Paul's Blog

Windows Phone 7 - Microsoft Strikes Back with a totally new OS and the Metro UI

2011-11-27T14:38:00.001-08:00

It's only been a few weeks since I starting using my new smartphone with the latest Windows Phone 7 operating system (aka "Mango"). Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft's latest attempt at cracking the smartphone market, something of a surprise since many of us thought that Microsoft had given up on the mobile/smartphone market (or the market gave up on it), thanks to the lackluster success of the Windows CE/Windows Mobile platform and the dominance of Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Indeed, as of late 2011, Windows marketshare for smartphones has fallen to only about 2% of total, with the smartphone universe being almost completely dominated by Apple and Google. But Microsoft is back with a TOTALLY new operating system this time and here's my chance to review it and compare it to some other phones I have owned.

It's strange to think of Microsoft of an underdog, but things have changed very quickly in the fast-paced mobile operating system world in the last couple of years. Only 3 or 4 years ago the market for mobile phones was dominated by Nokia, and then later by RIM, both of whom took turns in the number one spot but seem to have missed the smartphone revolution of the last 2 years and are now struggling to stay alive in a market dominated by iOS and Android. Microsoft have barely been a player in smartphones up until now, but the folks at Redmond have definitely not just been sitting around twiddling their thumbs while Apple and Google have built massive empires at the expense of their rivals. Microsoft have been working very hard on their latest Windows Phone OS and it may just be the thing that brings Microsoft back into the arena as a major player.

Cutting to the chase, let me start by saying that I really like my new Windows 7 Phone. In fact, I really, REALLY like it. Before I go into the reasons why, I want to preface this review by saying that I have also owned iPhone and Android devices (both of which I like), and am primarily a Mac user AND a second-generation iPad owner. In fact, I am such a long time Mac user, that I would have never considered a Windows phone were it not for a rather unexpected set of circumstances that led me to trying out some alternatives to Apple.

My journey into seeking an alternative to the iPhone leaped into reality one day when I left my trusty 3GS on a bus by accident. It was my first smartphone and I had owned it for about a year and a half before it got lost. Despite some nagging issues I had with the iPhone, it was a good phone but I was definitely thinking of trying out an Android even before I lost it.

The biggest problem I had with the iPhone was the issue of jailbreaking and being forced to buy an unlocked phone in the first place because of the exorbitant price of unlocked iPhones without a contract. This forced me to buy a locked phone and jailbreak/unlock it using third party hacking tools. Even though jailbreaking an iPhone is not that difficult, the idea that you have to hack the software every time you want to upgrade your OS, and rely on a group of underground hackers to provide you the tools to do it built up a lot of frustration in me and general resentment towards Apple. Other things I also didn't like were the small screen, which made it nearly impossible to type on those tiny keys without making glaring typos almost every time and the fact that the iPhone only has one navigation button. You have to use this single button for almost all primary navigation on the device and it sucks. Why can't the iPhone have a back button as well like other smartphones from other companies?? Too many clicks needed with just that one button to navigate around. I would kill for a dedicated back button on the iPhone.

Despite my frustrations with the iPhone, because of the incredibly high cost of getting a new one (900€ for an unlocked iPhone 4 in Estonia!!!), I opted instead for a much cheaper Android phone as a replacement and eagerly embraced the new and exciting world of Android with an open mind and a happy wallet.

The phone I decided to replace my iPhone with was an LG P500, a cute little Android phone that only cost me 180€ for a brand new, UNLOCKED model! It wasn't a high-end phone but it did everything I needed and didn't cost more than a new MacBook Air! The initial joy of having a real, factory unlocked phone after having to deal with the nonsense of jailbreaking was totally liberating! Google was my new hero and on top of that I found the Android OS to be fresh and "open".

My new phone cost around 1/5th the price of a similar unlocked iPhone, but it was about 90% as good as my previous iPhone, in my opinion. In fact, the only thing I didn't really like about my LG phone was that the screen was even smaller than the iPhone and the processor was slower (this was one of the very lowest-end Android devices on the market at the time). While I was OK with the LG, I eventually started to envy my friends with their snazzy Samsung Galaxy's and huge 4" screens with 1Ghz+ processors. I would have probably upgraded to a bigger phone and stuck with Android were it not for the fact that I got a GREAT deal on a Windows phone :)

Enter the Samsung Omnia 7 - and it didn't take me long to start liking my new Windows 7 smartphone. Aside from the much bigger screen (4.0" on the Samsung), the very first thing I noticed compared to my previous phones is how pretty the OS looks. Whoever designed the Metro UI (the square, grid-based system used in Windows Phone and the upcoming Windows 8) clearly has a very strong appreciation for clean, modern graphics and typography because the typefaces used and the classic grid-based presentation used in the Metro UI look terrific. As someone with a design background, I've always been drawn to Apple products but in the case of Windows Phone, Microsoft have finally entered the world of modern, well-crafted, visually appealing user interfaces that graphic artists can really admire.

What really strikes me about the new UI is not only the fact that it is genuinely beautiful, but also that it is totally minimal, understated, and yet practical and intuitive at the same time. Information is reduced to basic lines, squares and grids, but it all flows elegantly into a minimalistic experience that is modern, attractive and eminently functional without being pretentious. I imagine there are people who will find Metro too "boxy", but I think it's right on; Microsoft have done a great job in getting designers to build the look of their new OS rather than programmers without any sense for user experience.

Speaking of programmers, the Metro UI for both Windows Phone 7 and the upcoming Windows 8 desktop is built in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Web developers like myself can now build both applications and user interfaces for Windows phones using familiar scripting languages and open standards without having to know C# or C++ (hurray!). Check out the free Developer Preview of Windows 8 which includes Visual Studio 11 and the Metro SDK for building Metro style apps with HTML/CSS/JavaScript for both mobile and desktop environments. BTW, here's a good video from Microsoft's Windows 8 Developer Conference, introducing some of the ideas behind building Metro style apps for Windows 8 (which also applies to Windows Phone).

A major part of the Windows Phone 7 philosophy is the concept of "putting people first". In fact, the official Windows Phone motto is "Put people first." and the Metro UI follows through with this idea by integrating various social services and applications into a seamless experience. As such, address book, photo galleries, chat capabilities, SMS, calendar, email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., are all presented in a hub-like manner, accessed through inter-related "live" tiles where people (ie. your friends and contacts) remain at the center of focus rather than individual applications.

On the surface this whole "people first" idea might sound a bit like some kind of shallow marketing campaign, made up by an advertising agency who have never even used the OS, but I'm happy to report that Microsoft have actually succeeded really well in living up to the marketing hype behind this concept - it works!

One of the very first clues you'll notice regarding the "people first" approach is the prominently placed People tile, which itself is a live portal into virtually any information available to you about your friends and contacts. One of the People tile's main functions is to serve as your address book, but unlike address books on other mobile platforms, this one compiles live information on your contacts from every service you give it access to and puts it right there within each person's profile entry, just a couple of clicks away. Not only can you call your contacts or send them email or SMS messages right from their profile, but you can also write directly on their Facebook wall, see their photo albums on Facebook or Windows Live, read their recent Facebook posts (and comment or like them) or Twitter and LinkedIn Updates, see their home or work addresses on a map, view their birthday, find out who their significant other is, etc. The coolest part though, and I admit that this is mostly cool for hard-core Facebook users like myself, is that it pulls all the information about your friends from Facebook (assuming you allow it) and even populates their profile pictures with the profile pics from Facebook. Now I realize that not everyone is a Facebook fan and may not appreciate this feature, but I have about 1,000 friends on Facebook spread all over the world and Facebook is the best way for me to keep tabs on so many people in so many different places. Privacy aside, Facebook is great for this and the deep integration in Windows 7 with Facebook is really nice.

I don't really know how well any of this will work for people that don't use Facebook, but I know that Windows Phone also integrates with Twitter and LinkedIn and I suspect that the same level of integration with other social services will continue to evolve as Windows Phone 7 matures. In contrast, Android's syncing with my Gmail contacts seems much less elegant and practical in terms of the way I actually use the phone and interact with my contacts.

The heart of the Windows Phone 7 interface is the Metro UI, which presents you with "live" tiles instead of just application icons. Metro tiles are bigger than traditional application icons so they can display more information and thus update constantly with data so you can see quickly at a glance what is going on without having to drill deeper into the UI by launching a separate app. For example, the Calendar tile shows the latest calendar events for the day (yes even events from Facebook). The People tile constantly updates with photos of my friends while they doing something in cyberspace, or interacting with me via SMS, phone calls, etc. - a neat reminder of who's the most active of your friends. The Foursquare tile shows who's leading in checkins and the Pictures tile cycles automatically through photos in my camera roll. These are just a few of the things that happen with live tiles, and don't forget that you can move these around, pin them to your start screen, or remove them all together.

With all this inter-related info available on the phone, it wasn't until I actually started using the phone extensively that I realized that the information presentation works really well in practice. The more I use the phone the more I appreciate the simplicity and straight-forwardness of the UI and ability to see the information that is most important where I want it. Besides that, it is a very refreshing change from the familiar Apple/Google approach, which though it works great on those platforms, is not the only way to build a smartphone UI. I think that Microsoft have come up with something pretty original in its own right but more importantly, it works as promised in actual practice and grows on you the more you use it. Kudos to them for thinking different ;)

Regarding apps for Windows phone, they tend to look a lot different here than on iOS or Android. Naturally it's up to the developer to design the look and feel of their app but some apps look so different (Like Facebook and Foursquare for example) that it takes a while to figure out how they work. Generally they tend to be more text based than graphic based, using Metro's slick fonts and CSS3 transitions. Whether this works is up to you but it took me a while to get used to the UI for the Foursquare app for example, and I'm still not sure I like it as much as the version on the iPhone. In any case, the Windows Marketplace has plenty of apps available -- not as many as Apple or Google -- but the number grows daily and I'm sure that developers will adapt well to Windows 7 given the ease of creating apps and working with the new API's and Metro SDK. There's one big hole in the marketplace without Skype, but we are working hard on getting this to the Windows phone platform and it will be there before too long!

I'm not a big game player but you can access games through the Xbox Live tile and even access your Xbox Live games and settings, as well as interact with other players through Xbox Live. My custom Xbox avatar shows up in the Xbox Live tile and dances around to entertain me, even falling down if I shake the phone hard enough :D. So far I've only added a couple of games but they seem to work great.

For the moment I'm really enjoying my new phone and can't seem to put it down. Regarding the hardware, Samsung's Super Amoled screen is just amazing and makes the whole experience that much better. The Omnia 7's camera is kind of a mixed bag though, in full daylight it performs nicely, with good colors, but indoors it has real problems with autofocus and rarely takes a sharp photo. It also suffers from shutter lag and poor feedback compared to real dedicated cameras. Despite this, I'm mostly very happy with the phone and consider it a keeper. Microsoft also have a free Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac that allows you to sync your iTunes and iPhoto libraries to your Windows phone so this makes it easy for a Mac user like myself to live with it.

While I've only had the phone for about a month as of this writing, there have already been 2 significant OS updates and with the last one I noticed some big improvements and new functionality. The original version of the OS that shipped was a pretty early production version and was impressively stable, especially for a new OS. Android on the other hand always seemed to have some rough spots and even still seems very much a work in progress.

All in all, I'm totally happy with my new Windows phone. It's not the perfect operating system but I think it probably works better for me than any other smartphone I have used. I'm eager to see how the market receives the new version of Windows phone and how Apple and Google will respond to it. My guess is that Microsoft will do well and that more competition will give everyone better smartphone options in the long run

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are entirely my own personal opinions and may or may not reflect those of my employer.

Istanbul, Turkey

2011-02-27T06:23:00.000-08:00

I finally made it to Istanbul last month. After having dreamed about going there for what seems like ages and even after having made a couple of unsuccessful attempts, I managed to spend 5 days in this ancient and thoroughly fascinating city.

While there I met up with a Spanish friend and another American friend who has been living in Istanbul and teaching English at one of the universities. It was a great trip! The good: food, architecture, history, people, ambiance, exoticness, Turkish coffee, Turkish tea and more. The bad: not much. It was VERY cold but other than that I can't really complain. This is a lovely city that I could have spent weeks exploring. I will definitely be headed back in the spring when the weather is warmer. For the full visual journey, check out my Istanbul photo gallery here.

SF Rave Documentary Seeks Funding

2010-12-22T01:41:00.000-08:00

DJ Jenö and promoter Martin O'Brien are making a documentary about the rave scene in San Francisco in the 90's. Having been there and witnessed this great period of American history, I'm really, really glad to see a project like this and hope that it gets funded (I pledged $250). I think no matter how old I get, I will always look back at this period in my life as the most amazing and magical time, it really was special. Check out the video and make a pledge if you were there too!

15 Secrets of Transmit 4

2010-12-11T01:39:00.000-08:00

If you're a Mac user like me, you might already be using Transmit, the best FTP tool available on the Mac. I upgraded to version 4 a while back which is a major improvement over the last version (which I loved btw), and now Panic has just posted 15 Secrets of Transmit 4 on their blog. Lots of good tips for anyone using Transmit version 4. If you haven't upgraded yet, it's definitely recommended!

Blogging Again

2010-11-30T10:48:00.000-08:00

OK, I've taken an extended break from updating my blog but I just decided it was time to start again. Aside from the many trips I've been taking to interesting places, I also decided to blog about some technical stuff, since I've got all these ideas brewing in my head. So stay tuned for some more updates in the near future.

Move to Tallinn and New Job at Skype

2009-04-19T02:10:00.001-07:00

It's been months since I've updated my blog - suffice to say that I was too busy having fun in Berlin to bother about it. But the big news this month is that I landed a job at Skype and moved to Tallinn, Estonia! It's certainly a big move though and I am really excited about it! Skype is one of the coolest companies in the world and has one of the best products that is revolutionizing the way people communicate. Stay tuned...

