Mother of blogs

It is high time to give one personality to my blogs... if interested in further adventures of this blogger, go to mikidkolan.

Kind regards

Miki

Athens, Rhodes and Crete

Thanks to good people and scientific collaborations, mikidhellas in the action again!

I will not post new post here, as I already wrote the text in mikidtaiwan blog mikidtaiwan about Greece 2008, but will write that every visit to Greece is pure joy for me. And this time I filled one hole in my experience, i.e. I went for Aegean islands. Circle around Dodecanese by ships (ferries) was the only way how I could imagine doing the first visit to the seas of Ancient Greece. Eternal deck passenger. I will try to fill-in, in the future, the pattern I started on this trip (Piraeus-Rhodes-Crete-Piraeus). Together with my croatian islands, these are for certain the most beautiful places on Earth I saw.

Geia sou!

Greece finished, Odysseus goes home: Delphi

My last week in Greece as a resident. Next week I start my new position in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Sweet(ie)s at the end, I have two beautiful ladies as guests, and they convinced me I should go with them and see Delphi. Some 180km bus drive from Athens, good tour for a pleasant weekend. And...it makes sense to go and ask Pythia about some future before you change worlds, no?

We started 10:30 from bus station at Liosion, and after leaving Attica and M75 in Thiva (=ancient Thebe), bus stopped, before climbing up Parnassos, in Livadia. It is a magnificent walley behind the mountains above Corinthos.

We passed ominous crossroad where Edypus met (and killed) his father, and via Arahova we reached Delphi, small town at the slope of Parnassos, with good view to one small part of the Bay of Corinthos. At the horizon was Kalavrita or some close by mountain at Peloponessus, and views were breath-taking.

A pity Pitia was not there, as I would maybe have some questions...anyway, we did our best to be good tourists and attacked The Site at once. It showed to be proper choice, as we had sunny and warm weather, in difference to snowy and cold next day, sunday.
Ancient Delphy. Because of magnificence of mountains around, somewhat less exposed, I would say, than Acropolis in Athens or so. But anyway worth its fame.

My favorite was remainings of Tholos, below the actual Site, a bit after the source of C... (which was closed for visitors, because of danger-fallingstones).
Tholos was a round structure, of unknown purpose. Strange one there, really, and I noticed itatonce when approaching the sanctuary, as it is still the most eye-catching detail at the slope ofthe hill below the Apollo temple.

View from our hotel-Parnassos-was stunning piece of sea and mountains. The canyon below Delphy is not easy to catch in the pic, although it is a large one, because ofthe masiveness of the surrounding mountains. In good light it surfaces as large natural exit towards the Corinthos. Would be interesting to bike around! In some next life.

Next day we took a walk towards the Gymnasium and Tolos. Unique sights.
Afternoon, we took bus back to Athens, with 2 hour stop in Arahova. This seems to be Greek Madonna di Campiglio or Kranjska Gora or Zakopane. Mountain village, highly turistic today. Ski lifts are at the northern slopes of Parnassos, says Lonely Planet, we did not see any from southern side. There was some snow, blowed by the wind, but fortunately anything like usual in winter. I do not miss it at all :-).

Back in Athens we found rainy and cold (5 cels) weather, but already next day sun also showed. I like winter in Athens, I will miss it, oranges around and really the best winters I had in my life, what considers weather. But...climate is not everything you need for living, so I have to go on. Next weekend I will be in Taiwan :-).

Follow me on mikidtaiwan blog further, the Greek one seems to be finished. Greece is magnificent country. Balkan mentality, yes. Not so good :-D. Good food? Depends. If you happen to love cheese, olives and fresh vegetables, then yes. Athens, as a 5.5 millions city is really most liveable place I tried until now. My big thanks to everyone who made this time possible!

Welcome to Hellas 2007, via Croatia & Italy

I start this in the chained building, heavily bearded Che-Guevara like communist student guard in the entrance of the Physics building, I sneaked in to use my computer. Yesterday student were making a mess in the city, a bit of Molotov coctails, a bit of stones to police, usual here in Greece. Still the same old quarrel from (last?) summer, I think. Anyway, me at workworkwork, after Chr/NY/Alps.
I spent most of the C/NY time in Croatia (via Hungary, as usual), ending in Italy, not far from French border, in Alps behind Torino.
In Croatia, it was beautiful weather during all that time, so we could enjoy (mild)winter Kolan.

Winter blue is magnificent, I LOVE it!

This "angel" is above the house of someone who died few days ago in neighbourhood, requiescat in pacem!

Our cat brought new generation to life. She is very good mother, when other cats around died of some illnesses, she managed to survive together with 2nd generation of her kids. Brawa, Fela!

After peaceful and warm (near the stove) Christmas and New Year, Ling and me went each in other direction for a while. I went to Italy, for a JETSET meeting in Sauze d'Oulx, in Alps, close to border with France. I flew from Zagreb to Milan and catched a train to Torino. There I had two hours in sunny weather for sightseeing.
I found some map in Tourist office and went to make a square walk from Torino Porta Nuova station. Sure enough, following the Vittorio Emanuelle II street, I found this monumental monument:

You guess it was the omnipresent persona of Italy

Streets around the center are all in arches, sometimes even trams go through the arches.

In the military academia or so was strange plate, I was afraid to make more direct pic, but if you look better you'll see soldier aiming at you!

