List of gratitudes - 2018

In the last few years, I try to sum up my year on my birthday. This is the advantage, when you are born in a day, when everyone is in holidays and big parties are not really possible. I'm using this day for reflecting on my passed year: goods and bads, results, failures and what happened with me and the world around myself. 

2018 was one of those "big" years, although I was lucky enough to have a "big" event in my life almost every year in the last six years. This year in politics was unbearable in Romania and in the world too  and I'm sure the next year will be similar too. We need lot of self-defense techniques to survive the global world and the smaller enviroment's negative powers, but also to create a better world. 

This year was a paradigmatic one in my own small world too: new job, new city and lot of amazing things I experienced, which for I'm very grateful.

Here is my list of gratitudes for 2018:

- I'm grateful for my relatively good health

- grateful for my family who supported me in April-May when I decided to leave Cluj

- grateful for my old and amazing new friends from Budapest: great inspirations for me all of them

- thankful for my new job at the University of Sibiu: a dream I was hoping for since years 

- thankful for my summer (Sziget festival too)

- grateful for finding an amazing flat in Sibiu in a historical environment

- thankful for some of my friends in Sibiu who helps me a lot to accommodate in a new world

- grateful for finishing and publishing in Oxford the results of my 5 years long PhD 

-thankful for my most amazing Serbian friends who made it possible to participate on the Limeskongress this year - a really beautiful memory of late summer

- thankful for my colleagues and new friends from Szeged, where I will have a new research project next year.

This year was a "big" one for me. I hope, next year will be about stability, personal, spiritual awarness and evolution of all of us. A year of preparation for some bigger, more important steps on personal and on community scales too.  Maybe even on global scales too...

Wish you all a beautiful new year in 2019!

List of gratitude 2017

I write a list of gratitude since 4 years now. It’s a great opportunity to summarize a year and its events and to select those precious moments, which worth to remember for our short, personal „eternity”.

This year – in contrast with the last one – was less stressful in the world and in my life too, however important changes occurred in my personal life in 2017. It was the first year since 2012, which I spent entirely in Cluj again: a challenge for me indeed after 4 years abroad. It was also the first year, when I was trying to maintain my academic activity while working outside of academia. While this year was a terrible one for the country I choose to live in for a while again, 2017 was kind of a year of transition for me, with 2-3 milestones or big decisions.

Despite of this, I had numerous amazing experiences and moments in this year for which I’m really grateful. 

Here is my list of gratitude of 2017:

- I’m thankful for my relatively good health

- Thankful for my colleagues and my supervisors who helped me in my doctoral defense and my last month in Erfurt.

- thankful for my first ever visit to Denmark

- thankful for my present job and the help of those kind colleagues, who helped me to accommodate to the new situation

- thankful for the publishers, sponsors and all the great people working on my latest book and those who worked with me in the book presentations during this autumn

- thankful for the amazing moments at the Depeche Mode and Moderat concerts

- thankful for my colleagues who contributed to the first proceedings focusing on the histories of archaeology in Central-East Europe and for my colleagues from Cluj who worked extremely hard for it

- thankful for the faith of my few but amazing friends in Budapest, Cluj, Erfurt and my family for their kindness and patience

- thankful for those short, but amazing meetings with some special friends I met this year

- and finally, I’m thankful for my 30^th birthday and the hundreds of good wishes. Once, someone told me, that at this age I will have my biggest dream already come true: I will work at a university. Well, this is not a reality yet, but just few weeks before my birthday I was asked to be a lecturer of two courses.

I hope, next year will be similarly rich in nice moments or even more dynamic and we can enjoy our short earthly walk together more often, more peaceful and more mature too.

I wish you all a beautiful 2018 and all the joy you need!

List of gratitude 2016

This year was a hard and difficult one and not only for the world and Europe, but also personally. Although I didn’t face major crises or dangers, it was full with big decisions and lot of small or medium struggles, deadlines I need to pass. It consumed lot of my energies, patience which affected severely some of my friendly bonds too.