Berlin Apartment/Flat for Rent

2008-12-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for a great furnished, 1Bd apartment in a great part of Berlin, look here. This cool flat is located right on Kastanienallee and has Wifi and all the necessary goodies for short (or long) term travelers to Berlin.

Latest Con Spam

2008-09-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

I received this in my mailbox today, what should I do?

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of
800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be
most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing)
will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a
former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN /
McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the
American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can
be assured that this transaction is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the
funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds
in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under
surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a
reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the
funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond
with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to
protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Bin Laden Succeeds in Bankrupting America

2008-09-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

Few people will remember the pledge that Osama Bin Forgetten made back in 2004 when he said the following in a transcript that appeared on Al Jazeera:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

Full report on Bin Laden pledge from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/

Needless to say, Bin Laden has succeeded in his pledge. After spending nearly a trillion dollars to fight the phoney war on terrorism, America is on the verge of bankruptcy and Bin Laden is laughing hysterically while unable to contain his glee!!! The amazing thing about this is that America has actually been defeated by a small band of stone age, middle eastern religious zealots, living in primitive caves on a diet of goat milk and camels. Aside from the fact that this is the first time that the US has "been at war" with a tribal group since the Indian wars of the 1800's, one really has to be astounded at the stupidity, arrogance and utter incompetence of the people who claim to be protecting us from the terrorists and their utter defeat by a stone age tribe. What a bunch of blistering nincompoops!!!

Public Transportation in Los Angeles??

2008-06-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

The last time I was in Southern California I swore I would never come back until gas was $10 a gallon, SUVs were impractical relics, and there were only half as many cars on the road. Well strangely enough, I find myself back in LA this month with gas pushing $5/gallon and SUVs suddenly less desirable than tract homes in Las Vegas. Even more surprisingly, LA has a real Metro system! OH MY GOD!!! Who would have imagined that!!!

When I was last in LA about 10 years ago, they had just finished building the Purple line, that quaint, but rather useless line that only went about 8 stops from Union Station to Vermont and Western. Now LA has FIVE different metro lines, and though they still only serve mostly immigrant areas, one can actually get around pretty well, especially in and around the downtown area. In the few weeks I've been here, I've managed to travel all over LA without having to use a car (and this my friends, is a REVOLUTIONARY concept). I've been from Hollywood to Pasadena, Redondo Beach, North Hollywood and all over downtown. It may not be a very complete, or even efficient system, but it's here! You can even go all the way to Long Beach or LAX. You can buy a 1 week pass for only $17 that allows you unlimited usage and is also valid on buses. Well done!

OK, now the bad news - often times you wait FOREVER for a train to reach the platform and the clocks that are supposed to tell you how far away the trains are almost never work. Trains also stop running around midnight, escalators rarely work, the seating both on the trains and the platforms is terrible, connecting buses take obscenely long to arrive, and 85% of the ridership is Mexican or Central American, with another 10% consisting of homeless and mentally disturbed people who don't bathe and wreak of BO. That's not a racist statement, just a lamentation that so many "affluent" and non-immigrants still prefer to drive rather than take public transportation. In fact, one of the biggest stigmas about riding public transportation in LA is that it puts you face to face with LA's "underclass", the poor, dark-skinned (and sometimes homeless) throbbing masses that look better from behind the closed windows of your air-conditioned Lexus SUV than from the seat next to you. If you didn't think LA was a third-world city, a few days of riding public transportation will change your mind...

That's right, riding the subway (or buses) in LA, it's not hard to imagine yourself in Mexico City rather than Los Angeles. Mexican Spanish is the predominant language and you'll probably even hear some indigenous Mexican languages here and there. It's always fun to see the occasional European riding the LA transportation system, they always have this perplexed look, kind of like - hmm, I guess public transportation in America is only for poor people! I didn't know there were so many poor people in LA!

I suspect this situation will start to change though as gas keeps climbing in price and cars become less and less viable for working class people. Maybe the folks on the Westside will finally decide that having alternatives to driving are worth the trade off of having more of "those brown people" coming into their neighborhoods (one of the reasons Westsiders have been able to block the western expansion of the Red Line past Wilshire/Western. In the mean time the Metro system continues to expand east, with a new section of the Gold Line connecting East LA sometime next year.

While we wait for more metro lines to be built, the system does integrate really well with the bus network which serves the entire LA basin. Virtually all of the buses run on compressed natural gas, giving LA the largest clean-burning bus fleet in the country, if not the world! An added bonus, with diesel prices going up so fast, the cost to ride LA's buses remains very low. Natural gas continues to sell for much less than petroleum gas or diesel. See what a little forward vision can accomplish! Now if they could just get those buses to run more frequently then more people would start using them. And please bus drivers, turn down the air condition, you're not running a refrigerator car!

Even with the small steps LA has taken so far, I'd have to say that the air quality is definitely better than it was 10 years ago. I think people are starting to drive less and it's making a difference. Smaller cars are selling like hot cakes; the MINI Cooper is now the hippest car to drive, closely followed by the Toyota Prius, and they are everywhere! Cadillac SUVs with 20-inch chrome wheels are no longer cool. Way to go! We're halfway to $10/per gallon now, this city could be an amazing place once it kicks the oil habit. I might even consider moving back here. Imagine an LA with a real public transportation network, with more stations and frequent connections. 50% fewer cars on the road and half of those low emission vehicles. Imagine being able to clearly see the snow-capped San Gabriel mountains everyday from a beautiful, and revitalized downtown. This could be the promised land once again.

America's Thrist for SUVs on the Wane

2008-05-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

With gas prices approaching $4 per gallon, looks like American's thirst for big gas guzzling cars and SUVs is finally starting to let up. Increasingly, Americans are giving up their SUVs and buying smaller cars. I was really pleased to see several Smart cars around New York, one of the smallest cars available in Europe and only recently imported into the US. This is great news! I even saw one here in Arkansas where I'm staying at the moment. The Smart ForTwo is basically a two-seat vehicle with a 3-cylinder engine that gets over 40 MPG. It's so small that you can park it in the same space as a large motorcycle! I never thought this car would be popular in the U.S. but looks like it's actually off to a good start. Several other high gas mileage vehicles are also available in the US market and the choices for small, fuel efficient vehicles is finally growing as U.S. car buyers switch their tastes (it's about time!)

America sinks to new levels of depravity

2008-03-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

If the trillion dollars spent so far on this phoney Iraq war and the damage it has done to the American economy (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and thousands of dead and wounded Americans) isn't enough, now American "troops" have taken to torturing animals in Iraq. I guess that's what happens when you take 18 yo kids from small towns and make them into cold-blooded killers. These videos are disturbing but the truth about the Iraq LIE needs to be told and we need to have disturbing footage like this to make people realize how sick this whole charade has become. I don't know if these videos are real but they were apparently posted by soldiers themselves. The sad thing is that I'm sure there are much worse things going on, involving not just animals, but people as well. The Bush administration and the WAR profiteers that are behind this criminal front are destroying America with their own selfish, twisted agenda. How bad does it have to get before people wake up?

US soldier throws puppy off of cliff

US soldier shoots stray dog

Update June/2008: It turns out that not only are these videos REAL, but they have caused a huge international outcry and the Pentagon has responded by reprimanding the soldiers involved. Sad that these kinds of things go on, imagine what's happening that isn't getting reported :(

Pinetop Perkins Nominated for Grammy Award

2008-01-29T01:41:00.001-08:00

Pinetop Perkins with Grammy for Lifetime Achievement received in 2005
(photo by Paul Vachier, ©2007)

Pinetop Perkins On The 88's - Live In Chicago has been nominated this year for Best Traditional Blues Album of 2007! The album ships together with the DVD that I edited in 2005 - Born in the Honey: The Pinetop Perkins Story. Pinetop also has another nomination this year with the album Last Of The Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen, for which he was one of several contributing musicians. The 50th Grammy Awards take place on February 10th in Los Angeles.

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hot Springs, Arkansas, October 2007. Left to right are Chuck Dodson (Narrator and Sound Engineer), Pinetop Perkins, Peter Carlson (Producer) and me (Editor).

Paul is an Uncle Again!

2007-12-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

My sister Rachel and her husband Steve just had their first baby on November 20, 2007. Max Dengel even has his own website! The little bugger! So far I only know him through iChat but hope to meet him in person in a few months. Congrats to Rachel and Steve for delivering a healthy and adorable baby to the world.

Berlin Sucks

2007-11-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

I've been debating about whether or not I should post something to my blog about how great it is to live in Berlin. You see the problem is, I don't want people to know it's so great cause then they will start moving here in droves and drive up the low rents and scare away all the fun, creative people. If they knew that Berlin was like New York city circa 1978, they would probably turn it into a New York city circa 2007 within a short time (or worse, London). So here's to hoping that people will only read my headline and stay away....

For those of you who don't want to stay away, I'm renting a great Berlin 1 BD apartment right on Kastanienallee.

Ich bin ein Berliner

2007-08-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

Goodbye London, hello Berlin! This week I moved to Berlin, Germany, after 6 months of living in the UK. While London generally treated me well, it was a nightmare logistically and a frighteningly expensive city to live in. With money pouring into real estate from the world's millionaires and billionaires, and hedge fund investors cashing in their fortunes, London is officially now the world's most expensive city. Yes last winter was very mild, but this summer has been oppressively wet and awful - the sun hardly ever appeared! London is also WAY overcrowded and too obsessed with terrorism and security - they have CCTV cameras everywhere, even in public bathrooms! Hopefully things will change under Gordon Brown but it will probably take some time to undo the paranoia created by Blair and the big brother society. I'll miss my friends but was very happy to leave (ecstatic even). I took a bus from Victoria station and 16 hours later I was in Berlin, where I am now updating my blog.

The quick report from Deutschland: I love my new apartment, it's fabulous and CHEAP and I don't have any flatmates! Berlin is HAPPENING! I start German classes today and looking forward to being settled here for a long period. I have a great couch, come and visit!

Pinetop Perkins Documentary DVD Released

2007-06-23T18:30:00.001-07:00

It's been over a year since I edited "Born in the Honey: The Pinetop Perkins Story" and the DVD has finally been released commercially to great reviews. Pinetop Perkins is the legendary 93 year old, Grammy Award winning blues pianist (he turns 94 in July) who played with Muddy Waters, Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker and many other blues giants. I was proud to work on this documentary as the primary Editor and Script Writer, and also to have the privilege of meeting such a fine man as Pinetop. I also shot the cover photo for the DVD, taken on Pinetop's back porch in Austin, Texas in 2005.

Here's a brief review from BluesCritic.com:

How could you go wrong with a 60 minute DVD documentary on the 93-year old Blues legend with a bonus CD included? You can't when it's "Born In The Honey: The Pinetop Perkins Story". Friends and peers like Ike Turner, Taj Mahal, Bobby Rush, etc. help narrate this journey from the Honey Island Plantation in Belzoni, Mississippi through his 1983 "breakthrough" up to his present day doings. A few tidbits include Turner admitting Perkins taught him how to play, Perkins once playing a prank on a bandmate by letting him flirt with a "woman" before finding out "she" was a transvestite (as told by Rush), plus, most importantly, his trials as a black man in the pre-Civil Rights South and more. Sure, Ken Burns or Martin Scorcese could've done a better job (with their big budgets) but it's a fascinating life that of Perkins.

And another from AmericanRoots.com:

At age 93 blues pianist Pinetop Perkins is still rocking with the best of them. “Born in the Honey” provides a comprehensive look at Perkins life from growing up in the Mississippi Delta to migrating North and becoming a sideman for such legends as Sonny Boy Williamson, Earl Hooker and Muddy Waters. Starting his solo career at age 83 Perkins began to revel in the spotlight and continues to this day. Not only is this the story of Pinetop Perkins, it also serves as an overview of the migration north many African-Americans embarked on in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a fascinating story and one more than worthy of the DVD treatment. Also packaged with the DVD is a CD containing 9 live tracks and one rare studio track.

Here's a few more reviews of the DVD, you can order it directly from Amazon by clicking the box below:

Blog Critics Magazine
STL Blues Reviews
Jazz News
Dallas Observer
Austin Chronicle
Music City Blues Society

London Update and a Weekend in the Adriatic

2007-06-14T01:22:00.001-07:00

London Tube

Summer has finally arrived in London! After an incredibly warm and dry April (the driest on record in the UK) and an unbelievably wet May (the wettest in 20+ years, and freezing to boot!), we're finally starting to get some sun and warm weather here. It's still not a real summer, but at least I've stopped wearing a jacket most of the time. Those astute readers who've been reading my blog for a while may have noticed the trend over the last year or so in freak weather. This continues to be the case!

In April I also started an electric bass class at the London Music School and I'm really enjoying it! The bass is a relatively easy instrument to play, and although the class is quite difficult for a beginner like me, I'm the only student so I get a lot of personal attention. Bass really suits someone like me who's always been more rhythm oriented, but still wants to learn to play melodies. I bought a Yamaha RBX170, Yamaha's lowest-end bass guitar, but it plays great and has proven to be a great beginner's tool. It's a cool electric blue color too and was really cheap. I'm also taking a keyboard class for the second time around and continue wrestling with the 88s. I am finding that both instruments compliment each other pretty well though and look forward to being able to play both bass and keyboard before too long. This whole musical journey has been incredibly rewarding and it's the culmination of a life long dream for me - I love it!

My Yamaha bass

Aside from music, I've started salsa dancing and it seems that salsa is quite the rage in London. Besides being fun it's a great way to meet the opposite sex and there are plenty of places to dance. Right now my favorite is Salsa, near Leicester Square, which is open every night of the week. There's a good crew of people from my Spanish intercambio meetings that go there at least once a week to shake our booties. It's great!

