This year I had the chance to visit a very beautiful part of Bulgaria, that is the southwest area of the country around the cities of Goce Delchev and Blagoevgrad. There are a few places that are worth visiting like the gigantic house in Melnik (the smallest town in Bulgaria) built a few centuries ago, which has a winery 200 metres deep in the earth ground. The region is well-known for its great wines and I had the chance to taste one such that had a unique smell. Other places worth going to are Kovachevci and Leshten, ethnographic complexes similar to Etar. Pictures can be seen here.
But what stood out amongst the places I visited was the Dancing Bears Park in Belitsa. This project is sponsored by the Austria-founded international organization ‘Vier Pfoten’ (‘Four Paws’ in English) and Brigitte Bardot’s organization, which help many countries protect the rights and prevent physical and mental abuse of animals. Some of you are probably familiar with the stuff ‘Four Paws’ deals with if you are a regular watcher of Animal Planet like me. And right after I saw ‘Four Paws’ on a sign, I knew this was a key project for some serious issue.
A few years ago it wasn’t uncommon to see gypsies wandering around the downtown areas of cities, even capitals like Sofia, with their rebecks and bears or monkeys. People did not usually pay attention to that and could never imagine what these bears had gone through. You could see a ring hooked to the bear’s nose and that was really terrifying, but still nobody ever knew how much these animals had been and continued to be abused by their ‘master’.
So what is a dancing bear you ask? And the answer is simple – a bear which dances. But is it really dancing and how were they trained?
These monsters, which I previously called ‘masters’, smeared vaseline on the bears’ feet, put the animals on very hot iron and started playing on their rebecks. This way these monsters used to leave a psychological trace in the bears’ minds so whenever they start playing their instruments, the bear starts moving, which resembles dancing. They also took all the bears’ nails and teeth out using alcohol and tongs and they even castrated them so the animals are less aggressive and more controllable. In addition, the monsters pierced their noses, which is an extremely sensitive area (again, more controllable), with an awl. Malnutrition and other physical and mental abuse are the least these innocent bears suffered. This is considered barbarity in the 21st century. To be honest, this was the first project in years in Bulgaria that I think of as pure charity and unselfish help. But what surprises me is that when these bears were taken away from their so-called masters, the foundation or the country paid in order to take the bears instead of confiscating the animals, which leads me to believe that these monsters were never prosecuted and justice was never sought.
At the time of this writing, all dancing bears in Bulgaria have been captured and saved from their miserable being. There are currently 25 bears in the park, all of which are castrated and living the rest of their lives. A bear from Serbia recently arrived in the park and many more are to come and live there from other countries like Russia, Ukraine, and Serbia. The park is fully equipped with the latest technology and facilities. It has its own medical and dental centre, which take care of the bears. Regular visits from Austrian and other doctors from around the country happen on an annual basis. Some of the bears are slowly trying to accustom to normal life, learning simple things like digging or finding food, but the cruelty of people will never fade away. You can help and learn more about this and other projects of ‘Four Paws’ at Vier Pfoten.
Okay. After I took off from San Fran, I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia. I was about to spend a week at my aunt’s and uncle’s house. I was very eager to visit them and my cousins because I hadn’t seen them for a long time.
Atlanta is very beautiful from above. There were millions of lights across the whole city, which is spread across a vast territory. Many of you most probably know that Atlanta’s Airport is among the biggest in the world and it took us like half an hour on the ground to reach our gate :) traffic jam of planes
I had a whole programme scheduled for the week and I have to say it was a very exciting week. I got to visit some very interesting places – Georgia Aquarium – the biggest aquarium in the world, CNN, the High Museum of Art presenting paintings from the Renaissance and special guest exhibition of figures and objects from the army of the First Emperor of China, and others.
The Climate
The climate there was more or less the same as in Bulgaria. I was quite in a shock when I first arrived, coming from a city where it was 20 degrees centigrade the whole time to a city with temperatures below the zero. There is a much higher humidity there compared to my own city, but you get to feel that usually in the summer.
