Voilà le soufflé!

It's rhubarb season and this souffle is absolutely amazing!

It's actually not so hard to make, so go ahead and buy those stalks!

Entropa

To my own delight, I finally got to visit David Cerny's Entropa which was on display at DOX Prague for almost a year now after it had finished shocking the Europeans in Brussels.

This David Cerny is one hell of an artist, he sure knows how to provoke and take the piss out of stiff issues in our world. I love his work because it's thought provoking and is not gratuitous - that is, there's always more than meets the eye and some meanings reveal themselves after a bit of thinking.

Of course, not all of his stuff may be emanating meanings and symbols but it's most always fun.

Have a look at the official booklet for some interpretations of the pieces, and think of some personal ones :)

Malta

Italy - football players getting off with they balls

Bulgaria - this has caused the greates rage, however there's more to its meaning. I've learned about the chilly relations between turks living in bulgaria and etnic bulgarians so this brings a whole new meaning to the depiction turkish squats.

France

Finland

Germany

Greece

Slovakia

Czech Republic

Slovenia

Holland

Latvia

Romania - we got away quite easy on this one!

Luxembourg

The big picture

Czech your wallet

 

This little 'innocent' price list has been in Karlstejn for at least 3 years because I remember it from the time i first visited the place...

I'm surprised that nobody pointed out the ridiculousness of having the price written in letters!! for people who understand czech (therefore more or less locals). They probably did this in order not to make the 'foreign tourist price' seem like a rip off.

Well, guess what, it makes it look as twice as much the rip off, having that embarassing price list hung up there...

Oh and, btw, I took the czech version of the tour (i think they give out some english leaflets actually) and it wasn't much, almost not worth the STOPADESAT KORUN... sheesh!!!

Cloudy days can be fun :)

PIXAR - Partly Cloudy
Vezi mai multe video din Film

Tort diplomat

by Cristina

prima incercare :)

George Orwell's cup of tea

Prague is a very cultural city: there is always something happening in any immaginable art field. However in some of them there's the language barrier which is totally understandable obviously. My basic Czech skills aren't of much use when attempting to see a play for instance.
There are fortunately some very good workarounds: I discovered here the non verbal theatre which can be fascinating really as I've already seen two such shows - it emphasises how speech is merely one of the many forms of communication, many times not necessarily the best one.

The second workaround is actually proper theatre in English. Thanks to the large expat community in Prague and to the people who care about their theatrical cravings, there is the Fringe festival every year for 8 or 9 years now.

And since i have a weakness for theatre I fully profited from this veritable 'theatre season' and saw 7 performances, some better than others. If you read till here you might be wondering about the title - well here it is: I saw a really good performance of George Orwell tonight, he was telling the audience stories from his life 'through' a really good actor who spoke at an alarming pace which really kept me attentive for the full hour and a half.

Apart from reading 1984 which is a chilling experience and an mind opener in respect to world politics I didn't really know much about him. Turns out he was a very interesting character, an idealist escaping from life's unfairness in his work. A thing he failed to mention in tonight's performance however - quite unforgivable for an Englishman trying to set the world on the proper course - was how to make proper tea!

Ti-am luat un martisor :)

Foreigners = strangers?

It's funny how in both Czech and Romanian, the word foreigner also means stranger. It might have to do with a common pre-judgement that whoever comes from a different country is not awarded the same neutrality that the americans give for instance (their whole nation is based on 'foreigners') but they're rather treaded with a certain degree of suspicion.

What's the connection with the gracious ice skater in the poster? Well, the show has a foreign name, traditionally Czechs don't really appreciate things that can't/won't be translated because the Czech language is rather conservative, although among the young there's a similar english-ifying frenzy as is with romanian 'corporatists'.

However, one should not judge harshly a bewildered and outraged inhabitant of Sidliste Dablice, a panelak neighborhood at the outskirts of Prague, who, eager to manifest his dissaproval of spoiling the list of cultural events in Prague displayed in the bus stop with this uninteligible event, wrote a warm 'up yours, foreigners !!' in a meticulous marker caligraphy. Notice the double underline!

Sunday's music

In today's episode (wow, guess what, it's the first one!), Amanda Palmer proudly presents:

Discover Amanda Palmer!

For an even whackyer one, check out Oasis:

Creativity in advertising

It seems that no matter how much copywriters try these days, all liquid drops won't splash in anything but horses, to be more specific, 2 horses, veeery similar horses.

After being rather impressed by the out-of-the-box ad for Carpatina, it seems that it was rather more of a copy-paste ad.

I found this by chance on the author's website and I'd rather doubt that Soplica belongs to the same group Carpatina does. But who knows, anything's possible.

The future is now

So it's all nice with all the eco friendly energy and all, but soon all this crap will obviously fail because nobody will afford it except the fancy-pansy, highly developed countries counting, what, 10% of the population?! What about all the rest who won't afford it? Well it's probably gonna be back to that seemingly never ending source of energy: good ol' nuclear power.

It's not to early to plan your future nuclear business, no sireey... say you'd want to forecast an eventual depletion of nuclear resources, or the half life of all that waste that will result from the processing?! Hire a bunch of phisicists (all over the place these days), pice of cake, right?! Well, it's not that simple, that dreaded Y10K is way closer than you'd think...

Gives you somethin' to chew over, doesn't it?

Milano, a city for all senses

and all tastes, obviously :)

things here deifinitely aren't what they seem to be

Closing time at "La Dolce Vita"

To cook or not to cook, isn't this the question?!

To infinity and beyond!

What makes Paris stand out

Well, actually, it's not this that makes it stand out in particular, but most of you might know already what the city is famous for, so for now I'll take you on a tour of interesting stuff we ran into while wondering through the streets of the most visited city in the world.

smart parking

"I forgot my spare battery home, may i please recharge my car?!"

1 mai muncitoresc

recognize him? Pope out of stripes

and the devil out of the stencil?!

this was inside a museum! - a heartstopping experience

new trends in parisian fashion: bio dress

flower supermarket, sheesh!

1st of may, Kurdish people easing their 20-30 admirers into comunism with some barbecue and oriental music

daca zice Gianmaria, asa o fi!

i hope you know french

actual shell with Holy water inside a Church

wonderful place near our hotel

martzipan (or sugar?!) figures in a candy shop, very realistic(plastic-wise) stuff

cake tops for gay weddings, nice adaptation

and, a really uninspired ad