disappears and the layer of aggressiveness is peeled off from the portrait and she is left alone with her utmost fragility.

The Clairvoyant

What's in a name?

2010-09-20T11:41:00.001+02:00

"...That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

crossposted from Borderline

Before I got married I considered changing my family name to that of my husband, but the consideration was brief. Even if the thought of administrative hassle would not have been enough of a deterrent, my new name would simply not sound good and, given how my husband's family name was spelled at the time, it would have given rise to awful mispronunciation.

My decision did not mean that I didn't care about marriage as such (I certainly did more than my spouse), or that somehow I cared about my husband less than if I had taken his name. Nobody around me raised an eyebrow, except, typically, my best friend M., who said that he would not have tolerated something like that. Luckily--as he had been told countless times--I am not married to him.

I remember having a conversation with my grandfather (my father's father) back when I was in high school and marriage was a very abstract issue. I told him that I intend to remain Jelica V if and when I get married, and he said that would be the right thing to do. And although he did not live to see me marry, I thought of him when I was signing at the registry, knowing he would be proud.

I am also sure he would have been just as bemused as I was the other day, when Credit Agricole repeatedly tried to make me put my husband's family name as my prenom, on the grounds that this is how it was done in France.

My interview for opening a bank account was going swell, I was managing the conversation in French and was very proud of myself, when the lady noticed that my lease agreement lists me and Ruslan under different family names. That's where she started fretting. In France, apparently, you are supposed to take your husband's name.

"I know that in some northern countries there is a choice and, obviously, it is the same chez vous (her face at this point reflecting the effort of someone trying to place chez vous on a mental map, but alas it all gets fuzzy to the east of Germany) but here in France it is not like that."

At first, I am amused and I smile at this unexpected cultural difference, thinking to myself that at least chez nous is more progressive in something, which is rare. But unfortunately she starts trying to make me change my name on the bank account, so that it doesn't say Madam V but Madam Z.

"Excusez-moi, mais Madam Z n'existe pas!"

At this point I would like to give her a lecture about democracy, progress and women's rights, as well as to remind her that we are in France and not Saudi Arabia, but my brain is slow in French and a tirade ridden with grammatical errors would surely loose punch. Besides, she notices that I am getting annoyed so she drops the subject. After another half an hour of talk she mentions the "name issue" again (I swear this is how she refers to it) at which point I look at her menacingly and say very slowly, and with emphasis.

"Madam, this is my bank account and this is my name. Let us leave my husband out of this."

And so we do, but I still don't have my bank account. I would like to think that is because I am yet to submit proof of address (justificatif de domicile) and not because my name is problematic. But I am preparing my lecture (see above) just in case. The next person who dares suggest I change my name has no idea what's coming at them...

Through Lavoix

2010-08-24T09:30:00.000+02:00

Cross-posted from Borderline

The first weekend in Geneva was spent exploring the Swiss side of the Geneva lake. The guidebook was full of praise for Lavoix, a wine region between Lausanne and Montreax, so we took the train to Cully and started from there.

A pedestrian road winds through the wine villages, each a few kilometers away. The view is fantastic--on the one side, wide expanses of neatly-ordered vines, and on the other, a view on the lake and the Alps in the distance. The houses are few and far between, which makes the landscape even more beautiful.

We passed through the village of St. Saphorine on our way to Vevey. Although quaint and picturesque, it would not have been different than any of the others we walked through had we not glanced at one of the local restaurants and noticed a menu of 150CHF. That was a no-nonsense introduction to Swiss prices that took some time to sink in. For the record, we went to Vevey and had a gyros for 15CHF.

I could not pass up an opportunity to take a photo of some boats. When you see them like this in a small marina, you could be forgiven for thinking you are somewhere by the sea.

And if you don't own a boat, you can always get on one of these regular cruisers--the view of the mountains is even better from the water.

A Stop on Via Ignatia - Kavala

2010-08-17T22:03:00.001+02:00

There is a place in Northern Greece which I think is largely underestimated: Kavala. For the last 20 years Bulgarians visit regularly Greece and I haven't heard anyone say any words of praise for this cute little town.

For the first time I went to Kavala in 1989 with my parents as a part of a fantastic two-week tour of Greece. This was only two months before the Berlin wall came down and it was my first trip to the 'West'. All I remember from Kavala are lots of tears from a dramatic dispute with my parents whose cause I have totally forgotten. I remember it was very dramatic though. I have a nice fhoto with my father in front of the Turkish (and not Roman) aquaduct which I would have scanned if I had access to it.

Old Town

I hadn't been to Kavala ever since as somehow my international travels did not involve Greece. However, this summer I went there twice within a month and I liked it a lot. This is the main town in Aegean Thrace or Eastern Greek Macedonia - a 50-60 km band of land that is squeezed between the Bulgarian mountains and the sea. The famous Roman Via Ignatia linking Istanbul to the Adriatic and then Italy runs there. It was the main road linking the Western and the Eastern Roman Empires and later Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire (nowadays Greece).

Sunny Street

After driving along the road from Thessaloniki east along a totally empty motorway (built with EU Structural Funds) one descends for several kilometres across the city neighbourhoods to the port.

Town seen from ferry terminal

Kavala streets are full of life as, obviously, having lost their jobs, many Greeks spend time in cafes. The streets are busy but still the Thessaloniki hustle and bustle is missing which is nice. I feel that many young people just go down from their homes on the hills to the port to mix and enjoy the sea. It must be a bit harder to go back home after several ouzos. In the evening families walk along the sea and kids eat grilled corn and sugar cotton.

Street behind the port

In the past Kavala was Roman and then a part of Byzantium of course but the current flavour obviously comes from the Ottoman times. The Ottomans even constructed the aqueduct so all was not black and white at that time.

Kavala was also a target of Bulgarian appetites as it was occupied both during the WWI and WWII for three years. Because of love for Goethe and Shiller Bulgaria was always on the wrong side of the combatting alliances so they were the bad guys. This time I came upon a sign on a building explaining how the Bulgarian fascist occupiers tortured Greek resistants there. I can believe it.

I am sure there were tactical reasons for this occupation but maybe it also symbolized the longing for the Southern Sea. Hungarians have the same thing for the Adriatic: they find it really unfair that even a small part of it does not belong to them.

Street in the old town

Unfortunately we could not explore properly the old town because of the heat and the ferry to Thassos which was leaving soon.

After Bulgaria and Greece opened a new crossing point in Zlatograd, Kavala becomes easily accessible, even for a day trip or a weekend, for those who live in Central Southern Bulgaria. The road is indeed winding but it crosses the Southern Rhodope mountain which is equally beautiful on the Greek side.

Ferry's going away to Thassos

Doors, Walls and Pubs

2010-08-14T22:39:00.000+02:00

Don't ever tell me that English society is founded on democratic principles stemming from Magna Carta that progressively evolved over time. This is the official view.

In my opinion English society is founded on three major pillars: doors, walls and pubs. I discovered this secret during a trip in Peak District in June. I was told this from above. I wish I could do a PhD on the topic but I have to wash the dishes later.

If you go hiking in Peak District get ready for opening and closing doors. These are really good, stable doors with a cute closing mechanism that makes a nice 'clic' . I suspect producing doors in the UK is a serious business listed on the stock exchange. Forget about blue chips. Focus on doors, field doors.

A door to be opened and closed

I presume that opening and closing doors is a symbolic act all British kids exercise since tender age. Imagine the positive impact on their minds, imagine the problem solving skills this develops - one always breaks away from closed spaces, one always finds solutions. And then one carefully closes the passage to the past and continues forward until the new obstacle comes.

Properly working doors also strengthen your belief in the system. Things are not falling apart as the pessimists predict. These are not doors that are drooping sadly, difficult to close, bloated by the rain. These are lean, clean doors that make clic, clic, clic.

Wall and a bee-hive

I don't know if you ever thought of that but doors in the fields live in harmony with walls. You need a wall to have a door despite the saying that in some countries laws are like locked doors in an open field.

I think that in the UK, walls delineate private property which, they say, is very very important. It is important because it created the illusion of immortality. Otherwise, it also gives incentive to work a bit more.

Walls also keep sheep from straying away in the wilderness or into some motorway. And no one wants to see sheep invading the cities.

Playful steps and a wall

The interaction between private property and doors is called 'right of passage'. It is a fundamental English law giving the right of the public to cross private territories. Isn't it the pinnacle of civilisation? Have your own land, work it, improve it but please be kind enough to let all good willed wanderers cross it. I read somewhere that the public path was crossing a house and the owners of the house were obliged to let people pass. - Good morning, how are you? - I am going to my toilet and you? - I am on my way to the market?

No kidding, a good balance between private and public interest is quite important, isn't it?

Continuity

According to my well-founded, scientific theory pubs are the third pillar of English society. Last but not least. Besides being places where people vent off some of the miserable steam gathered during the day old pubs are a symbol of continuity. Look at the picture above where the owners of the pub are written on the beams. They went on until early 18th century. I noticed that in the beginning they stayed for 30 years and with time the period decreased. Is this acceleration of time? Or....was business simply bad so they had to move to door making?

:-)

This has never happened to you, right? Watch out next time, please!

Many walls and many doors in Peak District

Pictureless Istanbul

2010-07-18T02:23:00.004+02:00

Palace Hatice Sultan, Melling

There is a certain charm walking a place without a camera but I realised I went too far in perceiving a city landscape through the lenses so I often mentally framed certain images. As I have forgotten the cable to download pictures from my brain to the computer (I guess this will also come one day) I will have to rely on words which can also convey smells and Istanbul is a lot about smells. So here is my Istanbul from the past week:

- the mussel sellers and the nice spicy filling, only 50 kurus;
- the washed streets of Sultanahmed neighbourhood in the morning, water evaporating under the sun;
- the intense dark blue sky over Galata tower as you descent to Galata bridge at dusk;
- the cats in Cihangir;
- the ice cream sellers turning it and battering it with a happy face awaiting admiration;
- the grilled corn filled air;
- the happy bustling crowd around Taxim;
- the cheap sad grey pants in the underground passages totally contrasting the city's bright colours;
- Ayran, ayran, ayran;
- the hanging crescent moon over the roofs;
- the jetons for trams, boats and underground;
- the daunting ferries at Kabatas and the powerful trace they leave behind;
- the charming crumbling villa of Black Sea Commission in Dolmabahce Palace;
- the ladies peeking from the windows in Phener;
- the Bulgarian metal church in Phener, made in Vienna;
- the small car repair shops in Phener;
- Dolmabahce and Arnavutkoy seen from a boat at sunset;
- the new fashion for kids toys - devil's horns; angel's feathers; shining electric glasses; flying shining loops; plastic nose and fake mustaches;
- the snaking Bosphorus as one lands from Ankara;
- the ships waiting to cross the strait;
- the crumbling paint of old Ottoman mansions and houses;

And....the seagulls laughing at all that! God bless this city and its people!

Is there life after the World Cup?

2010-07-12T22:03:00.011+02:00

I am suffering from post-football blues.

Today felt so empty. There was no more anticipation of the next match and no more excuses for slacking on work, or house work, or blogging. All this time to fill and all you feel is one big "blah" of anticlimax. Whence the adrenalin of near-misses, squandered lifetime chances or impossible goals? The camaraderie, shared joy of winning, and friendly rivalries to add the element of tension? All gone, and 2012 seems so far.

This was one of the most fun football tournaments for me, and that means since Italy 1990, as that one was the first I followed. I watched more games in 2002 than now, but I didn't support any particular team so I wasn't so invested. I was very much into Euro 2000, watching all the games in favorite pubs and restaurants of my university town. I remember the sweltering heat in Blagoevgrad, eating from plastic plates and with plastic cutlery because of water rationing, and my tears as the Dutch sent us packing 6:1, while friendly strangers tried to comfort me and my roommate Marija (even more tears). It took me ten years to finally warm up to the orange team again, which is no mean feat (forgiving is one thing, forgetting another--just for the record).

After that, my interest in the tournament understandably trailed off, although Marija and I did manage to wake up for the final and drag ourselves to a pub to watch it, only to be awarded with the most boring match in the history of football (that's Italy:France for the uninitiated). We were rooting for the penalties to get at least some particle of excitement in that ocean of boredom but in the end France managed to squeeze a win. Yuk.

But back to the blues--what to do? I think a change of scenery would help, especially if it involves a sea coast, lots of lying about, a book in hand, and an ample supply of cocktails. Oh, I'll be stuck in Budapest's oppressive heat all right, and with a million things to do for at least two more weeks, but there has been talk of Greek islands and Bulgarian mountains so I have hope. Plus, I finally have a DSLR (and I didn't even have to sell an internal organ--easy peasy!) and one should never underestimate the power of a new toy to cure vague and melancholic conditions of the spirit. Exit ennui, enter Lightroom...

Have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?*

2010-07-08T21:56:00.013+02:00

The Octopus got it right and Netherlands and Spain made it to the final. Today this same Octopus sent me the video of the upcoming match which I would like to share with you.

Here one of the Dutch strikers is warming up ambitiously. Look at his pace and determination. His will is bigger than his abilities.

The Netherlands is attacking vigorously while Spain is playing with flowers. Spain is contemplating a secret move. It is a pacifist approach,a David against Goliath situation. Let them attack as much as they want, I am doing my ikebana.

Obviously things got out of control and Spain had to resort to the local witch. The witch is brewing old football shoes and Spain has to drink the potion if they want to have a chance - an undeserved penalty, an unmarked offside, at least something. Pleaaaase! The only problem: the witch is Dutch.

Both teams are in a stalemate. The result is 0-0 for the last five years. The game is stuck. The teams' official masseurs summoned the services of the local shaman who called the God of football. He is a cross between the right foot of Pele, Maradona's hand and Puyol's head. The God of football is huge and only his legs are as high as the new clock in Mecca.

After he is gone, Spain took the initiative and continued playing with hands. It is not in the rules but many things were not in the rules and FIFA accepted them. The video replay is not allowed, the whole world saw it but the referee - didn't. Never mind, who cares - hand or foot?

Spain is sad. Did they concede a goal or are the flowers to blame? Maybe the bouquet didn't turn out as it should have.

The Netherlands is frustrated. They took the ball and dashed to the local witch as well....

* Macbeth, Shakespeare

Friendships 1.0 and otherwise

2010-06-03T12:59:00.007+02:00

In a relatively recent study conducted by Crowd Science about 36% of respondents said they prefer to keep in touch with friends through social media than by phone. On the bright side, about 8 in 10 people prefer face-to-face contact, although there are 10% of weirdos who actually prefer online media.

I have to admit I am one of those people who use online tools—be it email, or social media sites—much more than the phone, even though I send a lot of text messages. Someone I know recently said to me that text messages are the postcards of today—what a romantic way to look at it (for the record, I am also one of possibly no more than 10 people on the planet who sends real, paper postcards every now and then). Phone conversations don’t do it for me, being a poor relation to real face-to-face contact; yes, you hear the voice, but there is no time to relax and talk about things that matter, it always stays on the surface unless you have hours to spare. I really much prefer to sit down and write a long and thoughtful email.

Or, for that matter, a blog post. Because, this is how it all started for us, way back when Andrej was a baby and we had little time on our hands but wanted to keep friends updated. So we figure a blog would do the trick. We quickly realized, though, that we have no inspiration for recording our everyday lives, and why should we? I personally don’t care about what my friends are doing every minute of their waking lives; what I want to know instead is what they are thinking, what inspires them, what are the things they feel passionate about.

