lunar eclipse

It's tonight (in my country).
Nice link about the event:
NASA - Total Lunar Eclipse
Check your timezones and visibility (where the map of the world is).

Go to bad earlier, if you need, or party until then!
Enjoy this global event

20080101 Taize @Geneva

gallery:

...pictures of the city ...people I've meet

I spent New Year in Geneva on Taize meeting. Many thousand young Christians from all over Europe (and some other parts) gather to pray together, sing, discuss, meet,...

Traveling in the bus wasn't something memorable. It was 0k when we stopped in Ljubljana, there was a concert of Oliver Dragojevic on the square. After 16 hours we arrived to school, main organising spot for our country. I decided to participate in the working group. There was an empty place in the morning cleaning team. They said we would be accommodated in the center if we work in the working team. The truth is that I was accommodated in France, but it was nice.

So, just in the beginning I left my bus I went alone to my parish. It was like that during whole event. I was always alone but never alone. Never belonging to a team, so everybody was my team. It was positive thing for getting to know more people.

In the parish I meet some nice Croatian group. They were all from a group of young followers of Franjo Asiski. And they welcomed me immediately when they figured I was alone. Cool! Hope some of them 'll be good friends in the future, I really like them.

5 of us were sleeping in France. Everyday we had a meeting at 22h in the Parish when they drove us to our home. In the evening we talked. In the morning we had some nice cheese and other stuff.

As I said, I had to clean everyday. So again I was leaving my group and heading towards Palexpo. My cleaning team were Polish & Croatian people with 2 leaders from Germany & Italy.


One day I went with "Polish cleaning team" to the city for the tour. Most of the day I spent with them. In the evening we returned to Palexpo to get some food with the others.


As for the praying... usually it was really nice. We sang some Taize songs which sound really cool! The nicest feeling is in the evening on Palexpo in the big hall, when everybody gathers for the praying and for the singing. You can really relax or participate in this celebration of peace.

After morning praying we had discussion groups. I participated only once 'cause that day I didn't have to go cleaning. And that day we didn't discuss :) We gathered, read some letter from Cochabamba. And nothing was happening. Our animator was silent, everybody was silent. Personally I wasn't inspired that much by the letter. So I suggested that we try something else, play some games perhaps. So we had 1 minute session of laughter yoga :) Nice opportunity for me to practice it. And played few more games. Then we ate and went for the regional meetings.

Our hosts were living in France. Man spoke English so I know more about him then on his wife who didn't speak English that well. He was a nuclear scientist working in the big lab with elementary particles. His parents were strong atheists and some children it seems. He discovered Jesus by reading a bible while he was 15 and with 25 he was baptises. His wife & he were really nice to us. We didn't communicate much in total but it was nice atmosphere.

New Year party was extremely unusual. It began in the parish, we were praying and singing. When midnight came we congratulated each other. Then went to some school, walking on the street with torches. There weren't many fireworks and shooting. Nations were presenting themselves in the school. There was some food & non-alcohol drinks to consume, which I did. I was talking to people, just starting to warm up and suddenly some important guy announced the end of a party. It was 2 o'clock!!! Amazing. All the Croats there came gathered in the circle and started singing. After 10 minutes the announcment guy got a bit nervous and it all finally ended. We went home. Believe it or not. What a party. Well, in the paper they said it would finish at 2 o'clock, but I didn't find it that serious.



Need to say that praying there is much more fun. You can get peace if you want, there is Silence room. Also you can pray with the others, a big group of young enthusiastic people. It brings a completely new motivation to be religious. Surrounded by many young nice people. Feels good. Gives hope for better tomorrow.

I'm waiting for pictures from Croatian friends. And my hope is to meet them more so I could really call them friends.

20071212 Jam in Serbia

Participated on event with few hundred people from my student organisation. It was nice to see friends whom I met while traveling around. The event in total was ok but I don't feel the whole satisfaction. I see there many people and they seem to have much fun. For me many moments weren't that funny so I felt stupid sometimes 'cause I wasn't having fun like the others.

