MPJ

While the short tale about famous actor is itself a small historical record especially for him and one little Serbian village half an hour away from my current location, I have to say that this post is a little bit mistitled even though De Niro's story has several connected points with what I want to write today. Instead, it will be about my grandfather and his war stories I listened yesterday for the first time. Actually, my mother told me all this before, but yesterday, during our annual dinner, he was in a great mood to tell them himself and this is my attempt to write them down while they are still fresh in my memory. But, for a moment, let's get back to the title story. Not too long ago, I read in a newspaper article* about Robert De Niro and his European travels he did about 40 years ago, more or less in the time where I was about to be born. Back then, these kind of tourist destinations were extremely popular among young Americans - if you were young and adventurou...

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention ar...

If I am going to give a thought or two about ancient Atlantis, its mysterious people and all the conspiracy theories behind it, there is no doubt that I'll first think of the origin of the story. Classical Greece and Plato. One of the most famous scholars from BC. In his own time, Plato was definitely the top Greek philosopher from ancient Athens, who lived in fourth century before Christ and dedicated his entire scholarly life to philosophical research and development of modern society and politics. The method he used in his publications were dialogues, very popular way of expressing scientific thoughts at the time. Plato's dialogues, in which he never took the role as one of participants, were often the front story accompanied with narration, but in some of them he even excluded narrator and presented his work in pure novel-style with his characters carrying the story all the way. In regards of today's title, two dialogues are especially interested - Timaeus and Cri...

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" ...

Before I start writing about this amazing sea, first of all I have to say that this story is equally about Greece, the oldest European country and the first known civilization in Europe. Surrounded with three seas, Greece is probably the most interesting place in the Mediterranean basin ever since it is formed and filled with water many millenniums ago. Aegean sea keeps the most important part in the history of mankind being natural barrier between civilizations independently developed over the west, east and south. Once in those past times, today known as B.C. this was the center of the World. It was also the place where many amazing things were born we know today as science, democracy, philosophy, mathematics, culture and sport along with all those "other inventions" like modern armies and wars, dictatorships, religion, divine beings... Aegean Sea Today after two millenniums, looking to this part of the world from my point of view and my own relations to the Aegean...

While visiting museums and exhibitions during travels is somewhat mandatory, touring our own cities and sightseeing their history is something we need a special reason for. I stumbled to this fact with many people and it is not much different with us as well. This special reason today was a time gap we've got between couple of errands we needed to finish downtown, so we decided to stop by WW2 Nazi concentration camp, now a perfectly preserved memorial museum and one of three in Serbia during the second world war. "Crveni Krst", concentration camp was named to nearby railroad station with more than 12000 people passed through its dark chambers who either died within or executed on the nearby hill "Bubanj". Probably similarly to other camps in Europe, this one imprisoned mostly Jews, Roma and members of the resistance, mostly partisans, communists and their supporters. Compared to the camps in Germany at the time specially populated with soldiers and officers, ...