New trains in the Sofia Metro

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I finally saw the new trains! I knew we had them, but since most of the trains are still the old ones, I hadn’t had a chance to try them.

The new trains are Skoda. The ride is smooth. They’re all connected from the inside, unlike the old trains. Each door has a screen, that shows where you are and how far you are from all the other stations in minutes. They’re quieter from the inside.

Samuel Vimes is a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. His shoes have thin soles and he can identify where he is by the feeling of the pavement on his feet. I have a similar feeling about where I am by the noise the trains make that changes depending on the tunnel. With these new trains, the noise is much lower and my internal GPS gets scrambled.

Bangaranga Salad

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I really appreciate it that Dara, one of our most prominent ad faces, doesn’t advertise gambling. Most of the celebrities end up with their own gambling billboards. Dara switched from advertising groceries to this salad. I don’t know if it’s a real salad but looks like something I’d be willing to try. Also looks gigantic, like a mountain of veggies, fruits and cheese.

And let’s appreciate again her winning performance for the 2026 Eurovision.

May in Books

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I didn’t read much in May. The month started with Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a monumental 1200-page space opera. I think that wore me down and I mostly chilled without books after that.

Best

  • To Sleep in a Sea of Stars – 5/5, a book I enjoyed and touched me, despite its absurd size.
  • Howl’s Moving Castle – 5/5, a sweet low-stakes fantasy story. It’s not the type of book you can binge but it is kind of cool the way Legends and Lattes is. Something that can flush your brain a bit if you feel down.
  • City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett – 5/5, an epic dark fantasy, almost steampunk, where tech faces miracles and gods. It has an unique world and even better developed characters than City of Stairs. Robert Bennet is clearly a very strong fantasy author. Looking forward to finding his other works.

Worst

  • The Belgariad #2 – DNF at around 30%.

I think this is is the worst month for reading since I started writing the monthly reports here. However, the 3 books I completed were all great, so it evens things out a bit.

My first impactful books

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
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The first was a comic from a series called Daga (Rainbow). My first Daga was number 14, and I don’t think I was able to read when I got it. The Daga series featured stories from popular books, including the entire Hobbit, from start to finish. There were also lots of space stories, things you can try to draw yourself.

Then came children’s books, like Pinocchio, Alice, Pippi, and so on. Then came pirates, adventure, the Wild West, Dumas, and Jules Verne. By the age of 10, I was already in the hundreds of books finished, but there was no Goodreads, and it’s difficult to say for sure. My mom would frequently bring me fresh books from the library.

There were several milestone books that had a big impact on me:

  • Pippi Longstocking – for its unlimited re-readability and for showing true friendship.
  • Winnetou – it’s difficult to say what I saw in this one. I guess it was a certain moral superiority in the main characters that looked appealing at the time.
  • The Three Musketeers – the first half is just so satisfying, with imperfect characters following their paths and accepting the present.
  • The Lord of the Rings – for the depth of its world-building.
  • Foundation – for introducing me to the world of truly great science fiction.

Now that I look to my book reviews, I still read Fantasy and Sci-Fi, occasional adventure/pirates, and some of the folks who published Daga keep impacting the gamebook genre to this day. Lost interest to the Wild West.