While I am keeping busy socially, I have found Londoners to be a bit uptight and I lament the fact that very little happens in London nocturnally. It's just not a late night town. Most places close at 11pm and the clubs mostly close at 2am, at which point a vast stream of drunken revellers packs into the night buses like an army of disoriented sardines caught in a fishing net. It's also a town full of people who seem completely wedded to their day jobs and don't have much time to do anything other than work or drink. When most folks are not working they are too tired to do anything and on the weekends go to a pub or crowded nightclub to drink themselves into oblivion. Sad that so many people will spend their lives like this... They might make lot's of money (London is awash in cash these days) but they are enslaved to their employers and don't lead any kind of life other than one of excessive material consumption. Funny how modern people always assume that our agricultural ancestors had no leisure time and only worked from sun up to sun down; I'd say the opposite is true! But that's just my social observation about big cities and financial centers like London or NY. Thank god I'm self-employed and don't have to slave away to the man or punch a clock. So many of my friends I rarely get to see because they are so caught up in this rat race of materialism and credit card bills which forces them to work all of their waking hours. I think the old farm workers lived much happier and richer lives than we assume. It's modern man that is the slave!

Boats in Venice harbor

Speaking of happier, richer lives, the Italians know how to live! Last week I took my first trip to Italy, to visit a friend I met through couchsurfing.com. My friend Cole lives in Padova and I stayed there and for a few days at his parents house near Venice. I got to see the wonderful city of Venice as well as Padova and even went on a side trip to Slovenia and Croatia with Cole's parents. Italy was just an amazing experience: wonderful food, wonderful people, and wonderful art. They have all their priorities straight too: food, art, sex, music! Work, punctuality, etc. are near the bottom of the list where they belong ;p

One of the highlights of my trip to Venice was a visit to the Venice Biennale, a biannual art exhibition that draws thousands of art revellers from all over the world. Each country has its own pavilion and displays various "modern" art works. Cole and I managed to find someone to give us free tickets and we spent a few hours checking out the art and very happening "scene". One of the better pavilions was the Austrian one, not because of the art, but because they had free food and drinks, and it was a huge affair that even drew the Chancellor and President of Austria. I met loads of interesting people there and afterwards went to the Austria party, a night time beach bash with more free food and drink. It was a great day and night in Venice! Ahhh, I love Europe!

Party goers at Venice Biennnale

Austria's party drew lots of interesting folks

The trip to Slovenia and Croatia was great too. The Slovenian border is less than 2 hours away from where I was staying, via Trieste, and made for an easy day trip. Cole's parents, who work at the Aviano air base, drove me there and we hit a few of the coastal towns, making it as far south as Umag in Croatia, in the northeastern Adriatic sea. The former Yugoslav provinces are quite fascinating and each has it's own distinctive culture and history, even though they all share a very similar Slavic language. Now with Slovenia and Croatia on my list of places visited, the only former Yugoslav province I haven't been to is Bosnia (and of course the disputed province of Kosovo).

Village dancers in Izola, Slovenia

Croatian fishing boat

For more photos of Venice and Slovenia/Croatia, check out my galleries at Zenfolio.

View from London

2007-04-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a long time since I posted to my blog, almost 3 months in fact. In that stretch of time a lot has happened. I moved to London in the beginning of January and started music lessons at the London Music School. Learning to play at least one melodic instrument has been a lifelong dream of mine and the short keyboard and Midi Technology courses I took from January to March were enormously rewarding! Despite having attempted a couple of times many years ago to learn either piano or guitar, I never really caught on. Chalk it up to a good teacher this time (thanks to Gary Baldwin), but I finally got it! I mean I really understand how the musical scale works now and how to read music, construct chords, etc. I'm at a basic, basic level, but I understand the theory, and can see the path before me. It's all about practice, practice, practice.... I also used Cubase and Reason a lot in my midi class so looking forward to eventually laying some tracks down.

London itself has been quite interesting. Aside from being one of the most expensive places I've ever lived, I've found it very stimulating. Living in cheap cities like Prague and Budapest was great, but there wasn't a whole lot going on, I didn't speak the language, and at the end of the day I didn't do much other than drink beer and soak in baths. In London, I've actually been more inspired to get more work done, mostly out of necessity (ie, the need to survive economically!) To give you an idea of how expensive London is, I went to see a movie a few weeks at a theater near Picadilly Square and the ticket cost £9. That's $18 US at the current exchange rate! I thought $7.50 was expensive!!! BTW, the movie I saw was David Lynch's new drama "Inland Empire". I really liked this movie, which seems more like a museum installation than a commercial release.

So anyway, my US$ income is worth less and less, even though it continues to grow. I've been getting new clients for my SEO work and haven't been having any problems with working remotely. Thank god for the internet! Now I'm going out and seeking work and it seems to be coming in, so things are moving once again I'm somehow managing to keep afloat financially. Interestingly enough, I've found a great circle of Spanish friends here in London so it turns out I'm practicing my Spanish even more than I did in Barcelona.

London is an amazing potpourri of languages and cultures. It's also grown to be Europe's largest and most important city, surpassing even New York in economic clout. It now stands to take the reign as the capital of the 21st century. Much like New York at the turn of the last century, immigrants have turned London into a vast melting pot and brought with them the wealth that will drive the economy into the next century. It's amazing to see the change that's taken place here over the last 20 years, but this place is really booming. I often times wish it were more British though; too many times I feel more like I'm in Bangalore, Warsaw or Moscow than in England.

A History of Oil

2007-01-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

This presentation is so good I just had to post it here for everyone to see. Please invest 45 minutes in watching this hilarious and informative presentation, and spread the word!

Serbia and Montenegro

2007-01-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

Electronics Genius Nicola Tesla from a Serbian 100 Dinar note

Wow... Eastern Europe never ceases to amaze me with its diversity of cultures, languages and landscapes. Recently I went to visit some friends of mine who live in Montenegro. I was really looking forward to the trip as I've never been there before and it was my first visit to the Balkans, a region that was racked by savage war only a decade ago. I took the train first to Belgrade, capital of Serbia, which is only about 7 hours from Budapest. Belgrade (or Beograd) is worlds apart from Budapest or anywhere else I've been in eastern Europe; this place REALLY feels like a former communist country. Perhaps it's the fact that it's the first country I've been to where they use the Cyrillic alphabet, but it really felt a long way from Western Europe. For the first time I felt like a clueless foreigner in a communist, east-bloc country (even if it's a FORMER one). Something about a foreign alphabet and not being able to read signs is also very scary... There's also a certain "tension" here, like something brewing under the surface that I can't quite put my finger on. People look different, they act different, they form their reality differently. They eat different foods and buy brands I've never heard of. They eat strange pastries and drink strange liquors that I can't pronounce. It's so wonderful to see new places like this, especially coming from a monocultural place like America with its wasteland of mediocrity and sameness, and its identical malls from coast to coast.

Serbia (or Srbija) is a Slavic-speaking country just like Russia, and because it's orthodox Christian, it's tied both culturally, linguistically and religiously to Russia; much more so than Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, or any of the other Eastern European countries I've travelled to this year. But Belgrade has it's own unique character and also feels quite cosmopolitan while at the same time having that "charming" stark, gray, decrepitude that one finds all over E. Europe. It's off the beaten path and I love discovering places like this!

Zastava: Old Yugoslavian Car brand

Serbia has been a crossroads for so many cultures over the centuries and is a wonderful mixture of Slavic, Mediterranean, Russian and Muslim cultures. You can feel the Muslim influence much more here than in other countries in Europe to the north, even though most of Serbia's Muslims live in Kosovo, whose political fate still hangs in limbo. For those interested in culture and history, Serbia will definitely fascinate.

Serbians speak Serbo-Croatian, which is also spoken in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, though those countries use a roman alphabet instead of Cyrillic. Being a Slavic language, it's surprisingly similar to Czech and I was really amazed at how many words in Serbo-Croation were exactly the same as the same ones in Czech. I don't know a lot of Czech, but virtually every word in my miniscule Czech vocabulary was the same in Serbo-Croation. It really makes Hungary and the Hungarian language standout as a totally alien language in the midst of a vast sea of Slavic culture that covers most of Eastern Europe and it was nice to already know how to ask for a beer at least (Jedno Pivo!)

Plaque from Orhtodox church in Montenegro

I didn't spend a lot of time in Belgrade; just enough to learn a little of the alphabet so I could at least read some signs. It's not a difficult alphabet to learn but it certainly pays off when you're visiting a country that uses it. My real destination was Montenegro (or Crna Gora - Black Mountain) and the coastal town of Bar, a 9 hour train ride from Belgrade. Only last year, Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia, in a public referendum and now is its own country. Montenegran's further distance themselves from Serbia by using the Euro as their official currency (Serbia uses the Dinar) and there are also far fewer orthodox Christians in Montenegro. It's a very small country of only 600,000 people, and its largest city is Podgorica, which few people have ever heard of, though during the reign of Yugoslavian dictator Josip Tito Podgorica was known as "Titograd". Lot's interesting little tidbits of history and culture in this former Yugoslavia.

The long train ride from Belgrade to Bar on the coast was grueling and since I couldn't get an early deptarture I missed the best part of the trip - the long, windy section through the spectacular mountain passes of Montenegro which offer some of the most dramatic scenery in Europe. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we reached Montenegro and I missed it (I made up for it on the way back though). One of the fascinating things though about travelling by train and interacting with the locals that made a strong impression on me was their hospitality. Every single time someone opened up a bag of potato chips, or a bag of nuts or a bottle of water or something, they always offered some to the other people sitting nearby; even if they were total strangers! It happened to me several times on the train and it really made an impression on me as this is something that would NEVER happen in a country like Germany (or the USA for that matter). There's a big difference when you start dealing with what I would call "hospitality cutlures" - cultures where people share things rather than hoard them selfishly. I'm not really making a value judgement about it but it is a very interesting cultural phenomenon. And it's not a Slavic thing either as the Czechs would never do this. In my experience this is a southern European thing.

Well after countless offers of chips, bread, swigs of strange alcohol from happy drunks, etc., I arrived in Bar late in the evening where I was picked up by my friend Drasko, a Serbian man with a Russian wife who I had befriended while I was living in Barcelona last year. Drasko and his wife decided to move to Montenegro to try selling real estate in the booming local property market. He whisked me off to his sprawling estate home on a cliff overlooking the sea where I anxiously awaited the morning light to catch my first glimpe of the blue waters of the Adriatic.

Sveti Stefan (Saint Steven) island in the Adriatic near Budva, Montenegro

It was strange waking up in a completely different country and being so close to the ocean after having been landlocked in central Europe for so long. Drasko caretakes a beautiful house with an absolutely gorgeous view of the sea in a small coastal town named Rezevici. It's surrounded by orange, olive, pomegranate, and persimmon trees and the weather was refreshingly mild for late December. I couldn't believe how many pomegranate trees there were! I love pomegranates! By late morning we got in the car and quickly surveyed the landscape. Wow! Montenegro is just a gorgeous, gorgeous country! I think the place it most reminds me of is Malibu in Southern California; it looks exactly like the coast of Malibu, with almost the same vegetation and dramatic ocean views. What's really fascinating about Montenegro though is that in the 90's, when NATO had imposed sanctions on Serbia/Montengro, the economy was in absolute tatters. They were essentially living in a time warp and nobody was interested in this gem of a country. In just the last 5 years things have changed RADICALLY. Investors from all over Europe and especially Russia have been snapping up land and properties like last-minute shoppers on Christmas. Homes that a few years ago couldn't be given away are now selling for hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Euros. Millionaires from Russia and Ireland arrive by the planeload every day to scour the coast for their perfect getaway home. Montenegro has seen one of the biggest property booms in Europe over the last few years and it's an amazing thing to behold. It's also one of the strangest economies I've ever seen. Many former peasants who owned land or property are now millionaires after having sold out to rich foreigners. There's money everywhere here, fancy homes, fancy cars, fancy clothing boutiques and everyone seems well off. It even feels like Malibu with all the money, or even the French Riviera. Amazingly enough though, the cost of living is still very low and everything other than property is cheap. Unfortunately, much of the beautiful nature is being overdeveloped and property prices have become way too high for the locals.

Budva Old Town with snow-capped mountains in background

Drasko and I spent a lot of time driving around and looking at properties with his wealthy Russian clients who fly in daily from Moscow to the local airport in Tivat. There's a whole new class of Russian "nouveau riche" who are transforming this former sleepy country into the next Monte Carlo. These Russians dress impeccably, with the lastest fashions, wear the finest jewelry, drink only the best single-malt scotch, and put our Western capitalists to shame. Frankly I was a bit put off by them but it is entertaining to see a culture so transformed, one that half a generation ago was waiting in line for 5 hours to buy stale bread and now wouldn't be caught dead with anything but the latest fashion attire from the trendiest Italian designers. My god Russia has become a wealthy country! We don't see it so much in the US but Russia is a very, very different place than it was 20 years ago. And that money is really transforming their playground destinations like coastal Montenegro.

The old Montenegro is disappearing. Whole villages like these are being snapped up by wealthy foreigners.

My last few days there were spent mostly indoors as the weather turned wet and it seemed to rain every day. I returned home just before Christmas and made sure to get the day train so I could catch the mountain scenery, which is truly amazing. There's some serious geological upheaval going on there. No wonder as the place is extremely active seismically and a major earthquake in 1979 destroyed much of the coast. The dramatic mountains also make for some great skiing and thanks to all the rain they were covered in snow the whole way back to Belgrade. I'm sure I will be back though as this is one of the most beautiful and charming places in Europe. And if you ever come here and take the train from Belgrade to Bar, make sure to get a window seat!

Be sure to visit my Montenegro Photo Gallery on Zenfolio

Chilling in Budapest...