The City
Atlanta is another large city and there are multiple business areas. Some of the biggest companies have their headquarters there, and one I am sure you know about – Coca-Cola. Yeah, you can also go to the Coca-Cola museum, spend $30 and drink e few different types of Cola from different locations in the world, but I left that for my next visit.
The downtown is much less crowded and buzzing compared to San Francisco. It’s currently being reconstructed and will have a slightly different look from the one from the Olympic Games in ’86. Some very beautiful, modern buildings can be spotted when walking around the city.
I noticed no traffic jams whatsoever so my first impressions were that Atlanta is a great place to live in. Especially if you live in those peaceful and quite residential areas located among the forest.
To be honest, I did not see as many nationalities as I saw in San Fran, but that’s understandable considering the fact that Atlanta is not the place to find tons of gold :) I am not sure if this is a good thing, but I really enjoyed being among people from different parts of the world and would definitely like to live in such place.
Georgia Aquarium
I had heard a lot of nice things about the aquarium and I was very lucky to visit it. As I mentioned earlier, this is the biggest aquarium in the world and has thousands of species ranging from Beluga whales to saw-fish, and South American piranhas. The aquarium is divided into several parts. If you have the time and there aren’t many people, you can use the moving walkways while listening to relaxing music. You feel like in a fairy tale and you get the feeling it is too beautiful to be true. You are practically walking either under or on one side of the aquarium, and some tens of centimetres of solid glass are preventing millions of litres of water from killing you :)
Thousands of species can be noticed – sword-fish, saw-fish, hammer fish, sharks, devil-fish, piranhas, dragonflies, Crustacean, crocodiles, alligators, turtles, sea stars, pikes, everything, but personally speaking the most interesting one was the Beluga whale. Beluga whales live in the Arctic Ocean, in the coldest waters on Earth. They are white in color and distinguish themselves from other whales in that of every ton of body weight, 800 kilogrammes are fats. These whales are extremely beautiful and as you spend more time observing them, you will notice that the malesperform something like a dance in the water – circling around in the water and slowly moving towards the surface to get some air.
There were also funny animals like these:
Some other beautiful views:
While the crocodiles were enjoying the heat in their aquariums:
The piranhas were staying so still in the water that they looked 2D. At first sight, they don’t look ugly and dangerous, but after awhile you can easily notice huge wounds on their bodies. I can’t imagine though what happens when they are fed. It probably looks something like a volcano of blood in there :)
If you would like to see more pictures from the aquarium, click here.
So this was my journey in the States. I had wonderful two weeks, probably the best in my life, got to see so many new and exciting things, meet a lot of new people, visit great places, taste delicious food, and the most important thing – I found the place where I want to live in.
Last year CsillaBessenyei (Hungary), Christian Sandescu (Romania), GregaPresenen (Slovenia), Boris Dekovic (Croatia), and I won prizes in the Netriders Challenge, which was the first organised for whole Europe. 24 countries took part in it and not surprisingly to me the winners were all from Eastern and Central Europe. It was 50-50 whether I was to be allowed to participate as I had to be 18 to fly to the USA, but luckily the trip was in January, 2009, which meant I am good to go. The challenge consisted of 3 parts – a theoretical test, packet tracer challenge, and a TAC call. To be honest, I am not the biggest fan of Packet Tracer and I have never used it in any of my studies, but I navigated pretty well in the competition. The fun part of the competition was the TAC call, where you had to act as a TAC and an engineer from Cisco would call you, pretending to be a customer and have a problem with its router, and you had to guide him on the phone. Pretty funny as I was not told in advance that I had to be on the TAC side of the call and it was really weird at first :)
On January 11th, I headed to San Francisco with a flight from Sofia. I had never travelled with a plane until then and it was kind of exciting. The flight to Munich was just a few hours and I had an hour and a half stay there to catch my flight to San Francisco. It was a long and exhausting 12-hour flight as we flew all the way over Iceland, Greenland, New York state and down to California. I have to say I was completely satisfied with Lufthansa, very professional work by the crew. If it wasn’t them to feed and entertain us all the time, it would’ve been a very boring flight. Unfortunately, I had no MP3 player as my Zen Vision:M broke a couple months ago and had to listen to Lufthansa’s radio or TV shows.