Still, there were some very good moments. On the first place friends whom I met before and made friends with some new people who seem really nice. And the other thing was visiting pub "Svrati bato" in the city of Donji Milanovac. There we drank nice vine and ate some fish through the whole afternoon. The city itself is full of mammuts. Suppose that there were some mammut's bones?

About fun...The solution is of course in me. I need to search in my mind those moments when I was able to be whatever I wanted. Sometimes it was during a really hard period but I managed to feel good & do crazy stuff. Need to concentrate more on myself

200711 elections in Croatia

Yesterday we voted for the new goverment. Today we are still waiting for the results.

I remembered one of my favourite songs of King Crimson.
I'll paste you the lyrics and highlight some of my favourite parts.

Epitaph Including March For No Reason And Tomorrow And Tomorrow

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
As silence drowns the screams.

Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

20071109 @novi sad

I went to Novi Sad. Had an excellent time. There was an excellent group of people. No smoking. Great atmosphere. No stupid games, just pure fun. And again, great people who made me feel really good.

We played some games. On one of them we painted our clothes and faces:


That was cool. For some time I wanted to paint myself like an Indian, now there was the chance. The paint is paint for the cookies so it goes easily off. I'm to repeat this by myself as well.

Novi Sad seems like a nice city. Didn't see it much. I'll return later sometime. 'Exit festival' would be a good choice.

200710

My friends in the neighborhood got pets. One friend got a dog and the other got 2 little animals, similar to hamster.
I got a plant for my birthday. And it's really cool one!


During the summer I broke my pinhole glasses. Actually, at the beginning I broke only one side which goes around the left ear. While in Denmark I demolished the frame of the glasses completely. What is left are only the each glass so I used some metal wire to connect them and a small knot to fix them around the head. Last week metal wire got broke which made me frustrated. It was one of those days with a lot of small iritating things. Now I improved it, making it much more resistant :)

So it's kind of a good thing that I destroyed them completely (altough I felt frustrated when it happened on film festival), now they are much more convient to carry and much more resistend. Yeah!

On few occasions I tested basic laughter yoga technique. It seems to work but no one wanted to join the club since people usually say they have enough of laughing. At least they laughed during the test which gives me motivation :)

[danskhed07] project ends

Our accommodation at the end of the project was in Christiania. City in a city. It's very interesting and beautiful place. It gives you a special sense of freedom in this world. Check out wikipedia for more details.

We were all together again. The whole team, north & south united, sleeping in one room:

I chose to sleep on the table. The floor wasn't so clean and I like to be different, as well. Some people were afraid for me not to fall down. I was wondering will they fall down out of their sleeping bags as well :)

We had to walk half an hour to the showers in the morning. And few minutes to the toilet...

When we arrived, lady who provided us with the accommodation gave us a brief introduction to this society. You're not supposed to run here since it's a signal that police has entered the area. Well, you an easily buy hashish/marijuana there and they are pretty famous for that. Any other drug is very unwelcome here! Also, when you start living here and get your place, you live there until you die (or do something extremely stupid). Then somebody from the long list of people who want to live there gets a chance to move in. You should start with the work here in the community to increase your chance of being picked up. And there are lots of jobs, like producing ecological food.
All the decision are being made in consensus by the whole community. Sometimes democratic voting is required.

In the evening we visited nice parties and met a lot of friendly people. There are few bars there and everybody is happy, dancing and welcoming you. Such a warm atmosphere. We mostly visited a bar where you can listen to rock, Bob Marley,... They are some afterparties as well, we visited one in the open. It is good to mention that Christiania is surrounded by the channels, so it's quite interesting to visit the beach as well and enjoy peace, alone or with your friends.

One evening we were invited for a dinner. Our hosts were living together in a collective, but not many houses, only one big house. Dinner was superb again. We had a nice fire there in the evening and chat. Hosts were actually our fans and they invited to so they can meet us. They followed our journey through media, mainly by newspapers "Politiken".

We returned to our place in Christiana. In the metro I made a short film:

MS organised trade fair festival while we were in Kobenhavn and we visited it:

There was some good music. And beer. And friends. And fun. And my friend from Kobenhavn who read about me in the news so she contacted me and we met :)

While walking around to the festival, to the bar-b-que, we sometimes see interesting stuff like:

The last one was in front of the stage on a concert somewhere in the city, near a channel.

