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Showing posts with the label thread6

Thassos Island Today and Before

The age of this blog is both old, in a sense of fast maturing of internet and IT technology in general, but also very young if we are counting human age in old fashion way. When we first visited Thassos island dozen of years before, internet and social sharing technology were about to enter their unstable teenage years, so to speak. It was the time when I bought my first digital camera, HP PhotoSmart C850 with it's state of the art optics and digital technology from the time. Pictures from Thassos back then in the summer of 2003 were probably my first attempt to take more artistic landscapes from our Greece vacations and today is perhaps the time to compare both what changes in photography gadgets and also with Thassos itself after full 12 years.


Let's start with images first. After 12 years in time distance, I decided to choose the same number of images for this post - half of them shown above, all taken with HP Photosmart C850 with 4 megapixels CCD sensor and half below taken from this summer vacation with Nikon D5200 and CMOS sensor with approximately 20 megapixels more than in old HP. It is insufficient to say that 12 years of maturing of technology in optics, hardware and software is easily noticeable.

As for Thassos island, very little changed over the years. Local people are still the same, very hospitable and friendly, beaches are the same as they probably were hundreds of thousands of years before, the Aegean sea is still crystal clear, just like in the time of Zeus and the company and the Sun is the same hot, like in all Julys in previous millenniums and eons.


What is little different are the people who are visiting Thasos - this year there were more tourists from Eastern European countries, like Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine and Russia and less from the Western Europe which is probably the result of the anti-Greece media campaign due to political conflict between Greek government and EU and financial crisis in Greece these years. I have to say that at least during our stay on Thassos I couldn't notice any crisis or any problems whatsoever. Man-made crises are always like that, they always have profusely enhanced exposure in media and the truth is never on either side in conflict and never in media. I know it is a cliche, but you probably heard the phrase "trust no one" and if you ask me, it is always the ultimate truth when it comes to raw propaganda, news in media, especially if it is related to some political affairs like current one in Greece vs EU (and by EU you can freely read Germany).

Usually, our thanks goes to our local Big Star travel agency and their forum called Putopis! which hosted couple of my posts from this blog. Also to the Greek agency Mouzenidis Travel and the perfect Filippos hotel we spent our entire vacation within olive groves near the village of Rachoni and its stairway (Greek: σκάλα) to the sea.

http://www.thassos-island.com/

Interview With an Expert

Have you ever thought about the most common software application installed on your computerized devices in your home? Is it some super tuned operating system you can't live without? Or is it some sort of office application you use to write, make presentations, and connect with your friends and business acquaintances? Maybe it is your favorite browser you are using on a daily basis to connect to your social network? Or some photo gallery application with tons of your digital photos and video clips? Perhaps it is some Skype-like communication device that is always within reach? Whatever it is, and depending on who you ask, I am more than positive that there are no unique answers.

Microsoft's HoloLens

I am sure everybody knows (?) why they are so fused to computer screens these days, but in our case there is no doubt. In total sum of our digital home appliances that can be found on various desktops or fit nicely in our backpacks or pockets, the most dominant cross-computer application is Minecraft. That includes a couple of Androids and Windows Phones, various personal computers, and one Xbox console. Not only that, we tried the most of Minecraft installations, maps, and mods, but we are also hosting a small server with our own growing world. Well, by 'we', I surely include myself with a teeny-tiny share in the plural meaning of the world, but the majority of the 'we' belongs to Viktor, who is our in-house expert for Minecraft affairs.

But before giving some thoughts on the Minecraft game, I asked our expert couple of questions in hope of understanding why one not-so-graphically demanding application and one not-so-typical game that requires not-so-much-of-real-gamer skills when it comes to quick interaction between the characters and other players is so popular and truly became a worldwide phenomenon and won so many awards over the years.

In-house expert for Minecraft affairs in action

Following is a short interview with me asking questions and Viktor answering them. To be honest, I am not really that familiar with all the Minecraft world; let's face it, over the years it grew into a full internet movement with MineCon and everything, so I hope my prepared questions are not off-the-topic or old, rusty, and non-interesting.

Anyhow, I will be taking that risk, and here's the full interview between father and son and more than 30 years of generation gap in between:

When did you learn about Minecraft, and how did you feel playing it for the first time?
At first I didn't like it that much, but later, after I watched "The Asian Guy Gamer" and their Minecraft videos on YouTube, I bought a Minecraft disk for Xbox 360 and started making my own worlds. I am playing it almost every day ever since.

Why do you like Minecraft so much and how is it different from other games?
Because I can build things and make my own worlds. Also, there are so many worlds out there, and every game can be different, and I can do whatever I want.

