Diversities of Split….as it celebrates its patron saint

laughing the weekend away

it was holiday time in Croatia past couple of days. we love to merge more days together, just to make holidays longer, of course. and i love this, of course. at the moment, i don’t care that much whether the holidays last three or four days, whether day take weekend days or they working days..

these last couple of days were great…apart from the partially closed eye, but that was okay too.

i spent time with really good friends..so why did i enjoy this time that much?

it reminded about the small things i loooooove to do…!

- how to enjoy a coffee to go!..go and sit on the wall by the seaside, put my feet in the sea and enjoy latte in a company of a good friend. you don’t have to worry whether you put you feet up on the chair or you are sitting like a lady, you can stand up and sit down, and stretch without looking weird. coffee to go rules!

. why to talk about your dreams out loud!…good friends will always take you seriously and discuss your ideas with you no matter how absurd they are….might tell you later that it’s an absurd dream but at least you will have a good laugh and a good talk filled with imagination and creativity.

- how to enjoy park and outdoor activities more …i don’t use parks that much, though i love them. one of my friends is crazy about frisbees…so he thought me all the rules of the game while demonstrating me some tricks of  a perfect throw (had no idea it has rules?!)

- how a night over beer can be the best party ever, when in a good company! (and might end up with partially closed eye..no fighting included..;)

- how happy i am to have good friends around!

it was a really good weekend, and the eye was partially closed because i laughed too much apparently. i laughed and shed tears (of joy) at the same time…the morning after i woke up with a closed eye!

it never happened to me before!

Horoscope…do you believe in it? :)

It was one night in a pub, over couple of beers that I realized that I wasn’t the zodiac sign that was given to me, as I believed, with my birth date but I was quite the opposite. Just in a matter of seconds I turned from what is believed to be a happy-go-lucky sign and that supposedly has an extroverted personality, into one that is very, very sensitive and not that travel oriented, not necessarily introverted, but not the most extroverted among the zodiac signs.

Don’t know how we started this discussion, but once we started it we got all very interested into what the ‘horoscope guru’ among us has to say….and there was no going back!

 

So, I found out that I’m not a Gemini and that I would have been a Gemini if I were born 13 1/2 hours prior to when I was actually born.

In twenty-seven years of my life I got used to telling people that I’m a gemini and I got really into the role of gemini! I love to travel, I love to meet new people, I love to talk, I’m an optimistic and happy person ….so many characteristics typical of this horoscope sign. and what is most important of all is that I really, really enjoy being a gemini!

I grew quite fond of this sign.

So now that I have to adopt to this new role, I’ve started learning about Cancers and there typical characteristics.

 

I’m still wondering, since I’m born on a day that is divided between two sings, can I read the horoscope of both and choose the one that I like more for that day?? that would be nice!

so, I announced to all of my friends that I’m not what I thought I was and I started looking into cancer…made a real investigation of this new role I have to get used to.

It is true that I’m very sensitive sometimes, but still believe that gemini characteristics prevail or maybe it’s my rising sign, sagittarius, that has the main role in cancer-sagittarius combination.

I have no idea, I did lots of research last couple of days…visited all of the astro sites. didn’t think that one night out over beer  would be so intriguing and would bring so many revelations.

Never believed that much in horoscope or I just refuse to believe that ones life is determined on the very moment one is born. I want to believe that everybody chooses there own life path and determines their own life, but on the other hand I can’t deny that  i really, really enjoyed going through all of these astro sites and that there is something about future reading or guessing that really caught my attention.

I was completely mesmerized and my eyes were basically glued to the laptop screen few hours in a row!

You can learn many things about yourself just by typing your date and time of birth. It’s really miraculous that a computer offers all of those information after just one, simple click on ‘make my natal map’.

wow…and after waiting less than a minute I got loads of info about my personality. thrilling and scary.

 

So, what about you? Can a horoscope sign really say that much about somebody?

I still refuse to believe that horoscope plays such an important role in ones life, but I’m sure that if I find myself again in a company of another  ‘horoscopes guru’ I will listen with interest and attention of what he/she has to say about my personality and life….and who knows maybe somebody will tell me that I am a Gemini after all!

 

 

 

 

To keep our faces toward …

To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits, is strength undefeatable.

Helen Keller

I love quotes. I found this adorable booklet while waiting on Tirana airport. It’s a collection of Helen Exley giftbooks…’Be what you believe in’. Love her booklets and I couldn’t resist this one.

Albania – country worth a visit!

Happiness of being in Albania.

So, I did something that really shook me up and down and returned thrill and happiness back to my body (not that I wasn’t happy before, just that I was even happier after Albania experience;)

So, as I am still struggling with job thing I decided  to give it a rest a bit and just dedicate my time and my thoughts to thinking (or not thinking at all:) about something else. …and it turned out to be a good decision.

I started planning my trip to Albania and was pretty enthusiastic at the beginning, and assured!, that I would go there only and only by the means of road transport…airplane excluded.

