Prague: Black Light Theatre

There is a lot to be told about my Prague escape this summer, but I would like to start with the part that did not get photographed: the Black Light Theatre performance. I went to "Aspects of Alice" and liked it very much. Apart from the classical music concerts taking place at every noon and in the evenings in the Golden City, the Black Light Theatre is a particularly special form of art you will definitely enjoy. It involves a world of dreams mingled with a real world, cartoons and people moving onstage with the same easiness you would picture in a movie. Only it is real, and happening in front of your own eyes.



Cameras are forbidden, still I found this little movie on the Internet. Enjoy - and go there if you are in Prague!

Flying to Maramures

This evening I am flying towards the north of the country. Hopefully the weather will be fine.

Take me and break me and close all your windows and doors.

Shut me off, cut me off, make me an island, I'm yours.

Take me away from the world, take me away from the girls.

Take me and break me and make me an island, I'm yours

(Joe Dolan, Make me an island)

I don't want to miss a thing

There is a certain thrill in knowing you are expected. A familiar face, waiting at the airport, at the railway station, just for you to know they knew you were coming, knew you had luggage (or not) and just wanted to give a hand, make a stand, make sure you knew they cared. I am always so glad when somebody waits for me – and keep looking out of the window when I arrive to Bucharest, in remembrance of earlier days, when my grandpa or my mother or my father would come pick me up at the railway station. In more recent times, I remember people dear to me who would wait for me, hug me and then take me home. Nowadays there usually is nobody there to fetch me, so I take the subway and try not to get depressed by the grey stations and bored faces of people.

Still it is my secret wish there were somebody there to wait for me - to be my home and give me the feeling that the journey was not in vain, that at its end they were there, waiting, smiling, knowing...

you are the afterglow
you are the midnight show
the only one i know
you come and then you go
and when you finally leave
you leave nothing for me
(Travis, Afterglow)

Vienna: Die Stadt gehort Dir

Writing about Vienna is like writing about my home, or about about a past life as a Viennese. There are few places where I have felt like home, and one of them is Vienna. I had the joy to visit the city again in the past weekend, together with a friend who had never been there before. Besides the pleasure of seeing some familiar places again (like the Stephansdom, Hundertwasserhaus and the Belvedere palace), there were some new ones we discovered and enjoyed.

Saturday morning was quite chilly, as we started strolling on the Mariahilfer street, well-known for being a shopping paradise. A short U-bahn ride brought us to the Naschmarkt – an antiquarians meeting place combined with a market selection of wines, soaps, meat types, vegetables and fruit from all over Europe and the world. Chinese, Turks, Greeks, Italians and many others mingled to form the most colorful blend of food and customs in the city. Later on, we had real schnitzel for lunch in what must be the temple of the best schnitzels in Vienna, called the Schnitzelwirt (Neubaugasse 52). Besides the immense portions, the service was irreproachable and the waiter grinned merrily at seeing us two sweat with the effort of devouring the meal… In the Griensteindl Café (a literary café close to the Kohlmarktgasse and the more famous Café Demel), I had the best cappuccino in a long time, to go with a chocolate-free slice of Malakoff cake. A night walk to the Danube brought us to the Hundertwasserhaus and then, to contrast it, to Vienna’s International Centre. The place was obviously built as a home to office and governmental buildings and I assume it looks like a termit house during daylight. When we arrived there at 9pm, it looked as empty as a deserted world after a Resident Evil raid. The evening ended in Pandora’s Box, a local pub with diverse music, enjoyable beer and funny Austrian guys; we entered because we heard The Doors inside and left when they hit the reggae disks.

Sunday was the cultural day – I satisfied my art appetite after two modern painting exhibitions – one taking pride in Monet and Picasso at the Albertina gallery, the second displaying Cezanne, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, the Fauves and even Brancusi at the Lower Belvedere galleries.

The funny feeling on returning was that there was a life that waited for me to come back here. Unlike other times, when returning felt like going through a tunnel of glass paper to adapt to the old habits, I felt happy and relaxed. Now I know that Arcadia is close :-)

I'm coming home to you
I'm alive I'm a mess
I can't wait to get home to you
To get warm and undressed
There've been changes beyond my dreams;
Everybody wants me to sing
There've been changes beyond my grasp;
Things I'm sinking in

Nothing falls like London Rain
Nothing heals me like you do
(Heather Nova, London Rain)

While travelling

What do people on the bus do while they are travelling? Well, they listen to music on ipods, watch movies on laptops, look out the window, comment about the length of the road, the technical abilities of the driver, talk on the phone loudly enough to piss everyone off (about family inheritance, children and the technical abilities of the driver), and there are people who make up stories about the ones who are travelling. Like me. I saw a guy's female best friend trying to attract his attention. It was clear they were sharing something - reading in the same positions, both wearing glasses, he showing her certain landscapes or giggling over certain lines from the books. The girlfriend was a bit resentful, however compensated by owning the right to kiss the guy, at which point the best friend looked out of the window. Quite funny to watch, actually.

Tonight she told me she'd known I had been rushing back to you.
What she didn't know was there was nobody to come rushing back to.
Or is there?

So now you've got the best of me
Come on and take the rest of me
Oh baby
(The Real Thing, You to me are everything)