Anyway, I did not really know what we are going to do there as we received no agenda for our stay so not knowing what it would be made me look forward to it even more.
When I went through the exit gate, a taxi guy was waiting for me outside with a piece of paper “Pavel Stefanov – Netriders”. When we got to the car, I was completely astonished. It was a very nice and spacious Lincoln with leather seats inside. That’s not a bad start, isn’t it? Commuting to the hotel, I didn’t really know where I was. At one point I decided to ask the driver and he said “We are in Santa Clara”. So it’s a big mega polis there including San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Jose and you don’t really know where you are until you see a sign.
I arrived late at the hotel – about 9 pm, and couldn’t make it for dinner with the rest of the guys so I had to meet them on breakfast in the morning. We stayed at Hilton Garden Inn, which is a really nice hotel, and I will definitely stay there if I come back to San Jose some day. The beds were king-size, with 5 pillows, and as I told the guys “sleeping in those beds for 9 hours feels like sleeping for a whole week”. There was also cable Internet (and FREE unlike hotels in Europe) and I was so happy :)
Day 1
In the morning, I met the rest of the winners and Penny Bradley, which made all this competition and trip possible. We were taken to building 5, where we introduced ourselves, met Amy Christen, the vice president of the Networking Academy programme, and then were given a brief presentation about Cisco Culture by Isaac Majerowicz. We were very hungry by that time and went to Cisco’s cafeteria. It is a very big hall with all kinds of food – Chinese, Indian, European, American, basically anything you can think of. There was also a Cisco burger which I had no other choice but to taste the next day, tastes pretty good :) And I had never seen so many engineers at one place, let alone Cisco employees, will never forget that landscape :). My eyes were immediately on the Cisco Merchandise Shop, where I bought stuff for $100 the next day :). Cable Lab with Joe O’Donnel was next on the list. I can tell you one thing – this guy is a guru. He used to be a mountaineer in the past, but like Jeff Doyle, who gave up a career of psychiatrist to become one of the most respected engineers in the field, he decided to go with networking. Joe is currently something like a manager of the lab, a lab in which Cisco has invested at least 200-300 millions of dollars in recent years.
In this room, there are devices downloading channel streams from satellites, those streams are demultiplexed, then encapsulated into IP headers and finally multicasted inside Cisco’s internal network. They use a different device for every one of these processes so what’s that virtualization Cisco is constantly talking about on conferences? :) Anyway, these channels are only used by Cisco employees and Joe makes sure everything works smoothly so that he doesn’t get called by John :) Then we entered the *real* room. We weren’t allowed to take pictures there for obvious reasons, but I can tell you one thing – it felt like heaven – more than 15,000 cable modems making noise and enormous ventilation systems beneath the floor cooling the whole room. Interesting fact – when they moved to the building, it was just a regular room and they had to turn it into what it is now, but not just do the whole moving, they had to do what they did for 6-9 months in the previous building in just 3 days. Can you believe it? They did the whole thing, 15,000 modems, cabling, cooling, content delivery systems, everything. No wonder why Joe feels pretty proud of this accomplishment. Then you would ask, what does Cisco use those modems for? It turns out that whenever there is a new Cisco IOS release, it goes through an enormous amount of testing, and not just testing of new features, they test the new release if it is compatible with every single Cisco IOS release there’s ever been. I was amazed, and still couldn’t explain why I find bugs in the IOS occasionally. The answer was simple “We can’t test every possible scenario, and if even if we could, it is not worth doing it” (or maybe it was “it wasn’t cost-effective”, not sure). Fair enough. They also had some kind of environmental change machine that they use whenever Cisco receives hardware that is suspected to have faults.
Executive Briefing Centre was next. This is where Cisco brings customers when they want to be shown some technology working. It is a beautiful building and the area where we were presented the latest Voice solutions looked more like a disco club :)
I was pretty overwhelmed by the end of the day and really happy with my experience during the day. We decided with the rest of the guys that we were very tired so we went straight to Applebee’s, which is only a few meters from the hotel. I was very hungry and didn’t have a clue how big portions are in US restaurants so I ordered a Santa Fe salad with a chop steak and fries. The guys had a good laugh while I was struggling to finish my dinner.
