A lot of smart people will tell you that the way to accomplish a daunting task you have set your mind on, be it writing a book, finishing a redesign of your website, running a marathon or changing some aspect of your life, is to keep your eyes on the goal and take it one step at the time.
Humans are driven by emotions, and the feeling that nothing is being accomplished is one of the nastiest moral-breakers of all. Especially if you look ahead at something that requires months or years of effort. The trick of getting around this is to split the humongous task we have before us into smaller tasks and take it one step at the time.
This is nothing new, all project management tecniques work with some sort of a milestone system, very smart people like Tom Peters make a great case about how milestones can be used.
However, the best example I have ever seen of how milestones can be a life-saver, literally, is the movie Touching the Void, as Imdb puts it “The true story of two climbers and their perilous journey up the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985″. Besides the amazing story and will of the two look at the movie from the point of view of milestones. One of them measured his milestones in meters, as he inched down from the mountain.
Same happens in a marathon, you set your mind to get to the next bend, one more kilometer, a few more steps. If you think that you still have 30km to go, you have the real chance of your moral letting you down. In the same time, you need to know why you are running one more kilometer, and that is to be closer to the finish.
For me the story in Touching the Void is the best, real-life example of milestones used to get an unthinkably difficult task finished.
There are some things that need to be seen to be believed or understood. For sure such a place is New York. As someone who spent his life in Europe, out of which around 5 years in Russia and the Ukraine, understanding how a city like New York can even function is tough. The amount of people going there and back, the relative small surface of the city, which gives the incredible density, the noise, the trucks. It is truly the city that never sleeps.
It’s hard to describe after seeing it for the first time so I’ll just shamelessly use a comparison I’ve heard which said that New York is like a big maze, you run around blindly without having the need to exit it, the high buildings are like walls and you can only see what’s in front, left or right. It’s the perfect place to disappear in the crowd.
So, if you ask me to describe New York, as I see it, I’ll just say – It’s like a giant maze for people in search of something. It is also amazing. If you never been there and have the chance to see it, DO IT. You might like it, you might not, but you will be impressed in a way or another, trust me on this.
This article is part of a short series about the U.S. through my eyes, a first time visitor.
Have you ever wondered why some people choose to push themselves to the very limit to climb a mountain, to risk everything to conquer a vertical rock face, to force their bodies to the very limit of human endurance in Iron Man competitions? If yes, you probably asked some of those persons – “But why”? And they told you something along the lines of  “For the feeling you get when you reach the summit, when you finish the race and because I can”? Well, I did, I also got the same answer and didn’t get it. “Because I can”, what kind of answer is that? And what feeling? I’ve tried, thanks to my brother, rock climbing and mounteneering but didn’t quite get the trhill. Rock climbing is not for me. However, thanks to the same crazy brother I got to take part in a mountain bike competition last week and I tell you, when I’ve crossed that finish line I got it! I finally did. Dead tired but I felt the rush of adrenaline or whatever that was. I felt that I did it because I could, I felt strong and I wanted more. And I challenge everybody to keep trying and do things that are interesting and a little crazy until, at least once in their lifetime, will get the rush and will get it, will understand why Everest was conquered and why people choose to run Iron Man triathlons. Go and search and do it!
I wanted to give this post a philosophical spin but it kind of sucked, so Ctrl + A + Del and back again. No philosophical bull crap. One mention, though. You will see that all top five places are more or less related to nature. Although I’ve seen beautiful cities, about some I talk here, churches, buildings, these rarely impress me as much as a beautiful view. I like two things about traveling – the places and the people, with their habits (which includes food, mmmmm). Churches and other piles of brick, mortar and concrete – second best.
So, without farther ado, I give you my top five, as these are today, the 14th of Aril 2009
There is something different about Istria, it’s different from the south of Croatia, Dalmatia (see nr 3), it just feels less wild. There are some beautiful places there, but more populated. I’ve see some of the most incredible cities, the likes of Rovinj. However, the one that really impressed me was a small city/village that looked like something from Dungeons & Dragons. All stone houses, off the bitten track and at 11 in the morning, on a weekday the most important thing one of the inhabitants had to do is wash the two stone steps in front of his house with a toothbrush, while a few of the other inhabitants were chilling at a nearby cafe. And of course, everybody was staring at you wondering what the hell you were looking for. When you see this, you know you’ve hit the jackpot. Unfortunately neither me nor Adrian can remember the name of the place. But anyway, beautiful seaside and with cities that look like Rovinj and with names like Pula, you can be sure it’s a good place to be. I surely enjoyed it.
