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2 September 2010
T-shirt print: My boyfriend is out of town this week.

1 September 2010
What an interesting spelling error: Miss-used. I reckon it should have read abused. Or misuse. But it somehow made me stop reading that piece of text and reflect.

31 August 2010
Since quite some time Coca Cola has this new product ‚zero‘ on the market which seems to suggest being cooler than the ‚light‘ variant. I am told that it has been specifically designed for men which would be worth a discussion.

30 August 2010
There is a new Internet service that is really nice. It is an audio streaming service called Grooveshark. Really good!

28 August 2010
Very soon the big trip will start, so I am pondering whether or not to buy new Nikkor lenses...

27 August 2010
What a roundabout question in a questionnaire: What was your age on your last birthday?

25 August 2010
What do you think of a software that tells you the following: Say ‘yes’ if the security warning box appears!

24 August 2010
'The Baseballs’ should be much better known! What a sound!
Received comment: Most impressed with the Baseballs, except their name. Listen too to the Stray Cats and to Big Audio Dynamite.

23 August 2010
Driving into Munich I saw a sign reading ‘Munich is blue’. Signs in Vienna say ‘Vienna is different’.

21 August 2010
T-Shirt print: Who’s playing you?

18 – 21 August 2010
Stayed in Tisno, Croatia, near the island of Murter and stopped in Zagreb on the way back.

17 August 2010
Silence can be one form of a lie. So a philosopher on the radio said today.

16 August 2010
Back in Austria. The Norway/Finland/Sweden trip was very intense! So many impressions: landscape, stockfish, salmon ladders, reindeers, Fjords, light nights!

15 August 2010
Ferryboat from Helsinki to Stockholm. Stockholm is most beautiful! We had to go to the Astrid Lindgren museum which I thought was a bit childish. In fact it turned out to be really nice and rather inspiring. One goes on a lift through scenes of various Astrid Lindgren stories. Cute!

14 August 2010
Helsinki: The ‘Wrong Noodle Bar’ is next to the ‘Arctic Icebar’. The local hairdresser advertises with a number of sayings like: Hairway to heaven. Forget the brain, use the hair. One single hair can make your day. Sweet dreams are made of hair. I love your thoughts under your hair. Crazy little thing called hair. You’re haired. Hairs truly.

13 August 2010
T-shirt print: Your skill in reading has increased by 1 point.

12 August 2010
My Finnish skills are quite poor but in addition to my favourite words ‘banani’, ‘banki’, ‘posti’, ‘ravintola’ and ‘hissi’ I have learned two new ones: ‘grammofoni’ and ‘messinki’.

11 August 2010
Dialogue in Finland (on a boat): A: Where are you from? B: Austria. Silence. B: And you? A: Here. B: From here? A: No, from Turku. Near Helsinki. B: And this is your holiday destination? A: Yes. And this is my dog.

10 August 2010
T-shirt print: Steak Sandwich.

9 August 2010
Lappland, North Cape: I have think of Qualtinger who said: Why would I need the sun at midnight? And Fjords? You can’t bathe in a Fjord. And the Lapps? Rednecks in furcoats! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRAttwSV_7c

8 August 2010
Driving through Norway is like driving through the images of my grandmother’s calendar.

7 August 2010
Security warning in a hotel room: Leave the room at once. However, if exit routes are filled with smoke stay in your room. Keep the door and window closed. Let the firemen be aware of you.

6 August 2010
Stockfish must not be confused with cured cod. Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod and is dried by sun and wind on wooden racks. Cured cod is salted fish that is dried on cliffs. In both cases the tongue of the fish seems to be a speciality that is sold separately. Almost 100% of all dried fish heads are exported to Nigeria where a dried Norwegian fish head is said to be a status symbol.

5 August 2010
Standing on the polar circle really has something to it!

4 August 2010
We drove all the way up to Trondheim, a really marvelous Nordic cioty.

3 August 2010
The Briksdal glacier and the Gerangerfjord were really amazing! What a beautiful country!

2 August 2010
What was really amazing and what will be the last impression from a real city I suppose was the enormous Vigeland sculpture park. From there we went up north over Lillehammer to Lom. Saw a postcard from the 1950ies showing a woman with a toaster, reading: If it fits in a toaster I can cook it!

1 August 2010
Oslo was called Christiania for quite some time (from 1624 to 1925). Oslo is a very nice town, unfortunately there wasn’t too much time to visit. The townhall is somewhat special but could also be in Eastern Europe. A new Olympic ski-jump is about to be built.

27 July 2010
Quotes from Brussels: ‘You do not have to be dominant to be significant. It is more about relevance than dominance.’

26 July 2010
The bookshop Passa Porta in Brussels states on one of its walls: ‘The curse of babel is in fact a blessing.’

23 July 2010
When talking to people, random gaps in general education can hurt almost physically.

22 July 2010
Psychologists differentiate between rational behavior and so-called pre-rational behavior which is triggered by stress and causes action based on old and very simple mental strategies.

21 July 2010
I am discovering songs in old operettas that are new to me. So for instance I just love the refrain of a song that translates as kissing is not a sin. For the German speaking community I quote the text:
Küssen ist keine Sünd’,
Mit einem schönen Kind;
Lacht dir ein Rosenmund,
Küß ihn zu jeder Stund'!
Pflücke die Rosen kühn,
Die dir am Wege Blüh'n,
Nimm dir, was dir bestimmt,
Weil's sonst ein andrer nimmt.

19 July 2010
' I love to listen to you thinking out loud' is I think the most beautiful compliment I ever heard.

18 July 2010
YouTube is a place for real discoveries. Even Duracell’s drumming bunny has made it there!

17 July 2010
A song I haven’t heard in years is 'Heut' kommen d'Engerln auf Urlaub nach Wean'. What is quite funny are the summaries given for the non-German speaking community: 'This is an original Viennese song. It is about angels having a holiday in Vienna, and they like it and god Amor also comes an has a lot of fun.' – 'The angels are taking the 38 tram to go drinking to excess and they are happily planning some singing and some mischief during their vacation!' Actually I like this version better…

16 July 2010
During a very good talk at the venue of my current exhibition I got a very thought provoking comment concerning some of my pictures. Allegedly already hundreds of years ago painters knew that when painting nudes, the nudes had to look away and not directly at the beholder. A direct stare would shy away the beholder. Reflecting on my pictures the comment then was that those ones where the mannequin in question looks more or less dreamily away into a distance are more erotic and sensual than those where the mannequin boldly and almost offensively glances at the beholder.

15 July 2010
I am told that the highest honours for the British Civil Service are in the Order of St. Michael and St. George. The hierarchy is:
* CMG = Companion in the order
* KCMG = Knight Commander
* GCMG = Grand Cross
The alternative explanation given by civil service less senior officials is:
* CMG = Call Me God
* KCMG = Kindly Call Me God
* GCMG = God Calls Me God
Received comment: I like the 15 July entry a great deal!

14 July 2010
A frequent quote, often used after stating simple facts aimed at proving people wrong is: 'This is of course not rocket science.' From a modern day’s perspective, is the crown jewel of all sciences still rocket science?

13 July 2010
Life can be tough but there is hope. Yesterday I learned that there is life after death.
From the Q&A of a newsletter: Q: How will my insurance be affected if I travel a high-risk country privately? A: If you travel to such a country privately you must pay an additional premium if you wish to submit a claim to your insurance in case of death.
Received comment: Have an educated insurance!

12 July 2010
I am invited to an event where High Definition TV will be presented. The print on the invite is blurred. Honi soit qui mal y pense (evil to him who evil thinks)…

11. July 2010
Home, sweet home: Apart from Zotter’s chocolate there is a band that’s called Chilli da Mur. Sweet!

10 July 2010
Dilbert’s alter ego and creator Scott Adams has a theory that you should invest in the companies that you hate the most. I can only recommend the hilarious article, especially the bits where he ponders about Apple’s emotional control over himself and his family.

9 July 2010
How likely is that certain things can happen at all? It’s a busy day. I run to a meeting, I have a paper notebook. I finally also find a pen, a metal one. I can’t use it because for some reason it has a dent that makes it impossible to get the ink cartridge out.

8 July 2010
For the quote collection: ‘… and here I am considerably honest: we must not let the best be the enemy of the good!’

7 July 2010
Life in a modern society is challenging. I went to a garage today to have my tyres changed. The garage was opposite a supermarket and as I had an hour or so I thought I might as well go shopping for groceries. The trolley had a nice little plate saying ‘thank you for bringing me back’. I thought that was nice and just wanted to leave the compound to head off to my car when all of a sudden the wheels of the trolley blocked. I pushed and pushed – but no real movement. I got another trolley, unloaded the first and loaded the second just to discover that a meter further the second trolley’s wheels blocked as well. With all strength at hand I tried my best and dragged the trolley back into the shop where I was greeted with ‘Oh yes, it was you who wanted to leave the compound, wasn’t it? We have an electronic system that blocks the wheels as soon as you leave the parking lot!’ As said, the trolley had a nice little plate saying ‘thank you for bringing me back’. It did however not say: Don’t you dare to take me away in the first place.

6 July 2010
At the end of June the ‘First International Conference on Yawning’ was held in Paris. According to the website, 20 leading experts came to Paris for an in-depth assessment of the challenges involved in the dynamic and fast moving field of research and conjectures on yawning.

5 July 2010
How sad is that: a second hand wedding dress on sale for just 290 Euros.

4 July 2010
I hadn’t heard that song for ages: Adieu mein kleiner Gardeoffizier…

3 July 2010
Saw the newest Hasselblad cameras during a trade show. Amazing! Unfortunately also the prices are amazing.

2 July 2010
The exhibition opening at Expression Deco went really well. I got some interesting new interpretations of m pictures amongst them that the mannequin on a balcony looks like a figurehead.

1 July 2010
Tonight my exhibition at Expression Deco will be opened!

30 June 2010
A hectic day with a one day trip to Vienna followed by exhibition preparations in Brussels at Exhibition Deco!

29 June 2010
I read that bacteria in sewage plants work much better if exposed to Mozart music. I went to a toilet today that was exposed to the Radetzky March. I guess that helps in pre-processing the product before it comes to the Mozart-led finalizing touches in the sewage plant.

28 June 2010
T-shirt print: Everybody just want to be like me!

27 June 2010
Talking about snobbery my father told me the following joke: After having stranded there years ago, an Englishman lives alone on a deserted island. After quite some time, finally a visitor comes and sees three houses, asking the Englishman: Why three houses? The Englishman says, well, of course there is one house I am living in. The other one is the club I go to. And the third one, the visitor wanted to know? Well, the Englishman said, that's the club I don't go to.

26 June 2010
I hear that the word of the day is tenebrous.

25 June 2010
Quite a number of Spaniards are called Jesus. Sometimes I reckon it is only me who finds it kind of funny when a meeting is opened with the statement: ‘… and we are especially pleased that Jesus is with us today!’

24 June 2010
How come that a PC just dies from one second to the other???

23 June 2010
I came across a really interesting artist from Larnaca/Cyprus that works with Dolls. More on his website!

22 June 2010
Is it really a compliment if somebody says about somebody else: 'no matter how busy he is with work, he always finds time for people'?

21 June 2010
How often do you have to say something until you can safely claim to say 'I always tend to say that...'?
Received comment: Seven times.

20 June 2010
Reading 'At home' by Bill Bryson.

19 June 2010
The laugh is always on the loser: Have a look at this image from a BP gas station with the warning: Do not leave pumps unattended - you are responsible for spills.

18 June 2010
I am quoting from a Travel Advisory that I got from a travel agency in order to prepare for a trip to Austria:
- Do not call Austrians German or assume that their cultures are the same.
- Avoid discussing religion, money and politics unless you are well acquainted with your conversational partner.
- In the west, it is respectful to keep appropriate distance from another person. Around Vienna, it is common for social interaction to occur at a closer proximity to others.
- Austrians tend to avoid confrontation, compromising rather than disagreeing.
- The judicial system is not corrupt and is independent of the legislature. The police are competent, and … some police officers speak English.

17 June 2010
How come that some grownups decide to carry around their mobile phones in hand knitted socks? Somehow that socks. Also the thought of grandmothers who start knitting socks for mobile phones from November onward seems odd.

16 June 2010
If someone says he is in a "listening mode" I reckon that does not necessarily mean he is in a "changing mood" or that anything could ever change at all.
Received comment: There is a vast difference between listening and hearing; a lot seem to do the former; fewer the latter...

15 June 2010
A new sound bite in my series of logic reasoning or rather the failure of any logics when trying to reason: “Now, there is apparently an issue with your connectivity to the new server, meaning that our current understanding is that you may not have access to the server. We are trying to debug this situation and get the connection up as soon as possible. Related to this situation, we’ve set up a page at http://www.the-server-you-cannot-connect-to.com where we will be updating the situation as we get more information. Related to this, we won’t directly spam you with status updates: the next and final information will be visible at the page http://www.the-server-you-cannot-connect-to.com [which you can obviously not access]. We may email you again to let you know once we’ve solved the connectivity issue [but we’re not sure of that yet. It might make it too easy for you].” Comment: The comments in square brackets are a mere interpretation by the blogger

14 June 2010
Although the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is all but amusing, this video is! What if BP had to clean up spilled coffee….

13 June 2010
Isn´t it a strange form of brand loyalty that I get an immense feeling of wanderlust when driving by Frankfurt airport seeing planes take off but not so much when driving past Charles de Gaulle airport?

12 June 2010
Who invented payback cards? And why is it that I somehow see to remember that the original ratio was something like 3%?

11 June 2010
USB is a very powerful connection it seems. This video shows the latest groundbreaking invention…

10 June 2010
People who put themselves in the center of their attention often stand in their own way.

9 June 2010
I promised to post a picture of the M&M dispenser… Here it is!

8 June 2010
I had a small accident. I heard a crack and thought my finger broke. It hurt, it swelled and I panicked. I called a hospital. They told me to come to the emergency room. When I arrived I rang the bell and told the person that answered that I had just spoken to him on the phone. He asked me whether I was sure. I said yes, I was sure, I had called a few minutes before and I most probably had a broken finger. He did not say he wished he could help. What he did say was that he was a psychiatrist and whether I was really sure I would not rather want to see him. I insisted on an x-ray instead. Coldly he sent me away to another branch of the hospital where I gladly waited for 2 hours in an emergency room until all reanimation for the day was done. Finally it was my turn and I was told that the finger was injured but fortunately not broken.

7 June 2010
Dilbertonian moments: A learns that B is invited to go to X. C and D should advise B whether to accept or to decline. C asks E to prepare pros and cons in order to advise B correctly. A advises that B accepts. B says, B would like to attend. D is all for it, too. E says mission accomplished. C says no, a proper pros and cons paper by E is due. E asks A for input. A sighs and fills in a 1.5 page form that says B is right in wishing to attend.

6 June 2010
I like the atmosphere on markets that are about to close. Shop owners do not pay attention to potential customers anymore. They hurry up to make sure they pack up all their belongings. Leftovers are taken by people passing by or end up in garbage. It so happened that my mother and I passed such a closing scene this afternoon. We walked by a flower booth and the owner presented us with 100 (!) tulips!

5 June 2010
Trip to Gouda and Delft: There is even grass green cheese in Holland, made by using basil.

4 June 2010
Modern societies and their unexpressed behavior patterns: If a rather civilized person says “sorry, I am eating like a pig here” does that actually mean the person is fishing for compliments? And, given the circumstances, is an apologetic nod an insult? How to keep one`s eyebrows under control in the situation?

3 June 2010
Sometimes unsolicited communication can be quite interesting. As recently blogged I was awarded an M&M dispenser for winning in a power point karaoke show. Now I get an e-mail alerting me to a service that allows you to order personalized M&Ms. I am tempted. Wouldn’t Broken Muses M&Ms be sort of cool?
Received comment: Will leave a big box of smashed M&Ms at your flat.
Received comment: How about posting a photo of the M&M dispenser you were awarded?

2 June 2010
Quote: “We have a contemporary website.” I wonder what that is really.

1 June 2010
A quite interesting quote: „The iPad is the killer application for the mobile Internet“. I have only seen it on pictures so far but dare say that it is quite bulky for an application. Especially given that it claims to be the haven for so many applications.
Another quote I actually liked was: We tend to overestimate the near future and always underestimate the remote future.

31 May 2010
This is also Europe: I parked my rental car in Cyprus, walked though the main pedestrian area and ended up at a checkpoint that divides the main shopping street into two distinct areas. After applying for a visa, I was allowed to walk over to the Turkish part of the city which proved to be much more interesting from a photogenic point of view. Unfortunately it was already to dark to take pictures.

30 May 2010
Observations from the airport: Most people aren’t dressed well. Jeans that do not quite fit in length, at the waist or are just in general wrong models for the persons wearing them seem to be latest fashion. Also, misfit high heels leading to shaky movements as well as ill-fit boots leading to dragging feet are equally beloved it seems. Above all elegance seems to be history.

29 May 2010
My next exhibition is upcoming: It will be through the whole month of July at Expression Deco in Brussels, Avenue Louise 226A. Opening: Thursday, July 1.

28 May 2010
Today a visitor in the office asked: Can I use your bedroom? How am I to keep a poker face?

27 May 2010
I only feel comfortable in a city when there is a coffee shop that could potentially become my favorite coffee shop – were I to stay in that city. Such place I recently discovered I Addis Ababa, right next to the old train station, the main station of the Ethiopia – Djibouti line that is not operational since quite some years. Only now, back in Brussels, I learn more about this coffee shop. It belongs to the Belgian ambassador
s wife and is described as follows: “Cleverly disguised behind a wooden picket fence, Café́ Choché́ opened a few months ago. After 18 years abroad, Rahel Zewdie wanted to create an oasis in a busy hub, only meters away from Addis-Abeba historical train station “la Gare”.

26 May 2010
I just love that statement from an e-mail I got earlier today: "Here is my problem: None of the organizations I had a look at actually seems to produce something useful. Everyone just looks around and summarizes what the others do." In essence that could also form part of my collection of circular definitions as if nobody is actually doing anything apart from looking around, what is there to summarize apart from general disorientation and tracking the overall inactivity?

25 May 2010
So again my name has come out as Margrit... This time it is consistently misspelled by a "communications manager". Isn't that interesting how broadly text blindness and/or dyslexia are spread amongst different professions?

24 May 2010
It is time to leave Africa again. Some thoughts on the famous sigh TIA – this is Africa: Don’t worry if you buy six stamps and the price you pay is a number that cannot be divided by six. The same holds of course true for all other things, too, e.g. a price of 11 for three coffees. Don’t feel the urge to raise an eyebrow if someone says wholeheartedly “good night mister” at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Also the attempt of being sold sunglasses or t-shits reading 13 months of sunshine in pouring rain is probably just TIA.

23 May 2010
Another way of spelling my name for the collection: Merkit.

19 – 22 May 2010
Lake Tana is as beautiful as I remembered it from the last time I’ve been there. Driving there from Addis Ababa is most beautiful, what a country, what a landscape

15 - 18 May 2010
Days in Addis Ababa with visits to the Entoto mountain, the big covered market Merkato and the Ethiopia National Museum with its archeological section featuring Lucy that was so far believed to be the earliest human-like being. Since 1994 archeologists have been digging out parts of an even older skeleton, Ardi, who belongs to a human-like species 4.4 million years old.

14 May 2010
A trip to the South of Addis Ababa, not quite to the Omo valley (which would be a three week tour I believe) but to Lake Langano and Lake Ziway. There are hot springs with boiling hot water and flamingos.

13 May 2010
Climate change is visible everywhere. Whereas it should be nice and warm in Ethiopia around this time, it is cool and rainy. Addis Ababa’s streets are covered with mud and at certain parts the streets seem to float away. Still there are picturesque moments but I have not been in a photography mood, yet.

12 May 2010
Flying to Africa again I have hardly ever seen such an empty plane with such caring stewardesses. A nice and easy trip so far!

11 May 2010
Slightly absurd dialogue: A: May I borrow your pen please? B: That`s mine. A: Yes, sure, but may I borrow it for a second? B (still staring at his phone): That`s mine. A takes it anyway and says thank you. B remains silent.

10 May 2010
I just love automated e-mails giving travel advise such as: "Organized crime groups occasionally carry out small-scale bombings, though these are generally closely targeted against others implicated in dubious business and pose little risk to personnel."

9 May 2010
Harbor cruise in Antwerp. After Rotterdam, Antwerp has the second biggest harbor in Europe.

8 May 2010
Quite an interesting day: I saw a flash mob event. A number of people had assembled on a large square in order to perform a polonaise for just a few moments and then walked on again just as if nothing had happened. Later on I participated in a Power Point Karaoke, spoke vividly on slides the organizers had downloaded from the Internet at random and that I had never seen before. I won. I even got a prize: a huge M&M dispenser. And I don`t know whether I should be proud about that really.
Talking about power point, one should never forget the take home messages and the lessons learned of course. So in essence three points:
1. On average people lack general education.
2. Overall people`s verbal skills are quite limited
3. It really depends what one tends to be ashamed of; when it comes to embarrassment, the bar has risen considerably in the past few years.

7 May 2010
Received comment on the April 28 reflection on the crowd intelligence: What if we had no stop signs, yet…

6 May 2010
Two attentive readers have pointed out two sides of the same story to me today. One is on mannequins and their history, pointing out that on the one hand they have over time become more and more homogenous but on the other hand still tell us something about ourselves: “At their best they tell us how we stand and carry our bodies; whether we want to be tall, willowy, athletic, busty, Amazonian, and if we need to pay attention to our arches. But even at their worst — headless, colorless, listless — a mannequin tells us something about ourselves.” The other article goes more into detail on one particular aspect of the change that has started to occur when it comes to the design of mannequins – an increase in slenderness. Interestingly enough it is called manorexic mannequins, and although the article contains mainly noteworthy statistics, the best part to me is the list of skinny men in history, lead by Hermes and Jesus. Gandhi ranks eighth followed by Fred Astaire…

5 May 2010
Parts of my recent Broken Muses exhibition have ended today. About half of the pictures will remain exhibited until summer.

4 May 2010
Is putting one`s cards on the table really the best way of getting something off the table?

3 May 2010
New names again: After having been called Marget the other day also the intolerable Birgit has resurfaced. And that from a man whose surname sounds like a prominent mixed yellow spice.

2 May 2010
A rather non-charming quote from a newspaper article: More and more people work out feverishly, trying to change for the better but fail to achieve any measurable result.”

30 April – 1 May 2010
Travelling is always exciting I find. It is interesting to see what people read, e.g. a book titled “Moscow is much more beautiful than Paris”, seen at Cologne airport waiting for a flight to Vienna. I also thought it rather uncommon to write one`s shopping list on the back of one`s hand as was the case with the person sitting next to me in the plane. What was slightly irritating was that “valerian” came first, followed by milk and bread.

28 April 2010
Being in many different sorts of working groups every so often, I am more and more wondering whether it is really true that groups or crowds are more efficient and intelligent than singular human beings. Anyways, in one way or another and contradicting Aristotle - who for that matter probably was never forced to attend working group meetings - I assume it is not always true that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

27 April 2010
“A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.” Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister.‏

26 April 2010
T-Shirt print: Life is 10% how you make it and 90% how you take it.

25 April 2010
Reminded me of broken muses: “Behind every beautiful thing there is some sort of pain.” Bob Dylan

24 April 2010
If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you find an excuse.

23 April 2010
Casino Austria International opened an outlet in Brussels. It is rather an entertainment palace than a casino really. Impressive.

22. April 2010
Talking about bacteria: I recently read a slogan from an Asian campaign promoting washing hands: “If the cook doesn’t wash his hands, the guests eat more than rice.”

21. April 2010
The New York Times quotes two interesting figures, stating that according to the International Telecommunication Union, “the number of mobile phone subscription is expected to pass five billion this year” which means that “more human beings today have access to a mobile phone than the United Nations say have access to a clean toilet.” That reminds me of a study stating that there are more bacteria on our mobile phones than on an average toilet seat. Is there a trigger or are apples compared to oranges here? In other words do people value phones over toilets, do clean phones lead to clean toilets, or clean toilets to clean phones, or dirty phones to dirty toilets, or toilets to higher phone usage or a generally higher phone penetration to dirtier toilets?

20 April 2010
Best practice sharing is not a bad thing as such. I was reminded of a well meant advice I got a few years ago to never wear fair colored suits in morning meetings after early morning flights. The rational was that an early morning flight, moderate boredom and utter tiredness can, in combination with a mouthful of rather average tasting coffee, lead to nasty stains on fair colored suits. Not to forget the embarrassment - especially vis-à-vis the host - of having spit coffee while drifting away. What reminded me of that was the feeling that my black trousers got dusty during a meeting. Be it that the Icelandic volcano`s ashes finally settled on Europe`s surface or my feeling that I had been in that two hour meeting since about two weeks – the baseline was I felt I needed to be dusted.

19 April 2010
One tends to forget that the content of professional looking papers coming out from a printer is not necessarily good or true.

18 April 2010
You can go by bus along the silk road from Hamburg to Shanghai in 75 days! In a newspaper interview the organizers underline the environmental friendly way of bus journeys. On a bus journey the average fuel consumption per passenger is 1 liter per 100km as compared to about 4 liters for a train journey and of course only a fraction of a plane ride. After the Icelandic volcano made the European airspace more or less collapse, these journeys might become a real hype!

17 April 2010
Had a really Dutch day with a visit to a cheese manufacturer in Gouda, lots of history on Holland and a visit through the Royal Delft Pottery. One has to really like the fine pottery. There are some quite original tulip vases which cost a few thousand Euros, though. The oddest new invention is a series of plates with text painted onto. The so-called “Diskus! Plate Men” reads: "Success isn't good for men. It makes them much too secure. Left to his own devices a man isn't going to reflect on life; it's not in the genes. And a man who is doing well has only himself to thank. He thinks. So he needs to get knocked around a bit by life. That might have the desired effect. I think". Quite remarkable is also the text of the “Diskus! plate Chance” reading "I'm sure it's no coincidence that we're sitting at this table together. Some things cannot be mere chance; everybody has got an example of this. On the other hand I think it's nonsense to say chance doesn't exist. I mean what's the chance that nothing ever happens by chance". The latter one makes it into my collection of circular definitions I think.

16 April 2010
Is having a sparring partner just another way of wanting to engage in some sort of competition?

15 April 2010
Is it a form of powerpoint poisoning that while staring in the hole of a ring shaped graph you engage in pondering whether you like ring shaped or pie shaped graphs better?

15 April 2010
I read that year after year more and more bees die over winter time. I wonder what happens to the drones.

13 April 2010
T-shirt print: We did the sheep.

12 April 2010
'Never to get what one wants is never to want (for long) what one gets, unless, sometimes, when it is taken away.' Susan Sontag.

9 - 11 April 2010
London gives the impression of having only suffered a little bit from the recession. There are still plenty of big words and slogans out there like: 'The icon re-imagined'.

8 April 2010
After a really long time of moderate name stability I have been given quite a new nice new name again today: Marlies.

7 April 2010
I was listening to a really professional and exhaustive explanation regarding the proper usage of a mobile e-mail client. The presenter began literally every sentence with an inimitable "unfortunately". His best contribution was: "Unfortunately this device cannot be upgraded, but please have a look at the support page of unsupported devices - of course at your own risk."

5 April 2010
Just for your reference: Should anyone ever be bothered to sell or buy an island, there is a brilliant website out there. Vladi Private Islands even has islands to rent on offer! The island shop is really neat! I recommend having a look at the "Island Survival Bag" which is not only elegant but also contains – and I quote verbally – contents which Robinson Crusoe only dreamed of. Amongst the goodies are a 2-man tent which pops up in seconds, a voucher for a free three day stay on a Canadian island (great if you get stranded somewhere in the Pacific I say…), a bottle of mineral water and a message in a bottle (Which message? Beware of contaminated water???), some fishing rods with accessories and amongst others the novel Robinson Crusoe.

4 April 2010
Happy Easter!

3 April 2010
Easter seems to be high noon for spammers. After quite some time when Viagra offers were on the decline and Valium on the rise, the time for Shylocks has come. As far as I can tell from my spam mail, on the Viagra front generic medicaments are on the rise.

2 April 2010
Photographer Bettina Rheims says that at times one needs to conceal things even from oneself.

1 April 2010
Presidential elections in Austria are upcoming and so the people of this country are told by candidate A that our behavior needs values and – in response – by candidate B that without courage there are no values.

31 March 2010
For people who have not been Austrian kids in the 1980ies this might not mean anything at all but astonishingly enough Helmi, an egg shaped puppet and TV star helping to teach children responsible behavior in tricky traffic situations is still active and even has his own Internet page! Don’t miss the song on the website!

30 March 2010
The few things I ever read on small talk can be summarized in three `take home messages`: 1. Smalltalk is not a bad thing as such and one does not necessarily imply intrinsic shame. 2. The situation always gives you the topic you want to discuss. And 3. Practise, practice, practice!

29 March 2010
The German defense minister is from nobility and has an appropriate name: Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg. Over the past months it seems that as a matter of simplicity, newspapers started to let go of parts of his name, calling him `Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg` only. Recently he had quite some bad press regarding German involvement in Afghanistan. From that moment on he lost all traces of nobility in his name and is referred to as `Guttenberg` only.

28 Mach 2010
Once more on kindergarten: I was told that there is even a book out there called ´All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten´. The author ponders over things like: share everything, play fair, don´t hit people, put things back where you found them, cean up your own mess, flush, wash your hands before your eat and many more. What I really meant when I mentioned a similar mantra a few days ago was rather different. I thought of things - and this is merely a start of a more elaborate collection – things like: Profound changes take place without anybody telling you. In the example: Child A promises child B to play together in a special corner on the next day. When child B gets to kindergarten the very next day, child A sits in the respective corner playing with child C and not allowing child A to join. Both, child A and child C smile at child B and act as if all of that were perfectly normal.

27 March 2010
As I noted on the 6th of June 2009, the words ‘Carefully balanced on the edge of a hole in time’ are engraved above the entrance of a bookshop in Brussels city centre. Today I saw exactly the same quote above the entrance of a theatre in Brussels city centre.