Day 2
New day, more energy, no jet lag. Speaking of jet lag, my body clock fits perfectly into the Pacific time zone as I used to stay up until 7 am doing labs at home. We had a job shadowing session planned in the morning. We had to choose between Ali Moghadam, a software developer at Cisco, or Dennis Frezo, who is dealing with the development of Packet Tracer. So considering the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that I am not really into this application, I went for the session with Ali. I think this was one of the most productive things we did there. Ali is a very down-to-earth man and was happy to share with us a lot of things. I completely changed my vision of how an employer should treat an employee and how a simple working day should look like. Something I forgot to mention earlier is that when we went into the building at 9 am, there was not a single person in most of the halls (where everyone has its own cubicle). So Ali explained that in Cisco it doesn’t matter when you go to work, when you leave work, or where you do your job. It’s all up to you. You can work at 4 am in the morning in the office, you can work every day at home through a VPN (by the way, every Cisco employee gets a free 800 series router, cool, huh?), it doesn’t matter. All you have to do is keep up with deadlines and do your job. It was also interesting to hear how he got his job and how he got into software engineering. I confessed I knew very little in this area (I still do) and was wondering where he got all this knowledge from. The answer was very relieving – from university! About the interview – it was really fun as he told us he had two interviews, one with Cisco, and one with another company on the same day. He had the interview with the other company first, which went really well, they even sent him the contract immediately by email so he didn’t really try to put much effort into the second interview – a 4-hour interview with plentiful of technical questions. I was surprised to hear that there had been no HRs during the interview and no stupid “How do you see yourself in the future? What are your plans? Describe yourself. What’s your biggest weakness?” type of questions that when you hear on a regular interview, you just want to slay the guy :)
The afternoon was designated to visiting Stanford University. I would lie if I didn’t say I’ve never stopped dreaming of studying there since Jun Kim told me of it. Stanford University is saidto be one of the most prestigious universities in the whole world. Classes are very small, tuition fees are very big, and places are very few.
This is an example of taking a class in the beautiful gardens in the campus, speaking of which it is enormous and includes very big territory. It has its own two hospitals, a church, stadiums, etc. The library is impressive, consisting of more than 2,500,000 books and you can practically find any book you want.
Technology – it was everywhere. The university has spent tens of millions of dollars on the most innovative technology. But it’s not just a lot of technology at one place, you see technology integrated and working hand-in-hand with education. Classrooms are state-of-the-art and the university actually has started taking another approach to designing classrooms. As opposed to the regular classrooms where the teacher has its own desk and students sit in front of him on their desks with a white board behind the teacher, the classrooms in Stanford are very spacious, opened and look more like a cafe than a real classroom. They have found that this new approach boosts students’ effectiveness and helps them relieve stress.
The university is where people like William Hewlett and David Packard graduated or children of presidents from the whole world study.
Dinner was at the Campus Cafe and I ate lobster ravioli. They were pretty delicious although it looked more like a soup than a meal.
Day 3
On day 3, we were joined by Bob Schoenherr, organizer of world competitions and network consultant at Cisco. He was born in California and everybody loved him right away. Even at the end of the trip some of us said that Bob was the best part of the trip :)
In the morning, we had a Telepresence session booked in one of the Cisco buildings with friends of Csilla, who were in Hungary. I was very impressed with this technology that I was exposed to for the first time. It is basically three big flat screens, each consuming about 5 megabits of traffic, HDTV cameras, and of course point-to-point links between the places. Telepresence sessions are very expensive because they consume a lot of bandwidth and require very good QoS characteristics. In addition, every Telepresence room must be built in accordance to the same design so that you really get the feeling you are in one room. All that is different in the rooms is the sign on the wall with the city’s name. I really felt we were in the same room. I was even told a funny story where a guy inadvertently dropped his bottle of water and another person from the other end of the session tried to catch it :)
The rest of day was for San Francisco. What can I say? I fell in love with the city. It’s a unique and charming city. San Fran is built on 29 hills and that’s the reason roads there are extremely steep. First station was the seaside from where we took pictures of Alcatraz. We didn’t have much time so we couldn’t visit the prison. A beautiful view from the Golden Gate Bridge was in front of us. Bob pointed out that the bridge is named after Golden Gate (which is just a narrow part of the ocean), not that the place got his name from the bridge.