2006-12-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Sign protesting the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956

It's been about 2 months since I moved to Budapest and I'm finding this city to be a very lively and inexpensive place to live. The people are nice and I'm finally making some headway on the Hungarian language! Last week I was reading a flyer and actually understood my first written sentence in Hungarian! Some of you may laugh, but Hungarian is a frighteningly difficult language, at least at first glance. Fortunately I hired a little old Hungarian lady to give me some basic language lessons for about $5/hour. I can barely say a few sentences but what I can boast is that I finally know how to PRONOUNCE words in Hungarian. This is no small feat mind you. I mean, how would you pronounce "Hogy vagy"? - which means "how's it going?". Or "gyógyfürdő" which means "thermal bath?" I'm the kind of person who would rather keep his mouth shut than make mincemeat out of words like that, as most foreigners do... So concentrating first on learning pronunciation, at a bare minimum, has been an important strategy as I've travelled through Europe and been bombarded by countless new languages. I'd have to say that Hungarian ranks right up there with Finnish and Estonian as being the most difficult. Linguists believe that the Hungarian language originated somewhere in western Siberia over a thousand years ago. Being non-Indo-European, it bears ZERO resemblance to any other language spoken in Europe. You'll hear people say that it's like Finnish, but trust me, it's nothing like Finnish even though they are part of the same language family and have about 6 words in common. English and Hindi are also related but they are about as alike as Hungarian and Finnish.

Anyway, one great thing about Hungarian, or "Magyarul" (Hungarian) as they say in Magyarország (Hungary), is that pronunciation is quite easy once you understand a few basic rules. Unlike English, there are no exceptions to the pronunciation rules, so once you learn them, you can pronounce anything in Hungarian just by looking at the way it's spelled. So far my favorite word to say is "Szénsavmentes Ásványvíz" - it just sounds so cool! Actually it's several words and means "non-carbonated mineral water", as opposed to "Szénsavas Ásványvíz" which means "carbonated mineral water" - something I frequently order in restaurants. It's a lot harder to say though than "sör", which is the word for beer, but least it sounds better than the word for cheese, which is "sajt" - pronounced "shite".

Even though I can't speak or understand Hungarian being able to order beer, water and just about anything on the menu feels like a great accomplishment to me. I'm still struggling with "Fütyülős Barack" though, which is a well know Hungarian peach schnapps that I've fallen in love with, but I'm working on it.

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungarian, Hungary

Romania: Bucharest, Transylvania and Maramures

2006-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Building facade with Romanian flag in Bucharest

I just got back from a nearly 2 week trip to Romania and it was absolutely an amazing country to visit. Romania is definitely a country in transition - it has one foot in the past, but it's front foot is firmly poised to step into the future as it prepares to join the European Union in only 2 months. More than anything Romania is a country of contrasts. From simple rural farmers in Transylvania and Maramures hauling hay in horse drawn carts, to trendy fashionistas with the latest gelled hairstyles in Cluj Napoca, to the the glue sniffing homeless kids on the streets of Bucharest, Romania represents the full spectrum of Europe over the last 100 years and rich vs poor, east vs west.

Abandoned car in Bucharest

My trip started out in Bucharest, Romania's largest city and rather cosmopolitan capital. My Lonely Planet guide book described Bucharest as the next happening place in Europe. "Forget Prague or Budapest," it proclaims, "Bucharest is where travellers in-the-know are going now..." Naturally I was eager to check it out, not only because I've lived in both Prague and Budapest over the last few months, but because the Lonely Planet Gude says Bucharest "has soul" (something I've found sorely lacking in Prague, and suspect exists in Budapest if I can ever get past the language barrier here). Anyway, it didn't take more than a few minutes of watching the colorful locals in Bucharest's gritty Gara du Nord train station to figure out that yes, this town does have soul. It may be the kind of tattered soul you get in other third world cities like Bogota or Sao Paulo, but it does indeed move to a less pretentious beat that promises subtle treasures for those who scrape below the surface. Life isn't about efficient government and well kept facades, it's about living life despite the calamity around you. Maybe something to do with the Italian influence? You definitely feel it here. Bucharest seems kind of like a run-down Rome and the language even sounds a lot like Italian. Kind of like an archaic Italian spoken with Russian intonations. Romania is also the first post-communist Eastern European country I've been to where I didn't feel like everybody was depressed and grieving the psychological traumas of half a century of Stalinist doctrine. Surprising given the brutal regime of Nicolae Ceausescu that only ended less than 20 years ago. I think Romanians look more towards the future than fret about the past. This is a good thing for an Eastern European country.

Young Girls on the streets of Bucharest

After a few days in Bucharest, I went off to chilly Brasov, in the mountains of southern Transylvania. I rented a car there and drove up to Sighishoara the next day where I met up with a couple of friends I had made at the hostel in Bucharest. We spent a night in Sighishoara, the birthplace of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler. Sighishoara definitely fits the Translyvanian stereotype: spooky old buildings on craggy mountain tops with endless mist and fog. This is the place to come if you want to experience the Transylvania of legend. It's not hard to imagine where images of werewolves and Draculas roaming about come from. This place is funky and it was also my second favorite town in Romania next to Bucharest.

Sighishoara, Transylvania

After Sighishoara we drove north through Transylvania to the town of Sighetu Marametiei, in the Maramures region just bordering the Ukraine. It was a rather hairy drive, especially at night through the mountains and Transylvanian fog that never seems to let up. Sighet, as the town is also called was nothing special, but we did stay at a great hostel run by a very helpful couple. The real reason for going to Maramures was to visit the Iza Valley, a small valley that is home to one of the most traditional peasant farming cultures left in Europe. The people living here are renowned for their wooden carvings, as well as wooden churches and gates, which adorn almost every house. They still ride horse and buggies and reminded me a lot of the Amish. We spent a whole day touring this area and photographing the people and wonderful churches. I have to say the people themselves were some of the most lovely folks I've ever met - gentle, kind, and warm. They were more than happy for me to take their photos and seem to have a simplicity and joy that was lacking everywhere else in the hustle and bustle of this big country.

Peasants hauling crops in Maramures, Iza Valley

Driving through Maramures though was another story, especially at night where you have to constantly dodge horse drawn carts, bicycles without lights or reflectors and peasants wearing black clothes and walking in the middle of the dark highway since there are no sidewalks along the roads that lead through the small towns. I still can't believe I didn't hit anyone and apparently a lot of pedestrians are killed this way at night. Probably a lot of them end up in the colorful "Merry Cemetary" at Sapanta.

Colorful, Poetic epitaths adorn the graves in Sapanta

The highlight of the otherwise boring town of Sighet was the Sighet prison museum. This notorious communist era prison housed countless "enemies of the state" during the years after WWII and the Ceausescu regime. I wasn't aware of how brutal things were back then. Thousands of political prisons were "reeducated" in prisons like these or died under mysterious circumstances, all of which is chronicled very well in the museum. One of Ceausescu's favorite forms of torture for his "enemies" was to administer moderate levels of forced radiation, not enough to kill, but enough to bring about horrific forms of painful cancer and slow death. There's no doubt that Stalinism and the reign of Ceausescu was a horrible plague for the region.

Map of Communist Romania with prisons and labor camps indicated

After the Iza Valley, the town of Cluj Napoca in western Transylvania was a bit of a shock. Cluj is a university town and home to the most fashion-obsessed people I've seen anywhere in Europe. Everyone is wearing the latest clothes and latest hairstyles, especially the teenagers. People eye you up and down for what you're wearing and although it's a pleasant town with lots of good cafes and bars, I found it a bit pretentious.

Trendy clothing store in Cluj Napoca

The other interesting thing about Transylvania that surprised me is preponderance of the Hungarian language. Transylvania used to be part of the Hungarian empire and many people here still speak Hungarian, often refusing to learn Romanian. Quite a few towns have bilingual road signs and every town has a Romanian name and a Hungarian name (and in quite a few cases a German name too). The Hungarian issue is quite a delicate political controversy here though and the subject of lots of ill feelings on both sides.

Gypsy couple in Sibiu

After Cluj we went on to Sibiu, a charming little town, and then back to Brasov before returning to Budapest via overnight train. One of the great things about Romania was the language. Anyone with a solid grounding in another romance language will understand a lot of things in Romanian, quite a change from Hungary where any other European language won't do you a bit of good. My solid Spanish and basic French got me pretty far. Romanian sounds a lot like Italian and has incorporated quite a few French words as well. It was a nice change to be able to understand restaurant menus!

I took quite a lot of photos while I was in Romania, 3 different galleries worth! Check them out:
Maramures/Iza Valley
Sapanta Cemetary
Miscellaneous

Halle-fucking-lujah!!!!

2006-11-09T06:23:00.000-08:00

These truths shall be held self-evident...

Travels through Germany and on to Budapest

2006-10-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've had time to update my blog but I've finally settled in Budapest, Hungary, after a few weeks of homeless wandering around Germany. It wasn't an easy decision to leave Prague, it was a really pleasant city and I even started taking Czech lessons and learned how to pronounce "Jířiho z Poděbrad" and "čtryři" (the Czech world for the number 4). Still I found the Czech people to be a bit closed towards foreigners and since my apartment lease ran out and I wasn't able to find a new place to live soon enough, I decided to go on the road again. I went to stay with someone I had met in Frankfurt, Germany and also attend the Photokina photography conference in Cologne. Unfortunately the "friend" I had met on the internet turned out to be a rather disgruntled woman who spent most of the time criticizing everyone in the world and when I confronted HER about her constant complaining and rather negative outlook on life, I was not-so-politely asked to hit the road... Funny how some people can dish out criticism but they can't take it... Still I had a good time exploring some of the small villages around Frankfurt, with their funky wood frame houses and really enjoyed seeing the amazing medieval monastery of Arnsburg. Frankfurt itself is a rather unnactractive commercial banking city, but the small villages in the area are really beautiful and a great way to check out some of Germany's historical and cultural legacy.

Butzbach, Germany

Remains of Arnsburg Cathedral

Spa town of Bad Neuheim, Germany

Architectural detail from German village

Travelling from Frankfurt to Cologne takes about an hour on the high speed ICE train, which got up to about 260 KM per hour, a great experience in itself! Cologne is worlds apart from Frankfurt and I really liked this town, dubbed as the media capital of Germany. I had a blast while there, volunteering for Nikonians.org at the Photokina trade show and checking out all the very latest in the photography world. Photokina is the largest photography trade show in the world and it was a really great experience to be there. I met a bunch of wonderful people at the youth hostel where I stayed and really enjoyed Cologne - this is one of my favorite cities in Europe so far! If you haven't been there it's definitely worth a visit! For those of you with a photography interest, I wrote a couple of reports over at my Digital Photography Blog.

Photokina Trade Show - Cologne, Germany

Germany too was quite a shock after spending so much time in Eastern Europe. It's amazing how advanced a country Germany is, both technically and economically. It's really a highly developed and prosperous place, full of smart people who know how to get things done quickly and efficiently! Overall I have to say that I really admire Germany and the German mentality. Yes they are direct and aggressive and all of those things that the rest of the world stereotype them as, but I find it refreshing in limited doses. It's no coincidence that Germany makes great cars and cameras and things like engines and factories - anything requiring advanced intellect, diligence and know how. Unfortunately they got a little carried away during WWII but you can't deny that Germany has been responsible for some great technical and economic achievements since then. It's a country that works very well, not unlike a fine mechanical clock. If you don't like it you can leave - but I like it.

After the Photokina show I head back to eastern Europe, flying into Budapest where I managed to find a very cheap room rental. It's in a great big flat on Ráday Utca in the heart of downtown, just a stones throw from the Danube river and short walk to the Gellert Bath Resort. Budapest is one of the more interesting cities I've had to the pleasure to visit. I can't quite put my finger on it but it's very "different" than other places in Europe. Maybe because their language and culture originated somewhere in the steppes of Asia centuries ago... Or maybe because of all the hot water that rumbles underneath the Carpathian basin and bubbles its way up to create one of the greatest spa cities in the world. Whatever it is, Budapest is a very cool place and it will offer an excellent base to explore the rest of eastern Europe and the Balkans. I hope to be travelling a lot while I'm here.

Communist era statue in Budapest's "Statue Park"

Learning Hungarian will be a challenge!

Did I mention that Hungarian is a tough language?

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Germany, Hungary, Photokina

Budapest, Land of Goulash

2006-09-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from Budapest, Hungary, where a friend of mine organized a group trip from Prague for the weekend (it's an overnight train ride). It wasn't my first time in Budapest, I visited around 8 years ago and once again I found the city to be as charming as ever. We were only there 3 days so we did the standard bath house runaround, checking out a different bath each day we stayed. If you've never been to any of the Budapest baths, these are some of the best in the world. Since Roman times Budapest (Aquincum) has been revered for it's thermal waters and several of the baths were originally used by the Romans and later built into elaborate structures by the Ottoman Turks, which still stand. They are masterpieces of old world architecture and are well worth a visit.

One of the surprise discoveries of my trip was Hungary's national dish: Goulash. It's a hearty stew that consists of a meat, seasoned with paprika and other spices, sometimes with potatoes thrown in. I'd been eating a lot of goulash in the Czech Republic, but had no idea what I was missing till I came to Hungary. Perhaps it's the quality of the paprika, or the more tender meat they use, but Hungarian goulash is unlike any other goulash I've ever tasted - this stuff is awesome! And cheap!!! The Transylvanian goulash, often made with cabbage, is even better! I think we had goulash every day for lunch AND dinner and never got tired of it. Once I got back to Prague it was impossible to eat the local goulash, since it tasted like something from a can.

Technorati Tags:Budapest, Hungary, Goulash

Tallinn Road Report

2006-09-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

Street corner in Tallinn's Old Town

Estonia is really one of the most interesting countries I have ever visited. And no, it is not an intestinal disease, which is what an American friend of mine asked me when I told her I was traveling to Estonia. It is however a tiny, but very up-and-coming nation in the Baltic sea that few outsiders ever visit.

For many years Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, but since achieving its independence in 1991, it's seen massive change and many consider it to be the most successful, economically and politically of the former Soviet states. I stayed here for about 10 days recently and enjoyed most of the visit, though it took a few days for Tallinn to grow on me - being a bit different than I had expected.

