MPJ

It was a foggy day on April 6, back in the year 1725, when angry villagers of the rural hamlet of Kisiljevo, Serbia, opened the grave of their neighbor Petar Blagojević, who died eight days before. His death was followed by a spate of nine other sudden deaths and numerous claims by the victims being throttled by Petar at night. When they cracked the casket open, features associated with vampires, just like they anticipated, were indeed present: the body was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there was a mixture of new skin and nails along with old ones peeled away, and there was blood flowing out of his mouth. The villagers were accompanied by an official of the Austrian administration (the Austrian Empire governed the area in the early 18th century) and a local priest. The entire case was documented and reported to the officials and covered by Die Wiener Zeitung, a Viennese newspaper, on July 21st. At the time, the vampirism was fully embedded into Serbian folklore with nume...

Geographically lying in the heart of Balkan peninsula, a small town of Svrljig is acting as a capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages that are, demographically speaking, living their lives on the edge of extinction. In just half a century human population of the area is more than halved with more and more 'haunted-like' villages containing more empty houses than those with smoked winter chimneys in which more people die than are born. The past of the area went through numerous changes over time and was pretty colorful to say the least. Like everywhere else, ever since the written literacy spread its wings only millennium ago, history of Svrljig is pretty well documented ever since the grate Schism of 11th century and we pretty much know what was like living here down to that time. But history goes even further in the past - to those times we know little about and all we have is a ruin here and there we can try to understand and build a...

In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take for instance old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and of course all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them, originates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci who live...

I remember that scene from the movie "The Blues Brothers" with Jake and Elwood hiding from who-knows-who in the super tiny apartment next to skytrain or railway tracks, shaking every now and again and every time when a train is passing by the neighborhood. I always felt sympathy for all those people who are actually living next to those high trafficking high or rail ways with heavy tremors in the air in form of high decibels of various noises all around them. Guess what? Our own neighborhood is now getting similar feeling. Actually, similar is understatement. It is way worse. The new tracks are placed just couple of dozens of meters above our house. In recent months and years, the local airport are getting more and more traffic and the runway position is actually crossing our street almost to the single angle. I couldn't do much about it except to took the camera as soon as I heard the noise and 'shot' their underbellies. So here are couple of those taken in previ...

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, famous flying dinosaur, mother Earth was pretty busy with the works of creating continents, large mountains, seas and oceans like we know today. At the time the place we know as Europe was mostly covered by large sea by the name of Paratethys. About hundred millions of years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as Alps and Carpathians, which made Paratethys to loose connection with Mediterranean to the south and to form separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with names of Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in nowadays Pannonain basin, that lasted almost 9 millions years and finally disappeared in the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago with remnant lakes here and there especially in Hungary today. During its long ...

It was May 20th of the 1883rd year of AD when people living in Dutch East Indies, back then in 19th century, started to feel more intense earthquakes and to spot first steam venting out of one of three volcanic cones, just above the powerful caldera in today's Indonesian archipelago of Krakatoa. In the following days of May eruptions started from the one of volcano peaks and after a week or so calmed down only to issue a warning for what would come in following months. What started happening on June 16th and culminating in August 27th is now well known as the most massive and powerful volcano eruption in the documented history of mankind. William Ascroft's pastel sky-sketches* The eruptions were so powerful that the most intense explosion was heard all the way down in Perth, Australia, which is almost 3000km south of Krakatoa. On the west, across the Indian ocean, people located almost 5000km on the islands not far away from Madagascar thought it was cannon fire from n...

Couple of centuries after Christ, Constantine was very popular name. Especially among soldiers in Roman and Bysantine empires along with Greeks during their Macedonian age. Within latin Cōnstantīnus and greek Κωνσταντῖνος (Kōnstantînos) name literally means the one who's constant and steadfast especially within military properties related to strength and stamina. In those times the land of my current location was called "Moesia Superior" with the city of Naissus in the role of its main trade center and biggest military outpost for Roman army. Today's name of the city is "Niš", the largest city of southern Serbia and also the city where I was born and where I live ever since. Serbian usage of the name is "Konstantin" and even though it is not related to military anymore, the name is fairly popular nowadays among young Serbians. It was third on my list when my son was born simply because I really like names with strong inner "adjectivity" ...