But my initial plan was soon rejected…by me. As it turned out, from Split (Croatia) there was no way I could reach Tirana in a days time. Sounds strange!??..since I need only to enter Montenegro from Croatia, and then from Montenegro to Albania. My plan seemed perfect but laws of physics and bad infrastructure between two countries (Montenegro and Albania) made me drop my initial idea and instead go all the way to Slovenia where I caught a plane that flew directly to Tirana. Once in Albania, I found out that there are buses and mini vans that run from Podgorica (Montenegro) to Albania, but it’s just that information can’t be found on internet. Good to know, just in case I decide to return! (which I most probably will:)

Albania is not the country with perfect roads. There roads are run by the law of creative mess. Everybody is his/her own boss while steering through the streets of Vlora or Tirana. It is the country that has a lot to offer to a tourist who is not looking for a classical or stereotypical beauty. It has great food. They are very proud of byurek and their most famous cognac Skanderbeg. If you just let yourself go and walk randomly through Albanian streets you will definitely discover so many charming local shops, pastries, start a conversation with a stranger who will even walk with you for 5min just to show you where is that road that you were asking about…….great country…so here are some pics, mainly taken in Vlora:)

home made byurek..pic with a byurek chef:)

hospitable and generous people, and very very generous portions…;)

great company to make my  already good impression even better

taking a stroll down Adriatic sea, but about to reach Ionian. amazing!, how do you know where one sea ends and other one begins?

back to Tirana, where it all started from. Waiting for a flight to Ljubljana, from Ljubljana catching a train to Zagreb…spending a night in Zagreb and catching the bus to Split….

but it was worth all the travel and would definitely do it again.

when nothing smarter to do, why not travel somewhere:)

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve last written.
Lots…
I’ve been not been that busy, well not in a real sense of that word. I can say I’ve been just contemplating and trying to invent, come up with something to change the ordinary thingy of the PREsENT MomeNT.
I’ve been teaching and learning from kids. I’ve been teaching them formal things, how to write, how to sit up straight, what not to say to each other and so on…and they thought me about the miraculous effect of laugh, of saying without thinking too much..and many, many more things.
Anyhow it was an interesting month and a half.
And then I decided to change something, I need an escape, a change from everyday routine once in a while, I need the road, I need to meet new people and therefore I applied to a voluntary project in a country I wanted to go for such a long time – Albania.
And last week I finally went to that country I dreamed of going for past three years.
Some pics in the following post……….:)

The other day, as I was walking through a mall in Converse shoes  I sprained my ankle. That happens so often to me…but it never happened with such intensity.

It was so bad that for a sec of where I was  and all I could see was just black in front of me. The place was crowded and I was thinking to myself..-.”there’s no way I’m gonna faint here”- so with little strength that I had left I managed to drag myself outside of the mall and I sat on the steps outside of the mall for a few seconds.

The next day my ankle was completely blue but that didn’t stop me from doing usual sport activities.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, even such a little and benevolent thing as ankle sprain…as I realised later on.

I did a few pilates trainings (currently I’m in a phase of looking for  a pilates gym that suits me best) and managed to do all the activities without hurting my ankle even more. But jazz dance with all the jumps, twists and turns and stretching was more than my ankle could handle.

I survived the class but by the end of the class, my ankle was a wreck! It tripled  in size….and wasn’t such a nice picture.

It was time for me to pay a visit to an old lady who knows how to put fractured or damaged bones back to its place!

It’s been four years since I visited her last.

I showed up without phoning first. The door of her house was open. She just made a waving sign with her hand to let me know to come inside. I entered her place and sat on the chair to wait for my turn, had no idea that I would leave the place richer in so  many ways.

As the old lady was turning and maneuvering with my ankle, as she thought and felt was right, she was asking me  questions, that as I later realised weren’t just plain ‘let’s-small-talk’ sort of questions.

Introductory question was job wise.  She asked me whether I work or I am still a student. I told her I’m neither and that I am looking for a job.

Without further thinking and postponing what was obviously lingering on her mind she went straight to the point and asked if I would like to waitress in her son’s pub.

I told her I would have to think about it. But the old lady just ignored my answer and continued with her ideas.

She told me how high my salary would be and then out of the blue she started talking about her three sons and her amazingly handsome grandsons!!

She has two actually, as I came to realize later on without asking myself.

So, she was still holding firmly my ankle as her story was taking a completely new turn.

She was actually welcoming me in her family. She was praising her grandson and kept repeating how good-looking he is and how we would make a great couple.

‘He is a sailor’, she added as my ankle made a clicking sound,’and he will be home soon’.

It was all very funny to me and it help me get my thoughts away from the aching ankle. She put a bandage around my ankle and then poured rakija on top of everything and told me to stay away from doing sports for a few days.

Story about waitressing and getting hitched with her grandson was a just a small talk for me but  granny was for real…!

I was about to leave the room when she pushed a pen and a piece of paper in my hand and told me write down my name and my phone number.

I obeyed without even thinking of making silly excuses.

She waved me goodbye and said that she would call me these days to come and meet her grandson.

Not only did I leave her house with a ‘fixed’ ankle but I also got a job and marriage offer…:)