A weekend in the mountains

Last weekend I took another break away from Lausanne, probably the last one before the classes start and time reserved for 'life' gets inevitably devoured by 'work'. Marius invited us to his family chalet in Gitschenen, above Isenthal, in the canton of Uri (read: Central Switzerland), so the 10 of us (Marius, Jasper, Pete, Jenny, Pierre-Jean, Maria, Davor, Nino (aka 'the Godfather), Florence, and I (aka 'me')), created a pact and set of Friday afternoon to this little piece of paradise.

I shall not try to describe this picture perfect/postcard area (soon I hope to have the pics on my flickr account (probisvet) - in the meantime check out infogrind), this you have to see for your own eyes. The best part was a combination of everything: good company, nice house, amazing views, no internet/tv/cellphone reception, simple, cheap food in large quantities, and the amazing feeling of being in peace with everything. I really hope to go there again (Marius, if you are reading this, you know what to do :-)). Kidding aside, the best proof of how good it was for everyone was the coffee break we took on the way back, just outside of Bern, where, all of us sitting in a half-circle around the bar, you could see nothing but smiling faces of good friends.



The rare reader will pardon an old fool for his sentimentality (talking to my grandchildren always makes me melancholic). After all, I am just a dreamer, trying to wake up so I can start my work day....

The city of love

This weekend I went to Paris again. It is always an exciting experience: you could probably live in Paris all your life without actually finding enough time to find out all the great things about the city. Predictably, it was my time to find out one of the bad sides: the thieves of Champs Elysee. The victim was my recently bought mobile, which I had placed conveniently on the table in a restau. A beginner's mistake that I am (hopefully) not likely to make again. Apart from the material damage (near 350 euros), I have come out of the experience shaken up, but in a good way. It was, in a way, sobering. For one thing, my jadedness for nice portable phones/toys has given way to resolve that a mobile is after all just a phone, and should be used to communicate, and not much more. Hence, an era of using my flatmate's old Nokia is on the way. And it feels kind of cool.

Serbian Sejour

So here it is: I am back in Switzerland after by far the shortest "vacation" in my homeland ever. As the young Serbian curse goes: "I wish that you live abroad, and come to Belgrade for less than 2 weeks", I have experienced the hasty 10 days of trying to see everyone, cattch up with everything, buy some (not so) cheap clothes, and get some sleep and rest in the process. Normally this is an ardeous task. At the time when the country is experiencing the worst set of floods in the entire century, it was downright impossible.

However, despite being on the edge of a cold for several days (which is equal to pneumonia for me), and having one of my back muscles lock down on me, I was able to "acomplish" a fair ammount of what I had planned. To start with, I had paid 4 visits to my dentist, getting 8 teeth fixed, meaning that I should really cut back on chocolate from now on if I wish to have any part of my original jaw still there by the time I am 40. Three out of the four sessions were done under anestesia, and the remaining one I had wished for it. To give Svetlana some credit, she really tried to make it as painless for me as possible, but I still stand by the claim that, if you enjoy torturing people, you should definitelly look for a career in dentistry. But now I will be, I hope, pain free for the following 3 months.

As for the people, which is the main reason I go to Belgrade for, most importantly I was able to see my family, and a good part of my High School class, and then a good part of them more than once. Usually I am better informed about what my friends are doing but it seems that all my study of communications tought me how to relay and extract a lot of information in little time, so I cought on quickly (Shannon would have been proud). I am just wondering if I will get it all mixed up or not. Some people I didn't get to talk to as much as I wanted to... others I didn't even get to see, especially the non-school friends. I almost mistyped the word 'friends' as 'fiends' - not a Freudian slip, just not pressing the appropriate key hard enough. It does raise a point about the english language, though. In any case, I wish I had planned my time more carefully, but even as such, my days were quite packed, and I tried to spend the evenings at home with my family.

So I come back to Suisse relativelly refreshed and ready to work hard during the following few months. This is partly due to some extra sleep, and partly because each stay in Belgrade reminds me that as much as I like where I come from and the people that I are close to me, it is really difficult to imagine myself functioning there on a daily basis, and I am glad to be living full time in a country where everything works, well, like a Swiss clock. It seems that I was born with some gene that demands my surroundings to function properly, and at least appear as if not everyone is trying to trick someone else (I am talking mostly business world and public life here). There exist honest men in Serbia, but my naive personality would not allow me to last very long there. One thing that was different this time than the previous was that I was feeling a bit more capable to fit in, and that maybe, just maybe there is hope for me to once return and be a productive (and successful) member of the Neo-Serbian society (the problem is that the neo-serbian society is very much like past-serbian society, only with a different variety of sharks).

Ok.. getting closer to Lausanne. One day I should write about it over a cup of Mocca in The Starbucks. A bientôt.

To Paris or not to Paris

First of all an apology to whoever might be reading this blog (if anyone ever decides to do so). I created a blog a long time ago with the intention of keeping it as as a log of little things that are going on in my daily life, but I never actually started writing. Now that I have regained some of my motivation (we'll see how long it lasts this time), I was wondering wether I should write what the hell has been happening in the previous months or even some grand 'truths' about life in general. I will do neither of such things. I will just commence writing about stuff that happens daily because from that everything will follow. Just as if I had created this blog a few minutes ago.

So today early in the morning I received an email from by basketball friends, in which they talk about the possibility of going to a basketball turnament in Paris, at the end of April (29.04.-30.04). As much as I would like to go, the timing couldn't have been worse, since I will be coming off a 10 day holiday in Serbia (24.04.- 24.04), and I will be joining Vlada (my brother) in Barcelona the weekend after (05.05.-08.05.). Ah, the sweet misery of having to make a decision... I think that in the end I will only go if the entire team's trip depends on it (there needs to be at least 7 players willing to go). In case I am not needed, I will postpone the Paris adventure for some other time. No need to force too many things at the same time, especially with qualifyers just around the corner.

Ok, is this good enough for the first real post? I don't know... But I will leave with it. Stay tuned for more... coming up towards the end of the weel... or as new events unravel (because there is "so much drama in the phd").

second posting

Wow, it has been a while since I created the first post, and then I vanished into the dark lands of Mordor. This short post is a notice to myself that I still exist, and perhaps I will actually contribute more often.