I arrived here via an overnight boat trip from Stockholm on Tallink. Tallink runs an enormous cruise ship service across the Baltic and my adventures began the moment I boarded. Sharing my cabin with me was an old Russian man who didn't speak English, a young Estonian teen age boy who was so blond he looked albino, and an old Estonian drunk who, in the middle of the night, decided to start yelling some kind of obscenities in his sleep while the rest of us tried in vain to get him to stop. If the outbursts weren't enough, the stench of cheap, hard, eastern-European liquor made the scenario all the more surreal. This was my first exposure to the Estonian language... A rather weird language indeed!

Estonian billboard advertisement

Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language, very much related to Finnish, but still rather unique and bizarre-sounding, enough to confound even the most accomplished polyglot. I managed to learn a few words of Estonian during my trip, the most useful of which is "terviseks" which means "cheers" when you are drinking. It sounds a lot like "terrible sex", and one Swedish guy I know made fun of this word a lot. But Estonian has a LOT of weird words... For example, the word for port is "sadam", and the word for appetizer is the rather unappetizing looking "eelroad". Good night is "head ööd" and the number 2 is "kaks", pronounced "cocks". Their currency is the Estonian krona, commonly written as the EEK. So something might cost 100 EEKs. EEK!

When people speak Estonian it does sound VERY odd to an outsider. One of my favorite sounds in Estonian is the letter "õ", which doesn't exist in any other language. An Estonian friend tells me that in order to pronounce a word with this sound you have to pretend that you are vomiting... Even worse, some words have a double "õõ" in which case you have to vomit for a little longer since the double vowel doubles the length that you pronounce it. There are loads of single and double vowel sounds we don't have in English including ö, ü, ä, öö, üü, and ää. "öö" is even a real word - it means "night". In addition to the crazy vowels there are tons of dipthongs and tripthongs to keep your tongue flapping well into the night.

Dipthongs, tripthongs and Holy Shit! thongs

Aside from their strange language, Estonia has absolutely the most beautiful women I have seen anywhere in the world. I mean GORGEOUS! Strangely enough, the men are not nearly as good-looking (with exceptions, of course). For some strange reason most of the men look like rejects from Russian central casting, victims of too much sausage and dumplings, while the women almost all look like next year's undiscovered super model. I think it has more to do with the fact that the men aren't really appearance orientated (for themselves, that is). Things are changing but there's still that lingering Eastern European stigma that believes that only gay men dress well and look after their appearance.

Despite the fact that Estonia (or Eesti, as the Estonians call it) has its own unique language, more than a quarter of the people living in Estonia are Russian and speak Russian. This makes for an interesting contrast and cultural dichotomy. While fewer people are learning Russian these days, there definitely is a lot of Russian influence, especially amongst the drunks that you meet on the street. I have to say that I didn't care much for the younger Russian population, who seem rather vulgar, lost and disinterested. They are in some ways a homeless people inside of Estonia who often drown their sorrows in vodka and other forms of alcohol or drugs. It's rather sad really. On my trip back to Stockholm I met a Swedish Jehovah's Witness who works in Eastern Estonia, near the Russian border. Here Russians make up about 95% of the population and drugs and alcoholism are rampant. He told me about all the junkies shooting up in staircases and general misery and hopelessness that pervades much of the Russian population in the more rural areas of Estonia.

I'm not trying to say the all Russians in Estonia are bad, but the younger ones especially don't have a lot of future and leave you with a negative impression. The older Russians in Tallinn are much more charming and have a bit more character than the young ones. Perhaps they can relate more to a time when Russia was more self-confident and politically powerful. Or they relate to pre-Communist Russia and the "old ways" - like this one fascinating woman I came across while wandering though Tallinn's old town.

With such a large Russian population, there is a bit of tension between the 2 cultures and it makes for some interesting cultural contrasts. One of the more visible contrasts can be seen in the architecture. There are lots of ugly, grey, depressing post-war communist style apartment blocks, of the type that you see all over Eastern Europe. These contrast sharply with the almost primitive, pre-Soviet wooden frame, Victorian style houses that you find all over Estonia and are gennerally in bad need of a new paint job. Tallinn, like so many other places in Europe is a living history book. The other kinds of structures you find are the medieval Hanseatic buildings (mainly seen in the marvelous Old Town click here for my old town gallery), and the ultra modern scandinavian inspired sleek new constructions that are popping up like daisies all over Tallinn.

Gleaming new apartment building next to 19th century wooden house

Tallinn has come a long way since 1991 and you can tell that this country is changing very quickly. Lots of money is being pumped into this country by the European Union as it prepares for futher integration into the west. In some ways Estonia's small size makes the process easier, compared to larger countries from the former Soviet Union who are limping by in comparison. The proximity to Scandinavia, both culturallly and geographically are also in Estonia's favor and the overriding impression one gets from a visit to Tallinn is one of a young and vibrant nation, with a foot in the past, but with its vision firmly set on the future. The internet in particular is one area where Estonia is really nmaking strides. Free WiFi is widely available in Tallinn and the government of Estonia has plans to make the ENTIRE country accessible by WiFi within a year of two ( which would make it the first country in the world to achieve full WiFi coverage). Estonia is already one of the most well-connected countries in the world with a very internet-savvy population. Even highly successful services like Skype and Kazaa where first developed in Estonia, by Estonians.

Estonian businessman surfing in a public park

This is definitely a country to keep an eye on, and not a bad place to visit either. I suspect that by the time I return the country will have changed even more, and probably gotten a lot more expensive too (Estonia is set to adopt the Euro sometime next year).

Technorati Tags: Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn, Estonia

2006-09-02T03:15:00.000-07:00

I've been staying in the fascinating but relatively little-known city of Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) for the last week. I'm not ready to write a travel report yet, but I did post some photos which I took in the very charming Old Town, a marvelously preserved medieval town center and UNESCO World Heritage site. Click here to see the photos.

Technorati Tags:Tallinn, Estonia

Stockholm, Venice of the North

2006-08-28T05:01:00.000-07:00

Stockholm, Sweden - View from Skeppsholmen island

Ever since I first visited Stockolm back in the mid nineties I've been in love with this city. In fact it's one of my favorite cities in the world. Actually this journey wasn't planned so far in advance, since my real destination was Tallinn, Estonia, across the Baltic Sea to the east. Nonetheless I found a really cheap flight to Stockholm from Prague and I couldn't resist the chance of spending a few days in this great city and checking in with some old friends whom I hadn't seen in years. Tallinn is only an overnight boat trip away and as I write this I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Tallinn, but more about that in a later post.

One of the first things a visitor to Stockholm realizes about this city, besides its cleanliness and general civility is how good looking and well dressed everyone is. If you're a ragtag sandal wearing backpacker, you'll quickly feel out of place here just like you will if you don't look like Dolph Lundgren or Hannah Graaf. This town has STYLE and people really go out of their way to look good (not that they look so bad in the first place). But I must say that coming from a place like Prague, where people are equally (dare I say more?) attractive, I did find Stockholm a bit stuck up at times. There's something to be said about the innocence of the Czech people who are every bit as stunning physically, yet who generally don't know the difference between Prada and JL Linderg.

On one of my first trips here years ago, I met a fellow web developer named Micke Wehner who was working for Spray at the time, one of Sweden's largest web design companies. Micke and I have stayed good friends over the years and we've visited and stayed with each other many times in both the US and Sweden. This time I stayed with Micke at his home in Telefonplan (just south of the city center). Telefonplan used to be a bit of a boring semi-suburb but in the last few years has become somewhat of a "hip" place to be, thanks to the nearby Konstfack art school, where there just happened to be a party and fashion show the same night that I arrived. This started a three day drinking and partying binge that I'm still recovering from...

Micke and I at Konstfack Fashion Party - Night 1

Stocking the fridge before the party - Night 2

Aside from all the partying and drinking, I did manage to do some sightseeing and visit a few places I hadn't been before, such as the Modern Museum on Skepssholmen island where the extremely controversial American artist Paul McCarthy has a huge exhibit. McCarthy is from Los Angeles and is known for his "scatological" art, evidenced by his obsession with sex, genitalia, Santa Claus, and feces (in the form of Hershey's syrup). Clearly this guy has some issues he's expressing through his art instead of dealing with it through therapy (or perhaps his art is his therapy?) While I can't say it's the kind of art that really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, it's cool to see an artist with such a strongly controversial point of view get a forum for his work. Three cheers for the Swedes; this kind of art would probably be banned in Amerikkka.

An art exhibit that I did vibe with was the photography show by Antanas Sutkus, displayed at the photo gallery on Skeppsholmen island, just near the Modern Museum. Sutkus is a photojournalist who has been chronicling life in Lithuania for many years and is considered Lithuania's best photographer. This was an exhibit devoted entirely to his work and I really enjoyed it, highly recommended!

Cleaning Lady, by Antanas Sutkus

Photos by Antanas Sutkus

My last night in Stockholm saw yet another party and drinking binge, though I managed to stay a little more sober this time, as my liver feebly recovered. This time it was a private party at the home of Henrik Karlsson, who's the head designer for Sweden's leading web design company Doberman. I met Henrik several years ago when he was interning at Method in San Francisco and we were working together on a project for Adobe. It had been many years since I had seen Henrik so it was great to see him again and see how well he was doing. He now has girlfriend, a young daughter and lives in a stylish flat in Södermalm. Doberman was also recently voted Sweden's best design agency, quite an accomplishment for the hard-working Karlsson and his team of savvy designers and programmers.

Henrik had a party for his company the night I saw him and it was great to meet all his coworkers from Doberman. Aside from drinking some genuine Absinthe, one of the highlights of the night was when this guy named Per showed up at around 2am in the morning after randomly stumbling down the steet and finding our party. Per is a Blues guitar player who went to live in New Orleans back in 1966 and studied Blues music with a bunch of the locals back then. He learned all these great Blues songs, like stuff from Barbecue Bob, and he serenaded us for about an hour with some great old time, New Orleans Blues music. He didn't have the greatest voice in the world but he really played with heart - it was really enjoyable. Who would of ever expected hearing New Orleans Blues in Stockholm of all place? The next day I was off to Tallinn aboard the Tallink cruise ship.

Me with Henrik and Micke - Night 3

Technorati Tags: Antanas Sutkus, Stockholm, Sweden

Mmmmmm, Beer....

2006-08-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Staropramen Brewery, Praha, Czech Republic

Before moving to Prague I'd never been much of a beer drinker. Sure I'd indulge in the occasional Dutch beer or a Newcastle Brown Ale, but not all that often. 3 weeks have gone by though since I arrived here and I've gained a new appreciation for this amazing human invention called BEER (or Pivo, as they say in Czech). If you've never had the privilege of drinking Czech beer in the Czech Republic, do yourself a favor and come and taste what REAL beer tastes like. My friend warned me when I got here: she wasn't a beer drinker either, but when living in Prague one quickly learns that Czech beer is unlike any beer anywhere else in the world (well, save for some parts of Germany and a few abbeys in Belgium). I mean, it is so good it's scary... I mean, you can drink it all day, huge mugs, and you never get tired... You just want more. In fact, you really don't get very drunk either. Czech beer seems to have a fairly low alcohol content, but it has an extremely high delicious content. It's like food. I've been drinking as much as possible everyday and trying to taste all the wonderful different varieties at the same time, like a kid in a candy shop. They're all good - Staropramen, Gambrinus, Budvar (Budweiser, no the REAL Budweiser), Bernard, Braník, Pilsner Urquell, and my favorite so far: Kozel Dark. Most of the others I've tried in Prague are light beers, but Kozel Dark is dark as molasses, and it is GOOOOOOD! The first time I tried it and couldn't believe that a beer could taste that good. Nowadays, I don't think a meal goes by here that I don't drink some kind of Czech beer (or two, or three).

Another amazing thing about Czech beer is the way it's served. In the US, bartenders try and avoid pouring too quickly to prevent working up a big head. Here in Prague, they do it the right way and pour the whole mug quickly so that you get a big head right from the beginning. Then you let it sit for a couple of minutes so the froth dies down before you drink it. This gives the beer just the right amount of aeration and it just slides down your palette...

Now, did I mention that Czech beer is cheap too! A half liter, which is quite large goes for for about 50 crowns, around $2. Sometimes you can get it for less and if you go to a tourist spot and get ripped off, you might pay as much as $3 or $4. At the supermarket you can pay as little as 40 cents for a bottle of beer, and we're not talking cheap stuff either. Indeed, the Czech Republic is a beer lover's heaven, and unfortunately I'm ruined for life- I'll never be able to drink another Corona or Heineken again.

Technorati Tags: Beer, Czech Republic, Kozel, Prague

Wacky Weather Continues...

2006-08-07T01:39:00.000-07:00

Well it's a been a little more than a week since I arrived in Prague and the wacky weather continues. The first week I got here there was a massive heat wave which broke a nearly 150 year record for high temperatures in Prague. The next week, while most of the USA suffered through a record heat wave and even a bridge in Ohio closed down because the steel was coming apart, the weather in Prague had suddenly become cold and fall-like. This was a week after California suffered record high temps, as did the rest of Europe. El Paso, Texas was even flooded and received twice its yearly normal amount of rainfall in only a few days. But who's keeping track of all this stuff? I mean that would require admitting that the earth's climate has been altered and we'd have to stop driving SUVs and give up our glutonous ways of consuming fossil fuels. And I don't even have to mention the wars that are going on right now, in lands that sit on top of or adjacent to those big reserves of fossil fuels... Is it all worth it?

Well the rain and cool weather in Prague continue as I write this. It's been raining almost constantly for a week and I'm left with that "it's fall already and where has the summer gone?" kind of feeling. I spent most of yesterday shopping for a jacket and long sleeve shirts, since I only brought summer clothes. My Spanish tan is rapidly fading, and I find myself longing for the sun and warmth that only a week ago I was cursing. Something tells me though that things could change again next week... Well if there's anything predictable about the weather nowadays, it's that it is UNPREDICTABLE.

