Journal

Location: Halkidiki > Athos peninsula > Ierissos - 5:30h from home by car.

So at the beginning of the year, scientists figured out that this summer would be the first in a handful when the summer is not hotter than the previous one. But still, it´s horribly hot.
This is why we fled to the Rhodope mountains, the lustrous, thickly forested mountain range covering a good part of Southern Bulgaria and Northern Greece, down to the island of Thasos. Still hot but just seeing all the stunning trees around refreshes your soul.
Ancient Greece (well what we associate with its mithology, the geographic region where it had influence) was waaaay bigger than the contemporary Republic of Greece. I had NO idea that the Myth of Orpheus was rooted in Bulgaria. The Devil´s Throat - that is, the cave where he made a deal with Hades to bring his wife back to life, but he broke the pact when he looked back on their way out of the cave, and lost her to Death forever - is in Bulgaria! Unfortunately many (actually all the) cool divers and speleologists died in this cave trying to explore it, and some of their bodies have never been recovered. Fun fact: Scientists dyed some water, poured it through the water entrance to the cave, and it left the cave 2 HOURS LATER! and that´s water, which flows extremely fast in the cave´s rapids. Pffffff... isn´t nature insane!
Back in town, I explored with my parents all the Roman ruins that weren´t yet on display when they visited 6 years ago. In these 6 years, we have ready to visit: the Odeon, the Forum, a whole massive City Gate, a Basilica with all its incredibly beautiful mosaics of birds, seats and water cisterns of a Stadium! These have been "known to exist" since at least the 70s but oh well, I totally understand that unearthing roman ruins can´t be the priority of a falling Socialist regime and an emerging Mafiacracy. What I found veeery cool: many of the leading archeologists in charge of the sites were women, and I am talking about the 70s in the Balkans. So that´s what I spent the scorching-sunny days on.
But during the night: it wasn´t the heat but HILLS OF ROCK kept me awake! I am not quite a Death Meatl fan. That´s the main focus of the festival, but I am very open minded and eager to listen to any musician courageous enough to play in the dusty almost destertish festival field. Plus these days, artists can´t make as much money selling albums as in the past and they rely more on touring. So if you like a band or just music, go and shake your body in live concerts when possible. I went for Gojira, Smashing Pumkins, Wolfmother, CoolDen and Kerana, but I discovered some great showpeople: Superhiks from Macedonia (extremely fun Ska Band!), Skunk Anansie (a legend , they play some of their songs on the radio but I didn´t know they were SO punk, epic) , Mastodon (the drummer SINGS half of the songs wow that´s a pair of lungs...!), Sepultura was kind of cool too. Whenever I don´t vibe to the show that much, I close my eyes. Not being influenced by the artist´s visual display and their hard fans is liberating. You start feeling just the music - yes feeling, because the vibrations are physical, it´s not just melody and rythm coming into your ears, it´s also the actual feel of music being blasted into your cell). Then you can dance to anything. And some artist have extremely cool costumes, stage decorations, visuals, light shows... so if you don´t vibe to the music entirely, there´s so much else to enjoy. Money spent on concerts is always well spent :D

The Theather Month! We are only half way through June and I´ve been to the theater 4 times. Yeyyy!
We started with Seraphim, a play adapted from a book by Yordan Yovkov emphasizing the joy of sharing and helping others. Seraphim is an extremely poor dude saving money for a new coat. It´s winter, and his coat is just a rug. He feels terrible about others´ problems and gives away what he needs to survive (maybe it was too much).
Next, we went to one of the 3 shows that King Guizzard and the Lizzard Wizard threw in the Ancient Theater. This is not a theater play but their songs and light show was theatrical, undeniable!
A couple of days later, the puppet theater. Don´t lose the child in you!
This very week, back to the Ancient Theater to enjoy the Family Adams Musical. Boom!

Earlier this month, I bought a book on water colouring with just 3 colours. But I don't know where my art gear is, it must be in some box I haven't yet opened since we moved in. Well, perfect excuse to learn how to use Procreate.
I set up a challenge for myself: sketch 1 page per day and change the palette once per week. Instead of copying the examples from the book, I would come up with my own drawings.
This would also make appreciate how much can happen in a day AND improve Problem-solving. If you follow an art tutorial entirely, we'll, you are copying. Someone figured out how to use x colors or techniques for you. It's okay if you are focusing entirely on 1 technique or aspect but keep it in mind.
So here goes week 20 of 2025 in sketches:
From 12-May to 18-May 2025

I truly enjoyed drawing everyday, and I can see progress from the first attempt. But oh girl, the ipad's pencil is quite heavy. My thumb ended up stiff as a dry stick. I was getting so obsessed with the sketches that one day I drew for 3h! I thought of turning the sketch + journaling to a weekly habit instead, and changing the palette once per month

This is week 21 of 2025

Planets aligned and we had a bank holiday almost entirely off together without planning it! We set off on holy Friday before lunch. Destination: Rila. We ate in a village for less than 10€! So after lunch, we arrived to the Rila Monastery.

