Iceland - Vik - A View from the Hotel

This is what I saw when I woke up in Vik, this is what I saw. You're looking at the beach down yonder. The motel is on a high hill off the ring road.

Farewell, Vienna, I'll Be Back

Thank you Berenice.

Thank you Magnus, for letting me tag around with you and for showing me Roboexotica.

Thank you Sylvia, for translating everything during Metalab and the closing party.

Thank you Johannes, for Taugshow.

Thank you, Andres, Jorg and Stefan for Coordinated Sewing Machine for Mapping, Analyzing and Transforming social Groupings of interactive Systems.

Thank you Lorenz, for documenting this important occasion.

Thank you everyone at WerkzeugH, for the food and the hospitality.

Thank you, everyone at Paraflows and Monochrom who I forgot.

I'll see you soon.

Vienna - Night of the Living Dead Media - Dawn of the Web

After the symphony on Saturday, I immediately headed over to MuseumsQuartier where the lads from Paraflows were throwing their closing party, and what a party it was. In their typical fashion, every detail was executed, and it all worked with the theme.

The theme of the party was Night of the Living Dead Media - Dawn of the Web; the whole thing was set the night before HTML, the language used to script Web pages, was born. A pretty cool concept, from the cocktail waitress walking around with a silver platter of silver champagne glasses (only ball bearings and other metallic goodies in those glasses, mind you), to the 90's-themed music the DJs were spinning.

I made it just in time for the performance, which consisted of a vocalist and a guitarist singing songs about events that were taking place circa '91, including some pretty funny rants about (what else?) sex and drugs. Thanks again to Sylvia for translating all of this for me!

After the performance the DJs started banging out thick-kick drum'd mid-paced techno, a style that's probably known as "tech house" these days. Back on the night of Dawn of the Web, though, it was all just music.

Some of the other great touches included the projections of original Sega and Nintendo systems on opposite walls. People could actually play the Nintendo system, and I saw some pretty heated games of MarioKart up there. All in all, it was a great way to conclude a week of innovation, creativity and community.

Thanks to everyone who was responsible for me having such a blast here in Vienna!

Schoenborn Palace, Vienna

There were some things I liked about this place, but NOT the hordes of tour groups I had to fight my way through to make it through the 40-plus rooms of this place. The outside was much cooler. I bought the E-ticket, so I could pretty much check out everything for only a few Euros more. The first picture is part of a garden just to the left of the palace, if you´re looking at it from the front.

This next one is a picture of some flowers in said garden. The hedge (above) surrounds the garden.

Finally (for now), this is a picture of the palace from the back, on an arcade called Gloriette on a hill. Gloriette was built in 1775, and I climbed to the top of it to take this picture. I used some serious zoom here, as the palace is quite a ways away from Gloriette.

Mozart at Musikverein, Vienna

Last night I managed to score front row balcony tickets to see the symphony in Vienna. The program was all Mozart, which was cool. They did the song from that car commercial, the one from The Simpsons where Homer is in space and about to crash into the ant colony, and the one from that Mickey Mouse cartoon. I thought they might do the theme from Beef (it´s what´s for dinner) but maybe that´s not Mozart. I´m only somewhat cultured.

But seriously folks, it was a great night and a great experience, despite the many numbers they did with opera singers. They were impressive at times, but for me, it was kinda like going to a downtempo show and having the band bring out an MC to rap all over the otherwise good music. This wasn´t quite as bad as that, though.

Vienna - City of Tiny Lights

Big thank yous go out to Berenice and Magnus (from Vienna) for making last night a great one! Berenice has been posting comments on Magnus' pictures at 23hq.com (Bere, please post link!) and so she introduced us.

I got some great shots of Schoenborn Palace yesterday, and I'm working on getting tickets to see Mozart tonight, so don't worry, I am getting a good mix of culture here.

Magnus and I met last night at Karlsplatz, a major transit centre here in Vienna. I said I'd be wearing a blue raincoat, he said he'd have an exploding umbrella. We agreed to meet in this huge expanse of territory, and somehow found each other. Headed over to the venue to find we were about 2 hours early, so he took me on a breakneck pace walking tour of the city, mostly of the museums. He suggested the Leopold Museum, so that will be the one I go to in addition to the Freud museum.

