Petralona

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

The Petralona Cave is a nice place to visit in Halkidiki. We went there on a hot weather day rather than on a rainy day, which was the original plan. The kids wanted to see a Minecraft cave and didn’t want to wait for the rain. They were right, it didn’t rain.

I’ll bring them to a wilder cave somewhere in Bulgaria.

Sozopoli

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

We spent some of the hottest days of the year in Halkidiki. It was a nice break from the routine and the kids enjoyed it. The water was great this year. The area around Nea Kallikrateia is rural, with endless beaches, beach houses, olive trees, abandoned lots, and tavernas that offer grilled food, eggplants, and zucchini.

The only hiccup was when I took the wrong road to a restaurant and the car got stuck in the sand. I tried digging out but it didn’t work and needed to be towed out. Another car got stuck in the same place the moment I drove out. The driver didn’t see me waving at them to stop. We dug them out, and this time waved harder to prevent a third car from entering the sandy road. That evening we couldn’t reach the restaurant but had an off-road adventure.

Why reading books matter

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

A brief essay as a response to this comment thread here, thanks to weirdo82.blog.

Books can make things happen, prevent things from happening, and shape the thoughts of large groups of people. They allow you to see through the eyes of real and fictional characters who have experienced great success and failure. Through books, you can learn, unlearn, and simply relax. They let us crack open doors and look at what’s behind long before these doors were built. The view remains in the shared memory of the readers, it can be analyzed, expanded, disproved, reimagined, or shot as a movie.

Reading books helps you talk with other bookworms, builds your Goodreads ranking, and is an infinite source of topics for blog posts. It also ensures you can read. It’s a challenge with no judgment, just you and the pages. They won’t ping you or complain if you don’t read them and won’t criticize if you don’t read them well.

Reading a page has the impact a fish has when swimming in water. It’s like the impact a bird has when she swings her wings. However, the combined force of all the books written and read led to our present-day civilization, good or bad. Will it disappear if we stop reading? Who knows. Maybe.