This is why this blog evolved very quickly from a diary into something where we share a bit of our inner lives. It’s not a substitute for real-life exchanges of thoughts, or what a friend of mine calls “relationships 1.0,” and it is not meant to substitute 1-on-1 communication, either. But it makes me really happy when friends—particularly those whom I see only a few times a year, or I don’t see at all-- tell me that they read something I wrote and it resonated with them, or they thought it was interesting, or it made them think.

Ideally, we would be sharing our thoughts over a glass of wine and a leisurely dinner that would extend well into the night, and possibly until dawn. That’s relationships 1.0 at their best, but in between those (alas, too rare) encounters, we have to substitute somehow—enter relationships 2.0. We are simply sharing animals like that…

My two pence

2010-05-14T16:07:00.002+02:00

Two Pence
Originally uploaded by Karen Roe

Is it political correctness gone mad, this trend in online communication to put a disclaimer to any thought by prefacing it with "in my opion" or, worse yet, "in my humble opinion"? I actively dislike it, and so does Amber Naslund, whose article is a must read if you share the sentiment that, if you care to have an opinion, you might as well stand by it, instead of hiding behind meaningless phrases.

Being clear and direct does not equate to being rude, aggressive and personal. Because, if you are, then no amount of IMOs and IMHOs are going to change that. Likewise, if you are not (rude, aggressive and personal) why would you want to cheapen your own words?

"The world is full of ambivalence, of risk mitigation, of qualified statements and milquetoasts and deliberate middle ground. And while I don’t think you need to kick up dirt just for the sake of it, we’d all do well to demonstrate that if we believe our thoughts worthy of public air, we have the courage to take ownership of them, too." (A.Naslund)

I like this idea of owning up, not just of your opinions (goes without saying) but also of your thoughts and feelings. Too often we hide behind euphemisms, and lack the courage to call things by their real name--to tell it like it is, even if only to ourselves.

I'm even willing to go as far and say that owning up to your thoughts/feelings is a true act of heroism (as defined by Ruslan in his post long time ago) because there is a sacrifice involved, and what you sacrifice is (often) a nice image you have of yourself, when you have turned the mirror of honesty towards you. To face your weakness and your imperfect self without reaching for the sugar-coating of euphemistic (and untrue) explanations--there is your hero.

In my humble opinion, that is.

Weekend of sleeping under the stars?

2010-05-11T09:30:00.004+02:00

After surprising everyone--including myself--with that bike ride from Szentendre to Budapest (22km of cycling, a few more of pushing uphill), I agreed to a weekend of hiking, trekking and sleeping outdoors somewhere in Peak District where there is no mobile reception.

It must have been a moment of temporary insanity because I hate sleeping in a tent and have adamantly refused to try again after that one camping attempt in Croatia (claustrophobic tent, rocky surface, bugs, 78C in midday and no hot water--sleeping under the stars is overrated).

Except this time there will not even be a tent... gulp. Everyone has to create their own shelter and sleep in it for two days (something tells me that this might change my sentiment about tents).

That is actually the whole point of the exercise because this is not an ordinary (if weird) weekend in the nature but a challenge in which teams compete while doing fun stuff and all of that to raise money for charity. I'm really looking forward to the walking-in-the-hills bit and team games (this family does not lack competitive spirit) but the shelter making part really worries me.

We are supposed to bring our own recyclable shelter parts to the event site and I can imagine the look on the faces of airport staff as I argue that a bunch of cardboard boxes and nylon are absolutely necessary for my trip to the U.K. Plus, I am completely incapable of doing anything with my hands other than typing (ok, cooking too, but you see my point).

So, I think I need help. Who's willing to join me in this adventure and save me from the embarassment (and inconvenience) of sleeping under the stars quite literally? There is still time to register for the event (June 11-13) and if you live in the U.K. getting there is not a problem (the nearest train station is Edale).

Spud? Polly? Anyone?

Why I love Jose Mourinho

2010-05-01T15:38:00.001+02:00

Serie A
Originally uploaded by tpower1978

He is (c)rude, confrontational and arrogant, with a charisma of a pit bull terrier. He seems to thrive on conflict, conspiracy theories, and making enemies. If he listened to Serbian turbo folk, there's a line from a song he could easily adopt as a motto: "those who don't like us can only hate us" (sounds infinitely better in Serbian)--fits great with his quarrelsome personality.

But all of that is completely irrelevant in the light of his coaching skills--he might be evil, but he's an evil genius. For a guy who started out as an interpreter (something that Barca fans like to remind him of contemptuosly) he came a very long way.

Whatever it is that makes a great coach, he's got it. Who would have thought he would take Inter to the finals of the Champion's League (something that hasn't happened in 38 years)? I am awed by this ability to take a pretty mediocre team and parachute it to success and glory.

I also find his complete lack of PC quite disarming. Why should a football coach be slick like a banker and sleazy like a politician? I am increasingly irritated by the reign of political correctness and its celebration of well-packaged mediocrity over unpolished competence--not just in football.

So what if Mourinho is an arrogant bastard? He has every right to be. Go Jose!

Critical mass baptism

2010-04-26T11:47:00.009+02:00

This weekend I rode my first Critical Mass--well done me!

We were about 35,000 people on Saturday, biking from Roosevelt ter, via Lanchid and Erszebet
bridge, past the Parliament and all the way to the City Park (see the route map here). In my imperfect estimate that was a bit less than 10km in length.

The weather was fantastic and so was the ride, despite the inevitable bottlenecks and having to push the bike occasionally. I was alone so I looked around in curiosity, observing the crowd, and I was impressed by how diverse a group it was--there were kids pedaling patiently, babies on the back of their parent's bicycles, over-enthusiastic teenagers, couples, mothers with daughters, even an elderly citizen here and there. Before I had thought that Critical Mass is just for bike pros, but it is far more democratic than that, and I loved that aspect of it.

This was also my longest ride ever, given that I am a complete novice and that this was only the third biking attempt in my whole adult life. Until now, I haven't ventured far from home because I was afraid of traffic, or that I would get too tired and have to push the bike back home. These are probably typical fears for someone very green but I realized they were totally unfounded--it is possible to have very long rides in Budapest without going into traffic, just following bike tracks around the city. My friend Greg from Cycling Solution would probably say that there is a lot of room for improvement but from my amateurish point of view, Budapest already has great infrastructure for biking and more people should be made aware of that.

But the best thing about this Critical Mass event for me is that I got very confident and absolutely excited about biking, so this is definitely not going to be a one-off thing for me. My next challenge is to try to ride all he way to Szentendre (20km from Budapest)--watch this space!

Gumi macko, my love, Tri-omino, mon amour

2010-04-23T10:54:00.009+02:00

It has happened to you that you wake up in the morning not quite knowing why. It has happened to me to eat aromatic hazelnuts or freshly grilled asparagus without appreciating fully. It happens to Budapest tram passengers to cross Margit Bridge without lifting their heads while passing by one of the most beautiful urban landscapes in the world.

Has it happened to you to cross the garden in a beautiful morning hurrying home to finish an important report not noticing how the popcorn-like tree transformed into green leafy tree? You have presumably sometimes stop contemplating a sunset hurrying home for the evening news.

The answer how not to do that and how to enjoy the present moment and small things lies with kids. That's not a revelation, of course, but come on - let us learn it once and forever!

This morning I was struck again by my sons' joy when they were administered their daily dose of multi-vitamins in the form of rubber teddy bears. They were beaming with happiness. One would say what's the big deal...but they would say 'Gumi mackooooooooo, hurray!'

A handful of gumi macko (rubber teddy bears) vitamins

And look here: this is Boris' new passion. It is called Tri-omino and it is a game that resembles domino but with triangles. We discovered this game at New Year through my friend Richard who is the ultimate game guru. Boris is the absolute world tri-omino champion and I have never seen someone being so happy hearing the words 'Yes, of course, we will play until 400......' or someone so excited when making a bridge or a diamond (tri-omino figures).

Tri-omino, Boris' passion

And some words about passion in doing small things like.....eating ice-cream. Here is Andrej and that's how he looks like when he is left alone with a box of chocolate ice-cream. I promise to write a report on Monday with a similar attitude and I wonder what would come out of it.

Andrej after eating chocolate ice-cream

I am kidding a bit with this post but I am also serious. I would like to learn these simple joys and appreciate them fully. Dozens of daily interactions and apparantly banal things and motions are full with inherent beauty which is kind of veiled because of our way of life, because of rushing or because of wrong focus. I would personally like to lift the veil.

I would also like not to be scared by the repetitiveness of things as we all know that this is what often kills the freshness of perception. Exactly because we know it is possible to be tired by repetition I would like to look for fresh ways to look at repetitive phenomena.

I think another reason for lack of appreciation is a certain arrogance that we can have towards possibly simple phenomena assuming that dealing with presumably more complex phenomena makes us more intelligent than we actually are.

There is a poem by my father which is fully in line with what I want to say.

If you transform
Emil Zhechkov

If you transform your soul
into an exquisite bell
How beautiful - drumming of little rain drops hammers
on its bronze neck.

Kid's fingers touch and wake
the sleepy tendersness -
invisible sounds will blossom from
the magic box of the morning.

If you turn your soul into a green tree
it will be a smelly bed for jumping birds
dreaming of infinity
and tireless wings....

It seems to me that we are debtors to many things around us....

Take a patriotic ride

2010-04-22T15:13:00.003+02:00

Are your patriotic credentials in need of refreshing? Have you taken pride in the glorious past of your nation lately?

No, neither have I, but today I realized there is an ingenious way to do it. If you happen to be Hungarian and live in Hungary, you can choose to zoom around not in any random taxi company, but patriotic taxi service called JOBB taxi. Any similiarity to the name of the ultra-right party that has just won almost 17% of votes (JOBBIK) is very deliberate if you even just take a peek at their website (jobb means better but also right, both in spatial and abstract sense).

You would have to be blind to miss the map of pre-Trianon Hungary (which includes big chunks of several neighboring countries) blasting from every corner of the site and, according to reliable eye-witnesses, features prominently on the actual taxis. If you want to become a regular customer, you get a card with--you guessed--a huge map of Greater Hungary coupled with a coat of arms with angels hovering over it.

Interestingly, the homepage features their bank account in flashing numbers the colors of Hungarian flag (red, white, green) so if you don't feel like a ride, but want to support the cause, I suppose you can wire your donation. They offer really competitive prices, but you probably need to complete a quick language and constitution test before you can enter the taxi, and a DNA sample might be needed to establish your true Hungarian-ness.

The taxi drivers are wearing Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazi collaborators) uniforms and only ever turn right, never left. OK, I just invented this last bit but who's willing to bet?

Mother to some, stepmother to others

2010-04-21T09:48:00.008+02:00

When you want to describe that one and the same thing can be good for some people but very bad for others, in Serbian you say "nekome majka a nekom maceha," or "mother to some, stepmother to others," mother being the embodiment of goodness and stepmother... well, think of poor Cinderella.

So with Ejyafjallajökul. My friend Katya is stranded in Spain (this is supposed to sound bad, but somehow it doesn't), reminiscing about Breugel's The Fall of Icarus: " Icarus is drowning in the sea, but no one even notices. Now, people wander the streets with suitcases and backpacks, and life in the city goes on as if nothing happens."

Ruslan, on the other hand, was grounded in Budapest, possibly stranded from a certain point of view. Instead of partying his last 30-something in the city that never sleeps he ended up here. I have to say that this required swift logistical moves on my behalf but I get a kick out of short-notice deadlines (take note of that, potential employers).

This is what we ended up with:

Beef with dried apricots and raisins, with a whiff of cinnamon and orange. It was my first attempt (I have cooked beef no more than three times in my life) and while there is room for improvement it did turn out tasty.

Dangerously good Italian wine--easy to drink, and before you know it you are all slow and fuzzy.

Is there anything more kitsch than heart-shaped objects? Hardly, but this was the best-looking cake around and it tasted yummie (cottage cheese and fruits).

And it was Ejyafjallajökul that has given us this beautiful feast--so do cut him some slack.

Eyjafjallajokull

2010-04-17T15:40:00.004+02:00

Since Thursday my finger has been on the pulse of Earth: I have been following the movements of the omnipresent volcanic ash quite closely. I had a flight to New York to catch on Friday. I had a weekend to spend with Ivailo and Emily. Well, all this didn't happen because of Eyjafjallajokull. John Cleese (Monty Python) reminded me through The Guardian of the saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Well, after saying this John took a 5,400 $ taxi from Oslo to Brussels.....He must be still making some bugs from the royalties on his films....

I wonder if I should blame the poor guy Eyjafjallajokull (Yesterday I was thinking of the fundamental difference between Icelandic names and other names, take Etna for example) for not having conducted extensive consultations with me if it was a good time to erupt. His behaviour is not at all in the good democratic traditions of proper stakeholder consultation.

If only he had contacted me in advance and invited me for a tea at his place (heated with his own energy) we could have negotiated something and I could have convinced him to wait 24 hours as this was my first trip to New York. I could have persuaded him that there were talks to be talked with Ivailo and Emily, streets to be walked and drinks to be drunk.

There is something flattering to be implicated in such a global affair like the eruption of a volcano. One feels a part of a grand scheme more than usual. This is not any more something that is happening to some people in some airports telling the camera that they haven't showered for 2 days. I am already in the game of global interdependencies.

When it's hard

2010-04-16T14:50:00.002+02:00

Leonidas of Sparta
Originally uploaded by Charalampos Konstantinidis

In the first years after Milosevic was ousted from power, elections were held in Serbia about once every two months and it seemed like the country was in a permanent campaining mode. On every visit we were greeted by yet another round of campaign billboards and Ruslan would ask in astonishment: "What, are you having elections again? But didn't you just have some last time?"

Anyway, during one of those semi-permanent election campaigns, one of Milosevic's former allies-turned dissident, Nebojsa Covic, campaigned under the slogan "Kad je tesko--Covic"
("When it is hard--Covic"), implying that he's the man to take care of difficult situation. He was referring to the fact that he had been appointed to deal with the crisis in Southern Serbia which had the potential to turn into an armed conflict (it did not, but it spilled into Macedonia instead).

It was a cool slogan, although it was not enough for his party to garner enough support. But I was reminded of it when, in a completely unrelated conversation, a friend of mine said that, in difficult moments, his slogan had been "When it is hard--Jelica." I thought that was very sweet and I knew it was true. But the irony of the situation was that, at that moment, I was struggling to keep my head above the water, swamped by issues I had no idea how to deal with, paralyzed by indecision and very much in need of help. But I kept the stiff upper lip because how can I be a reliable friend in need if I am breaking into pieces?

I suppose it is some kind of twisted pride, not wanting to share your worst moments and your weakness with people with whom you would otherwise share everything, and whom you love unconditionally. Maybe it is fear that, after the flood of inevitably banal reality sweeps in, it will be impossible to resume dialogue. I know this might sound strange, it does so even to me as I am writing it. It is a mixture of vanity (living up to expectations) and a Spartan, unsentimental approach to yourself.

As I had jokingly replied to my friend--when it's hard, bite the bullet and carry a lot of paper tissues with you. But I wish to add: and have a few friends around to pass you the tissues and help you wipe the snots, without anyone being ashamed or feeling embarrassed.

Not much of a Spartan, eh?

Do pandas go to heaven?

2010-04-07T22:17:00.003+02:00

Boris is concerned about dying. He was watching television with grandma last time we were in Lazarevac and he saw a scene from a war movie in which the Germans shot dead a whole bunch of school kids (based on a true WWII event in Kragujevac). I didn't even know that he saw something like that (I wasn't at home) and he never mentioned it at the time. But the other day he started sobbing incontrollably, saying "I don't want to die" and it became clear that he remembered that movie scene and that it had frightened him.

