Start blog

(Sept. 22nd 2006)

Well, the basic idea of starting my own blog is quite settleded for a while. But never the less most people need occasionally some external energy, to start with their good ideas. Same with me. And besides gentle pushing in eMails and the according blog of a close friend of mine I finally start, because there where some major impressions the week ago:


The Promised Land

Since a colleague of mine fell sick on pneumonia I got a short term assignment to a scheduled class in Israel. I felt like many other people in the world when they get an email, stating that they will leave to Tel Aviv soon. But after the first shock and boiling down to statistics, it is not that frigthening anymore. Based on squarefootage and inhabitants it is much more likely to die on a german highway than getting bombed while staying in Israel.

Since I still drive car in Germany and refuse to switch 100% on public transport (which is not really secure as well) I decided to embrace my fate, fly to the Promised Land and to enjoy every minute there. Finally it felt like one of the most secure places in the world. You need to get adopted to the ubiquitious security and in first place I felt little bit annoyed by getting security checked at any supermarket, cinema and even the hotel (as long as they don't know you). Besides that I found a nation full of ancient places. The Israelian people where mostly very nice and of course polite. The food that is served all over the place is marvellous. Allthough there is not that much that you might call a national dish, besides the hummus and pita bread, the mix of all the immigrant groups managed to bring the best food from all over the world to israel. You feel and particular taste the arabic and orientalic influence, but even for the Germans they have everywhere Schnitzel. Amazing, the Israeli call it even Schnitzel.

So if you go there, prepare for marvellous and big breakfast buffets as well as a lot of other increadible good meals. Plan time for the culinarian experience, since dining is not a rush in the near east.

Besides that I finally managed to visit the ancient city of Old Yaffo (Jaffa) which is actually part of Tel Aviv. This was the first place where I felt how dense history is setteled in this country. From the aegytian people through the arabs and the early jewish people, the crusaders up to now every 50 years latest, allways another tribe fought about this hill through the last 3500 years. You see the old gate from Pharao Ramses II and the reminders of the activities of Thutmosis III, you see the old mosque and the crusader monestary, where Saladin and close by Richard Lionhearth had some hazzle ... well basically everybody showed up since one of Noahs sons founded the city 40 years after the biblical flooding. Allthough Jaffa is presumably the oldest harbor in the world, when things got hot 1000 b.c. it was allready not so important anymore since other places were found which are more protected towards the open sea.

Funny thing besides is that they have "Andromedas Rock" which refers to the story where Andromedas mom, Cassiopeia statet that she is even more beutifull than the Nereids. This really upset Poseidon and he created a monster that brought lots of troubles to Jaffa. Her father, the King decided to make peace with the monster by searving his daughter as dinner. A son of Zeus showed up, I think Perseus and saved Andromeda and to finally punish anybody Cassiopeia was sentenced to being a pattern of stars that has to walk all the times through the firmament. Subtile as the old gods are with the feet to the top, otherwise it would not have been a punishment.

Finally I hope to go there again and at least make the trip to Jerusalem.

And very finally, the really most dangerous thing in Tel Aviv are the taxidrivers. If you survived the taxis, nothing else could harm you.


Photokina 2006

(Sept. 27th 2006)

Monday my manager approached me with the basically good idea to replace again a sick colleague at a booth on the photokina. I was a little bit upset since I actually had to prepare a projekt for next week but finally I agreed to support them at least one day. I'm happy I agreed. So I finally had the opportunity to work closely together with Christian Popkes, a popular european photographer who had a "workshop project" together woth our best customer. So if you need a very good portrait of yourself, make sure you show up at Photokina, Hall 4.1.. For my part I really enjoyed to meet Christian and well ... perhaps we will repeat that without the fair- business arround sooner or later. Since he works for Hasselblad I had as well the chance to have a close look on the new fully digital Hasselblad H2D which is an increadible digicam. Since I have not a spare house to sell I guess I will stick with my old D30 for a while.

Besides that I had some new experiences with large format printing which I really avoided for a long time in my carrer. At least I could refresh some of my digital workflow and colour management knowledge, before it vanishes unused.


Vienna Calling

(Oct. 2nd+3rd 2006)

I travel to Vienna for four years now, at leat three times a year. As you might see in my calendar I mostly teach network classes together with Hewlett Packard here. As many business travellers I see airports, conference rooms and hotelbeds. This time I really forced myself (actually I was forced by my wife which took advantage of having vacation while I needed to work) to leave the "house" in the evening and see little bit more of this marvellous city. Besides that this time I had to travell by car since I took a little bit of network equipment along and that gave the opportunity to arrange a little bit more spare time.

So finally I did some sightseeing and took the chance to see the catacombs of St. Stephan which offer some strange insights on a perhaps more strange part of Viennas history. Besides the church we went to the museum quarter and there picked the exhibition of the vienna architectural center. A really deep insight into architecture which could be found in vienna. Since many famous architects lived and worked in Vienna you may find really a lot of most impressing buildings either in the exhibition or life. Thwo architects whose buildings we saw over and over again where Otto Wagner who built for example the vienna subway and Friedensreich Hundertwasser who built the "Hundertwasserhaus " and the "Kunsthaus " (House of Art) which we visited anyway to see the last day of H.R. Giegers exhibition with really a lot of strange artwork. My favourite work is of course the original model of the alien head from the movie "Alien". But as well you might find the Harkonnen Environment most impressive, some furniture which was originally designed to be used in the movie "Dune" for the Harkonnen royal family.

