Vacation time?

It's the middle of August, and, traditionally, especially in Europe, half of its world  is on vacation somewhere.  I remember that when I lived in Italy, the cities would become ghost towns, and the factories completely shut down their operations during this month. Today, only tourists flock in them since the museums and art galleries are kept open.   Here in NY, today,  I noticed that, of the nine apartments on my floor, I am the only tenant still in town.

During this strange summer, we continue to roast and sweat in NY stormy and sticky weather, but  I spend lots of time indoors, fully occupied with loads of desk and paperwork, in addition to a large reorganization of computerized files and data that needs to be done for both my personal and work record keeping.  Notwithstanding the now, no longer new, concept of striving toward a paperless society, we are still continuously buried in paper, whether we like it or not.  Just from unsolicited mail I continue to receive daily at least a dozen unwanted envelopes, and catalogs, which require address concealment  before they are discarded, and so my shredder gets a workout daily.  These chores, quite boring if not alternated with other distractions from time to time, are unfortunately a necessity.

  

Thank goodness for online news broadcasts and personal connections,  which interrupt the above monotony!  And here is, again, another article and video about the '(in)famous'  Albanian bunkers constructed during the paranoid communist dictatorship.  The idea of using these steel and concrete structures for tourism is not new,  and it has become a reality already in some areas of the country.  They were built in different sizes, for population and military use.  Now it's unthinkable of removing or destroying them;  the cost would be prohibitive!  So... they remain and continue to attract attention everywhere across the countryside, on top of mountains, along roads, and the entire coastline, now that foreigners are visiting the country  more and more because Albania has been touted lately as the number one tourist spot to be discovered.