What do you like the most in the game?
To search and mine diamonds and make armor, swords, tools, etc. To build large houses and castles and to play within online servers.

How would you rank Minecraft installations and why?
1. PC 2. Xbox 3.WP 4. Android. PC version is the best, simply because I can play in multiplayer mode with my friends online. It also allows typing commands and cheats. And I have a server of my own with my IP.

Who are your favorite characters and skins in Minecraft?
Hulk and Foxy for skins and Ender Dragon for characters. Horses in Xbox are also great.

What is the most complicated structure that you ever built?
Roller-coaster in PC and large, eight-story house in Android game.

Who are the best Minecraft gamers you are following online?
Definitely Pat and Jen, Channels: PopularMMOs & GamingWithJen. Also Think's Noodles, The DiamondMinecart, and Stampy.

If you could, what would you do to improve Minecraft in the future?
I would like to see portals between servers somehow. So I can make a portal on my server that ends on some different server. Also more interesting machines.

Which one do you prefer: Creative or Survival mode?
Survival.

Is Herobrine real?
Only in some mods.

Well, there you go. I can't be completely sure, of course, but it is pretty certain that if you asked any other seven-year-old Minecraft gamer, you would get the same answers. More or less. However, this game attracts players of any age. I was no different. I remember when I turned it on for the first time, and after spending half an hour in the tutorial, my first reaction was "What's this?" followed by "What should I do now?". And then I realized. This is not the ordinary game. Like most of the other games, where you clearly know what to do and what your goal is. No, here, there are no goals and there are no levels. There is no ultimate ending you are reaching toward. The only thing Minecraft is giving you is the environment. The rest is all yours.

Creeperized Wallpaper for true Minecraft gamers

As soon as I figured that out, it was pretty obvious that in order to turn the game on, you have to deal with two switches. One is to click on the icon to start the game, and the other is in your head. The one that says "Imagination Power On". So I clicked on that one too, and everything started to make sense. The next thing I knew was that hours passed in the real world while I experienced a truly great and short entertainment inside. In a nutshell, Minecraft doesn't require some expensive VR gadget to render the world for you. It does all that with elementary graphics and ordinary three-dimensional programming. What it is extremely successful with is the interaction with that other switch in your head that makes everything possible. Very few games are capable of such things, and this is the main reason Minecraft has been so successful for so long. For that matter, I have fears for the direction of future Minecraft and the vision in Microsoft in order to use it inside of their version of Google Glass, called HoloLens. I surely understand the need for next-gen gadgets and that VR is always trying to get into gamer's worlds effectively, but in this particular case, it could destroy the very essence of Minecraft imagination. I am sure that HoloLens, when it comes or in one of it's future versions, will effectively merge the real world with the imaginary one and, in this case, perfectly render the Minecraft world into your living room. Imagine that.

But is this really necessary?

Maybe.

Perhaps not. Playing imaginative games like this one is just like reading books. You don't need extra help to render the virtual world. You have the ultimate gadget already. For free.

The little gray cells.

Solar Eclipse

Moon travels around the Earth in elliptical orbit and logically there are two points in its path where it is closest and farthest from us. Today it was in "perigee-syzygy" of the Earth-Moon-Sun system or simply called "supermoon". Coincidentally, it happens that today it has the power to fully block the sunlight in northern Europe and made the biggest shadow one can do on Earth. In Serbia it only made partial eclipse covering somewhat less than 50% of the Solar disk. These are 12 photos I took in intervals of approximately 10 minutes from eclipse start at 9:40 until it went away around 11:58. The biggest shade was at 10:48. We were pretty lucky today since the nature gave us clear sky with just one stubborn cloud that covered the Sun-Moon kiss around 11AM.


Above image is the composition of those 12 photos which I took through our Sky-Watcher telescope with solar filter. I still don't have proper camera or adapter for taking astronomical photos so I used our dSLR and manually took images. Therefore, photos are not ideal and perfect so I used little photoshopping to make them as clear as possible.


More about today's event in our neighborhood I found at timeanddate.com and tons of websites as the media literally went viral this morning. No wonder as the next partial eclipse in Europe will be in 5 years and next total one is not expected before 2026. Unfortunately total eclipse in Serbia will not be visible any time soon.


It sure is spectacular when our Moon eclipses the Sun but in the celestial sky above there are more events in the same fashion. I mean, situations when three Solar system bodies become aligned, so to speak. In this update of the blog story about classic eclipse, one of those I took with our scope on May 9, 2016. It was transit of Mercury across the Sun and the photo ended very well. I managed to catch one of those giant Sunspots as well.