26 March 2010
Thinking about chess: Wikipedia tells us that the word ‘rook’ is borrowed from the Persian ‘rokh’ and the Sanskrit ‘rath”. In the past the piece was called a castle, tower, marquess and rector. The Persian word rokh means chariot, and the corresponding pieces in Oriental chess games such as xiangqi and shogi have names meaning chariot. Persian War Chariots were heavily armored, carrying a driver and at least one ranged-weapon bearer, such as an archer. The sides of the chariot were built to resemble fortified stone work, giving the impression of small, mobile buildings, causing terror on the battlefield. However, in the West, the rook is almost universally represented as a crenellated turret. One possible explanation is that when the game was imported to Italy, the Persian rokh became the Italian word rocca, meaning fortress.

25 March 2010
Men talking to each other: A: That comment you made earlier during lunch was brilliant! B: Actually it was a suggestion. And people took it up and so we can expect xzy as a result. A: Now that you say that I remember. It was great, whereas my own contribution was barely a comment. A: No, I have to protest, it was so the point! I have to say that without your contribution we would not be where we are now!

21 – 24 March 2010
The last few days have been very, very busy with preparing last night`s event which was really nice! Over 50 people gathered together and spend a nice evening I think.

23 March 2010
Exhibition opening and reading in Brussels!
Received comment: The pictures were wonderful!

20 March 2010
After quite some time I have been to Oostende again. And when I am there of course I pay the mannequin with the beautifully broken nose a visit. She is still there, still beautiful, but even more scratched and broken then in the past which makes her look even more melancholic.
Received comment: If she's melancholic, dear lady (and I'm inclined to think that a more appropriate descriptor is "pensive"), it's because she has missed you...

19 March 2010
A collection of messages that seem to help some people through hours of discussions: Well, it's kind of like, you know. You never know, it really all depends.

18 March
Overall when thinking about what has best prepared me for life I have to say, upon careful reflection of course, it was my time in kindergarten. Nothing in human interaction in day to day life that hasn`t already happened there in a, I must admit, less coded way.

17 March 2010
Steady observation shows that the older people become the more they seem to be interested in construction sites. Close to almost any modern construction site you see a few on average elderly people watching others work on the construction.

16 March 2010
Does the extensive use of smart phones and blackberries and the like lead to callused skin on the thumbs?

15 March 2010
I like the video of the song Serious by Richard Hawley a lot.

14 March 2010
Framing pictures for an exhibition brings you much closer to your own images. You are forced to engage with them in a variety of ways.

13 March 2010
Adam was only a specimen for Eve. Jeanne Moreau

12 March 2010
I tend to believe that there are people that manage to trigger severe Tourette Syndrome attacks in otherwise completely sane fellow human beings.

11 March 2010
Urban myth: Allegedly there has been a Viennese student who managed to nick a thighbone from the medical university. He used it as a gearshift in his car. He was expelled from medical school whether because of stealing a bone or because of impious behavior no one knows.

10 March 2010
Upcoming Broken Muses Exhibition and Reading from Margit Kuchler-D´Aiello´s book in Brussels on March 23!

9 March 2010
News from Vienna's bookstores: I was searching for a biography of Potemkin and all I found was a biography of Andreas Hofer, hero and rebel of the alps, so the title says. Another book which appears to have elapsed my notice is the bestseller 'I thought I was a panther – the story of a duck in search of its real self'.

8 March 2010
Vienna. Passport office. After a while one is finally served but quickly interrupted again. The clerk in the passport office takes a phone call of a person who obviously needs some more information on how to apply for a passport for a newborn baby. The official is in a really bad mood, shows signs of passive resistance and mumbles: all you need is a passport photo, a proof of citizenship, a birth certificate, and most importantly: a baby.

7 March 2010
Flowers are blooming at all times for those who want to see them. Henri Matisse.

6 March 2010
A house without books is poor, even if beautiful carpets cover its floors and precious pictures hang on its walls. Hermann Hesse.

4 March 2010
The keyboard has been rescued and the M key works again. So far, so good but now the mouse pad is on strike.

3 March 2010
I managed to poor some water over my computer’s keyboard. As if that wasn’t clumsy enough, I ended up losing the M key in my attempt to quickly wipe over and dry the keyboard. Having problems with my name all time, the M has grown on me lately.

2 March 2010
Problems were the day before yesterday, then we had challenges yesterday. Today we have mere opportunities. Everything, even the most challenging problematic situation is an opportunity. In Orwell's newspeak one would call that perhaps a paradigm shift. And as we know, alternative thinking is a thoughtcrime.

1 March 2010
I learned today that cognitive behavior consists of six phases: 'Observe, Orient, Plan, Learn, Decide, Act'

27 February 2010
Why is the movie Up In The Air nominated for 6 Oscars?

26 February 2010
Until recently I got between 3 and 5 e-mails a day advertising Viagra. Since a few days that has changed and instead of the Viagra ads I get ads for valium. What do the spammers want to tell me really?

25 February 2010
Having participated in countless meetings in the last decade I can summarize my overall findings in just one statement: men like to talk to men. The content of the conversation is of rather low importance but it seems to give them reassurance and self confidence. Also being amongst themselves they tend to go on for longer than necessarily needed.
Received comment: Loved the comment about men talking, especially. Your man friend who makes conversation "of rather low importance"... :-)

24 February 2010
The French have eight words for soup: Bouillon, Consommé, Crème, Bisque, Potage, Soupe, Potée and Verlouté.

23 February 2010
What I forgot to mention is that I read an article about latest findings in brain research: Contrary to common believe, forgetting is an active process of the brain!

22 February 2010
So much about gender equality: A 15cm scratch on a car formerly driven by a man is seen as a minor damage, to be repaired with some car polish. The same auditor however regarded three hardly visible spots on a car formerly driven by a woman as major damage.

21 February 2010
Now we know it, Tiger Woods allegedly wanted to let the world knowhe was sorry . What for was not really clear. With this speech he could basically have apologized for almost everything. It’s a good example how you can say rather little with many, many words and still manage to bore people to death. Even his mother seemed to sleep through most of the speech.

20 February 2010
Exhibition opening of the photo collages of Bernadette Reginster . Interesting!

19 February 2010
According to Alec Wilder, in his study of American popular song, the rhythmic pattern in 'Puttin' on the Ritz' is the most complex and provocative he has have ever come upon.
Wikipedia knows that the song is in AABA form, with a verse. According to John Mueller, the central device in the A section is the 'use of delayed rhythmic resolution: a staggering, off-balance passage, emphasized by the unorthodox stresses in the lyric, suddenly resolves satisfyingly on a held note, followed by the forceful assertion of the title phrase.' The marchlike B section, which is only barely syncopated, acts as a contrast to the previous rhythmic complexities.

18 February 2010
A travel agency I came across the other day offers tourist trips to Saudi Arabia (and to North Korea for that matter). For women, the Saudi trip includes a top-notch burka that is handed out in the plane just before arrival.

17 February 2010
Some published diaries - especially when edited and published by a deceased celebrity's child - can only be seen as a cure for insomnia.

16 February 2010
Incomprehensible blurb: 'There is a Finn in every Dutch guy.'

15. Februar 2010
Recently I notice bizarre book titles like: 'There is only me who calls myself I'

14 February 2010
The economic crisis fosters quite notable developments like this rap between Keynes and Hayek . One hears that this song is meanwhile even used at universities to explain the difference between Keynes' and Hayek's theories.

12 February 2010
Still sick.

11 February 2010
For the concerned reader who wonders what has happened to the poor guinea fowl (see 16 December and related days): In the meantime it is not smelly anymore and has made it from the freezing cold terrace into a warm room.

10 February 2010
Some people expect that if they let you have their read copies of 'The Economist' you would most certainly be jumping for joy.

9 February 2010
The American photographer Leonard Freud said about photographs: the more ambigous the better.

5 – 8 February 2010
Having an angina is bad enough but trying to find a doctor who could prescribe some antibiotics on a Saturday is a challege to say the least. A pharmacist sent me to an adress that proved to be the address of a city center hospital. It was closed. Just when I wanted to ring the front entrance doorbell, a friendly bypassing women said that according to er experience this makes absolutely no sense and I should instead follow her and enter the hospital via the garage. I did as I had been told and ended up in an evelvator that would not stop at level zero. At level five it eventually stopped, the woman headed out to the geriatric station that happened to be there and a young fellow with a swollen cheeck entered the elevator. Together we ventured through other levels of the hospital, deserted, dark corridors, construction sites and eventually took another elevator that – surpirsing enough - brought us to level zero. There - as expected - the information desk was unmanned. There were no people. All shops were closed. The light was dim. Suddenly another young guy appeared and asked whether we were also searching for the exit. We said no, we were searching for doctors, people who could help with swollen cheeks and swollen throats. In the end at least we could show him the way out through the grim garage. The moral of the story was that of course I should have just rang the bell. That was the direct connection to the Saturday/Sunday emergency service where two perfectly friendly people, a nurse and a doctor were there to help. No queues, just nice and friendly service.

4 February 2010
A sign of being stressed out? Politely asked for the reasoning behind a certain piece of text, the person says: 'Well as I have written it, I must have thought something at the time!'

3 February 2010
Manipulation or charming way of saying 'I want'?
If you take a cake, I will take one, too.

2 February 2010
The world of marketing: These days you get ancient dishes that are high in carbohydrates but low in taste in yesterday’s canteens with modern day names. An example: without the slightest change in the actual preparation of the meal, a tasteless lentil stew, cooked to rags becomes a lentil curry on basmati rice.

1 February 2010
The mannequins page of this website has undergone a major overhaul!
Received comment: I think the blog is increasingly witty and sardonic. And I enjoyed the new mannequins page esp 5th down on right

31 January 2010
Brussels' flea market was more beautiful today than ever I thought, be it because of the cold weather and sunshine or because of more classy goods.

30 January 2010
After quite some time I found again some useful instructions on how to wash your hands properly. The advice is to:
1. Wet your hands with water.
2. Put 3 to 4 ml of soap liquid into your hands.
3. Rub your hands together for 30 seconds, talking care to completely soap all areas of your hands and fingers.
4. Rinse your hands and dry them well with a paper towel.
5. Turn the tap of with the paper towel in order to avoid recontamination of your hands.
As if all that would not be complicated enough (I just remind of the need for water, liquid soap and a paper towel), the best advice comes thereafter: 'Avoid touching your face with your hands during the day!' So face touching only at night time in the future!

29 January 2010
Very inspiring video on one of the new EU Commissioners!

28 January 2010
Now we know it, heaven is not only on earth, it is in Belgium! A Belgian made chocolate bar I bought today states on its package: 'Chocolate made in heaven!' A few lines below they also state 'Made in Belgium'.

27 January 2010
Giorgio Armani seems to have said 'You should not be dressed for the job you have but for the job you want.' Well. During the last few days I was approximately dressed like that. Well, not quite. But still I felt very much like following the motto 'A woman modestly dressed is as a pearl in its shell'.

23 – 26 January 2010
72 hours in Tehran/Iran. It is a different place indeed. I had again quite some issues with my name and gender. It started with being registered under Brandi all over the place, but that was not so bad. When I gave my room number to the girl who controlled access to the breakfast room, her reply was: Where is your husband? I said politely there was no husband. She said that the room was booked on Mr. Margit Brandi. I tried to explain that there was a misunderstanding and that in fact it should read Mrs. Brandi. Instead of talking to me she opened a file with a scanned copy of my passport, pointing at the picture while stating: This is not you, this is your husband!
Before leaving the country I was greeted with the words: Thank you, Sir.
Wearing a headscarf as default accessory, I also had the chance to notice that the women’s hairdresser lobby is rather weak. When I called the hotel reception for a hairdresser they replied sharply: 'Only for men!' and hang up on me. I tried again, explaining that it was a hairdryer I needed, not a hairdresser.
Tehran’s covered market is the largest one on earth I was told. It hosts shops underneath about 10 kilometers of roofs in different styles and shapes. It was a paradise for male broken muses! I just could not hold myself back and took many, many pictures which of course did not go unnoticed. People were tremendously friendly and showed great interest in the broken muses theme as well as in foreign ethical behavior. I had quite an interesting discussion on women in general and their hypothetical husbands and their pars, the hypothetical boyfriends and whether, in the theoretical circumstances, one would or would not be jealous of the other.
Another issue was that unfortunately my website was not accessible from Tehran.

22 January 2010
Saying on a postcard: Feelings are unreasonable. That’s what makes them special.

21 January 2010
Oscar (the skeleton) travelled back home – again that went unnoticed.

20 January 2010
Oscar is a great photo model. Even after an exhausting session yesterday he was still fresh and in good spirits for today's.

19 January 2010
Brussels is a very liberal place and that's what I like about it. If one wanted to be overly critical, one could also call that indifffernce. But anyway. What happened wan't much but still amazing. After a long dry period of lobbying - but that's another story - I could finally borrow a friend's skeleton. It is a male skeleton. Real bones. The owner calles it Oscar. So Oscar travelled with me to the studio - all the way through Brussels on the passenger seat. And the amazing part was: nobody cared. No raising of eyebrows, nothing. Well that's what I like about Brussels!

18 January 2010
Also this year is obviously not the year where my name is finally correctly spelled. Today I learned on an official document that my name was Dr. Branol. That again reminded me of the first and most thrilling way of having my name misspelled. Years ago the owner of an Italian photo lab called me Signora Brando – with a big smile on his face!
Received comment: Maybe you should change your last name from BRANDL to SMITH? :-)

17 January 2010
From the collection of not so bad insults: 'Oh, I did not recognize you. You are blonder than you used to be!'

16 January 2010
My name was misspelled again. It read 'Brendl' in a hotel reservation. The nice thingthough was that the saying of the day on the hotel reception day said: 'Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse!' (Thomas Szasz)

15 January 2010
After quite some time of relative silence on the recent question on twitter (to tweet or not to tweet, that is) I had a discussion on the pros and cons of twitter the other day. Pros are hard to find I'm afraid but on the cons side I can't add much to this page describing what you should definitely not tweet about. Worth mentioning - also for day to day life I guess - is speaking out of context.

14 January 2010
An advertisement for some speakers I recently saw read 'Seduced by design, surrounded by sound'. Sounds like a lot of noise to me.

13 January 2010
A young girl wore a handbag with an interesting print the other day. It read 'Generation mtv - official sponsor of friendships'.

12 January 2010
Having thought about Ethiopia over the weekend again: Many schools there have their own mottos. I particularly liked: 'There is no darkness like ignorance' and 'Knowledge cannot be taken away from you.'

11 January 2010
Finally the Ethiopia pictures are online!

10 January 2010
And coffee once more: The 15 things worth knowing about coffee are really worth reading. What is also a remarkable idea is to paint in coffee. An artist called Karen Eland has reproduced famous pieces of art using coffee as paint. I wonder when the smell starts fading. And the most remarkable one: a Mona Lisa made from 3,604 filled coffee mugs whereby the color shades are derived from the various shades of coffee.

9 January 2010
And again a story on Nespresso: I have to admit that the newest TV advertisement is well done. In the shorter version it is not that obvious but I think that having seen the longer version one could say that if the machine and the tabs are the only thing missing in heaven Nespresso is perhaps not heavenly as such :-)

8 January 2010
Elvis is alive. We knew it. On the occasion of Elvis' birthday (8 January 1935) Brussels' Manneken Pis was dressed like Elvis. Unfortunately I was 30 minutes late and Manneken was naked again.

7 January 2010
Starting the day with a train at 6:54 is an unpleasant thing as such especially if at 6:53 a metallic voice lets you know that this train will not be running at all (for no obvious reason) and besides all coffee places in the station are still closed.

6 January 2010
There is a museum for glasses in Amsterdam where about 1000 glasses from various periods are exhibited, amongst them of course also monocles. They were originally used as magnifying glass and 'as playful distance correction'. The description further read that 'they were the favorite tool for eccentrics' especially at a time when 'it became fashion to hold them in one eye'.

5 January 2010
In Amsterdam the newest t-shirt print for t-shirts sold at tourist shops is: I am Sterdam.
What I’ve also seen in Amsterdam was a money saving box with Obama’s picture on it and the word 'change'.
Furthermore there is a fashion store called UN whereby UN stands for 'united nudes'.

4 January 2010
An article in the newspaper advises that one should always have much more knowledge than one shows.

1 January 2010
Broken Muses wishes a Happy New Year 2010!

31 December 2009
Isn’t it slightly unsettling if a restaurant advertises with the slogan: 'Patience is a sister of wisdom'?

29 December 2009
New book titles that make me shiver: 'The art of reading thoughts', '111 reasons for being a Philistine' and 'Let’s face it: I’m overweight'

28 December 2009
I almost bought the complete DVD set of the Austrian 1970ies cult series 'Mundl' and this just because the set had a complimentary white ripped flannel undershirt reading: 'My beer isn’t stupid'

27 December 2009
Quotes of real friends: '… and when you’re going to visit me in the US, make sure you come on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are good, I am free on Tuesday evenings!'

26 December 2009
Family stories: Christmas lunch. The late grandfather's ex-girlfriend has lunch on the next table. As one of the most unbeloved people ever – her nickname always was 'the witch' – people keep staring at her secretly. When she leaves the restaurant, she nods in the direction of the family. Soon after the family decides to leave as well and misses a coat. A family owned good winter coat. Instead of the coat there is a leftover shabby thin black coat. Angry and disgusted looks follow. The witch is accused. A group is sent over to her house. She swears she hadn't taken the coat, brings out every coat she owns, proving her case. The group leaves unsatisfied and returns the shabby coat to the restaurant. The family exchanges stories and the most vocal one has a lot to tell about lost coats, umbrellas and hats. When he prepares to leave he finds out he is missing his coat; the coat that was waiting for its owner to come back to the restaurant.

24 and 25 December 2009
Merry Christmas!

23 December 2009
Driving home for Christmas with a thousand memories from any available radio station that Michael Schumacher made it back to Formula I. As if there was no other news at all. Well. Riving through Germany and Austria I saw quite some differences. While you can mostly drive as fast as you wish in Germany there are some 'highway churches' on the way. The message in Austria is much more direct. There you have huge billboards where the word ‘Death’ is crossed out with a seat belt.

22 December 2009
It is thawing; the guinea fowl is visible again!

21 December 2009
I love those invitations you get from social networking sites. XYZ indicated that you are a friend. Wow! It reminds me a lot of my time in kindergarten where other children would eventually ask you: Do you want to be my friend?

20 December 2009
In the morning I could still see the guinea fowl’s head. In the afternoon even that was gone and the guinea fowl is a mere hill covered by snow.

19 December 2009
It was minus seven degrees during the day, the streets are slippery and cars meander through Brussels icy streets. Even pet dogs were dressed. I saw one in a pirate dress with the Jolly Roger printed all over. Creepy.

18 December 2009
The guinea fowl is rather smelly and had to move out. It lives now on the terrace and is totally covered with snow which is as such rather unlikely for guinea fowls I assume. Besides, it is also rather unlikely for Brussels to have 10 centimeters of snow that seems to be here to stay!

17 December 2009
I saw a picture of the demonstrations alongside the climate change summit in Copenhagen. One poster I though was simply great in its simplicity. It read: There is no planet B.

16 December 2009
I got a guinea fowl as a present. To be precise it is a helmeted guinea fowl which must by no means be mistaken for a white-breasted guinea fowl, let alone a crested guinea fowl. No, it is not a real one, it's made from terracotta but it is interesting. It has an enormous body and a very small head. Anyway I’ve been doing some research. Wikipedia lets us know that guinea fowls are social beings and are 'normally monogamous' although occasional bigamy has been recorded for the helmeted guinea fowl. How interesting. Furthermore there is a small and declining ethnic group in the south of Ethiopia called Karo. During festivals and dances men dress up as either guinea fowls or leopards. Well, one sort of understands that their number is declining.

15 December 2009
From my kinky quotes collection: 'We have looked at so much material we've gone dotty.'

14 December 2009
Karl Lagerfeld recently said in an interview that he has still not shot the perfect photograph. I have the same feeling when it comes to my own pictures.

13 December 2009
I always forget how many interesting galleries there are in Brussels and how many nice details there are over all.

12 December 2009
Very nice t-shirt print: 'Belgian chocolate addict'. I saw a very interesting muse today, maybe I can even involve that mannequin in my next exhibition!

12 December 2009
Very nice t-shirt print: 'Belgian chocolate addict'.

11 December 2009
I love the creativity in this manual on how to hand wash! You shall never forget to start it all with wetting your hands (!), applying enough (!) soap and rubbing hands palm to palm. Also rotational rubbing involving the left thumb is a good idea it seems, and the rinsing with water should not be underestimated!

10 December 2009
And yes, I also noted down some new and interesting t-shirt prints in Ethiopia: One simply read 'Nobel' and another one 'Mr. Zero'. Quite a different approach to life I thought. Another one ran around proudly with a t-shirt reading 'Pyromanist' and a fourth one just let the world know: 'In that case I chose dancing'.

9 December 2009
Still digging through some notes and memories of Ethiopia: What I particularly liked were some menus with really interesting dishes: There was 'full with beard', 'raise with mean' quite some offers of 'paper steak' and – my favorite – 'chicken with raise'! Even as a vegetarian I could think of going for that one, after all it comes with a raise! Although you never know if they run out of it and just give you a 'raise with mean' served next to a 'full with beard' who is up for a ‘paper steak’ really.

8 December 2009
By the way who came up with the idea that raw carrots are a good snack at evening receptions? As soon as you eat them while trying to have a conversation, you spit. And depending on the person you are talking to, you regret or embrace that fact.

7 December 2009
Real life has me back I fear. I saw my name printed as Ms. Brendel today. Well, what more can I say?
Maybe something slightly ironic: I carry home kilos of Ethiopian coffee, of those at least three different sorts of coffee for my parents. And what have they done in the meantime while I was away? They have changed their coffee machine for a Nespresso one that operates with coffee capsules…

6 December 2009
Thinking about Ethiopia: I have so many impressions, memories and so many images. I liked a conversation around my question of the whereabouts of the city center. I simply wanted a direction or say pointing somewhere would have been fine as well. Instead I was confronted with the honest question - that was not in the least cynical - 'What does city mean?' A good question I thought. I said well, in a city you have houses, streets, shops. When he heard shops he beamed and said, aha, yes, shops and pointed me into the good direction.

5 December 2009
I'm back in Brussels with a severe cold. Who said that you could get a cold in Africa in the first place? Isn't it supposed to be hot there all the time?
What I will definitely miss is a word that I really learned to like there: Ischi. It is often used and sounds mostly like a sigh. Ischi can mean many things. Sometimes it simply means yes or ok, then also: I understand, I agree, I see, let's see, I will do what I can, you may think I will do what I can but I actually won’t, no, not quite, well, maybe. A very powerful word!

4 December 2009
Last day in Addis and so much was still to do. For instance last pictures needed to be taken, films needed to be brought to development and shopping (for the famous Ethiopian coffee) to be done. Exactly when I started to believe that I cannot do all what I had planned in my last day anymore and felt slightly stressed I saw a guy in a t-shirt that read: Too blessed to be stressed.

3 December 2009
About a 1.5 hours drive outside of Dire Dawa 7000 year old cave paintings have been found a few years ago. At first they seem to be quite disappointing given the long way and the bad roads leading there. One saw two or three rather faded images. But the longer you looked, the more you saw. There were hundreds of paintings, faded but still visible.
Dire Dawa on itself is quite a big city but only about 100 years old. Originally the Addis Ababa – Djibouti railroad should have connected Djibouti’s port with Harar and Addis. As the project developed, connecting Harar seemed to difficult and costly as the train would have needed to go through a very mountainous area and so the decision was taken to have a stop in what then was a small town; Dire Dawa. For me the most interesting site in the city was the train station with its many broken and discarded railway carriages and locomotives. A paradise for pictures of the neglected and the broken!

2 December 2009
From Dire Dawa it is about a one hour drive to Harar. After Mekka, Medina and Jerusalem, Harar is seen as the fourth most important Muslim city. Harar has a very intact city center that reminded me very much of cities I have seen in Yemen four years ago. Its 89 mosques are often tiny and hidden in people’s houses. Water is scare and water supply remains one of the most pressing issues in the region.

1 December 2009
Ethiopia follows the Julian calendar and advertises with 13 months of sunshine. Given that it was slightly raining during the last two days and else rather cloudy and July and August is the yearly rainy season I dare to doubt that promise.
I admit that flying to Ethiopia’s second biggest city Dire Dawa was much easier than driving again for 550 kilometres each way. On the other hand one also misses something when taking a plane, probably it is the feeling of travelling as such.

30 November 2009
I did not want to disappoint any shoe shine boy any more and so I took the car and went downtown in embarrassingly dirty shoes. Guess what, no shoe shine boy around. Not a single one, as if they were on strike or all had a day off. So I went back again still in dirty shoes. On the positive side I found a bunch of nicely broken muses.
Traditional Ethiopian restaurants often have hay on the floor and a corner where they prepare the coffee in the traditional coffee ceremony. In that corner there are also quite some animals, mostly rabbits and chickens. Mobile food it you will. What is logical but still slightly unsettling is that the amount of those animals decreases proportionally to the amount of food served to neighbouring tables.

29 November 2009
Due to unforeseen circumstances we stayed overnight in a real budget hotel in Dessie. The travel guide book would probably not even rate that hotel in its category ‘shoestringing’. Well, anyway, it was quite funny. I tried to convince the staff to give me a towel. After we discussed what ‘shower’ and ‘dry’ could possibly mean I really made them laugh when performing a pantomime of showering and drying myself with a non-existing towel. Anyway that was not necessary as there were a) no towels and b) no water at all. It was definitely an experience at Euro 2,- to put it that way.
Driving from Dessie to Addis took about 10 hours although the distance is a mere 400 kilometres. I tried to find rational explanations for what I saw but my only conclusion is that road works here are illogically planned and executed. The pattern is as follows: A stretch of about 500-1000 metres of relatively good if not excellent road is demolished and replaced by gravel or a dirt side road. The next stretch of about 500-1000 meters is left as it was before but gets worse and worse due to trucks that are heavily loaded with gravel. So one is forced to drive from pothole over bumps into the next pothole on a formerly good road, led sideways to a gravel stretch or a side road, back up on the asphalt stretch, down again and so on and so on. Instead of finishing one stretch and then going to the next, there are literally hundreds of these construction sites and of course works cannot be carried out at all places at the same time. What is also quite remarkable are big square shaped holes (about 10 cm deep) that are cut into good asphalt. Mainly that is done just behind crests or curves, naturally without any warning signs. Even a four by four car doesn’t pardon driving into a sudden hole easily. As if that wasn’t enough, various animal herds (lambs, goats, cattle, camels) tend to walk or rest on the streets and suicidal people seem to have declared it a national sport to run across the street only when a car is approaching. As soon as darkness falls groups of three tend to sit down on (!) the road for an evening chat. One can imagine more comfortable places. As the streets are not lit, driving past such groups makes your heart stop for a moment. The nastiest hurdles to driving safely are football sized stones on the street. As far as I can tell there are three reasons for those stones: One is that as soon as a car or truck breaks down, stones are arranged around it to block up the road for a while. While the vehicle might be removed after a while, the stones remain. Another reason is stones that have been thrown at animal herds in order to make them cross the street. And the third and probably most accurate reason for the majority of stones is bored children that place them there.

28 November 2009
Lalibela is THE highlight of a trip to northern Ethiopia! Its 900 year old monolithic rock hewn churches are breathtaking. There are eleven of those churches in two groups and one is standing freely apart. UNESCO has insisted on ‘preserving’ the churches from further damage (water, erosion???) by putting up equally breathtakingly ugly scaffolding and modern roofs on top of most churches. From an aesthetic point of view one can only wonder why it was necessary to do it that way. ‘Preserving’ the churches resulted in a large crack in one of them as some heavy machinery was parked on top of the church in order to install the roof...
Well, anyway one has to try hard and blind that out when looking at these masterpieces of human architecture. All of the eleven churches are still in use and different in style and decoration. King Lalibela wanted to build a second Jerusalem and had 40.000 people working on these churches for about 33 years. Most of them are connected through a subterranean network of corridors. Those corridors are not lit and it is said that this was done on purpose so that people could experience how hell could look like. For me the most beautiful church is the free standing church Bet Giyorgis. When walking towards it, the first thing visible is its cross-shaped roof. Later on one descends to the entrance and can visit it inside.

27 November 2009
When driving through the marvellous landscape it is striking how many unmanned offertory boxes there are even in the most deserted places. No church, no chapel, no priest but a tinny offertory box.
Juding upon various recommendations of locals, driving to Lalibela should have taken us between 6 hours and two days. What was more worrying was how they looked at the four by four car. In disbeliev they mumbled: You want to drive to Lalibela with THAT car? How many spare tyres do you have? Just ONE? And you dare to go like that? In fact it was long drive but then again the road was not that bad.
In Lalibela the traditional round hut is quite a special; it has two floors. There is a very nice new hotel (Tukul Village) that rents out either ground floor or upper floor of such a hut, combining traditional architecture with modern comfort.

26 November 2009
I see vasts amounts of haytsacks here in Ethiopia. Many of them walk on either two or four legs. When carried by people this is done by men using the inevitable stick they carry around. Haystacks on four legs are carried by donkeys, horses or camels. The interesting thing is that in all cases the haystack as such is about the equal in size. The only difference is the speed in which it is carried. Especially donkeys love resting at the middle of the street. Live in general happens on the streets. Most people lack a natural shortening reaction when a car is approaching them. I was told that the haircut of many boys in the countryside reflect upon that. Those boys are bald apart from two ringlets on their forehead. Although it is believed that nothing will happen to them these locks are there for security reasons. Should the kid’s guardian angel urgently need to act, he has to grab the boy somewhere and drag him off the street. Therefore those two ringlets come in handy.
What I was told, too is that instead of being celebrated yearly, birthdays are only celebrated shortly after a baby is born. A special bread is beaked for the occasion and the tradition is to break this crispy bread on the baby’s back. If is breaks and the baby does not scream, people believe that this will be a strong girl or boy. If the baby is crying, relatives pity the parents and wish them well with their weak child.

