I ♥ PRG

Having spent the weekend on a 'mini-break' in Prague, I think I have found a new favourite European city. In many ways, Prague reminds me of Vienna, but sort of as if you compressed it to a smaller size. It seems like a place that lends itself perfectly to wasting time in a way that is not a waste of time. I mean walking through the city and finding nice secluded corners, or patches of lawn where to sit and read or let your mind dangle.

At the same time, however, Prague is enormously interesting, and is simply crammed full of sights, places and buildings that are not only hyped for the tourists - although they are, devastatingly, frequented by hordes of them - but are also 'relevant' from a historical perspective. (History meaning mostly history of art, but you know that this is quite a relevant subject for me.)

So, facing a huge array of options and things to do, and with only a very limited amount of time - 36 odd hours - on our hands, in which we also had to accommodate a Radiohead concert and some sleeping, Max and I tried to make the best of it, and find the golden middle path between doing nothing and doing everything.
We certainly left out many valuable experiences (Torture Museum?!) and feel the need to return, but that is generally the case with me and towns that I like, and thus a good sign.

We arrived around 8 p.m. on Saturday evening, and after checking into our Youth Hostel, the very recommendable Crib 15, had an initial look at the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter Josefov by night. Walking on the bank of the Vltava we also more or less bumped into Jonny Greenwood, and spazzed. Attempts to take kafkaesque pictures turned out rather spectral:

Next morning, we again set out to survey the situation by daylight, giving the Inner Ring - that is the square where the famous Town Hall, a Jan Hus monument and various churches are to be found - a second chance.

What I find quite fascinating about the churches on Prague is that they're rarely found in open squares, with a lot of space around, but rather in tiny alleys, with the neighbouring houses being directly attached to the buildings. Cf. the view of the Teyn church façade from in front of its entrance:

After an unoriginal and unsatisfying, but neccessary lunch we hit the Lesser Town (west of the Vltava) to look at the Castle and the much awaited Cathedral. We merely interrupted or ascent to the top of the hill on which the Castle is built to buy Trdelníks (I am sure that this is a wrong plural form, but I do not know the correct one), a lovely little take-away-dessert made of yeast dough wrapped around a sort of pole to create the characteristic tube-shape, and topped with sugar and cinnamon and various other all-things-nice, like so:

Continuing our way, we soon came upon an enormous, uninviting and yet very intriguing wall.

At the end of that wall, however, was a magic portal - or so it seemed, for it led into a beautiful garden that belonged to a baroque palace (Palais Waldstein) and had a sala terrena with enormous niches. We had fun there.

After that, we finally climbed the hill (nice view), and then entered the area that is officially part of the castle-complex. Amazingly, we had coffee and mint iced tea in a cafe right at the foot of the choir of St. Vitus. It was otherworldly, not least because the spot where the church is built seems really secluded and is surrounded by coherent buildings on all sides, so you kind of get the impression of being on a film set. But then again, a lot of it was probably also due to my ability to be star-struck by architecture, something not everybody can relate to, probably.

But then again, St. Vitus is an impressive sight, and only really reveals its actual size (read: enormity) when you enter it. The pictures really don't do it justice, and will probably also bore everybody who is not obsessed with Gothic architecture as I am right now.

But still, I guess that even outsiders who are not interested in the details can appreciate its beauty and impressiveness.

When we finally walked back to the youth hostel, it was later than we had planned, and we were almost late for the concert. But luckily, we managed to get there in time and were graced with an amazing performance. It was the first time for me to see Radiohead, and I'll probably bite my tongue before calling them over-rated again any time soon.

Thanks to Prague for being warm and welcoming - BRB.
And thanks to Radiohead for still being enthusiastic and making an effort.

Zoo Time!

Last week, we all went to the zoo, and I attempted the rather unmanagable feat of taking some acceptably fine pictures of animals. It takes a lot of patience and practice, so the outcome is rather meagre, but I can live with that.
Nervous little monkeys (or tamarins, who are brilliantly called Liszt-monkeys in German) are particularly difficult to capture. As are seals in full motion. Luckily these fellows seem to be trained to pose for tourists. Moreover, inhabitants of the Arctic circle - the polar bears are still quite young, and appropriately playful. I always wonder, though, if they don't suffer terribly in the summer heat.

The trip, anyways, reminded me of how much I love zoos. And Vienna is luckily blessed with an ancient and beautiful zoo, which has recently been, and is still in the process of being modernised, so as to make the animals more comfortable. There's fewer and fewer animals pacing up and down their cages, and this is really a relieving development, because it always breaks my heart to watch that. Next year, I think, I'll get a pass for the whole year, so I can go in every season and watch the young grow up and all that romantic shit. /oldladyhood

In my bedroom after the war.

Very edifying.

Candy-coloured custom cuteness!

I've long been planning to dedicate a blog-post to the teensy little greatnesses that Artemis creates in her spare time and will ship to affictionados all over the world for but a little financial compensation. Among her product range are such varied goods as pastel-coloured moustache-shaped soaps, fake-patisserie pins and necklaces that look like an entire scrumptious afternoon tea party shrunk down to fairy-size (including the china) - but still temptingly realistic so you're not sure if you want to pin them to your lapel or rather stick them in your mouth - and original, unique jewellery made from vintage buttons and similar charity shop finds. It might be a little too saccharine-scented for some, but hey, on some days, pastel-pink is still the best colour to go by, and for those who frequently get girl-shocked by that sort of colour scheme, there's still the jelly-green boombox soaps or a hearty breakfast of soap. But enough of those words, here's the creamy cream of her flickr account:





















But there's more where these came from. Just check etsy and flickr for additional fake-yum!

Firekites.