Had a drink, checked out his workspace, and then back to the venue. A bar was setup in the basement of Konzerthaus, along with a room with about 50 chairs, a set of decks and a guitar. Two men dressed as pirates were the hosts for the program, called Taugshow. Taug, as I understand it, is to really dig something here in Vienna. It's part of a larger event called Paraflows '06 that's going on now. They did it in English for the first time, which was great for me, as my German is pretty bad.

Their guests included such eclectic guests as Lauren Hill's personal shopper and a man from New Zealand who is working on a project to create self-replicating machines. The monologue (or dialogue) between the two hosts and the audience at the beginning focused on typos in email (or eNail, they quipped), and was pretty damn witty at times.

The musical act was also well-placed and well received. I have to get all the names straight, and I'll post a link to the main site later.

I'm off to the brunch they're hosting for Paraflows now, and I have to probably go to the venue to score those Mozart tix and it looks like rain. Should be an interesting day, if not a dry one, here in Vienna.

Aah, Prague

I arrived to Prague on Sunday, and I leave tonight. I don't want to leave, but Vienna awaits.

When I arrived, I was feeling pretty awful from a full night out in Berlin on Saturday, but I headed into town to explore nonetheless. Walked around as it got dark, fascinated by the architecture and the castle looming in the distance on the other side of the Vlatva River. Got a little turned around, found something to eat, and jumped back on the tram to go home.

Monday I explored the city alone. I managed to see quite a bit of it, as it's really a small city compared with Berlin. Berlin has about 14 pages of maps in my DK guide, Prague, six. A bit smaller, but I'm not sure what the scale is like.

Prague is a city of twists and turns, of winding roads and changing street names. All the streets are stone and about as wide as your thumb, so it's tough to get around and easy to get killed. But believe me, I'd rather die in Prague than live in a lot of places I've been.

Monday ended simply enough, I headed back to the hostel, had a couple of beers at the "bar" there for about $1 USD each, and crashed out.

It was a massive day out in Prague Tuesday, as Markus from Perth, Australia and I headed out to hit the town. Went up to the castle where we somehow managed to see the president of Lithuania. Took the funicular (read: tram) down to the base of the Vlatva river and stumbled into the Museum of Modern Art where we were treated to an exhibition by Kupka. More on him later.

Headed out to ask about some tourist activities. Maybe it was the Prague talking, but we wanted to do something special to commemorate our trip. So we sussed out some help from the tourism office.

We asked the girl at the tourism office, "Excuse me, do you speak English?"
"Yes," she proudly replied.
I cleared my throat and said, "We'd like to jump out of a plane." She wasn't quite sure she'd heard us right. Markus bit his lip, hard, to keep from bursting out laughing.
"Excuse me?" she asked, puzzled.

Next we headed to Klub Arkitecture for dinner. Had some asian-fusion style pork and some local dumplings, along with Czech beer, of course, some of the best and cheapest in the world. It was almost $2.25 USD per pint at this club, which is actually pretty expensive for this place. Yeah I know, I'm in heaven.

Finally, after dinner, we decided to catch some music at one of Prague's many excellent jazz clubs. Finally found one after trying to find another one from Markus' Lonely Planet guide that listed the wrong address. They had a sign on the door that read, WE ARE NOT JAZZ CLUB. WE DO NOT KNOW JAZZ CLUB.

When we finally got to a decent one, we saw an excellent four-piece combo complete with a vocalist with stylings recalling Bebel Gilberto and an older gentleman whose fingers were difficult to see when he played his stand-up bass. The guitarist had serious chops as well.

We stumbled home after two sets, finally springing for a cab after we couldn't find the 52 (night tram) back to the hostel. Our hostel, by the way, was absolutely excellent. Look up The Boat House if you're ever fortunate enough to find yourself here.

I have been writing this over the last couple of days. I´m in Vienna, heartbroken that I had to leave Prague, but we´ll see what this city brings. Not much so far.

I´ll try to post more on Prague soon, and something on Vienna. Watch this space for the story of the dumbest thing I´ve done on this or any other vacation.