I tried to reassure him by saying that he is just a little boy, he will grow to be an old man and then die, as we all will, but that didn't help one bit--he kept crying. I had a frantic mental search for a better explanation when he asked, through tears:

"When I die, how long am I going to lie on the floor? Is it going to be very long?"

"No, when you die, you will go to heaven."

"What is heaven?"

"That is where your grandpa is. We go to heaven when we die" (she says, biting her agnostic lips)

That seemed to have done the trick, but only for a minute before another round of whining.

"But how am I going to get to heaven? I can't fly!"

Here I had to introduce the concept of the soul, praying that he wouldn't press further, but he seemed somewhat relieved that the flying issue has been resolved in such a simple way. I also had to reassure him that he would not hit his head against the clouds on the way up because clouds are soft.

He wasn't entirely convinced about any of that, though. Clearly, something else was bothering him and, sure enough, another round of sobs starts.

"But I don't want to die! I will miss my panda... Panda can't come with me to heaven...I don't want to die..."

Just imagine that prospect: an entire eternity without your faithful panda by your side. It is just too much for a boy to bear.

There was only one way to alleviate this angst--I promised him that panda, too, will join him in heaven. He was still a bit suspicious about the logistics of it, but then he finally smiled and you could see how deeply relieved he was. I was, too, and the more I think about it, the more I see it from his point of view: what kind of heaven is that if it doesn't have pandas in it?

Homecoming

2010-03-30T20:04:00.014+02:00

If home is where your books are, I either have two (half-full glass approach) or none (half-empty), since my books are divided between the temporary home in Budapest and my childhood home (permanent, but not really mine anymore) in Lazarevac. But the best thing about this is that when I go to Serbia I have a great library--mostly from my university days--at my disposal.

This time I rediscovered an interesting collection called "A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation," which I must have acquired for one of my English major courses. It contains mostly poems and an occasional short story. Three of the women on the list of featured writers have Kerouac as their family name--Jack must have been quite a catch.

But back to the topic of home, inside the collection I found a poem that I liked; it's called "Homecoming," written by someone called Fran Landesman.

Homecoming

Somehow
The birds sound the same
When waking from a dream
In London or in San Francisco

Surely
The cats on the street
Are just as mean or sweet
In London or in San Francisco

So is the smell
Of morning coffee
But the color
Is different

The grass is the same
It gets you just as high
So is the gossip and the blues
And the boys taste the same
They get you just as high
The only special thing
Is the color of the sky

I'm not even sure about that color of the sky but I know that, when I decided to move skies, I took "that little sun"* that my friends and I gave to one another and it still gives me warmth on cold, overcast days.

------------------------------
*Mihailo Lalic, "Lelejska Gora"

Go Down by the River

2010-03-27T17:27:00.005+01:00

After rubbing gently off a tram on a crazy Belgrade intersection on Thursday, Jelica and I finally went to the theater after several years. What a shame!!! We saw the Hanoh Levin's piece Requiem based on three short stories by Chekhov. The actors were fantastic with beautiful minimalistic staging and music with pretty much nothing on the stage but a bench (a bit of a Chekhov cliche) and a moon that watches over everything.

There are several topics that touched me and that I would like to single out.

At the end of his wife's life (and close to the end of his own life), the old man realizes the terrible loneliness of their common life. Time has just passed in the little poor hut in the little village on the way between Paris and Shanghai without they even kind of noticed each other lost in survival cares and petty-mindedness. As the man said with regret - we didn't even go the beautiful river that is in our village, we just didn't dare and stayed in the hut watching the world through the window. We could have gone there, caught some fish, we could have opened a restaurant and served people with a smile instead of making coffins and hoping that more people would die to make a bigger profit. These are two separate topics and could call them *so close and so faraway* and *fear of life, fear of breaking free*.

While taking his wife to the doctor in the nearby village, they traveled with two local prostitutes lamenting the lack of style of local men, their stinginess and poverty. Things are so different in Paris.....While they were travelling the horseman kept asking them to be a bit quieter and respectful as his son died the week before. Obviously no one cared and at one point the saddened man collapsed and confided his grief to his horse who understood him the best. This reminds me another post of mine on the loneliness of man in his noble ambitions - a Splash Quite Unnoticed. This was the topic of the *loneliness of man in his grief*.

There was also the issue of stinginess. After having to make his wife's coffin for free, the hero concluded that life is associated with losses and only death is linked with profits. Life-losses, death-profits.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage

2010-03-21T21:34:00.007+01:00

I would like to follow up on Jelica's interesting post and share some thoughts of mine. Home, homecoming, nostalgia for home is something that is a part of my life. The intensity of feelings varies from persistent longing to a certain degree of detachment. At times I have felt a compulsive need to return, other times - I bathe pleasantly in relative rootlessness.

I was thinking today that home is mostly a reference point, a beginning and an end., the 0 of the coordinate system. To use the metaphor of the famous Cavafy poem Ithaca (and Jelica's photo) - it is the port we return to or will potentially return to. The boat may sail the oceans but wouldn't it be an endlessly lonely boat if there is no port to shelter it (not only in storm)?

It seems to me that there are different types of home-shelter. The most premordial one for me is the one offered by parents. Going back to my mother's place and to my father's grave is the ultimate return - there is nowhere I can go any further, it is the absolute zero. Losing the parents is losing the 0 and the beginning.

For me the place where I spent my childhood (coinciding with the above) is also the home. Like they sing in the song: Douce France, cher pays de mon enfence..... Je t'aime dan's la joie ou la douleur. There is no place in the world that can replace the town where I spent those endless childhood year. Everything is first then, that's the place where we build all smaller coordinate systems: first friends, first school, first books, first self-consciousness....That is why the attraction is so big.

A third type of home is the linguistic home. There is no need to explain that there is no language like our mother tongue because of the above two reasons. No matter how comfortable we feel in a language acquired later, childhood has not been spoken in it.

Of course, maybe the most important home in daily practical terms is where we live at a given moment and where our family and friends are. That's the home we return to after business trips and it is written in our ID cards.

My conclusion (for tonight) is that our link to home depends on several things:
- our relations to our parents (no matter where they are);
- our relation to the physical space where we spent our childhood;
- our relation to our mother tongue;

And here I would like to remind you of a famous poem which speaks of home and which I have remembered in times of strong nostalgia.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

Warm bath of identity

2010-03-18T13:54:00.005+01:00

When you live abroad, there are two questions people will ask you again and again:

1. how long do you plan to stay here?
2. do you plan to go back?

The answer to the first has been a standard "one or two more years" until I realised that we've been here much longer than that. So nowadays I am more likely to say that I have no idea.

The second one is easier, because the answer is a resolute "no." There is something terrifying in that certainty but I suppose it is better than deluding yourself that you will go back in some distant future.

When I left in 1997 I didn't mean to leave for good, I had some vague idea about returning when Milosevic is gone and things get back to normal. Maybe these were half-hearted ideas all along--my best friend claims so, anyway, and he is probably right. But that door that was ajar, at least in my perception, slammed shut in 2003 when our then prime minister was assassinated and any improbable return was taken off the agenda.

So do I still have a homeland? I grew up in Yugoslavia and then, without any choice in the matter, in Serbia, spent some great years in Bulgaria, had an exciting time in London, have fallen in love with Budapest and enjoyed it for years.

Legally speaking, I am Serbian, I have no other citizenship. And Serbian is my one and only mother tongue, even though being away from where it is spoken has taken its toll on my vocabulary and (embarassingly) even grammar. But I feel neither a bond nor particular loyalty to Serbia as a country. I feel closer to people who have grown up watching the same cartoons as myself, even if their native language is Slovene or Albanian, than to my own cousin who was born in 1989 and has only been Serbian all of her life. As Tony Judt so aptly put it: "This warm bath of identity was always alien to me."*

But while I have given up on having a homeland, I still need to have a home--a place to start from on all the journeys, a place to belong. An anchor, if you will, and not necessarily geographical, although that helps. Budapest is, for many reasons, not home and, while I always knew that, I have felt it more strongly lately and the realisation that I live in a beautiful bubble has seriously put me off balance. I got tired of not belonging, not understanding and not participating.

It is a little bit like a relationship--after so much time, you either commit or you split, you don't just drag on forever. But which way for the boat?

------------------------------------------------------
*"Crossings," published in New York Review of Books.

Spring cleaning

2010-03-16T12:46:00.007+01:00

We spent the whole day yesterday dusting, scrubbing, cleaning cupboards, washing, tidying, mopping. And then some.

It was a day off in Hungary because of the March 15 holiday and what better way to spend a holiday than getting your hands dirty? That reminds me of Christmas day in 2002 when I had a day off work (I had hoped to work but my boss had other plans for me, so I got a night shift on December 31st instead). I was all alone in London which, without public transport, feels like a ghost city, so I just cleaned and cleaned all day. I remember that I even cooked a meal for myself, which was a real feat considering that those days I mostly subsisted on Nutella.

I do enjoy an occasional day of purely physical work. When I used to work for Habitat for Humanity we would spend a day on a build site at least once a year and that was so much fun. It's a little bit like skiing: you are totally knackered at the end of the day but it still gives you a kick. It's just so much better than typing all day.

I feel like now is a good time to do some mental spring cleaning, too. You know, shake off the hibernation, get out of that unproductive waiting that julochka wrote about so well, leave behind all the melancholic winter thoughts and negative energy.

Perhaps also clean the dust that has settled on this blog and inject it with some fresh energy? I hope that the blog fatigue stays behind with the previous season.

Indignation

2010-03-11T12:07:00.005+01:00

(I am in denial)

Dear Weather,

don't you think that we've all had enough of you this season? In fact, let me rephrase this: don't you think we've had more than enough of you for this season and the previous half a dozen at least?

I thought we had an implicit agreement that spring was in the air. Sure enough, it was pretty cold these last few days and the wind was very chilly at times, but there was a definitely springy sunshine and the air smelt of renewal. Until this morning, when I awoke to a snow blizzard and white wet stuff everywhere.

I feel cheated.

I just wanted to let you know that my patience with your quirky behavior is running out. This should better be the last we are seeing of you for this year. Or else...

Glimpses

2010-02-13T21:03:00.005+01:00

Today I was thinking of the English word 'glimpse', its French equivalent 'entrevoir' and the Bulgarian 'zyrvam'. For some reason I like this word very much as it seems to me that it is charged with mystery. It must be so because of the its fleeting nature.

What comes to my mind is a day on a beach in Bulgaria. I must have been 2-3 years old and while waiting for my mother to get out from the women changing room the door opens and I had a glimpse of a naked woman for the first time in my life. What was its impact on me if I still remember this...

Two days ago while walking in Brussels I had a glimpse of the Grande Place bathed in sun under falling sun, the gilded facade of the townhall shining. Some minutes later this moment had gone.

Maybe around a year ago I discovered a song by George Brassens which is called Les Passantes with lyrics by the poet Pol Antoine. It is a beautiful song charged with glimpses of happiness. A verse reads:

Mais si l'on a manqué sa vie
On songe avec un peu d'envie
A tous ces bonheurs entrevus

If we failed our lives
We dream with a bit of sadness
of all past glimpses of happiness.

One of the explanations of the great value of those moments is economic. They are in such short supply that the price goes up. The other explanation is that these glimpses are openings to other worlds which remain undiscovered, promises that remain unfulfilled. These glimpses may take numerous forms: the words of a friend, the morning light over the sea, a girl you've once met on the train (as in Pol Antoine's Les Passantes), a burst of laughter and lightness that can hopefully persist and resist the tediousness of days.

A La Recherche du Kebab Perdu

2010-01-23T19:41:00.003+01:00

I spent last two weeks in Sarajevo, Istanbul and Ankara while reading Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns. The common word between three cities and two books is kebab. Kebab is also famous in the Balkans as cevapi, kebabceta and is either grilled minced meat or simply grilled pieces of meat.

I think that my preference goes for the Bosnian version of kebab - the ones the can be found in the cevapdziinicas in the old carshija. They are served in portions of 5, 10 or more but my experience showed that 7.5 is an optimal number for a portion of cevapi. In Bosnia cevapi are served with lepinja - thin grilled bread. They go perfectly well with kajmak (a kind of salty milk product) and onion and cabbage or tomato salad.

I like a bit less the Turkish kebab which is similar to the Bosnian but is served in portions of 6. What's it all about with these numbers and why can't a person order any number of cevapi (like in civilized places like Bulgaria) without calling a referendum? Turks are getting closer to the magic number of 7.5 though. Turkish cevapi go really well with a couple of long peppers and lentils soup which - purist as they are - the Bosnian cevapi places don't offer.

The other highlight of my trip were the aubergines. I ate stuffed aubergines several times and I like them a lot although they could be prepared with lots of oil. There must be some cooking technique which reduces the oiliness. Maybe the tule is simply 'put less oil'. I must praise here Turkish Airlines which on the flight Munich-Istanbul offered an excellent meal of salmon entree, stuffed aubergine and cheese cake. I hadn't had a proper meal in a plane for ages.

I have to also advertise here two Ankara restaurants - Mantar (Mushroom) and Daphne. The first is a very cosy, average priced restaurant where you choose your own meals in the kitchen. The latter is a more elegant and expensive but extremely good restaurant which, unfortunately, unexpectedly charges 15 EUR for a small bottle of raki (pastisse).

My culinary experience in Turkey was topped by the discovery of fresh pommegranate juice (3-4 TRL) which is practically everywhere and is of extraordinary quality. I can also recommend the fresh spicy stuffed mussles at the fish market in Beyoglu.

Geography of a Year

2010-01-17T22:02:00.000+01:00

Last year I was on the road for 58 working days which is more than 1/4 of a working year and 1/6 of the whole year. It occurred to me that one could analyse a year through different prisms and for this post I chose the geographic prism. I was thinking that the years of all travelling people comprise of a sequence of places and emotions and impressions that they evoke. All these inevitably interfere with everyday life. We take our lives to the places which become brighter or sadder and we take the places to our everyday lives. To me, the perception of a place is a result of the encounter of our state of mind and the place itself.

I also made links to the blog posts that were dedicated to the trips and I also chose one photo per trip which is a visual summary of my impressions.

Istanbul (Turkey)

My travelling year started in January with a trip to Turkey plunging from Budapest winter to a Marmara spring. The light was bright, the air was mild, I had lunch by the water in Arnautkoy and long walks in the evenings. I remember the light from the office in Kabatas (below) and the spectacular view over the Bosphorus during a 3-hour meeting in a bank in Kabatas. This was the trip of the seaside views and the sudden passage from winter to spring.

Kabatas, Istanbul

Ohrid and Skopje (Macedonia)

February was a travelling month and it started with a visit to Ohrid. I remember the lead colour of the lake and the snow on the tops of the Albanian mountains. I took a regular walk to my favourite place in Ohrid - Sveti Joan Kaneo - when I came upon these stranded boats. This was the trip when one of the motors of our propeller plane stopped and gave us a good scare.

Boat in winter slumber

Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

February Sarajevo was lots of snow. The carsija in the old town is quiet and mystic when it snows, the yard of the mosque is peaceful with an occasional believer crossing it hurriedly, the smoke of the cevapi places is more palpable and the copper objects stand out. This was a trip of copper, quiet and cevapi smoke.

