Don’t panic, it’s not a spaceship

Vitanje, Slovenia. In the middle of nowhere’s nowhere. The country where the last inscription of this size reads Tito.

First they built a space centre, more precisely The Cultural Center of European Space Technologies (the round spaceship in the middle of the village). And just recently a familiar friendly white inscription was added, in English, to be seen from space. One assumes then that whoever finds Vitanje from above has already mastered English.

Until I visit the space to make sure of visibility and take a photo, the one below was taken off the line. Thank you, Rok.

ADD-IT: And since some family members have opinionated that this only makes sense to the initiated, let me tell you that the answer lies in the trilogy in five books Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. And that it is 42.

Photo: Rok Deželak

Source: http://val202.rtvslo.si/2015/07/vitanje/

Sweet towel of my youth

Just last week mom held her first Hitchhiker book, read a bit and proclaimed: “This man is crazy!”

Today is the Towel Day, dedicated to Douglas Adams and his Guide. It makes so much sense that there is really nothing one can say to oppose it: If you carry a towel, chances are great that you have all the rest with you too. (And I’m not googling the matching original part from the book on purpose because writing from memory is fun.)

However, lest we forget and there are less and less of those who choose to remember, today is also – and has been for longer – the Day of Youth, one of the biggest holidays in ex-Yugoslavia, Tito’s birthday (not really, it was just celebrated then).

Red star in Porto Ercole

Lest we forget: memorials in Jewish quarter in Roma

Photo: Zedd (both of bestia) & MM

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy