4 years we’ve been married (well, on August 21 to be more precise) and that’s officially the first cheese cake in the family. Petra and Jessica (who actually cooked it), my Romanian colleague Cătălina and lastly – Jamie Oliver are all to be thanked for it. I just ate and photographed.

Let me use the occasion and drop you all a brief update on us… We’re back in Sofia after a lengthy but still kind of pleasant drive from Holland to Bulgaria. The holiday was too short unfortunately… but then few good holidays are actually “long enough”. Now we’ve gotten into the daily life back here and the church is slowly picking up as well after a pretty empty summer.

I myself have been blessed with the ability to work 25% more than I ever had for the past three weeks and if I manage to keep at it until the end of the month (more would already be the icing of the cake) it’d be wonderful.  Petra’s work hasn’t resumed to full speed yet, but in a week or two she’ll probably want to be back on holiday as well. This school year she’s also going to be teaching first aid courses at the school, so it will certainly be different than what she had earlier.

We’ve finally gotten ourselves to select a new bed – the second bed in the family (the first being still in Holland cause it’s too bulky to transport). We’re so excited to actually have a chance to sleep at night. It will certainly play a role in my tiredness and sleeping pattern chaos. Lately we’ve been trying to make the place of my mum a bit nicer and comfortable to live in and that’s removed a lot of annoyances with stuff breaking down daily (esp. the old beaten hot water boiler).

Still no definite word on our own apartment. Certainly for the next 9 months we’ll be staying where we are (should the house itself not fall down). If you think of us, please, do continue to pray for this situation. It’s way beyond being an annoyance for us – we simply don’t think of it anymore, but the monthly payments remind us of it regularly, so it’s not exactly “being easy” either.

So, we’re on the road again… And as you can see – our car has been refreshed – it almost drives as a car driven 1km only… almost. Too bad the miracle took place in the middle of the Austrian highway. Otherwise I could have provided you with more photo material.

For the rest – the trip through Romania was surprisingly quick and pleasant. There was some waiting and road works but nothing compared to previous years. Mind you, even on the ferry we had space to open our car doors. Progress is taking place!

We’re in Germany now, with Ali and Sonja, barely surviving the awful heat that’s hit Western Europe. On Wednesday evening we’ll drive the remaining 4-5hrs to Holland. Hopefully by then the weather would be a bit more normal for the region.

That’s about it for now. Just wanted to show off with the new car. You’ll hear more from us in two-three weeks time.

Floods? Killings? Famine? Theft? Plenty of idiotic behavior? Lies? Life is full of stuff that take the words out of your mouth but not for a happy reason. The question I’ve been asking myself lately is “How do you get past that?” It surely can’t be by looking at the world around, cause at best you can turn to nature… and see it full of… well, today it’s mostly full of oil. Tomorrow it might be something else. The point is – rarely are you able to see the beauty crafted by the hands of God and be encouraged by it. It’s like mankind got its hands on a bucket of sh… O.K., poop and thought it was time to paint straight on top of the canvas, cause see – it wasn’t good enough. Whatever we try to improve on our own we mess up. Badly.

Maybe it’s my poor vocabulary, maybe it’s just cause I’m tired, but right now I can think of a whole bunch of phrases that basically express the meaning of “screw up” (not to mention the single word expressions), while I can only think of a couple that express the opposite. Funny, huh? Anyhow…

The question is: How do you get past that? How do you keep on living in the midst of all that’s being painted with an unpleasant substance? When you see injustice – what do you do? Or do you not see this… you keep your eyes closed? What do you see when you close your eyes? I, being myself, can’t close my eyes. It was all fine till the point when I realized I can’t change it all… actually, I can’t change almost anything. Now the stuff I see bothers me so much, I can barely stand it.

I’ve been telling myself “don’t seek justice, this is God’s job.” It does help most of the time. I needed something more, however, and happily I got a reminder tonight. For a brief moment (an attosecond, perhaps) I closed my eyes and saw…  something that’s worth closing your eyes and seeing.

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!

- Revelation 5:11-13, NIV

I can’t keep my eyes closed, but I’m looking forward to a day when open they will see this same image.

Interestingly enough, if you were to ask a Bulgarian “How’s life?”, he’d say – “Life? Life’s no life at all!”. Ask your average Western-European – life will actually sound like life. Go to the city and compare it with the village… It’s unlikely that “similar” is how you’ll describe the experience.

I was in the village just the other day. It’s good that I drove there because the gradual change of environment and constantly decreasing quality of the road helped me adjust. If I were to fly there it’d be quite a shock, I’m sure.

City people who complain about life ought to be sent to the village. Life is life. Depending on where you live.

The same seems to be valid for justice these days. You look around you and you see so much of the opposite – tons of people corrupted by power, many others living under the impression they’re some sort of kings… When at the end, we all get hungry, we all get thirsty. The only difference is that some are hungry for longer than others. The life of some is more of a life than this of others…

A few days ago a woman wanted to jump off a bridge in Sofia because she owned 500 bucks and couldn’t pay them back. Today I read that a family of three burned in their own house a day before the 14th birthday of the child. Supposedly it was a suicide because of the poverty they lived in. The other day I read about a policeman who was caught selling drugs while on the job. And a week ago I read about a guy who killed a female pedestrian with his Porsche, driving 120km/h where 60km/h was allowed. His sentence – 18months probation. Life does have a price. Depending on where you live.

I mostly try to not think about injustice. I’m under the impression that this is how most of us deal with it… Otherwise, I imagine, it’d be really hard to laugh at funny movies or buy that extra pair of fashionable clothing. Yet, I wonder if this really is the way to go. It gets even harder when you try to fix things up to only see them torn down by someone else the next day. I’m starting to grow tired and weary from all this and I wonder what the next level will be. Things are easier to ignore when you’re younger, but oddly enough – things are considerably harder to fix when you grow older. And since we can’t stop time – what do we do when it’s hard to ignore things but we’re mostly unable to change them?

Life… only if it didn’t depend on where you live!

What’s with the end of the world?! Well, it appears that a bunch of people got tired of Facebook’s privacy policy modifications and started closing down their accounts. In several months, I foresee a world-wide crisis over this issue, which may or may not result in something. All in all, the dogs are barking but the caravan moves on. Meanwhile, those who care for their sanity should do a reality check: if one were able to survive without a single web-site 5 years ago, chances are (pretty high, mind you!) that the same is possible today. People give up meat and live on just fine, for crying out loud! (apologies to any vegetarians reading this, no offense intended)

Now, to a more meaningful topic – Jerome Klapka Jerome and his masterpiece of brutal comedy Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which by the way you could download freely in various formats (epub, pdf, kindle, etc.) from feedbooks.com – a great source for public domain classics. Anyway, back to the book… I’ve read it in Bulgarian way back when I was a kid. My father used to laugh so much over it, I couldn’t help but try and find out why. Reading it in English now – it’s only funnier. I highly recommend it if you’ve never came across it so far. Here’s a couple of quotes to sparkle your interest:

“George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two…”

“I don’t know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man’s life – the priceless moments that will never come back to him again – being wasted in mere brutish sleep. There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of time; his valuable life…”