How Vikend Naselje and sunsets are healing my body.
It is incredible how a mundane decision to rent a cheaper place can trigger an avalanche of profound, personal discoveries. When, just under two months ago, on the eighth of July to be exact, I packed up my life in the Scottish village of Insch and officially retired, I did not have a grand plan. I simply wanted to rest after nineteen years spent as an expat in the United Kingdom, where year after year, night after night, I worked as part of the night staff. Whilst looking for a budget-friendly spot for the next stop of my retirement journey, I came across Vikend Naselje in the Serbian Kopaonik mountains. I was drawn here purely by the low price of the monthly rent, and fate played a beautiful trick on me, placing me in an apartment named "The Place of Rising Sun".
And it is precisely here, at an altitude of over fourteen hundred metres, that my new evening tradition was born. For a week now, day in and day out, I drop everything and go outside to watch the sunset. It might seem that simply opening the window would suffice, but subconsciously I feel that I need to be there with my whole being, without any barriers or glass panes. Interestingly, I already felt a magnetic pull towards the evening sky during a two-day stopover in Belgrade, when I went specifically to the Pobednik monument at Kalemegdan to watch the sun dip below the horizon. Only now, connecting all the dots, am I beginning to understand the powerful and healing symbolism this phenomenon holds for me, which subconsciously perfectly mirrors my current state of mind.
The sunset, in its deepest essence, is a universal symbol of transformation and the ultimate natural closure of a cycle. It reminds us that for something new to be born, something else must leave indefinitely. This phenomenon teaches us the beauty inherent in transience and the acceptance of the fact that the most spectacular moments in life are fleeting, and their value stems precisely from this finiteness. In many cultures, the evening sun is a time for pausing, taking stock, and deep reflection, but above all – it is a promise and a hope of rebirth. Though the light disappears behind the horizon, we know that the morning will come. For me, it is a daily, visual lesson in letting go of past duties and transitioning into a state of well-deserved rest.
For nearly two decades, working the night shift meant that the evening was the beginning of stress for me, a preparation to battle my biological clock in the chilly British climate. Today, standing face to face with the sunset in Serbia, my brain finally receives the long-awaited message that the multi-year shift has come to an end, and the old biological debt is finally being repaid. Under the Pobednik monument, a symbol of victory and freedom, I subconsciously said goodbye to that difficult stage as a winner, accepting the setting sun not as an end, but as a triumphant culmination of my journey. Now, immersed in the Balkan expanse, I celebrate my own golden time without any rush.
Fascinatingly, this life revolution coincided with a radical change in my lifestyle and a transition to the HCLFLP nutritional model, in which I derive as much as seventy-six per cent of my energy from carbohydrates, and twelve per cent each from fats and proteins. My body, fuelled for the past 4 months by clean energy from plants and starches that grew thanks to the sun itself, has become an incredibly sensitive receiver. Such a diet improves metabolism and naturally supports the production of serotonin and melatonin, perfectly harmonising with the processes that evening light triggers in the human body. I can feel my nervous system, stimulated for years by artificial lighting, undergoing a deep cellular detox in the mountains, and my mind entering a state of soft fascination that naturally lowers stress levels.
Even the local weather seems to cooperate with my recovery process. Visibility in Vikend Naselje is not ideal – from morning till night, a permanent, dry haze hangs in the air, resembling a fog. This is nothing other than Balkan tropospheric haze, often carrying dust from the Sahara. However, this natural curtain acts like a brilliant photographic filter. It softens the harsh mountain sun, allowing me to look straight at the solar disc without pain, absorbing the healing, red waves of light that give my body an unambiguous signal to wind down and rest for the evening.
In this way, my pure pragmatism and search for savings opened the door to a free, daily sanatorium for body and mind. I found myself in the heart of the Balkans, a place of incredibly intense energy, where the rawness of the mountains collides with the local philosophy of "meraku" – the art of celebrating the moment and deriving pure joy from simple things. I live in a place dedicated to the rising sun, but it is precisely these hazy, daily sunsets that allow me to close the past with full acceptance and prepare the space for my own, completely new dawn.
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