I felt so small. Apparently, during the World Wars, the Americans laid submarine nets in the ocean to protect from torpedoes and Japanese submarines. It was a quite peaceful place at that time and the city accepted a lot of immigrants from Chine during the Gold Rush, but it turned out there is not much gold in the valley. This is why you can see a lot of Chinese or predecessors of Chinese people there.
At lunch, we went to the wharfs, where we had white chowders. It’s basically a small loaf with a hole in it where the soup is. I recommend eating this if you have the chance to go there. From there we headed to the downtown of San Francisco by cable cars!!! I think this is when we really got the feeling of the city. This area is really beautiful, with a lot of modern architecture and high buildings. Another thing that stuck in my mind was that I could see a real community – from the homeless beggars on every corner to the well-dressed businessman carrying his brief case probably with contacts for millions of dollars.
Chine Town was next – a great chance to walk around this area. I truly felt like being in a Chinese city, but we didn’t stop there for much longer. Bob had mentioned earlier Fry – the biggest electronic store in the world, and Christian and I were eager to go there. He wanted to buy the Creative X-Fi PCMCIA sound card and I wanted to buy the player I could only dream of buying in Bulgaria – Creative Zen X-Fi. The store was gigantic. They sell every single electronic thing available on the market there. It was like heaven for geeks :)
Dinner was at an Indonesian restaurant, food was okay, service was great, drank some very good Singaporean beer.
Day 4
I felt really sad in the morning that we were leaving on Friday. But then I thought “Hey, I have another week in Atlanta”.
Thursday was for Apple’s Headquarters. Cisco and Apple have established a partnership not so long ago and the first fruit from this partnership is WebEx being available on the iPhones. We met Wendy Walker, the Sr. Marketing Manager of the company, and were given a short presentation on what the company has been doing since its establishment, how it progressed to being one of the leaders in multimedia solutions nowadays, and the range of its products. I am not going to lie to you and say this is my favourite company as I am firm admirer of Creative and as I already mentioned I just bought the Creative Zen X-Fi. So my already existing impressions were confirmed – Apple is a very proprietary-oriented company and focuses exclusively on end users. Maybe this is one of the reasons for their success, but sooner or later they will have to open up a little bit and partnering Cisco is maybe one of their first steps. On the other hand, the company idolizes the word “innovative” and I was really impressed with their vision and the fact that they really adhere to it. Their products are madeto be very user-friendly, easy-to-use, and last but not least beautiful.
I learned a new, awesome term- BSAs (bandwidth-sucking applications) :D WebEx is probably one of them.
We had a lunch at Apple’s cafeteria and they boasted they stole Google’s Head Chef :D
The last interesting thing for this day was the Compliance Lab with TonnyYoussef. This is where any product that you’ve seen available on the market from Cisco has passed before being announced and where products reach end-of-life before they are even produced :). Here, devices are tested for safety and assurance. Most companies prefer to outsource this kind of work, but Cisco has decided to do this itself. Few advantages – smaller amounts of time for testing, as a result they can create a new product before their competitors, smaller chances of confidential information being leaked out, from what I heard Cisco employees are very loyal. Anyhow, I was astonished to see what hardware is tested against – low temperatures, very high temperatures, earthquakes – 8.1 on Richter Scale, RF and sound emission, high pressure, ability to be used by disadvantaged people, compatibility with other vendors, possibility to stick your finger into the device and get electrocuted, ability of the device to inflame. Amazing, isn’t it? And they video tape most of these procedures and send them to some of their biggest clients like AT&T, Verizon, etc. Cisco is just one of 4-5 companies in the world that does this kind of stuff. So from now on, whenever you’re mad, Cisco hardware is an option… :)
We also got to see Cisco’s data centre, which looked very decent, but Bob told us the one Cisco has in Texas is really one of the greatest and an example of Green IT.