Milan's Public Journal related chapters and threads:
Astronomy & CosmosFringe ScienceBeth's Q&A and Science & Technology

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Table of ContentsLatest posts and Home Page and RSS feed

Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?

Do you ever wonder why we work like we work? Why working time lasts those eight hours and why takes the best part of the day? Who made it this way? And why? It all started with industrial revolution in early 19th century which culminated into real nightmare for most of workers, especially in large factories, where long working hours were mandatory and kept people outside their homes all day long. The working day was 10 to 16 hours, six days a week and not only for adults. Use of children was cheap and preferable. Deaths and illnesses from exhaustion were common and it was cruel and inhuman. Eventually, the nightmare spread from workers toward capitalists as well, in form of rise of social movement with Robert Owen's famous slogan "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".


Well, today, almost two centuries later, we now live, more or less, in Owen's vision, work around eight hours per day and enjoy our lives during the work or after. Or both. Nobody today dies from the job. Well, not due to poor working conditions, anyways. Perhaps some of us are in danger from the death by boredom in some rainy days in the office, but, and again more or less, today we are in control of our professional careers. On the other end, if you ask me, even this eight hours are sometimes too long. Many times. They say that with age comes the wisdom, but also comes a certain dosage of laziness, especially in second part of the working hours. After 20 years of continuous work in my professional career, eight hours now seem too long. I passed that period in my life with idealistic thoughts and glimpses to the world as it is waiting for me to make the difference. If you are in your forties, there are other variables that must be included in private and professional life. Middle age crisis for example. Not enough challenges like before. Too much routine in both lives. Too competitive environment, to say the least, wherever you look. Generation gaps. Following faster ways of living. And you don't have to be in forties anymore to feel the difference or experience injustice.

Perhaps it is time again for another Robert Owen to appear and try to get shorten this eight hours to six or less. Or to try and modify the working habits and move everything possible to freelancing and outsourcing. To ban offices in those businesses that still insist on using them in old fashion ways, although the entire job can be done today from kitchen table and home wifi. Before, when I was teenager and later when I was trying to make first step in my professional career, they used to say that major changes will come in 21st century. New millennium will change everything. Well, the 14th year now in new spectacular century is about to expire in few months and I can't notice anything majorly different. More or less. But still, the major question from the old times is still there. Do you live to work or you work to live?


It would be unfair if I continue with this story without answering it first. And to be honest, from the beginning and my first employment, I always worked to live. For me, family and home was, is and it will always be the number one. No exceptions. No matter how important was the project I was involved in. But to be completely honest, if I used a scale from minus ten to ten, where -10 means full commitment to the job, while +10 is the finest family time, I would not score the biggest number too often. I don't think I score it easily even today. It is impossible. Sometimes, if comes into my life challenged and pure, the job can suck me in for days. Months even. But always let me go. So my number is within wide scale from -5 to the very high of 9 with more positive then negative values. Ten only sometimes. And I want to keep it that way. If I looked to all my half-a-dozen companies I were working with in my former professional life, the cruel truth is, with couple of exceptions, that I didn't stay in touch with my former co-workers. We all moved along. Simply put, while our intelligence and educations defies us completely, our curriculum vitae is nothing more than a document only worthwhile during searching for a new job. Nobody cares what is written inside while you are having steady job. Only in between two of them.

But enough with work, let's see the other side of the medal. The story I wanted to tell in the first place and maybe unconsciously, I started with too long introduction. What actually inspired me for today's story is Tony Parsons - British journalist and novel author. About month ago, after I read three Harlan Coben's thrillers in a row and two of James Patterson's Alex Cross series during the summer, I felt that I needed a break from tension and crime stories. But I can't really swallow those light readings with love stories in foreground so I went into search for something different - hoping to find a story based on ordinary life, family affairs or one of those with "true story" written on main covers. Tony Parsons, with his "Man and Boy" trilogy, gave me exactly what I wanted. And more.


If you didn't read it already, I recommend it warmly. It is about typical family of the early 21st century, filled with both, pain and love, surrounded by tough life in one large city in which work and mortgage can destroy your life in a split of a second. Harry Silver, in main role, shows us everything what might strike one modern family in one fast-forward world and where, no matter how he tries to maintain normal family life, this proves to be not entirely possible with all the mistakes and distractions from the job. It is also about conflicts between generations and what connects them. About shallowness of business life. Friendships. This is the story that will force your eyes to let go a tear of two too often but also it will put a smile on your face every now and again as well.

