sereja's prepaid post

today is the birthday of one of my best friends, sereja. sereja son - sereja dreams. that's what we used to call him and still do. and that is absolutely true - sereja is a dream friend. a dream friend and an even better person. he can make the dullest day so interesting with his bright smile and hilarious sense of humor. he is simply awesome to have around.

sonchik, today on your birthday, i just can't make my mind whom should i be more thankful to. to you for being such a great friend or to God for blessing me with a friend like you.


happy birthday!

for my friend sali

everything french i associate with my friend sali. every french view i see, every frenchman i meet, every french melody i hear. i also associate french melodies with autumn, the season of 'cozy days'. days, when you sit with a warm blanket, hot chocolate and nice book.

this all is sali for me - coziness, warmth and chocolate smell. she is there for me in the most rainy days and cold days, she is there for me in the lonely days, making them so bright and warm. she is there to share all my emotions about books, movies, paintings - all the artistic things in my life.

these songs are also sali for me. and i want to share them with her in the first place and of course with you.

autumn soundrack

i'm sharing with you my autumn soundtrack, this is what i'm listening to these nice september days.
and what is your song of the season?

night views

maybe i won't be talking much in this post. i will just show you some pictures by my bachi and leave the story telling to your eyes.

 

little streets

i have some more stories about croatia to share with you. today its the small narrow streets i want to tell you about. i have always loved such streets, where with your arms open you can touch both sides of them. these type of streets are in french antibes, in tuscany, in many small european towns i've been to, but nowhere they look as fairy-taley as here.

in dubrovnik's old city some streets are composed of only stairs. you look up and see a lady hanging out wet tshirts and lingerie to dry from her window, look to the left, see the light and hear the music coming out of an old balcony, look to the right and here they are - happy people sitting in their garden laughing. 

when i was walking in the streets of old dubrovnik it felt like i was in one big decoration to a movie from last centuries. i can imagine women in long dresses walking here, holding umbrellas, and children in brown shorts and braces playing football, men with walking sticks and black cloaks at night.

the biggest street in the old city has a pavement which is centuries old, it shines all over, can you imagine how many people's feet walked on there? so many, so many, that it is as slippery as ice rink in some places.

i think i could live in such a city, because it has everything i need for the happiness - beauty, sea, nice people, great food, music and sun.

one nice croatian dinner

i'm starting my croatian posts not with the first day and first emotions about this country, which are extremely positive, but i'm starting my story with a fantastic restaurant, which perhaps is more the real croatia than any other places that million tourists visit.

bachis sister, khato, has two amazing friends, sabina and azra, who live in zagreb and who came to visit us in dubrovnik for several days. by saying that, i am not quite actually right, perhaps we came to visit them, because they spent these days taking us around and everywhere and showing us some great places which we would never find by ourselves using a tourist guide. among those places was this restaurant which i want to tell you about today. this place is not known to any tourists and only people who live in dubrovnik know about it.

i can't even call it restaurant actually, it was a family house and felt like we were sitting in the garden of a very nice family and having great time. actually i don't even remember the name of the place. but i can still remember the taste of the food, the lemonade and desserts we were treated with.

almost everything on the menu is local, homemade and home-grown. the tomatoes, grapes, wine, lemonade, prosciutto, cheese, apple pies and of course the great lamb and potato grill, which takes 4 hours to be ready.

 

the taste of the lamb and potatoes grilled together is something beyond my words. actually it was something beyond the words of all of us: so many happy faces all together were speaking for themselves.

and i want to thank aya and sabina for the fantastic evening, with great food, nice memories, wine, jokes and lots and lots of laughs.

search for happiness

Back from the holiday with lots of nice emotions and feelings, which i want to share with you. Before i do this in my tomorrow's post (since I don't have any pictures with me now), i will tell you about the book I read during my autumn holiday break. This is a book by Francois Lelord - Hector and the search for Happiness. I think it's a perfect holiday reading, because pages flow nicely and easily and the emotions that come are just the same. 

'Hector...' tells you about the rules of happiness based on the authors personal experience. It sometimes reminds you a little bit of Alchemist, Little Prince and all the wise but simple books which I adore. Out of 21 rules of Happiness that Hector came up with, I love these ones the most:

Happiness often comes when least expected.
Happiness is being with people you love.
Making comparisons can spoil your happiness 

Happiness is a certain way of seeing things.

And with the last one I agree very very much. If you don't see things in a happy way, even a perfect evening with friends on a seaside and live music may not be something special for the ones whose glass is always half-empty.

PS. I truly recommend this book and this is what I want to read next:

my post about autumn too

with the start of autumn, 90% of my friends on social networks dedicated a status, a post or at least a comment to that subject. yes, summer is over, and yes, i am happy with that.

there are two reasons for my optimism:

everyone is back in the city, and its not just me boiling in tbilisi and looking for someone to have lunch with. i can now have lunches with different people everyday :)

and

i'm going on my long-awaited holiday in croatia, though with not that hot temperature, but definitely with sun, fun and my bachi in it.