Day 5
Csilla, Boris, and I had to give short presentations to 10-15 people from Cisco about our trip and how it impacted our careers whereas Christian and Grega talked about career opportunities in the IT. Grega and I left earlier because I had to catch a flight to Atlanta so we said good bye and that was it.
This week was one of the best, probably the best, in my life and I will never forget it. I liked a lot of things about the USA and was proven wrong to have any prejudices. I will never ever have such, I’m sure about that. People in the USA are very friendly and are smiling all the time. It took me awhile to get used to it, but I loved it. I met so many new and different people from all parts of the world and I noticed no discrimination at any time. One thing I was unable to get used to was that everything was big – buildings, sings, streets, advertisements, food portions, cars.
I felt kind of sad at the end, but I know some day I will meet these people again and will be back in San Jose and San Francisco, cities I fell in love with.
John O’Callaghan feat. Audrey Gallagher – Big Sky (Markus Schulz a/X Remix)
I am heading to San Jose this weekend and will spend 5 days at Cisco’s Headquarters. I will meet four other people that placed in top 5 of Cisco Netriders Challenge and I also hope to have the chance to meet with some engineers from Cisco. To be honest, I do not want to expect, but I am really looking forward to my trip. After that, I will head to Atlanta for a week at my aunt’s and uncle’s house in Georgia. Can’t wait to see them. I will do my best to do as many labs as I can while I am in the US because I am in the final weeks of my CCIE lab preparation. In case I don’t have that much time, I will probably do volume 3 of Internetwork Expert. Otherwise, I will be doing the mock labs, have to finish two more labs from IPExpert, and I might start watching the Catalyst QoS videos from Netmaster again as there were too few tasks in the workbooks up to now.
Това лято реших да ходя до Хрватска за 5 дни и по-точно в Дубровник. Пътят ми мина през Сърбия – > Черна Гора и след това Хрватска. Не съм пътувал все още по искърското дефиле, но пътуването до Дубровник беше истискнско приключение. Гледаш отлвяво до теб дълбока пропаст около 20м. а вдясно стръмни скали, на които не виждаш края. Много красив беше вторият по големина каньон в Черна Гора (първият между другото по големина в Черна Гора е най-големият в света след Grand Canyon в Колорадо). А впрочем в Черна Гора паричната единица е евро, а държавата съществува съвсем отскоро и не е в ЕС и ми направи впечатление това, че за разлика от нашите магазини, бензиностации и т.н и в Черна Гора, и в Сърбия можеш да използваш евро.
В Черна Гора на отиване минах да видя отдалеч св. Стефан.
Нощувката на острова започва от 750 евро и нагоре за тези и в интерес на истината имаше доста англичани и американци.
Преди да започна да разказвам за Дубровник, ето и малко информация за самата Хрватска. Извоювала е независимостта си през 91г., като дотогава се е водила война с редица държави – босненци, сърби, черногорци, а както се убедих имало е и защо. Като население са по-малко от нас и като територия също. Още не са в ЕС и причината за това, че държавата си защитава интересите, за разлика от нас – ЕС искат хърватите да си затворят много от корабостроителниците, а хърватите категорично отказват. Корупция в държавата има само на най-високо ниво, при нас корупция има на всяко ниво, но не искам да се спирам на тази тема. Средната работна заплата е 700 евро, а паричната единица е крона; 7 крони = 1 евро. В държавата над 90 % са хървати, има и малко сърби, но повечето емигрират, защото има дискриминация към тях и трудно си намират работа. Малкият етнически процент се дължи на това, че през WWII е имало масово етническо прочистване.
Хората са в по-голяма степен със западноевропейски манталитет и малко от нашите негативни балкански черти ги има при тях. Не видях човек да ме излгеда намръщено, всички се усмихват и се опитват да направят посещението ти страхотно. Имаш чувството, че всичко живее в синхрон. Обслужането беше наистина на невероятно за мен ниво.