Gigantic Copper Kettle (photo: Christelle Kapoen)

Pristina (Kosovo)

In February I went to Pristina for the first time. This was the freezing trip. I was lucky to be there with my friends Ellen and Peter who are real insiders. We had two culinary evenings with good wine and the company of UN and EC stuff. I also had the honour of seeing the library which was ranked among the ugliest buildings in the world.

Frozen Pedestrian Street, Pristina (Photo: Ellen Baltzar)

Salzburg, Innsbruck, Zillertal (Austria)

As always, first week of March was dedicated to skiing and Austria. This was the trip of lonely skiing but also endless scrabble in the evenings. This was sunny and cold Salzburg, crossing the bridge where Mozart allegedly dropped his notes but also Innsbruck and memories of singing incessantly 'Innsbruck, ihc muss dich lassen...' - an old song I know from my choir years.

Genova (Italy)

If I have to rank my trips last year this will be among the first. It was Liguria, Genova and deserted Portofino. It was the first spring air, the eternal Mediterranean and the sea light seen through the olive trees. It was a hanging full moon on a palm branch and a glass of campari.

Portofino, Liguria, Italy

Paris and Lille (France)

Regretably, I forgot my camera in France where I went early April. I had not been in Paris for many years and it was so good to be back. This was the trip of sunbathing in the Luxembour Garden, having morning coffee at the Place du Contrescarpe in the Latin Quarter where the April light was reflected in the fountain.

Vienna and Zagreb were other two trips in April which were good but not particularly memorable.

Brussels

In May I had a couple of trips to Brussels and I could have long walks after work because of the long days. This was a trip when I had the time and luxury to look at the facades of the buildings for hidden signs. I liked the photo below - a fragile tree which sprouted on the wall of an ancient cathedral.

Hope, Brussels

Ancona, San Marino, Urbino, Venice

This was my second Italian destination in 2009. This trip was so great that I dedicated three posts to it. I remember being a bit dissapointed by Rimini and its tourist industry but overwhelmed by Urbino, the Rafaelo museum and again Venice. The bridge below in Rimini is from 1st century and still in use. Ancona was flowery, yellow and elegantly decadent.

Roman bridge, 1st c., Rimini

Lazarevats (Serbia) - May

As the summer approached the work trips were intersparsed by some family trips. Below was a fly-hunting trip to Serbia.

Boris and Andrej, hunting

Brussels and Bruge (Belgium)

I spent another week in Brussels in June and this time Jelica and the kids were with me. We visited a long forgotten Bruge where we had great time with Adriana, Zoya and Vida and the day changed from torrential rain to warm afternoon afternoon by the canal.

Canal, Brugge

Sarajevo - June

In June I was in Sarajevo again, ate another five portions of cevapi and strolled along the carsija a dozen times. I tried to take pictures if Muslim architecture. This trip was also a nice long drive with my colleagues from Budapest to Sarajevo and a fish soup by the Danube in Mohacs.

Miljacka River

Thessaloniki and Halkidiki (Greece)

During the past several years my Bulgarian friends acquired the nice habit of spending a week in Greece. This year Boris and I decided to join them but camping. This was a trip of absolute freedom, no schedule, Boris falling asleep on the table and me carrying him to the tent, Boris' excitement with the warm nights in the tent, fresh grilled fish and quiet sunsets.

Vourvouru, Sithonia, Halkidiki, Greece

Mljet (Croatia) - July

This was a trip with no Internet, 'Discovering the Balkans' by Maria Todorowa, crystal clear water, biking at 40 degrees at 2 pm, eating tons of fish while watching the sunset and regular 200 m. walks in the night combined with lying on the warm cement under a pine to watch the stars and discuss the boats with friends D and I.

Mostar and Sarajevo (BiH)

Coming back from the sea we crossed Bosnia and Herzegovina and I finally visited Mostar for a midday walk along the carsija. It is also quite interesting to climb the peninsula from Croatian Adriatic, through Herzegovina, Muslim Sarajevo and Republika Srpska. I remember the sad story of the destruction of the bridge but also the beautiful meadows of Romania Mountain in Republika Srpska.

View from the bridge in Mostar over the carsija and Neretva river

Rhodope Mountain, Bulgaria

This was our regular summer pilgrimage to Bulgaria and the Rhodope Mountain. This year it rained a bit which can be seen from the picture. The village and the hills are particularly beautiful when the sun shines after the rain. This was also a trip of blueberries, lots of wine and long walks around the village.

Solishta Village, Bulgaria

The autumn was full of trips again but mainly to Brussels. The problem with the autumn trips in Brussels is that it is dark so early that no pictures are possible. These were great trips because I rediscovered the pleasure to stay with friends. I almost got adopted by my friends R and A as well as E and S for which I warmly thank. I immensely enjoyed the stays and the bottles of wine drunk.

Belgrade, Serbia

The last business trip of the year was quite dramatic because of the big snow and the crazy schedule of meetings in a deadlocked city by the taxi drivers' strike. Somehow, on the last day I managed to take a walk and make some pictures at the Kalemegdan fortress.

View of Sava from Kalemegdan

Kosovo (but not UNSCR 1244)

2010-01-10T21:23:00.001+01:00

Anyone who has written publications on the Balkans knows this magic formula - Kosovo, UNSCR 1244. UNSCR stands for United Nations Security Council Resolution and is the politically correct way to refer to the breakaway state of Kosovo which is funnily refered to by the Kosovars themselves with the Albanian ending 'a' - Kosova. UNSCR 1244 placed Kosovo under interim UN administration and is the only formula acceptable to Serbians.

This is not a post on Kosovo, UNSCR 1244 though. I would like to share some photos on village Kosovo where we spent the new year. Kosovo is situated in the Rhodopi Mountain in Bulgaria. It was established in the 17th century and it seems that it was quite lively in the 19th century.

This is not the case any more. Many of the beautiful stone houses are deserted and one hardly sees a living soul on the streets except an occasional dog or cat. If there ever has been a life in the village it is long gone.

It is such a pity that modern life is organised in such a way that beautiful places like this one are empty and sad. We all tend to crowd into the cities (very often ugly) looking for each other's comfort but I wonder if one day people will not get tired of the hustle and bustle and start going back, organising communes, living together a different and maybe much more interesting and harmonious lives.

And these places had a life before industrialisation in the 40s and the 50s drove people from villages to towns. I have seen my grandfather's pictures from a village (Kilifarevo, south of Veliko Tarnovo) in the 20s and 30s and there were dozens of young boys and girls who had fun, used to have a musical group and even a theater group...

I wonder if this will not happen again one day. I imagine this village with dozens of young families, some of them working remotely, some of them working the land, some of them living here and working elsewhere. Although this sounds like a dream it may happen one day as big cities become too crowded and too polluted and most importantly one loses one's connection to nature. We all know we miss it and we all know that we are handicapped without it. When will the tipping point be?

The problem is that getting back to such a place requires a change in the mindset, it requires living in a slower way, acquiring new skills even changing one's communication patterns.

This is 'the other' hill of the village seen from our house.

The other hill, Kosovo

This is our side of the village seen from 'the other' hill.

This house looks like a forteress who is under attack and is hardly holding. In reality there is no one to attack and no one to defend. Is there anything worth defending?

Shy Flag

The church was surprisingly fit and the tower is neat and white. The building in front has three purposes: a shop, a local bar and an ethnological museum with three separate entrances.

Church Dome (1851)

Some houses are really falling apart and are probably beyond repair. Imagine how beautiful this one was and how beautiful it could be.

Past Glory

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly
all your life you are only waiting for this moment to arrive...

Beans, Pumpkin and Apricots

2010-01-06T21:29:00.019+01:00

Christmas is receding into the past (except for old calendar Orthodox countries like Russia and Serbia) but I came upon some pictures from the Christmas Eve table at my mother's place which I would like to share.

One is supposed to fast for 40 days before Christmas but on the 23rd the conversation between my brother and mother went as follows:
My mother: What are we eating tonight? Something light and vegetarian as we have to fast at least 24 hours before Christmas.
My brother: Well, fasting tomorrow evening would be enough I think. Let's grill this nice meat.

So much for sacrifices.

The frugal Christmas Eve table is almost the same each year with only small variations. It includes:
- bread with a cross on top of it and a coin inside;
- red peppers staffed with beans;
- rolled vine leaves with rice;
- potato and onion salad;
- tomato and onion salad;
- dried apricots and prunes;
- all kinds of nuts;
- baked pumpkin;
- pickled peppers staffed with pickled cauliflower.

Christmas Eve Table

Each year I swear to eat less but it is never easy given the temptations. For me the quantity of eaten food during the holidays is in inverse correlation with the capacity for social interaction and enjoyment. It seems to me that millions of people do not enjoy the overeating part of the holidays but persist in doing it. It is understandable that excess is one of the points in each holiday but wouldn't it be nicer to indulge in an excess of sociability and communication for example rather than excess in eating.

Christmas Eve Table, another perspective

There is of course a magic formula for the quantity of wine to be drunk in order to achieve a maximal sharpness of mind. This formula is hidden in a bottle swallowed by a fish which was swallowed by a whale. I am not preaching moderation here as sharpness of mind is hardly the desirable condition for each one picking a glass.

Bulgarian Wine Collection in the Restaurant in Village Kosovo

Wine Produced by My Friend Z

There is an idiom in Bulgarian which is hard to translate but it approximately means 'I wish I had your problems'....

Home, Bitterness Forgotten

2009-12-27T19:40:00.003+01:00

Today, for the first time after 15 years, I met one of my best friends age 7-14. We had a great time together and for me it was a very positive reunion. One of the things he shared made me think quite hard. He said he liked my blog post about our town, its positive mood and the memories it awakens and it made him remember the past in a nice way. However he can't help being disgusted by many of the things that are happening here (I am still here) which spoil his memories.

As I don't want to be cheesy and present a distorted picture of my town I would like to list some of the things I don't like:

- the fact that a big number of the Amsterdam prostitutes and pimps come from Sliven;
- the fact that the current mayor (ex-football player) is known for conflict of interest and a quasi dictatorial way of managing the town thanks to his past glory;
- the painful fact that one of the rich business women (ex-MP) managed to get a permission to build an office building on one of the prettiest and symbolic squares in town;
- the fact that for some safety reasons (admittedly) they cut hundreds of beautiful poplars that lined the small river for kilometers on end. These poplars have been painted by local painters for hundreds of years and...yes, they fall easily when the strong local wind blows.

And I am sure there are many more things that I simply don't know of because I don't want to be immersed in the local press.

I am looking for some kind of forgiveness or at least an excuse for not mentioning (this is the least) and not thinking or trying to change any of these things. I feel my powers are so limited and I am not in a position to change any of the above. How can I make a local teenage girl read a book and not dream of a well-paid job in Amsterdam? It's impossible and it is so fundamental.

I also need this place in my thoughts as we all need our Ithacas. And I cannot hold it in my thoughts with its negative everyday problems. I need my happy memories, the lightness of my childhood, the enthusiasm of my father as a young local poet and doctor, the impeccable home of my mother, the small cottons of the poplars in May, the smell of the linden trees in June and as long as some local pimp does not force me to go to Amsterdam, I will chose to have a selective (and no-doubt one-sided approach to Sliven).

And for the rest, no doubt that every little effort in the right direction is praiseworthy. I learned some time ago that we are all like Sisyphus pushing our rocks uphill. It seems that this is the normal state of affairs and I will personally not dispair as long as I know that this is at least the right hill.

Home Sweet Home

2009-12-24T14:00:00.024+01:00

After a cold and hectic stay in Lazarevatz and Belgrade, we continued further south first to Sofia and then - to Sliven. My notion of home is turned upside down as I have lived in several cities. However, Sliven is my home if I adopt a definition that home is where I spent my childhood and where parents live. That's also the place where my father's familiy belongs historically, where I have lived the longest (from age 3 to 19) and where I have been to school.

Sliven is also the place where every street speaks with layers of memories as I had written in an old post. Here the air is quite nice and sweet as it is constantly refreshed by the wind from the mountain (Stara Planina or also known as the Balkan Mountain). As I often joke it is difficult to find someone more Balkan than me having grown up with the sight of the Balkan in front of me and having roamed the mountain with friends.

So here is a short photo album of Sliven. Yesterday, when we arrived the sunset was quite beautiful as photographed from our terrace. After icy Belgrade (it reached as low as -19) todays' 15 degrees and sun feel like a premature spring. I associate such sunsets with the arrival of spring.

Sunset

One of our usual and quite nice passe-temps in Sliven is walking (or rather dragging) along the main street and buying all king of stuff to the kids while meeting old friends and acquaintances. This is a portion of the main street with the old clock tower at the end. I have crossed this street thousands of times. It is usually packed with people and cafes which mushroom in summer of course. An usual evening in high school consisted of walking the street several times and meeting all your friends who, of course, were doing the same (and what else could one do at that time?).

Main Street (Largo)

That's a nice house built in 1910 that is now one of the galleries in town. Fortunately, many of the old houses were preserved and painted.

Gallery (1910)

That's the municipality with the old clock tower. The clock strikes at noon now (also 10 pm in the past) with the first chords from a 19 century revolutionary song (Rise, rise, Balkan hero, wake up from your deep slumber!). My father use to work for some years in the municipality as a health care coordinator for the region on top of his work as a doctor.

Sliven Municipality

This is a place friends used to meet and I have spent some time here waiting in the pre-mobile phone times. The place used to be known as the Russian bookstore as it used to sell Russian literature. Naturally, pre-1989, that was one of the ways for cultural transfer and ideological influence. It is a bookstore now as well. The poster features Dan Brown's Lost Symbol instead of Dostoyevski. I am not sure which cultural influence is better but this is a separate discussion.

ex-Russian Bookshop (now - the Penguin Bookshop)

This is a tree that is more than 1000 years old and is one of the symbols of the city. I can't remember the English word for this type of tree. I checked and it is an elm tree - ulmus campestris.

The Oldest Tree in Town

That's a monument of a cool guy - Hadji Dimitar - who was heading a group of rebels in the mid-19th century fighting the Turks. Expectedly, he died at the age of 28 killed in a fight. I like the place as this is a nice monument and because of the cypress trees behind. When we were kids we used to organise cypress cone fights there.

Hadji Dimitar

This is a church - Saint Dimitar - which is opposite the monument and you can also see the clock tower in the distance.

Saint Dimitar Church

This is my old school where both my father and I studied from 1st to 7th grade. I can see my old chemistry and biology classrooms. I have played hundreds of football and basketball matched in this yard and it is usually filled with kids. Memories of what has happened in this yard are so numerous.

My Old School

And this is a nice old clock tower which has been recently reconstructed.

Old Clock Tower

White Whitecity (Belgrade)

2009-12-19T16:53:00.009+01:00

If I have to choose between the moderate and the marginal and dramatic, my preference goes for the latter. This is the reason why I love dramatic weather in either directions - both hot and cold. That is also why heavy snow, thunders, heavy rain and heat waves attract me so much. I have a liking for the marginal behaviour as well provided it is in an intelligent direction and that it is an intellectual statement. While Arthur Rimbaud's life story - quitting poetry at 17 and dealing with trade in Africa - is to be respected in its marginality, Partizan fans marginal threats to a reporter who disclosed their criminal links is to be immediately repudiated.

These days were of metereological marginality. It snowed a heavy snow in Serbia and the temperatures were very low. On top of that Belgrade taxi drivers were on strike because (hear that) they were against the introduction of obligatory meters in the cars and because they wanted minimum tariffs. How funny that we all want to be European but when the European way is against our financial interests then the Europeanness is easily forgotten.