25 November 2009
Axum used to be the capital of a huge kingdom and is still perceived as the holiest city in Ethiopia. Today it is actually a small town and also when visiting most of the sights one is done with that in pretty much half a day. People believe that the Queen of Sheba has lived in Axum. The most impressive site are the obelisks or stelae. They are simply wonderful. After having been in Italy more than 70 years, the second tallest obelisk (about 27 meters high) has been returned to Axum in 2005. The tallest one (over 33 meters high and also carved out of one single piece of granite) is believed to having collapsed already during its erecting. It lies scattered into five pieces on the obelisk field but still is beautiful. I liked that one most, maybe just because it is so broken. All the obelisks are about 1700 years old and were used to mark tombs. Some of these tombs have been excavated and can be visited. Another remarkable sight is a church where allegedly the ark of the covenant is kept and guarded by a monk. This monk is the only one who is allowed to see it and hands over this duty to his successor on his dead bed. Sometimes it is shown during religious festivals but covered up so they say. Nobody, not even the monk who is guarding it may open it.
As in many places, chats on the road here tend to start with the phrase ‘Where are you from?’. After having disclosed that I come from Austria, the answer I got today was quite stunning: ‘All right, I also come from the US!’ In general I decided not to protest anymore if somebody takes me for an Australian. What was slightly embarrassing the other day was when a waiter then introduced me to an Australian band with the words ‘meet your countrymen’. The Australians gave me a certain look when they found out that actually it was Austria...

24 November 2009
The street from Gondar to Debark was the first really bad dirt road and the way to Axum was even worse. It’s a drive from one bump to the next and through nothing but dust. When we finally arrived to Axum I was covered with a red layer of dust. There is financial support from the world bank for paving these roads. The project has been won by a Chinese company and has already been started. Chinese lorries, road rollers and excavators are visible all over the place. Ethiopia as such seems to be largely in Chinese hands anyways. Most recently paved streets have been built by Chinese companies and all masts of the one mobile network are brand new and Chinese. In the cities you see Chinese companies digging the roads to lay new fixed telecommunications cables. Chinese sneakers and clothes flood the weekly markets. Most workers are locals but all the foremen are Chinese.

What strikes me particularly when driving through the villages is the sheer multitude of tabletop soccer games. Judging from their design, those tables must be about 25 years old. I assume they have been imported at the time in bulk and distributed to most villages. Almost every bigger village and any city has about one, two or three of these tabletop soccer games and most of them just stand next to the main road. They are either surrounded by 10-12 children or 2-4 teenagers. In the first case the game is rather static; there are too many players around the table and thus there is not too much movement amongst the little soccer players on the table. In the latter case two of the 3-4 teenagers play the game with high concentration; the others seem to be there for moral support only.

23 November 2009
Maybe I have been assigned my own personal rain cloud after having spent more than six years in Belgium. Anyway it is quite interesting to notice that already in Bahir Dar it was slightly raining and people said this is by no means normal for this time of the year. In Gondar there were showers, too and here now in Debark it is really pouring with rain. Debark is 1800 meters above sea level and it is not only wet but also very cool. In the mountains today it was still sunny but also very cool but sort of expected given the altitude of up to 4600 meters. Those mountains are spectacular. At times they reminded me of the Andes in Argentina, at times of the Alps but then again they are different. There are trees and other very lush plants up until over 3000 meters, cows, horses, sheep and baboons live there and today we even saw buzzards and lammergeyers.

22 November 2009
Gonder is a treasure and a real discovery! Gonder had its golden times as capital of Ethiopia and seat of the empire in the 17th century. Palaces and ruins of palaces are a sign that show the wealth and power still today. Emperor Fasilidas even built a huge swimming pool, about 30 by 70 meters big, with a castle in the middle. It must have been truly splendid at its time. Even today they fill the pool up once a year during the most important festival in January and have children bathe in it. UNESCO has declared the palaces world heritage and they had all reason to do so. The dynasty is said to go back to the mighty queen of Sheba who reigned Arabia and most of eastern Africa at her time. It is also said that back home in Europe people just laughed about stories of an independent and sophisticated empire in Africa when early European visitors told about Gonder in the 17th and 18th century. They simply could not believe that this was even possible. Since the empire went down, most of the palaces have suffered and some of them are only ruins. The interior decoration and treasures were all taken out of the country and most of it is probably in different British museums.

What is very bizarre in the city itself are the Pepsi cola sponsorship activities. Most interestingly Pepsi even sponsors police control points at intersections. Those little huts are not only branded but also have man-sized Pepsi cola bottles on their roofs.

21 November 2009
In the early days they used to say ‚Mens sana in corpore sano’. Nowadays that reads ‘When your body heats, your mind chills.’ Having read that on a billboard the other day I had a relaxing morning in beautiful spa of the Kuriftu Lake Tana Hotel in Bahir Dar. Actually this splendid hotel and especially its interior design reminded me very much of the Flintstones. From Bahir Dar we drove about an hour to the Blue Nile Waterfalls which are nice but as always I am more thrilled by artefacts than by nature. Anyway it was very well worth the visit. From there it took quite some hours to get to Gondar, home of the emperors of Ethiopia’s early days. The landscape was as stunning as on the way from Addis to Bahir Dar and interestingly often reminds me of Austria and the Alps. I really have to redefine my picture of Africa.

20 November 2009
Lake Tana hosts over 20 cloisters on its many islands. We reached some of them by boat today and this was really and experience. They are peaceful and quiet. On some of these islands only priests and monks live. On others there are also small villages. The lake itself has the colour of the river in my hometown during my childhood; a light brown that looks sort of dangerous. The cloisters were all similar. Their shape was the traditional Ethiopian round hut with a straw roof. The sanctum sanctorum inside is square shaped and only accessible for priests and monks. On the walls of the sanctum sanctorum that you surround walking inside the round shape of the cloister building there are naïve paintings of diverse bible stories from the new and old testament. Much beloved are Saint George killing the dragon, the martyrs, the circumstances of all Apostle’s death, all stages of Mary’s life as well as the angels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. What was particularly fascinating were the little museum that hosted old Gondar, Axum and Lalibela crosses as well as old bibles dating back to as early as the 9th century (!).

18 November 2009
Went to some excavations from prehistoric times in the south of Addis Ababa. Splendid and nicely presented!

17 November 2009
I estimate having seen about 80% of all mannequins in Addis Ababa during the last three days. It is a paradise for Broken Muses! What was especially nice were mannequins wearing glasses and all sorts of fractures. I think I experienced sort of a muse trance on those days, recognizing only very little apart from the mannequins. I have been to the Addis Ababa Museum though. There was a room ‘first in Ethiopia’ showing the then king driving the first car and operating the first telephone. Apart from that I had some interesting discussions with my driver/Sherpa, for instance whether or why it makes sense to switch on the lights when driving downhill in neck breaking speed over a sand road. Or why it could be worthwhile asking the way after having gotten totally lost. Earlier on and just before the first real turn and maneuver, we had figured out that he has never driven an automatic car. After I had violently removed his left leg from the break, things went generally a lot smoother.

16 November 2009
My first impressions of Addis Ababa: It is a big and not too beautiful town that does not unveil its charms immediately. There are more Volkswagen beetles here than I have seen in a long, long time. And else of course the gap between rich and poor is enormous although not as bad as I experienced it in India. People say that the Merkato is the biggest market in all of Africa. If you only search long enough I am sure you can literally really find everything there. The most bizarre sight I found was an area devoted to the production and sales of coffins. You can get anything there from the cheapest, carelessly assembled coffin made from raw wood, over carefully crafted and painted ones up to the upmarket coffin with cloth coating on the outside and a comfortable foam coating on the inside. What stroke me was that in another area I had seen matrasses in various shapes and forms. Not a single one of them was white: they all came covered in breathtakingly ugly patterned cloth. The same cloth or at least similar patterns were also used for coating coffins. There may be advantages in chosing similar patterns for both, who knows. In one corner children’s coffins were for sale. Those were rather on the simple and bare wood side but painted in bright pink. And they could be esily stampled by the dozen

15 November 2009
Arrived to Addis Ababa late last night and spent a beautiful day here. I had a massage, took a lot of pictures of mostly broken mannequins, had a car cruise around the city, a drink in one of the most luxurious hotels and a great French/Belgian dinner. So I guess I had a very good first day here!

14 November 2009
Recent T-Shirt prints: 'Your pizza has arrived!' – 'Idylls end in thunderstorms' – 'Sold out' – 'Future Artist' – 'Untitled'

13 November 2009
No problems with my name today but I am back to square one regarding my gender. I received the following invite, addressed to Mister Margit Brandl: Monsieur Margit Brandl, nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter à une table ronde sur le thème: "Irak 2010: année zéro?"

12 November 2009
Hadn’t I moved from time to time yesterday they would have taken me for airport inventory and probably dusted me sooner or later. Else I found that you see more men with backpacks at the airport than in the mountains (not that I would be in the mountains myself often but s till). And there has been a clear shift in trends; while it is still cool to have something behind one's ear it used to be a cigarette some years back and is a Bluetooth hands free device for your mobile phone nowadays.

11 November 2009
One should do a series of pictures in airplanes. Many people who most often don’t know each other and who also do not really want to communicate sit close to each other. Sooner or later almost all of them stare at a little screen in front of them, headphones on and show different stages of excitement.
Back from Lebanon. Well not exactly. I was flying over Brussels but needed to connect at Heathrow airport to finally go to Brussels. Standing 6.5 hours ahead of time in front of three screens that list flights for the coming hours and seeing that your flight is the last one on those screens can be rather depressing.

10 November 2009
Man is a creature of habit and worryingly so. After my late arrival the day before yesterday I did not notice, yesterday it was the evening small talk’s main topic and today it seems pretty normal: the ubiquitous military presence in Beirut/Lebanon. There are armed soldiers on literally every corner presenting their machine guns and often there is a fully fledged armed and camouflaged tank right next to them. All uniforms have the same camouflage pattern but differ in colors. There are blue ones, grey ones and khaki ones. The guns all look the same and very frightening but the guys as such are just very friendly. They chat, text, greet tourists but nevertheless a feeling of slight uneasiness remains.

9 November 2009
From the collection of well articulated offenses: 'Your English is very good! Do you want me to speak slowly so that you can understand?'
And, this time witnessed: An elderly gentlemen waves at a colleague of me and asks politely: 'Are you asleep?'
Received comment: I notice that you were not kidding when you put my unfortunate comment on your blog. Your website appears to be a true reflection of who you are, creative, confident and willing to communicate on every level.

8 November 2009
Even during the financial crisis banks advertise. Brussels airport is decorated with a huge poster of PNB Paribas reading 'The bank for a changing world.' On the same spot there used to be a huge Fortis ad showing a red curve reading: 'Life is a curve, where are you on it?'

7 November 2009
I saw a few beautiful broken muses yesterday in Paris and was suffering as I did not hav my camera with me. Today I spent a few hours in my darkroom, for the first time in months. It is such a thrilling feeling to see the picture slowly appearing in the developing liquid.

6 November 2009
Finally – after going by train to London Wednesday and from there by train to Paris I am on my trip back to Brussels. Well that’s what I thought. There is a high speed train between Paris and Brussels. I had an electronic ticket that required me to print out a paper ticket at the station using a code. Sure enough I could not print the ticket out in Brussels, as I had to rebook the whole journey and go straight from London to Paris. But the return trip remained valid and so I tried to get a ticket. What I found out is that I had a 7 digit code and that is what one needs for the Belgian electronic system. In Paris one would need a 6 digit code and sure enough it is not the first 6 digits of the 7 digit code. As the tickets are booked on codes and not on names, nobody could find the ticket. In the end I boarded the train and tried to convince the conductor that the print out of my lousy electronic booking confirmation is as good as a ticket. He ran away with my passport and for about ten minutes I thought he would either kick me out of the train (running 300km/h) or require an enormous fine. To my total surprise I got back the passport and a nod that everything was fine.

5 November 2009
From the collection of well articulated offenses: 'If we do not pay attention, xyz will employ some lawyers and a few other unemployed people…'

4 November 2009
I am not good at taking trains, And also not very lucky in doing so. From tonight onward there will be a 4 hour strike. So my journey back from London to Brussels and my trip to Paris tomorrow are affected. Great. And on top of that, the Eurostar train got stuck in the channel tunnel. A creepy feeling I have to say. While one is beneath the sea, all engines went out, the lights went out as well and no information was given. After ages the conductor said that he was in 'permanent contact' with the driver. Well, probably he saw him running towards the end of the tunnel…

3 November 2009
I hear that in the UK an area where there is no Internet is called Not Spot as opposed to the inevitable Hot Spot. I like that. It reminds me of my trip to India and that mountain resort that I assumed to be just nature and thus a classical not spot whereby it turned out to be the best hot spot I’ve been to ever!

2 November 2009
I’ll go to Paris later this week and will take the high speed train. Somebody told me that I can travel paperless; all I need to do is filling in an online form. Well. I tried. And I found it odd. The website opened but instead of a form it showed an idyllic image of a train in the far distance and a ruminant cow whose ears move accordingly!
Received comment: Yup, the old Margit is back. The blog is just hilarious! Harry
Harry is right. The \"old Margit\" is back. But the \"new Margit\" (whoever that is!) is just, fine with me, too.... William

30 October 2009
I would never have thought so but a touristic Flamenco show can be fascinating! Wonderful rhythm and proud dancers!

31 October 2009
Sometime life is fair. For a number of days you are somebody’s Sherpa and then on the next day when you least expect it, someone is your Sherpa.

29 October 2009
Arrived to Seville/Spain yesterday Tonight a colleague and me were was searching for the vibrant nightlife in Seville everybody spoke of. Somehow it is rather limited.

28 October 2009
My phone tells me that I tried to call myself 11 times today. I even left me a voicemail. Unfortunately I did not understand the message I left for myself on the voicemail.

27 October 2009
Seen as advertisement on a truck from a tires company: My sport is transport.

26 October 2009
Although it is not often publicly stated or if so very well paraphrased, passing things on has become a valuable job description of many people. Having said that, one must by no means underestimate the role of the forwarding function in modern day e-mail clients for growth and job creation!

25 October 2009
I’ve read it a few days ago in a newspaper and actually seen it in a leaflet in Austria this weekend: Penny, a food discounter with a budget travel agency subsidiary, actually offers journeys to outer space for 209.555 Euro – sold via their Austrian call center. This is no hoax but actually meant to boost their overall travel portfolio. Like they do for their food offer, they have a best price guarantee; if you see the journey to outer space for a cheaper price anywhere else, you get the difference back. More here.

24 October 2009
I wanted to order a new (HP) keyboard online. Unfortunately the online shop said when I typed in that I wanted to have it shipped to 'Belgium': 'We do not ship to Alaska, Hawaii and Prisons.'

22 October 2009
After a long period of relative name integrity I was called 'Verena' the other day as well as 'Margite'.

21 October 2009
Last weekend I saw a toilet seat in a shop with Obama's picture and the inevitable ‘Yes you can!’ printed on it.

20 October 2009
Everybody seems to be thrilled by social networking sites these days. After having reported on my dubious twitter experiences a while ago (29 April), I am now again amazed about the notification (!) of one of these websites that a number of people want to get in touch with me. One of them highlights a picture showing his well trained upper body; it can only be assumed that there might be a face as well but the possessor seems to suggest it can be disregarded.

19 October 2009
I have to quote a friend of mine who often says: 'The fact that one is paranoid does not mean that they are not after you.'

18 October 2009
We all know that you can see the Chinese Wall from outer space. What seems to be less known is that one can also see the illuminated Belgian highways. On second thought who would have thought that the kingdom of Belgium and the 'Middle Kingdom' have that much in common?

17. October 2009
And what else is happening in the world? Well, Hugo Chavez is about to nationalize a Hilton Hotel on Isla Margarita. In London, an art event is just over where 2400 people stood on a pole on Trafalgar square one hour each. One I read was dressed in brown, giving the image of a piece of shit with an impressively big fly on his back. He was holding up a sign reading: 884 million people do not have clean water.

16 October 2009
I spoke at a conference earlier this week and received the following thank-you letter (I only quote the relevant part only): 'Thank you very much for your participation at this week's … Conference 2009. We really appreciate your contribution, and the part that you played in helping to make the event the success that it was. I very much hope that you both enjoyed the event, and also found it useful.' Well obviously I could not hide my alter ego as the both (!) of us are mentioned.

15 October 2009
News News News: There is now a mobile page for reading the Brokenmuses Blog on a mobile device. Just bookmark that page http://www.brokenmuses.com/brokenblog-en.php on your mobile phone or scan the code with your phone’s bar code reader:

14 October 2009
A friend of mine just shared the following nice story, underlining that this really just happened in a Barnes and Noble coffee shop in the USA. 'That will be $4.17. Do you have a Barnes and Noble card sir?' 'No.' 'No worries sir ... hey good news get a refill today for only $0.50 when you return today before 11pm.' 'OK.' 'Here is your change. Thank you for shopping at Barnes and Noble. Have a love filled day.' All that was delivered perfectly with a straight face and no doubt pre programmed as part of the customer service manual.
Well all I can say now is 'Dear readers, thank you for reading the broken blog and we hope to welcome you back to our site soon again! Have a perfectly broken day!'

13 October 2009
Have a look at this website on Smart Logos With Second Thought To Make You Look Twice. It is really nice and thoughtful what simple images/logos can do.

12 October 2009
I love online tools that – after having used them successfully for registering demands for approval - give you the insightful line: 'Following requests have been granted or rejected …' without of course giving you any hint how to find out whether they were approved or rejected. Probably the decision has not been taken and will never be taken. I thought this rather neutral half-sentence would be a wise answering line for any requests that come over social networking sites: Your request to connect to me has either been approved or rejected.

11 October 2009
I eavesdropped on a conversation on the table next to me in a Munich coffee shop: A: 'You know I really like bears.' B: 'But they can eat you, too!' A: 'That’s right but you know when I went to Alaska I was very disappointed; I did not see a single bear!' B: 'That’s such a shame!'

10 October 2009
A bakery in Tyrol advertises with the following: 'We bake wishes!' and 'You should give good things to your body so that the soul is eager to live in it.' Well.

8 October 2009
Book title: 'Kiss, bow or shake hands: How to do business in 60 countries'.

7 October 2009
Saw a photography exhibition by Jonathan Zuck; very inspiring!

6 October 2009
Word of the day: throttle.

5 October 2009
New t-shirt prints: 'What is fashion?' – 'Future Billionaire' and 'It's all about me'.

4 October 2009
Today’s Dilbert comic strip is simply hilarious. We all know that Twitter is helpful.

2 October 2009
In 2000 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on 'women, peace and security'. What a title!

29 September 2009
I eavesdropped on the following conversation: A: What is that (xyz)? B: I have no idea. A: You can't know everything. A little later: A: Where is (city xyz)? B: I have no idea. A: You can't know everything. Again later. A: When will we arrive? B: I have no idea. A: You can't know everything. There was not the slightest irony in all that.

28 September 2009
I cannot stand blurred photos, especially when they are huge and used as advertisements. I keep staring at them thinking to myself: Why? Why is there a trend towards blurred images?

27 September 2009
Who has invented those smoking rooms on airports? Since smoking is prohibited, smokers are forced into foggy chambers, most often unembellished glass cubicles. This is humiliating for the smokers and a source of cursory compassion for passersby.

25 September 2009
Thoughts on a Friday: Why do printer jams only occur during Friday afternoons or when in a hurry? Why is it more difficult to eat round sandwiches compared to longish ones? And why is mayonnaise always dripping out of sandwiches when one does not have a napkin? And why is mayonnaise still used for sandwiches at all?

24 September 2009
A new fast-food chain in Brussels is called 'Take Eat Easy'.

20 September 2009
Just recently I had an evergreen conversation on what makes Brussels special and whether or not there is something like life quality in Brussels. Despite some drawbacks for me it is the surreal moment that makes Brussels worth living in. Twice a year (one was today) Brussels has a car-free Sunday. It seemed that virtually everybody was on the street, people were cycling, there were spontaneous flea markets. Roaming through the streets all of a sudden I found myself in front of a house, a tailor most likely, that had a bright red corset hanging out of his first floor window that was the top part of a long red carpet. Magritte couldn’t have painted a better picture of the surreal Brussels moment. Click here to see a picture.

19 September 2009
The Champagne region i not far away from Belgium and today was the most lovely day to visit. I loved the catheadral of Reims with its smiling angel, all the other beautiful sculptures on the outside and the windows by Chagall inside. I did not know that it is UNSCO world heritage. A visit to the Pommery champaign wine cellars was well worth the visit. About 20 million bottles of champagne are stored in about 18 kilometers of chalkstone cellars. The buildings on top seem like a castle complex, it is fascinating. I mused about buying a so called Salmanazar; a 9 liter bottle of Champaign but refained from it for a number of reasons. The Methusalem (6 liters) was also impressive but equally unhandy.

17 September 2009
I’ve spotted quite a number of new t-shirt prints: 'Superlative conspiracy', 'Make me cupcakes' and – next to a museum worn by a young girl: 'I really don’t like art'.

16 September 2009
I’ve been to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens yesterday. It is truly splendid. The museum is replicating the acropolis uphill which you see from many places of the building. They’ve brought together many remains of the antique decoration. What impressed me most were the Caryatids.

15 September 2009
It is always interesting to see people working close to airport terminals. Since one world is sponsoring ‘electricity geysers’ on some airports, you see more and more people around those pillars, connected through cables. In Byzantine times we had pillar saints but as far as I know they were sitting on the pillars and were very ascetic. On second thought I guess I prefer that they’re sitting next to the modern airport electricity pillars and not on them.

14 September 2009
E-Mail programs are tricky and sometimes do more than they should. I just wanted to file something in a draft folder, addressed 'to self'. Who can assume that I have a colleague whose name is Selfu to whom the message went automatically and who now probably muses about my message? I tried to recall it but in vein.
Unrelated to that but also oddly enough I got an e-mail saying 'Dear Mr. Margit … you should rent a technical resource program'. I have no idea what that means but after just having admitted writing e-mails to myself, I did not dare to ask. Ah yes, the gender issue came up again with that as well!

13 September 2009
Notes on a Sunday: Went to cinema with 15 Euros in my pocket. Lost the money on the way. Found out in front of the cinema. Went home.

11 September 2009
I really like the new song by pink ‘Please don’t leave me’. But the best thing about it is the video.

10 September 2009
I had no idea that a) carrier pigeons are still used today and b) that pigeons really provide broadband capabilities. A story worth reading… Where can I get a pigeon?

9 September 2009
This online presentation is a very beautiful piece of art with some very thoughtful observations. I especially liked ‘Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful’ and ‘Don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.’ And ‘What other people think of you is none of your business.'

7 September 2009
Adding to yesterday's butcher shop: Today I saw a Brussels bakery called 'Boulangerie Sans Souci'.

6 September 2009
Close to Brussels’ south station there is a butcher shop called 'Boucherie Stalingrad'.

5 September 2009
Just read in a brochure for woman travelers: ‘To concentrate your favorite shampoo and conditioner, just pour the shampoo into one pie plate and the conditioner into another. Place them in the oven at a low temperature (about 200-250°) for several hours. Much of the water will evaporate, leaving very thick liquids. Using a funnel, pour these liquids into small travel bottles and label them. All you need is just a few drops at a time, and they'll last for weeks.’ I don’t know if I would want to do that.

4 September 2009
I was invited to a wedding in Bruges which was really nice. It reminded me once more how difficult it is to be the wedding photographer and was happy that I did not have the honor.

1 September 2009
A new muse is online in the friends-section of this website.

31 August 2009
A new museum opened. In their frequently asked questions section on their website they say the following about whether or not one can visit the museum now: ‘the museum will remain closed to the public until after its official opening.’ Well great!

29/30 August 2009
I’ve been away from Brussels recently and after a fist assessment three huge buildings have been torn down in the meantime. Not a big surprise. I have not been to Vienna city center in a while and having been there just now I find out that they have torn down a building in one of the major downtown shopping streets. And that is sheer unbelievable.

28 August 2009
Seen on a car today (advertising a company that obviously has to do with construction or better destruction): ‘Our mission – your demolition.’ Taken out of context I would not necessarily think this is a great slogan.

27 August 2009
French is really not my strongest side. So it happens that three young guys in a little car stop and ask me for the time. Or at least that was what I understood. Actually they asked the way to the station. They were at least as puzzled as I was but took it nicely and said they liked my accent.

26 August 2009
T-shirt print (pink on brown shirt, worn by a 30 year old): I’ve been dressed by my mum.

23 August 2009
Thinking about it raspberry juice is somewhat totally out. I guess peach ice tea has made the race and replaces raspberry juice fully.

22 August 2009
I have become a Billy Bryson aficionado. Can’t stop reading his traveling books.

20 August 2009
T-shirt prints: 'I am entitled to be grumpy'
'Made in Jail IIII II'
'Live beyond your means'
'Real eyes, real lies, realize'

7 – 19 August 2009
Umbria, Rome. Well, Umbria does not feel like Italy at all. It is all neat and tidy and well kept. No dirt on the streets, plants are in pots and neatly arranged around the houses. Most little towns are on hilltops and from medieval or Etruscan times.
My best insight was that Baci, the hazelnut praline chocolate comes from Perugia. In every Baci there is a little paper with a quote or a proverb like: 'Of all sentiments love is that which has the greatest need of leisure' - Stendhal.
Perugia is overall the nicest and most enjoyable city in Umbria I thought. What was particular interesting was that there are escalators that bring you up to the historic city. So from various spots on the hill they’ve constructed escalators that bring you up and around so to say. Probably it is only possible in Italy to drill through historic walls and antique archeologically interesting ground in order to make life easier with escalators.
Assisi is a great spot for tourists, its double cathedral (one is above the other) is very impressive, Citta de la Pieve is enjoyable (especially the costume festival on august 15 was) and Orvieto is also a place one has to see (mainly again for the cathedral). Gubbio is allegedly the oldest medieval town which is still entirely intact and I must say it has something.
Else being in sunny Italy really felt like holidays with important questions: Do I have a second cappuccino for breakfast? Is it sunbathing or culture today? Do I read another chapter or will I just get lost in thought now?
The last day then in Rome was again totally different. Even in the middle of summer and in an incredible heat Rome is special and stunning. In quite a rush we saw Fontana di Trevi, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo di Fiori, Trastevere and San Giovanni in Laterano.

6 August 2009
Not underestimating the pandemic, warnings against the swine flu - or whatever it is called these days - have always quite some comic potential. I read today that the best way to avoid infection is to observe the following basic rules of hygiene (please pay special attention to the first two):
- Wash your hands and keep them away from your face.
- Cough hygienic: Keep your distance from others and cover your mouth with your - sleeve or a tissue.
- Make sure closed rooms are aired regularly.
- Keep your distance from others and avoid crowds.

5 August 2009
Pole Pole. Suaheli for take it easy.

4 August 2009
On 13 February 2009 I asked whether you can urge people who are already collecting bags of antique book shops to start a collection of sickness bags from airplanes. Well, obviously you can. And people do much more than that. There is an online gallery for air sickness disposal bags. Most wanted these days: any pre-1970 bag. Somebody offers a free starter kit consisting of 3 bags of his choosing.
My personal favorite is Rafael Antonio Lozano jr. He is on a personal mission to visit every Starbuck’s outlet in the world. See his webpage. I especially liked the about me page.

2 August 2009
Summer slump in the newspapers: The only things that newspapers do is pondering the beer brand Obama recently drank while receiving guests in the white house garden, whether – on the eve of becoming grandfather - it is about time for Sarkozy to have a baby with Bruni and whether it is appropriate for a serious newspaper to have an interview with Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest figure (as Cohen is not willing to have interviews as such and rather prefers posing as one of his alter egos).

1 August 2009
So this is it, one of THE Belgian seaside destinations, Blankenberge. Seen it, been there. No need to go there again in the middle of summer I guess.

31 July 2009
Belgian Artist Phebus has created a limited series of broken muses stamps.

30 July 2009
Austrian wafer manufacturer Manner now also sells Manner 'soundbags': handbags where you can connect your iPod. It has integrated boxes and replays music…

29 July 2009
Is the NASA video of the moon landing still copyright protected?

27 July 2009
Swine flu isn’t called swine flu anymore ans also Mexican flu seems to be an outdated term. It has a very prosaic name now: Influenza A/H1N1. Anyway, a recent warning reads: 'Personal hygiene is all the more important, especially in contact with people who are returning from a trip or vacation and in contact with other people in general – at work, for example. …
- Cough and sneeze into a paper tissue (not into your hands).
- Keep a physical distance from people who have cold symptoms.
- Refrain from shaking hands.
There are basically no grounds for panic.'
I especially like the last two lines.

24 July 2009
T-shirt print: 'Secret society of vegans – saving the unicorns since the 90s'

23 July 2009
As my father would put it: Some people are really dreaming of lukewarm iced-lollies.

22 July 2009
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says in its article 24: 'Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.'

20 July 2009
New pictures from Cairo/Egypt are online, amongst them many new broken muses!

19 July 2009
'I can because I want what I must.' Immanuel Kant

18 July 2009
In Bruck an der Mur there is a school for explosive engineering.

16 July 2009
T-Shirt print: 'Reality is a stinky business'

15 July 2009
Sometimes you don’t know if something is a change of for a change.

14 July 2009
Even after many years of practice I find small talk tiring. And I still manage to go home hungry after an evening reception with food and drinks.

13 July 2009
The Finns are very curious people, they even have a competition for carrying wives.

12 July 2009
'I am always perplexed when people say that a photograph has captured someone. A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment.' Annie Leibovitz in At Work.

11 July 2009
'Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.' Mark Twain

10 July 2009
'When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.' Russian Proverb

9 July 2009
'When I get a little money, I buy books: and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.' Erasmus
'My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.' Abraham Lincoln

8 July 2009
Weird scenes on Munich airport... Many young people in traditional clothes stood there waving huge signs reading ‘To the international convention of Jehova winesses’ with which they welcomed about half the population of Japan.

7 July 2009
No all song texts are cunning. An example: ‘There are nine million bicycles in Beijing - That's a fact - It's a thing we can't deny - Like the fact that I will love you till I die.’