Дубровник е един от най-големите градове в Хрватска, точно до Средиземно море и е най-скъпият град в Хрватска. Цените са горе-долу като в София, само че в евро. Хората се занимават само с туризъм и много малка част с риболов, защото както се оплакаха хърватите – преди години италиянците дошли и им изловили всичката риба :)
Както и да е, след 2 дни път пристигнах в Цафтат, което е на 10-ина километра от Дубровник. И оттам се започна…
Първото впечатление, което ми остана в съзнанието, беше издрядната чистота по улиците. Не съм видял едно боклуче по улиците или пък фас.
Беше голяма жега иначе и доста влажно и затова направих съвсем бърза разходка по пристанището. Можеше да се видят наистина големи красивици. Говоря за яхти…
Беше пълно с яхти с американски и британски знамена, коя от коя по-хубава и скъпа. Определено някой ден планирам да си взема една такава.
След това се запътих към Дубровник и се откри невероятна панорамна гледка към стария град.
Градът е много приятен не само за туристи, но и за живеене. Не е пренаселено, има страхотни къщи, било то на хървати или пък чужденци. Има много останки от Ренесанса и много култури. Немалко държави (град Флоренция най-вече) са имали аптетити да завладеят града, но те все били неуспешни.
Преди няколко века, когато мореплавателите се връщали от пътешествия, те прекарвали 40 дни под карантина в една от кулите на снимката, за да се предпази града от зарази, болести, чума и т.н.
И така през следващите няколко дни посетих редица острови (Хрватска има няколко хиляди острова по крайбрежието си). Имена не помня, но за този се сещам, че беше най-близкият до Дубровник. Пътува се с кораб дотам и има такъв на всеки 30 мин. (нашият градски дори не е толкова редовен). Този остров е незаселен, но има разнообразна ботаническа градина. Островът е населен от 30-40 фазана и техните малки птици.
И флора…
А обратно в Дубровник и индианци….
Clear Blue Water – една от любимите ми песни на Chicane.
Сега разбирам, защо на една от породите кучета им викат далматинци (област Далмация).
And another babe…
Покрай Дубровник минаваха и крузери от време на време за 1-2 дни.
На следващия ден посетих най-красивият според мен от всичките острови, до които стигнах. Откриха се такива невероятни гледки, имаш чувството, че не си на Земята и нямаш достатъчно голямо полезрение да обхванеш цялата гледка. Всичко те погълва…
А ето това животно имаше огромна популация на всички от островите, нарича се цикада, бях го чувал преди с една програмка Atmosphere Deluxe, която симулира всякакви атмосфери, но като го чух на живо имах чувството, че има поне 50 такива на всяко дърво и ти цвърчи отвсякъде.
А в същото време някои се готвеха за пътешествие.
А ето я и кулата за карантина :)
Какво да кажа за залеза? Както написах в един от предните си post-ове, мечтая си да зърна залеза до Cafe del Mar на о-в Ибиса, но този не беше за изпускане.
Нощта в Дубровник е спокойна. Няма и помен от нашите курорти, където се чудиш как да затвориш очи от непрестанния джангър от близката таверна… Peace
А някой тепърва дебнеше за храна…
На връщане минах през древните градове Котор и Будва в Черна Гора, но нямах време да разгледам градовете и трябваше да се задоволя само с няколко часа.
И така завърши пътят ми до Дубровник и обратно – обратно към CCIE Lab preparation-а, но за него друга статия.
Най-после успявам да намеря няколко минутки да напиша нещо за в блога.
Ето няколко реда за впечатленията ми от пътуването да Кошице.
На 27 юни заминахме Димитър, който е много печен, тъкмо беше завършил НПМГ, и аз за Кошице с влак. Пътувахме приблизително 24 часа и присигнахме в четвъртък след доста ужасно, изморително пътуване. Имахме няколко часа същия ден да се разходиме из града и да се регистрираме за състезанието. Организторите на състезанието ни посрещнаха много топло и се бяха погрижили то да мине перфектно.
