Lets start

Which was your best day so far? Was it your graduation day? Was it your last volleyball game your won. The last time you got a surprise from someone. Was it last year, last week or just simply just yesterday? As great as any of these days may have been at the time there are only one day that really qualifies and that is today. Today can be your best day so far it is up to us what we do with our day.

There will be moments in our life's which is being counted as our best days so far. If we add them together with every new things that comes along, such as our graduation day, summer break, a surprise from someone, our birthday, our children's birth, things we do together with our family, friends and everyone else. if we just add them together and at times when we look back we will see how much we have in our lifes to be happy for.

If we wake up in the morning believing this is going to be my best day so far then we have made a good beginning of the new day. There is only one day that is my best day so far and that is today. And i will add this new day of my best day so far to all of the others of my best day so far.
What we do with our day is up to us but it sure will give us so much more in return if we have a positive attitude towards everything. Its not going to be easy but it sure will make a huge different of our day by thinking this is my best day so far.


*Annika*

Each day have its worth. I have always foundet in myself a rule which one is never going to be changed and it is "you never will realise the dream you saw last night" and that for bad luck is more than true.
Maybe someone is born to have always pain and never a great time but human bin have written it by God and we can't change it.
My best day i haven't seen yet.

Well, My best day so far is the title of a book I read were the author talks about how he wakes up in the mornings thinking this is "my best day so far". It made me wonder if there is really such day. We all have our own definition of this thought " My best day so far".

I don't believe everyday to be my best day so far but some of the days I find something which brightens my day. It could just be a specific moment which consist in the daily work with my patients. The little girl with scoliosis who believes that when she wakes up her back will be straight again without the hump or the person I sit and hold in the hand to comfort him or her.
It could be the sparkling in the eyes of a child who just have learned how to cycle. It could be the moment when a sister, brother, parents or friends meet each other after a long time, the joy they feel. This is all moments that makes our days. But we all have our own definition believing what is our best day so far. Myself I can see glimps of such days from time to time but to say that everyday is "my best day so far"... I am not really there yet. But this sentence made me wonder what everyone else of you think of it. So please join in and share your thoughts of the sentence "My best day so far"

*Annika*

To a Poet

How did you catch my eye so suddenly,
Together with the wind, the flowers, the trees,
Together with the song, the river, the sea,
Together with hope, pain and laughter?
You caught my eye so suddenly
or were you there from the start?

by Ritu Petro

(from the volume Vargje të përfqluara, Tirana 1994, p.25. Translated by Robert Elsie)

Oh mountains of Albania

Oh mountains of Albania and you, oh trees so lofty,
Broad plains with allyour flowers, day and night I contemplate you,
You highlands so exquisite, and you streams and rivers sparkling,
Oh peaks and promontories, and you slopes, cliffs, verdant forests,
Of the herds and flocks I'll sing ut which you hold and which you nourish.
Oh you blessed, sacred places, you inspire and delight me!

You Albania, give me honour, and you name me as Albanian,
And my heart you have replenished bith with ardour and desire.
Albania! Oh my mother! Though in exile I am longing,
My heart has ne'er forgotten all the love you've given to me.

When a lambkin from its flock strays and does hear its mother's bleating,
Once or twice it will ive answer and will flee in her direction,
Were others, twenty-thirty fold, to block its path and scare it,
Despite its fright it would return, pass through them likean arrow,
Thus my wretched heart in exile, here in foreign land awaiting,
Hastens back umto that country, swift advancing and in longing.

Where cold spring water bubbles and cool breezes blow in summer,
Where the foliage grows so fairly, where the flowers have such fragrance,
Where the shepherd plays his reed pipe to the grazing of the cattle,
Where the goats, their bells resounding, rest, yes 'tis the land I long for.

by Naim Frashëri

(excerpt from O Malet' e Shqipërisë, from the volume Bagëti e bujqësija, Bucharest 1886. Translated by Robert Elise)

Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) is nowdays widely considered to be the national poet of Albania. He spent his childhood in the village of Frashër where he no doubt began learning Turksih, Persian and Arabic and where, at the Bektashi monastery, he was imbued with the spiritual traditions of the orient. In Janina (Ioannina), Naim Frashëri attended the Zosimaia secondary school which provided him with the basics of a classical education along Western lines. Here he was to study Ancient and Modern Greek, Frech and Italian and in addition, was to be tutored privately in oriental languages. As he grew in knowledge, so did his affinity for his antheistic Bektashi religion, for the poets of classical Persia and for the Age of Enlightenment. His education in Janina made of him a prime example of a late nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual equally at home in both cultures, the Western and the Orintal.