We finished this very exhausting and tourist like trip with a business- talk in my current Vienna favourite restaurant. Besides the decorations in strange colours, the concept of a churrascaria is most easy and appealing. At least if you are not a vegetarian. This classical Brazilian restaurant style implies that you can not really order your meal. But as soon as you had your apperitif you give the waiter a sign by taking your salad from the buffet, which says that you are ready to start. Then the service brings the full set of side dishes, in small portions, which are replaced by new portions as soon as one dish is empty. Then, the main part, every five or three or however minutes a guy leaves the kitchen with some sorts of grilled meat sticked on a metal stick, visits any table, introduces the meal and chops a piece off if you don't refuse to take it. Roastbeef, steak, beef with parmeasn chease, bacon on chicken breast, .... you get a lot of different meat slices, at least I think 14 in this case. served along with some Caiprinha this really makes a good evening.

Besides this one stressfull day, we really enjoyed the classical coffee houses as well as some very alternative bars, where Vienna has plenty of them, along the daily routes of business travelling.

If you ever go to vienna and need some additional advice, perhaps you like to write an email.


Cars

(Oct. 5th 2006)

Yesterday I have been once again in the cinema. The movie Doro and I chose (ok I chose, but Doro had no alternatives to offer), was the latest Pixar production Cars. I rate this movie a full A, the best one I have seen for a long time. Even if you like light entertainement cinema with popcorn and coke this movie pays off a big time.

For somebody like me, who was involved in motorsports for two years and spend one year of my life in studying computer graphics, watching this movie is something like a holy service. The characters / cars are animated beautifully, behave on the one hand of course very carlike but on the other hand they got so marvellous adopted human characteristics, that I even start to love Sally ;o). The landscape picks up the car motive and embodies car parts where you never look for them. The rocks have shapes of hoods and tires and other parts. The finish of the cars is rendered perfectly and even in the very light intensive scenery of the racetrack it reflections seem to be perfect, allthough I am aware of the rendering cheating that occasionally takes place. But on top many other scenes show parts of the masterclass of computer artistery, like the fields and weeds moving in the wind or all the effects arround the splashing water when driving through the hills and passing waterfalls. The level of detail is really incredible. What I found personally really most amazing was the fact that even the lost rubber of the racetires was roling over the racetrack borders, like on a real track.

Great.

And finally the movie reminded me of some bsinesstrips I had to Idaho and Utah, where I experienced similar landscapes occasionally and I felt very very touched about this type of presentation.

Thanks to Pixar.


Vienna II

(Oct. 8th 2006)

Since my students performed outstanding in the first two days of this week, we were able to finish early on friday. This gave me the second chance in one week of sightseeing in Vienna. Well ... rare occasion, but I enjoyed this very much again. So finally I met my wife downtown and I really looked forward to see the "Palmenhaus" which is a very famous building as well. It is the largest palm- pavillion in Europe with its 111 meters length and was constructed 1882 by Franz Xaver von Segenschmid. Again a very famous architect living in the seccond half of the 19th century in Austria.

Footnote regarding famous architects: Hundertwasser, more artist than architect and mentioned prviously built a waste incineration plant, what I learned the day before yesterday and found really obscure.

The palm- pavillion is part of the gardens of the Schoenbrunn Palace and after we visited the house, we walked a little bit through the gardens, since we anyway needed to walk to a nearby subway station (you have the choice between Meidling- and Schoebrunn- station. The garden itself is a masterpiece and is still in very good shape so you might walk a while. There you find besides the actual palace some roman ruins, (vienna is first mentioned 800 b.c.) the zoo as well of course as the "Gloriette"   and the well of  Neptune.  I always refused to whorship the imperial Austria but what the guys built in this time is really remarkable. When you climb up to the Gloriette, your price is that you have a marvellous sight over large parts of older Vienna.

Besides other animals in the park you find some Eurasian red squirrels which are not so shy, like the guys you see occaionally in other forests running up the pines as soon as you spot them. I spend half an hour on shooting portraits of the squirrels, before my wife pushed me in the palm- pavillion, since it was about to close. Perhaps you find some pics soon here.

When we left the Park, we walked through a couple of streets and over and over we found reasonably old houses, built in the last 200 years, marking the special flavour of Vienna. Grown up in Germany I am not used to cities like that and suddenly I remembered a chat with my very best friend a couple of years ago, when he mentioned some pictures of old Stuttgart , prior to WWII. Stuttgart was supposed to have pretty much the same look than Vienna, same as Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, ... Take any German city. One of the major crimes in WWII, was really to destroy this entire cultural heritage. Regardless of guilt and responsibility, every destruction of cultural goods in a major scale is a crime and it is the biggest pitty of human history that these buildings and stories are lost forever. Vienna suffered damage as well, like London and Paris, but the destruction was rarely so complete. I feel a big loss when I think about Germany in that way.

Besides, if you really like to have an impression of the imperial old middle Europe, travel to Vienna and Prague. Prague was never bombed due to a deal of the allies which felt guilty for not helping the tchecsz people when the Nazis started to invade the east. Vienna suffered damage, but not that much that it could not been rebuilt. Whereas Germany had no money to do a orriginal remodelling after the war. Budapest and Bratislava are catching up but have of course strong influence from the communist era.