Despite of these big obstacles however, I still have a lot of amazing, thankful memories from this year. As a tradition since some years, here is my list of gratitude for 2016:

-          I’m thankful for my relatively good health

-          Thankful for my friends, especially for those who are still with me after this hard year

-          Thankful for my nice trip in Rome – the 4^th time since I visited the Eternal City yearly

-          Thankful for publishing my first monograph

-          Thankful for meeting a large number of amazing scholars at the 5 conferences I organized or attended this year

-          Thankful for my few, but good friends from Erfurt  for helping me in the last months
        Thankful to have the chance to listen live David Gilmour, my musical icon

-          Thankful for friends and colleagues from Mainz to survive the last months of writing my Ph.D – my hardest summer ever

-          Thankful for my family for their patience in September, just before I submitted the thesis

-          Thankful for finishing the Ph.D. thesis – the biggest work I have done till now

-          Thankful to find a kind of stability – at least for a while – in Cluj-Kolozsvár again and some nice friends here, who didn’t forget me after 4 years of living abroad

Let’s hope, the next year will be much easier, calmer and will test less our patience, fears and we will face less obstacles.

Happy new year and lot of happiness and success for everyone!

List of gratitudes 2015

As I did also last year, I decided again, to write a very personal post in my blog. Nowadays, when some people find  "boring" or lazy to write a personalized letter for birthday and human relationships became more and more superficial, real values such as old friendships, fidelity, responsibility, hard and persistent work, kindness and devotion need a special care for survivor. 

So, here is a list, why I'm very grateful and thankful in this year:

• grateful for my relatively good health and the fact, that I had no serious injures in this year (although I found my limits in this sense)
• grateful for my amazing friends, especially those who I know since 15 or even 20 years now. Biggest gift of the human adventure to have so long interactions and relationships
• grateful for all the new friends and nice colleagues who I met in this year and we are keeping our friendship also now. They made much easier my stay in all the foreign countries I visited or where I need to live 
• thankful for visiting 15 cities in 5 countries in this year and all the cool people I met there
• thankful for my colleagues from Erfurt, who still represent the best spiritual and intellectual support to survive a cute, but for me, too provincial town 
• thankful for the colleagues from Alba Iulia and my friends there, helping me to write the book about Cserni Béla 
• thankful for all the conferences, colloquiums and seminars where I had the opportunity to meet so many amazing names and personalities. A memorable moment of the year was the Lived Ancient Religion panel at the IAHR, where at least 20 of the best scholars from my field were present in a small room.
• and finally, I'm thankful for my struggles and painful experiences in this year too. They helped me to learn my limits, to be more confident and sure, what I want and what I like. My stay in Germany proved also, that I value more emotions, passion, devotion, fidelity and the old, Central European values than some so called liberal or Western ideologies.  And I'm proud of that. 

  

  One of the big discoveries of this year: the beauty of Prague

List of gratitude - 2014

People nowadays suffer in the missing of universal values. Egoism, accelerated lifestyle, consumer society without limits, growing atheism suggest a new era, where people must focus only on themselves, their own life, they became Gods of themselves without any universal values (about this topic see the works of  Elemér Hankiss). 

Instead of posting some boring Facebook - yearbooks with all my pictures from this year I made a list of gratitude. Gratitude for God and all the people, who contributed, helped me also in this year. This list is my universal value, an abstraction that is higher than anything that our society can offer.

Thanks for You all:

- I'm grateful for ending this year relative healthy and without major medical problems

- I'm grateful that all the members of my family and my best friends are also healthy 

- I'm grateful for visiting 6 countries and 27 cities in this year and meeting a lot of amazing persons

- I'm grateful for visiting also in this year twice my beloved Rome, meeting my friends there and meeting pope Francis again

- I'm grateful for my academic links and colleagues from Erfurt and for the amazing scholarship I get in this year

- I'm grateful for discovering two very rare and important Mithraic monuments in this summer

- I'm grateful for having a companion and patience to finish and publish my first book

- I'm grateful for the 8 articles written in this year and for the numerous nice ideas I had

- I'm grateful for finding a nice place to live in Erfurt and all for my friends there

- I'm grateful for resolving a conflict with one of my most beloved friend from high school

- I'm grateful for my struggles, which helped me to be more self-reflective 

- I'm grateful for all the material and financial incomes of this year

- and finally...I'm grateful for Your so special smile:)