I stumbled to the "Man and Boy" within Serbian Laguna - my favorite online bookshop, in their editor selection called "Laguna gems" or something like that, and after I reached second cover I felt hunger for more stories like this one. So I browsed bookshop's online store again, secretly hoping for a sequel, and searched the author's page. To my surprise I found two more novels in the trilogy and also short news about author visiting our town in the tour of promoting his latest book. To cut the story short, I ordered remaining novels, read them in record time and yesterday Viktor and I grabbed the first book and went to the signing event to meet Tony in person. I knew that a person who was able to write Harry's adventures, couldn't be much different than his main character, especially after I read somewhere that his personal life story has many connecting points with the novel itself. As it turned out, Tony Parsons was one great guy with nothing but the smile on his face despite the endless line of people waiting for the autographs. He was especially nice with Viktor and shared the fact that his middle name is also Victor, named after his father, so I can't resist not to share the photo of two Viktors below. After the event, my son and I went to McDonald's for a happy meal and to sort out our impressions and later first thing he said to his mother when we came home was: "It was the best day!". I couldn't agree more.

Tony Victor Parsons & Viktor

Anyway, to resume the main story and in conclusion, my life outside work, in its current stage, is one huge place and full of wonders and challenges. No matter if I just read a book, watch a movie, do dishes, participate social occasion, play a game, travel or enjoy precious family time, it is always far ahead of the most enjoyable project at work for which I, in the end, receive a paycheck. This always makes me feel that "work has this strange effect of zooming things larger than they really are".** Money is one great thing we can't live without, but sometimes, if not always, it manages to spoil the very essence for the work it is paid for. In the latest years when I ask myself why I worked so hard on a project that gave me pleasurable time while it lasted, I always answer with "Oh yes, for the money'. And it wasn't my first thought when I asked myself the same question twenty years ago...

Image refs:
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/5-things-every-son-needs-to-hear-from-his-dad.html
https://vomitingdiamonds.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/boredom-at-the-office/

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
* http://connections.msn.com/articles/detail/256476535
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/typical-work-day-length/
** http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/work-life-balance
http://financecareers.about.com/od/careermanagement/a/LiveToWork.htm

Fishermen and Pirates of Evia

The road this summer took us approximately 700 km south to the second-largest Greek island, Evia (Εύβοια). Starting from this year, we decided to leave Macedonian Greece and start spending our vacations and visiting other regions of the country and this southern part of the Balkans. Our vacation resort was located only about 100 km from the spot where the famous 'Battle of Thermopylae' took place and where, in the late summer of 480 BC, King Leonidas of Sparta confronted a large army of the Persian Empire led by Xerxes the Great, who was trying to occupy ancient Greece in the second Persian attempt. The Greeks were vastly outnumbered and faced with imminent collapse after the betrayal during the second day of battle. Leonidas dismissed the majority of his army and, in the most famous last stand, remained to guard the narrow pass of Thermopylae only with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. We all know what happened next. At least many of you saw the movie, and although it was diverted from the real happenings and portrayed Leonidas defeat in a more or less artistic way, this was one of the most striking battles of them all. In the following months and years, Greeks managed to stand on their feet and finally, in a couple of naval battles, forced Xerxes to withdraw and to finally end the war.


Anyway, history aside, we spent ten days in the town of Pefki, at the northern shore of Evia. It is inhabited only by local fishermen, and its small harbor is occupied with small- and medium-sized fishing boats. Every night this small fleet was sailing out from the bay and in the morning was returning with tons of various catches for local markets, restaurants, and further industrial export. Fishing is a very successful business in Evia, and there is no surprise if you see a fisherman's latest model of Mercedes-Benz parked next to his boat. Of course, during the summer, the small fishermen's town grows into a large tourist resort, and over a couple of previous years, the Serbian 'tourist armada' started to grow rapidly. Many Greeks have already learned a couple of Serbian words, and lots of menus in local restaurants and tavernas are already translated to Serbian as well. Even the Serbian flag is waving on the beach next to the Greek one in several places. I guess Persians did it all wrong; instead of invading the Greek peninsula, they only needed to sail here for summer vacations and start spending gold and coins, and Greeks would probably raise their flag for free. :-)


This vacation was a perfect chance to test our Olympus µ TOUGH-6010 under the water. Viktor and I were very excited about this and made tons of photos and video clips. The camera heroically withstood salty water, and some of the photos, after little post-processing, ended very well. Video clips, although not in too high resolution, captured nice underwater activities, especially in those times when Viktor dropped the camera to the sandy floor and we had to search for the little thing while it was recording all our efforts from the bottom of the sea. Crystal clear water of the Aegean helped a lot, and we are looking forward to our next underwater adventures.