5 July 2009
Advertisement for a bookshop: 'Shoot your own movie – read a book.'
And another t-shirt print: '99% angel'.

4 July 2009
Can you claim doing sports regularly when you just run after planes or between gates at the airport respectively?
Latest spotted t-shirt print: 'Greetings from Djibouti!' I am sure not everybody has got a t-shirt like that.

3 July 2009
A few very insightful Wittgenstein quotes:
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

2 July 2009
Dennis Meadows, who was part of the Club of Rome and co-authored the book 'limits to growth' said in a recent interview: 'In the short term you often have to go complicated ways in order to change things for the better in the long term' and 'you have to sacrifice now in order to live better in the long run'.

1 July 2009
A friend told me about a quote by Henri Ford who said 'When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.'

30 June 2009
My grandmother used to say: 'Life isn’t a musical request programme.' Today's word: 'muddle'.

29 June 2009
Today’s word is ‘cantankerous’.

28 June 2009
Nobel laureate Eric Kandel said in an interview 'a human being is what he has learnt and what he remembers'.

27 June 2009
I wonder why politicians like Obama are so successful with slogans of 'change', 'yes we can' or 'the time is now'. Change seems the most difficult thing to achieve for most people. Maybe it is because the marketing of these slogans imply that someone else will do it, that being for it is all it takes and the dirty work is done by others. I am curious whether the opposition will soon start marketing slogans like 'too little, too late'.

26 June 2009
What else do you need on a Friday apart from a pigeon that shits on you, a PC that gets stolen and the police that says they were not informed about a stolen PC but instead about the fact that somebody had been taken hostage?

25 June 2009
Bertrand Russell allegedly said 'Anything that can be put in a nutshell shall remain there.'

24 June 2009
New pictures at the Broken Muses start page.

23 June 2009
I ask myself what drives people to throw away things on the street. Today I saw a pair of boots on the streets. So somebody has left them behind. Why?

22 June 2009
After long months of relative stability regarding my name I was called 'Birgit' and 'Margrit' today. The latter is maybe a tribute to the recently opened Magritte museum in Brussels.

21 June 2009
Midsummer and it is raining cats and dogs in Brussels.

20 June 2009
I Can’t stop reading 'Shantaram' by Gregory David Roberts. It is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in recent years.

18 June 2009
Trying to recover from bleeding hands, aching back and other pain from yesterday’s exhibition.

17 June 2009
Exhibition in Brussels in the Royal Arts and History Museum. My main take is that the secret of some people’s success seems to be having developed mastership in watching others work. Well, apart from that I refine my earlier assumption of personal hell (which was screwing together picture frames). Since I do pictures on aluminum support, that is no longer necessary. It now contains mounting and demounting easels. So it has changed a bit over time.
Some people but really just a few seemed to be interested in my pictures and said things ranging from 'I really like them' to 'they all look so sad' and 'well I'm into art from the far east'.

16 June 2009
I read a most shocking article by a woman who survived a prison sentence in North Korea.

14 June 2009
Finally found some time again to work in the dark room. Facing my negatives I only realize today in how many places I have been lately: Budapest, Lisbon, Porto, Prague, Maastricht, New York, Munich, Cairo, Athens.
What else is new? There is now a news archive on the website. And I will have a half day exhibition next Wednesday in the Royal Arts and History Museum in Brussels.

13 June 2009
My best friend tends to say ‘Man should stay amongst themselves and play football.’

12 June 2009
Returned from Athens. I read a very interesting article on photographic retouching. Retouching is not only commonplace, it becomes so bizarre that celebrities start to look totally different from magazine to magazine.

11 June 2009
News in the section of t-shirt prints: ‘Three reasons to be a teacher: June, July, August.’
and ‘To do is to be. Socrates - To be is to do. Plato - Do Be Do Be Do. Sinatra.’

10 June 2009
Arrived to Athens quite late and had barely time to see the Acropolis. Such a great city. So much to see and no time really.

6 June 2009
Written above the entrance of a Brussels bookshop: 'Carefully balanced on the edge of a hole in time'.

5 June 2009
My camera seemed broken. I am so relieved that it was only empty batteries.

4 June 2009
I got some very interesting feedback to this website today asking me whether I was suggesting James Bond is a 'broken muse'?!

3 June 2009
Newsletters are always a fruitful source for my blog. I read today under a heading ‘joyful news’ that ‘we would like to take the opportunity to inform you of the birth of our new website’. Had I only known that websites just get born, broken muses would have been up and running years before 2005.

2 June 2009
A while ago I reflected on the fact that there are people who you can smell before you even see them. In elevators I sometimes get the feeling that you can smell certain people also still a while after they’ve left. I am not sure which is worse.

1 June 2009
What I forgot to mention about Cairo the other day was a very insightful button on the livery of every hotel employee reading: 'Yes is the answer, what is the question?' It was not always easy to get the question across, especially as it needed to be worded in a yes/no manner. Difficult to ask where breakfast is served or when to check out at the latest.

30 – 31 May 2009
A classical trip to Paris involving a visit to the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel tower, a boat trip on the Seine, a stroll through St. Germain des Pres and a visit to Versailles. What was perhaps different to a really pure classical Paris trip was a tribute to the largest flea market of all times at Porte de Clinancourt where the bride, a broken muse in her wedding dress, is still sitting in the back of a shop for old metal.

29 May 2009
2 years of Broken Muses blog!

28 May 2009
WWF says without the environment there is no economy.

27 May 2009
While waiting for a takeaway pizza a woman with a dog on her arm entered the pizza place. She asked whether the owner needed a dog. He declined politely, not today. I was happy having ordered a vegetarian pizza.

26 May 2009
You can be registered in more than one country in Europe but it seems that you can only vote in the vote on the European Parliament in one country.

25 May 2009
I cycled to another bike shop in order to buy a lock. It was closed.

21 - 24 May 2009
My visit to Cairo already started of well. I was picked up by a driver who looked like Omar Sharif’s grandson and said his name was Honey. His two phrases were: 'Welcome to Egypt' and 'no problem'. Without any problems he welcomed me to Egypt at least 15 times. We drove to the pyramids of Gizeh. Although I had of course seen them numerous times on TV or on pictures, the feeling of actually standing in front of them is hard to describe. There is a reason for calling them a world wonder. Being there and looking at them is stunning, moving. The Sphinx is equally impressive. How must the first discoverers have felt when seeing them? Of course there are numerous people who try to make the impression even better for tourists, they offer posing with camels or riding horse carriages.
The bazaar in the Islamic part of the city offers a wide array of obvious and not so obvious products. There are shops that manufacture hats or bind books. In between there are goats living on the streets and stands where you can drink freshly squeezed sugar cane juice. A must is the picturesque El Fishawy Café on the Khan El Khalili bazaar. More posh is the rooftop bar in the Nile Hilton that offers a splendid view over the city.
Coptic Cairo, the oldest part of the city as it seems is also most interesting. So is the Egyptian Museum that hosts all the sarcophaguses, mummies, sculptures, tomb accessories and whatever one can imagine from the ancient Egyptian times. I guess one would need weeks to see all its treasures.
The City of the Dead is probably the thing that made the biggest impression on me apart form the pyramids. About 300.000 people are said to live there in mausoleums and huts between the gravestones and tombs. It is a city in the city for the poorest of the poor, it has bus connections, shops and car repairs. The alleys have names and the graves numbers, so even mail can be delivered.

20 May 2009
I decided to ride a bike again. I cycled to the office, somehow managed to lose the lock. I then walked to a sports shop, the only one I know by the way, only to find out it has been closed down and replaced by a clothes shop. Somehow my cycling seems to be ill-fated.

19 May 2009
Wherever there is a construction ongoing you can be sure that there are people close by observing the scene. Is there a meditative aspect to construction sites and the change coming with it? Or is it just comforting to watch other people work?

16 May 2009
Art is beautiful but a lot of work. Karl Valentin

15 May 2009
Have a look at this real estate ad. Isn’t that THE brokenmuses apartment?

14 May 2009
I visited a brewery in Munich which was really interesting especially regarding the logistics. What was nice to hear was that at some stage in the fermentation process the beer is cooled and a certain amount of CO2 is set free. You cannot smell the gas and if you breathe in a certain amount that is lethal. In the past, many people died when entering the cooling rooms. So a way out was that the master brewer had a sausage dog, accompanying him to the site. Then he sent the sausage dog to the cooling room on a long leash. If the dog collapsed, the CO2 level was obviously too high. The respective dog collapsed but did not die. He eventually recovered but remained dizzy for a while. On old pictures it seems that you always see the sandwich dog next to the master brewer.

13 May 2009
Why are there dishes that are described as follows: 'Fly fish caviar mousse on Castell Franco salad, asparagus spears in watercress vinaigrette and ciabatta bread'?

12 May 2009
… beauty is found in the everyday rather than in the ideal … Ann Temkin, the Blanchette Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture.

11 May 2009
Sentences you hear when shopping. Some of them sound pretty boring but make some sense, e.g. 'Would you want a plastic bag?' Others are a bit awkward like 'Do you collect Disney stickers?'

10 May 2009
A wine and book lover recently told me that only red wine is real wine. White wine he thinks is just a refreshment.

9 May 2009
New pictures from Rome are online!

8 May 2009
Some people think it is eccentric to read old newspapers. One could call them oldspapers. The advantage is that the chance of missing something important is rather low. On the other hand the problem is that one is never quite up to date of what is ongoing on the present day.

7 May 2009
At the airport I got a leaflet that draws your attention to various symptoms of what I thought was called the swine flu and what now all of a sudden is called Mexican flu. So at first, a whole species was discredited, now it is a whole country.

1 – 6 May 2009
An interesting fact I had not come across so far was that New York was briefly called New Orange after the Dutch had taken over briefly again from the British between August 1673 and November 1674. I found this nowhere in the Museum of the City of New York but only in a little brochure.
Being in the Library Hotel where every room has its theme and ‘please make my room’ signs read ‘please dust my books’ and ‘do not disturb’ is neatly worded ‘shhh, let me read’ all of a sudden New York seems to be all about reading. The theme of another bookshop was: Don’t judge a bookstore by its cover. Reading the daily paper, I came across an interesting article on the myth of multitasking and another one on the inventor and genius Nikola Tesla.
In New York Everybody between 16 and 20 seems to go crazy for Abercrombie & Fitch clothes. I saw many youngsters in the rain with paper shopping bags from the brand, protecting the shopping bag from the rain rather than themselves. The shopping bags show parts of the jeans and the well trained six pack of a male model. Allegedly the clothes are sold in dark rooms and so I wanted to check whether that was true. The first thing I saw was a gigantic poster of the shopping bag picture, a crowd of screaming girls, a girl with a Polaroid camera and – the model. I waked past the crowd, posed with the model and got a Polaroid picture of the two of us instantly.
Else it was raining cats and dogs most of the time and freezing cold. Nevertheless I saw districts I haven’t seen before, like the Meatpacking district, the Upper East Side and some parts of Brooklyn. A real discovery was the Bar of the Mandarine Oriental Hotel, overlooking Central Park.

30 April 2009
'I have always imagined that Paradise would be a kind of library' – Jorge Luis Borges.
Also read today: 'Busy loving, busy hating, busy laughing, busy going crazy'. And a new t-shirt quote: 'There is no future in time travel'

29 April 2009
I don’t know whether joining twitter was such a success. Amongst the first ones who became my 'followers' were persons calling themselves 'Harpi Bizarre' and 'I hate people'.

28 April 2009
I was informed about the following recommended health and safety procedures regarding the swine flu:
- Maintain good personal hygiene, wash your hands frequently.
- Avoid touching your face.
- Avoid people who are obviously sick.
And now my absolute favourite:
- Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze and put your used tissue in a wastebasket. If you don't have a tissue, cough or sneeze into your upper sleeve, not your hands

27 April 2009
I think I will start a collection of insults. Heard yesterday: A person goes on and on about something. The next one says: 'Recently I heard something really intelligent. Actually it was the opposite of what you just said.'

25 -26 April 2009
It’s a shame. I am in Porto and exactly today (April 25) is the most important Portuguese national holiday. Everything’s closed. Well, eventually one shop was open where I could buy the thickest sweatshirt ever as it is sunny but freezing cold. Who would think that this is possible in Portugal? Anyways, Porto’s center is UNESCO world heritage and although there are not many people on the streets and somewhat is seems like a ghost town and although half or more of the houses are empty or breaking apart, there is an irresistible charm to it. It is truly broken, which I of course happen to enjoy very much. I even found a few broken muses.
One should definitely have dinner in the Cafe de Paris, a drink in the Bar dos Livros (both Rua da Galleria de Paris), have coffee in the neo-baroque Café Majestic dating back to 1921 (Rua Santa Catarina) and browse through the books in the Llelo bookshop (Livraria Llelo, Rua des Carmelitos).

24 April 2009
There are exceptionally many blind people in Lisbon I think. During the last three days I saw at least 15. Today there was one on the streets passing me who wasn’t very good at it, yet. Although I tried to make space he still managed to hit me with his stick.
On the Mrs. Bean syndrome (© by a friend of mine; what she means by that is being enormously clumsy just as Mr. Bean): First I burnt my tongue today with a Pasteis de Belem (a cake and real Portuguese delight). Then as said I got hit by a blind person’s stick. When I tried to help someone at a lunch buffet I managed to hold my own plate in such a clumsy way that sauce was running all over my hand. And finally without George Clooney I was just unable to operate a Nespresso machine – producing only hot water.

23 April 2009
At a conference: A colleague referred me to talk to a person from a particular country. So I walked up to this person, introduced my self and said I was referred to him in order to talk to him. The I thought not so polite answer was: 'I don’t think that this will be useful.'

22 April 2009
Visited Sintra/Protugal and got tremendously lost. When I finally discovered I was going around in circles, the police drove by. I managed to stop them. I must have looked very exhausted. The drove me about 15 km to the train station and dropped me there saying 'enjoy Portugal!'.

21 April 2009
It is not easy to keep a poker face when somebody who is about to present a no-nonsense topic stands in front of a white wall while a video is projected and has a play-button projected onto his trousers.

20 April 2009
There is nothing such as a casual Monday. I went to the office casually as there were no meetings foreseen. Then a meeting popped up. So I prepared for it, got back home, dressed up, went to the meeting only to find out it was cancelled.

18 – 19 April 2009
Maastricht is a very interesting city. A new bookshop (Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen) has been built into an old Dominican church from the 13th century. Where the altar was, today there is a coffee shop. Not far from it, a 15th century Dominican monastery has been transformed into a modern hotel (Kruisherenhotel Maastricht). What used to be the Gothic church is now the central lobby. The bar is in the altar area there and the breakfast room in the gallery. The inner courtyard is also well done. A fountain sculpture with a rotating ship propeller creates a whirlpool that moves an ostrich egg up and down. Remarkable! And before I forget: The wasabi nut is also a common delight in Maastricht...

17 April 2009
It is always interesting to see what people throw away. A particularly stunning combination of parts of a Hoover and a broken icon can be seen when clicking here.

16 April 2009
I read that in Stockholm a hotel was recently opened that has been built into a jumbo jet (Boing 747). The jumbo has been manufactured for Singapore Airlines in 1976. It is possible to sleep even in the cockpit! That’s the website of the Jumbo-Hotel.

15 April 2009
Prague is a beautiful city and interesting in many ways. Czech beer is world known and offered of course everywhere. Also in the mini bar of my hotel. The interesting detail though was that the cheapest item in the mini bar was a pack of condoms. The price was a third of the cheapest beer.

14 April 2009
A friend of mine has just started her wold-tour. She will go from Vienna to Madras, Sri Lanka, Singapur, Hongkong, Australia, to the Easter Islands and to Chile. More on her bi-lingual German and English travel blog.

13 April 2009
Best selling books (titles only; 4 titles taken from the top ten of the non-fiction best seller list quoted in the 'Standard' of April 11): The hurt human being. The olive and us. Happiness rarely comes alone. Who dies healthily has more from life.

12 April 2009
I was stopped at the airport because I had 26 film rolls with me. Obviously the four ladies at the security check were well trained and spotted the camera on their black and whiter screen but the film rolls remained a miracle. They found it very suspicious that a person would export 26 film rolls from Austria to Belgium. The digital age has hit hard again.

10 April 2009
After cinema a huge Granny Smith apple landed just beneath me on the street. It came from above but there was no person visible who has taken the first bite and then thrown it. Weird.

9 April 2009
The wasabi nut has arrived to Bruck an der Mur! Furthermore there are now garbage bins for dog shit only, see a picture here.

8 April 2009
I hear that there are very interesting philosophy lectures at the university in Graz. They are well attended. Amongst others there is an older student who – much to the disgust of the other students - starts eating a strange kind of dark brown mash as soon as the professor enters the room. During the last lecture before Easter he did not only eat his brown mash but presented his false teeth and licked the rest of the brown mash off them.

7 April 2009
I got a chocolate Easter bunny. According to the package this is understood to be a hollowware made of bitter chocolate. Said hollowware has grim looks, is wrapped in a golden aluminum foil and has a brown bowtie as well as an amulet (!) on a ribbon.

5 April 2009
Kierkegaard said once: 'You can make Wild ducks tame, but you can never make Tame ducks Wild again.'

4 April 2009
A new classic in the world of t-shirt prints: ‘Blame my sister’.

3 April 2009
A specialist told me that a bilby is an oviparous mammal. For a picture of a bilby, please click here.

2 April 2009
Just in time for Easter I came across a very curious trade mark case. The Austrian supreme court is seeking guidance on the concept of bad faith within the meaning of the Community trade mark legislation. The subject matter is chocolate Easter bunnies. The Austrian cholocate manufacturer Hauswirth has been challenged legally by its competitor Lindt&Sprüngli. Both companies produce golden chocolate bunnies at Easter time, both with gold-colored foil wrapping and a ribbon. Lindt also uses a bell on the bunny’s ribbon and has a three-dimensional Community trade mark of an Easter bunny wrapped in gold-coloured foil, with red and brown markings, wearing round its neck a red ribbon with a bell attached. The case is about the likelihood of confusion and more generally about the concept of bad faith when registering a trade mark that can be used against products which were already available on the market before the trade mark was registered. The interesting part comes in the opinion of the advocate general where the advocate general tries to define what an Easter bunny is: ‘Part of the mythology of Easter is an egg-bearing creature known as the Easter bunny. Different languages categorise the creature as a hare or a rabbit, and the English ‘bunny’ is perhaps flexible enough to encompass both. In Australia, where rabbits are viewed with disfavour, its mythological niche has been partly taken over by the ‘Easter bilby’ (although, given the animal’s possibly oviparous nature, one might have expected an ‘Easter platypus’). The article sold under the trade mark in issue in the present case is termed by its manufacturer ‘Goldhase’ in German, ‘Gold bunny’ in English, ‘Lapin d’or’ in French, ‘Coniglio d’oro’ in Italian, etc. Fortunately, the exact zoological classification of this (probable) lagomorph is entirely irrelevant to any of the issues in the case.’

1 April 2009
Recently a new sandwich shop opened in Brussels, brilliantly named for April’s fool day: It’s called ‘Fou’d Food’, crazy for food. This bar is close to a restaurant called Archimedes' principle or better 'Le Thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed', pronounced as 'Le Theorem d’Archimed'. Another nice name from my collection of interesting restaurant names in Brussels is 'Et qui va promener le chien?', so 'and who is going to walk the dog?'.

31 March 2009
Where to go really?

30 March 2009
Many people are talking about the 'Internet of Things' these days. Recently I read it slightly misspelled, being referred to as the 'Internet of Thins'. So it seems that the future Internet is only there for the really fit and slim ones.

29 March 2009
Brussels is known for chocolate. At Easter there are chocolate eggs everywhere and a particular shop advertises his giant chocolate eggs with 'eggsplosion of taste'.

28 March 2009
News for the collection of t-shirt prints: 'Animals taste good' and 'I recycle women'.

27 March 2009
Why is it often so that the answer to 'please decide either – or' is answered by 'we believe that what you proposed is the ideal way forward'.

26 March 2009
Conference in Cologne: It seems that the tensions between Cologne and Düsseldorf go as far as that the toilets in a Cologne conference venue are called 'Düsseldorf'.

25 March 2009
Is it really a sign of a rotting society when coffee shops advertise 'breakfast until 5 pm'?

21 – 22 March 2009
News from the world of t-shirt prints:
Under an print image of the Brussels atomium there is a sentence in small letters reading 'This is not Porto'. Or 'Portugal apologizes for having invented the fado' or 'Download the whole Portuguese economy, just 20kb'. What I also found appealing was a handwritten ad in the shop windows of a shop selling handmade shoes reading: 'pretty shoes = pretty feet'.

19 March 2009
Some buses in Brussels have a bright huge sticker nowadays reading: ‚This bus respects the environment.’ And then they block everybody’s way…

18 March 2009
On the Brussels Berlaymont building is a huge new poster reading: ‘Our food has become greener’ I’ve noticed. It takes ages for bananas to become yellow after you’ve bought them.

16 March 2009
From my series of meeting quotes: ‘It’s not a conference, it’s a real meeting with topics!’

15 March 2009
I tend to complain that there are hardly any ATMs in Brussels. Recently there are quite some at the airport at least. The image that is printed on their sides speaks for itself I guess, just have a look and click here.

13 March 2009
Nowadays there are more electricity plugs at airports, mainly due to the fact that a major airline customer loyalty program is sponsoring plug-in stations for charging phones and laptop computers. So people do not sit in the dirt between toilet entries anymore but gather around these charger stations. Their cables are now long enough to sit properly on the nearest benches. I have to say that I liked the humiliating image much more: businessmen in more or less tailor made suits sitting on the floor next to a power outlet…

12 March 2009
There is a new installation on the roof of the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels. It’s a huge bright blue brain.

11 March 2009
I am quoting from a Belgium Travel Advisory that a colleague of mine recently got from his travel agency:
- There is an underlying threat from terrorism, but nothing that you should be concerned about.
- Continuing political tensions between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking ethnic groups [sic!] led to the government collapsing in 2008, but this is unlikely to lead to long-term instability affecting the security environment.
- Driving standards are improving but remain poor by European standards – this is the legacy of a lenient driving test and inadequate driver training.
- Hepatitis B: Recommended for ... anyone who may have a new sexual partner, share needles or get a tattoo or body piercing.
- If you do not speak Flemish, it is usually preferable to speak English, not French, when speaking to a Flemish speaker.

10 March 2009
Recent studies seem to suggest that multitasking is not at all the great new approach that it has been said it was but makes people vulnerable to errors. More here. According to the study author David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, it takes far longer - often double the time or more - to get jobs done when people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them than if they were done sequentially.

6-8 March 2009
New tales from Absurdistan: Chaudefontaine is in a spa area and home to thermal springs. There is a fountain with two interesting warning plates. One reads that the water is definitely not drinking water. The other one reads that the water is not subject to any control whatsoever. Interestingly enough people are queuing there with empty bottles and canisters in order to fill them up with the water from the fountain.
Not far from the fountain is a public park with interesting signs, one of them forbidding dogs to pee in the park!

5 March 2009
From my collection of t-shirt prints: ‘Information Overload’

4 March 2009
A controversial statement in a controversial debate: 'First of all I would like to underline that I agree with everything that has just been said…'

3 March 2009
New tales from Absurdistan: I got an invitation to join a running group. The advertisement read: 'Coached by xyz you will learn how to smoothly run 5km in 10 weeks time.' Well, 10 weeks seems generous for 5 kilometers. That gives you about 336 hours for 1 km or 20.16 min for each single meter. I guess that can be done not matter how untrained you are. Some snails may overtake tough.

28 February 2009
Ryanair’s CEO announced yesterday that in the near future his airline might charge customers to use its aircrafts' toilets.

27 February 2009
From a newsletter: ‘There are apparent pro- and cons on the taste of coffee in the new offices. A ‘taste’ test session will be organized to potentially change the coffee.’

26 February 2009
Thinking about the concept of a bad bank, I hear some people think it might be cool being a manager there. Titles could be along the lines: vice president toxic assets - bad bank inc.

25 February 2009
Again trouble with my name: Today it was Margit Brandle.

24 February 2009
My name was spelled correctly on a conference badge!

23 February 2009
An American friend from California tells me that talking to me and listening to my accent is way more fun than listening to their governors Arnold's. I guess that’s a compliment.

22 February 2009
From my collection of t-shirt prints: 'I need some truth and aspirin.' Fernando Pessoa

21 February 2009
Tales from hairdressers: A woman in her sixties enters the hairdresser at about 11 a.m. She has short hair. Approaching the first competent-looking hairdresser she says that she has to do a Mardigras parody of the local mayor later on the same day. In order to do so she wishes to also look like him which would involve pinning her hair down in order to model a bald head. Additionally she would want to have the one or the other long dark strand of hair – 20-30cm would do – that could be glued all over the bald head from ear to ear. The hairdresser’s mood changed quickly between disbelief, amusement and slight anger. Rather logically she argued that one cannot possibly model a bald head using – admittedly short - hair. When she saw the squashed hopes of that woman she advised to try find a wig that could eventually be shaved in order to resemble the mayor’s haircut.

20 February 2009
The rumour goes that there are acting librarians who refuse to read books that are written by female writers.

16 February 2009
For quite some time I hesitated to try. But I have to admit that there is a certain fascination in studio photography. Here are a few pictures.

15 February 2009
Allegedly Daniel Craig alias James Bond has sleeping difficulties.

14 February 2009
I thought three crosses stand for signatures of people who can neither read nor write. Now I find out that it stands for kisses. Maybe for kisses of people who can neither read nor write, who knows?

13 February 2009
Can you urge people who are already collecting bags of antique book shops to start a collection of sickness bags from airplanes?

12 February 2009
There are very creative ideas out there how to sell things. What seems to become popular at the moment are raffles for houses. Read more here.

11 February 2009
I stumbled over a list of spa treatments from the Margit hotel on Margit island in Budapest. They offer things like a Hungarian wine cream massage, a body scrub with salt and fruit brandy and a honey and cabbage packing!

8 February 2009
A few updates: The pictures from Budapest (January 2009) are online now, click here. The Wasabi nut has finally hit Belgium. I was told that a huge pile has been seen on a market in Antwerp. And last but not least: Bernd the bread (see blog entry from 18 January) has been kidnapped (!). After 11 days it could be liberated. Read more here on the kidnapping of Bernd and a related story about freeing Bernd.

7 February 2009
Is ‘Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän’ really the longest German word? That is highly questionable but there seems to be an interesting book on the subject matter by Guy Deutscher, called ‘The Unfolding of Language’.

6 February 2009
When crossing the street this morning a young guy with a suitcase asked me whether there were any cheap hotels around. He was searching for something in the range of 15-20 Euros. I pointed in a direction and said there was a youth hostel close by. He gave me a frightened look and said ‘No, never. I’ve seen a film about hostels…’ That left me slightly worried. What kind of films are out there on Brussels’ youth hostels? Or, even more worrying, what is happening there?

5 February 2009
I was again mistaken for being an IT administrator. Before the problem was reported I got a nice democratic opportunity to back out. The line read: ‘Do you agree that you are the correct person to ask about this?’

4 February 2009
On contradictions: I received an e-mail requiring me to immediately install a ‘mandatory’ piece of software. After explaining the obligation in more detail the inspiring next line reads: ‘The Installation at first is non-mandatory but it will become mandatory at a later stage, therefore we recommend that you install the software.’

3 February 2009
And again some news on my name: Yesterday I saw my name printed as ‘Margriet Brandel’ and today ‘Margit Brandle’.

31 January 2009
Some typically Austrian expressions: ‘and now again, nobody is to blame, right?’ (person searching for a culprit for), ‘is there still a Krone (newspaper) left?’ and (for taxis and busses) ‘just wait, I’ll take you there’.

30 January 2009
Austrian Airlines offers 'home made dessert’ on their flights. Are flight attendants required to bring home made desserts for their passengers?

29 January 2009
Again some news on my name: I got a letter that was addressed to 'Hanne Brandl’.

28 January 2009
A briefing that starts with the phrase ‘on the other hand’ is almost poetic, isn’t it? On the one hand at least...

27 January 2009
New tales from Absurdistan: A sign next to the elevator says: ‘The elevator is out of order’. On the sign there are workers with loads of cables and tools – obviously they are busy repairing an elevator. The elevator as such is working fine. It’s fast. No dubious sounds, so in essence much better than normal.

26 January 2009
There are actors out there that are appreciated because they are able to vomit when requested to do so. Click here and then go to picture number 6.

25 January 2009
According to my guide book, the flea market in Transtevere is well worth a visit. Either it was too late in the day or it has just changed too much I can’t tell but nevertheless it was quite disappointing. Mostly cheap new clothes are sold there and not much more. What was really worth a visit was Ostia Antica. Ostia used to be Rome’s sea port and the mouth of the Tiber river. You really get a great impression on how life must have been in an old Roman town 2000 years ago. The site is really well preserved. What fascinated me most were the splendid mosaics.
Harry's Bar is also well worth a visit, what a splendid restaurant! A real discovery was the Museo Atelier Canova Tadolini. It’s a sculptor’s workshop full of sculptures and today a restaurant.

24 January 2009
Unfortunately it was rainy and dark today and Rome’s Piazza de Fiori was rather deserted. If it is wet and miserable there it really is. Nevertheless we made it to the Vatican – or to the Vatocan’s post office that is. The crib is still there although Christmas has already been a month ago. I read that they took it down but the Pope had it re-erected until February 6.
One of the really curious sites is the Purgatory Museum. It is smaller than anticipated. Basically it is one room in a side corridor of the ‘Church of the Sacred Heart’ in the Prati district of Rome. There are a few photographs of objects and some books or cloths which are said to be showing evidence of contact made to the living from souls trapped in Purgatory. Mostly it’s hand prints and fingerprints which appear to be burned onto the pages of books, bed linens and clothing. More when clicking here. Interestingly enough a lady offered to show us around. She was from south America and spoke Spanish.