Gay parade was this days:


During the day we walked around and explored. Like Botanical garden:


We had a farewell party. It was in a nice apartment. Music system had a protection. If you would put the music too loud for few seconds, it would shut down. You can see it on the video. "Can't touch this" was played 5 (or more) times, because it was always too loud.

We played some games, like a bottle game:


And again we had a dinner at an apartment with some "Servas" people who wanted to meet us.

The projected ended. Although I never actually felt it. And I was true. Even few days later we were again called to meet some media. I accept it if they provide us with lunch :)
People went home or to a hostel. Except for few of us. More about it in the next post...

Here are some pictures of this great team:

[danskhed07] finals

Our final destination was Kobenhavn and meeting point was "Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke" office. Among the other stuff, you'll see some interesting skeletons there:

Next day we had a presentation of our work at Christiansborg Palace (house of the Parliament).

Later Ramya&me had an interview and appeared on TV:
http://www.dr.dk/NETTV/Update/2007/08/24/204259.htm#
Just for the camera, we hitchhiked on the street. I managed to stop some lady on the bike so she gave a ride to Ramya :)

More on Denmark

I give you here some observations which I haven't mentioned before. It's my way of looking at it, yours could be different. And mine if I would spent more time there...

• snails
  Naked snails are very unpopular in Denmark. They eat a lot and Denmark is just full of them. Parliament discussed this topic once and they announced they every Dane should kill a naked snail, if he/she spots one. There was a discussion in the news what is the best way to do it. One politician suggested cutting it in half with scissors. So journalists came to him with "the tool" and the naked snail...he wasn't able to do it, of course :)
• politicians... have their phone numbers & e-mails made public. You can easily contact them
• taxes... very high, could be 40% - 50%.
  
• high standard...well, check out the taxes. At the moment, country is ruled by social-democrats. You get a lot of stuff for free. Some cool museums, highways aren't being payed, care of elderly people, kindergarten are cheep. High-technology is everywhere. Lots of cool patents around you. Middle-class earns a lot comparing to rest of the world.
  
• coins... some coins have a hole in the middle. Looking funny&cool
• electrical plug... there is a switch (above the plug) you need to turn on to get the electricity. It saves energy & it's practical as well
• helpful... on the street you easily approach to ask for some info or help. Everybody speaks English. But it's harder (requires more time and effort) to make friends with them, when they give you the info you asked, they usually like to run away
• open&homogeneous... Homosexual marriages exist for a "long time" in Denmark. They accept many things and are open. On the other hand, they like homogeneous society. On the street it's hard to tell middle-class from rich. When I was in school I asked do they have state competition in math. They said no, they don't want to have the best, they like everybody to good.
• private schools... many can afford it. Some parents send their children there because they want them to be in more Danish environment since percentage of immigrants in the public schools are increasing. But by sending them to private schools, some public schools become 100% immigrant. In private schools kids learn to live by themselves, far from parents, but need to obey certain rules (like dress-code)
• Raadhus (city-hall) @Aarhus... ground where it was build was once a cemetery
• driving without hands... while hitchhiking and getting a ride, we talked to people a lot. When drivers talked to us, they liked to use hands in communication so sometimes they didn't have hands on the wheels. But if you talk to them in the park, on the street...they don't use their body-language that much :) I suppose they get excited by driving the car
• saying 'yes'... in Danish: 'Ja'...some of them inhale air while saying it. At the beginning it was weird to see it. Usually when somebody inhales loudly like that it's because they are scared, but I got used to it
• religion...they don't go to church that much, but most of them are members of the church. You become a member when you turn 18. Every member pays 1% tax
• 13... it's something old and not common any more, but interesting. Some old Danes are afraid of number 13. If they get guests in their house and there are 13 of them, they put a doll and pretend it's a human just to have 14 people on the table, not 13 :)

The project is actually over. But I still get fun&experience... more about Kobenhavn in the next posts....