Flat Sausage Fair

Approximately 15 years ago I was working as a lab assistant in the programming department of microassembly and object-oriented languages within the College of Applied Technical Sciences in Niš, Serbia. I was engaged with all five semesters and was teaching students from their freshman year to graduation, and every now and again, along with the board of professors, I was asked to attend their final exams, followed by a sort of social celebration in the form of a small festivity with a table full of food and drinks.


On one such occasion, a student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we had ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb", which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known to have tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head, but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. The student looked at the professor and said, "I am sure you never tasted this one," and pulled out from the bag a ... well ... something that looked exactly like a "horseshoe" in both shape and color. I glanced toward the professor who claimed that he tasted it before and saw that even he was surprised with the strange-looking sausage in the student's hands. The student glimpsed the same, warmly smiled, and explained to us what it is and how it's made. Today, almost two decades later, the "vitamin bomb" sausage is a recognized brand, and the simple translation from Serbian "Peglana Kobasica" is "Ironed" or "Flat" Sausage. Last year, the town of Pirot and its tourist organization created the first "Flat Sausage Fair", and yesterday, despite poor weather, we decided to visit the second fair made in honor of this great Serbian soul food, which is the mutual name for all those old recipes that survived centuries in their original forms.

But what is so special about this sausage that it earned its own fair?

The recipe is not the secret, although this is not a meal you can make in a couple of hours in your home; with a little enthusiasm, it is doable, and results could be extraordinary. From what I can find online, you need a great selection of various quality meats (cleaned and stripped of all fats and unwanted parts), ultra-finely chopped or minced and mixed with spices (up to 2% of different chilies, 2% salt, 1% garlic, and 1% pepper, followed by other suitable spices according to your taste). No water or any other liquids are welcome in the mixture. Now comes the interesting part. After filling is ready and wrapped into eatable natural sausage casing, sausage should be formed in the "U" shape and left for drying on the draft. The drying "chamber" must be very cold, with an optimal temperature around zero degrees or colder, with as low humidity as possible, and in the presence of great frost, keeping outside water from vaporizing in great scales. Usually with a bottle, sausages are pressed and ironed two or three times a week, after which they take the form of a horseshoe. Ironing is necessary for most of the unnecessary air and water to be ejected from the sausage, which ensures longevity. Needless to say, they are purely organic with no preservation of any kind, no additives or artificial colors, no heat treatment, and no exposure to smoke.


Since there is no strict recipe when it comes to ingredients, it is clear that with different mixtures of various meats and spices, they come in a wide variety of different tastes, and given the fact that they are made of and the nature of the preparation that has not changed from the times dating a couple of centuries before, in my humble opinion, I have to say that I haven't tried better sausage yet. And believe me, I have tried many. Even those advertised on large scales, like the white sausages of Bavaria or great Danish delicacies you can buy outdoors, are simply not worthy rivals. Furthermore, the energy value of the sausage is very high, and it is usually served in small dosages and sliced into tiny, a couple of millimeters chopped pieces. Best of all, due to the fact they contain almost no water inside, you can store them in a deep freezer, where they keep their original taste and shape even after a couple of months. Yesterday's fair was, like the year before, organized very nicely and with thousands of people browsing and tasting the specimens. We bought a couple of kilos of different varieties with different meat mixtures and spice ratios, and the winner for me was a hot, whitish, extra tasty brand. It was moderately hot, made out of four different kinds of meat (besides beef, they used the best parts of goat, horse, and donkey meat), and with a great mixture of spices. The casing is giving this particular one a whitish color, which is also pretty cool and unique.

Unfortunately, because of yesterday's weather and half a meter of snow outside our weekend house, we couldn't get to the fair earlier and see its social side, so I am including the video I made last year. Somehow and also to my taste, the jazz band playing last winter fits greatly to this particular fair and the advertising product.


Serbian Flat Sausage*
http://www.rostiljanje.com/gastronomske-manifestacije/peglana-kobasica/

Image Refs:
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/na-hiljade-turista-dolazi-na-sajam-peglane/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/gradska-hronika/pocinje-prijava-za-sajam-peglane-kobasice/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/ogromno-interesovanje

Refs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NjN4KZ1zdo
http://www.peglana.com/english/index.htm
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/zivot-drustvo/praznik-peglane-u-hali-kej/
http://fondazioneslowfood.it/ark/details/1707/pirot-ironed-sausage
http://www.tanjug.rs/news/113206/pirot-hosts-flat-sausage-fair.htm

Πάργα

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this, and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of the western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45°C (113°F), and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car, and go to one of four nearby seas for a couple of weeks to cool off and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries, which are always seriously depleted when summers come).