Anyway, I acted as my own taxi driver and I drove 200 km in snow and ice between different meetings. On Friday I took some time for a nice slow walk in Belgrade, a visit to some bookstores and have a nice lunch.

This is Vojvoda (Chieftain) Vuk in a small park. I don't know what he did but he died aged 35. I imagine he was a marginal personality and logically did not die in his bed. I took a picture of him as I liked how the snow looked like some strange creature is strangling him.

Vojvoda Vuk

Knjaz Mihailova is a beautiful street and here are its cute lanterns.

Lantern on Knjaz Mihailova street

Kalemegdan fortress was fantastic under the snow. There was hardly a soul in the cold and all I could hear was the sound of me walking on the snow.

The small and the big

Kalemegdan Fortress

There is a beautiful view from the fortress both to Sava and Danube rivers. In a cold and snowy weather water looks like mercury and so does the sky.

Frozen Sava River

Santa Clause, Cherry Nose, Holy Night

2009-12-10T20:49:00.005+01:00

I haven't written a blog post for weeks. I don't know what got me - it's been a bad period for me - too much stress at work, too many travels and things to do, too many sleepless nights and hectic days. And....inspiration is such an delicate thing. Sometimes you think it will stay forever, the next day - it is gone.

This period of the year time usually accelerates for me. It is probably because December is kind of short because of the Christmas and New Year holidays and I want to cram the same number of things in less days.

And there is the accumulated fatigue from the year. I haven't counted my days of travel this year but I have been away for at least 50 days and 20 of them were during the last two months. That's a lot, at least for me.

And there is also the end of projects and books I have worked on. Although, on one hand there is a sense of relief that something is over, there is also a sense of emptiness and the questions 'was it worth it?', 'was it good?'. Some new things are starting as well but I still can't get motivated enough about them.

I definitely need some slow time, some long mornings and evenings with friends therefore I am waiting for the Christmas break. I am really looking forward for around 10 days of no work thoughts and laptop use only for blog purposes. I just have to get rid of this terrible habit of answering e-mail at 3.30 am just because I have the instinct of checking my work e-mail any time. That's too bad, constant connectivity is terrible.

I guess I just need Santa Claus to come for me with some peace. Several days ago Santa came at my work place and my kids were quite happy to get to meet him.

Here is Boris reciting a poem to get a bag of chocolates. He had to overcome his initial fear from Santa though. The day before he shared with me that he doesn't like Santa as Santa who came to their kindergarten had a gun and wanted to beat him up. I hope this is not true. This reminds me though of an article I read recently on how in 1951 a group of French Catholics burned an effigy of Santa protesting against Santa's growing importance to families and commerce in a way 'stealing' some of Christmas original symbolics and passing it on to a pagan symbol.

Claude Levi-Strauss reacted to this and tried to explain the Santa Clause phenomenon as marking the border between childhood, adolescence and adult age. He calls it a 'myth of initiation', mysteries that adults know and kids - don't. I still remember my horror and disappointment when my mother told me that Santa doesn't exist. I also remember the wonderful December evenings when Santa came to my mother's dental clinic bringing me a nice toy (toys were fewer these days and their value was higher) or...New Year in Veliko Tarnovo when Santa left gifts in front of the door.

Levi-Strauss also explains Santa's existence by the need to limit the 'obligatory' gift-giving period to once per year (he must have forgotten the birthdays). It seems that the origin of Santa Claus is found in the Abboth Liess, Abbas Stultorum, Lord of Misrule. The good Santa Clause appeared as a symmetric personality to Roman Saturn who ate children. He has something to do with the Scandinavian Julbok - underground demon bringing gifts to the kids.

And.... there must be something about Santa Claus if Bob Dylan started singing carols.

On obscenities and homelands

2009-11-24T09:45:00.012+01:00

"Obscenity: the root that attaches us most deeply to our homeland."

This is Milan Kundera going one step further from Czeslaw Milosz who famously wrote that language is the only homeland. I love Kundera's ability to get into the core of an issue with a pithy definition. I bumped into this one while browsing his "Art of the Novel" and I could not stop laughing.

What he describes is a familiar sentiment to all of us who have been uprooted out of our native linguistic context and into a second or a third language. Swearing in a foreign language? No problem! It carries almost no weight. You say the words just like any other words because you are detached. You don't feel them as bad, inappropriate, or harsh.

In my own language, on the other hand, I use them with utmost care. Don't ask me to teach you to swear in Serbian because I won't--first, because Serbian curses are really harsh and, second, because there is a proper context for swearing and that, for me, always involves being home (as in, home in Serbia). Out of that context, it doesn't feel right.

It is funny, when I am irritated or angry, I use a Bulgarian expression "po dyavolite" which means "to hell." Now, to Ruslan this is extremely rude and he reprimands me every time. My other Bulgarian friends say this is an old-fashioned curse which almost doesn't feel like one, it is kind of charmingly outdated. That's how I feel about it, too.

The Serbian equivalent "dodjavola" (it has identical meaning) is so light, I don't think anyone would consider it an obscenity. In fact, I bet people would just burst out laughing at it. But then it is true that we are a nation which curses a lot, and a general threshold of tolerance to using "bad language" is much higher than in other places I lived.

In Serbia, swearing is weaved seamlessly into conversations, whether it's a friendly banter or a serious discussion (as for arguments, that goes without saying). It completely cuts across class, geographical origin or education--you can't pigeonhole people based on swearing because everyone does swear a lot, from manual workers to university professors. It's one true democratic pursuit.

That's one thing that has been a cultural shock for Ruslan and I don't think he managed to get used to it even after all these years. Our cultures are otherwise incredibly similar, our languages very much alike, most of our idiomatic expressions are the same and, generally, we have very similar "mentality," except for this one difference that we curse a lot and, somehow, they don't. Why is that?

In the mail

2009-11-16T21:32:00.014+01:00

I would like to dispel a notion some of you might have (especially if you are Ruslan) that all that ever arrives to our mailbox as a result of online shopping are shoes (and occasionally clothes). It would be so wrong to think that because I actually enjoy buying books (and occasionally music) much more.

After all, shoes are a necessity, so we are talking very low levels of the Maslow pyramid here. And finding the right ones--well, that's just hard work, as any woman would tell you. Really, no fun at all.

Books, on the other hand, are sheer pleasure. To say that I like to read would be an understatement; I also like to see our library grow, although the space is a limiting factor there. When I dream of my own place, the first thing I visualise is a library taking up an entire wall, from the floor to the ceiling.

So, today, three new additions to the library have just arrived:

The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera

I read this one back in high school but felt like re-visiting. I like Kundera a lot--he is not heavy artillery like Nabokov or Danilo Kis, but he is witty and somehow manages to stay on this side of (over) simplification. A perfect re-reading material.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado

I don't know much about this author except that he is Brazilian. I discovered one of his books, "Gabriella, clove and cinnamon" in Ruslan's father's library, in Bulgarian, and I read it practically in one go. It was fantastic and I even re-read it last summer. I decided that I had to get something else from Amado and, voila. Let's see if Dona Flor rises up to expectations.

Langford's Basic Photography: The Guide for Serious Photographers

After just a tiny bit of browsing, I can say that this one is very promising and also very different from both Scott Kelby and Brian Petersen. It really is for people with a ~~nerdy~~ scientific slant, as there are a lot of technical details about how a camera works, the role of light, etc. Just what I have been looking for! An in-depth look will follow in the next installment of the analogue experiment series.

The analogue experiment, take 2

2009-11-12T11:48:00.019+01:00

I finally developed the second roll of film that I shot with our Canon 2000, so it is time for a review.

For a start, it's far less disappointing than the first batch, although I am still making some beginner's mistakes, like, for instance, having subjects out of focus. I have a picture of Andrej standing by the pool with ducks in the zoo--I wanted his face to be in focus, but instead I focused on the ducks. How did that happen? I think I need to learn how to focus on subjects which are not in the center of the frame, but rather to the left or right of it.

I did learn something from that first film and that is not to go for big apertures when shooting on bright sunny days at noon. In fact, I also learned that it is probably a good idea not to shoot at all on a bright sunny day at noon, because the shadows are unforgiving, and everything looks very harsh, especially human faces. So I graduated from washed out to harsh, which is not ideal, but let's agree to call it a step in the right direction.

In the meantime my "Understanding Exposure" by Brian Petersen arrived, and I read it almost in one go. I liked his approach more than that of Scott Kelby (whose books I browsed in Julochka's Blue Room during Blog Camp 2.0) but the problem is I don't like his photos much--they look cliched. And while I like the way he describes exposure and the interplay between the light and aperture, shutter speed and ISO, I think by now I know enough of the basics and I want to go a bit further (if that makes sense).

Of course, what do I do then but reach for another book. This time I did my own snooping around Amazon and I came across something called "Langford's Basic Photography: The guide for serious photographers." The "serious" bit got me (such an easy marketing prey) and then one of the reviews mentioned something about having to have a "scientific slant" to appreciate the book and that sealed the deal.

Finally, last time I was moaning about analogue experiment number 1 Kristina asked me to at least post some images of my photos (since I can't post the originals, them being on paper). So here they are, snaps of the snaps:

Gray vs. red

2009-11-11T20:00:00.009+01:00

Drizzle, drizzle. Chilly wind. Oppressive gray skies.

In other words, November. Definitely the worst month of the year, with a narrow win over February, which has the advantage of spring being round the corner. With November, it's many months of sheer grayness ahead.

The only way to fight this overwhelming gray is to inject a mega-dose of red in your life.

Like this pair of wellies, fresh from the post and right in time. When I showed them to Ruslan he said, in slight disapproval: "But why do you need them when it rains so rarely here?" (clearly, he overslept the month of June, when it rained so much that the Danube flooded). Those were rash words as the very next day it started drizzling and hasn't stopped since.

If you don't have a pair of cool, red rainboots at hand (or, better yet, at leg)--well, you definitely should get one pronto. In the meantime, you can go for a little bit of red in a glass.

I'm not claiming it will make November any less gray, but a few of these and at least you're guaranteed not to bother. Or notice.

Twenty years after the Wall...another wall

2009-11-09T22:14:00.005+01:00

Horgos border crossing between Serbia and Hungary

I don't remember much about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I don't think it has anything to do with my age.

Although I was only twelve, I have clear recollections of the Romanian revolution just a month later and seeing the execution of Ceausescu on public television. It was shocking, it was closer to home, and it was the real end of socialism (bloody, controversial and a portent of things to come on our side of the border).

I don't remember any of the adults in my life being euphoric about bringing down the Wall, because the Wall has never really been about us. Yugoslavia was nested comfortably in some artificial middle ground, neither East nor West, complacent in its home-grown brand of socialism (or "socialism") fuelled by Western money. The generation of my parents had much more freedom than their peers in Hungary, East Germany or Bulgaria, at least when it came to travel. And people did travel, if only for shopping tours to places like Trieste and Munich--silly, maybe, but they could do it. They might have felt all kinds of things, but "walled-in" was hardly one of them.

Fast forward twenty years and Europe is a whole different place. In two hours you can drive from Budapest to Vienna, passing by the old border post which has no function anymore, except as a reminder of the old times. No one will stop you to ask for your passport, check your visa, count your money, rummage through your luggage, ask about where you are going and how long you plan to stay. If you catch a train from Budapest to Bratislava the only way you know you have changed countries is that the information voice coming from the speakers suddenly stops speaking Hungarian and switches to Slovak. It's only been two years that countries like Hungary and Slovakia joined the no-border zone but you get used to it so quickly.

It is easy to forget that things could be any different--until you reach Horgos, the border crossing between Hungary and Serbia, the end of the no-border zone and beginning of the twilight zone. Maybe you are not aware of it, but Berlin Wall has simply moved a little bit more east and nowadays it goes by the name of Schengen Agreement.

Horgos is where Europe without borders abruptly ends and a nightmare called "applying for a Schengen visa" begins. True, there is no barbed wire and grumpy East German soldiers around (just a bunch of grumpy Hungarians and ever-so-laid-back Serbians) but that's because the Wall now has a more subtle face--that of an embassy clerk processing your visa application, deciding if you merit being allowed in. If you happen to be Serbian, Albanian, Macedonian (not to mention hailing from further east) Europe without borders is something that happens to other (more deserving?) Europeans.

I am now living on the "right" side of the border and, boy, am I happy about that. But until my sister can come visit from Belgrade any time she damned well pleases, and just because she feels like it, without having to plan half a year in advance and collect a million papers to prove something to someone--until then, the Wall is not down yet. Not for all of us.

A language lost

2009-11-08T18:06:00.003+01:00

My Grandmother and auntie

Recently I read an article in The Guardian about small languages dying out and what, if anything, could be done to prevent that. I am not a speaker of a language threatened by extinction (although my Serbian vocabulary has been depleted over years like depleted uranium) but there is a language that was once spoken in my family and is now lost--namely, German.

It was the native language of my ancestors on my Mother's side of the family but my Grandmother is the last speaker. At least she was, but now she can hardly put a few sentences together, although she probably understands more than she can speak. I didn't think it was possible to forget your mother tongue but knowing how much my Serbian has deteriorated over the past ten years I can see how it could happpen. After all, she has had no one to talk to in German for almost sixty years. And as she didn't pass it to her children--my mother, aunt and uncle--the knowledge will perish with her.

Now that I am trying to pass my own language to Boris and Andrej--their only tentative link with my homeland, which is not quite theirs--I am thinking more often about that lost link with my ancestors. It is as if a piece of the identity puzzle is missing; a small piece, maybe, but still a door to a completely different world that I never got to know.

Ironically, I have never felt any affinity towards German language or culture--a complete lack of curiosity on my part. Instead, I fell in love with English at the age of nine and I have been firmly entrenched in the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking ever since. But that missed opportunity for an insider glimpse into one of the most important European cultures is something that I now regret.

Although, if you ask my friends they will tell you I am German enough as it is, but that's only because punctuality and (self) discipline tend to be in short supply where I come from. Which tells us far more about the Balkans than it does about the Germans.

Documenting pain

2009-11-04T16:30:00.001+01:00

Some time ago we went to see the World Press Photo exhibition, as we have done for the past six years or so. World Press Photo is a worldwide competition where professional press photographers can submit their images that cover not just the news but also nature, sports, science and everyday life.

Inevitably, in any given year, most of the images are those of war, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. It's not for the feeble-hearted, nor those with utopistic ideas of world peace. Those are the pictures I like least, and I try not to dwell on them too much; I prefer all other categories but the news.

This year there were two particular images that had me thinking long after we left the exhibition venue. One of them was of a wounded African soldier, blood spurting out of his mouth and the look of hysterical terror on his face; another one was of a man holding a dead friend or relative, screaming in desperation.

Both pictures were close-ups. Both had me thinking: was this really necessary? Not the mindless killing, which goes without saying, but sticking up a camera in someone's face when they are dying, or going mad with grief. Is this ethical? Don't people have the right to dignity when they are most vulnerable?

I wonder what was going on in the minds of those photographers as they were snapping--is it simply work for them and they switch off basic human compassion? I think there are many ways to document the atrocities, be it of war or disasters, without getting this close to personal pain.

The Roads Not Taken

2009-10-31T22:01:00.003+01:00

Usually, I take decisions easily and I trust my intuition. Sometimes, it has taken me a bit longer to take decisions for important things but once it was done I didn't reconsider and I didn't try to think too much of the alternative roads.

After all, each choice is made on the basis of a methodology. While very often the method is the intuition, the blink (Malcolm Gladwell), other times - it is a value. In third cases, the decision is taken by someone else or by chance.