In the meantime, I've been shooting lots of photos and set up a Prague art and architecture gallery over at Zenfolio. Most of these were taken before the rains came. Well the one good thing about cold, rainy weather is that it affords you lots of time to sit in a cafe and work on your blogs.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming

Prague, Czech Republic

2006-07-30T03:20:00.000-07:00

Prague, Czech Republic

Just arrived in Prague and it's hot! Talk about global warming! The temperature has been over 30C degrees every day and hit 34 the other day (about 93F). It's very uncomfortable but at least it's not very humid so I've been able to sleep at night for a change (Barcelona was unbearable at night). It's funny cause my flatmate has a European travel book from 1996 and it says that the average high temp in July in Prague is about 75 degrees and it rarely gets hot... Just goes to show how much the climate has changed in only 10 years. It's been this hot in Prague for weeks on end. Just last week, Prague broke a 141 year record with a high temp of 35.3 C (95.5 F)!

Anyway, aside from record breaking warm temps around the globe, I'm glad to be in a new country and Prague is a beautiful city, although a bit of a culture shock coming from Spain. For the first time since I arrived in Europe, I *really* feel like I'm in a completely foreign culture. There's a huge difference between the mediterranean culture in southern Europe and the Slavic culture here in central Europe. On top of that there's a lingering bit of the communist mentality and a radically different diet - one based on meat, dumplings and beer instead of garlic, wine and olive oil. Add to that a totally foreign language that I can't even pronounce - much less speak - and it feels like another world. Despite this, I really like it here. It's a welcome change in cultural mentality and a fascinating study in human behaviour. Different beliefs, customs, religions, invaders and conquerers, attitudes towards sex, politics, money, etc. It's kind of like switching dimensions. I really love how in Europe you can travel a few hours and be in a completely and totally different culture with a different language, history and mentality. This is very refreshing and has a lot to do with the reason I came to Europe in the first place. BTW, my flight from Barcelona to Prague was only 58€ on Smart Wings, such a deal... It can be very cheap to to travel around Europe these days.

After only a few days in Prague, things are going pretty well. I managed to find a nice flat in the Smichov area, cheap and comfortable. Here's a picture of me with Ella, my Finnish roommate. She works for Exxon, who have a huge corporate presence here in Prague. Yeah, the same Exxon that just announced a record $10 billion quarterly profit. But who's to criticize them for raising their prices more than their suppliers are and passing it on to consumers? Well, that's another story. Ella and I went out last night to one of the beer pubs and I drank several mugs of Staropramen and ate a very tasty dish of goulash with dumplings while chatting with her colleagues from work. It was an international crowd of Finnish, Swedish, Slovakian, Cambodian, and Nigerian people. Could be dangerous though living in a country where a large mug of first rate beer costs less than $1.

Ella and Me having a beer

Technorati Tags: Czech Republic, Global Warming, Prague

Photo Gallery: Gothic Art of Barcelona

2006-07-13T03:14:00.000-07:00

Detail From the Iglesia de la Catedral de la Santa Creu

I just launched a new gallery of gothic art of Barcelona. This is an ongoing exhibition of gothic art and sculpture, mostly from the various medieval churches and religious structures that one finds in Barcelona's Barri Gotic. I think you'll agree that these are marvelous examples of art, reflecting incredible craftsmanship and providing a fascinating glimpse into the world of medieval Barcelona.

This is also the first time I've shot the Fuji S2 camera, an old camera as far as digital SLR's go, but nonetheless an excellent performer!

Technorati Tags: Barcelona, Fuji, Gothic, S2

Bay Area Real Estate Portal

2006-07-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Today I launched a new web site: California-Dreaming.net. Capitalizing on the success of my Enchanted Realty pages for the southwestern USA real estate market. California-Dreaming.net hopes to be an important resource for home and property buyers researching desirable living communities in California, whether it be to buy a home, condo, land or any other kind of property. Initially I will be covering 5 real estate markets, targeting Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the east San Francisco Bay. They are: Dublin, Livermore, Pleasanton, San Ramon and Walnut Creek.

Technorati Tags: Bay Area, California, East Bay, Real Estate, Realty

Pamplona: Running with the Bulls

2006-07-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

Pamplona, Spain - July 7, 2006

This past weekend I realized a great lifelong dream of mine: visiting Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls. Thanks to my friend Blair Holland, I drove up friday night on a charter bus, chaperoning a bunch of English speaking tourists in exchange for a free trip (6 hours from Barcelona). Once in Pamplona, we partied all night, without sleeping, and returned late in the afternoon the next day. The bull run took place at 8am and lasted only a few minutes. I chose to shoot pictures instead of running (a wise choice I think), and you can see my photo gallery here. Several people were injured by the bulls and the photos I took were a bit gorey, so be forewarned.

Actually, the running of the bulls occurs during the Feast of San Fermin, a week long bacchanalian orgy of drinking and partying that includes a lot more than the bull run made famous by Ernest Hemingway. I don't think I've ever seen so many drunk people partying at one time, or so much vomit in the streets. But it was a blast and definitely worth checking out. The run itself was truly amazing. Even though it lasted all of a few seconds, the bulls ran past in the blink of an eye... The overall experience was unique and moving. Check out my Pamplona photo gallery as it will give you a much better idea of what it was all about, along with blow-by-blow commentary.

Technorati Tags: Bull Run, D200, Nikon, Pamplona, San Fermin, Spain

Lisbon Portugal

2006-06-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

Street Corner in Lisbon, Portugal

I'm currently visiting Lisbon, Portugal, a lovely little city indeed. It's full of history, art, architectural treasures, and amazing people. Here's a photo gallery of my latest photos from Lisbon.

I also just started using Flock, a new web browser implementation based on Mozilla's Firefox. It's a great browser and even let's you post directly to your blogs from within the browser. I'm posting this now using Flock's Blog post feature.

Technorati Tags: Lisbon, Portugal

The End of Materialism and the Rise of Personal Satisfaction

2006-06-04T05:01:00.000-07:00

Detail from Gothic Cathedral - Barcelona, Spain

Each day as I wander the ancient cobblestone streets of Barcelona's Barrio Gotico, I find myself more and more content with my life and the simplicity of a world without financial commitments or excessive material want. I've been here since February and when I first arrived, I fancied having a nice big apartment, with nice furniture and expensive art. For the first few months here I went that route. It cost me a fortune but somehow I was never really satisfied, despite the fact that I had a great pad that was the envy of some of my poorer friends. But how could I have know any different? After all I was coming from America, a land where, we are taught, money is the road to happiness... If we can just make enough money we can buy that house that will make us truly happy, buy the furniture that will be the envy of our friends, buy the clothes that will make us cool, and if we're really lucky, get into the coolest clubs where we can be surrounded by people who will remind us of how cool and how happy we are... Those illusive clubs exist somewhere, but only if you have enough money and can impress the doorman with your coolness, someday you will, so you think... Ha ha, what a big lie that is! I've come to the realization recently, after many years of owning a house, earning a good income, and having money, a nice car, and having credit card debt and a mortgage and all the rest that goes along with the rat race lifestyle, that those things don't bring happineess, but instead are a prison. They're a prison because we can never be content with what we own, we always want more, want better, etc. The American way of life, which encourages debt, consumption and excess, is a prison life style, and it's no wonder I felt like a prisoner my last few years while in that country.

Port of Barcelona

This nagging feeling of the fundamentally unsustainable practice of endless consumption that typifies the "American way" has been slowly leading me to make some major personal changes over the last few years. First among them is that I've been significantly cutting down on what I own instead of accumulating new things that I don't need. It's an incredibly good feeling! It started with garage sales and giving things away to friends. By the time I sold my home and left hip Santa Fe for the back-country simplicity of Arkansas, all of my worldly belongings fit into the back of my VW Golf. 6 months later, the only thing I had accumulated was some more songs on my iPod, and some camera equipment (I'm a photographer, after all). I left Arkansas for NY then, to stay with my dad - homeless, but with at least a bed to sleep in. Each phase of this journey led to greater and greater sensations of freedom, as my material load lightened and so did my financial commitments. Granted I wasn't making much money, but I had enough to live on; and who needs more than that? By the time I came to Europe, everything I owned fit into 2 large suitcases. Selling, giving away, and even throwing away the things that I had worked so hard to accumulate for so many years was one of the most liberating things I have ever done. Most of it was crap anyway. It's amazing how much crap we accumulate that we don't need. Believe me, it wasn't easy getting rid of some of it... There's always that voice in the back of the head saying that "some day I'm going to need this hole puncher", or "one day I'll wear this shirt" - even though I haven't worn in the 3 years since I bought it on impulse. Faahh! Get RID of it and get the clutter out of your life! For me, getting rid of most of what I owned was the best thing I ever did. I haven't looked back.

Still, when I first got to Europe I found myself somewhat cash rich, but lacking in "possessions". The "natural", American response to this is to go out an buy! I resisted pretty well, but I did get a nice apartment and decorated it really well (thanks to VISA). Afterall, I'm in Europe and this is "my movie", so why not enjoy the hedonism? Well, it wasn't all that bad, paying almost 800 Euros a month for a flat and being surrounded by nice things... But I still wasn't really "happy"... I was beginning to feel that it was my attachments to the material world that was part of my lingering discontent. Nothing like the depression I suffered while I was back home, trying to pay my mortgage and deal will credit card bills, cursing creation while stuck in traffic jams, feeling guilt for shopping at Walmart, but never really having that a true feeling of "freedom", no matter how much money I made.

This month I moved for the third time since I've been in Barcelona. The first apartment cost twice as much as the second. The second one, gorgeous and full of character, was great but I spent way too much time cleaning and buying things to make it look nice. I felt more like an albatross than a place to rest. "Give it up", the voice inside me said... This month I moved into a creaky, old attic apartment on calle Palau, near Plaza George Orwell (aka Plaza Trippy) in the heart of Barcelona's Barrio Gotico. Bohemian to say the least, but it's lovely, and full of character. It's also a shared apartment, the first time I've shared a place in years. Nothing belongs to me here, it's all furnished and I have a simple small room with a bed and a desk and one window. It costs less then 400€/mo, including utilities (and the all important WiFi connection). It reminds me of how I lived when I was in my 20's. But the funny thing is that I'm really happy not owning anything. The less things I have the more free and content I feel!! The thing that starts to happen when you give up trying to OWN material things, is that more things start coming into your life. I've noticed this a lot. For example, I needed to send a fax the other day. The "American Way of Life" says go get into your SUV and drive to Office Depot and buy a fax machine with your credit card, dammit! This is the old programming... Instead of doing this however, I mentioned to my roommate that I needed to send a fax and she said, "Oh, I have a fax machine, I can't seem to get it to work, but you can try it..." 20 minutes later I was sending my fax and all was well. I've noticed this kind of thing happening more and more as I let go of my material possessions. Things seem to fall into my lap just when they are needed. At the same time my appreciation of the few things that I do own, or even of those things that I don't but still find their way into my life somehow, increases... Things start to take on a new shine, and a new depth... I begin to FEEL the real abundance of the planet in a new way. Maybe we weren't put on this earth to stockpile as much as we can before we die after all?

The other day, I was trying to reach a friend of mine who's a high paid Art Director at an ad agency in NYC. She makes LOADS of money. She always seems to be stressed though, REALLY stressed. I haven't been able to talk to her in over a week because ever time I try to reach her she says she's got to go to work, or at work, or tired from working and can't talk cause she's in the middle of a shoot or a press check. She's usually very brusque too, like she's really pissed off or something (actually she's cursed at me a few times). I've noticed this with a lot of my friends back home, re: work. It seems like they are always working, working, working. Sure they have nice houses and cars and maybe the LATEST iPods, but they all seem like slaves. And isn't that what the American lifestyle is all about? What good does it do to work all the time just so you can have enough money to enjoy your free time with the nicest, trendiest things you can afford? Well, it just seems to me that that ain't livin...

Faces of Music: Photo Exhibit

2006-05-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'll be inaugurating my first photo exhibit here in Barcelona on Saturday May 13. This subject is "Faces of Music", a look at different musicians from around the world. Pictured above is Pinetop Perkins, 93 year old legendary blues pianist from Mississippi.

Here's the info, hope you can make it:

Opening Saturday, May 13 from 19:00 - 21:00h
Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mundo
Rambla de Cataluña 7, 1 - 2
Barcelona, Spain 08007 metro: Pl. Catalunya
Drinks and appetizers served
Music by Michele Faber
Exhibit lasts until May 19th

Reykjavik on a Budget?

2006-05-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well I FINALLY made it to Reykjavik! After many years of dreaming about visiting this remote island in the north Atlantic, the dream became reality last week. Thanks to my good friend Uni (Unnur Lárusdóttir - click here for her blog), I not only had a wonderful place to stay, but I was given the red carpet treatment by a genuine Icelandic native. I recommend to anyone that plans on visiting Iceland to make friends with a native before arriving, it's the best way to see it. Tip: If you don't know any Icelandic people, check out Couchsurfing.com, it's a cool site I found that helps to network world travellers on a budget.

Uni's a rock star! I met her a few years ago while she was attending music school at the College of Santa Fe. She's one hell of a singer! Here's a photo I took of her during a performance she did in Santa Fe. She's got a beautiful voice and I'm convinced she's going to be Iceland's next Björk! Not only can she belt it out like a punk rocker, but she can sing soft and beautiful Icelandic sagas as well, as you can hear on her Myspace page, where she enchants us with a haunting rendition of an old Icelandic song (click on the song entitled "Numarimur I" - the words speak of how she misses her homeland). Go and have a listen... Unnur knows a lot about Icelandic history and has spent time learning some of the old sagas and studying the local mythology/cosmology.

OK, so how was Iceland? Well my first impression is that it is a country with a completely different climate than ANY other place I've ever visited. Reykjavik lies at 64 deg. north lattitude, further north than the southern tip of Greenland and the northern part of the island lies only a few kilometers outside of the Artic circle. Even in mid-April it was COLD. There was snow on the ground when I arrived and the low's where around 0 deg (C), 32 (F). Spring had NOT arrived yet and there wasn't a bud to be seen on a tree anywhere... Despite this, all the locals where raving about the warm weather... What felt to me like the dead of winter in southern Europe was like Spring for the locals. I would definitely recommend visiting a little closer to summer, unless you like cold, rainy weather.