Due to the shortest distance and good roads, Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of driving. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those "gastarbeiter" people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long rivers of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way, this is a nightmare you want to avoid. Once we had bad luck and got stuck in one of 7 lanes between the Serbian and Macedonian (FYROM) borders and waited 4 hours to pass through. This is why we always travel halfway during the night and cross the borders around dawn or so to avoid crossing peaks and giant waiting times. The return way is always smoother, and we mainly use borders for rest and shopping. Like I already wrote in the post Aegean Sea before, short car destinations in Greece are all connected to the Aegean Sea, but this time we chose to check out the Ionian basin and try the relatively new motorway the Greeks built not so long ago. Only once I spent vacation in this part of Greece, and I remember it was a hard job for my father, as the curvy road from the Aegean to the Ionian Sea included one mountain after another, and driving through them required full concentration all the way with frequent resting points. Today, this is a different story with the new modern freeway, and the same destination is now reachable within 3 hours or so. Believe it or not, this new route includes about 60 tunnels almost 50 km long combined, and during summer heat, driving through all the tunnels comes extra handy and relaxing.

Since this was the first time for me driving this road, I decided to use a little help from modern GPS navigation. It was only needed for the last hour of the trip, where we needed to leave the motorway and find our way to the final destination in Parga, a small and old town located some 40 km south of Igoumenitsa port across the Corfu island. I didn't have any specialized GPS car devices before, and I decided to risk it a little and use the smartphone instead. I bought cheap navigation software called "Navi Ninasus" despite not so many recommendations online. To my surprise, it handled all the situations extremely well and pointed us exactly to the front gate of our villa without any problems. Rerouting was perfect and fast, and it proves very well on the ship and on foot as well. You can see it in action in the photos below, and if you want to save some serious money in the big GPS market, this one is a very good solution.


When we visited our travel agency (Big Star Niš) and told them that we decided to go to Parga this year, Stefan, one of the agency owners, while describing the house we wanted to hire, said something about a nearby olive forest that looks exactly like the scenery from "The Lord of the Rings", a fantasy trilogy based on J. R. R. Tolkien's famous book. Of course, I was a little skeptical about this but at the same time very curious to explore. The moment of our arrival, when I first saw the large olive tree just above our villa, I was eager to go to the forest as soon as possible. So we did the very next day, and if you look at the next couple of photos from the woods when we made a shortcut our way to the Lichnos beach, I am sure that, like me, you will agree that old olive trees are something special to see, and to tell you the truth, if Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf jumped out of some tree, I wouldn't be surprised at all. My only regret is that we didn't hit the time when olives are being collected with large nets villagers are using for this purpose. I am sure this would be something worthwhile to see. Needless to say, our landlady on our last day gave us a bottle of olive oil as a present, made exactly from the olives collected right from the woods we saw and photographed, and with this blog post I thank her for all her hospitality and kindness. The same level of gratitude goes to Stefan and "Big Star", which is one of the best travel agencies in Niš.


Perhaps to better feel and, in this case, hear the forest, I took a couple of seconds-long video clip showing all the beauty of old olives:


According to a couple of wikis I read, I learned that Pargians are descendants from the old Greek tribe called Thesprotians. Perhaps the best-known resident in ancient times was Odysseus himself, who married Thesprotia's queen of the time by the name Kallidike and spent many years in this area leading the tribe and fighting many wars as their king. Unfortunately, if we leave mythology aside, real history for Pargians was not so cheerful, especially much later in the Dark Ages when these people shared violent times with the active neighborhood. They survived different rulers and occupations starting with Normans, Venetians, French, British, and Ottomans, not to mention constant attacks from various pirates from the sea. Today, the monumental fortress built for their defense is the sour witness of the old times, standing above the small town for centuries. In the town below, old narrow stone streets, similar to those of Corfu, are now wonderful tourist attractions, along with four beaches, all very different in nature and appearance. Surrounded by large hills and dense forests, Parga today is one of the few real tourist paradises during summer, filled with voices of dozens of different languages, especially at night when it is not easy to find an empty chair in local tavernas. In addition to Parga's social life, to me, Greek vacations are always more about reading books and enjoying peaceful moments. This time I brought "The Lost Symbol" and swallowed it in just a couple of days. If you want to learn something more about worldwide Freemasonry, this is the book for you, especially if you are, like me, a big fan of Robert Langdon's adventures. We had a large garden in front of the house with a big stone table where, below the shadows of lemon leaves, reading Dan Brown's book got additional pleasure. On the other hand, for Viktor no summer vacation can pass without his tablet and a couple of video games (picture to the right).