Recently, I had a strange nostalgic sensation about what has not been. I was missing the un-happened and the almost-happened. It was not something concrete, just a cumulative longing for the untaken roads so to say. If only I had a second life like the cats, go back from the beginning and each time an important decision had to be made I would take the 'other' one.

Well, one more life would not be enough as most of the choices made lead to other choices which would not have been available otherwise, etc. Therefore, there is a multitude of lives out there which could never be checked against some criteria, for example happiness.

The only practical conclusion is that one should not regret that much the decisions taken. There certainly are choices that cannot be undone and that is a bit tough. However, other choices take us to yet more interesting places in life geography and we are actually at constant crossroads.

The crossroads are so numerous that basically there are no two lives that are identical as mathematically it wouldn't be possible that two people live in identical circumstances and take exactly the same decisions at every crossroad. That is, our lives are unique. Yet, I was missing a second uniqueness the other day....

Road at Chantilly, Paul Cezanne

The Road Not Taken

(Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

So Near, So Far

2009-10-22T21:02:00.009+02:00

A recent conversation with a friend made me think of some things around us that are at the same time very near to us but also far because of insurmountable barriers. See for example Mount Ararat for the Armenians. Those who have been to Yerevan know that the mountain and the peaks are a mere 30 km away from the city but....in Turkey. And the relations between Armenia and Turkey are not exactly loving......to the point of closing the common border. So Armenians keep looking at those beautiful pyramidal peaks knowing that they cannot even come close to them.

Mount Ararat as seen from Yerevan (2005)
- Greater Ararat (5,137 m) and Lesser Ararat (3,896 m.)

Ararat is a holy mount for Armenians. It used to be a part of Big Armenia as indicated on the map below. Everything in Armenia is called Ararat - hotels, restaurants, dogs, people. Even Noah's Ark was docked there when the trip was over and the rains stopped.

I would call the Armenian disease 'longing for the sky'.

Old Armenian Map, 1729

There is a similar situation in Bolivia. Because of historical reasons Bolivia is now a landlocked country. Bolivia had a small chunk of land at the Pacific Ocean but it lost it to Chile in 1904. It seems the Bolivians cannot get over it and they still keep a fleet and ships at the Lake Titicaca. Apparently they also have a day of the sea each year that is more important than anything.

Bolivia nowadays

The Bolivian sickness is 'longing for the blue ocean'.

Territorial loss map of Bolivia

The Hungarian immune system is not that strong either. Everyone who lives in Hungary and who is not a Hungarian nationalist by nature is a bit (or a bit more) tired by seeing the pre-WWI map of Hungary on cars, motorists' leather jackets, T-shirts....It includes a good chunk of the Adriatic Sea in nowadays Croatia (the blue part on the map below). These must have been cool times for Hungarians but....

Map of pre-Trianon Hungary

I would call the Hungarian disease 'longing for the glorious past'. It comes together with a kind of swine flu called 'longing for the Southern Sea'. It is a dangerous condition.

I think we all (including the collective national psyche) need to long for something lost and something past. It must be a kind of piece in the psychological puzzle. I guess we especially need the psychological equivalent of a southern sea - warm and refreshing at the same time and opening to the wider world.

Unfortunately, this psychological need comes handy to cunning politicians who easily exploit it need and call for action. Or....in the better case - distract the collective attention from trivial robbery and mismanagement - here and now.

I think we'd better know that these things should remain where they are - so near, so far.

He was bored and he was bored too

2009-10-18T21:21:00.000+02:00

It got hold of me today at 3.45 in the main hall of the Central European University. It came suddenly and unexpectedly and I felt it like a punch in my diaphragm. L'Ennui came to pay me a visit while listening to how wonderfully corporately socially responsible Magyar Telecom is. Don't get me wrong: they are certainly doing a great job but I felt that I couldn't care less about that at that particular moment. I had to leave but before that, in a purely masochistic manner, I endured a coffee break. There is nothing worse than a coffee break when one doesn't feel like speaking.

I rushed home in the rainy streets feeling strangely weightless. I passed by a Thai Massage place which looked so boring, the castle hill view at the end of a rain-washed street was so banal, the metro - so commonplace. I knew what had happened to me as it had been there before. I came home with the firm intention to consult what some of the theorists of l'ennui familiar to me thought about that. I open 'Les Fleur du Mal' (Baudelaire) and I read in one of the poem 'Spleen' poems:

'J'ai plus de souvenir que si j'avais mille ans/I have as many memories as if I have lived 1000 years'

I think that this is one of the causes - being greedy of life experiences we end up hoarding too many and it becomes more difficult to get new, fundamentally different ones which leads to a lousy feeling of repetitiveness.

Then I continue : 'L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosite/l'ennui, fruit of the sad incuriosity'. I knew I would find this. It was exactly this today: I didn't care about MT and about several other things. One of the main things that makes us get up each day is the curiosity, isn't it? When I am curious I feel I wouldn't have a boredom problem if I lived a 1000 years but no: curiosity is not guaranteed at all, it seems.

By the way, I was thinking of writing about boredom since last weekend when I visited Robert Capa's exhibition and heard the following words from a Hungarian guide: ' Capa lived a good life. He stayed at expensive hotels and earned lots of money. But he wanted more, he was bored. Then he met John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was bored too. They decided to go together to the Soviet Union......' At first, I smiled at the simplistic way of describing Capa's urge to visit war zones and places like Soviet Union in the 1940s but then I thought that she was probably right.

I remembered an old theory of mine (well, it must be someone else's of course) that war is not caused by the arcane dealings of politicians but more so by the people who agree to get involved in it. And, it seems to me that war can be a desired escape from the tedium of everyday life. In fact, I think that people are perversely attracted by it as it saves them from the boredom of commonplace existence. This also reminds me of a thought of Boris Vian in this line of thinking that if each individual soldier disagreed to go to war there would be no war.

This was also confirmed by Richerd Holbrook who said about the Vietnamese war that 'the terrible truth that people do not like to admit is that the war was fun for young men, at least it was fun if they were civilians or journalists'.

L'Ennui, Sylvia Plath

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy's palm where yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejeune now: naive knight
finds ogres-out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blase princesses indict
tilts as terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero's dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God's trump,
when bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping towards havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from dooms blank door lady or tiger.

Blog action day 2009: climate change

2009-10-15T08:09:00.013+02:00

I signed up to participate in this year's Blog Action Day which means that, together with about 7000 other bloggers from around the globe, I am going to write about climate change today. You can check out the details here and, of course, if you feel like writing about climate change you can do that without registering as well. The idea is to create a big buzz in the blogosphere about the most important global topic of this year (ahead of the Copenhagen summit in December).

I think by now even the most die-hard conservatives have accepted that climate change is a fact and that we need to deal with this problem sooner rather than later, lest we risk the future of the entire planet. It is a complex problem, it doesn't have simple solutions, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of it.

It is also easy to forget, while we wait for the world leaders to take some serious measures, that there are many things we can do as individuals. It might seem that our individual impact is so tiny that it makes no difference at all in the bigger picture, but that is not true.

Remember how a group of people walking on a bridge in a synchronized step can create vibrations so powerful that they can bring the whole structure down? If each of us does whatever is in his or her power to do, the sum of billion small parts will add up to something big.We can start with simple things: recycling, saving paper, turning off tap when you brush your teeth, taking showers instead of bath, taking public transport/walking/cycling instead of driving, etc.

Check out this great resource on WWF's website where you can get lots of useful advice on how to green your living. And take a look at the video, as well--it's funny, but the ideas are good.

That much we can and must do--we have no choice.

You were walking smiling

2009-10-12T20:50:00.006+02:00

On Sunday, summer suddenly bowed goodbye and retired behind the curtains. Autumn came to play a violin tune - there was no breakfast on the terrace, we didn't take the kids biking in the park either. I performed a ritual of anticlimax - removing the summer shirts from the hangers and packing them high up in the wardrobe. I did exactly the opposite so recently. Where is expectant March....

Driving back to town today I was thinking that my body and mind have to adapt to the new circumstances: the new gray light, the lack of regular biking in the morning, lunches in the kitchen instead of the sunny meadow. I even subconsciously played Leonard Cohen in the evening who is not exactly a merry influence.

Florence street in rain, 1888

Bernardo Strozzi

However, rain can be so beautiful when we adapt to it or....when we forget how wonderful the sun is. I thought of Jacque Prevert and his Barbara.

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante
Sous la pluie...

...Cette pluie sage et heureuse
Sur ton visage heureux
Sur cette ville heureuse

It translates roughly:

Remember, Barbara
It rained on Brest that day
You were walking smiling
Relaxed, enchanted and dripping
Under the rain....

...this wise and happy rain
on your happy face
on this happy town....

Raindrops are beautiful on a loved face.

Autumn rain and bad weather make us turn inside to ourselves and suddenly a wall is built between us and the outside world. It reinforces the cosyness of inner spaces, it makes us fix the lights, adapt the music, take out the good books. It's good to listen to autumn rain from the bed, very early in the morning in the dark or late in the evening.

On the other hand, it is also good to venture in the rain. One gets a feeling of a mini-exploit. I remember once going to pick tomatoes almost naked under a very strong rain. Well, we had drunk things as well but I was also happy.

Rain also accelerated the rotting of fallen leaves and this gives a nice deep smell.

When it is raining outside and I am working it is also good because I don't have a feeling that I am missing something. Suddenly, work becomes so much more appealing which, most probably, is the fundamental reason for the economic success of Northern countries versus Southern countries.

But, let's not forget that spring is coming......in New Zealand.

The analogue experiment

2009-10-05T20:37:00.004+02:00

(a gratuitous photo of a flower, taken with a P&S)

I can't share my first analogue pictures in years because I don't have a scanner so you will just have to rely on my judgment.

I wasn't too happy with what came out, primarily because a lot of the pictures look a little bit washed out. My camera is theoretically supposed to warn me if I am overexposing which it didn't do; in retrospect, I think I got carried away trying to achieve very shallow depth of field, totally ignoring the harsh light in which most of the pictures were taken (as in midday light on very sunny days). I was shooting on aperture-priority, like a good student of Spud's.

Then again, I got interesting colors on some of the images, even if they look like someone has been playing with Photoshop contrasts a bit much. Some have a problem with focus, so that's definitely an area for improvement. Well, frankly, there's lots of areas for improvement and I hope my "Understanding Exposure" is going to arrive soon because I don't quite know what I am doing (I canceled Scott Kelby because he wasn't in stock and I had already waited for more than a month).

I keep on shooting, though, and the second roll of film is almost finished so now I'm curious to see if I made any progress. I did make diligent notes all the way about what I shot, with what aperture and in which kind of light, which helped immensely when I sat to analyse what went wrong (or right, occasionally). Let's just say that, despite a little bit of disappointment, the experiment goes on...

Five Whips Per Day

2009-09-26T21:15:00.007+02:00

Some months ago I came upon a great game of imagination in the French magazine 'Philosophie'. A dozen philosophers were asked to let their imagination free and answer some crazy questions. What would happen if......: - there was eternal peace; - a feminist revolution happened in the Muslim world; - teleportation was possible; - sexuality was finally free etc.

Tonight I decided to ask myself a question. What if technological revolution happened in some lopsided and erratic way?

Sometimes I have dreamt that photography and moving pictures were invented some 2000 years ago as I wanted to see pictures or videos of my family through the centuries. Imagine opening some video files of your ancestors in the middle ages in some strange middle age video format recorded on potatoes for example. Well, potatoes is not such a good idea not because they would smell a little bit but because my potato reader just broke. Maybe it should be electronic chips or.....

Who knows, isn't it possible that technological revolution was much faster in the Balkans and somehow strangely isolated? And while Vikings were cutting the heads of the non-Vikings and of other Vikings as well, while Spanish were chasing Muslims away and Jews too, while all these strange things were happening, in a small town at the skirts of the Balkan mountain, people were calmly assembling their PCs while listening to their peach-pods.

Peach pods are devices made from the stones of peaches. They were invented by an Ottoman shepherd (MA in agriculture from the University of Izmir) while he was bored one day. The day was sunny, no wolves were attacking his sheep and he was reading the letter of his daughter -Angie - who left a year ago by rickshaw to Baghdad to study political studies in the local university. So this shepherd started playing his wooden flute and had the idea to record the music on the stone of the peach he had just eaten.

Later a decree was passed in the local parliament (shepherds had just won the elections against barbers by a narrow margin) that one has to put the peach stones in one's ears and the music starts playing - the link between politics and science was much closer then than now. In fact...it was not music. Maybe people just wanted to listen to the silence being emitted by the peach-pods.

Then there was this blacksmith who discovered that silence is different while it is caused by different lack of noises. He discovered that silence when he was not hitting his hammer was different from silence when dogs are not barking. This blacksmith took the scientific prize of the year which, to his surprise, was missing because he was the inventor of the lack of things. He really appreciated this and didn't say thank you at all and didn't say 'I owe everything to my family' either. He just said 'Amen'.

And, by the way, the daughter of the shepherd had just started dating a date-grower on the precise date of the end of Ramadan in 1333. They had really good time together listening to the Rolling Stones while kicking camel dung in the dusty streets of unconquered Baghdad. There was a local madman who discovered a device for downloading music from the future directly into the heads of those who believed strongly. The madman was offered a scholarship in the Madrasa of Isfahan at the amount of five whips per day. At that time, people really liked pain because after pain there is no pain and that's what they liked but to get to this point they had to go through some pain.

By the way, a dog is barking, I am really thirsty from the Chinese soup I ate by the opera at its 125 anniversary so maybe it is time to go and eat some grapes before reading Misha Gleny's McMafia.

I'm going analogue

2009-09-24T10:06:00.005+02:00

The truth is, I love my internal organs, after all, and I wouldn't want to part with any of them unless the doctor orders so. That means selling kidneys to buy a DSLR is not an option. But I still want to practice with the holy trinity of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and to learn to understand exposure and goof around with the depth of field and such. Which I can't do with my point and shoot, lovely as it is.

So just as you're thinking that it's, basically, a "no-win" situation, a little lamp lights up in her head and she gets this ingenious idea (as usual, i might add)... to go analogue.

The thing is, we have this beautiful Canon EOS 3000 which had the bad luck to be bought just a year before we got our first digital camera so it's been patiently collecting dust (loads of it) on our book shelves for at least five years. It's a total "video killed the radio star" situation, which is a shame, because it is a very capable camera that made nice photos--those three or four times that we actually used it.

This is just a temporary solution, obviously, because there are many downsides to working with film, as you might remember from the old days. Like, the fact that film actually costs something and so does developing it; it's not much but if you shoot a lot of pictures it adds up. Plus there is the carbon footprint issue: the film just adds to the amount of junk we're littering the planet with, and the chemicals used for developing it are toxic. And then you have to wait until you've shot the entire roll and developed it to see what came out of it. I guess that's the strangest part, once you got used to reviewing your work immediately and deleting what you don't like right there in the camera, before it even gets downloaded.

But maybe that's not a bad thing, to hold off that instant gratification urge and learn some patience, in addition to learning how to make better photos. I've also noticed that it's making me really think twice before I press the shutter: wheather the composition is right, and if it's a picture worth taking. As a consequence, I am not taking many photos but they should be better than average with all that thinking involved. Right? Or you simply need to shoot more to learn more?

(and where is Scott Kelby when you need him? amazon.com, I am soo disappointed this time!)

