Nikola

Again a little late – I was too lazy to publish these pictures sooner. But anyway, we gathered in Sofie’s flat to make a small party to celebrate New year! The theme was StarTrek. Everybody was supposed to bring some light sword. I think me and Kamča, we won the content as our swords were not simply lightning, but also blinking and screaming!

František

František shaking and dancing…

František and Gikola

Nikola and Anička fighting

Nikola and Anička still fighting

Anička dead after the fight

Sylva with my sword

Sylva with my sword

Guy with a little of explosives

Sofie

Nikola

Opening the champagne

František and rocket

Somebody preparing fireworks

František, Nikola and Sofie

Anička

Somebody took my camera and shoot an animation of me and Kamča

Nikola loves her!

Kamča and Nikola, at first having own partners

Then they realised there is somebody else than the figures…

so after a while they started dancing together

and this is the ecstasy

Silver shining beasts

Vienna has always been a symbol of kitsch. It is as it had been at the kaiser monarchy, and it’s the same now.
As we have seen, a la mode are golden and pink pigs, silver deer and black dogs. And some other remaining
from previous years. Just judge yourself.

Black lady

Let’s begin with something mild.

Even in Hundertwasser’s museum are these

And also this shit in Hundertwasser’s museum

And what about thesse?!

Getting more gold

Even more posch bed

Silver

Silver socks detail

These shine more

Horse head

Also black dogs are popular (as well as black women)

Give us more black and pink!

On the market – kitsch for poor

I told you that this comes from the past

Golden bells in the Botanschegarten

A small exhibition

All pigs are popular

Pink pigs

Opera toilettes are a special piece of Vienne decadence. Just have a look yourself.

No comment

Toilette’s loge

Hundertwasserhaus

Hundertwasser is a renowned Austrian painter and architect that had incredibly cool ideas in architecture and makes really nice paintings. Read more in wikipedia. We have been to his museum in KunstaHausWien and we have seen Hundertwasserhaus that is nearby Kunsthaus. In the KunstHaus we have also seen an exhibition of photographies of Annie Leibowitz. Apparently, this museum had the best exhibition we have been to in Vienna. Website of Kunsthaus Wien 10 points of 10. (-;

Kunsthaus from outside

View from the top floor

Firealarm. Stylish (-;

Inside café where we had Sacher and cafe (a must in Vienna)

Bottles

Backyard of Kunsthaus

Hundertwasserhaus

Hundertwasserhaus

Selling sausages

We went to Vienna for a short trip just before Christmas. Vienna is amazing city. It is so much more cultural than Prague, so much more relaxed. I think people just care more about themselves and about the city. And you can feel it. However, I would appreciate a little warmer weather. It was so cold that I was almost not taking pictures… -20 degrees is not a good weather for a walk… (-; Next time!

Old tram

Parliament

Christmas market

Not stop! Stop!

St. Stephan

Street somewhere in the city centre

Sweets shop – so artificial…

Belvedere

Park in front of Belvedere

Belvedere

Inside Modern art museum

View over the city

These pictures are from archive from last summer from city Zlín. Zlín is famous because of Baťa and his shoe factory. He had helped to make a city from a village. He hired two architects – Gahura and Karfík. They both made a new city of a new age. Gahura came up with urbanistic plan and Karfík designed few legendary buildings like house for workers, Baťa skyscraper.

Skyscraper

Some photos are from museum in the famous Baťa scyscraper where is located city council.

Entrance to the sckyscraper

Scyscraper

Inside Baťa museum

Inside Baťa museum

Inside Baťa museum

Famous Baťa’s office in the lift

View through luxfer window

Skyscraper from the bottom

Skyscraper

An old factory

On the roof of the scyscraper

Trolleybuses

Kamča

Trolleybus

Baťa’s houses (from a car)

New university library

Theatre

View to the north

View to the south

Stolen in the train (-;

Designblok is an annual design exhibition that takes place in Prague. Pretty much every designer wants to be there. Sadly, lot of stuff it is quite shit as people just don’t care about quality of their presentation, but they prefer just to be there. Thus I’m not sure if it’s worth the time.

Geek’s workplace

At first, the organisation is quite shit – besides two main buildings, you have no idea where to go (it’s even hard to figure out those two buildings). The web is also quite shit – you have no idea where you should go, what is good and what is just crap. Information overcrowd… Secondly, there is not that much to see. Besides that, it’s quite commercial action. It looks like many companies and individuals just buy a place there to show their clothes or overpriced furniture by telling us just this is design, so it must be pricey… And then you make an idiot from yourself and go to the shop and you see what? Nothing… What more, as some exhibition halls are included in the project, they charge extra money for entry besides the money you paid for Designblok. It’s just some ridiculous money for one room with nothing – like DOX – I’m so glad I didn’t go there. Also lot of people dress like from advertisement to look cool (read as to look the same as most others there – young, promising, cool, modern, active, vital – append any modern cliche you can think of). Some people who came to exhibit probably prepared their works just a day before the exhibition. So at the end, you have a feeling that some works were cool, lot of ok design, but at some you ask yourself – what the fuck is this doing here?! The real question is a little different one – is this thing really worth the time? And I’m not really sure about that.