Just 20 km offshore, there are two small islands called Paxos and Antipaxos. According to the legend, Poseidon himself used his mighty trident and sliced the southern part of Corfu, making this small archipelago paradise just for him and his wife, Amphitrite, to enjoy some peace and quiet. Compared to nowadays worldwide religions, I really love Greek mythology and their amazing stories. I mean, come on, if you are creating a mass of fairy tales, using wild imagination is a must, and ancient Greeks did it very well. Of all religions in existence today and those extinguished in the past, Greek former beliefs are probably the best in the history of mankind. Anyway, there are many boats sailing to the Paxoi Islands every morning, providing a one-of-a-kind experience of swimming in the same waters where Poseidon enjoyed his time with his wife alone on the beach. A small boat even entered one of the sea caves, providing a unique feeling for us, but the best was the moment when one of the boats turned loudspeakers toward the cave and played James Brown's famous song "I Feel Good". The echo from the cave provided a sound effect I had never heard before. Don't miss this trip if you are spending vacation in Parga or Gaios, the main town of Paxos Island, where we enjoyed "Τσιπούρα" delicious Mediterranean fish with teeth.


The second boat trip was a ship cruise to Corfu and the island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο), a special place for Serbian history where more than 5000 Serbian soldiers were buried at sea. At the beginning of World War I, the whole Serbian army was forced to retreat by the major offensive by Austrian and Bulgarian armies. In just two years of war, the Serbian army declined from 420,000 to the number of 150,000, ending on the island of Corfu with the help of Allied forces' ships. Those who didn't survive harsh wintertime during the long walk over Albania's mountains were buried on the island of Vido, and those who couldn't find empty burial space on the island were just buried in the sea near the island. This very spot where they are buried is called Blue Sea Tomb, and there is now an almost hundred-year-old poem, "Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb", describing the pain and suffering of the Serbian people and soldiers during WWI. I simply wrote "History is sometimes painful" in the book in the memorial. And I meant not only Serbian history. For more about our trip to Corfu, please read the post Streets of Corfu, where I experienced a a unique kind of déjà vu that I tried to describe there. Following are photos from Corfu and Vido, and the second image is of the Serbian House at 19 Moustoxidou Street, which is one great museum dedicated to the WWI events.


But life is always going on, and history is there to remind us of our failures and our brightest moments. We should use it to learn from it, but honestly speaking, I have that feeling that humans have a long way to go in order to start avoiding mistakes and stop repeating violent behavior from the past.


Well, this post is also a photo collection from the vacation, and now is the time to choose the best photo taken. Of course this is subjective business, but if you ask me, the honor goes to my wife, who took the opening photo of this post. I am sure for some of you this would be just a bunch of rocks on the shore, but for me this is the perfect example of accidental photography and Pareidolia. My wife actually just wanted to take a photo of the rocky formation from the taxi boat when we were returning from the beach to Parga, but after we saw it on the big screen, from this angle, it looked amazingly like a giant prehistoric fish or sea dinosaur with a large fin or flapper on its back.

Needless to say, we all fully recommend Parga and the Ionian Sea for summer vacation. I am sure we will be returning here in the future, maybe next time to northern Corfu or one of the southern Ionian islands.

Streets of Corfu

Long ago I started to experience that one extremely memorable dream. One of those that doesn't fade out with the first morning sunshine. Instead, it was regularly popping to the surface of my mind, making me wonder if these vivid images, haunting me every now and again, were just a product of my imagination or perhaps there was something more hidden beneath. In the dream I wander the narrow streets of an unknown city, one after another, and after a while I stumble to the big square with large monumental buildings decorated with dark reddish bricks with no signs or any familiar markings I can recognize. I was always wondering where all these colorful images originated from and somehow always had that feeling that I am probably missing an important link to fully understand the whole picture.


Recently this final link suddenly appeared, and during our vacation last week I accidentally found my dream site, and all missing pieces finally placed together, forming a memory almost 40 years old. Somehow, subconsciously, I have always known that it wasn't the dream at all and all the streets and buildings were very real and instead represent one of those almost forgotten recollections hidden deeply in my memory banks. What I saw in my night vision was the lost memory of the city of Corfu.