Where friends meet

2009-09-22T13:16:00.022+02:00

Our favorite square, about which I waxed lyrical just the other day, was voted as one of the seven most popular green getaways in Budapest in some kind of online poll that went on this summer.

This is how it was described:

Szabadsag ter is said by many to be Budapest's "most European square" with its well-tended lawn, historical buildings and old trees. This was the site of Pest's first pedestrian square, founded when the wife of great statesman István Széchenyi planted a tree there in 1846.

I'm not quite sure what they mean by it being "most European"--is this a synonym for clean and tidy? --but never mind, it gives me a perfect excuse to post some more pictures from the square, taken this Sunday.

The best thing about Szabadsag is that many of our friends love it, too, so it's a great place to meet and chat while kids run about doing their own thing...

or, less frequently, they sit in one place and share a rice cake...

occasionally harassed by smaller siblings wanting attention...

Age difference is no obstacle to this budding friendship between Lia (4.5) and Andrej (2.5)--kindred adventurous spirits that they are.

Thirty days hath September

2009-09-19T15:01:00.010+02:00

...and they are running out really fast. Technically, it's still summer for two more days, but we know better.

At least this weekend we can "count" on good weather, if we are to believe the forecast heard on the radio. So far, so good--it's warm and sunny, with that beautiful soft light that only happens in September.

This morning we took the kids and their bikes to our favorite place--Szabadsag ter, or Liberty square, in the heart of downtown Pest. It's a beautiful spot, both peaceful and lively, where kids can bike and we can sip a lemonade, enjoy the architecture and daydream about what it would be like to have a flat there (it would be great, I can tell you that right away, but it's not going to happen).

The place definitely has an autumnal feel now, compared to only a few weeks ago when I was last there. The green is still the dominant color, but the first signs of aging cannot be missed (an apt description of yours truly, in fact, as she prepares to celebrate 32nd birthday).

Sound of Silence

2009-09-16T18:47:00.002+02:00

Some time ago I was listening to a programme on BBC about capturing unique sounds and I was thinking that sounds suffer from the dominance of images. Nowadays, it's all about cameras and capturing an unique individual angle to the visible world: people, nature, architecture....Our computers are full of thousands of images - raw images as the world actually is in a given place at a given time. And almost no raw sounds.... I am not talking about music, of course, which is organised sounds. Or at least most of it.

One walks along the Danube in Budapest and there are dozens of tourists making pictures of the parliament, the bridges, the castle. And there is no one sitting there and recording the noise of the traffic, the splashing of the river, the passing boats, a passing ambulance, a faraway laughter. Why is it like that? Are sounds simply less interesting? Is it because images stimulate instantaneously and easily our brains with colours and forms? Is it because mathematically there are more combinations of physical objects to be photographed? Our wonderful eyes maybe interact with the outside world in a richer variety of ways than our ears. Take for example a building: there are so many angles to see it and perceive it. And.....in the end, the good picture is exactly the original angle with the best possible light.

While, it seems to me, we can't do that with sounds. Take an ambulance siren. You can hear it weaker or stronger and the only variety comes through the strength of the sound through the manifestation of the Doppler effect. There are very little nuances to it.

However, recording interesting sounds is a fascinating idea to me. Thinking of it one may follow the development of city life through sound. Imagine that someone has recorded 10 minutes of sound at the crossroad of Andrassy and Terez boulevard (or any major crossroad in any city) at lunch on the 23rd of April every year since 1878 when sound recording became possible. Imagine the difference: horses-trams-cars and the interrelation between them. So some sounds are unique in a way.

And...other sounds are probably eternal. Has the splashing of the sea been the same over the past 5000 years? What about the sound of falling raindrops on the dust or the gust of wind in the leaves of a tree? Is the wind playing the same tunes with the branches of the same tree or are they endlessly varied?

In the early 90s I' had heard of a French ethnologists who hunted for disappearing sounds like National Geographic photographers take pictures of disappearing species.

But, anyway, sound reality is very rich. I am on our balcony now, 21.56 on a Wednesday night, 16 September, 2009 and I am hearing:
- the sound of gentle wind in the branches;
- the singing grasshoppers;
- the background noise of Moscva square;
- an occasional passing car;
- Nina Simone on our CD player;
- a closing door;
- a faraway kid's voice;
- a faraway clapping;
- the sound of the keyboard.

It's a rich sounscape if one thinks of it.

I am also thinking of some favouirite soundscapes of mine:

- the singing grasshoppers on a summer's night when the window is open and some soft music is playing in the other room;
- the absolutely silent sea early in the morning with an occasional splash of water;
- a faraway happy laughter.

Surprising trip down memory lane

2009-09-14T17:47:00.011+02:00

Sometimes you hear a song where and when you don't expect it, and it teleports you straight into a different time and place before you even realize it. Like today, when I was trying to do some work in one of those Starbucks-lookalike cafes that have sprung up in Budapest like mushrooms in the last year.

There I was, happily immersed in web strategizing when I heard Freddy Mercury's voice in "Too much love will kill you" and, bang! off I go straight into early 1990s. That was the only time when I actively listened to Queen--it lasted for a year or two, not more--before I moved on to different stuff, but I always like to hear it again.

And it always brings the same memories: four people (my sister, my best friend, his younger brother and me) listening to Freddy Mercury ad nauseam, talking high school stuff, collectively adoring Michael Jordan, creating a makeshift campsite in the middle of their bedroom (no idea why), talking politics already, being silly but also very mature and serious.

It's a memory of an island of calm in the middle of madness--our country was disintegrating, the war was about to begin, we were sliding into poverty and hyperinflation and we knew what was ahead, we knew it would be years of despair but, at the same time, we just wanted to be teenagers and do what teenagers do. Queen always reminds me of that struggle to remain normal, against odds.

Plus "Too much love will kill you" is a wonderful song--check for yourself:

Just Copenhagen

2009-09-11T14:26:00.016+02:00

A cool retro bike, looks like something straight out of Henri Cartier-Bressons' photos, except in color.

The Wheel of Copenhagen, reminded me of The London Eye.

At the entrance to Tivoli amusement park.

I like the way the sky contrasts against all the warm colors of the city.

When he's not on manhole covers, he is on boats. In fact, he is everywhere.

Every shop window is a little design exhibition in itself.

That one spot

2009-09-09T22:34:00.002+02:00

Last Friday I had a walk in the beautiful city of Lund, passing by scores of students and looking out for aggressive cyclists who have no mercy for poor, disoriented pedestrians. My only complaint: "frisk bris," which was neither fresh nor a breeze, more like a very chilly gale (ok, I may be exaggerating, but only slightly).

Then on Sunday it was Copenhagen, with its gorgeous canals, countless stores with impeccable Danish design and manholes with engraved profile of H.C. Andersen.

Finally, yesterday I found myself in Bratislava, bathing in the Indian summer sun, its old town bustling with life. For the first time, I actually liked it.

But as the train crawled back through pretty hillsides of Northern Hungary, taking me "home," I thought about what it would be like if I had to travel like that all the time.Ruslan spent about 70 days on the road last year and I thought that was excessive; he liked it at first, I think, but at some point it weighed down heavily on him. And just the other day julochka talked about one of her previous jobs in which she spent 200 days traveling in one year (for those of you fraction-challenged, that's almost two thirds of the year :).

Would that send my head spinning? No doubt. I think I would feel suspended in some kind of parallel reality of airports, train stations and schedules.

Yesterday I was reminded of something written by Mesa Selimovic, one of my favorite Bosnian writers, who said that travel is all about just one spot, the one from which everything starts and to which you always return, the place that you long for when you are away. Without it, travel would be pointless nomadic roaming leading nowhere; but then, if you only had that one spot and never left it, it would lose all of its worth.

Those Wolves Are Real Pigs

2009-09-07T21:22:00.003+02:00

Lately, the kids started cracking incredible jokes. This morning we had our serious morning discussion with Boris and Andrej while Jelica is neither blogging nor camping at the notorious blog camp in Copenhagen. I don't know what these guys are doing out there. They must be setting some new age Odin sect whose followers perform their worship in blue rooms instead of churches.

So, these are the kinds of conversations that take place on the morning bed.

Andrej said 'Did you see the wolf coming down in the living room?'

I said 'Coming down from where?', imagining an ET wolf landing in the living room.

Andrei said 'He was holding to the lamp and he came down, didn't you see him?'

I agreed with him, impressed with his quick thinking as actually this is the only place a wolf can realistically come down from in a living room.

Boris, realising that this is a serious debate he was being left out from said 'Oh, I slept so profoundly that I didn't notice the wolf this night'

Then Andrej said 'I am a pig'.

Then I said 'No, you are not a pig. You are a little piglet at the most'.

To which Andrej answered 'The wolf is a pig!'. I didn't answer anything wondering if it was a wolf or a pig that came down from the lamp in the living room this night.
_

Two days ago there was another line that I liked a lot. It was raining outside, we were coming home and then all of a sudden Boris said 'Daddy, do you want us to pay attention to you now?'. What could I answer to such a kind offer but accept. He was acting so differently from the peasants in Brueghel's picture the Fall of Icarus a commentary on which you might have missed as Jelica poured on top of it some hot news from the same Odin sect meeting in the blue temple.
_

Today in the afternoon we were driving with the car with Boris and Andrej when we saw a fire truck on the street.

Boris says 'What is this fire truck doing here?' I say 'I don't know', really not understanding what they are doing in the middle of the road. Then Boris says 'They must be putting several houses on fire. I know that's what they are doing in Serbia'. Then I start laughing and explain that fire fighters extinguish fires rather than put them up. What would the world be like if fire fighters put houses on fire and arsonists - extinguis the fires?
___

Later this afternoon we are walking along Andrassy, I bought them a pack of chewing gums and gave them one each and put the rest in my pocket - a currency more precious than gold. A bit later, I take one chewing gum too. Boris asks 'Why are you taking a chewing gum?' I say 'I am a human being. I have the right to have a chewing gum'. Boris answers 'So human beings eat chewing gums too?' I say 'Yes'.
__

10 min. ago they get up from bed to brush their teeth in a team. Andrej wants to drink water from a dirty cup. I say 'Don't drink from this cup. It is dirty.' Andrej starts crying so I give him water from the dirty cup as it is not that dirty after all and the least thing I want after 14 hours with them is to be unreasonably tough. Then Boris says in a whining voice 'I want to drink from the dirty cup toooooo'. So never underestimate dirty cups. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

What's in the Blue Room

2009-09-07T08:00:00.001+02:00

Beautiful things, blue and otherwise

creative people, bloggers or not

sustenance, because blogging makes you so hungry

to say nothing about thirsty

and plenty of books: some great, some useful (the jury is still out on Scott Kelby), some with misleading titles...

What blog camp is all about

2009-09-05T19:36:00.011+02:00

Talking photo walks, like this one in Lund, Sweden, where lovely Kristina showed us around town. This is the spot where a handsome guy stopped us to ask if we were interested in aerobics classes.

Making funny clay figurines

Showing off with your Nikon, if you've got one

Eating yummie cupcakes but only after Spud has immortalized them in about a dozen (or was it a score?) of pictures

Looking out for that axe

And taking photos, lots of them, especially if you're Spud

A Splash Quite Unnoticed

2009-09-04T15:36:00.001+02:00

I was in high school when I somehow discovered Brueghel's picture 'Fall of Icarus'. I remember I was so moved by it and the powerful message behind it - no one pays any attention to Icarus drowning: the plougman continues ploughing, the shepherd keeps staring at the sky while Icarus is disappearing in the sea.

The witnesses' attitude could be either interpreted as an 'apathy to suffering' or 'apathy to dying dreams'. Or....maybe as a 'It serves him well' attitude, kind of punishment by the common people for Icarus' daring and curiosity.

When I was in high school I understood it more like 'an apathy to dreams' or 'the loneliness of the flight '.

It is funny, it seems to me now that the landscape really resembles the Ligurian coast south-east from Genoa and reading about Brueghel's life he really travelled to Italy before moving to Brussels.

Anyway, it is a beautiful picture and if you want to appreciate it, you have to enlarge it or...go and see in in Musee des Beaux Arts in Brussels.

The Fall of Icarus, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

That's exactly what W.H. Auden did in 1938, a visit which gave birth to the beautiful poem below. Auden mostly saw it as 'an indifference to suffering', a small curiosity maybe.

Musee des Beaux Arts, W.H.Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

It is quite clear that this theme was close to Brueghel's heart as a similar motive is repeated in the picture below - Procession to Cavalry - where hardly anybody is paying attention to Jesus walking to Cavalry.

The Procession to Cavalry, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

By the way, I didn't have a similar problem this evening as while we were walking into the house with Boris and Andrej, Boris made me an offer 'Daddy, do you want us to pay attention to you now?'

* The title is a line from Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, William Carlos Williams

Tickets to ride

2009-09-02T15:01:00.012+02:00

picture by flickr user pascalg_1991

The countdown is now for real--only 2.5 days to go until Blog Camp 2.0.

"Blog what?!"

"What kind of camp?!"

Yes, I hear you. Here's the explanation: it's five bloggers meeting in real life in Denmark with the aim of taking cool pictures (and learning to take even better ones--right, Spud?); drinking lots of wine; talking even more (as Anna said, we seem to be a chatty bunch); blogging, maybe; and generally having fun. No bonfires, no girl scout stuff and no tents (yay!) but still, hopefully, lots of camp-like camaraderie.

So, I'm about to spend three days with four women I have never seen, except on pictures. I think I know a fair bit about them but you can never be sure. Suppose they turn out to be sociopathic serial murderers? There was an axe featuring prominently during Blog Camp 1.0 and a threatening knife. But I'm trying to be reasonable--bloggers have been known to attend blog camp AND come back alive to tell the tale so I am just going to assume there will be no involuntary contact between the mentioned axe and my neck.

Which will allow me to get excited about the fact that, in two days, I am going to travel somewhere by myself. No kids, no husband--just me. Even if that means waking up in the ungodly hour of 3:45.

There was a time when Boris was small, Andrej wasn't yet born and I was working, when I did everything possible to avoid travel because I couldn't bear being away from Boris. Those rare trips that I had to make were filled with guilt and anxiety. I knew Boris was in the best care possible but I was still very uncomfortable being away.

Well, that's changed. I don't know when or how, but possibly as a result of having to stay at home for extended periods of time with kids while Ruslan globe-trotted in his job. I suppose the long hours spent entertaining a small child and a toddler taught me to appreciate an opportunity to get away (especially when it doesn't come by so often).

I am now off to choose my flight reading, pack the prezzies (if I remember where I put the wrapping paper? or when was the last time I used it?), make some more lists, and if, in all excitement, I don't forget to pick up the kids from kindergarten on time, I'll just go on feeling smug (tickets firmly in hand).

Bridge over Troubled Water

2009-08-30T21:14:00.010+02:00

On our way back from Mljet to Lazarevts this summer we decided to cross Bosnia and Herzegovina and stop in Mostar and Sarajevo. I've been to Sarajevo several times both in winter to eat chevapi and in summer to contemplate Muslim architecture.

However, Mostar had always attracted me somehow: because of the beautiful name (keepers of the bridge), the story of the old bridge and the blue waters of Neretva whose delta I had seen some years ago at the Adriatic Sea.

And here we are, it's July, it's noon, it's hot but we dragged the kids for a stroll in old Mostar and a coffee on the old main street (carsija).

And here is the elegant silhouette of the bridge built by a student of architecture in 1566 when Mostar was in the Ottoman Empire. The literature says that it's a 'single span, stone arch bridge', 4m. wide and 30m. long.