На следващия ден беше The Opening Ceremony. Разбрахме, че можем да се регистрираме да правим теста (I-вата част от състезанието) още на същия ден (по програма трябваше да е на другия, но решихме, че е по-добре да разпределим 2-те части в различни дни). Тестът беше много странен – имахме 30 минути да отговорим на 82 въпроса :) – нещо невъзможно според мен. Както и да е, успях да отговоря на приблизително 60-65 от тях. Повечето от въпросите ги бях срещал по Cisco тестове, но може би 70-80 % от тях бяха с диаграми и имаше доста за четене (затова реших да не се спирам и задълбавам). Честно казано нямах представа как съм се представил, очаквах да им някакви големи разлики в резултатите, но добрата новина беше, че само 20 % от теста важи за final score-а. Доста от времето този ден прекарахме в една от залите (заради wireless-а). Разходихме се из града, който не беше нищо особено като забележителности, затова решихме да тестваме бирата им :) – оказа се доста добра, макар че на следващия ден опитахме и чешката, която беше класа над нея. Едно от най-впечатляващите неща бяха жените в Кошице – никога не бях виждал толкова красиви жени, имах чувството, че половината от тях можеха да участват на конкурси за красота и да ги спечелят безпроблемно :)
В събота беше втората част от състезанието, практическата, която беше подобна на тази в БГ – configuration на routers и switches. Имахме 1 час и 30 мин да направим нужните конфигурации. Задачите не бяха много лесни: Frame Relay, RIP v2 (plus passive-interfaces, distance xxx), ACLs, port-security и други IOS features. Имах проблеми с FR отначало, бях 100 % сигурен, че конфигурациите са ми правилни, проверих всичко 2-3 пъти, преконфигурирах, дебъгвах и все нямах connectivity (в крайна сметка това се оправи от само себе си след 50-55 минути). Имаше доста неясни задачи, в крайна сметка направих всичко без една странна задача (уж се води Security) – “record the number of times to the console the user was permitted to telnet by the router). Това ми струваше 8 точки (може би и победата в състезанието). Аз лично така и не успях да разбера какво искат да направим и все още не знам – ако някой има предлоложения, да пише плс. Другото странно нещо, което май бях объркал, беше следното: telnet-ваш се към един адрес (който имаше ip add на loopback 0 – 10.123.2.2 примерно на втория router), той да прави static NAT и да redirect-ва telnet-а към един switch. Голяма глупост, беше доста неясна задачата. Whatever…
Към 4 часа беше the awarding ceremony. Очакванията ми бяха, че ще съм в топ 10, но не мислех, че ще съм сред първите 3-ма. Забравих да спомена горе, че ние с Димитър се сътезаваме в най-силната категория UNI (CCNA 1-4 материал, участници от secondary schools и университети). В крайна сметка завърших на 3-то място. Бях частично удовлетворен – от една страна си викам “окей, топ 3 не е зле”, от друга съжалявах, че не съм 1-ви, защото бях отишъл с това намерение. Победител, ако не се лъжа, стана унгарец. Получихме поздравления от организторите и спонсорите и различни награди. Приех състезанието просто като един момент от The Road to the CCIE R&S. След това отидохме да “полеем” успеха.
На следващия ден тръгнахме обратно за София, като имахме 12 часа престой в Будапеща, Унгария. Решихме да разгледаме града въпреки малкото време на разположение. Взехме си екскурзовод и автобус, който ни разведе из целия град. Бях удивен от този невероятен град- най-красивия, в който съм бил някога. Архитектурата и паметниците на култура са просто смайващи – невероятни замъци, църкви, статуи и гледки. Градът се е запазил, както е бил може би преди 20-30 години. Скоро ще кача снимки от града да видите за какво става дума.
В понеделник се прибрахме след отвратително пътуване с родното БДЖ (както казах на Димитър – това беше най-ужасното нещо, което ми се е случвало в послените 5-6 месеца).
Това беше накратко пътуването ми до Кошице и обратно. Прекарах си супер и това може би беше и моята почивка за това лято, туй като скоро почвам стаж в Телелинк и няма да имам свободно време :(
Ако не сте умряли от скука и сте стинали до този ред, поздравявам ви!
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