Le temps passe, mais de temps en temps
il ne semble pas se bouger.
La nuit devient jour et le jour devient nuit,
des saisons changent.
Le monde tourne et tourne,
des jours passent comme il faut.
Rien semble changé, mais
ceci n’est pas vraie.
La vie semble monotone,
mais la vie n’est pas montone,
car elle bouge comme la terre,
comme des jour, des nuit et dess saisons qui passent.
Utrecht-‘s-Hertogenbosch, le 27 mars 2010
OK, for some people it would be strange to read now a blog from me about a car. yes it is true, I am writing about a car now, but not a normal car,no it is the car of my dreams, it’s a Zastava Fičo or “Fića”. A picture of a “Fića” you see at the right (photo taken in Karljevo-Serbia, august 2008).
The Zastava 750 (Застава 750) was a car made by the Yugoslavian car maker Zavod Crvena Zastava. It was a version of the Fiat 600 made under license from 1965 (see more info here) and it is a car of my dreams.
Soon it is my birthday, so…. I think the car is quite cool, I think I can even park it here at home in the box where we stall our bikes…I love this car, because it looks is so cute….
Here a Fičo /”Fića” movie:
Last three months I heard too many complaints about the weather, mostly these complaints contained that it was too cold and/or there was too much snow. It was even in the Dutch media where the complaints were heard, last Saturday the Dutch news did announced that the spring started, no really? That‘s normally the case when it is March and the sun is above the equator around 20-21th March, that is going on since ages…..
Yesterday a news item was about that the temperatures are getting better and “that we need it “. Personally I find it a bit too ridiculous, because my opinion is that we cannot change the weather, so why complain about it? Yes it was cold and yes there was snow, so what? You have to deal with, we are not (yet?) able to change the weather, so adapt to the circumstances and try to make the best of it and stop complaining, because you only harm yourself and your environment with it. You give negative energy and especially in dark, cold days you can use a bit of positive energy….
The cold, dark days with snow had also their charm, so here some pictures of the nice winter we had, just to remind you how beautiful it can also be…… 
Ok and now spring can start
I am importing my old blog into this nice wordpress setting, so if you see sometimes an old blog above then you know I am busy with it !
Have a nice evening!
Sometimes you get attention of a story by coincidence and the story of Vesna Vulović is such a story. I am reading a book about Ratko Mladić now and in this book I was reading about a bomb attack on an airplane of JAT (Jugoslovenski aerotransport = Yugoslavian air transport). So I wanted to know more about it and searched on the internet.
It was the 26th January 1972 when a bomb exploded on JAT flight 367, which was on his way from Stockholm to Belgrade. A member of the Croatian National Resistance (Ustasha) terrorist group claimed the bomb attack a day later.
The aircraft piloted by captain Ludvig Razdrih broke into two pieces, spun out of control, crashing near the village of Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). 27 of 28 of those on board were killed upon ground impact; but a crew member, Vesna Vulović, survived.
She holds now the world record, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 meters (33,333 feet). It is an amazing story and first I could not believe it, but it is true. Later Vesna became a national hero of Yugoslavia, but when Yugoslavia disintegrated, she protested against the Milošević-regime and lost her job by JAT.
If you want to read an interesting interview with Vesna Vulović then you can click here.
More information can be found on her’s Vesna Vulović wikipedia page ( I copied some sentences of wikipedia into this blog)
B2B, will say nothing to you if you are not an member of “les Anciens d’AEGEE-Europe”. Les Anciens is the alumni organization of AEGEE, the European student organization, where I was an active member off during my student period. The Back to Brussels (B2B) is a yearly returning event and it is always nice!
So this weekend I spent a really nice weekend with old friends in Brussels and I really enjoyed it. Friday we had a nice party after we went to an Ethiopian restaurant. Saturday we had a chocolate tour through Brussels (part of the profit made by the organization who organized it was for the homeless people) and then we went to the AEGEE-headoffice for the traditional reception. Yes it was late when I returned home.
Sunday morning (or better say afternoon) we had a brunch and then it was time to go back, I had the chance I could drive with somebody. All by all I have to say that I spent a very nice weekend in Brussels and that I have a lot of new ideas, such as organizing a New Year event in the Netherlands for les Anciens. Another one will be “Les Anciens go to Vladivostok”, a dream will become true, but for that we have to wait 1 ½ year…..It is good to dream, but it is even better when you can make your dreams reality……
I made the picture at the right in the library of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. In the library Yugoslavia (=in Dutch: Joegoslavië) still exist …
But if you go to look in the bookshelf over there then Yugoslavia does not exist anymore, because there are no books anymore with the label “Joegoslavië”…
The books have now labels like Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia,Montenegro and Macedonia (Kosovo is not yet spotted)….Very confusing for me when i want to search specific liturature….Maybe it is better to have Yugoslavia back that is much easier for me to search 