Europe, is this you?

Moments like this I realize the main reason why I love school. It makes you think, search, discover, and after months of work and lazy habits I feel it's so damn refreshing. In case you didn't know, I'm still a student, in masters that is, but still it's school. So now, in my last year of master studies, I am preparing my last piece of paper, the final exam, the biggest of them all, the dissertation. Studies are in Romanian, in my home country and about communication in Europe mainly. So my smart ass decided to make a unique paper as final exam (hopefully last one in my early years), Islam in Europe (after so many months of living in an Islamic country that is) Cool books, interesting articles online, live impressions from my daily life, but most fascinating, one impressive documentary which I discovered today :D from my friend Anca, An Islamic history of Europe produced by BBC. I think the history lessons in primary school are to early for the young ones to understand, maybe that is why less and less of the students end up with all sort of lame jobs cause they don't really know what those teachers bla bla in front of them. I think that in order to understand these pieces of history, especially of such scale and so much information, one should physically go there are see it with own eyes. I think that the things that happen so long ago have a tremendous impact in some of the today's people, either Muslim or European or whichever and especially in out today lives, even though we do not even imagine so. I think Europe was right but I think Europe is sometimes wrong now and I think I made the best decision to write about this story, especially after living a piece of life in an Arab country. So to stop writing crap that no one understand probably :)) I'm going to tell you a little bit about this documentary, about our old world history lessons and then hopefully you'll be curious enough to watch it yourself. Islam's biggest impact in Europe happened in Spain with the invasion of vandals and Visigoths, ruling over the Latin country for more than 500 years, but bringing a great progress and a way of life called La convivencia,a time when Muslims, Christians and Jews were living together and building a prosper and equal life for their land, Andalusia. In same or not so much situations were Sicily and France, where the Muslims wisdom brought development from different points of view to the European life, until finally kicked out of their land by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, Europe being taken over back by Christianity. Well enough about this cause I'm gonna spoil the fun and interest of seeing the documentary, even-though there are much more than the above to be discovered in the movie. So to end the post, Enjoy!

Ramadan kareem

Finally the Holy month of Ramadan is here, this year being celebrated between 1-30 August. Just to imagine how this is happening in Muslim countries, this month is like the December month for Christian, especially Christmas days, with lights and decorations and fasting and others as such.
And because living in an Islamic country, of course we have to adjust to the conditions. One rule here, Ramadan or no Ramadan, Muslims are called for prayer 5 times a day, meaning that in the city you can hear the readings from Coran in the speakers of every mosque...and believe me there are a lot of mosques. The Muslim prayers are happening at specifid timings, the first prayer being in early morning at 04:26, Fajer, at 05:46 Sunrise, at 12:30 Dohor, Aser at 15:56, Magreb at 19:06 and Isha at 20:36. But especially in this month, because of fasting from morning till dawn, eating and drinking is not allowed in public...

As a sign of respect for the locals, all non Muslims should not eat any kind of food or drink, not even water in front of the Muslim people who are not eating and drinking all day.
So how to live in this crazy heat without at least drinking water. Our luck is that, being such various in nationalities, our dear company permits us, the "guests", to drink water during working hours no matter if Muslims are around or not, and to eat in public, but only in specific areas :) So we are saved.
Definitely I will need to pay lots of attention with this drinking or eating, cause today I just found myself with the bottle of water at my mouth in the middle of the bus...without realizing that I am surrounded by locals...who are fasting. I closed my bottle immediately and put it back in my bag, just like nothing happened. Luckily no one said anything, probably they were to sleepy to notice me :P
More about Ramadam here.