grasswire

It’s the last week of the semester and it feels sooo good!! Well, it will actually really feel good after I grade some 200 papers that they will all turn by the week is over, but still… We also had quite an exciting weekend but I choose not to go into details of our car breaking down on the highway and a wedding from which starved people escaped to McDonald’s to get a little snack. What you get instead is the above pic from Koper, and a slightly more abstract version of the same motif - mind you it is quite a challenge taking photos while holding Tamara in one hand (click here to see the proof and here to see the little perpetrator).

Since my “adventures” since the return have been mainly confined to lecturing, grading and taking care of Tamara’s cold, you’ll get some more of the New York pics. Today’s topic - found and made pairs. Click on the image that opens after you click the thumbnail to get the full size pic.

A shot inventory of things to remember:
- the enigmatic and poetic beer descriptions which make ordering a bit of a venture
- the number of shops that sell boxes for moving
- breakfasts at Metro diner (take the number specials number four)
- old, fading painted advertisments and signs
- the view of the city from a sort of roof top after-party
- crafter’s stalls and the relaxed atmosphere at Union square
- replacing guidebook for a list of places recommended by friendly natives and the surprises this brings
- trying to get a cab on the street (try doing it in the middle of the night for five people)
- not to mention all the crazy photos tourists take

Well, not just back but back on the old track, i.e. lecturing, grading papers and searching for a good real estate deal. And sorting out impressions and memories of New York along the way. Will post more tomorrow, so far I had just managed to browse through the photographs once as both of my girls are currently ill.

Off to conferernce in New York, will be back on Monday.
Must say hat a certain line from a certain REM song came to my mind today -  ”Leaving New York, never easy (it’s pulling me apart)”. Only in my head, it goes: Leaving for New York, never easy…” 

The thumbnails are actually from my commuter train (a.k.a. Kamnčan)

No matter how casual farewells with friends who live abroad appear to be, I am always struck by the stubborn power of geography that takes effect after the parting. Apparently, space structures our lives more than time… and there appears to be no way to overcome space except through spending time (and its derivates). I know you might not find this to be very deep or think that I should know this stuff from physics, but it is one of the things that have been on my mind today and which never cease to amaze me.

The pic is a close-up of an angel from a church bell in rainy Radovljica. Those of you who have seen Wenders’ Wings of desire (Himmel über Berlin) might remember that even angels have to sacrifice time(lesness) to conquer space ;)

Conferences are one of the better parts of working in academia. I got accepted to a big one in April in New York and will have to start working on my paper soon (on my half of the paper, to be more precise). It will be on racial food packaging and I’m co-authoring it with this really cool guy I met in Tartu. Must admit am not so much concerned about paper and presentation but more on showing my passport, adorned by Syrian and Iranian visas. Perhaps I should have a new one made ;)
Should anyone know of reasonably priced hotel on Manhattan, drop me a note. The pic is from Vienna airport.

Our days in Macerata, awakened by coffee and the sound of street cleaners, were all about pasta, salami, cheese, and sweets, topped with evening passegiatta and washed down with a glass of wine. The pale red brick houses and narrow streets of the walled city were perfect backdrop for this debauchery for taste buds.
Here is a short selection of pics, you can also click here and see more pics on my Flickr page:
- Saturday evening passegiatta
- still advertised, but not sold for years
- waiting
- monument (shot with Holgos)
- bar(red) window
- found still life with graffiti
- black-eye at carnivale 1
- black-eye at carnivale 2 (specially for ex-Daisy people)
- Tamara as kozmonaut

No, I was not plunged into the abyss of after party depression.
Quite on the contrary – after sending the first two chapters of my thesis to my supervisor on Thursday, we headed for a mini break in Italy to visit our former professor and his wife. I must say that after plunging the yellow envelope into the giant yellow mailbox in the middle of the night, the seven hour drive through fog and rain that followed still seemed like a giant relief :)

This is just a sneak preview, more pics and text to follow.

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.