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I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our early vacation in the region back then in eighties of the previous century. I vividly remember there was a dangerous dirt road with not much room for two vehicles to pass by, ending near to the one of the mounting homes with embedded small tavern which can really print on its portfolio that was built on the top of gods' heavenly entrances. For some fairly strange reasons, Coca Cola and Souvlaki on the tavern's terrace felt really tasty, just as the pure and clean water from the water stream just next to it. Unfortunately and despite of all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine or out of worldly items or even a glowing shiny rock. There were no gods whatsoever. Or naked muses. Or beasts with snakes instead of hair. Or horses with wings. Or mighty heroes. Nothing. Well, I was only 10 years old. What did I know.. Maybe that pair of hawks we saw flying around the highest rock acro

Often, I found myself giving a glimpse of thoughts of where would I move on this world in order to acquire at least a little bit better life compared to what we currently have. Or when. Has there ever been a time in history when there was a civilization with a more dignified style of living? With society built with more honest foundation toward themselves and their neighbors. With equality among people, gender, color skin and different cultures. With not at all or just a hint of superstition and religiosity. With no temples higher than schools and people homes. With cities without strong police keeping order and without military of any kind. Was there a country without fortifications, both real and metaphorical? With no or just a bearable hostility toward others... There is definitely no such idealistic settlement on this world. Not now. But there was one before. More than three thousands years ago on the island of Crete. The first civilization in Europe and perhaps the first and the

Another 'Greek' vacation came to its end, after we chose to take, and risk a little, probably the longest drive toward the ancient civilization cradle in history of all of our summer vacations. Driving in a row full 14 hours is not exactly fun as expected but in the end when I put all the 'pros' and 'cons' after couple of years of planning and anticipating our first visit to the famous Peloponnese, it was worth the wait. But before a story about sites we visited I'd like to share some thoughts about the journey itself. This year it was the weakest link of our entire vacation and little 'pros' can be take out of it. First of all, it was too long and with 40+ degrees Celsius outside, it was far from being pleasurable and relaxing. If you add to the 'cons' list too many moments with driving poor roads and unnecessary waiting time on borders and tolls, especially within the transiting country of Macedonia (FYROM), I am not far from the decision t

I think I inherited passion for photography from my grandfather and my father after him. That was somewhat ironical because my grandfather lived his prosperity years and his youth in the age when photography was in its early years and developing, state of the art, black and white photos of the time belonged strictly to professional realm, so to speak. Even so, his living room and hallways were always full of artistic photos, paintings and remastered photographs he liked the most. Even later, during my father photographer's passion, some 40 years ago, when first color films came to stores, having your own optically and chemically equipped darkroom lab in order to develop negatives and print your own photographs was too expensive. Although it was not so cheap to buy even a decent SLR camera to capture perfect moments in time, if you are following your passion and to quote master Oogway, nothing is impossible. So in the aftermath, what I remember the most from my childhood was those

Lately I was watching current stream of war related news and Syrian migrant crisis and I thought of what would I say on the blog about actual, continuous and devastating warfare in Europe, Africa and Middle East and stupidity of literally inexplicable background of who is fighting whom in all those conflicts and what cause would justify the aftermaths in form of devastated cities and long refugee-columns... Or even what words should I use to describe foolishness of the new cold war between nuclear powered "super countries" and what that will mean for our children and theirs in the future... Then I realized that reacting to meaningless affairs and worldwide political absurdity in a world so divided by racial, structural, governmental and religious diversity is also meaningless. I also realized that I said enough in the past. There is nothing new to be added or said. There will always be people who will think that rifle is not a rifle if it never fires a bullet. And to use a

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention ar

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 megap

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit new city abroad and little afraid of what you would stumble to when it come to simple things? Like how to use metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma of should you exchange the money to the local currency or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way? Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014 Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family to the trip to Copenhagen for both, business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism and any off work activity for that matter. So I took a little research this time and Ericsson's " Networked Society City Index " helped a lot. Within t