I'm mesmerized by this music video that I discovered thanks to Julia's (cheshirestreetcat) most recent blogpost and feel compelled to re-post. Its means are simple but painstakingly applied and the "motion" effect of smudged chalk on blackboard is amazing. Together with the music it's exactly the right sort of thing to get carried away by on a wet and rainy summer day like today. (In fact, the mood, and naturally, the title, almost leads one to mention 'autumn', and surely it would be even more appropriate, but the concept of autumn shall not yet enter my conscious thoughts, or, to put it with Peter Licht: "Das verbotene Wort heißt Herbst.")

July, July.

I have decided that the last day of July is a good day to send a life sign into the blogosphere. My presence in the interwebs has of late been of a rather lurkerlike quality, but I hope that my reluctance of active participation in the accumulation of random information in this textual mess of virtuality has not caused too many hearts to ache and eyes to moisten.

My July has been filled with a more or less balanced amount of travelling and activity and staying-at-home and idleness. Both was done with relish and, typically, a little wistfulness, for you know how it is with the grapes and the palates and the taste and the moment it all happens. (If not, Keats has more on it.)

I need a little more time to sift through photos of the Berlin trip, but a post dedicated to those is waiting in the eaves. For the time being, I will please myself rather than you, and post 2 pictures that caught my attention earlier today, and are rather random und unrelated apart from the fact that they are major sources of smilingness (for me).


^ (taken today)
My cat grinning smugly down at me after having clambered up diverse household items and garden furniture on our porch in order to reach a strategically advantageous position for overseeing the situation. Any situation.

^ (taken 2-3 weeks ago)
Max looking up at me on an escalator in Berlin. 'Nuff sed.

For tomorrow, I predict fine, hot weather, guests at the country house, good clean fun and possibly brownies and a spiffing peach and nectarine bowle (fruit punch) to round the whole thing off.

Summer, now.

I am back from Blur (elaborate blurthemed post postponed until such time as I can order my thoughts and illustrate them with still and moving pictures and sounds.) Now the summer can start. Or, to quote facebook:


There are no events.
Create events.

I am up for a lot of adventures and a lot of togetherness and a huge amount of awesome, basically.

PS: Though I love travelling, I have always had an unnaturally high esteem for the residential city of my choice, Vienna. Still, coming back home has never been anticipated quite as much as this time. Here's to being the recipient of surprise home made cakes called Peter and being made to feel very special indeed. <3 <3 <3

If you came back as the deep sea I would come back as the salt.

Give me their album, quickly.

Animaux d(h)om(me)estiques

Lacan

It's just because I've spent a lot of time "with" him recently, trying to write a paper about his "aesthetics" if you can call it that. I've just found this video of him lecturing, on youtube. He seems even more mad and even more french in real time. A tad shocking, that!




But, facetiousness aside, he does have a point, I think. Several, in fact. On the other hand - the points might be mine, and I might be reading them into every opaque string of words that crosses my path. I might be a little bit in love with the notion that everything (or everyone) is dominated primarily by a feeling of a lack, and that all we do is motivated by the desire to fill this emptiness, though this can, by definition, never be done. Also it reminds me of something Adam Roberts, a much valued professor back in Royal Holloway who also wrote an excellent essay about "Byron's vagina" - google it! -, once said in his course, and I believe he was quoting some philosophical pop star or the other way around: "The glass is neither half full nor half empty, it's twice as large as it needs to be."

That noted, I can only end upon a soppy note, saying that for whatever undetectable reasons - it might or might not be related to the apocalyptic rain falls of the last few days - my glass is positively overflowing at the moment, and I think if I wait a little longer it might become enough to fill a bathtub or a small paddling pool.
But, apologies, apologies, apologies! The above paragraph is exactly the reason why you never get to read books written by happy people: They'd be crap!

Heaven.

In the face of the gaping blogging void of the last two-ish weeks, one could argue that I have nothing more to say.



But of course that's not true, yeah? I've just not found much time for geschwurbel recently.



Bear with me.

Per aspera ad astra ...

Let's say this picture is about storing away assorted beginnings and endings and the emergence of a friendly summer sky.

I ♥ Vienna: Schlösselgasse

It's always amazing how I still haven't seen all the streets and alleys in the district I live in, even though it's the smallest in Vienna. And it always takes little accidents like getting on the wrong tram or getting off one stop earlier to make me go exploring. I didn't have much time for taking pictures today, because I had a library to go to before closing time, but here's two, and there's more at flickr, actually.

Later I met Theodora to see 4 homosexual-love-themed short films via the identities queer film festival, which turned out to be really rather depressing and shattered our rose-tinted illusions of sweet gay college boy love with the cast iron meat mallet of bleak human reality, or real humanity, whichever you prefer.
We were indeed so devastated that we had to have pizza and ice cream and talk a lot about romance and neuroses. I have to conclude that my idea of romance is problematic, and that the existence of neuroses is therefore not surprising.

A life-long love affair.

I find this rather beautiful:

On the one hand, I believe that all of literature is implicit in language and that literature itself is merely the permutation of a finite set of elements and functions. But surely literature is constantly straining to escape from the bonds of this finite quantity, surely literature is constantly struggling to say something it does not know how to say, something that cannot be said, something it does not know, something that cannot be known? One can say of something that it cannot be known as long as the words and the concepts for saying and thinking it have not yet been used in that particular juxtaposition, as long as they have not yet been arranged in that particular order, in that particular sense. The whole struggle of literature is in fact an effort to escape from the confines of language. Literature reaches forth from the extreme edge of the effable. It is the demand made by that which no dictionary contains which stimulates literature.
(Italo Calvino, "Myth in the Narrative")

I feel a personal paradigm shift coming on.
I want an infinite collection of awesome.