23 January 2009
Rome at it’s best: I got to see a tiny little shop or say a doll hospital, specialized in repairing old dolls. They were more than friendly when I asked whether I could take pictures and when I disclosed that their shop was basically the reason for wanting to come all the way down there from Brussels, they were really flattered. Piazza Navona is even more beautiful than I had remembered but I have to say that quite some time has passed since my last visit. The Pantheon is a remarkable building and so is the Trevi fountain. The advantage of traveling to Rome in winter seems to be that there are far less tourists than one would expect. There are all kinds of rumours around who renovated Via Veneto,’s ‘Cafe de Paris’, I can only say the only thing I spotted was a nicely renewed café that pays tribute to Fellini. One of the most remarkable sights today was definitely the Capuchin crypt in Via Veneto. The walls are decorated with bones, just like in Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic that I have visited back in 2004. The legend goes that the bones of about 4,000 Capuchin monks have been used. Unfortunately one isn’t allowed to take pictures. More on a very curious website here.

22. January 2009
And again news on my name: In an e-mail today a US colleague called me 'Margaret Brandl'.

21 January 2009
One of the English bookshops in Brussels sells 'anti-establishment mints'.

19 January 2009
Also other people have their imaginations of their personal hell: Amongst the best ideas: Changing telephone numbers on endless piles of business cards. And: Being forced to attach documents on a prefixed website that does not foresee attachments.

18 January 2009
There is a puppet character called Bernd the bread. He is a white bread that is mostly grumpy, frustrated and depressive. What he really likes is staring at the south wall of his house, learning the pattern of his woodchip wallpaper by heart, reading his favourite magazine "The desert and you" and enlarging his collection of the most boring railway tracks on video. More at Wikipedia.

16 January 2009
Do I worry too much when I get suspicious about a cost estimate that starts with the words 'Our objective is to add value to every client. Cost is only one aspect of value…'

13 January 2009
There are some odd diseases out there. A few days ago I read about the so-called Body Integrity Identity Disorder. This is according to the wikipedia definition a mental disorder implying a psychological feeling that one would be happier living life as an amputee and is usually, if not always, accompanied by the desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs in order to enact that desire. More when clicking here.

12 January 2009
I wrote a while ago that in my personal hell I will screw and unscrew picture frames with a non-fitting screwdriver for forever and a day. What I will be doing in addition is claiming missing airline miles.

11 January 2009
In Paris models who do life-modeling in art schools went on strike last month for higher wages and legalised tips. Read more (link).

10 January 2009
Kryolan, a company based in Berlin, is the biggest producer of artificial blood worldwide. Apart from blood, make up, hair colour and glue for artificial beards they also manufacture artificial excrements like faeces, vomit and pus. The aim is that these products look and feel as real as possible while at they same time they must not smell or taste bad. The main customer of the company is Hollywood. Interesting article (German only).

8 January 2009
I fear that pop songwriters are not the greatest poets: ‘I’m not a saint, but I’m not a sinner - and everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner…’ (from a new song by Lily Allen).

7 January 2009
The Brussels Broken Muses exhibition is now over.

6 January 2009
'The human face never lies. It is the only map that records all the territories where we have lived.' Luis Sepulveda 1998

5 January 2009
A new form of multitasking has emerged. People go to public toilets while talking on the phone and continue talking there.

4 January 2009
'Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others.' Marcel Proust, 1918

3 January 2009
Finnish saying:'Maailmaa on jos jonnekin päin, sanoi akka, kun kepillä saunanluukusta koitti.' How big and wide the world is, said the old woman while plunging out a stick from the sauna hut.

2 January 2009
Drove about a 100 kilometers into the wrong direction. I vaguely recalled that the Hungarians call Vienna 'Pecs'. Unfortunately it is 'Becs’ for Vienna and 'Pecs' for a Hungarian city somewhere in the south close to the boarder with Croatia…

1 January 2009
After having been to the Astoria hotel’s fine coffee shop and the posh New York Bar in the New York Palace hotel the day before yesterday, to the Boston bar and the Gellert and Callas coffee shops yesterday, the Gresham Palace coffee shop was still on my list for today. Not that there wasn’t anything else to do here than sitting in coffee shops. The Museum of Fine Arts and the Szecheny Bath were also worth a visit.

31 December 2008
It is freezing cold in Budapest but that was just ideal for the so-called Memento Park where many of the old statues from the Hungarian communist past have been put up in order to remind people of these times. It is fascinating, especially on a day where colours are fading away and the frost is visible on the grass and tree branches.

30 December 2008
Drove to Budapest – to the Margit island on the Danube river where I will stay for a few days in the Margit Thermal hotel. The island is connected to sides of Budapest (Buda and Pest) via the Margit bridge. The legend goes that Margit was the daughter of King Bela IV who forced her to live as a nun. She cured lepers and did a few more saintly deeds and eventually was beatified. The not so great part of the story is that for her lifetime she refused to wash above her ankles. Well, all that was back in the 13th century.

28 December 2008
'Ugh' can be pronounced in 8 ways in English. See the following sentence by Tony Benn: 'Going through the Borough of Slough, I bought enough doughnuts to give me a cough, which made me laugh.'

27 December 2008
From my collection of t-shirt prints: I saw a shirt today with a print that translates to something like 'star shaped cinnamon biscuit'.

26 December 2008
The British Department for Children, Schools and Families has produced more than 150,000 leaflets for 'the season to be careful' to advise parents in preventing typical Christmas Day accidents which have sent people to hospital such as:
- Parents stabbing themselves with scissors they’ve grabbed instead of screwdrivers to assemble toys;
- People cutting themselves with knives they are using to open presents too quickly;
- Children falling off rocking horses or smashing new bikes into walls;
- Tripping over toys and trailing cables in the rush to try out new computers and other appliances;
- Gravy exploding in microwave ovens;
- Tipsy party guests toppling down stairs or crashing to the floor when they miss their seat at the dinner table.
For more information on the leaflet click here, for a comment in the Guardian, click here.

24/25 December 2008
Sending holiday greetings has become difficult in today's world. The most politically correct one I found this year was the following:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter/summer solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that it is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the recipient.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting the following terms an conditions:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting.
It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and irrevocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher; me, in this instance.

21 December 2008
Some people are genuinely rude I think. I quote: “Please send me your comments/thoughs by the end of the year if you have any.”

20 Dezember 2008
According to Manner, every two seconds a Manner Neapolitan Wafer is is eaten in Austria.

19 December 2008
Vienna or at least parts of Vienna face a hostile takeover by either Christmas market booths or the ever present wasabi nut. Whereas the former is widely visible and can be smelled clearly and distinguishably (what is called “Punsch” is most often just lousy hot wine with loads of sugar and some artificial flavours), the latter is much more subtle. Whole market areas that were used for selling fresh or dried fruits and nuts before are now devoted to a big, green artificial peanut covered with wassabi paste.

18 December 2008
An online service informed me today via e-mail that again Christmas will fall on the 24th of December this year. That insightful comment reminded me about a book I read a few years ago with the title: Our second daughter is again a girl.

17 December 2008
Isn’t it interesting that extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy for treating kidney stones was invented by Dornier because of problems the company was facing with their supersonic aircrafts due to shock waves? More here.

15 December 2008
Sometimes being ahead of time it is rather easy. What I heard today just seems to prove it: “The Directive from 1998 is already 20 years old.”

12 December 2008
What I forgot to mention about Tokyo: I met James Bond! Click here to see a picture of Daniel Craig and me and please take into consideration that I had a heavy cold and high fever. Bond girls look differently I have to admit.

10 December 2008
From the classes in basic logic reasoning: “We have the solution and you tell us what the problem is, right?”

9 December 2008
From my collection of circular definitions: „A connected world is a better world because it helps connecting people to other people“.

8 December 2008
I think one could make a lot of money with seminars on basic logic reasoning for IT support personnel. One basic modul would deal with the thought of “no e-mail without e-mail” or in other words “I cannot send an email to my client describing his problem and possible solutions if he does not have e-mail access and reports exactly that as a problem”. Module two would be “if – then correlations” or “why the user needs to have an Internet connection before he is told to search for a solution on a particular website. Module three could be “a good because and an even better but” such as having better explanations for non-functioning services than “it’s not working because the user is in Belgium”. A module for the advanced staff would then be “there is only so much a user can take”.

6 December 2008
As a private person it is getting more and more difficult to visit factories. Today and therefore with a two week delay I received an email refusing me a visit of a factory in Sendai/Japan. They would not do guided tours for tourists they said. Well. What also interests me to a large extent would be visiting old factory buildings that are not used any more.

5 December 2008
Sometimes I wonder about modern day’s professions. About their names, that is. And I think at times it is really not at all easy to figure out, what is meant. Who would have thought that a job ad for an „after sales service technician“ actually searches for a watchmaker?

4 December 2008
Announcement in a bus: Passengers should not use their mobile phones as they annoy their neighbours.

3 December 2008
Why would somebody put his bed’s head board in the office garage? Probably that is meant for not bumping into the wall when parking.

2 December 2008
Tales from the Dilbert side of my life: For whatever mysterious reason the IT department seems to believe that I am the responsible administrator for a particular IT service. They gave my name to everyone who reported a problem. As the server for that service seems to be down since many hours, a number of people contacted me in varying degrees of anger, telling me to get the problem fixed. I spent the day telling them that I had no idea what this was all about.

29 November 2008
I am back again in good old Europe where things don’t move as smoothly as in Japan. But on the other hand at least people do not wear protecting masks and so you do not feel as being part of a science fiction movie that is all about rebel bacteria and where you are the only one who has not heard about an effective means of protection, yet. And still they hit me hard. I have still not recovered from one of the most annoying colds I had during recent years.

20 - 28 November 2008
Tokyo is very much first world. Everything seems to work out, things function smoothly and people do not make big fuzz about it. Trains are on time, taxis available on every corner of the city, people genuinely friendly and helpful and no one seems to be stressed out.
My first impression of Tokyo was the toilets. The seats are heated and most of them have a quite sophisticated menu. You can chose from various bidet functions and – most interestingly – put a flush sound on. So without actually flushing you can enjoy a flush sound. The flushing button as such is often not part of the sophisticated mechanism and rather hidden.
Already on the way from the airport it is stunning how little advertisement there is next to the road or on buildings. It is like big cities should be; you concentrate on the skyline and you are not distracted by advertisement.
What is the biggest metropolitan area in the world does not give that impression at all. When looking at it from top of a skyscraper, you can see it’s enormous dimensions but when walking in the streets you have the feeling of being in a small town or discovering a certain neighbourhood of such town. There is no rush, the air is clean, there are hardly any traffic jams and there is no shouting or other forms of loud noise. People are not moving in a hasty way either. Next to skyscrapers there are residential areas where you walk in the middle of the street and don’t even think of the possibility of a car running you over.
There are many vending machines in Tokyo where you can buy most anything from. Mostly it is hot and cold drinks, but there are also food vending machines with attached kitchen. You chose your food first, pay and as soon as it is done you are allowed into the shop. People still smoke a lot in Japan. There are cigarette vending machines with cigarettes brands called Hope, Seven Stars, Pianissimo, Cabin and Péche.
Other interesting brand names were: “dog’s care joker” for a shop with dog supplies and “Doughnut Plant” for a doughnut restaurant.
The Mori Art Museum greets visitors with the words: “Visitors who have consumed alcohol will not be permitted inside the museum.” In the museum there was a sculpture of a tuk-tuk motor rickshaw made of artificial bones and called “Autosaurus”. That was very special I thought.

20 November 2008
I always thought that although most shopping streets look alike, no matter in which city you are, they have a distinctive smell. In Brussels, it is the smell of waffles. Since I walked past the “gourmet wander waffle London“ booth yesterday night, I am giving up on the idea of distinctive smells.

19 November 2008
An advertisement in a shop in London’s Oxford street – decorated for Christmas - reads “the more the merrier”. I guess that slogan has been agreed upon well ahead of the current global financial turmoil situation.

18 November 2008
News on my name: A taxi driver wrote me a receipt for Marie Brandel and a hotel was reserved on the name of Margit Brandelille.

17 November 2008
Unfortunately I missed an interesting project in the KDW (Kaufhaus des Westens) in Berlin, called “revolting mannequins”:

16 November 2008
I had an odd flight today. My luggage decided to spend the night in Vienna instead of coming with me to Brussels and the stewardess said “all remaining passengers are kindly requested to board the aircraft. Otherwise they will be uploaded.”

15. November 2008
J. M. Keynes said after some disappointments: „Three things drive me crazy: love, jealousy and studying share prices.

13 November 2008
My mother says that a colour iPod does not become white when washing it in the washing machine (not even at 60 degrees). She has to know as she tried it recently. She also says that it does not become an iPod shuffle through washing although since then there is some noise when shaking it. Interestingly enough the new one though reshuffles songs when you shake it.

11 November 2008
In Belgium, the 11 November is a national holiday that reminds people of the end of the World War I. In Austria, the carnival season starts on November 11 at 11:11.

10 November 2008
The slogan of a bio supermarket reads: „Be positive – health is an attitude!“. This will for sure make really ill people very happy…

8 November 2008
My best friend Margit Kuchler-D’Aiello’s novel has been published! It is called “Portrait eines Balkonsitzers“. The blurb says: “Mr. T. is sitting on his balcony and looks at the world. He is rather content until one day his attention is drawn to a young woman in the neighbouring house… Margit Kuchler-D’Aiello has written a touching story full of melancholy and poetry. It is a story about aging and longing, about failing, about hopelessness and the fragility of love.”

7 November 2008
From my “meeting quotes” series, this time a quote during a moderate dispute: A: I have the feeling I live in a parallel universe! B: I can assure you that this is the case.

6 November 2008
On core (immaterial) values: A beggar in Brussels city center plays the European anthem on a flute.

5 November 2008
On core (material) values: Nutella is raffling a golden Nutella pot (14 carat).

4 November 2008
There are different dustmen in Brussels. There are those who are just regular garbage collectors and then there are those with an over dimensioned hoover. The machine is then either used to hoover leaves or to blow away leaves. Those that hoover leaves can mostly be found at intersections with little or no trees and thus little or no leaves on the ground. The others are mainly populating alleys with loads of leaves. There they use the hoover to blow leaves into nice patterns.

3 November 2008
I wanted to make an appointment at an institute for Thursday. Sympathetically enough, they still use a paper agenda with loose sheets for each day. Much to the embarrassment of the assistant, they had lost Thursday. She mumbled that this had never happened before that they lost a whole day. She then had a last attempt searching and pointing to the other end of the room asked her colleague: “Veronique, can you search for Thursday over there?”

2 November 2008
I uploaded a few pictures from the recent exhibition opening in Austria.

1 November 2008
What’s new on the market is the so-called BachPod, an iPod that contains the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach. On a parallel issue I sometimes ask myself whether future generations - instead of browsing albums with their childhood photographs - will receive a memory stick from their parents with the complete childhood photo compilation.

31 October 2008
On winning time (taken from my “meeting quotes” series): I will actually, kind of, sort of like double-check…

30 October 2008
And again another story on my name: I reserved a table in a restaurant on my name. When I got there I was greeted with the words: “Good evening, Madame Wandel”. [In German, “Wandel” means change.]

29 October 2008
There are bags from bookshops that read: Attention, reading might endanger stupidity.

28 October 2008
From BBC News: “Man's arm trapped in train toilet: TGV toilets are equipped with a powerful suction system. A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the on-board toilet. The 26-year-old victim was trapped when he tried to fish out his mobile phone, which had fallen into the toilet bowl, and fell foul of the suction system. The high-speed TGV train had to stop for two hours while firemen cut through the train's pipework. The man was carried away by emergency services, with the toilet still attached to his arm. "He came out on a stretcher, with his hand still jammed in the toilet bowl, which they had to saw clean off," said Benoit Gigou, a witness to the man's plight. The incident happened on Sunday evening, aboard a train travelling in western France between La Rochelle and Paris.”

27 October 2008
Belgium has a club called the “League of Optimists of the Kingdom of Belgium”. According to their brochure their purpose is “to help bring about a change in the mentality of the inhabitants of Belgium, encouraging optimism and enthusiasm, good humour and positive thinking, greater daring and a spirit of enterprise, tolerance and understanding between individual citizens and communities”.

26 October 2008
Sometimes I feel like a city map on two legs. Random people looking for addresses come to me and ask me. Today it was in particular funny. The houses the girl was looking for had recently been torn down.

25 October 2008
There is a book with the title: Women who read are dangerous (by Stefan Bollmann).

23 October 2008
Another one on the Fortis advertisements: As said they still advertise with the incredible slogan: “Life is a curve – where are you on it?” but they also ask underneath the picture of that curve: “Are you heading to the right direction?

22 October 2008
The exhibition opening in Brussels tonight went really well. It was very pleasant and I had the chance to talk to many people. When I mounted the pictures last Friday I noticed that the cleaning personnel looked at my pictures and I had a good debate with them. That was a really nice compliment I thought. Also yesterday it seemed that everybody really discussed the pictures.

21 October 2008
A typical one day business trip: Getting up at five in the morning and returning home after eleven at night. On my way back home I finalized the preparation for my exhibition opening tomorrow. All pictures now have their little tags.

20 October 2008
New tales from Absurdistan: Fortis still advertises with the incredible slogan: “Life is a curve – where are you on it?”
There is a Belgian label called: But were is the sun? (Mais Il Est Où Le Soleil?) and a new (Belgian?) movie called “Let’s talk about the rain” (parle-moi de la pluie).

17 October 2008
Quotes from a very entertaining meeting: “I can tell you one thing, this is not inconsistent with what we’ve just said. This is just a daisy argument!” and A: “And, did they say anything intelligent on the subject whatsoever?” B: “Let’s double check, we can’t preclude that.”

16 October 2008
Again on the never ending story of my name. I added a subsite to an Intranetsite. In normal circumstances the new page shows the author’s name at the very bottom, something like MargitBrandl. But to my surprise today the new site all of a sudden said SabineBrandt. Isn’t that weird. Now it is not just about taking away my first name, it is also about changing my second name. It seems Birgit was only the beginning.

15 October 2008
The exhibition opening yesterday night was a really good party with over 100 guests. Most of them were really interested in pictures and I guess everyone has seen my pictures. The most interesting comment was: “Even though your pictures capture inanimate objects, they seem to be the liveliest ones”.
A lady asked me why, by all means, broken mannequins. I said, exactly because they are broken. We had a lively discussion, interrupted many times though. She spent at least 2 hours in front of one of my pictures, a mannequin from Moscow (Inside Gum). That made quite an impression on me.

14 October 2008
Hairdresser to customer: "How old are you by the way?"
Customer: "Seventeen."
Hairdresser: "And how are you coping with that?"

13 October 2008
Worked. Drove to Germany. Worked. Refueled. Drove back.

10 October 2008
On the current financial crisis: I read the following insight on some well-known and now bankrupt banks: 'There are two sides to a Balance Sheet - Left & the Right (Liabilities and Assets respectively). On the Left side there is nothing right - and on the right side there is nothing left'.

9. Oktober 2008
On the way to the airport in Bucharest, the driver was very positive about Tarom, the national airline that would bring me back to Brussels. He said: "Our pilotes are the best in the world. Should there be an accident, it wasn't their fault."

8 October 2008
Is it a sign of fatigue when you become dizzy in a running sushi restaurant just because the food is moving past you all the time?

1 October 2008
Worked. Had dinner. Went home.
In Paris they would say: Métro, boulot, dodo.

29 September 2008
There are still occupied houses in Berlin, one seeems to be a real artist's camp.

26 September 2008
What a statement: „Our current debate shows that there is only a marginal corridor for consensus…”

23 September 2008
I am not officially known as THE corporate spammer. A few latecomers are still spamming back. A nice one today read: “Please don´t pusch [sic!] the button answer all. It´s terribble [sic!].” In essence he is right.

21 September 2008
Seen on a t-shirt in Paris: “I am muslim. Don’t panic.”

20 September 2008
I would not have thought that my “bride” is still where she used to be 6 years ago when I first took a picture of her. But she is, I found her again on what seems to be the biggest antiques and flea market in the world, located in Paris.

19 September 2008
I think I’ve understood today what they mean by glass ceiling. It almost definitely has to do with soundproofing. And so the story goes:
VIP: I’ve just missed a call from a number starting with +27. +27, that’s the country code for…?
Margit: South Africa.
Deputy VIP (pretending nobody has said anything, yet): I don’t know.
VIP: Hm…
Margit: South Africa.
Deputy VIP (still pretending nobody has said anything, yet, checking something at his mobile phone, face lightening up): South Africa!
VIP: Ah, yes, South Africa, thanks!

18 September 2008
From the pool of realistic quotes: “I have a personal opinion on that but that is irrelevant”. What a statement from a civil servant, every administration would love to have people like that.

17 September 2008
We’re back to Birgit. The newest slogan is “Birgit take me off that list”. But also Margrit, Mgit and Martingit have been used lately. To be fair I have to admit I have a huge pool of potential spelling errors as I got about 100.000 e-mails since yesterday.
Nevertheless “Birgit take me off that list” almost sounds like a song title.

16 September 2008
After calling me Birgit has become popular, the newest trend seems to be calling me “Kathrin”.

11 September 2008
Tales from Absurdistan: At night I sit down at a restaurant table. The waiter comes over. I tell him that I am still waiting for someone but would like to see the menu already. Instead of the menu he brings me coffee.

9 September 2008
I saw another half mattress today. Not the other half of the one from a few days ago, though.

8 September 2008
Tonight I used my retouches color set for the first time, trying to recolor some black and white prints. I like the redundancy of that work in the age of digital photoshopping. It is the luxury of the outdated, the physical pleasure of the old-fashioned.

7 September 2008
I got to know a street artist called Mimi the Clown. I saw his work earlier in Brussels and Paris and was always asking myself who was behind it.

6 September 2008
I recently read: “If you are good at anything, that is beauty.”

5 September 2008
My e-mail client does not work. There is a new hotline. They are friendlier than the previous ones but equally unhelpful. In order to refer to the problem, you need a number. The number was sent to me by e-mail which I cannot access (as this is precisely the problem).
In the past there was Yves. Yves worked for the previous hotline. Whenever I called – sometimes up to 10 times a day – he would ask me for name and essential PC data. He refused to recognize me. He did not even show a sign of recognition. Never.
The new hotline employees are not allowed to state their names. They also do not have a personal telephone number. So there are neither traceable nor responsible. I do not know what I like better, forgetful Yves or the no name world. A day in the life of Yves, that would be at least a title for a tragedy. I am not in the mood for comedies.

4 September 2008
I attended a workshop and can report back a nice quote: “… it depends whether you live more or less than 25 km away from your home”. Living away from your own home is an interesting attempt and requires further study I think.

3 September 2008
A conversation from across the corridor: A: “I hate my car, I just hate it!” B: “So why is that?” A: “It’s missing some essential parts!” B: “What? A steering wheel?”

Still 2 September 2008
Democracy live. I spent a good part of the day in the European Parliament, listening to their Plenary debate. A good 20 out of 785 or so people were present. A few of them had helmets on their desks, interestingly enough only on the Socialist’s side.
Note: On 7 August, a 200-square meter section of the ceiling of the Parliament’s building in Strasbourg fell down. Subsequently the Plenary session exceptionally takes place in Brussels this week.

2 September 2008
He holiday season is finally over. The best thing to recognize that is the amount of conference calls. During a call today, three colleagues faced the following difficulties: A: “I can barely hear you”. B: “No, no, that’s all right, we’re here!” A: “As far as I can tell from the acoustics, to me it sounds you’re in a toilet!” B: “I can reassure you, we’re NOT in a toilet!” At least not together I assumed.

1 September 2008
On my way to work I came past half (!) a mattress that someone had thrown away there. I understand that after a while you throw away a mattress. But half a mattress?

29 August 2008
26 August: Someone refers to me as Birgit in an e-mail addressed to a whole group. Slightly hurt I politely corrected that and got an appology. 29 August, same person, same group, same mistake „Birgit and I propose…“. Alzheimer is a subtle disease and affects the short term memory first. I wonder whether we’ve now found common ground for my name. I feel that there is hardly any room for a compromise on my end.

28 August 2008
Why do I get invitations to luncheon (!) meetings on “Obesity and Weight Loss: The Empowered Consumer”? Probably the new slogan in Brussels is “Burn fat, not oil”.

26 August 2008
There are very interesting t-shirt prints out there. A recent one read: “I taste good”. In a restaurant I saw a guy whose sweatshirt read “vagina lover”. On her t-shirt, his girlfriend only committed to “mango”. A little boy in Stockholm sported a shirt reading “trouble maker”, and a guy in Brussels one stating “trouble with authorities”.

25 August 2008
Welcome to Absurdistan: While I wait at an intersection, a woman in pink pyjamas (!) is crossing the street pushing an empty buggy (!) and a person is calling me, happily informing me that he won’t be able to join me for a meeting that took place a week ago.

23 August 2008
A t-shirt in Amsterdam read: Cereal killer.

21 August 2008
The seven deadly sins are contrasted with the seven holy virtues. They vary to quite some extend depending on the source chosen. There is chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. But also chastity, temperance, liberality, diligence, patience, kindness and humility and another set that reads prudence, justice, restraint, courage, faith, hope and love or loving-kindness.
Anyway, to my knowledge there are no new virtues that reflect the age of globalization.

20 August 2008
I just learned yesterday that the Vatican has added seven new deadly sins for the age of globalization. The original ones are lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. They were laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularised in the Middle Ages by Dante in The Inferno. A distinction is drawn between mortal and venial sins. Mortal or deadly sins threaten the soul with eternal damnation and immediate descend to hell unless absolvation is sought before death through confession and penitence.
Whereas the old sins were personal in nature, the new sins are social (it should be added that the old ones are by no means abandoned):
1. "Bioethical" violations such as birth control
2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty

19 August 2008
On saying it bluntly: “20 years ago when you were green, you were a freak. Everybody laughed about you, except other greens of course.”

18 August 2008
Isn’t that a form of globalization, being in Amsterdam on Sunday, sleeping in Brussels, having Indian food on Monday in Helsinki and biking to the hotel after that?

15 August 2008
Brussels bi-annual flower carpet on the Grand Place is ready and can be admired for the next three days. It is truly splendid, a masterpiece made of flowers! I had ever seen it before, as I was out of town during the two previous occasions.

14 August 2008
Heard during a lunch discussion, the topic being neighboring countries: “Well, I don’t want to be judgmental, but they are stupid, unsatisfied idiots there!”
Well, so much for not being too judgmental.

13 August 2008
A friend of mine sent me a quote from the Kung Fu Panda movie that is really nice: 'Yesterday is History. Tomorrow is Mystery. Today is a Gift. This is why we call it "Present"'...

12 August 2008
A quote from an e-mail that came in during the holiday season: “I just came from vacation and life is still somewhat disorganized. This is of course a state that will continue…”

11 August 2008
Leaving Stockholm seems to be difficult for me any time I am visiting this charming city. When I was here for the last time, I missed my plane due a delay caused by a traffic jam following a heavy car accident (where I for heaven’s sake was not involved). Today my flight was cancelled because baggage handlers on Brussels airport went on strike.
All that is dwarfed by an incident that happened earlier today in the archipelago around Stockholm. We were called by some neighbors and asked to help rescuing a guy who has shipwrecked with a little boat. The boat, not more than a nutshell, has turned upside down and swam unmanned in a channel between two islands. The driver had been rescued already and brought to the shore. When we arrived there, the man who had saved him and brought him over to the shore had his head in his lap and seemed to wait for a doctor to arrive. The shipwrecked person did seem to be pale and in severe shock, as if he was unconscious. In fact he was dead already when we came there. We thought that the coast guard, a helicopter that just landed there with a team of experts and the medical team that arrived on another ship would do the trick of reviving him but in fact all help came too late.

10 August 2008
A trip to beautiful Stockholm city center where we saw a Lennart Nilsson photo exhibition called “Somewhere in Stockholm”. It was very interesting to see that in his earlier work Nilsson, Sweden’s most well known photographer who is famous for his medical photography, has taken black and white images of Stockholm. Around 40 pictures taken between the 1940ies and the 1960ies, none of them previously exhibited, are shown in the Kulturhuset until 7 September. Also have a look at www.lennartnilsson.com.

9 August 2008
A boat tour in the Stockholm archipelago took somehow longer than expected. Also in Sweden it tends to get dark around ten at night…

8 August 2008
I read a nice quote along the lines of “Real achievements need passion…”

7 August 2008
In 1865, the Boston Post opined: "Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires. Even if it were, it would be of no practical value."

6 August 2008
Even universities do marketing. The Yale university advertises its summer courses with the slogan: „Same veritas. More lux.”

5 August 2008
I got a post card from the “beginning of the world”, a slogan Brittany obviously uses. I’d be interested if there is any region that advertises itself as the end of the world.

4 August 2008
From the sound bites collection: „The group was very successful. No effort was made to seek consensus.”

1 August 2008
One can hardly believe it but there are CDs out there for babies. They carry nice titles like „baby dream“, „classical lullabies“ and „nature sounds“.

31 July 2008
Driving back to Brussels took much longer than expected. But being on the road there is plenty to learn. For example that Worms is not only a legendary town but a real city with a Nibelungen festival. They even have wine from the area with names like sea spider and donkey’s skin.

30 July 2008
A nice Freudian slip towards me: „… there is no problem as you do not have a wife or children“.
On a different subject I was reminded about the special language of real estate agents when trying to rent out impossible apartments, e.g. saying spacious apartment and in brackets: 34 square meters.

29 July 2008
Isn’t it odd that the VIP computer hotline deletes my enquiries not on grounds like I was not entitled to VIP service but because of my “Viennese” accent?

28 July 2008
I hear a very interesting radio program on recent research done on happiness. They foud that in order to be happy and contented with a job or more generally an occupation, one has to find positive replies to the following three questions:
1. What do I think makes sense?
2. What do I really like, what pleases me and makes me feel good?
3. What am I really good at?

27 July 2008
Once more Mariazell and the Basilica there. What’s new there? Well, they do not only sell gingerbread there but also gingerbread ice cream and there is a pizza place and a bet and win bar close to the church.#

26 July 2008
Someone who was interested in acquiring a Broken Muses picture had to refrain from doing so as he was held back by his family. The argument being that he is a hopeless collector and on top of that has 34 pairs of shoes. Unless he is willing to throw some things away they would oppose any new acquisition.