Iceland's climate may be tempered by the warm Atlantic Gulf stream, but it is still sub-arctic in nature. The fact that everyone uses studded winter tires (which were mostly still on in April) and that there are SUV's everywhere attests to the severity of the climate. In fact, Iceland is the only country in Europe where SUVs almost outnumber regular cars (and this despite having some of the highest petrol costs in the world!). There are big monster trucks with monster tires all over the place. I didn't like this aspect, but at least they really use their SUVs as roads get very perilous and there's loads of unpaved roads in the countryside.

Well petrol costs might be high, but Iceland does get almost 100% of it's heating from geothermal energy. The island is situated right on top of the Atlantic rift zone where the N. American and European plates meet and stretch apart. Most of this happens underwater, but Iceland is the result of millions of years of volcanic eruptions and the intesity of the tectonic activity creates an immense amount of geothermal energy which the locals have tapped very well. In every home you'll find that the hot water line gets fed directly from the ground - boiling hot water that stinks of rotten eggs! It runs right to the tap! You can wash with it, bathe in it, even drink it. You can leave your hot water running for a week and it will never run out. In Iceland there aren't any hot water heaters or boilers, the hot spring water is also used for home heating and circulates through the radiator pipes. People in Iceland don't have heating bills, just a small water bill. And btw, the cold tap water is spring fed too, only it doesn't smell like rotten eggs since it's a different source. It's considered some of the purest drinking water in the world, again, right to the tap. The abundance of geothermal energy also means that Iceland has no need for nuclear reactors. It is one of the few industrialized countries in the west without a nuclear energy program.

Naturally, there are great hot springs in Iceland. And despite the fact that you can have a soak by simply filling your bathtub, a trip to the Blue Lagoon is well worth it. While it may be very touristy, it definitely lives up to the hype and is undoubtedly the most amazing hot springs I've ever been to.

Just the scenery you witness getting there is worth the trip. It's a ways out of town, and you have to cross an immense black lava field to get there, much of which looks like the surface of the moon. The pools themselves consist of runoff from the ground and the water is colored blue due to a certain species of algae which lives there. The water is actually quite salty and has a very high silica content. The floor of the pools is made up of black sand and there are vats of white silica/clay that you can use to make mud packs. It's LOVELY, and well worth the trip despite the high cost ($20 entry, or about $45 including transport). BTW, I also went to one of the baths in town which was much cheaper, but nowhere near as nice. Plus they were using chlorine in the hot tubs, so I would much prefer to go out to the Blue Lagoon, it's a treat that's not to be missed.

As for the town of Reykjavik, I 'd have to say I was a little disappointed with it. I have been on the Icelandair mailing list for a few years now and have been reading about how cool and hip a town it was. I was expecting a Nordic version of NYC or London... Not that Reykjavik isn't cool, it's just small, REALLY small! Only about 150,000 people live in Reykjavik and quite frankly, it's just not a very dynamic city. The architecture is a bit frumpy and outdated too, not ugly, but kind of seventies like (although clean and well kept).

It's just a small town with one main street and a small downtown area. The bars and clubs are great, but you can see everything in a few days and it seems smaller than other Scandinavian cities like Oslo or Copenhagen (quite a bit smaller). However there seem to be just enough cool little bars, trendy shops and interesting underground-ish things going on to make it worthwhile.

I think that the biggest draw for visitors to Iceland may be in the nature that you'll find outside of Reykjavik. I didn't get out of town all that much, but I did get to Þingvellir, which was beautiful. This is where the first Vikings used to meet to plan their political affairs.

On the way up to Þingvellir, we went to ride some Icelandic horses, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The Icelandic horses are smaller than normal horses and have an extremely docile and friendly disposition. They are wonderful animals and very easy to ride, even if they look like they are going to break when you sit on them. This was one of the highlights of my trip.

One thing that that I did find great about Reykjavik though is the people. They are really a great bunch of folk and not a bad looking lot either. Here's a shot of my friend Unnur with her best friend Holmfriða, typical beautiful Icelandic blondes...

But not everyone is blonde, here's the bartender from one of the bars on Laugevegur street, Reykjavik's main drag:

And another pretty blue-eyed viking:

And here's Mr. Silly, one of Unnur's friend's. Notice a trend in the eye color?:

The interesting thing about people from Iceland is that almost everyone can trace their heritage to the Norwegian Vikings that first settled the island in the 9th century. Everyone is related if you go back 8 or 9 generations. But that doesn't mean they all look alike... Another interesting thing about Iceland is that it is the only Scandinavian country that stilll uses patronymics instead of last names. A patronymic is a family name based on your father's first name, plus the addtion of "son" or "dottir" depending on whether you're a boy or girl (the English words "son" and "daughter" were borrowed from old Norwegian when the Vikings ruled part of Britain). So a brother and sister can have two different "last names" even though they both have the same parents. Unnur's last name is Lárusdóttir, but her brother's last name is Lárusson, because her dad's first name is Lárus (and of course his last name is different since it's based on his father's...) Seems confusing but it actually works pretty well. There are a few people who don't use patronymics, but the majority of Icelandic people still do, unlike the other Scandinavian countries which dropped the "dottir" ending a long time ago and now keep the last name the same regardless of the father's first name.

Icelandic mythology is quite fascinating and although I don't know much about it, Unnur's father explained to me that when the island was Christianized in the early middle ages they were forced to give up the gods and godesses like Thor and Odin that were worshipped by the early settlers. Still the religion wasn't completely abandoned and much of the mythology went underground, where it still survives in the form of old sagas and chronicles like Snorri's Edda.

Someone who know's a lot about Icelandic mythology and cosmology is Unnur's friend Reynir Katrínarson, an artist and mystic who has studied the subject for many years. He's been researching 13 different godesses which were worshipped in ancient times, apparently the godesses have been kind of glossed over in favor of the male gods in modern historical literature. Anyway, Reynir and Unnur have been creating musical performances based on some of these godesses and the corresponding musical sagas. Here's a picture of me and Reynir in front of some of his paintings. He lives in a small fishing village near Keflavik.

Meeting the locals was one of my favorite things about Iceland and it's one of the best reasons to make some friends there. You'll also want to go out drinking with them because this is one of the best ways to get to know them. Like other Scandinavians, they really open up when they drink, and yes, they do like to drink alot. I guess there isn't much else to do but some of my best nights where spent drunk and partying with the gang and I made many friends this way.

As much fun as it is to drink, alcohol is VERY expensive and a beer at a bar costs a minimum of $8, while outside of bars alcohol is only sold in government shops where it's a little cheaper but still exhorbitantly priced. Some good local beers though are Viking and Thule, but Icelanders also drink a lot of Danish beers such a Carlsberg and Faxe, Faxe seeming to be the favorite import. Did I mention Icelanders like to drink?

So, being that everything costs so much, how can one visit Iceland on a budget? Well, like I said, first make some friends who can put you up. Then buy your food at grocery stores instead of eating out (the cheapest bargain lunch costs minimum $12 - 15). Buy your alcohol at the local store and get drunk with friends BEFORE you go to the bar late at night. Then you only need to order one drink and you're already wasted... BTW, I found the food to be quite good in Iceland. Expensive, but much better than expected. One of my favorite food items is this dried fish they have called harðfiskur. Actually there are quite a few varietes but all of them are yummy and chock full of omega 3 fatty acids. You can taste the delicious and clean arctic water when you eat this fish, I was hooked on it...

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that there are a lot of ethnic restaurants, especially Thai and Indian in Reykjavik. They tend to be a little cheaper and are generally pretty good. Still, a small bowl of chicken curry with rice will set you back around $12. I did most of my food shopping at the local grocery and cooked at home. The one time I went to a moderately priced restaurant and had dinner for two (with 1 glass of wine), the bill was close to $80!

Last but not least, you don't need to spend a lot of time in Reykjavik where money goes especially fast. You can see the whole town in a few days (if not a few hours) but there's much more to explore if you head out into the vast countryside. Icelandair has free stopover flights from Europe to N. America and pretty competitive fares. You can stop over on your way from London to NY for example and not pay anything extra, even if you stay a week. I recommend going when the weather is warm though and maybe renting a car. Iceland gets more than 20 hours of sunlight in the summer months and it's a naturists and photographers dream (actually on average, Reyjavik gets more sunlight than Miami or Sao Paulo, although the winter is dark and dreary). This is a land of beautiful contrasts, striking nature and beautiful people who love to drink and party. Bring lots of money but try not to spend too much. It is possible to maintain a modest budget, just eat out as little as possible and get drunk BEFORE you get to the bars. I managed to stay about 6 days without spending a fortune (but I can't say it was cheap either). I'll be back though, they say that May and August have the best light...

Easter in Basque Country

2006-04-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a great road trip up to Basque country in the north of Spain. The Basque country ("País Vasco" in Spanish and "Euskal Herria" in Basque) is an amazing place! It's lush and green and looks more like a cross between Ireland and the California coast than like the rest of Spain. I spent time in Bilbao, which houses the new Guggenheim museum. As well as San Sebastian, a few coastal towns, and the lovely beach town of St. Jean de Luz in the French Basque region.

Basque is a cool language. While not much is known about its origin, it seems to be derived from the extinct Aquitane language which was spoken in the Pyreenes and southwestern France during Roman times. It is otherwise completely unrelated to any other known world language. While not as common as Catalan in Catalunya, Basque is spoken by as many as 600,000 people, and most of the road signs in Basque country are written in Basque (often times with the Spanish translation crossed out by Basque nationalists). It's also spoken in parts of France as well as in the Navarra region of Spain, further south.

I was fortunate enough to be there during Easter week (Semana Santa) and witnessed some of the grand parades and festivities that took place. Throughout Spain this is an important holiday and worshippers dress up in hooded outfits that that represent religious brotherhoods (hermandads) that originated in the medievel church. Check out some of the photos I took of the processions.

The Guggenheim museum was well worth the visit. Currently they are showing an exhibit of Russian art that is the largest collection ever shown outside of Russia. It ranges from early medievel iconographic paintings to modern works from contemporary artists. It's especially strong in 19th and 20th century Russian art and offers a fascinating glimpse into the art of Russia.

The Guggenheim was definitely one of the highlights of my visit, but overall I really enjoyed my time in Basque country. It's a unique place with a special feel all its own that is very distinct from the rest of Spain - one might even say it's "magical". It's also amazingly beautiful area with lush green hillsides studded with shaggy herds of sheep and beautiful beaches. It was a pleasant surprise, I'll definitely be going back.

My First iMix on iTunes

2006-04-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

Just created my very first iMix on the iTunes store. This one is called "Electric Blues" and features some of the best blues guitar players jammin slow and hard.

Playlist Description:
Deep, Bluesy, Electric guitar sounds from some of the greatest guitar legends. If you like gut-bucket Blues with an electric twist, this is your mix. Click here to listen.

Playlist:

Leaving Home - Son Seals
Now You're Gone - Buddy Guy
Somebody's Sleeping In My Bed - Buddy Guy
Cotton Picking Blues - Son Seals
Laundromat Blues - Albert King
Electric Church Red House - Jimi Hendrix
Born Under a Bad Sign - Jimi Hendrix
Once I Had a Woman - Jimi Hendrix
Herbert Harper's Free Press News (Electric Mud) - Muddy Waters

Mozilla Web Developer Extension

2006-04-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been working on a redesign of my main publishing site NoEnd Press, using CSS. I bought the excellent book Professional CSS Cascading Style Sheets for Web Designto help me get a better grip on CSS. This book cost me 55€ here in Barcelona, but it's worth it, probably one of the best CSS books around. One of the best tools I've found so far, thanks to the book, is the the Mozilla Web Developer Extension from Chris Pederick. If you use Mozilla/Firefox (and you SHOULD), this extension is a must for any Web Developer. It adds a menu and toolbar to Mozilla with some seriously useful features (screenshot above).

Carving up some Cured Ham: Random Thoughts

2006-03-29T07:02:00.000-08:00

It's March 29 and there was a full eclipse of the sun today, partially visible from here in Barcelona. However, I didn't wake up early enough to catch it. Since I just recently got DSL in my funky little gothic flat, I stayed up till 3 in the morning last night shopping for music on the iTunes store. Some the treasures I found: DJ Krush/Jaku, The Electrolux Decade, Bill Laswell/Imaginary Cuba, Cream/Disreali Gears, The Best of Lou Rawls, Muddy Waters/Electric Mud, The Jazz Influence/Kevin Yost Compilation, Nightmares on Wax/In a Space Outta Sound, and Jazzflora: Scandinavian Aspects of Jazz. Of course I didn't buy the whole albums - I just love that you can buy individual songs for only 99 cents a piece without getting the whole album. Perfect example is the DJ Krush album Jaku. Most of the songs on this album don't do much from me, but 2 in particular are masterpieces - Beyond Raging Waves and Pretense. Beyond Raging waves blends traditional Japanese shamisen music with modern, dark trip hop, in a way that only DJ Krush can pull off. It's superb, click this button to link directly to the song on the iTunes store where you can have a listen:

Aside from surfing the Web, I've been spending a lot of time lately shopping at the 1 Euro store. There's lots of 1 Euro stores in Barcelona and they are the equivalent of 99 cent stores back in the states. When I first found out about them I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread (actually better, since I don't eat bread). I must have spent 30 Euros in the past week buying stuff, most of which has since fallen apart. It seems that nearly all of the stuff you buy in these stores comes from China and is manufactured to the absolutely lowest quality standards you can imagine. I guess they think, and probably somewhat rightly so, that it's cheaper to keep buying a new tape measure or other household doodad every week than making a better quality one that lasts longer than a week that you have to charge more for. I have mixeed feelings about these places (kind of like the Walmart conundrum one faces in the good old USA). The other day I bought a phone for 7.5 Euros which is about $9. Actually it hasn't fallen apart yet but the funniest thing about this phone is the instructions that came along with it. So funny that I had to include it here to share with the rest of the world. Click on the image below and check it out, it's NOT TO BE MISSED.

