grasswire

There is more to Munich than bier, pretzel & Weisswurst, and out of the three, you are less likely to escape the first. However this time, it was simply a convenient backdrop for a party that one of my summer school friends threw. It was great to see some of them again, though not all who I hoped would show up actually came. Thought about a lot of things during the four hour drive home, like differences in lifestyles, desired and possible futures, different periods in life, and about the mercilessness of geography that will again keep us at bay.

We had the second day of blistering sun in a row and it felt sooooo good. Apart from the cold, it felt as if spring was about to start. Spent the morning around Ljubljana’s city centre, did a lot of walking in the company of my Holgos (that’s how I just decided to call my EOS with Holga lens). The morning was as much fun as the bits of conversations I had or overheard. On the train, a high school girl complaining quite loudly how her breasts are too little compared to those of the other three girls that she was talking to. As I took the photo of stacked chairs in front of a bar, the bar owner came out to talk to me as he thought I was going to send the photos to local authorities as a part of complaint (well, talking about a guilty conscious). An hour later, a funny old guy at the secondhand bookshop said “let me give you a business proposition” – that I should start making stock library of old illustrations and he didn’t want any fee or credits for the idea (but he did want a fortune for a bonded volume of magazines from 1900 with nice illustrations and ads).
And some Holgos’ output of the day:
- long winter morning shadows in the park
- property of the bar owner with guilty consciousness
- close-up from vegetable market
- a rural vignette in the middle of Ljubljana

Just wanted to share this beauty with you, my official snack for tomorrow: the bun is layered with creamy spread, pieces of baked chicken with Persian spices, slices of preen peppers, black olives and lettuce, sprinkled with a touch of dried basil. I admit that enjoyed making it as much as I will enjoy eating it.

Resisting the late night temptation is quite another thing though.

Have been busy writing other stuff so post-Schengen border post is to come within next few days. Till then you get this monochrome large urban still-life sort of pic.

Had a great Sunday trip. We wanted to try out Tamara’s fancy new sledges so we headed for mountain pass Jezersko just to see if we would get lucky. And we deed indeed get lucky, but not the way we expected. As the road zigzagged up the valley, we slowly climbed above the thick grey layer of fog and its cold, damp fingers into the blistering sun. Instead of snow, we got a first glimpse of spring, a warm embrace of 12 degrees Celsius and a magnificent view of the snow-covered peaks that you can see on the pic. To spice up the thing, we decided to drive a few kilometers up to see the post-Schengen border between Slovenia and Austria which will be the topic of a forthcoming post. For now, you can click here for a sort of found Alpine still-life.

Just a simple pic to commemorate the passing week which was marked by my frequent train commute to Ljubljana. I actually like to commute to work by train – not only because it gives me a little more than half an hour to relax, read or catch up on my correspondence but mostly because its a good way to observe people, their surprising reading habits and to get snippets of youth culture I would otherwise be completely disconnected from. Not to mention the sound bites of interesting conversations, such as the one I wish I overheard more. Two boys were talking about someone photographing women and one guy said I wouldn’t mind photographing your mother in swimming suit. After initial shock of amazement, the other guy recuperated by saying: “Well, if you dare to do that….I will give you….lets say 10 Euros. Yeah, I’ll give you 10 Euros if you dare to ask her that.”
And they say that you can’t put a price on everything :)) Sort of reminded me of that “priceless” adds for Visa. Anyway, I guess Matej would also be very interested in models so cheap.
Have a nice weekend.

Here is a little something I stumbled upon in one classic book on print advertising: the difference in the readability of text written in caps or lower case type. Apparently, we very much rely on the upper half of the words for word recognition. For best results, use Serif fonts set in upper and lower case as its readability is some 30 time better than for text set in all caps black letters.
Now go to work, after reading the text in upper pic try reading the text below that’s all caps :)

I caught a part of a song today on the radio, a female voice singing something like “hold me, like it’s the last time you hold me”. Didn’t particularly like the piece but after a while, I started thinking about just how curious that line actually is. Hold me, like it’s the last time you hold me. I can still remember one occasion like this, holding someone in the dark dorm room for the last time, and it is not a pleasant feeling at all. The momentary denial is being constantly raptured by waves of agony, remorse and prospects of bleak future. The knowing of an end looming above you, the despair, the false hopes… Perhaps I’m just getting old but why would you want a thing like this?
I’m aware that it is perhaps just a metaphor, but in my opinion, it is a rather inconvenient (and cheesy) one. I could understand someone wishing to be held “like the first time”, with all the passion, enthusiasm and prospects, but “like the last time”, with mixture of agony and despair… Beats me.
Would really like to see your comments on this one…

I heard on the radio yesterday that so far in this year, Ljubljana got only 30 minutes of sun. Sadly, Kamnik is much the same and not a minute was added to the score today. When you look through the window, you really get a feeling that you are living in a glass of milk. Grrrrr.
Speaking of whiteness and milk, check out this cool pitcher from Rosentahl that we got as one of the presents from our friends – way more attuned to our taste as the one we got last year from my mother.