I hadn't read enough beforehand but Didi explained (reading from some website in Bulgarian) that a hermit monk used to live in the area and he got famous, he was healing people so he got a bunch of followers and eventually they built the monastery. It's the main Christian point in Bulgaria, and has also a strong link with Bulgarian nation as it was used as a fortress during wars - I need to read more about this. Didi bought a book about a monk who made the first globus in Bulgarian (it is now in the national history museum in Sofia) and translated half of the Bible into BG. Some frescos in the Church's portico were hilarious though! They are from the 19th century and if these artists lived now they would get good money with animations I must say.

On Saturday we went to the hot mineral water pools in Sapareva Banya. Okay, here's the thing. Growing up, I loved geology and all things ancient and deep into the earth. Volcanos, caves, fossiles. But can you believe that, even if I surely had a good mark in my last ever geology exam, on Saturday I didn't know how hot water can spring from high mountains without volcanic activity? This is how much they teach us at school. So as a refresher: The deeper you go into the earth's crust, the warmer it is. If i remember correctly, around 30-40 °c warmer for each KM (See links at the end of the entry for more). And so, Sapareva Banya´s people discovered in the 50s a geyser with water sprouting at 103°c! But their hot water ponds were already famous or course during ancient Rome. It's unbelievable what secrets the mountains hide… Just rocks, minerals, heat?

BTW it's not proven that hot mineral waters have healing properties. Or Saunas. It hasn't been studied and it looks hard to prove because, how do you generate a control group? Let's say in the past people would get lead poisoned in towns, so they were sent to mineral baths. Here they would drink good water, eat better food, relax, breath clean air. And they would get healed possibly because mineral water makes you pee more so they would pee the lead? When you go to a bath, besides the bath practically everything is also new: the forest, the food, the air. So probably just the resting and quality of intake is what heals 4wther than the hot spring water but good for them, their marketing has worked over millenia!

On Sunday, I really wanted to see the 7 Rila lakes but it was confirmed : too much snow, and the lift doesn't work. Didi found and alternative, a glacier ring where there's a permanent waterfall called Skakavitsa. In winter it freezes and crazy lads go ice climbing (and some die of course). We walked from Proslap to the Skakavitsa hut and then to the waterfall. Most of the way was easy'ish forest, with some wet, rocky stretches and some swamps. But it should be okay in summer unlike the Southern Pyrenees - that get ultra hot. I noticed there aren't the classic pyrenaic bushes in Rila. It must be moist and cooler in summer here. We saw birds, squirrels, frogs, a beautiful cat that probably lives in the hut.

In the evening, we went to a pub near the geyser. There was live music: a keyboardist and a singer singing Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian songs. Some songs were intensinly deep, slow, dramatic but the guests were cheerfuly drinking and sharing the show with face time on their phones with some Rado - who probably lives abroad. Didi told me that these dark dramatic songs are normally story-telling turned into music, poems, often on how some ‘partisani’ died in the mountains during the Liberation´s revolution and uprisings. It was fun!

And today, Easter Monday, we gotta go back home - and work. Shift starting in 3h. In the forest, I was thinking that it's so sad we have to work so much instead of (for instance) being in the forest. But pal, if I wasn't working shifts in a company, if I was ‘free’, I would need to be growing my own potatos, grinding my own grains to make flour, chopping my own wood, cooking all day, taking shits in a hole in the dark, because if you are free and you don't make money, you can't even pay for a wc bowl, or afford a car and gasoline to spend 3 nights in Rila. I am conflicted here, but it's a good thing to be aware of how work probably empowers me more than not.

Before we say bye for now, I feel still very susprised by how differenly Christian countries/communities celebrate Easter. Compare the Spanish tetric, sad Easter with saetas and drummers versus Austrian and Bulgarian Easters, mostly pagan rites with eggs, sweets, lamb, abundance and life.