Antoher funny writing in the streets, Iam curious who produced it and why:

It is written, in Polish: "Och how stupid Italian I am".
Main square is monumental as usually in Italy

This picture encompasses Italy for me:

(Red) Vespa, monuments, old and new buildings mixed.
This is the old one, at least it looks so

And this one is, at the same square, the new one :-D

I did not have much more time, so I just went to the next square, in direction of river Po

One typical street there:

It is nice city, with very pleasant spirit at the sunny winter noon.
Then I went to train to Sauze, and 15 min bus up to Sauze d'Oulx, at 1500m, one of the sites of Torino 2006 Olympic Games. It is located above the Alpine walley close to Sestriere, tops around are up tp 3500m.
View from my hotel room was astonishing

Especially the next morning

Even more astonishing was the lack of snow. Whole week we had T-shirt weather!

Hotel was somewhat too modern for this small willage, but this is tourism.

It was 4 star, quite expencive one, I would give it 2 stars at most, and force them to go for a half price. The only thing I will remember from this hotel is appropriate interior for the conference dealing mostly with toroidal magnetic fields. It did not have stairs, but there was spiral all around, where all the rooms were! Really original.

But, as I said, it seemed a bit too modern building to be incorporated in the serene architecture of the Alpine village.

But, view down to Oulx is really magnificent!

After a week of science and nice meetings with good people, I went to visit Eli to milan, and to fly from there to Athens. Sunday afternoon I took a short look to the center of Milan. I was surprised with mass of people at the square near the Duomo.

Through something what resembles Zagreb Oktogon (or it resembles this?)

I came to La Scala, bow to Verdi

Streets of Milan are also full of arches

I found also two very important institutions here (Mafia is here? Nooooo!):

Torino, Milano...two quite nice small cities, I commented to someone in a letter ;-)

More islands: Eire

High time to visit Ireland. Workshop in Dublin, about tests for various codes in astroph. community, was a nice two-day event, and I took some time for sightseeing.
As usual, without some big previous knowledge, so it is highly personal view on this city. My only "preparation", in a sense of knowledge anything about Dublin was Joyce, whom I read few years ago, "Dubliners" and "...young artist" book and Ulysses, which was my introduction to English (when you read it through, and try to catch the words, you learn a hell of English...although, it is more poetical than fiction kind of joy, reading it).
Here we left the Continent, I think bay of Le Havre was below, as we were following Seine river:

It was my first sight of England, still waiting for me. White rocks Albion here, glowing gold in the morning sun:

There was a nice day in Dublin, Svjetlana picked me from the airport and we went to the city. Finally meeting on her terrain, we managed to meet in last 10 years, after Zagreb, in...Frankfurt, Pag and Tokyo, finally Dublin :-) . Fate of physicists, or rather all gipsy-like scientists.

The river Liffey is part of the city, nicely incorporated into it:

I went through the Trinity College, it was a must-see walk, as is the Grafton street nearby.

Campus is what you expect of such place, really a classical sight

Especially I liked the warning plate, the last note is: "Radios may NOT be Played":

Side exit from the campus-from this comes 'he entered on small door to the world of Science'?

Street from Trinity College towards Marrion Sq. DIAS is located in the Marrion Sq., OLD Victorian or so building, very nice. Lacks functionality a bit for something like COSMOGRID project, but it is not surprising, it is other generation of architecture.

Nice door all around square are famous, DIAS also has its horse in this race, although no fame lived in this house (as in some other around the sq.)

In the evening, driving 50 min to Svjetlana's house, I had chances to try a bit of ordinary Dublin life-here night impression-a bit impresionistic, but it's done by my palmtop camera, sorry for the bad quality.

Bus is double decker of London type, nice view from it, every ride is sightseeing tour

I like the colors on Dublin streets

Catholic country...has to take care of it's youth...brrr!

Guinness IS different here than anywhere else, I do not like it in mainland Europe at all, but the one I had here was excellent beer, almost as good as what was sold for 'dark beer' in "U Fleka" in Prague some...16 years ago.
We did not drink it a lot, only one visit in a bar just behind DIAS, but there'll be next times, I am sure. I like the place.
That you would not think I only did sightseeing and Guinness drinking, some proofs of work there. Pleasant discussions with nice people.

It was 50 min to Svjetlana's house, if lucky not to stuck in traffic jam. Traffic in Dublin is a nighmtmare. We make jokes about Southerners, but in Dublin they were not able to make tunnel under the city...for all the vechicles. For trucks, which are (going to ferry to the harbour) pain for this city, they made it...too low!
Sure, periferies of the city are much cheaper to buy a house than the city itself, and they build it obviously in the terrains of factories etc., as I saw in Melbourne also:

Yes, they look the same, as you see in movies, 200 or so houses around and along the lane looking the same, even to the detail of...this what is behind the house. People? Not the same, fortunately, at least not from appearance, not yet.

In Dublin I found really a great mixture of races and nationalities in the street, this was nice sight after rather monotonous mainland Middle-Europe. It seems I should think of this term as in USA is Mid-West. In the streets you could hear Polish and Russian almost equally often as English. Irish? Is it something to eat? Even in the train stations, names are given in English first, and then, in barely visible yellow colour, in Irish. Someone commented that Irish gave up their language after they managed in their fight for independence from England. Good for us, tourists, but for them...I do not know. But probably natural step in...dying out of an Nation-and incorporating it in some greater entity. Which? European? I would not say. It will have lots of slavic, yellow and Indian blood, from this what I saw on the streets of Dublin. And good :-)