Naim Frashëri is the author of a total of twenty-two works: four in Turkish, one in Perisan, two in Greek and fifteen in Albanian. In view of his sensitive position as director of the board of cecsorship of the Turkish Ministry of Education in which capacity he was occasionally able to circumvent the ban on Albanian-language books and publications imposed by the Sublime Porte, Naim Frashëri deemed it wise not to use his full name in many of his publications, and printed only a "by N.H.," "by N.H.F." or"by N.F."

The poetry collections for which Naim Frashëri is primarily remembered were also published in Bucharest. Bagëti e bujqësija, Bucharest 1886 (Bucolics and Georgics). is a 450-line pastoral poem reminiscent of Vergil (70-19 B.C:) and laden with the imagery f his mountain homeland. It proved extremely popular amonf Frash'ëri's compatriots and was smuggled into Albania in caravans. In it, the poet expresses his dissatisfaction with city life, no doubt from actual experience on the bustling banks of the Bosphorus and idealizes the distant and longed-for Albanian countryside. It is a hymn to nature in the traditions of European romanticism and yet one of earthy substance in which like Hesiod (8th cent. B.C.) in his "Work and Days", Vergil in his "Georgics" or the great eithteenth-century Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780) in his somewhat less idyllic "Deasons", Naim Frashëri sings of the herds and flocks and of the joys and toil of agriculure and rural life. In the collection Luletë e verësë, Bucharest 1890 (The flowers of spring), he also paid tribute to the beauties of the Albanian countryside in the twenty-three poems of rich sonority. here the pantheistic philosophy of his bektashi upbringing and the strong influence of the Persian classics are coupled harmoniously with patriotic idealism- literary creativity serving the goal f national identity. The verse collection Parajsa dhe fjala fluturake, Bucharest 1894 (Paradise and winged words), published together with the spiritual essays Mësime, Bucharest 1894 (Teachings), evinced his affinities for the heroes of the past and for the spiritual traditions of the Orient, in particular for the Persian mystics. Istori' e Skenderbeut, Bucharest 1898 (History of Scanderbeg), is an historical epic of 11,500 verses which Frashëri must have written about 1895 in his last creative years and one which the author himself regarded as his masterpiece. it also constituted the poet's political legacy. Another work of similar proportions published the same year as the "History of Scanderbeg", is Qerbelaja, Bcharest 1898 (Kerbela), a Shi'ite religious epic in twenty-five cantos, which deals with the Battle of Kerbela in Iraq in 680 A.D. in which Husein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, was killed. In contrast to the "History of Scanderbeg" , Qerelaja is a narrative epic devoid of a hero or principla character. Many elements of Naim Frashëri's religiosity are also present in Naim Frashëri's Fletore e Bektashinjet, Bucharest 1896 (Bektashi notebook), which is of major significance for our knowledge of the pantheistic but secretive Bektashi sect of dervishes. Frashëri hoped that liberal Bektashi beliefs to which ha had been attached since his childhood in Frashër would one day take hold as the new religion of all Albania. Since they had their roots both in the Muslim Koran and in the Christian Bible, they could promote unity among his religiously divided people. The Notebook contains and introductory profession of Bektashi faith and ten spiritual poems which provide a rare view into the beliefs of the sect which in the nineteenth century played an important
role in the survival of Albanian culture, in particular by the illegal distibution of Albanian books.

The significance of Naim Frashëri as a Rilindja poet and indeed as a "national poet" rests not so much upon his talents of literary expression nor on the artistic quality of his verse, but rather upon the sociopolitical, philosophical and religious messages it transmitted which were aimed above all at national awareness and i the Bektashi tradition at overcoming religious barriers within the country. His influence upon Albanian writers at the beginning of the twentieth century was enormous. many of his poems were set to music during his lifetime and were sung as folk songs. If one compares the state of Albanian literature before and after the arrival of Naim Frashëri, one becomes aware of the major role he played in transforming Albanian into a literary language of substantial refinement.

by Robert Elise.

Enjoy the reading

*Annika*

Ballad of the man the world did not know

Every morning he sent letters off to the whole world
With imaginary addresses and confusing messages
And on them he licked the stamps of his suffering
The man the world did not know.

He rose and bowed to present himself
With arms raised he cried out to his own idols
He loitered in train stations, anticipated friends who never came to see
The man the world did not now.

