Vacation!!!

Finally - VACATION!

Only those who work like me, seven days a week, non stop, brutal working hours (often from morning to late after midnight) can understand and appreciate what it means to wake up each morning with a time on my hands and no obligations looming on horizon, no place I have to be at exact time, no inventories, price changes, standing all day long or dealing with customers who would like to buy something "inexpensive" (read: 1 euro,if possible) . The only thing that surprised me somewhat was the fact that I couldn't wait to escape to my countryside retreat and found it covered with snow. At the end of the March! So much for the Spring, oh well.

Not that anybody would bother me anyway, but I had locked all the doors and pulled down the shades (my friends joke its because I live in windowless tiny ship cabins all these years) and protected from storm outside, I watch my documentaries, listen ancient croatian schlager music (or occasional classical piece)  going trough my book collection and sitting by the fire while something is cooking on the stove.

The first thing I selected to watch (or re-watch) was a DVD Box titled "The Movies Begin" which is a five-volume boxed set with very,very early black & white movies I ordered online many years ago. It is a wonderful document about very early beginnings of cinema with lots of goodies thrown in it, of course they are all silent (with added piano music or occasional comment) and the one I always return to is of course masterpiece "A Trip to the Moon" ("Le Voyage dans la Lune") by early french film-makers, brothers Méliès. It was probably inspired by Jules Verne and a huge success in its time, I think its actually the first (saved) "movie" instead of just a little snippets we have at the beginning of the box. The whole box set is so rich, that I usually enjoy it only in the little doses (I must also add wonderful "The Great Train Robbery") but other DVDs from the box deserve re-watching again as they are divided between "Experimentation and Discovery", "The European Pioneers", "The Magic of Méliès" and "Comedy,Spectacle and New Horizons". Some of this ancient cinema pieces are very short, other last a little longer - there is occasional piece like documentary-like "Moscow in the snow" that looks like something from a dream and I watch it fascinated. Real time machine, with long gone streets and faces looking back at me from the movie camera.

Back to documentaries - instead of checking any of the current blockbusters, I decided to enjoy what I like most and selected classic 1970s "Life on Earth" by David Attenborough. Of course in the meantime documentaries had changed and today everything moves faster & has computer animation - it is in fact this old fashioned TV presentation that I enjoy so much and so far I had spend two wonderful evenings sitting next to a stove watching Attenborough climbing the rocks and standing with his feet on some corrals in the Pacific explaining what he holds in his hands. Probably I have seen it all as a child but this is the first time I have time to see it all as adult and enjoy the explanations (he is informative and intellectual without being patronizing) so in a way this weather has been good to me.