It all happened when I was the age of my son today. I was about 7 years old when my parents chose to spend vacation on the island of Corfu in the northern part of the Ionian Sea, just about 100 km away from the southern cape of the famous heel of the Italian peninsula. While waiting for the ferry in the early morning, we took a walk to the empty streets of Corfu (Greek: Κέρκυρα), the main city named after the island itself, and what was once one small walk under the morning sunshine now is just one almost faded memory for some reason refusing to die and from time to time reminding me of a beautiful site I experienced so long ago.

A couple of days ago, almost four decades after my last encounter with the island, I decided to take my wife and son on the tourist cruise to Corfu. The ship was medium-sized and filled with approximately 300 people of different nationalities and a not-so-small group of Serbian tourists. During the final two years of World War I, the island of Corfu served as a refuge for the Serbian army that retreated there on Allied forces' ships. More than 150,000 soldiers, royal government officials, and civilians established Serbian administration in exile during 1916-1918, while in Serbia under occupation of Austrian and Bulgarian armies, only women, children, and old men stayed. We started browsing the city in the street of Moustoxidou, where next to the French Consular Agency lies the honorary Consulate of Serbia, or simply the Serbian House, the museum completely dedicated to the WWI events that happened on the island and the island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο) across the harbor (first three images above).

The center of the city is a labyrinth of narrow streets, and it requires great orientation skills to remember where you are or where you were in order to find the place of interest. While we waited in front of Sorbonne's office of the French consular building, I got the idea to use the extremely elongated portrait size of the 16:9 aspect ratio of the digital format and start taking photos of small stone alleys. Generally I don't like this format compared to its landscape counterpart just because the image looks too narrow in the vertical direction, but in the case of the streets of Corfu, I could say this is an ideal combination. We didn't have much time until the ship departure time, so I chose the "Scene Selector" feature on my Coolpix camera (which is a somewhat improved automated mode in Nikon's software for digital cameras) and started clicking at the beginning of each street we crossed. After little post-processing (mostly minor changes in brightness, contrast, and sharpness), this blog post is the result. I included on this page 36 images of beautiful small and narrow streets, all taken in the center of Corfu.

When I was 7ish years old, I was a lot smaller, streets were empty, and everything looked large to me. This is probably why I remembered the whole site and its mystical appearance in the early hours. Especially when we stumbled upon big city hall with loud church bells echoing through the streets. Today tourism changed the scenery a lot, and streets are full of various stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Compared to the 70s, now walking the colorful streets full of people and friendly salesmen brought a familiar environment of other Greek towns. However, the unusual city's topography, with up and downhill streets oriented in all directions, provides Corfu with little authentic feeling and a small glimpse of the old times when civilization was still knocking on the doors of all Greek coastal towns. My wife chose some small, authentic Greek tavern run by an old couple where we experienced even further travel to the past, where traditional Greek hospitality was still not influenced by modern times and Wi-Fi hotspots and where time flowed much slower.

Our free time in Corfu was between 2 and 4 PM, and photographing empty streets or scenery was mission impossible. Still, I managed to find a couple of empty streets and alleys or ones with not too many people inside. These photos (in the above last segments) ended probably the best, showing Corfu's special mixture of Venetian, British, Italian, Greek, and Byzantine architecture that mainly originated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

At the very end of this special photo story, I can only recommend this part of the Balkans highly, along with Parga—a small town where we settled for 10 days in a family villa next to an amazing olive-tree forest. I am sure this part of western Greece hides many more interesting places to visit and photograph. If you add the crystal-clear waters of the Ionian Sea and friendly faces wherever you look, I am sure spending just one vacation on the island is way too little time. I will definitely come here again in the future, and this time I am not going to let new memories fade again to the point of haunting dreams like before. I have to say, though, that when I was walking the same streets again after a long time, I didn't experience the typical déjà vu feeling like I described in the blog post last year. Even though there were some glimpses that looked familiar, too much time passed, and I guess I wasn't able to recognize exact spots and views, probably due to the fact that children and adults experience events and scenery differently, and not just because of different points of view but also because a child's mind is a lot emptier, and they simply don't have much data to compare with, especially if they are experiencing something for the first time. Nevertheless, the whole experience with my lost memory was at least unusually unique, and I doubt I would encounter many more like it.

Streets of Corfu (Full Photo Album):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TLw83qgV8ZmMe1Gi8

Parga:
https://www.mpj.one/2013/08/parga.html
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vSM1DFFafrfvMxU96

Corfu (Wiki and Web):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vido
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Campaign_(World_War_I)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Serbs_Corfu1916-1918.jpg
http://www.greeka.com/ionian/corfu/corfu-architecture.htm
http://www.pargagreece.co.uk/