Every day at dawn he waited at the gate
For the postman to bring him replies
To his correspondence from someone in the far wide world
The man the world did not know.

Message after message, words and requests
Not a scrap of dust on his typewriter
Not even the spiders came to rest in the room
Of the man the world did not know.

And one day he stopped living, he had no more ink
His quill dried up, his typewriter fell silent
Who is this poor fellow? they said when they found him dead
The man the world did not know.

The funeral parlour buried him
And put on his grave a tombstone
Only one letter arrived at his address
The bill for the burial
Of the man the world did not know.

(Baladë për njeriun që nuk e njihte bota, from the volume Atleti i ëndrrave të bardha, Prishtina: Rilindja 1982, p. 17, translated by Robert Elise)

Balkan menu

Don't set the table, love
let's go out for dinner
We'll leave early
And come back late
Life here in Europe's changed
Come on, love let's go
Let's have some punch
At the Admiral Bar
And a coupe royale
At the Montreal sidewalk cafe
In Benny's pool room
We'll try a arom behind our backs
We'll have a cappuccino
At Marilyn's cafeteria
And a martini with olives at the Florida Club
Don't set the table, love
Let's go out for dinner
To the Miami Pizzeria
And have a pizza New Jersey
An escaloppe viennese at the Roma restaurant
And then go to Parma's
for a coupe macédonienne
And when it gets late
We'll go back home
To empty our bowels
In a Balkan latrine

By Eqrem Basha

[Meny ballkanik, from the volume Zogu i zi, Skopje; Flaka e vëllazërimit 1995, p. 31, translated by Robert Elise]

Eqrem Basha (b 1948) is among the most respected contemporary writers of Kosova in recent years. He was born in Dibra in the western Albanian-speaking region of what is now the Republic of macedonia, but his life and literary production are intimately linked to Kosova and its capital Prishtina, where he has lived and worked for the past three decades. it was in the early 1970's durong the only real years of freedom in Kosova, that Eqrem Basha moved to Prishtina to study language and litterature at the newly created Albanian-langauge university there. He later worked for Prishtina television as editor of the drama section, but was fired ofr political reasons during the Serb takeover of the media in 1989-1990. Basha is the author of eight volumes of innovative verse spanning the years from 1970 tp 1995, three volumes of short stories and numerous translations (in particular French literatur and drama). He is currently in the publishing industry in Prishtina. Eqrem Basha is an enigmatic poet. Perplexing, fascinating and difficult to classify in a literery sense, he succeeds in transmitting a certain mystique to the inquisitive reader. At one moment he seems cooly logical and shows an admirable ability to reason deductively and the next moment he is overcome by absurd flights of fancy into a surrealistic world where apparently nothing makes any sense. Basha has an urbane view of things and delights in the daily absirdities of life. Nothing could be more foreign to him than the inspiration many of his fellow poets derive from the rich folklore traditionsof the northern mountain tribes and verse of social commitment. His verse is light, colliquial and much less declamatoru than that of many of his predecessors.

(By Robert Elise)

Enjoy the reading

*Annika*

Eqrem Basha

Rita Petro (b. 1962) also known as Rita Filipi, was born in Tirana and studied Albanian language and literature at the University there from 1980-1984. She thereafter worked in the publishing industry in tirana. In 1993she did post-graduate studies at the University of Athens.

Petro's vesre, some of which was daringly erotic for post-Stalinist Albania, has appeared in three collections (published under the former married name Filipi): Vargje të përfolura(Defamed Verse), Tirana 1994; Shija e instinkit (The Taste of Instinct), Tirana 1998, and Këtu poshtë këndohet live (They're Singing Live Down Here), Tirana 2002.

(By Robert Elise)

Enjoy the reading

*Annika*

The last gate

I have flung open the gates
to my soul,
Only one I keep closed,
The last gate.
There linger the angels,
There loiter the devils.
If you approach the angels,
You will make me your slave,
If you approach the devils,
You will become my slave.

The last gate will remain closed.

By Rita Petro

[Porta e fundit from the volume Vargje të përfolura, Tirana 1994, p.5. translated by Robert Elise]

Do not demand any promises

Do not demand any promises,
Promises like keys can be lost,
Do not demand constant love,
Eternity and the shadows of death lurk nearby,
Never demand any unsaid words,
Words mean no more than objects.
Demand only that I change one moment
In your long life.