The Alps are fantastic. If you live in Europe, you have no excuse not to go at least once and see them. In the winter they turn into this giant playground, where you can ski, snowboard, whatever, all day long. Patscherkofel is very close to Inssbruck. The winter Olympics of 1964 and 1976 were held here. You can take a damn bus from the center of the city and be and the ski lift in 20 minutes. Beat that Bucharest! Besides the incredible scenery and perfect slopes and great service and the fact that you can take the bus from the city and the great landlords we had and the good food and the great weather and so on, Patscherkofel gets a top 5 because it was my first contact with skiing outside Romania. For Miha and Gabi it was the first contact with ski. So top 5, definitively, top 1, not yet, read on.
Istria is one thing, Dalmatia is another. I don’t know what’s with the rednecks and the south but it seems wherever you go, when you go south you find more of them and Croatia is not an exception. It seems to me that people here are a tiny bit less friendly then in the north, but who gives a damn? This Croatian dudes say that the sunset over the Adriatic is the most beautiful in the world and they are ready to produce scientific facts proving that the atmospheric conditions are unique and bla bla bla… I don’t give a damn about their charts, but the sunset is beautiful, it’s more than that, it’s spectacular. The see is incredible too. It’s like a big, beautiful, clear, salty, warm, fish inhabited, calm lake. And the sun… the sun just burns everything and makes everything white, even the rocks. There are more rocks than plants there, but if you like it, it’s spectacular too. And Pag, a big island, is also spectacular. I thing that’s you can best describe it with these words: hot, rocky, windy, spectacular.
This picture was taken very early in the morning, don’t even know the year, very close to Omu. On the previous day Adrian and me climbed for the best part of the day to get there. It gets second best for the sheer feeling of a job well done I had then, for the beauty of the mountains and for all the beautiful things I saw while getting there. Adrian gets the credit for dragging my ass all the way to the top. I get bonus points for being stubborn. It gets second place because in my mind Omu’ symbolizes Bucegi, and these are the mountains I see most often and love.
Can I say spectacular? Yes I can and yes I have to! It has to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen so far. Me and the usual suspect, Adrian went for a short 3 day canoeing trip to Algonquin while we were visiting Frank and Denis in Canada, Toronto. This was last year, august 2008. The whole canoeing thing came to us, and especially to Adrian after we saw one of Ray Mears episodes, when he was building his own canoe and talking about the voyageur. And it was all happening, yes, you guest it, in Canada. After some Googling Adrian found these guys, Voyageur Quest and we booked a canoe trip with them. Must say, Adrian, being the hard core, lone wolf, experienced mountaineer her is and me being the usual cynical asshole we were a little skeptical about this whole organised trip. But was it worth! Oh boy! Never mind the organisation of things, which was very good, but the view…. Those who have never been in a canoe, do it! Right now! It’s not a boat, it doesn’t squeak, it just slides through the water, silently. It’s just something different from anything else. It’s not waking, it’s not riding a bike, it just is nice. And Algonquin is spectacular. You should see the sky at night. The nature is also different from what I’ve seen back home and in Europe so far, it has a different feel which I can’t really explain. Because of the whole canoeing experience, combined with the astonishing scenery and the sheer joy of the trip beating our most optimistic expectations, Algonquin gets the top spot, for now .
It was hard to sort through the places I’ve been and I must say, I cheated a little bit. Austria is very fresh in my memory as only recently I’ve been there. And when I had to choose between two places I chose the one for which I had pictures. There are places that I’ve seen before the miracle of digital photography hit the world. Up there, in the top 10 there are many places from my beloved country, like Sibiu, Sighisoara, many mountain picks. A big role in choosing the top 5 played the emotions associated with it. Maybe one of my recent ski trips to Sinaia was spectacular, but it was just a weekend getaway.
Hope you enjoyed this and let me know what are your favorite places and why. Don’t be shy!
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