Related links:

• Fantastic Frescoes of Rila Monastery: The Devil’s in the Details – GALLIVANCE
• Sapareva Banya
• Europe’s hottest geyser springs in Sapareva Banya’s center - Tourism
• Hot spring - Wikipedia
• Does the sauna improve the immune system? In German

Back in January, I decided to run an experiment. I wondered if I am the creative, handy person my family and friends consider me to be, or if this was just a pre-social media phase. It´s been 3 full months, so let´s do a quick review.

Why this experiment matters: Every night, before falling asleep, I have flickering thoughts of projects and new skills I want to develop. Data analysis and viz? UX/UI? Designing lamps and wooden furniture? Taking gardening seriusly? But at the end, there´s always a big banner saying "I am too busy." Is that true, though? So I stopped using social media to gather evidence on 2 things: How busy I am and whether if I am still creative and eager to learn new things.

Assumpions: I am a person with many hobbies and interests, and I have time to develop new skills. Or was I?
Growing up in my parent´s place, we only had 1 computer. It was in "The computer room". This was a real thing in the 90s and 00s. In this room, you were rarely alone. You would have a sister next to you, a cousin, a friend, your dad, and you would browse the internet together, play games together. One would watch and give advice, the other would execute. It was fun! and social.
Since there was a limited amount of time you could use the computer and/or internet daily, you couldn´t afford wasting time doomscrolling. It´s true that this option didn´t exist. Websites and forums had a bottom - unlike today´s social media feeds. If, let´s say, you wanted to edit a photo on Phososhop and then upload it to your Fotolog, you would spend some time in advance thinking what and how you would do it, then you have your 2h of computer time, do your best, and life goes on until tomorrow. No distractions (unless they are good distractions such as inspiraiton for your next project!).
During that period, I was: sewing my own clothes, customizing clothes and bacpacks with stencils, designing objets with Fimo, Sculpy or clay, drawing comics, composing songs for my girl band, painting weekly with a community of artists, self-learning Photoshop and photography (and finishing a Law degree in the standard given period of 5 years).
I graduated and left my parent´s place, migrated to another country, and had a new array of responsibilities I didn´t have before: laundry (most horrible chore ever), cleaning, cooking, work and study, go places to pay bills. I still bought an ukelele. I learned how to play it mostly by watching other ukelele players on YouTube tutorials (before they had the peksy YouTube shorts) and with https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/. I was going hiking before work in spring and summer, and drawing comics after work with co-workers. I wondered, am I still able to focus and enjoy hobbies and projects if switch off distractions? or was that part of my youth, and I am just old and boring?

Results: Current Environment: I work full time in a job that doesn´t allow me to do be distracted while on shift, and I sleep 7.5-8h. Hence, I have around 8h of "free time" per day (this includes chores) + 16h on the weekends. This is what has happened:

• 1. Draw almost daily on Procreate. Improvement in 3 months: from not understanding how to use the menus to creating a video recipe for my friend Nikola in 3 months, and a second animation for Boro´s cat, Frank. I sketched potraits of the contractors fixing my flat and some family members.
• 2. Play the ukelele or the bass guitar around 3 times a week.
• 3. Write on a journal every day (in Notion). If I see that a topic is compelling, I start drafting a longer piece. I have published 3 essays on Substack
• 4. Improve my driving. I was giving my parter and friends rides to run errands. I can now park in the night with much more confidence.
• 5. Designed my wardrobe.
• 6. Use Claude (AI) once a week to improve my Bulgarian writing and reading skills.
• 7. Better short-term memory. I can remember recent conversations, concepts and quotes I have read in books or articles, and I find misplaced objects faster (where are my keys???)

We are still under renovations, we don´t have wardrobes or doors. Some rooms are so empty that there´s eccho and in some you can´t see the floor because it is full of boxes and bags. Frida... Frida is sad. Frida had to abandon her rental-Kingdom and is not accepting that it´s time to conquer new land.

You don´t belive me? I brought evidence.

It´s not only moving from one flat to another what is stressing Frida. It´s April, storks have arrived to their summer residences here in the Balkans, teenagers were wearing shorts and then... BOOM! It just started snowing - someone forgot to pay the subscription renewal for spring! When it rains or snows, the drops and flakes hit our brand new aluminium windowsill (worst choice ever, changing it to stone or tiles as soon as I have some savings). The rain sounds like a machinegun against the aluminium. Frida must think we moved to Baghdad under George Bush administration...