[from the volume Vargje të përfolura, Tirana 1994]

This love

This love
Has inflated my breast,
But there is little air around me.

This love
Has given me the heavens,
But my window is so small.

This love
Demands that i surrender my all
But the fear of sin
Is as old as the world itself.

Help me, oh God, to understand,
Does this love cut off the shackles
Or put them on?

[Kjo dashuri, from the volume Vargje të përfolura, Tirana 1994, p.26]

Sherock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. They put up their tent and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes his faithful friend.

Sherlock Holmes: Watson, look up at the sy and tell me what you see.
Watson replies: I see millions of stars.
Sherlock Holmes: What does that tell you?

Watson ponders for a minute and then replies: Astronomically speaking, it telss me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meterologically it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?

Sherlock Holmes is silent for a moment, then he replies:
Watson, are you being silly, someone has stolen our tent.

About basketball

Symptoms

The psychology instructor had just finished a lecture on mental health and had procceded to give an oral quiz to the freshman class speaking specifically about manic depression the instructor said:

How would you diagnose a patient who walks back and forth screaming at the top of his lungs one minute then sits in a chair weeping uncontrollably the next minute?

A young man in the rear of the room raised his hand and answered:

A basketball coach

Some people come into
our lives and
quickly go
Some stay awhile,
and leave
footprints on
our hearts,
And we are never,
ever the same.

As non albanian would I like to learn more about the culture, the food, what is typical for Kosova / Albania. Is there such a typical national dish you eat? What about music, folkdances and other culture things. what about authors besides Ismail Kadare.
What is the things you like to show people from out of Kosova and Albanian when they come to visit. Is there more to see besides the Marble cave in Gadimë.

I am sure that alll of us non Albanian speakers in the forum who works in Kosova or know someone who invited us to the forum would like to know more about the country and who is better to share and tell us about your country than all of you.

Annika everything is on the portal but also here some topics may be worth.
In the portal left corner line one there is menu and there are many links about Kosova and Albania by chosing favorite language 8) 8) 8) .
If you need further informations take a good room in a hight hotel pay it for me one pizza and two beers i will let you know some really wanderfull albanian traditions

Note:
This is typical for Kosovo.

Naki shkruajti:Annika everything is on the portal but also here some topics may be worth.
In the portal left corner line one there is menu and there are many links about Kosova and Albania by chosing favorite language 8) 8) 8) .
If you need further informations take a good room in a hight hotel pay it for me one pizza and two beers i will let you know some really wanderfull albanian traditions

Well Naki some of us do not speak albanian even if we try . most of the times its better to ask the people who lives in the country about things than reading just simply tourist information.

I am sure you can show me some "really wonderful" Albanian traditions

I am sure you can show me some "really wonderful" Albanian traditions

What this mean can you translate for me in Albanian please

What this mean can you translate for me in Albanian please [/quote]



My Albanian isn't good enough in translation... and I "pledge the fifth" ( No comment)

Well since we covered some of the traditional food in Kosova and Albania. Thank you Arla. Would you Arla or some of you others in the forum like to share some of your favorite recipes?

Well what is some of the things you would recommend me and others to visit in Kosova and Albania? I am confident that you have lots of things you would like to show your friends if they come to visit you. I would like to know from all of you who lives in Kosova and Albania. (I don't like to read tourist broschyrs).

Here is some information for you, Annika
Nowadays, Albania is a "work in progress' country. This is more evident in the large cities, mainly in Tirana and Durres. Tirana has probably changed 65 -70% of its 1988's infrastructure.The same may be true for the Durres city.
The other cities are changing to a slower rate. Saranda may be an exception.
Unfortunately, Shkodra, despite its very rich cultural and historical heritage remains one of the poorest and dangerous cities in Albania.
South of Albania has probably more to explore than the rest of Albania combined. Cities of Berat and Gjirokastra are very pleasant and very rich in historical monuments. Butrint, in the far south is the jewel of the Albanian archeology. Saranda is the top vacation destination for the Albanians.
However, you don't want to miss the Albanian Riviera, which includes Dhermi, Himara and Vlora.
Infrastructure is changing and once you set foot in Tirana (which you may have to visit anyway, the only international airport is there),
you will see the fast pace of which the city is growing.
Weather on October/November can be upredictable, unless you stay in the southern tip of Albania.
In Tirana, you never know, it may shine or it may rain. However, it is not cold. The coldest months are January and February, where the temperature in Tirana may drop in negative values(celcius)
Saranda, Vlora have a more stable and comfortable weather