Old bridge seen from carsija, Mostar

The bridge is actually quite steep and slippery. It really feel like climbing rather than simply crossing a river. No way to photograph the bridge without people.

It's steep, isn't it?

The mountains around Mostar look barren and unwelcoming and that is why the bridge, the river, the old street feel even cosier.

Naked mountain over Mostar

On both side of the bridge there is a typical shopping street seen in towns of the Ottoman Empire - carsija. It's the middle age Ottoman equivalent of the commercial streets of Western Europe nowadays. It's full of handicrafts, small art galleries and cute cafes where you can sit on the ground and drink Turkish coffee.

The old town of Mostar seen from the bridge

That's a part of the shopping street. I don't think pink was a common colour but...

A dukjan (shop) on the carsija (main street)

That's another view point to the old carsija and you can see the mosques, the old white towers and the stone roofs of the houses.

Carsija from above, Mostar

All this was not so fun in 1993 when the Croatian forces started deliberately targeting the bridge. Mostar is the main town of Herzegovina with a big Croatian minority and that's why Croatia had some territorial ambitions. By destroying the bridge they wanted to sever the Croatian part of town from the Muslim one. The construction was slowly eroded in spring and in summer until finally on 9 September, 1993 several artillery shots brought it down after 427 years. There is a museum with all the photos of the collapse and it is rather heart breaking. Just imagine what was in the head of the guy who pressed the trigger....

I searched you tube to embed a clip here but the only one I found with the original shots were edited by a Croatian nationalist group trying to prove that in fact the bridge was destroyed by Muslims. Obviously there is a conspiracy theory about that as well.

The Pleasure Is in the Details

2009-08-26T22:03:00.000+02:00

It's a warm late summer evening, the hazy moon is going to bed over Buda, the tiles of the terrace are transmitting warmth to my bare feet. The grasshoppers are singing a song, a motorbike is revving up in the distance. What could one do on such an evening but remember the sea?

We spent some time at the Adriatic Sea this summer and I already wrote about that but I would like to write about those small things that weave the fiber of a pleasurable day and which are rarely mentioned:

1. Preparing and drinking a cold frappe - I am a real coffee addict and I need my two cups of coffee per day. In summer time I prepare something which I call 'frappe' although it is not shaken. It's powder coffee, a bit of cold milk and a bit of very cold water. I used to drink this around two 2 pm when the heat was trodding on the island.

2. Eating a chocolate ice-cream in the heat of the day - I discovered a great 10 kuna chocolate ice cream in Croatia - Macho:-) One of the pleasures of my days was going out in the biggest heat and eating an ice cream.

3. Lying in cool bed sheets reading a book - After having a frappe and an ice cream, it's time for a rest. What wonderful pleasure it is to lie in the cool bed, reading a book, occasional wafts of sea breeze moving the curtain!

4. Diving in the cool water after being hot - There is an aspect of our lives that is unjustly neglected. It doesn't last long but it's memorable. It is the first second after one jumps into the water. Temperature falls and the heated body finds peace again.

5. Watching the sunset over Korcula while sipping local wine – Seen from Mljet, the sun goes down over Korcula. Air is calm, the sky is painted in dozens of hues of rose. The seas are divided in Sunset Seas and Sunrise Seas. The Croatian Adriatic coast is a sunset sea. The Bulgarian Black Sea coast where I used to go as a kid is a Sunrise Sea. That’s a fundamental difference.

6. Lying on the hot cement in the evening, watching the stars and feeling the heat accumulated during the day - every evening after dinner we used to take a leisurely stroll with Jelica, the kids, Ivona and Dusan. We usually went under the same tree by the sea and lay on the cement to watch the sky. The cement - not a really natural substance - was wonderful then, telling a story of a past sunny day by passing a bit of sunshine to us. The stars shone bright above and we were speaking mainly Japanese.

7. Finishing the day with a glass of wine on the terrace – Each day ended around 11 pm with a glass of wine on the terrace and a nice conversation with Dusan, Jelica and Ivona. As the village is quite small we could hear all types of ex-Yugoslav songs filling up the night air for a while.

8. Waking up very early and watching the quiet bay – I slept well by the sea but several times I woke up very early and benefited from that to watch the surreal bay and boats. All things – of organic or inorganic nature – were sleeping.

Is it over with the summer?

2009-08-24T19:05:00.015+02:00

We came back from the second leg of our holiday yesterday and I collided with a sense of disorientation so huge that I felt completely overwhelmed. It was as if my mind got detached from my body and stayed behind, hovering over a glass of Bulgarian wine in soul-searching conversations with old friends.

The fact that we traveled back on a cloudy, rainy day made me feel even more strongly that the summer is over and with it the carefree times, the fun, and the exploration. What if another winter of discontent is on the way? I'm referring to last winter when the combination of crappy weather, loneliness and lack of structure in a day kept me in very low spirits.

But I'm trying to borrow a little bit of Ruslan's indestructible optimism and think about many more sunny days that we'll have and all the fun things we'll be able to do. In the meantime, here are a few summer-y pictures I made just a few days ago:

This is an apple orchard in my best friend's yard. His parents have a country house in the village of Veliko Orasje where we spent two days having a great time without doing much.

These are my favorite apples--sour and very refreshing. Yummie!

My grandfather has a plum orchard and now is the prime season for picking them. They were too ripe for my taste--I generally prefer my fruits sour--but they are completely organic, since my grandfather doesn't use any pesticides. That's a great feeling, to be able to just pick something off a tree and eat it, without worrying about washing off layers of chemicals.

Quince in my grandfather's yard. They are too sour still--even for me.

In which she learns that an annoying A can lead to a very pleasant B

2009-08-11T14:38:00.007+02:00

I bet this doesn't look appetizing and you're probably wondering what the hell it is and why does it deserved to be pictured.

This is what you get when you boil fresh cow milk and leave it to cool down overnight--in the morning you find a layer of kajmak (clotted cream is the closest I can translate this to English). If you leave the milk like this for a few days you can get a dense, cheesy and slightly sour cream which you can use as a spread, or to eat with cevapcici and freshly baked bread.

But you can also skim it that very first morning when it still has a neutral, milky taste and put it in your coffee. This is how I used to drink coffee in childhood and it's absolutely divine (please, don't talk to me about cholesterol and saturated fats--we can leave that conversation for some other time).

I think I started drinking coffee only to be able to put kajmak in it, and I would stuff so much of it in the cup that the taste of caffeine would almost be lost. It was more kajmak with coffee than the other way round.

My grandmother, who knew about the passion (and who taught me how to make coffee at the tender age of eight) would skim kajmak and store it in the fridge especially for me, so that there would always be some when I came to visit. Those were the days...

But here I am, slurping kajmak again, and all thanks to crazy, last-minute food shopping that left us with about 30 liters of beer and a bottle of whiskey, but no milk. I was a tad annoyed at first but now I see that it was all part of a greater plan to reunite me with kajmak. Thank you, Providence and Rodopi cows!

Blueberries and mushrooms

2009-08-10T13:11:00.017+02:00

Yesterday morning after breakfast we set out from our house on a walk to the forest, lured by our friend's Zlatka's promise of blueberries and mushrooms (lots and lots of them) waiting for us in the woods--best of all, not far away, even for a group with many small children.

The road to the forest meanders up the hills, leaving the village of Solishta behind. You can still see a few scattered houses. The village is small and still largely undiscovered by tourists. Ruslan has been coming here for years since Zlatka, his childhood friend, has a country house in the village so it's been the gathering place for friends. This time we are not statying in her house, but renting a place just the opposite.

An obstacle on the road. We had to tread carefully past the horses, one by one, because they can get irritated and bite you. We did our best not to disturb them, especially since they had plenty of flies annoying them already.

A fine example of sharing among brothers. Actually, the hand motion indicates that it's Boris sharing his juice with Andrej, which is typical. Andrej only likes to share other people's stuff, he keeps his own for himself.

Daddy's shoulders are the most reliable mode of transport for lazy and cranky 2.5 year olds.

I know you want to see those blueberries, rather than the same old me, but I will have to disappoint you. There is a new road going through the forest and the old trail that led to these ~~mythical~~ blueberries is lost. Instead, we found some wild raspberries on a very steep and slippery slope, full of thorns moreover, and totally not worth the trouble. But I'm never the one to miss a photo opportunity, am I?

If, on a summer night

2009-08-05T15:26:00.005+02:00

...oppressed by the heat, pacing aimlessly about the house while everyone else peacefully sleeps, you would step on the balcony in search of that elusive bit of freshness, start fiddling with the camera to give yourself a sense of purpose, pray for some breeze and try to enjoy the view:

You would learn two important lessons:

1. 'night scene' setting on Olympus doesn't really work unless you have a tripod--the shutter speed is so slow that even your breath can disturb the camera and produce a blur.

2. 'available light' is comparably better, but shooting images in the dark is obviously not this camera's forte.

Which is quite a lot of wisdom for one muggy night.

Dépaysé

2009-08-01T09:00:00.001+02:00

One of the ~~few~~more interesting words I remember from my French course in July is “dépaysé,” which is used to describe how you might feel when you travel to a foreign country where you feel a bit disoriented. The way our teacher explained, it is the antonym to “déjà vu,” or something that you know too well, and thus is too familiar and, presumably, of little interest.

The reason why I was so fascinated by this little word is that it has a very positive meaning in French. Apparently, to feel disoriented is something to be desired when you travel. This was difficult to grasp at first and, although I now get it semantically, I am still intrigued by it.

To my rational mind, a state of disorientation is something to be avoided at all costs. I rarely travel without a guidebook, more often with a map as well and, when possible, with an A-Z of street names, just in case. You might say that I am at the totally opposite end of disoriented (can you be super-oriented? Superpaysé?). I adore maps, I am very good at reading them and I like to navigate. Why would I not want to be oriented?

Ok, I suppose I am taking the word a bit too literally—it probably doesn’t mean that you don’t know where you are when you are “dépaysé.” I guess it’s just a striking change of scenery, which is exciting and positive, in which case ‘disoriented’ may not be the most accurate way to translate it to English because it has a negative tone to it. Or does it? Maybe it’s just negative to me? Perhaps other people enjoy feeling lost/disoriented?

Call me ~~anal~~boring but I’m sticking with my maps.

If a then B

2009-07-30T16:48:00.001+02:00

I know I shouldn't write or do anything when I am angry but I want to share how sometimes it I wish I could undo some strange chain of events as cause and effect are so incommensurate.

This morning I was going to go to work by bike. I had a small breakfast and I was going out when I realised that my sunglasses are missing. I spent 10 minutes looking for them thinking that the sun is strong and it would be nice to have sunglasses. I found them and I left home. I started biking when I heard a noise in my front tyre. I leaned to have a look and then my glasses, being quite loose, started falling. I tried to catch them, I lost balance and fell off the bike bruising my arm, twisting my wrist, hurting my elbow. I know that this wrist and elbow will hurt for weeks if not months, I will not be able to bike, driving is harder, etc.

Then I was kind of angry that I had looked for my sunglasses because if I hadn't done it then they wouldn't have fallen and I wouldn't have fallen either. I realise it's a bit arrogant to mess with the cause and effect but isn't it strange how a cause of a very insignificant dimension (like looking for glasses or not) can lead to a very significant consequence?

A similar thing happened to me some three years ago. I was hesitating if I should go and play football on a rainy November Sunday. Then I decided to go and I had a serious injury to my knee which will be with me for life.

Sometimes I wish that if bad things happen at least they happen by some overwhelming necessity because otherwise it is us and our free will and our free choices which govern the order of things. And this, of course, gives us a bit too much of a responsibility to handle.

Blue, Green, Blue....

2009-07-26T14:07:00.022+02:00

I know that a serious blogger doesn't take two weeks of holiday but somehow computer and holiday do not go together. I preferred to turn off the connection with the outside world and slow down time. And I am sure our eyes need a break from these bloody screens.

I decided to dedicate my post-holiday blogging debut to two colours - blue and green. For me some places are colours and light before everything else. Mljet is blue and green in all hues and shades, depending on the time of the day, the types of clouds and probably (not tested) the time of the year.

And that's how I am choosing to remember it: blue and green. I guess it's not very fair to objective reality to filter out every other colour and most of the other small things but isn't that the way memories work? Aren't memories stylized constructions bordering on the mythical?

So let me use this mental photo shop and let Mljet be blue and green for me and let all other colours disappear into the oblivion!

Jelica already mentioned that there are two big bays in the island called 'lakes' by the locals as they are connected with the open sea only by a very narrow strait. That's why they have different biodiversity and even the water is less salty for some reason. The two lakes and this part of the island was declared a national park some 40 years ago.

I like taking sneaking pictures of the sea. Somehow on such pictures there is a surmountable obstacle between the observer and the object. It's like a gate that you are invited to cross.

A sneaking view of the Big Lake

The noon light gives a light green shade to the pine trees. And there is this pleasant visual effect when one makes a picture of trees from below and it is due, of course, to the laws of perspective: it's as if the trees touch each other. And there is the blue sky above. It's as if Mljet is imprisoned between the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky

Pines and sky

This view of the Big Lake is above the trees. I put it here because of the intensity of the blue. There are many hiking trails on the island with splendid views.

Big Lake, Mljet

There is a small island in one of the 'lakes' - Sveta Maria - with a 12th century Benedictine monastery on it. I find it quite Borgesque: a monastery on an island in a lake on an island. Imagine if there was a small lake on this island with a small island and a smaller monastery and another lake.....

Sveta Maria, Benedictine Monastery

That's a very idyllic place where we used to go swimming in the mornings: an old boat, a pine tree stooping over it, stone path, young light-green trees, crystal-clear water. We used to climb the boat from time to time and jump. The kids called it 'our boat'.

Pristaniste (Harbour)

The only thing I was missing a bit these nine days was the rough open sea. The last day I went on an exploratory mission, parked the bike and climbed a hill separating one of the inner lakes from the open sea. This is the first glance of the sea. It was like a magnet for me after days by the quiet inner bays.

First glance of open sea, Mljet

I found a wonderful place for jumping into the sea but didn't dare to do it as it was at least 20 m high and there might have been some rocks below. I was tempted by the abyss though...

And after feeling my heart speed up at the view of a power beyond control I returned to the inner bay where there was a little floating man. Happiness!

Floating man

Don't we all need some alternation of rough seas and inner bays?

Back to blogging is so damn hard...

2009-07-23T14:09:00.006+02:00

...after our escape to a "mysterious island," as Ruslan called in his farewell post. We were completelly offline for a good ten days and I realised, to my surprise, that I'm quite ok with that. Somehow, the whole island atmosphere worked just fine without the blog, Facebook, Skype, email and online shopping.

Time to admit to our whereabouts: we traveled to the island of Mljet, the southernmost Croatian island in the Adriatic. In my mind I'm still seeing boats from my balcony

smelling the pine trees

dipping feet in the sea whose color is unmatchable by any other

Ruslan has a theory that our spirit lingers on at the places we visited long after our body has relocated elsewhere. So the fact that my mind is still on Mljet makes it difficult to write. Plus, I'm so busy with all the ~~beauty makeov~~ renewed job hunting and all that.

But I promise a proper post with lots of pics and ~~random babb~~ witty thoughts, very soon.

Even Bloggers Need Some Time Away

2009-07-11T06:27:00.003+02:00

Dear all,

Even bloggers need some time away far away from every day blogging. For the next ten days will be on a mysterious faraway island generating ideas for future exciting posts.

Have a nice weekend and then week!