25 July 2008
The tourist season should be at its peak but in fact there is not too much going on in Istria at the moment. In Novigrad’s five or so harbor restaurants there was not a single person at lunchtime today!

24 July 2008
Rovinj is always worth a tour!

23 July 2008
We went to some stalactite caves today in Baredine, in between the towns of Porec and Vizinada.

22 July 2008
Istria is full of old and interesting little towns. A real discovery was Grožnjan, a town full of galleries. The one that made the biggest impression on me is run by the artist Jozef Todjeraš. He makes little terracotta heads that resemble doll heads, cuts them most often in four pieces and re-assembles them in an intriguing fashion.

20 July 2008
After a very nice wedding party I drove further to Croatia. A thousand kilometers can be a long way. Finally I ended up at the entrance of the local nudist camp. With the help of my dear friends in the end I arrived safely to where I was supposed to go.

19 July 2008
Europe without frontiers - that is always impressive. Nowadays you only seem to recognize having passed another frontier and thus being in another country when recognizing that your mobile phone is booked into another country’s network.

18 July 2008
On politeness in the electronic world: Using my great new list I invited for a meeting. The tool was kind enough to send me – on behalf of myself - an invitation as well. Trying to be polite, I wanted to accept the invitation and pushed the appropriate button. I received the following warning message: “As the meeting organizer you do not need to respond to the invitation.”

17 July 2008
I feel a little like the Sorcerer's Apprentice. In trying to make my life easier I wanted to set up an e-mail reflector and accidentally subscribed about 57.000 people. Now I am trying to get most of them off the list again… I am just about to get rid of all the Florians. Filipos are next. But there are still 50.000 to go.

16 July 2008
A thoughtful reader has alerted me to the fact that his company has specific employees that are responsible for certain corridors. In an emergency case those corridor agents need to make sure that everybody has left their rooms. There is even a job description for that kind of job. According to that description, apart from foreign languages, a corridor agent has to have a loud voice. It is worth mentioning, that there are also deputy corridor agents. It would be interesting to know whether there are training workshop for all corridor agents worldwide.

15 July 2008
Some restaurants in Brussels have interesting names. One is called “Ultimate Atom”, another one “Second Element” and a third one “Ultimate Hallucination”. I have been to the latter one just recently and what is worth mentioning is that they sell Champaign in full and half full glasses.

14 July 2008
On Belgium: There are beers with raspberry, peach and cherry taste (I should say that they are actually brewed together with those fruits) which taste uncommon to put it diplomatically. One of the best known breweries is called "a la mort subite", to the sudden death. As far as I know they do not own the rights of the equally well known beer "Delirium Tremens".

12 July 2008
The photo museum in Charleroi is a real discovery! It is said to be the largest photo museum in Europe with about 50.000 prints and over one million negatives. From one of the billboards I noted down the following quote: “Is photography a mirror, a view of reality or a relection of the photographer’s subjectivity? The two complement each other – a window can open onto a mirror and a mirror can reflect a window.”

11 July 2008
" The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." Theodore Roosevelt

9 July 2008
It has been quite a while since I last had as bad a meal as today. They ran out of sandwiches on the train to Strasbourg and what was advertised as the „salade compose“ turned out to be stinky cubes of ham on a variety of salads that have gone bad a while ago. Ah yes, and no dressing available.

5 July 2008
Albert Einstein said: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
He also said: The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

4 July 2008
There are gifts that come around and go around, like for example a nice large box of exquisite chocolates. Everybody is happy to get them. What has proven to be absolutely wrong was to open such a box. The content proved to be rather prehistoric: the chocolate was covered by a thick white film and literally nothing was eatable anymore.

2 July 2008
I was standing next to a neighbor in the elevator. He had an ID badge and I was close enough to secretly read it. It read Free Lancer. I thought, what a terrific name and that this probably has lead to some hilarious confusion already until I found out that of course he was called Freddy so-and-so and that was just the job title.

22 - 28 June 2008
Montreal

21 June 2008
On my way to Canada with Jet Airways the steward called me Mrs. Brandy. As he was Indian, he wiggled with his head. I saw that there was no chance to get on with Brandl. So I suggested that Brand would do as well, but he kept wiggling his head and stayed with Brandy. Actually I started to like Brandy. And after all that’s what my Belgian registration card reads as well. They pronounce it Brandi, though.
On the ground and after quite some months with no major male-female confusion, the customs officer waved me through while saying “all right, go ahead, Sir!” At least he did not stop me.

20 June 2008
Two songs are played up and down in the Belgian radio. One keeps repeating your eyes are as big as the moon and the other refers to a silhouette that resembles the loved person. I wonder how a silhouette of a person with eyes as big as the moon might look like.

19 June 2008
Today’s witticism was: Delegation can be learned but the comfort zone for many people is in micromanagement.

18 June 2008
A friend of mine says it is better to be known for being eccentric than not being known at all.

16 June 2008
A friend of mine has programmed a widget for my blog - unfortunately for Apple users only. What is rather cool and what is a nice inspiration is that he is calling it "broken blog"

15 June 2008
Another trend in the seminar business I spotted in a newspaper: There are seminars to “de-resent”. Anti anger training.

14 June 2008
The newest trend in calling anyone a manager is having the profession of “engagement manager”. I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea what that person would do in his day to day work.

13 June 2008
I followed an 80 slide presentation today – which as such already qualifies for power point poisoning. The tragically funny part about it was that the whole concept was built on outlining terms and conditions for a group of “exempt” and another group of “non-exempt” people. Somebody dared to ask “exempt from what?” and just got the answer from the guy who was not only presenting but really should have known “I have no idea”. What a brilliant way of wasting about 80 people’s time. One could also talk about a dilbertesk afternoon.

12 June 2008
Probably Freud would have had a good time hearing me say: And whom are you going to cook tonight? I think I wanted to say what…

11 June 2008
A nice new lesson for those who have some difficulties with logic reasoning (heard in a meeting today): Well, if we finish step one, we can then start with step two.

10 June 2008
After a long pause something adding to the „sort of kind of“ collection: Some people like to end all their sentences with “and stuff like that”. And I mean ALL sentences.

9 June 2008
A nice quotation from a conference call: Would everyone please open the first Excel shield… I always thought that these spreadsheets are used for protecting and hiding reasons.

8 June 2008
Now the Leuven exhibition – after having been extended twice – is finally over. I brought the pictures back home and made room for another artist’s exhibit there in Leuven.

6 June 2008
A friend told me that in today’s world bus drivers are called “destination managers”.

5 June 2008
From the series of nice filling sentences: “We can have as many opinions on this issue as we have people in the room.“

4 June 2008
Since my car needs to be fixed I have a rental car for the time being. Yesterday I wanted to put something in the trunk and discovered a huge bag with many little bags inside. Although I did not really want to see what’s inside I could not resist checking it out. And well, it was bread, loads of old and dry bread. Is this the rental company’s way to communicate their driver’s omen?

3 June 2008
There is something I find quite frightening when it comes to telephone conferences. There are people who get started very vividly, they state their name and say hello to everyone but then they fall silent. From time to time you hear them breathing and that is in a way frightening.

2 June 2008
On hot days you can smell some people before you can actually see them. But I should of course mention that I am shortsighted.

1 June 2008
Meanwhile smokers are discriminated against (see blog entry from May 14). At Munich’s central station they have painted parking place sized spots with a smoking sign in the middle. There and only there smokers can gather.

30 May 2008
The Austrians are never to be blamed: A train conductor said in his announcement right after taking over in Salzburg from his German colleagues: “Due to a delay on German territory (!) we are 12 minutes behind schedule.”
The reason for the delay was that several children were playing on the train tracks somewhere between Munich and Salzburg. The German conductor had announced we would stop there for 10 to 15 minutes. Probably to let them finish their games.

29 May 2008
From the collection of last and concluding lines of people’s e-mail messages: "enthusiasm is contagious, start and epidemic".

28 May 2008
The newest trend seems to be hotel rooms specially designed for women. A Brussels hotel is very proud of it I heard and offers not only magazines, but also extra toiletries and a special professional hairdryer.

27 May 2008
Brussels has a broken plane now. It seems to be very popular to go to the place where the cargo flight crashed a few days ago.

26 May 2008
The gipsy quarter in Bucharest is somehow smaller than I remembered it. Nevertheless it is an interesting area. There was a street that was devoted to flowers. People were sitting in front of their houses, working on flower bouquets.

25 May 2008
Another memory from 2002 was the immense amount of wedding dresses that were sold in Bucharest. Although much seems to have changed, wedding dresses are still sold all over the place. In the old town almost every shop seems to specialize in wedding dresses or bride’s necessities. It almost looks like collective obsession. And actually there was even a wedding that we saw on Saturday night. It was slightly disappointing as most guests seemed to have either already left the place or never shown up. My suspicion was that most guests were taking a paddleboat tour on the lake that surrounded the restaurant where the wedding dinner was hosted.

24 May 2008
I did not now that they’re now even offering visits to the Parliamentary Palace, the huge monument that Ceausescu had built in the eighties. Unfortunately one would have had to pre-book it quite some time in advance so we did not have the chance to get in. Nevertheless it is an impressive building, somehow so big that it seems almost unreal.
From my earlier stay I remember alleys leading to it with half-finished monumental houses where the cranes marked with the construction year 1989 were just left over. I did not find these streets anymore, it may very well be so that in the meantime the buildings have been finished and the cranes been removed.

23 May 2008
Since my last trip to Bucharest in 2002, many things have changed. The city is much more modern and westernized than it used to be. Huge advertisement billboards are mounted to buildings and give the impression of being in just any other city. What fascinated me in 2002 was that you constantly had to watch your step in order not to fall into a hole in the ground, step into motor oil or dog excrements. Not to speak about stumbling over a dog. Well, there are still bumps and deep holes in the streets and sidewalks and one has to watch one’s step. There seems to be less oil and less dogs but for the latter still too many for a biobigot person like me.

22 May 2008
On my way to Romania I needed to go through Vienna. It seems that a little odd to just have a stopover in a city were you once lived.

21 May 2008
Isn’t it bizarre if a waiter is greeting with the words „I am sure you take a lager beer!“?

20 May 2008
Is there a cure for cynicism?

19 May 2008
I took a very beautiful picture of a muse in Slovenia and developed it today.

18 May 2008
One of the best reactions I got regarding some black an white pictures (taken in New York in April 2008) came from an eleven year old boy: “… hmmm… I guess it has been quite a while ago since you were there, right?”

17 May 2008
According to the New York Times there is a special term for disliking certain animals, it is called biobigotry.

16 May 2008
I think I will start a collection of last and concluding lines of people’s mobile e-mail messages. A nice one reads: “I am sending this on move so please excuse the lack of grammar and spelling.”

14 May 2008
Smokers are not treated well anymore these days. Meanwhile – seen at an airport today - they have to go into closed cages, four at maximum to smoke inside a glass cube watching the non-disturbed non-smokers outside.

13 May 2008
I am not superstitious but we have the 13th and a black cat was coming from the left side, well, that is almost too much.

10 May 2008
The homeless woman is still sitting on that doorstep day in and day out (see blog entry of March 23).

7 May 2008
As we know there are lousy jobs out there (see blog entry from February 8 - shark on a diving fair and Feb. 15 - policeman directing traffic together with a functioning traffic light). If you have to wear a red tight dress, playing a pregnant woman that is in fact pregnant with a magazine that is just about to be published, well, I do not know whether that is really a fun job.

2 May 2008
After quite some time I’ve been to the movies again. „Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis“, which is a really funny comedy about prejudices.

30. April 2008
The suicidal pigeons in front of my office window are back. The tree where they obviously are nesting is about to bloom and stretches its branches against the windows. That leads to a rather frightening scratching sound and as if that was not irritating enough, those pigeons are sitting there and keep staring towards the window. From time to time they then fly against the window and probably suffer from a traumatic brain injury and immediately drop dead.

28 April 2008
Taken from the series of avoiding immediate action: “We are really just starting and not aiming very high with fast actions.”

24 April 2008
Close to being allowed access to the collection of circular definitions: We must not confuse the term service with the term service.

23 April 2008
Recently I saw a picture of some vegetables by Markus Vater stating that they „like plants because they have a different organic background“.

22 April 2008
There are hotels who charge 1.5 Euros for using the shower (and forbid using it after 10 p.m.) but offer wireless Internet access in the room for free.

21 April 2008
What is he deeper meaning of a magic tree in a convertible?

20 April 2008
Viktor & Rolf say that fear is a bad advisor.

19 April 2008
Spending most of the day at Frankfurt airport is a rather boring thing.

18 April 2008
„ I still have a video conference with the Pope“ was one of the best excuses for declining an appointment on short notice that I have heard in a long time.

17 April 2008
It is Thursday and I was sitting next to a guy whose socks said “Friday” in elegant print. Luckily I was not close enough to find out whether they were from last Friday.

14 April 2008
My insurance company kindly let me know that there is no Malaria in Austria and no Malaria in Belgium.

13 April 2008
The former Golden Tulip hotel is now part of the Thon hotels chain. I am not quite sure whether changing from golden tulip to tuna fish was really an improvement.

12 April 2008
The latest hotel ad in Brussels reads: “Come, get closer, stay a while and experience the way you deserve to be treated.” Isn’t that nice.

11 April 2008
Underestimating the distance from Brussels, I went to an exhibition on “Radical Advertising” in Düsseldorf. In total it was about a 500 km drive and starting at 19:00 was probably a bit late but nevertheless it was truly worth it. A series of black and white shots of oversized Calvin Klein posters in cities made quite an impression on me. And although up to now I had been rather skeptical on video art I saw some intriguing scenes of a guy trying to just blend everything – from coke and chicken to iPhones – using an ordinary kitchen blender.

10 April 2008
From a toilet poster: “If you sprinkle when you tinkle be a sweetie and wipe the seatie!”

9 April 2008
Too soon we are leaving New York again, heading back to Washington and from there to Europe.

8 April 2008
In the Museum of Modern Art I found a very interesting statement by Ann Temkin, the Blanchette Rockefeller curator of painting and sculpture who said: “… Beauty is found in the everyday rather than in the ideal.”
SoHo is fascinating as always although I did not find my New York Muses that I took a picture of some three years ago. What I did find though was the Italian coffee place I like to go to in Broom Street in Little Italy.

7 April 2008
Yesterday - after a quite intense photo equipment shopping tour - we saw an exhibition of the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, called “I want to believe” in the NY Guggenheim Museum. His installations are fabulous. Cars are hanging down in a spiral from the ceiling of the Guggenheim. A ship wreck is placed on broken china, gunpowder pictures are framed by videos of explosions he has arranged in many places all over the world and wolves are arranged in the shape of a flying dragon.
Having seen the flat iron building and parts of Fifth Avenue, we saw the Empire State Building and Groud Zero today and walked all the way across Brooklyn Bridge.

6 April 2008
Eight years ago the Broken Muses concept started with a picture I took at the Italian Market in Philadelphia. Yesterday on my way from Washington DC to New York I spent a few hours chasing them. After having almost given up I was lucky and discovered them – hiding in a narrow corner. They have suffered surprisingly little over those last eight years. Some have a few more scratches, the occasional nose has bigger bruise but in general I would say they are doing just fine.

5 April 2008
Some quotes to remember:
Some Think Tanks do not much thinking but lot of talking.
Not knowing much does not prevent you from having an opinion.
A response to crisis is re-organization.
Often there is a triumph of experience over performance.
Most groups increase efficiency if they lose one of their managers.
86 Mio barrels of oil are consumed worldwide per day.
Looking at the western world’s economy today, what’s left for my children to do is burger flipping or working as gender equality consultant.

30 March till 4 April, 2008
It feels good to be back to University even if it is just for a few days. It feels like intellectual holidays. Being at a US university is also a very interesting experience. The identification with the school is omnipresent. Apart from t-shirts, sweatshirts and other trinkets, the University bookstore sells even Georgetown University pajamas.

30 March 2008
Boarding a long-haul flight and having a look at the necessaries they had out, one gets a good overview about what globalization means. The plastic package reads: Bag – made in China, socks – made in China , eye mask – made in China, ear plugs – made in USA, tissue – made in China, mints – made in Spain, marine body butter – made in USA, toothbrush – made in China, toothpaste – made in India and romance card – made in USA. Interestingly enough, the romance card made in USA is missing.
Another airline, different security requirements. I find the following very charming: “If you are sitting in an exit row please identify yourself to allow for reseating if: You lack the ability to read, speak or understand the language, or the graphic form, or the ability to understand oral crew commands in the language specified by the airline.” So how can you possibly find out about you obligation to identify yourself to the crew if you just don’t get it?

29 March 2008
Den Haag hosts an exhibition of Lucian Freud, Freud’ grandson, who is a painter. Next to that there is a Picasso exhibition. Both were really interesting.

24 March 2008
There are a few new India pictures when you click on that link and three new trinities!

23 March 2008
During an Easter walk in a big city: A homeless woman camps in a narrow entrance next to a new flower shop, the close by glass eye shop still presents a variety of glass eyes in their shop window, an old lady in a fox fur coat blows hr nose on the street using only her index finger and not far away there is an old ventilator leaning against a bus stop.

22 March 2008
A few days ago I took a plane and got a seat in the emergency row. What is a standard procedure is always an embarrassing spectacle. As soon as one is seated, a steward or a stewardess is leaning over, giving you looks like “I have my doubts that you can count to three”. Then, in a soft and slow voice he or she starts explaining about the tremendous responsibility that comes with that seat. All that concludes with “… and we strongly recommend reading the briefing card for passengers sitting at emergency exits” that can be found in the seat pocket in front of you. And well, this briefing card is worthwhile reading. I cite: “If there is a clear order from the crew, unfasten your seatbelt”. So if they accidentally forget about that order or if the order is just not clear enough, tough luck, the heroes at the emergency exit stay buckled up. Further in the text it reads “2. Check outside condition an only open exits which are not in direct danger area (e.g. fire)”. As if one would have the choice between opening more than one exit at a time anyway, but more importantly: one sits there, seatbelts unfastened, stares out of the window as told and thinks to oneself: if it is burning to my left and to my right, am I in a direct danger zone? If not than one has to remove “the cover”, pull the handle on the top of the exit and place the other hand in the grip mould on the window (points 3 and 4). After having managed that, one has to “move the exit inwards” (5) and “6. throw the exit out of the aircraft”. That seems to be a compromise text. Pull it in, throw it out and all in one go. Something just does not seem right here. Plus, it is not only the exit door that needs to go, the exit as a whole has no be thrown out of the plane. Isn’t that just to much to ask of a passenger who happens to sit at that exit? Finally one is told to get out on the wing – foot first, slide down the escape slide and assist passengers sliding down (7). So no jumping head over heels. Interestingly enough one has to assist others in sliding – now word about any other form of giving them a helping hand.

18 March 2008
My e-mail address died more or less completely. Not only that senders are told that I do not exist anymore, meanwhile it is even worse, telling me that I am an “unknown sender”.

17 March 2008
Little by little my e-mail account is dieing. Senders are told that I do not exist in the system anymore.

13 March 2008
For the collection of very positive thoughts and statements: “I was positively happy with the event.”

10 March 2008
Lousy weather ok, but no people queuing in front of my favorite AMT? That is unusual. And well, yes, there was a metal fence cordoning it off leaving me with 20 Eurocents and no chance to get closer to it.

9 March 2008
Price finding for locksmiths is closely linked to the degree of desperation of the one who has locked himself out. Plus there seems to be a weekend cartel in the sector.

8 March 2008
The photographer Miroslav Tichý says: Beauty and perfection does not interest anyone!

6. March 2008
Finlly I have uploaded some first pirctures from India. Just click here to see them!

3 March 2008
A little collection of sentences that help you to say nothing if you do not intend to say anything really: We cannot underestimate the issue. This matter is more important than urgent. It is never too late to do the right thing.

2 March 2008
I read in a newspaper article reflecting on art that there are no male muses. Which is actually true, all nine muses are female.

1 March 2008
In the dark room developing pictures again - a long learning curve.

29 February 2008
Following up on kind of, sort of: I have a jazz CD that’s called “Kind of Blue”.

28 February 2008
In a rather well-known institution in Brussels there are signs that point you to “restrooms and translators”. So you think those poor guys are mentioned together with the toilets. To my surprise those restrooms weren’t toilets but actual rooms for resting and reserved for the translators.

27 February 2008
When entering the European Parliament with a laptop you have to go to a special counter and register the laptop. There is a special form for it, requiring the PCs serial number and a signature of the owner. So far so good - assuming that there is a similar control when leaving the building. But there isn’t. In that sense I have brought my PC many times to the building but – theoretically – never brought it back outside.

24 February 2008
In the train from Austria to Germany today I discovered a so-called „tail light switch“. I thought it was “sort of” interesting.

23 February 2008
The rumors say that my beloved coffee shop in my hometown is almost bankrupt. Will it disappear?

22 February 2008
There are four different sorts of garbage bins at Munich central station in order to sort garbage for roper recycling. The local clochards have a difficult time grabbing into those bins because of the design of the bins. Nevertheless they carry foru different plastic bags with them in order to also sort the meager harvest.

21 February 2008
Is there reason to believe that a big office coffee machine that says “no flow” even though water supply and electricity are ok is just unhappy?

20 February 2008
Watching people boarding an aircraft is sometimes odd. What can you think of a passenger that carries a book showing with a summary on the backside that reads “My name is Joe. Actually I am a rather nice guy but sometimes I just kill people.”

19 February 2008
Isn’t it sarcastic if the hotline wishes you continue having a great day just after you told them that your computer just doesn’t work anymore?

18 February 2008
For whatever mysterious reason, „okidoki“ seems to be back in fashion again. I fear that “super-duper” will celebrate its revival soon, too. Thinking of it, together with “sort of“ and „kind of“ one could form some nice little sentences.

15 February 2008
In the series of really frustrating jobs (see blog entry of Feb. 8 – shark on a diving fair) there is another one: policeman directing traffic at an intersection together with a functioning traffic light. Without a working traffic light I can see some excitement but with one, well, that is then basically supporting the traffic light through waving and whistling.

14. Februar 2008
There is a tram here in Brussels that goes to what would translate like „Viennese“ and a bus which has its final stop at „Heroes“. So I guess Viennese and Heroes are not close. Can the Viennese be Heroes? How about those Heroes that want to become Viennese? Can you blame the Heroes that do not want to become Viennese? And what if both are just end stops?

13. Februar 2008
The „Kite Runner“ movie started today and is one of the best films based on a great novel I have ever seen. The other people in the cinema must have seen it likewise, they applauded after the show.

12. Februar 2008
How often can you use „actually“ in one single sentence?

11. Februar 2008
In a close by house people are in hunger strike since quite some time. It seems that the authorities do simply not react.

10 February 2008
The spa in Spa has something, especially on a beautiful day.

9 February 2008
A very well known hamburger restaurant chain advertises “Sauerkraut” burger in Holland. And they interestingly charge men 25 Eurocents for using their toilets while women go for free. On the other hand Holland is very blessed with ATMs. Today in Utrecht I saw four in a row, one next to the other!

8 February 2008
There are lousy jobs out there, for example being in a shark costume at a diver’s trade fair handing out brochures.

7 February 2008
It seems that Belgium has been annexed to the UK. That must have been done rather smoothly and without any media coverage. I just learned about it today when reading the not so fine print on my sandwich bag: „Please use a bin and keep Britain tidy!”

6 February 2008
Booking a non-smoking hotel room and a parking place in a hotel over an Internet platform, means you end up with a non-smoking parking place. Thinking of non-smoking parking place might really be a market gap…

5 February 2008
Had a chat with an anthropologist who basically summarized the findings of all the studies he had done so far in saying that what makes human beings special is that they behave irrational.

4 February 2008
On car dealers and copyright: “… and into this data slot you can put a data card just like the one you use on your PC. So you just download music and put it on the data card…”

3 February 2008
I have talked a lot about India today and shown pictures. India changes you to a certain degree and teaches you a lot about different values in different people’s lives. By the way, Calcutta has a town twinning agreement with Naples.

2 February 2008
A dizzy day after a long ball night and a nice train ride through Austria.

1 February 2008
Although I have not been to the Opera Ball yesterday I have been to the Coffee Maker’s Ball today. It was a great, impressive, cheerful and truly majestic party.

31 January 2008
Vienna is different. So they say in an advertisement. But yes, it is the country that has more ATMs than people. No, I exaggerate…

30 January 2008
Today I heard a piece of small talk, put to the extreme. “Well, thanks for the meeting and now we need to go out and I think we need to go through a door…”

29 January 2008
What I thought was a nice and huge sculpture of a snail – exhibited in a chic restaurant in Brussels - is obviously only a wheelbarrow that is put in a weird way with its handles pointing to the ceiling.

28. January 2008
Casanova has obviously said “I attribute nearly all the good fortune I have had to coincidences.” That is what my new mouse pad says.

27. January 2008
Nobody really looks great when having a parking ticket in his or her mouth.

25 January 2008
On a close by restaurant table people were drinking orange juice. I heard the following statement which would probably not really thrill the Nobel Prize committee: “If you give it a thought what we’re drinking here was three oranges just some minutes ago…”

24 January 2008
I have to admit that I thought spitting was not en vogue any more in Europe. Having a closer look at the street around a bus stop that I pass by almost every day gives another picture. It is not really sputum but rather remains of chewing gum but still. It seems that spitting has just come to another dimension.

23 January 2008
I should have kept the old habit of taking a day off at my birthday.

22 January 2008
In a garage in Brussels’ city center that I often use there is an old wrecked car. It used to be blue at the time and is now covered in a thick layer of dirt. A little while ago somebody wrote into the dust “Exists also in blue” (see blog from Dec. 16). Now there is a new line on the rear window that reads “Wash Me!”.

19 January 2008
In comparison with Delhi Brussels seems like a climatic spa. Nobody is running after me, touching me or wanting something. Red lights are not really ignored, they do are not only strong suggestions. Nobody is clearing his throat right next to me in order to spit in the next second. And I mean there is NO spitting at all. Over the last weeks I was already confident when there was no 180 degrees spitting or no direct spitting into my direction. Thomas Mann would have been thrilled by the amount of sputum there is in India. At the time I am sure there was plenty of spitting in Europe as well. I still remember the spitting pots that were mounted next to each reading room at my university. I always thought of them as ashtrays until somebody once explained they were actually spitting pots. Besides I am enjoying the warm light of ordinary light bulbs while reflecting on the incredible luxury of life in the western hemisphere.

18 January 2008
Travelling back to Europe I’ve been reading an excellent book called Animal’s People, written by an Indian author. In a way the journey back home could have even lasted longer.

17 January 2008
After three weeks trevelling back and forth through India, Delhi is almost boring. What cheers me up is the Cah Bar, a tea bar in the Oxford Bookstore. It seems to be hip in India’s main cities to sip tea. Also chains of coffee shops are booming. Nevertheless this tea bar in the bookstore is a real pearl. Indians seem to love reading. There are excellent newspapers and magazines and books can be bought on every corner. Literally. I’ve seen books being sold in tiny trolleys in railway stations, packed in plastic covers or piled up on the street and in various bookstores all over the place. What makes the Oxford Bookstore so special is probably not only their selection of books and the nice calm atmosphere but the concept of integrating the tea bar into that. There is a selection of over 40 different teas but the most fascinating one is still the marsala tea (black tea with cardamom) which comes in a silver, ape shaped tea glass holder.

16 January 2008
Agra is a two and a half hours train ride away from Delhi and home of the Taj Mahal, one of the world wonders. It is definitely an impressive building, although as one has seen so many pictures about it already, the big bang is not really happening. It is majestic, and the white marble is splendid. If you get closer it is not that white anymore but from a distance it looks bright white. The guide said that it is also cleaned once every few weeks as the air pollution is simply too high. Not too far away there is another very interesting site, the abandoned palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, including a Red Fort made out of red stand stone. Those sites are very touristy and so are the hundreds of trinket sellers that can be really annoying. Going back to Delhi in the evening confronted me again with the extreme poverty of this country. It is incredible how many people and especially children live in the poorest circumstances, often handicapped, lepers, and forced to begging. Children seem to live in or at lest in the vicinities of the railway station. They play on the tracks and when a train is about to arrive they quickly jump up on the platform, shake out their dirty clothes, smile a friendly smile and sign that they are hungry. As if their skinny bodies would not speak for themselves. Their skin is covered with dust and so are their clothes, some of them are only able to move using their arms and hands, while their feet and legs are underdeveloped and useless. It is shocking to an extend that is going over what one can support. Ignoring it is impossible and facing it almost unbearable. You want to help but feel that you are basically helpless give the vast number of cases.

15 January 2008
New Delhi, Old Delhi, two rather different places compared to the rest of India that I have seen so far. New Delhi is rather boring, there are wide streets and condominiums and modern hotels like everywhere else in the world. Old Delhi has a Red Fort, where you can only see the outskirts of the palaces within, an impressively huge Mosque and some busy market streets. People are running after you, begging and touching you constantly. It is impossible to just stop for a second and watch the scenery. Cannaught Place is a busy intersection and somehow the point where Old and New Delhi meet and is compared to other places rather calm and modern. The most modern subway has some stops there, there are bookshops and coffee houses and trinket sellers are relatively moderate.

14 January 2008
Finally my suitcase appeared again and with it all the films I had shot so far. Meanwhile they form part of my handluggage. Calcutta is really impressive, the Brits have done a really great job here. The so-called writers building for the clerks of the East India Company and the administration of India is amazingly beautiful and in a very good state. The Post Office looks like a cathedral and the Indian Museum is a huge complex hosting many dusty but interesting items. In one quarter one bookshop is next to the other and almost anything is available (second hand) on any subject in any language. In the middle of all that there is the „Indian Coffee House“, an insititution by all means. From how it looks and how it feels to be inside it could also be somewhere in the Arab world. A huge hall, lika a ballroom hosts many simple tables and a bee like humming so loud that a conversation is rather difficult. The coffee is great. The walls are painted in a light yellow that comes off on many places. The balcony in the first floor gives people an even better look over the rest of the place. The only (rather small) photograph on one of the walls shows the Rabindranath Thakur, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Besides that there is no other picture. The only other furniture are ancient fans all over the place. Right next to that quarter is a street with professional writers. They sit in open rooms one next to the other and write texts for their clients on really ancient typewriters.