Layers of History

2006-03-19T06:56:00.000-08:00

One of the most amazing aspects of Barcelona is the tremendous amount of history that has taken place here. Growing up in America, it's rare to find a city or structure that's been inhabited for more than a few hundred years. Most places in fact don't even go back a half-century. Barcelona is different, this city has been a melting pot of cultures and religions for a few THOUSAND years.

While Barcelona keeps up with the modern world and casts its gaze to the future with as much gusto as any other modern city, it maintains deep ties to the past, and the irretractable tentacles of history run deep. One need only stroll around the immense Barrio Gotico/Ciutat Vell, the old part of Barcelona, to get a feel for the historical legacy that this city represents. Here one finds late period Roman ruins, along with Medieval cathedrals, cobble stone streets and dimly lit alley ways that predate the English langauge itself (and of course, the Catalan one as well). I recently moved into a section of the Ciutat Vell (old town) called the Born, or more specifically, the Sant Pere neighborhood, not far from the spectactular Santa Caterina market place. My building is a text book study of the multi-layered history of this city, and the Barrio Gotico in particular. The structure I live in dates to at least the medieval period, with thick concrete walls covered with ancient plaster. The ceilings are 20 feet high and reveal wooden vigas so old that they've been bent into strange angles that seem to defy the laws of physics. Fortunately, the apartment has been nicely modernized with wooden floors (real, thick, slabs of wood, not plastic wood) and modern appliances, making it a cozy and spacious place that just drips with character.

Speaking of characters, any place this old is likely to be haunted, but my experience so far indicates that the only spirits dwelling here seem to be medieval nuns from some ancient cloister. I felt their presence immediately upon moving in but I haven't actually seen them (yet?). Scoff if you will, but I'd swear on a stack of bibles that this building used to be a convent of some sort that was inhabited by more than a few nuns (with a rather nice demeanor, btw). My suspicions have since been verified after I discovered that the nearby Mercat Santa Caterina was built over the ruins of the Convent of Santa Caterina, a huge and sprawling medievel complex dedicated to St. Catherine. The remains of the convent can still be seen beneath the market, which is only 2 blocks from my house.

But like an onion, the layers of history extend deeper and deeper in Barcelona. Even these sisters were relatively new inhabitants of the structure compared to their Roman forebearers. Outside my front door is part of a Roman aqueduct, preserved in situ, as seen in the photo below (yes, this is the lobby of my building, only 8 feet from my front door). The nuns themselves were living in a place that was already over a thousand years old during their lifetimes!

Dig a little deeper and you'll find more. Outside my front window, some ancient Roman ruins were discovered while workers were constructing a new housing project. They had to change the architectural plans so that the ruins could be unearthed and studied more closely. Here's a photo showing the archaeological team at work (this is 20 feet from the entrance to my building).

Barcelona I Love You

2006-02-26T03:55:00.000-08:00

Well I've been in Barcelona for 3 weeks now and I don't know where the time has gone. The first week was a blur of jet lag, culture shock and hours of exploration by foot of this sprawling city and its amazing and ancient barrios. I've quickly adapted to the food and the idea of having wine or beer with every meal hasn't been at all difficult to acclimate to (especially since both are so cheap). I've made a few friends, thanks to Speed Dating and a couple of contacts from friends back home. My Spanish is improving quickly and I'm even starting to pick up the dreaded Spanish accent - Joder! Que coño es eso! I'm even learning some Catalan, this being the national language of Catalunya, and spoken by a large number of its residents both old and young a like.

My flat near Mercat Sant Antoni has been really cozy but I've quickly found that it's an overpriced tourist trap, despite being located in one of my favorite parts of the city (the photo above is a view from my balcony). At the moment I'm frantically looking for another place to live for March and beyond. There's quite a few resources, but it takes time and patience (especially if you're picky like me).

Here's a little Catalan grafitti ("A word to nobody. A word to everybody.") There's certainly a lot of talented grafitti artists here and this one kind of reflects my frustration with finding a place to live that I like and is affordable. Spain has gotten much more expensive to live in since the conversion to the Euro, and Barcelona real estate in particular has gotten very expensive. However, with some persistance I think that I can find my ideal place. Once I get settled into a new crib, I'll post again, with more photos...

Barcelona: City of Carthaginians, Romans and Catalan Eccentrics

2006-02-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

I've just arrived in Barcelona, the major city in Spain's Catalunya region. An ancient city with a long and colorful history, Barcelona remains one of Europe's most dynamic and interesting cities to visit. A mecca for artists and non-conformists such as Salvador Dali (above), it's been calling me for a long time now and, YES, I finally made it! Well, actually it's my second time visiting, but this time I plan on making it an extended vacation...

I love cities with history and Barcelona is just dripping with it. In ancient times it was a major Roman outpost (Barcino), with much of the original Roman ruins still buried beneath the city's ancient quarter (Ciutat Vella). The Museu D'Historia de la Ciutat is a great place to find out about Barcelona's history and allows you to descend into the past and see some of the old Roman ruins, one of the best things to do while visiting.

Here's one of the many street performers you'll find along the Ramblas, a popular thoroughfare near the city's port. The temperature in Feb is pretty mild, but sometimes it gets chilly at night. Can't wait till the warm weather comes!

New Years in Hot Springs and on to NYC

2006-01-29T21:17:00.000-08:00

I spent New Year's Eve of 2006 in Hot Springs, at a party thrown by my friend Chuck Dodson. Chuck put some photos up on his site taken that night with some of the local crew. This was one of my last social events in Hot Springs and it feels sad to leave behind this memorable city and the wonderful people I met there. I sincerely hope I make it back before too long...

Helena, Arkansas: Main Street of the Blues

2006-01-08T12:47:00.000-08:00

One of the more interesting towns I've discovered during my stay in the mid-south is Helena, Arkansas. Located right on the banks of the Mississippi, in the Mississippi delta, this town has one of the most colorful histories of any town in the area, and has played a major role in the history of American blues music. Although now only a shadow of its former self, it was a wild, honkey-tonk kind of town during its heyday in the 1940's. Musicians from around the delta came here to jam, drink, and gamble. Just the kind of place you'd go to escape the blues if you had them (like Pinetop Perkins says, "you got the blues if you can't sing 'em"). The King Biscuit Time radio show was first broadcast from here on KFFA in 1941 and introduced the public to artists like Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Houston Stackhouse, etc. The show is still broadcast, more than 60 years later by the same DJ, Sonny Payne, now over 80 years old. You can visit the radio station which is now located in the Delta Cultural Center, right on Cherry Street (there's an excellent interpretive musuem there, btw, highly recommended). Once a year, Helena plays host to the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival to honor the blues and this town's indelible impact on the music. I visited Helena last week and took a few photos while I was there. Helena's pretty quiet these days, but it still makes for an exceedingly interesting and historically educational stop if you're in the area.

Happy 2006!

2006-01-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

I know what my New Year's wish is!

Xmas in Kentucky

2005-12-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

Recently I drove up to Kentucky to spend Xmas with Momfeather, a Tsalagi (Cherokee) elder living in Marion, Kentucky. Marion is in extreme western Kentucky, near Paducah and the border with Missouri, Illinois and the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. It was a pretty interesting place and I continue to be amazed at some of the treasures I'm finding in my travels through rural America. One of the things I did while in Kentucky was visit Mantle Rock, a very unusual, natural sandstone arch near the town of Joy. Mantle Rock is famous since it was a stopping place for a large group of Tsalagi's who sought refuge there during the Trail of Tears in the terrible winter of 1838/1839, when they were forced to leave their homelands further east. During this winter, the Ohio river froze over and they were forced to camp at Mantle Rock. As many as 300 of them (out of perhaps 1500 who camped out) died at Mantle Rock due to starvation and freezing temperatures. It is both a beautiful and haunting place - above is a picture I took there, underneath the archway.

This wasn't my only interesting experience of the holiday weekend. I also visited one of the Amish communities in nearby Marion. A long time ago I used to think that the Amish were just plain weird, but I now have a new found appreciation for their way of life. They live a very simple lifestyle, eschewing modern conveniences like automobiles or electricity, something that doesn't seem so far fetched to me anymore. We visited a few of their stores and none of them have electric lighting, only a few kerosene lamps. This means you have to go around in the near dark looking through their wares. I tried to adjust my eyes and bought a few things including some great pickled vegetables. All of the Amish people I met impressed me with their character, especially a women we meet while my friend Peter was shopping for arthritis medicine. She was an older woman but kind of wise and rugged in a rural, colonial, Kentucky kind of way. We were talking about fear for some reason and she mentioned that in the Bible it says "Do not fear" 366 times (one for every day of the year, plus an extra for leap years). I don't know if that's true but it's a pretty interesting figure. Great advice too.

Momfeather cooked dinner on Xmas and made the most amazing venison (deer). It was marinated in rasberries and tasted unlike any meat I've ever had. Kentucky has a huge and healthy deer population and this one was caught wild and cooked with one of her many traditional Indian recipes - damn it was good, like supernaturally good...

Skiing in Colorado

2005-12-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days I've been up in Winter Park enjoying some of the best early season skiing conditions Colorado has seen in the past 20 years. It's been a blast, but I'm definitely out of shape after living at sea level for the past few months. Despite having plenty of snow, this has been one of the coldest weeks ever. Thanks to an arctic blast, Winter Park saw temperatures as low as 38 deg below zero (F)! This is the coldest weather I've ever experienced, though thanks to the dryness, it's actually not all that terrible.

Winter Park is a great resort and offers one of the best deals around for a season pass. I bought their Rocky Mountain SuperPass for $329 which gives you a full season at both Winter Park and Copper Mountain ski resorts, plus 50% lift discounts at Whistler and other Intrawest-owned ski resorts, PLUS you get 3 days of skiing at Taos. Too good a deal for me to pass up even if I have to fly out from Arkansas. Lodging is pretty cheap too, I got a great deal on a studio condo through VRBO.com.

Anyway the skiing is great and I managed to catch some of the Paul Mitchell Freestyle competition on Thursday and Friday. The photo above is Sweden's Henrik Winstedt showing off his great form. I took a bunch more photos which you can see in my skiing photo gallery.

Arkansas?!?

2005-11-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

Well I've been living in Hot Springs, Arkansas for almost 3 months now and I must say I reallly like it! Who'da ever thunk it? Arkansas? Hillbillies? Bible thumpers? Actually Arkansas is a BEAUTIFUL place, full of charming, genuinely nice and even intelligent people... Did I mention they were genuinely nice? Not nice like "I'm gonna pretend to be nice cause I want something from you" but nice like "I'm really interested in you and isn't it a beautiful day today..."

There's a lot of charming things about the south too... Like saying "Y'all" instead of "Yuze guys", being able to choose between sweetened vs. unsweetened ice tea, eating grits, me-maws, pa-paws, and having mild winters. OK it's the bible belt but everyone needs their addiction...

In 3 months I've met some really great people in Hot Springs, including folks from all over the world and a cadre of artists and musicians who have relocated from New Orleans. In October, Hot Springs hosted the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and it was one of the best film festivals I have ever been to (and I've been to a bunch). The festival brought some great films and a whole host of characters to town, transforming this sleepy hollow into an international hub of cosmopolitan sophistication.

On normal days, Hot Springs seems like a town that is just a shadow of its former self. Once a wild and booming town during the mid 1900's, with visitors from all over the world coming to enjoy its famous bath houses and Vegas style night life and gambling. Al Capone spent a lot of time here, and all kinds of stories exist about him. You can tell it was a wild and crazy place, with big money. The town began to recede into itself in the late 50's when they stopped gambling and the bathhouses closed due to the advent of modern medicine and prescription drugs. Hot Springs has never really come back to its former glory. This is the kind of place that Bill Clinton knew when he went to high school here in the early 60's. One finds all kinds of beautiful, majestic old buildings that attest to the former glory of this place. They now lie either abandoned or quickly deteriorated under the humid weather and oppressive summer heat. A friend of mine calls Hot Springs the "City that time accidently left in its pocket when it did its laundry".

Apparently, Hot Springs has quite a long history. Besides being the only city in America located INSIDE of a national park, it was also the first national park created in the United States, founded in 1832 by none other than Andrew Jackson. Some people think Jackson had some nefarious reasons for setting up the national park, but I wasn't there and couldn't say for sure... Still the story of Hot Springs told by some Indian elders is an interesting one, to say the least. But this kind of story is rather typical of the types of experiences I 've been having here. Let's just say that there's a lot more here that seems apparent on the surface.

They Call Him the "Grindin' Man"

2005-11-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

For those of you that don't know, I moved to Arkansas in October to work on the Willie "Pinetop" Perkins documentary. Pinetop is the oldest and greatest living Blues pianist in the world. He was born in 1913 in Mississippi and played with the likes of Robert Nighthawk, Sonny Boy Williamson, Earl Hooker, Muddy Waters, and many, many more great Blues artists. He was Muddy Waters pianist for 11 years, replacing the legendary Otis Span in 1969. At age 92 he's still going strong...

I got to spend a wonderful Thanksgiving in Austin with this incredible man, and Pinetop even dressed up for a photo shoot (see my photo gallery for some of the shots). He's a joy to work with and we look forward to finishing the Pinetop story which promises to be an important addition to the history of Blues music in America (expected finish date is Jan. 2006).

Starting my blog today

2005-11-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

OK! another blog! Since I'm officially on the road now I decided to create a new blog and update folks as to my latest whereabouts and what I'm up too. What else is a guy with Uranus transiting his 4th house (while opposing his natal Uranus) supposed to do?? Stay in one place?? Here goes...