Gandalf, the tattooed girl...

Recently I visited a medieval market in a nearby town with my family. After paying six Euros entrance fee and getting my hand stamped I entered the baroque town center. Market stalls were offering chain mails, knights armor, swords, clothing and many other “medieval”stuff. If I asked a salesmen for the price he would most likely answer me in a fake medieval accent - which basically meant re-arranging grammatically correct sentences to make them sound like nonsense and creating words that surely never existed “back in the old days”. Of course there was the obligatory tournament in the afternoon with a few Czech knights. Not only liquer and cigaretts are cheap in the Czech Republic!

People with medieval outfit had free entry. Saving six bucks of course lead to a lot of witches, wizards, elves and even some knights and knaves floating the market. But - there is a catch, didn’t witches and wizards end up being burned alive if ordinary people got aware of their profession? And aren’t elves an extinct species of insects whipped out by global warming and El Nino?

Of course not on a modern version medieval market - Gandalf, the blond girl with a tattoo on the forearm and on the lower back is not in danger to end up on a village barbecue. She and her elvish friends from Middle Earth are save these days. Over all I counted ten girls with a tattoo on their lower back and either an elvish outfit or a wizard stick like in Lord of the Rings. Thank god this wasn't a high socity party, otherwhise there would have been a huge copycat fight with body parts beeing cut of! A bare midriff Ian McKellen in the LOTR movies would have been disturbing, but the 20something blond female version is actually very sexy.

Well, I had a good time at the (fantasy meets) medieval market, sipped my coke from a plastic cup, watched the tournament with knights wearing rubber made chain mails and wooden swoards and thought how much more fun this could be if only I where 15 years younger…

And then there was this one day when I woke up...

...could not find my daily newspaper on the doorstep, turned on the Radio and there was no music, switched on the TV and CNN was not reporting about anything. There was no Internet-Connection and I finally realized – something really bad must have happened last night…

But if the media is not able to report about it, I might not even be able to wake up that day at all.

Linz at night

Linz in Upper Austria, last night!

The McDonald’s Conspiracy…

There have been a few titles for this stories, instead of deleting them like usual, I decided to add them all –

Banalities of Life
The Golden Double Arch Mystery
Lunch-break-thoughts of an office clerk
Brainwashed?
The Mc Files

Every now and then I visit McDonalds, or the “American Embassy”, as I tend to call it, during my lunch break . Today, once again my addiction for fat and fast food took over and my stomach called for some French Fries, Diet Coke and a Hamburger Royal TS (quarter pounder), my standard meal. It’s like a recorded message when I place my order. It’s almost ridiculous on how standardized the procedure has become for me.

Today I noticed something that has never occurred to me before. My college and I went to McDonalds half an hour earlier then usual, to prevent a queue. Unfortunately there were already people waiting in line, I assume due to the fact that only two counters were open. While I was standing in line I watched the huge pictures of salads, different kind of burgers and various side-orders. I decided to add a tuna salad to my standar meal. No big deal to add “and the tuna salad” to my tape-like standard order.

At that very moment I had this strange thought if McDonalds is actually interested in having people stand in line? Making us watch those huge pictures of food for a few minutes to increase sales? If I just walk in to an empty counter, I probably wouldn’t have thought of adding the extra salad. By spending some extra time, thinking of how delicious the salads on the picture look I changed my mind.

Well, if that is indeed the plan and I’m light-brainwashed into spending more money on fast food then I intended to, I might should quit fast food for good. (Just kidding…)

Every aspect of life…

Recently one of my relatives passed away and the whole family gathered for the funeral. It was a sad day for me, I had know that relative all my life. When the funeral was about to start, one of the guests pulled out a digital camera and started taking pictures of the coffin. I have to admit that this might have been one of the most bizarre moments in my life. I was sitting right behind the person who took the pictures and could just watch in disbelief as the camera made that “click” sound and the picture of the coffin appeared on the screen. Maybe the picture was for someone who could not attend a funeral but even that seemed like a very odd idea to me.

I usually carry my camera with me all the time and there is hardly anything I would not take a pictures of, but it has never entered my mind to capture something as sad and depressing as the coffin at a funeral. I just can’t see any point in that. Is this a way to mourn the dead? Or is it just to satisfy curiosity.

We can capture every moment, but I don’t think we need to. Some moments are so special and intimate, they are simply to strong for the lens of a camera.

Mystery Muehlviertel

The heavy rainfalls of the past view days created this wonderfull scenery in the early evening, just before sunset.

Little Note for a very special friend

Dear Erin!

It has bean a wonderfull year getting to know you - I hope you are back save in Canada with your family. Thanks for the many little things that made life a little birghter the past year.

Ps: Never ask the decision ball any serious questions again ;-)!

I wish you all the best! We will all miss you!

I’m dreaming…

Last weekend I had one of the most beautiful dreams in my entire life. It wasn’t one of those dreams where I become incredibly rich and realize within the dream that this must be a dream, but one where I was sure that it was a dream and actually just enjoyed what was going on. The dream wasn’t about something that would ultimately change my life, but a very simple “perfect” situation.

After all, memories are memories, if you remember a dream or something that actually happened, where is the difference?