13 January 2008
In a way Calcutta (Colcata) was the real target and centerpiece of my journey to India. I always assumed that Calcutta is the methaphor for India and whenever I heard „India“ I thought Calcutta. India`s former capital city is a real perl in the true sense of the word. It has been designed by the British as the London of the East and was meant to be even more beautiful than London. Many of the palaces and houses could also be in Europe, in Italy or France or Vienna. But mostly it reminds me of Palermo where also hundreds of beautiful buildings are just rotting and falling apart. All those nice buildings are very worn and everywhere you look there are people, plants, dust, dirt and pieces of walls, bricks and stones. Before getting to enjoy the city I was brought back to reality rather intensively. My luggage got lost on the flight from Kerala over Bangalore to Colcata. And with it all the films I have shot so far. Well, if only I get the suitcase back! To me, Calcutta`s most interesting quarter is the so-called potter`s lane. Calcutta adores goddess Kadi, a goddess of death that demands huge sacrifices from people. The usual sacrifice is donating a Kadi sculpture that has been made out of mud/clay from the Ganges river and throwing it back into the Ganges. Once a year there is a procession where this is widely done. The Ganges gives and Kadi takes. After that the potters start over again, take mud/clay out of the Genges and start sculpturing new huge statues. In many tiny streets there is one potter workshop next to the other. Some of them manufactue the inner straw skeleton of the sculpture, others add the first layer of clay to form the final lifesize statue and then again others model heads or hands to be added later on in the process. Numerous scupltors work there. Some of the statues are fresh and the clay is still wet, others are older and the clay breaks up, leaving traces and wrinkles. Broken Muses made out of clay. I was fascinated and wandered around in this maze of incredible craftsmen streets taking picture after picture.

12 January 2008
The difference between a five star hotel and a home stay is that it is easier getting in touch with local people and other travelers in the home stay. This morning right after breakfast I was offered to see the wedding pictures of the home stay owners. Although the house was packed with pictures of Christ, crosses, a Christmas tree and other related items I could have sworn they were Muslims. But in fact and against all conspiracy theory attempts on my side including the hidden picture of Mecca I’ve spotted close to my room they were Roman Catholics and got married 16 years ago. I briefly thought about a camouflage attempt but gave up on that thought quickly when I saw the wedding pictures that seemed almost Hindi (bright saris for the bride and a huge multilayered cake etc). The album and the pictures were so worn that about 5.000 – 10.000 people must have flipped through them already. The best part came after that. The husband asked in a very subtle voice whether he may show some more pictures. He said his father has “expired” just one week ago. The Indians do not speak of “passing away” or “dying”, rather they say someone is not so well anymore or simply he expired. I was slightly astonished, especially because I am not used to see pictures taken at a funeral. Those shots of the 82 year old showed a slightly blue face and were taken from a perspective that made the dead face seem huge and the grieving visitors besides and behind the corps looked rather small - relatively spoken. Weird and in a way rather funny. In the Jewish part of Cochi an artist had made quite some impression on me. The guy was in a long batik shirt with a huge Krishna on his back. According to a leaflet he offers sketching in a meditative environment. I was curious. He led me to his first floor loft studio where he made me sit down on a mat and started sketching. I posed but that did not really work out the way I had supposed it would. In the end the picture does not resemble me too much, the only thing which is rather realistic is the green color of my t-shirt. I waited for a attempt to start a meditation together. Instead he started chatting and told me about an old judge whom he had sculptured once. He showed me pictures of that sculpture and said that t has caused quite some controversy in the local news. We talked about his difficulties in finding a good spot for exhibiting and I told him about my pictures. He said he is friends with the minister of Culture in Kerala who could eventually be of help should I want to exhibit in Kerala. He gave me the Minister’s phone number and most importantly his name: he is called Mr. Baby.

11 January 2008
A day on the beach of Cherrai. I drank way too much tea with Kardamom, the taste was simply wonderful. In that area the tourist trap has not been invented. Lunch was costing the equivalent of about 20 Eurocents. Mostly that beach is used by the locals to see the water. As neither men nor women can get out of their clothes, the waters are if at all just tested with their feet. It is most astonishing. Busses full of schoolchildren are brought over 120 km to that shore. 6 – 10 year old girls and boys are allowed to play near the sea but only with their school uniforms on. Their teachers wear the most colorful Saris but cannot get wet either. Most of the afternoon we’ve chatted with and English nurse who spends about three months of unpaid leave in an ashram, helping to set up a hospital. A very fine woman who has definitely gotten some insight in Inidan society.

10 January 2008
Cochi is a really nice town that has many hidden treasures. I saw how candles are made and how ginger is dried in the sunshine of a huge inner court of an old warehouse. Ginger and mango pickles are still handmade, packed and sealed in a very odd manner. Working conditions are more than hard. Some girls and women sit on almost broken chairs in a packed open air corridor of that old warehouse stirring pickles, pouring them into little plastic bags or sealing them with an archaic hot plastic sealing machine. One of these girls was so pretty that I could not help but think she would be a model elsewhere. Instead, her task was sticking labels to the filled little plastic bags. Another warehouse hosted all imaginable spices, packed into big bags for wholesale purposes. Most of those spices I had never seen before or never seen in a size as big (huge pepper seeds, dried chilly, cardamom, coriander). In the middle of the spices district all of a sudden there was an art gallery, showing impressive modern art works, mostly paintings and some installations. Unfortunately all of those who I would have shown some interest for were not for sale. In the hostel there are regular power cuts. They are even announced beforehand. During dinner there was one, bringing an interesting scenery to life: leftovers from dinner, smells after cold spices, mosquito sounds, and a lonely rocking chair that seems to move all by itself before I discover that there is a child in it. Just when the dripping candles were lit, I had the feeling to be in the Adams Family’s living room.

9 January 2008
Another five hour train ride away is Cochi, one of the oldest towns of Kerala. The Portuguese, Dutch and British used this town as main entry point for the spice trade. There are giant so-called “Chinese fishing nets” in the harbor. Those nets are huge and can only be bent into the water with the help of at least four people. The nets give the harbor a very nice skyline. One of the fishermen said that there are only 10 left where there used to be 24. The Tsunami destroyed most of them and since then the catch is most depressing and therefore the owners are reluctant to build up the missing nets again. Biologist forecast another 5 years until the big fishes will be coming to Cochin’s shore again. Nevertheless they must catch something because in one of the fish markets there was a massive amount of huge, flat, so-called “Pomfret” fish. It was a nice spectacle to see the Pomfrets being loaded into baskets, and after weighing packed into boxed cooled with crashed ice. The ice itself came in big blocks and was crushed with an enormous shredder.

8 January 2008
Finally leaving the jungle resort by jeep to take a train from Ooty to Metupalayiam. This train has been constructed in 1886 by the Swiss and has not been changed since. It leads through the Nilgeri mountains, showing an impressive panorama of mostly tea plantations. The train ride took about three and a half hours whereby most of the time the train was pulled by a historical diesel/steam engine. Although that was very nice it lead to a very dirty face. From Metupalayiam another train brought us to Coimbatore, the Indian fashion capital but as we were only arriving there at night there was no opportunity to check out the shops. The dialogue of the day (in a hotel): A: Do you have a free single room for tonight? B: Yes, for how many people? A: For one person! B: Yes, ok, a single room is available, but for how many people? … continued. The dialogue took place in a very friendly atmosphere with a lot of head wiggling on the Indian side. Wiggling in a way that resembles moving the head to either side, resembling the figure eight, neither nodding nor shaking the head is a frequent behavior pattern in India and can mean anything from yes to no, maybe, for sure, I do not understand, or not quite, I also see it that way or no, most certainly not to we will see or god only knows.

7 January 2008
Getting up at 6:15 during your holidays is not an easy task. Anyway, a trip to a village where they wash elephants in a river seemed to be worth it. We drove for about half an hour to arrive on the one side of the river that was not only in a very bad back light but also rather impassable. Well, an Elepghant was down in the river and about to be pulled to the other side. There \he was briefly washed and then quickly led away over a hill. A brief discussion with the driver to bring us to the other side resulted in a no based on a story that there is this forest ranger who does not allow tourists to be there. Shortly after that, two tourists were visible on the other side and sure enough the forste ranger was not mentioned anymore. We were brought to the other side. Unfortunately the last elephant was just about to be washed. The driver said that we should have started earlier, they always wash the elephants earlier and that he would have mentioned that to his boss anyway but nobody ever listens to him. Well. A serious discussion with that boss later on resulted in comforting words and pittyful looks. Of course they would take us on the afternoon toor again. But in the afternoon all of a sudden it was the regular tour and of course to be paid again. As I figured it would not be feature-length anyway I did not get into a serious argument with the guy. Tomorrow we are heading back towards civilization...

6 January 2008
Another long taxi ride brought us to the Nilgeris, a jungle area. The hotel here is in the middle of nowhere and called Jungle Retreat. Not only that they warn you from tigers and elephants on signs beneath the road going there, the welcome to the holtel was two large black Rottweiler type of dogs. I almost fainted. But in the end, the rooms here are marvellous and it is really quiet. Quite a change from the hectic city life during the last days. Interestingly enough there are only Americans staying here. Probably they mixed up India and Indiana - no that was not nice.

5 January 2008
Mysore used to be the capital city of one of the last Maharadja kingdoms. It is an ancient town although you cannot see that anymore. Most of the older buildings have been destroyed some 200 years ago and so the city looks rather young. The most interesting site is of course the Maharadja Palace. It is a palace out of the stories of 1001 nights although borderline kitsch most of the times. What is rather annoying is that one cannot take any pictures and even has to hand over all cameras at the entrance. The Green Hotel here is a really interesting place. It was built to serve as a palace for the unmarried sisters of the Mahardja, just outside the city. Then in the 1950ies it was transformed into movie studios and recently into an eco friendly hotel. You could see Miss Marple there. The main house unfortunately only hosts 7 rooms and we had to stay in the other buildig, most likely the servant`s rooms back in history. Anyway I got a glimpse into one of the rooms in the main building: it really looked like a bedroom for the court. The main block also hosts a library with a bed beneath the window, a reading divan, simply great. And the chess table in the games room was just tiny but brilliantly carved.

4 January 2008
The energy saving bulb has conquered India and puts everything into a cold and unfriendly light. Even in the train that we had to catch very early this morning heading west towards Asikere Junction gave you the sterile feeling of a hospital. After quite some time in the taxi, we visited the Hoysaleswara temple in Halebid which is a marvellous site, covered over and over with sculptures and reliefs. After another long ride we arrived to the Channekeshava temple in Belur. Hundreds and hundreds of figures are carved into the outside wall of the temple as well but in a different manner. After another two hour ride we came to Sravanabelagola, a temple that can only be reached after climbing up 600 or more steps. It hosts a 17m high monolithic statue of a naked god called Gomateshvara. Rumors say that it is the tallest monolithic statue on earth. What is impressive is that it is over 1000 years old. The most funny thing was that in a corridor behind the statue there are smaller statues and one of them was just cleaned by a naked man. I asked the tour guide for an explanation and he said that about 12 monchs serve there and four of them are naked. All the trinket sellers around these three temples are rather delighted when the rare tourist shows up. They are all called „Hello my name is Johnny Maybelater“. Yes, maybe later.

3 January 2008
After a short trip to Hospet center we took a flight back to Bangalore. The same instructions on how to use the sickness bags, a short flight and back we were to the luxury of the Windsor Manor Hotel where hot chocolate is not only served on the private terrace but also sweetened and stirred for you. Eventhe toothpaste tastes after cinamon here. I keep on wondering since quite some time why both the English and the Dutch who controlled the spice world market for such a long time actually never developped a special way of cooking based on all these spices themselves.

2 January 2008
The journey continues. Today it is a visit to Hampi and Hospet. On the flight to Bellary, Deccan Airways explained amongst the usual safety instructions the use of the sickness bags. In Hampi there are the remains of an old ancient kingdom that existed until about 1550. I did not quite get the whole story due to some consistency issues although the tour guide was quite knowledgeable. Anyway, he said also that towards the end of that monarchy the Portuguese brought quite some horses as present for the king and those horses then lived there together with the elephants (when they were not fighting in a battle). The elephant stalls have been uncovered and did not need too much restoration while the barracks for the elephant guards have completely rotten. So the life of an elephant at the time was so much more important, a clear discrimination in favor of the elephants. The most interesting palace in Hampi is the musical palace. It is a palace that consists of many columns with even smaller columns around them that seem to be there for aesthetic reasons only. But in fact they are hollow and make a beautiful noise if you touch them. You can play a full concert with different tones there. Unfortunately is just in the process of being renewed so one cannot touch those columns. Hospet is particularly remarkable as there are so many pigs on the streets. The way back to the hotel was easy; we just had to turn right at the big black pig that was eating garbage in a little hole there.

1 January 2008
It is unbelievable but the Dalai Lama came today to stay overnight in the same hotel in Bangalore. Together with 12 Buddhist monks I sat for several hours just outside the hotel lobby to wait for him. In a way it was like the preparation of the last supper. Being number 13 and constantly in trouble with the ceremony master of his holiness who doubted that my photo backpack contained only photo equipment. I was seen as security risk. While waiting I found out that almost all of the monks had mobile phones and on average four out of the twelve were in a call. Furthermore the rest did not sit there contemplating or meditating but rather chatted with their peers or wrote SMSes. The one that did not have a phone had his finger in his nose most of the time. In other words they seemed to be pretty modern and human. And then he finally came. A red carpet had been rolled out, the monks and other people from the Buddhist community of Bangalore lined up and last in line the only six Europeans waited for the Dalai Lama to come by. I was so excited and then he came and really shook hands with me! For a picture of that scene, please click here!!

31 December 2007
New Years eve and a quiet day with massages and sauna in the hotel. At night during the new years eve party, H. was awarded “Best European Bollywood dancer” and won a hotel voucher in Jaipur, 2000 km to the north and therefore not very useful.

30 December 2007
Leaving Mumbai and going to Bangalore. The rumour says that since outsourcing is not en voguie any more, there is already a new verb in English namely „to bangalore“. And really, Bangalore seems to be better off than Mumbai if that can be seen as a category at all. Also here people are poor, dentists pick teeth on the street and beggers have all kins of heartbreaking physical shortcomings. The city market is a great mixture of fruits, vegetbles, colors and flowers whereby this description is by no means sufficient. The floweres are folded to long chains that are devoted in temples or used in order to decorate statues or pictures. The smell is very pleasant and not even the smell of the ubiquitous leftovers of the holy cows can kill that smell.

29 December 2007
Those of you who have seen my first self-developed pictures already know the story and will probably never believe whom I have met in Bombay by pure coincidence. In a very picturesque market hall that would deserve a description on itself all of a sudden Mr. Kahn stood in front of me. Mr. Kahn, the artist from Paris whom I took some picture of last August. Those pictures were my first ever self-developed pictures! So there he was in flesh and blood! I was not only astonished but just merely happy. What a coincidence! Some might say: Will wonders never cease? How is it possible that you meet a person in a city of 20 million that you have seen only once before in Paris? And who has nevertheless left such an impression? I just could not believe it. He has left Bombay for Paris in 1973 and was there again to visit family. But it was the first time in years that he actually went back to India!
Just a few days before Christmas I had mailed him the pictures I had taken last summer. When promising him to do so in August I felt rather stupid, explaining that it might take months for me to actually send some pictures. The reason for that was that I was just about to install my darkroom and setting everything up to get started. In today’s digital age that sounded like a cheap excuse but probably too bad to be true.

28 December 2007
A visit to Bollywood was very high up on my „must see“ list for Inida. But that is not as easy as one would imagine. What people told me about Hollywood, basically buying a ticket and then being shown around in order to see how special effect are made is not happening here. A big sign at the entrance of Film City informs all visitors that they are not allowed to get in. After intense discussions I was informed that neither the ators nor the producers want to be disturbed on the set. I could try and send a fax to the administration but no, for today that will never work out. Slightly depressed and definitely disappointed I decided to check out with the tour organisation I had heard about whether they could help out. After searching with for an Internet cafe with an uninspired taxi driver I found their site but as it was lastly updated in 2002 and the phone was dead I thought that they have probably gone bankrupt or so. Before I could go on with searching for another solution the guy next to me in the Internet cafe announced in brilliant English that there will be a server update and no Internet connection anymore. I took the chance to tell him about my wrecked plans. He said that never having seen a Bollywood movie is not an issue as you have to be brain dead anyway to suffer through a three hour performance. He was pilot for Kahthar Airways by the way. But else he said it would not be a problem at all to actually see the studios as the owner of the cafe was regularly going to the studios and could definitely bring me in. So we tried it again, this time with the owner of the cafe and his nephew – just to be thrown out again and even more harshly than before. Under a certain performance pressure the guy than propsed to go to another studio where we faced a similar tretament but after long discussions and handing over some rupies were finally sucessful. And what a reward! They produce 800 films a year in Bollywood but just at this very moment thy were shooting a prisoner`s story „Prisoner 420“. At least 150 people were dressed up as either prisoners or guards, chatting and hanging out at the set waiting for the main character to show up. They were having a really good time especially after they got some attention of unexpected visitors. I shot many, many pictures. Especially in the cantine that really looked like tghe cantine of a prison with all the prisoners eating there. I have rarely before enjoyed a meal as much as there. And of course actors had a good time as well posing for my pictures.

27 December 2007
Mumbai (Bombay) is a huge and loud city where the ubiquitous poverty is overwhelming. My first impression was most depressing, people sleeping on the streets, mostly only wrapped into a piece of cloth. They roll themselves up on the sideways where cars pass by only a few centimeters away. Their belongings fit into a single platic bag which is placed besides or behind them. Some use plastic covers to have a roof or at least the impression of a tent over their heads. But then again, it is unbelievable how poor people can be and how privilegeded we are.

21 December 2007
My mailbox is inaccessible and neither opens, nor allows for sending or receiving anymore. That seems to be the protocol of a sudden death.

20 December 2007
My mailbox started telling me (via e-mail) that I cannot longer send anything as I do not longer exist.

19 December 2007
My mailbox does not accept incoming e-mails anymore and tells the respective senders that I do not longer exist.

18 December 2007
I heard that a racing driver once said his life was a car race. In betweein races he said he was just waiting.

17 December 2007
I finally managed to take a picture of the “sandwishes” billboard!

16 December 2007
I saw a car in a garage the other day which was grey and dirty as can be. It is obviously standing there since quite some time. Someone has written into the grey dirt: “Exists also in blue”.

15 December 2007
After a few more painstaking hours in the dark room I seem to find out more and more about the art of developping pictures. I fear that really only practice makes perfect…

14 December 2007
The discovery of slowness: Despite the ubiquitous hectic times just before Christmas I discovered a person who seems to be immune. Slightly impatient I watched her for about 25 minutes wrapping one (!) gift for me…

13 December 2007
Several hours and the first one hundred sheets of photo paper later I start to see some correlations and light at the end of the tunnel.

11 December 2007
Another nice item in the collection of circular definitions: I think that everybody who has arrived is here now.

10 December 2007
A meeting today was opened by the following kind statement: “I see some new faces around the table and some very old ones.”

9 December 2007
Today was the end of the five day exhibition Selection XXI.

8 December 2007
I spent most of the day at the exhibition venue. The interaction was mostly happening between the artists and not so much between the visitors and the artists.

6 December 2007
I went again to the exhibition venue. It is really interesting to see people watching my pictures, talking intensively about them. As I did not want to move too close I didn’t not get too much of the conversation but there was “amazing”, “incredible” and “impressive” in it.

5 December 2007
The evening of the evenings: Opening of the exhibition Selection XXI in St. Gilles in Brussels. There were several hundred people present, if not one thousand. Many of them had a look at my pictures, some of them asked questions. A few asked whether it was photos or paintings. Others had questions like why this subject, why mannequins, why broken? Recognition and criticism from unknown people is interesting. One lady said that those pictures seem sad. I would say melancholic, but that is a matter of definition. The evening went smoothly, the ambience was nice. There was Champaign and finger food – everything a vernissage requires.

4 December 2007
I had to hang up the pictures for tomorrow’s vernissage early this morning. I totally underestimated the long sharp edges of the aluminum surface and only found out when I felt the blood dripping down. Nevertheless the overall impression was really nice.

3 December 2007
I spoke out and handed over the last invitations for the exhibition opening on Wednesday night.

2 December 2007
I spent again some hours with developing pictures learning a lot. I definitely need to get some practice.

1 December 2007
I guess you must spoil before you spin. With regard to picture development I seem to produce quite some junk for the time being.

30 November 2007
This is fun, just click on the following LINK.

29 November 2007
Today I got the pictures form my exhibition next week. They are mounted on aluminum, perfectly done by my favorite laboratory and in a larger size than ever before.

28 November 2007
I got the invitations for my next exhibition, Selection XXI. They look marvelous!

27 November 2007
The “sandwish” billboard (see Blog entry of June 30, 2007) is back on the street!

26. November 2007
I saw a manual in a conference room today: “The art of setting up a telephone conference.”

23 November 2007
Read in a recipe today: „… and then add half a liter of chicken soup or alternatively guardian angel soup or ginger energy soup. “

22 November 2007
I had another lesson in black and white film development.

21 November 2007
Recently there was a big initiative in Vienna requiring all dog owners to carry little bags with them to collect dog shit on the spot and help keeping the city clean. Graz is even more progressive. Today I saw a dog shit bag dispenser next to a garbage bin.

20 November 2007
Together with a friend of mine who is a great graphic designer I worked on a Broken Muses brochure.

19 November 2007
I heard a sales person in a bookshop in Vienna saying to her colleague that there is this American who regularly comes to their shop and who speaks German very well but has some charming difficulties from time to time. Recently he was very concerned and told them something that would translate like: “I am so worried. My wife will be operated on her turtle”. What he wanted to say was “… will be operated on her thyroid gland”. The words are very similar in German.

18 November 2007
I did a two hours black and white family photo shooting. Enough work for picture development till Christmas…

17 November 2007
A few dozen birthday candles on a Sacher cake are a logistic challenge as well as a source for great heat.

16 November 2007
Flying out from Brussels I sat next to a guy asked me whether we had ever met before. After a little break he added: “If that is not the case, even better, because I need an unbiased pinion. So I found myself smelling at a stranger’s wrists helping to select the ideal perfume.

15 November 2007
I was finally able to develop my first black and white picture. It is a great abstract piece of work that will potentially shape history. It is deeply black, shiny, simply great!

14 November 2007
After various major mistakes in various flight bookings a very big German airline decided to say sorry through upgrading me to business class for one of the many flights where they messed up my bookings. I had great food and great drinks but to my astonishment I was the only one who ate. It seems to be posh to refuse excellent food when you are entitled to. Is this the latest trend in the luxury segment?

12 November 2007
One of the biggest threats nowadays can be put in simple words: “Let’s have an e-mail discussion”.

11 November 2007
After all I wanted to try and develop my first picture only to find out that I had everything but paper. That must have gone lost somewhere.

10 November 2007
Somebody said that it does not make a difference whether a dark room looks nice or not. It’s main aim is supposed to be dark anyway. Well, no sense for aesthetics…

9 November 2007
The neighbor’s dog is called Nero. Whether it is called after the emperor ort he color remains open.

8 November 2007
Is there an art movement in modern art which focuses on aesthetics?

7 November 2007
Can you or do you even have to assume that modern day walking canes with inbuilt compasses are mobile phones with GPS-modules?

6 November 2007
In the bus from the terminal to the aircraft at Munich airport a guy spoke vividly to someone else on the phone. He started the conversation by saying “well I am actually at the Frankfurt airport.” There was a big smile on everybody’s face.

5 November 2007
There is not only publicity for Volkswagen but recently also for a Volksnotebook.

4 November 2007
When using public parking garages, mostly when entering or just before paying, almost everyone has the parking ticket in his mouth. It is interesting that nobody has had the idea of putting some flavor onto these tickets. I think a slight coffee taste would be excellent and would bring good business to the pubs in the surroundings.

3 November 2007
Status report from Amsterdam: 10 people queuing in front of a cash machine.

2 November 2007
A few days ago the neighbors have put up a skeleton in the size of a three year old child right next to their all year Christmas tree.

1 November 2007
From the life of a plumber: On Tuesday I was told that it is too late for the plumbing company to take on any new for this week because first of all it was already Tuesday lunchtime, secondly Wednesday is just the day before the public holiday on Thursday and therefore not ideal and thirdly of course nobody works on a Friday after a public holiday.

31 October 2007
Another example of circular definitions: I’d propose to proceed in the way I’ve just proposed.

30 October 2007
There is a couture designer called Sisi Wasabi. The name reflects on the Austrian emperatrice Sisi and the spicy Japanese horse radish paste.

29 October 2007
My father says the darkroom will be a bright spot.

28 October 2007
I think that the former owner of my darkroom had a certain weakness for development tanks. There is a tremendous variety of these tanks, ranking from stainless steel to plastic specimen.

27 October 2007
Sorting out my belongings and setting up the darkroom is a cumbersome task. Especially recognize pieces of furniture wrapped in bubble wrap is a challenge.

26 October 2007
Thinking of the actual debate on environmental protection: already Kermit from the Muppet show knew that it’s not that easy being green.

25 October 2007
I had an interesting chat today about the adventure of taking hotels. Talking about it I recalled a recent stay in Helsinki where my boss and I found out that our two rooms that had been booked well in advance were simply not available any more. The concierge offered us a free taxi ride to the closest available hotel – 60 km away from downtown Helsinki.

24 October 2007
I learned today that my Internet pages cannot be accessed over the public Internet in China. Probably because the word “censored” appears several times.

23 October 2007
Just after having come back from London and on my way to the metro station “Brussels Midi” I crossed what I had described in my blog entry of July 1st as “brand new ATM”. At the time it was too new to have power supply. Well, meanwhile it isn’t that new anymore and it isn’t a real cash machine I fear; big letters on it’s side announce it as “ash” machine. So again no money, just ashes.

22 October 2007
London has changed pretty much over the last years. I remember that there were bookshops on every corner. Searching for one today made me walk at least 45 minutes in cold drizzle, passing by many clothes shops and bars. Finally they did not even have the book I was searching for.

21 October 2007
The opening of the exhibition in Leuven was very nice. About 60 very interested people were there and I got some really nice feedback!

20 October 2007
Charles Dickens said: “I […] feel the truth, that trifles make the sum of life."

19 October 2007
What remains of a pigeon… that was exactly what I saw today on a zebra crossing. I guess that has been one of those suicidal pigeons that preferred to go that way instead of hitting my office window (see blog entry of September 20, 2007).

18 October 2007
Adorno said in his aesthetic theory (1970) that pieces of art that mean to be images reflecting nothing but reality do that only peripheral; they become reality because they react to (the first) reality.

17 October 2007
I had a diet coke without caffeine yesterday. I wonder what they will come up with next. Probably it will be either coke without color or half full cans.

16 October 2007
Most of my belongings have arrived to Brussels. The moving guys brought box after box and piled them up. I made me feel slightly uncomfortable that I had forgotten about everything I'd ever owned. The movers did not unwrap anything but a statue, Klaus, that was buried in tons of styrofoam flakes. Exactly in the moment when two of the three strong guys lifted Klaus out of his big box in the hallway, my un-beloved neighbor came out of the elevator, gave all of us a weird look and said to her dog “come on darling, that woman does not like dogs”. As if that wouldn’t have been enough, the movers did not find the statue’s supporting stand and instead deposited it in my bed. I was considering sleeping on the couch but tried my best to get hold of that stand. It appeared in the very last box.

15 October 2007
I found out that the town hall in Brussels is only used as tourist attraction. The actual offices are in a building close by, where, after I had finally found it, I had to queue together with 70 other people only to get a number for waiting in line for the actual service.

14 October 2007
The guys in the occupied house had a washing day today. There was wash in all colors on a string that was bent all over the facade in the third floor.

13 October 2007
Since some countries require each driver to have a reflective safety vest, there is an inflation of these orange or yellow uniform vests. You can buy them literally everywhere for something like three Euros. Anyways, they are most popular with bikers where they have a leveling effect on (at lest the bicycling part of) society. No matter whether it’s a man or a woman, old or young, tall or short, slender or less so, well dressed or less so - a reflective safety vest is slipped over all of them.

12 October 2007
At the opposite side of my street a house is occupied by a bunch of people who from time to time bring some sofas to the street where they relax while demonstrating against cars and driving as such.

12 October 2007
A nice example of male argumentation which is perfectly dull but broadly accepted: “It seems that business is good where there are no barriers. And where there are barriers, we have difficulties.”

10 October 2007
Do you know the „sort of kind of“ speeches? There are people who introduce every thought with either “sort of” or “kind of” which makes it impossible to concentrate on what they want to say. But I guess they only sort of want to say something. Which might anyway only be kind of, you know?

9 October 2007
I had a speed exhibition today in the Committee of the Regions in Brussels. It was nice, thou. I had to rush from a meeting to my car and further to the Committee of the Regions to hang up the pictures for an evening cocktail which I could not attend due to other obligations. After 10 p.m. a friend picked the pictures up again. When hanging them up I got some very nice feedback saying that it was amazing how human and fragile those scratched faces look.

8 October 2007
I am playing a funny game with my cleaning lady. Whenever she sees me her face freezes and she brings up the serious topic of my plants. There is nothing wrong with them as such but she has the feeling that I do not water them properly. That is why she has started to water them with enormous quantities of water and several times a week. Whenever I notice that she had been around I secretly pour out liters of water so that my plants’ Amazonas swamp feeling doe not prevail. That of course leads her to think that these poor plants drink all the water she gives them in no time, thus they suffer, ignorant me does not care and the burden to help them survive lies on her shoulders. Something stops me from clearing that up.

