Monday, September 25, 2006

Kalispera

Kalispera, my friends! I’ve been away but now I’m back in business. A bit more tanned, a bit more relaxed and richer by some moments and experiences.

Last week took me to the beautiful Greek island Crete. When we first got there, I must say I was not taken aback by the beauty, but hey, all the tourist resorts are supposed to look rather ugly, aren’t they. The sea and the mountains on the background, however, left some room for hope. And it really was only getting better.

First and foremost, I can never get enough of the beauties of Mediterranean Sea. If you take the bright blue (or sometimes bright green) water, add to that white sand (or sometimes pink sand, as seen at Elafonissi) the blue of the sky and the grey, green, brown or yellow of the mountains, you get numerous picture perfect moments. The best of these kinds of moments was on the last day when we rented a car and drove off to the most north-western peninsula. The distance from our hotel was not really long but the last leg of our drive was on a mountain road where we could literally go only ca 10 km per hour and it took us approximately 50 minutes to get through the 7 kilometers when the road ended and we had to walk across the mountain by foot. The view that presented to us when we reached the other side was breathtaking – bright blue lagoon, white sand, huge rocks in the water and perfectly blue sky.
Another location with picture perfect sights is the Santorini island, located north from Crete. To get there we had to get up at 4 am (and this on my holiday!!), take a bus for an hour or so and a boat for 5 hours just to spend half a day on a small island, where the little towns are filled with tourists, like Venice in August. However, as it was almost the end of tourist season, it was not so bad for us, and when staying away from the main streets, it was possible to wander around all alone and photograph the gorgeous white houses with their blue doors and the mountains and the sea and the lazy cats and dogs lying in the sun.
The most tiresome (but yet so rewarding) part of our trip was the 16 km walk through the Samaria Gorge (kuru) (supposedly the longest mountain gorge in Europe). For Samaria, we had to get up at 5 am (and this on my holiday!), in order to start earlier and get through the gorge before the hottest time of the day. The next evening after the “walk”, when I was putting on my dancing shoes, my calves were protesting rather loudly but I still won the argument, beauty demands sacrifice (and pain:)
When speaking about dancing, I have no idea how I always happen to get into the middle of “situations”. One evening there was a cabaret group performing in our hotel. 3 girls and a guy, and they were rather good I might add, doing all the different dances from belly dancing to salsa and classical ball-room dancing. At some point the guy asked a woman to dance from the audience and that was a sad sight, for she had no rhythm whatsoever. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, keeping a low profile, for I had just eaten, had not showered after a long day and I was not wearing my dancing shoes, when all of a sudden the guy was in front of me, grabbing me by the hand. Do I ever say no to dancing? Of course not! So, off went the flip-flops and there I was, dancing with the star of the evening, in front of all those people. He was so relieved to have a better dancer than the previous woman that he didn’t wanna let me go. Now, these situations make nice memories but it’s better if they were just memories, this time however, one of our group members filmed every last bit of my “performance”….i sure hope my micro mini skirt managed to cover my ass during all the twisting and turning.

A couple of more things in a nutshell – Greek cuisine is good and fresh, the wines are tasty, though rather unknown in the world, the people are friendly and the nature is stunning. The weather was pleasant and I think I managed to recharge my solar batteries for a while being.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Fragile

Have you ever wondered about how fragile is a human life. You stick a blade of a knife into the right place and a person dies. A tiny piece of metal, entering the body with high velocity can kill us. So can a reckless driver who hits us on the street. How can it be that in the evolution process we were formed so brilliantly that we have this whole elaborate system of bloodstream and muscles and nerves and digestion and so on, but our protection system is unbelievably weak. I think we definitely need some pimping in that department. Just think about it, we have a thin layer of skin covering all this intricate system. It’s even worse with the innate protection system and how badly we actually know what is going on inside of us. What we notice outside, are the small things, like when we gain or lose some weight, or we get a pimple or our skin colour changes after sun tanning – the mostly unimportant stuff. However, there’s often no way of knowing if there’s something really wrong with us. There could be a tumour a size of tennis ball somewhere inside us and we would have no way of knowing. For heaven’s sake, for a while we wouldn’t even know if there were a whole new life growing inside of us, before some obvious signs would give that away.

Have you ever felt that you want to LOOK inside of yourself, to see, what you have there or find out what is causing some pain so you would know what to do about it? I know doctors can actually do that but they usually do it if you already know, that you have some problem, which needs to be checked. They’d never give you a whole body scan without any reason, just for checkup. I know this topic is way too serious but when you hear that a young and seemingly perfectly healthy man dies in 2 months after finding out cancer has taken over his entire body and several other stories, it just makes you think. I’ve never been much of a fan of hypochondriacs and never will be but reasonable doubt is definitely wise when it comes to your own body and health. This is all we have here, one body and one life. Take care of it.

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Sting - Fragile (live performance video here)

Friday, September 15, 2006

The Mating Game

It's almost weekend. Let the games begin! (If you wanna listen to the song, the link is under the song name)

Bitter:sweet
The mating Game

Dance with me across the ocean floor
Sail away to heaven's open door
Step right up you're the next contestant
In this sweet charade
Take a number, wait while I twist your fate

On the mating game
Mating game

Hold me close enough to drink my rose
The devil in my pocket turned to gold
Sorry to warn you, you're in a daze
Tonight I'll love you, but tomorrow go away
Step right up who's the next contestant
In this sweet charade?
Take a number, wait while I tease you sane

On the mating game
Mating game

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Could you be...

Yesterday a boy told me i was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. (Well,I guess he hadn’t seen the latest pics of Scarlett Johannson…) I tried to convince him that it’s a well known side effect of alcohol that girls start to look more beautiful but he was rather persistent and wowed he’d be saying the same thing when he was sober too. Later on he also told me that in addition to me being beautiful I was also really cool and nice person. And later he also told me he really would like to get to know me better. All the perfect things to say, right!? All the regular lines of sweet-talking, right? Or was he being sincere? (Once in my life I’ve come upon such an instant admiration and he really was being sincere. He was just the type who didn’t really think before saying and spoke his first emotions.) Anyway, today I found out his age…hmm...he really still has years and years ahead of meeting beautiful girls. Maybe even more beautiful than me:) But what the hell is this about, year after year I start attracting younger guys? I know I don’t look my age but this is ridiculous. I will not go on and break the age record again, once a year is rather enough…

"Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world?
It's plain to see, you're the reason that god made a girl
When the day turns into the last day of all time
I can say i hope you are in these arms of mine"

Prince

Monday, September 04, 2006

The Swedes have left the country

Yep, it’s official, the legendary Mr. Acorn and Mr. Punisher have left Estonia. Last Saturday we packed their little “Ferrari” with all their stuff and sent them off to Sweden.

They came to Estonia and to our lives about a year ago, they somehow managed to find their way to our friends’ circle and to our little hearts….and now they left…How could they do that to us!?!? Now we have to manage to cope without their adorable Swedish accent and their jokes and their parties (I’ve got loads and loads of good things to say about them but this post should not be about praising them but about dispraising them for leaving us:). At last Friday’s farewell party I was so melancholy that even alcohol was not working. So, all those cocktails didn’t manage to get me drunk but the next day i still had a massive hangover, how cruel is that!?

Anyhow, temporary melancholy mood aside, the summer 2006 was absolutely amazing and the Swedes were an integral part of it and I have a feeling this is not the end of it all and we’ll be seeing more of them soon enough. That’s just the feeling I have. And my instincts don’t usually lie;)

"Sometimes it's good to feel something."