7 October 2007
Oscar Wilde said “It is personalities, not principles, that move the age.” I could not agree more.

6 October 2007
The neighbors added carnival balloons and garlands to their all year Christmas tree. We are at the beginning of October and to my knowledge we are neither close to carnival nor to Christmas. I get confused whenever I see their window. Probably that has to do with climate change. I’d advise them to calculate through how many tons of CO2 emission they would save as a family if they got rid of their nasty black dog.

5 October 2007
One conference call is followed by another. I consider that as a real bad habit of our times. Well, after a really long one (over four hours) I dragged myself to a sandwich bar (no sand wishes there any more) from where I have a great view to the favorite cash machine. This time I had a witness for 12 people queuing.

4 October 2007
There is one thing that keeps me thinking since a long time. When driving to the airport in Brussels the closest you can get to the arrival hall is using the express parking which allows you to sprint over to the arrivals in less than a minute. Surprisingly enough the two parking places that are closest to the exit towards the arrival hall stink bestially after urine. I wonder whether that has to do with the inborn attitude of the master hunter who has managed to land the best parking in the area needs to mark that place even when under immense time pressure?

3 October 2007
And another exhibition is planned still fort his year. I won’t give further details, yet!

2 October 2007
I had a look at the exhibition venue which does look very nice. It will be a challenge to deliver, exhibit and put away those pictures in four hours next Tuesday.

1 October 2007
I just learned today that I am required to exhibit some photographs at the Committee of the Regions (Brussels) next Tuesday. It is the so-far shortest exhibition I will be doing; it will only last for four hours. So probably I shouldn’t call it a permanent exhibition.

30 September 2007
I heard an interview with the author Ilija Trojanow today who said that the fork was a only introduced to the Italian royal court around the year 1000. The lady ho brought the new took over was coming from Byzantium, where forks where used since the 4th century. It nevertheless resulted in a scandal in Italy, especially because the arch bishop was reminding everybody that god gave men two hands to eat with and such a tool was to be called profane.

29 September 2007
I had a totally new experience today, which was developing the first three black and white films myself. It was a great feeling to hold the negatives in hand knowing that it was you who had shot and developed them.

28 September 2007
It is not particularly nice to be brought to your plane by bus. It means carrying down heavy hand luggage to the bus and afterwards up to the plane again. Most of all it means being stuck in that bus for longer than you would have expected. People keep pushing you and force you compromise on your originally chosen place and trat it for a a strategically inappropriate position in the middle of the bus. There you the witness a strange spectacle of people holding on to a handle or steel post although the bus is not mobbing at all. They keep holding on so hard that you can even see white bones and finger joints glancing out of their hands. You ask yourself why this is happening although the bus doesn’t move for at least twenty more minutes.

27 September 2007
Lisbon in late summer or early fall is a very nice combination. Blue skies and sunshine, life can be tougher. There are remarkable sidewalks and this tram number 28 that goes up a hill in an unbelievable speed, speeding through breathtaking curves and narrow streets. But what impressed me most was the encounter of an elephant man. A certain layer of swollen dark red cancer-like surface had settled over his whole face, burying mouth, nose and eyes behind it. I was asking myself whether it was appropriate to take a picture or not. For ethical reasons I decided against it. There are more ways to remember that other’s can be so much worse off than yourself than by just taking a picture.

26. September 2007
The last few missing pictures are hanging now, the name tags are fixed right beside them. Now only the invitations must be finalized and printed, then the Leuven exhibition is ready to be opened.

25. September 2007
My neighbors have a big black dog which would be enough pain anyway. In addition to that they have a plastic Christmas tree in their apartment which I can see from a corridor window. The electric candles on that tree are burning every night which is bizarre in summer but mostly anytime except for December.

24 September 2007
Today the piece of clothes I saw was an expensive looking rain jacket with two zip fastened arms, detached but assembled right next to the jacket. My suspicion is that all this clothes in the street has to do with the cash machines or their absence that is. The saying goes that in some places the money is lying on the street. As it is difficult o get money, maybe that’s why the clothes are lying there.

23 September 2007
Today was car-free day in Brussels. It is unbelievable how many people own bikes. And how many seem to have left their cars and their sense for traffic rules home. Tomorrow there will be more cars but this city will also be a safer place for pedestrians again.

22 September 2007
A pink baby anti-adhesion sock crossed my way. Ok, here I admit that this might not have been abandoned out of free will.

21 September 2007
There seems to be a trend towards leaving your clothes and shoes behind when coming to a city. Not too long ago I came across a pair of lonely pumps in Naples and a single dotted one in Munich. Just a few days ago I passed a pair of crumpled jeans alongside a parking lot. Not far from that there was a pair of abandoned climbing boots, nicely aligned on next to the other. Today seven or eight black used socks crossed my way or vice versa – they were scattered along some twenty meters of a sidewalk. In the gutter there was a pair of white gloves.

20 September 2007
There are some trees in front of my office windows which grow against them and create strange noises in the wind. But this does not bother me as much as the pigeons that crash into the windows on a regular basis. They fly against these windows and probably drop dead in the second when the bounce. I fear that I have kind of a pigeon cemetery somewhere down there. Probably it even started smelling. I guess I should never open these windows again.

19 September 2007
100 days after the elections Belgium still does not have a government which you barely notice as a foreigner. Nevertheless there are many critical voices that try to suggest that this is the end of the Belgian state. As a very funny reaction, a Belgian tried to sell Belgium over Ebay "For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts ... free premium: the king and his court (costs not included)." The oddest thing was that there was even interest from someone to buy it! Ebay took it off their website.

18 September 2007
How to define division of labor: After an initial attempt and mutual acceptance, labor is divided which is followed by the comforting feeling of “a problem shared is a problem halved”. That is then abruptly ended by the horror vision of the other parties not fulfilling their duties because they spent all their energy in inventing creative excuses.

17 September 2007
I counted 18 people queuing in front of a Brussels city center ATM …

16 September 2007
There will be a new Brokenmuses exhibition soon in Leuven/Belgium!

15 September 2007
A very tiny extra packed cheese (a “Babybel”) lays right next to my door, in fact next to the elevator there. It is wrapped in dark red plastic and gives me reproachful looks whenever I pass by.

14 September 2007
I was inspired recently to think about those products that are left right in front of supermarket cash desks. Some people seem to spontaneously decide against a product that they have thoroughly chosen and brought with them all the way through the supermarket. Does that make a reference for exactly buying these products? And isn’t it also interesting that those products were even found before?

13 September 2007
It’s Thursday the 13th and there were five people and a guide dog queuing in front of my favorite ATM. I ask myself how guide dogs are trained for finding the rare ATM in Brussels.

12 September 2007
Further on gender issues: A male colleague on a contentious issue arguing for his view: “My proposal to solve the issue would be to write something that I’ve just said!”

11 September 2007
Why women will never make it: I just heard this statement from a woman speaking to another woman today: “I’ll get going and get it done. Because after all it needs to be done and if it’s done it’s done, right?”

10 September 2007
My officially employed me got vaccinated today. After a slightly absurd dialogue, certain earlier vaccinations of my private me were recognized. The exception being hepatitis was then shot in such a clumsy way that I could not use my right arm all day long.

9 September 2007
It’s not only me alone who experiences weird situations at work. I was told about a recent security training for employees which had to be done using a standardized slide set. The first slide showed a site map where all those doors that were only 3.10 meters high were specifically marked. All employees who are taller than that have to be alert and need to pay special attention. To underline that, the bottom line read: “The event of an accident is highly likely”.

8 September 2007
On my vaccinations that I still need to receive before going to Belgium again (see Aug. 31) the question is now whether other vaccinations I got in the past (e.g. against hepatitis or tetanus) were given to me for work reasons. If not, which is unfortunately the case, they do not count and I will get them again.

7 September 2007
I had a meeting today in a room called “Cheesecake” (in Helsinki). Help the help of several locals I would have never found the room. What made it worse was that I had to make my way back alone. While stumbling through myriads of hallways I asked myself – should I pass away without having seen daylight again - whether legally spoken your death certificate replaces your birth certificate.

6 September 2007
Why do men in general get away with statements like: “We will get an answer because we have to get an answer although people do not have an answer, yet.” or “We are in September now and we have to be aware what is going to happen in February because after all February is only five months away…”

5 September 2007
An airport toilet announcement I saw today read: “Help us saving water. Press the flush button twice.”

4 September 2007
In my Istanbul conference hotel, a quite good hotel superficially spoken, showed the weirdest comportment of employees I have ever seen. The other day a Turkish speaking room maid entered my room, without prior knocking. Gesticulating she explained that she is in charge of controlling whether my single room is used by more than one person. I was rather surprised as I had never thought of smuggling in a battalion of “blind overnight passengers” in my hotel room. On the next day the same lady met me in the bathroom asking me whether she should start cleaning the room. As if that would not have been enough anyway about an hour later – the room has still not been cleaned – she came again requesting whether there were more people besides me sleeping in my room. Shortly after that a guy showed up who wanted to control the status of the mini bar. Probably he found it rather impolite that I kicked him out.

3 September 2007
The saying goes that the eyes are the mirror of your soul. I wonder whether you can say that the camera bans on film what is reflected over that mirror?

2 September 2007
I saw the Istanbul Pera Palace hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote the Murder in the Orient Express. It is closed for renovation, but I managed to sneak in and got a little private tour. In the evening I went to a 500 year old Hammam. The guy at the entrance wore a T-Shirt saying “sexually deprived for your comfort” and told me that the massages will be done by men. I sort of fund that weird but in the end it was just a great and harmless experience.

1 September 2007
After arriving from Munich to Istanbul, I thought my luggage was lost. For whatever mysterious reason I found it on my way to the lost and found counter at the other side of the arrival hall: it stood lonely next to a belt that stood still and said “Rome”.

31 August 2007
I had a conversation with the HR department. They advised me to get some vaccinations for Brussels. Probably to protect me against the EU virus.

29 August 2007
No matter where I want to go to in Munich, I always have to drive 8 kilometers to get there. I type in a random place and the navigation system tells me 8 kilometers. Sometimes I get the feeling that this is deliberate. Even if the distance is 5 kilometers only it secretly guides me on sidetracks and calculates an 8 kilometer route.

28 August 2007
The UN building in Bonn hosts inter alia EUROBATS, the secretariat in charge for the Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats.

27 August 2007
A Munich supermarket chain is selling “Tsunami Sushi” – not the best name you can chose I guess.

26 August 2007
A person working for the personnel department, human resources that is, sent me an automatic response saying: “Dear sender, I am in the process of being switched to a new data base system…”. How can a person be switched to another data base system?

25 August 2007
An advertisement for toothpaste advertises a “smile for eternity” showing Marilyn Monroe’s lips on a huge poster. Right next to it the pope advertises automated blessings - to be sent to your mobile phone via short messages.

24 August 2007
Again a short piece on cash machines. Not only that Austria has them on every corner, you can also re-load your prepaid mobile phones there.

23 August 2007
Is it really true that not the world but the pictures taken of that world are the scale of beauty?

22 August 2007
A restaurant in Munich offers a 4 course menu and calls the dinner “enjoy dinner in darkness – there is little to see but loads to experience”.

21 August 2007
After telling a colleague about a non-paper I was working on she said: “I would not want to do your job.” I replied “Me neither.”

20 August 2007
Subway graffiti in Munich: I’ll be with you forever. Yours Aids.

19 August 2007
I ask myself how the art market functions. How are pieces of art evaluated and estimated? Who judges that an artist has created something really great and outstanding, or that he has the potential to do so? And on which criteria is that done?

17 August 2007
Do politically correct toilets have a hand shower? More than that it keeps me thinking that a Japanese coupe asked me the way to their hotel in Helsinki and I could give them the right advice. Moreover, all cash machines in Helsinki are called Otto, but nobody has asked me for that.

16 August 2007
The world hasn’t stopped turning – which I sometimes doubt. But still: the shop specialized in wheels for trolleys and the like in Helsinki is still where it used to be when I took a picture back in 2002.

15 August 2007
Schopenhauer said: “With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.”

14 August 2007
In my personal hell I will screw and unscrew picture frames with a non-fitting screwdriver.

12 August 2007
In August, Paris is really dead. There are hardy any people in the streets and most shops and galleries are closed. The atmosphere is weird.
I had dinner in Le Procope, which used to be the first coffee shop ever. Nowadays it is a fine restaurant.

11 August 2007
On one of the islands of the Seine there is a replica of the statue of liberty. That is kind of odd, especially because from a certain angle you can see the Eiffel tower in the far distance.

10 August 2007
I went to the opening of a gallery in Düsseldorf. I guess the best thing about it was a cinema fort two people with two red velvet seats. The film was the credits of a spanish movie – in an infinite loop.

9 August 2007
When browsing through the index of Brussels’ galleries in a weekly magazine I found one that’s called “Sorry, we’re closed”. I am sure it is in the neighborhood of the restaurant “And who is going to walk the dog?”

8. August 2007
I had dinner with a colleague. Hat was kind of odd was the waiter’s „Bon Appetite Gentlemen!“.

7. August 2007
Target and objectives setting are time consuming habits. A colleague of mine thinks that only if you have a target you can actually reach it. On the other hand having a target is also the prerequisite of missing it.

6 August 2007
Today’s insight: Modern laws are made by people that show a certain lack of logic reasoning and miss the sense for simplicity. Instead of thinking about short, concise and lasting rules, detailed over regulation seems to be en vogue.

5. August 2007
A sign on the terrace of a small restaurant in south west Styria read: “Please do not feed the cats. They belong to the neighbor”.

3 August 2007
I am always curiously interested to keep track of new trends. One of the latest trends seems to be the concept of so called cuddle parties where strangers meet to cuddle with each other - under the surveillance of a “cuddling trainer”.

2 August 2007
From the long list of communication killers: One particular example that can be used in almost all circumstances in which one does not want or simply cannot answer a question. “You may remember that I had already sent you some slides regarding that issue.”

1 August 2007
I am thinking of a new picture series: “Dirty fingers of man at work.” In a way, dirty fingers have something comforting. Something like: I can do it, repair it, help you, make anything better. The natural borderline for these people with the dirty fingers is electronics, particularly car electronics.

31 July 2007
My car refused to recognize the key today. Two hours and about 200 tries later the touring service showed up. They towed away the car and brought it to a garage in an (to me unknown) part of town. We’ll see whether and if so how I will get it back again.

30 July 2007
Just recently I read in a nice e-mail that one should never let someone else's stupidity interfere with his own joy. That is easier said than done if confronted with it way too often.

29 July 2007
Why is it always raining after my car has just been washed (and polished)?

28 July 2007
Why can I not refill gas without participating in the gas station chain’s lottery which means putting lousy star or dot shaped stickers onto a post card with several rows for an endless number of stickers that – if ever filled completely – would give me the chance to win a coupon which would entitle me to buy something that I never wanted or needed but definitely cheaper than for the regular price?

27 July 2007
Sitting alone or at least having the attempt to sit in peace in a train or subway seems to be socially unacceptable in Munich. Or otherwise maybe people just like it cozier. Anyways I get slightly nervous whenever somebody approaches the empty or not so empty (bags, suitcase) seat next to mine (while there are many more free elsewhere close to my place), does not even bother to ask permission but just puts himself or herself right next to me. Most often there is not even enough time to get the bags onto a safe place on the lap.

26 July 2007
Sometimes I really suffer from not having my camera with me. Yesterday I saw a tall black guy with a v-shaped body in a white underwear type of shirt and a straw hat which left an impression.
Today at the airport I saw a less impressive guy with that tried to step on the escalators but to the wrong direction. The back of his t-shirts read: „best time to make friends“. I really wonder whether going against the main stream of an escalator provides fort he right opportunity to make friends

25 July 2007
It’s not always me who witnesses strange forms of argumentation. Somebody told me yesterday that in a recent meeting he had heard the following: “Only because 99% of all customers are happy with the service that does not mean we do not have any problems!” And, even better and a follow-up argument to the same discussion: “At the moment we really do not have any problem. But just assume we had one: how would you solve it?”

24 July 2007
Lunchtime in a little restaurant: A British lady sat next to my table, wearing a bright green shirt and an even brighter yellow blouse was served pizza. She cut it with scissors (!) into very small pieces. The scissors’ handles were in the same yellow as her blouse. And yes, the restaurant also offered knifes.

23 July 2007
More clarity to the story of the national holidays in 2008: May 1st will be a Thursday and Ascension. Therefore it was planned to “shift” May 1st to May 2nd which was heavily opposed by some business people who did not want to close their shops two days in a row (Thursday and Friday). Consequently a Commission then decided to shift May 1st to August 17 (a Sunday) which is a day where most shops are closed anyway. Employees can choose whatever date for compensating the lost 1st of May. Most of them will probably chose May 2nd.

22 July 2007
What I like about Belgium is the absurd snapshots. Amongst the leftovers of the national holiday parties today I saw half a hover. I really wonder from where it has been falling down onto the street.

21 July 2007
Today Belgium is celebrating their national holiday. It is Saturday and there is a rule that the population is entitled to a certain number of public holidays during the year. Next year one of the holidays in May will be on a weekend. Therefore a special Commission has decided that this (lost) holiday will be made up on August 17, 2008. August 17 is a Sunday in 2008. Most probably another rule applies then which is that public holidays that fall on Sundays will be made up on Mondays.

20 July 2007
During my last absence the landlord has changed the lock at the entrance of the building I am living in. In spite of a key you now need a code in order to open the door. For safety reasons, the code was safely deposited in my apartment (and not in the post box). The answer to my question, how on earth I should have gotten hold of the code while I already get stuck at the entrance of the building was answered by a “well, yes, you’ve got a point here…”.

19 July 2007
Where have the times gone when traveling needed to involve a travel agency and scheduling was a matter of long term planning? I have the feeling that one can spend hours and hours comparing schedules and tariffs via different web sites. In the need the result is always the same: Schedules involve spending private time and are still impossible and prices are arbitrary.

18 July 2007
No sand wishes anymore: The sand wish restaurant has a new owner and sells sandwiches now.

16 July 2007
A new item fort the collection of circular definitions: We need to get into that market, because when you are in, you’re in and when you are not in, you’re out!

15 July 2007
During breakfast in a small coffee shop and elderly woman sat next to us and started talking. She was 81 years old but the way she was telling her stories and interacting with us I thought she was barely 60. She had a huge black and blue mark on her right upper arm. Without any bitterness she explained that there are some gangs that are digging out the cobblestones on the square next to where she lives in order to throw them after each other. Sometimes an elderly lady like her is in their way.

14 July 2007
Besides a shop specialized in “church requisition and special electronics” the most stunning discovery was that there are surfers in Munich city center. There is a small river in the English Garden and at one particular spot there is a constant wave of about a meter where surfers are showing their most precise movements.

13 July 2007
I thought of starting a collection of communication killers. The most recent example was the nice introduction of a topic with the words “for sure you have read in this morning’s financial times…”.

12 July 2007
Just yesterday I was reading a story about the Czech Foreign Minister, Graf von Schwarzenberg, who obviously cares for good manners and is kissing hands of his female counterparts on a regular basis. The whole interview was really good and I was particularly smiling when I read about that. Well, today I attended a meeting in London - and was welcomed with a hand kiss. Well, needless to say: that made my day!

11 July 2007
I was calling a colleague in order to get some information I needed. I introduced myself politely, told him from whom I got his name and started to introduce the issue I was calling about. But soon enough I was interrupted by the question who I was. Calmly I repeated my name and department. I was interrupted again. My phone number was unknown. I said mildly that the internal directory might not be functioning fully, yet. He requested an e-mail identification. Kind of puzzled I tried that while at the same time he was asking my name again which I gave in a frostier way than before. He found me in the directory, but with a different number. I thought my unwanted disguise has vanished and started to tell my story again when I was interrupted for third time. I could be anybody. From the press or from a competitor. He would call me back under the other, the only “real” number. My destiny was merciful. The other number was my mobile.

10 July 2007
A hilarious reaction to my blog entries on sand wishes:
“Food for thought and your blog - a follow-up to your Sand Wish story: The European Commission restaurants propose sandwiches of the week. This week’s sandwich is the so-called “Provencette” (bread from the provence) with Maredsous cheese and Jambon Braisé (cooked ham).
But ...now comes the but and what is written under it: The Jambon Braise has been replaced by Jambon d'Ardenne, which is smoked ham and the Maredsous has been replaced by Mozzarella. To my obvious question: "Why don't you call your sandwich than: Provencette with Mozzarella and Jambon d'Ardenne?" I never got an answer.”

9 July 2007
Friday night on my way to Austria I had to refill gas right at the outskirts of Munich. When I was almost done, a guy in odd clothes came over to ask me whether would go to Vienna and whether I could take him and a friend of his with me to Salzburg. In the beginning I was kind of skeptical but then I had a look at both again and thought that two guys in traditional clothes with a very weird baggage can be trusted.
And what can I say about this journey to Salzburg? It was great! They were craftsmen (carpenters) on the waltz. When I heard that, I first thought that this can simply not be true and that I would definitely appear in candid camera. But they reassured me and said that this is by far not something that died out some hundred years ago but a tradition that is still there. After the apprenticeship and before being able to become a master one has the opportunity to go on the waltz for three years and one day. During this period, he (or she) is not allowed to come closer than 50 km to his hometown. The wanderer needs to be decent and reputable and will earn his living by offering services according to the apprenticeship. Whenever the means earned allow for it, he travels the world. It is mandatory to wear the traditional clothes and the walking stick but besides that and a small bundle with personal belongings that is all to be carried around. Most often these craftsman travel alone.

8 July 2007
I do not like to refill gas. Since I have spoken to a filling station attendant a few years ago who said he would find it disgusting to control oil for his clients, my aversion has slightly decreased. By the way, meanwhile the gas station he owned has closed down. So sometimes people are courageous enough to change jobs they are obviously not made for.

7 July 2007
Through a reaction to my blog I came to think that it is in fact true that I have been locked up in the office several times recently. A few months ago I could not leave the office toilet anymore as the lock was blocked and just a few weeks ago a colleague locked me in the office.

6 July 2007
Munich is a weird place. On a little vegetable market I saw a big, overdimensioned plaster model of a half grilled chicken on a kiosk. A sign close to it said “take me”.

5 July 2007
Germany is he Dorado for bargain hunters. Six wine glasses from a fine brand for 10 Euros, three towels for 4 Euro 50, three for the price of two, everything promises to be cheaper and cheaper, better and better. What does not change are the rental prices for apartments. No 60 square meters for the price of 30. So if you spend a good part of your income on all these incredibly cheap goods, there is one problem that remains: where to put all these things.

4 July 2007
I talked to the concierge again who rescued me a few days ago (see June 25). He still gives me these pitiful looks that seem to say “you would not be where you are right now without me” and “how come they let you commute without guard”.

3 July 2007
Forgot to mention that besides sand wishes they advertise also more profane things like pizza and salads.

2 July 2007
There are rumors that Belgium has increased the price (or tax) for aluminium foil threefold in order to contribute to the government’s environmental protection targets. I somehow fail to understand the deeper meaning of that. Maybe that has to do with the sand wishes (see blog entry from June 30). No sand wishes in aluminium foil anymore in this country!

1 July 2007
On my way to Brussels south station and its Sunday flower and vegetables market I thought it might be wise to have more than 15 Euros in cash at hand. So I went to the one and only ATM at the railway station. 14 people were queuing up there. So I went all over to the other end of the huge market to another ATM with only one person waiting and three more standing around. One of them said it might be better to go to another cash machine on the other side of the road because the one we were at was out of money, another one close by had a huge queue and the other one on the other side of the road just had “better” money. A little astonished I did what he advised me to do and crossed the street - just to find 12 people queuing there. I gave up and used the 15 Euros I had for shopping. On the way back to the metro station I saw a brand new ATM – too new and now power supply, yet. I got off the metro at my favorite ATM and saw nobody there. I felt kind of worried – and right so because a sign said “temporarily out of service”. In a way one could build a conspiracy theory around that.

30 June 2007
A bar close to my office advertises sandwishes - on a sandwich board. I ask myself since quite some time what such a sand wish must be like. Does one have sand wishes close to a beach and if yes, is a sand wish then the wish for a cold drink? Is that lousy bar then the closest thing to a beach bar you can get in downtown Brussels and if yes isn’t the only sand wish you can have there a sea view?

29 June 2007
My father writes in an SMS that the readings on board were a great success. When I called them today also Margit said she was pleasantly surprised about all the nice feedback she got.

28 June 2007
Today is the second day of the two readings on board. They are in Murter in a bigger harbor. I was asked how it is possible to have a library on a 6 meter 60 boat. Well, my father obviously has his priorities in life. For the rest of the season he will keep the “literature suitcase” on board.

27 June 2007
I am just missing my best friend’s and my father’s great evening on board of Dr. Putzi. In the library of my father’s boat in the Marina Nikola in Tisno/Croatia, Margit Kuchler-D’Aiello is reading out of her recent work.

26 June 2007
Why do I get e-mails with sentences like “I think it is important because it is already important and it will become even more important in the future”? After a rough analysis I think this is because we all are getting older and with age the issue of aging does not become better.

25 June 2007
I managed to get locked uo in the office together with two visitors. While we had our meeting, the cleaning personnel locked my office where I had my suitcase, home- and office keys and my notebook. This office is a very safe zone. You cannot leave it without key a, you cannot leave the building without key b and you cannot get into the garage without key c. The only option was to call the concierge, to abase myself and beg him to come, feeding the guests peanuts and diet coke in the meantime and live through nasty remarks and a grand hero appearance of the concierge.

24 June 2007
Is the GPS system providing the ordinary driver with more freedom or is it just a system that has a life of its own which gives the user a feeling of quasi-democracy? As if you could ever choose!
In the not so distant past I used to smile pitiful at the owners of GPS systems, accousing them of not being able to read any maps anymore and secretly even blaming them for laziness of severe sort. Since I own one of these devices myself that attitude has somehow changed. Although I know about all the relaxing effects I am also quite aware of its drawbacks. For instance it has a tendency to distract you and make your way to the next slip road to the motorway´ which leads to the traffic jam of the century. With an almost Buddhist calmness it then announces “enter the motorway after 300 meters” whereby the voice calms down at “300 meters” knowing exactly that these 300 meters will cost you the next 30 minutes of your time.

23 June 2007
Is there a deeper meaning that some places sell some very specific things? In Brussels it is a shop specialized in glass eyes, in Munich it is one that sells tailor made toupees.

19 June 2007
Every once in a while I spot these lonely and pitiable people, sitting on the ground, their jackets, computer bags and other belongings scattered around them while having a PC on their knees that catches all their attention. Most often these sceneries occur next to toilets, obviously a fertile place for power sockets.

16 June 2007
I visited the surrealism exhibition of the Museum of Fine Arts in Mons. The pictures, collages and sculptures of Magritte and the group of artists around him are fascinating. Their humor is sometimes very plastic and then again subtle. The Belgian surrealist Louis Scutenaire pointed it out in the following way: “Humor is a form of melancholia.”

15 June 2007
I got a call from a (female) colleague from a nordic country far away. After a brief discussion (over a very good land line) she asked me whether she had noted my name correctly as she intended to send some more information. Everything was correct and I thought we were done when she finally asked me whether I was male or female.

13 June 2007
A short update on my favorite ATM: This morning there was a lonely police car – but most likely they just had a routine stopover and not a spectacular operation. At lunch break we were back to normal and had six people queuing up in front assumingly having a real good time.

10 June 2007
Together with a friend I went for a walk in Mariazell, one of Austria’s number one places of pilgrimage. The basilica has been freshly renovated for the pope’s upcoming visit in early September. In a small corner of the church there is a booth for all sorts of images and rosaries in all sizes. It was exactly there where I saw a priest arranging tiny little mini-rosaries, one after the other, meditative, in great patience, engrossed in thought.

8 June 2007
The new car is a bit scary. It has no key and uses a card which has to be put into a slot instead. It needs to be started and stopped by pushing a start button, the handbrake disappeared from its normal place and works on its own whenever it feels for it and most worrying: I found a little bag with some big screws in the glove compartment and have no idea where they should be mounted.

6 June 2007
I had a little car accident today. While I was waiting at the red light of an intersection an elderly lady hit my car in a slow but persistent movement. She did not stop when she realized it. She just went further and further. I felt steadily displaced, a weird feeling. The result was a really long dark green line and a profound bump in the beige passenger door of the lady’s car. My bumper lost all its color. Well, I never really liked the hunter’s green anyway. But still. I did not plan to lose it that way.

4 June 2007
There are obviously variations and differences in Europe, especially when it comes to ATMs. The problem is that there are hardly any in Belgium. The rare spots where you can finally find one can be described as nice gathering points for people. I have hardly ever seen one where there would not be a queue of at least 3 to 12 people waiting. Most likely they are seen as speed dating spots or are somewhere recommended hot spots in small talk beginner’s lessons.

2 June 2007
In contrast to my normal preference of non-arranged photographs, I was trying out something new today. Running around with my camera and a huge beach ball with an imprinted world map in a rather poor area of Brussels city center, I think I made my self rather ridiculous. People were looking at me like I were the eighth world wonder.

1 June 2007
This evening I went to a photo Vernissage in Brussels. The most interesting thing there was a note saying that one may respect that this is an artist’s environment where other people are also living. Visitors may respect these neighbors and be at the same time kind enough as not to urinate (!) onto the street (the exhibition took place in the second floor…).

31 May 2007
About two months ago parts of my Istanbul pictures got lost at the laboratory. The person in charge in Brussels has done a lot in order to find them. Meanwhile she almost became a friend and I am allowed to call her Barbara…

29 May 2007
Nowadays eye doctors seem to divide their patients into two groups: Those whose cornea is thick enough and those whose cornea isn’t. Only if the cornea has a certain thickness, a laser correction of the eye and with that substantial additional income for the eye doctor is possible. There is sort of a positive discrimination for those with the “right” sized cornea.
Another weird detail of the day in Munich: People from Ukraine seem to favor Italian supermarkets that specialize in fruits and vegetables. And it seems that they think I am the only person in Munich to help them find their way to this particular supermarket. For those who know me I think it is quite obvious that Italian supermarkets have so far been of an obscure nature to me. This led to a rather ungentle encounter with at least theoutskirts of the supermarket. You never know, there may be a point in time where I can use that valuable information…