Kamča sleeping

Ok, it was enough of complaints! There were also some cool things!

Wall decoration

Porcelain

Modern flat must include a little bit of nature

Floor

Toasts

A small kitchen (-;

Cannot be open – wtf?

A light

A chair

Grabštejn – a village without church, but with a factory and a nice castle

One nice day I went with Kamča to a small afternoon trip to a castle Grabštejn near Liberec.

A mini submarine

Abandoned home

Chrastava train station

Train station Grabštejn – abandoned

Trees in the train station

National heritage institute

The first yard

In a yard of the castle

Kitchen from two centuries ago

Landscape near Grabštejn

McDonalds were not first with that logo!

Roof

Roof

Yard

In the tower

Stairs

In the basement

That’s how do they live here – with flowers

Grabštejn

Exhibition of gems

A small square in the middle of Bergamo old city

The last afternoon we rushed from Milan to Bergamo where we were supposed to take the airplane back to Prague.
I was pleasantly surprise how nice Bergamo was. It is a beautiful small city without much mess and tourists,
nicely cleaned, and nicely taken care of.

Bergamo fortification

View over the vast lowlands

A modern church next to our hostel

The way to the old city

Bergamo old city

An entrance bridge

A palace

Cathedral

Entrance to the cathedral

Isn’t there some similarity (-;

Milano Centrale – finally some monumental thing

The next day we headed to Milano. We spent some time there, being in some museums, and then
we headed to Bergamo from where our plane took off back to Prague.

Milanese tram

A lion in some museum

Hall

A statue

Do you see it?

Chinese art in Italy? (-;

A picture

Duck

What is this?

Railways station

Outside of the station

A horse on the top

The entrance hall

Western ticket office

Ceiling

A little crowded…

A fountain in the middle of a huge square in Padova

After we left Venezia, we went to Padova which is just 30km on the west. When we came to the city
centre, it was freaking hot. We couldn’t even walk. We had a great lunch with Kamča and Enrico
(Maruš was on the diet (-;). I think I like Italy a lot because of they know how to cook, and what
to cook (unlike we). I have never had there any foot which was not tasty.

We were picking wines just because of the label. When we liked it, we bought it. Actually, this turned out not to be a good strategy at all )-;

White&black and black&white

Townhall

Townhall – a detail

A window

A river (or a channel)

A lamp

We were on the market where they were selling just anything

And we had one of our best ice creams

Enrico would agree

Selling fruit

Maruš on fruit diet

The first aid

The next day we continued with La Biennale in Arsenale, and in some other buildings around the city. Arsenale wasn’t actually divided by countries, but more by artists. Sorry, I cannot present them, but you can perhaps find them in the catalog of La Biennale.

Textile decorations

I didn’t break any of those

Africa

Reich eagle

Bread

Cotton

Zeppelins

Cadillac

Bike tyres

Look into infinity

A pattern painting

Patterns

A pattern painting – detail

A pattern painting – a whole thing

Planes

Guy in the middle of a plate

Rock’n'roll

View to the garden

Unicorn

The first aid

A city

Mountains

Kamča watching glass balls with some pictures in it

The main reason why we went to Venezia were not the heaps of tourists. It was La biennale de Venezia, a modern art exhibition where many states exhibits its contemporary artists. It was really cool. However, I don’t know what to think about the czech presentation. Actually we still share our building with Slovaks. This year, there was nothing. Yes, nothing. Just some plants. Nothing else. We went through twice and we didn’t know what is it. Well, we haven’t seen nothing before. Ok, I like it as a joke. When I think about it, I really like it, but I don’t know if this is the best think to exhibit at the Biennale. Just a note that these are pictures from the first part.

Czechoslovakia (I have nothing against sharing building with Slovaks, but Czechslovakia is kinda over for more than 15 years!)

Anyway, I really liked building of Corea, exhibitions of Uruguay, Russia, Scandinavia, Denmark and Egypt. I think these were the best. Plus the cafeteria (-; Anyway, also have a look at the website of biennale – http://www.labiennale.org.

Canadian building

Australia (full of sucky videos like at every exhibition)

This guy was actually an animal

Germany

Emergency exit (-;

Scandinavia

Kamča

A Scandinavian classic

Russia

Like being a football player – really cool

This was not a part of exhibition

Venezuela or Columbia – not sure, sorry (-;

Virtual furniture

Denmark

Broken stairs

Gold is the colour!

I wouldn’t have a dinner here

Main building (no specific country)

A flower

Cafe

Cafeteria

Hungary

USA

Israel

I like their letters

On the island

Flower boat

Egypt

Egyptian cats

Calatrava’s bridge

The first thing you would do in Venezia is to cross a new Calatrava’s bridge. It’s been built just couple of months
ago, and it has to be remade again. He just fucked up one thing. The glass is falling down. Hmmm… I wouldn’t expect
anything like that from guy that makes the best bridges in the world… Anyway it’s beautiful, I really like it!

Kamča in Enrico’s glasses

These pictures are from the second and the third day we were in Venezia. The pictures from the biennale are still about
to be prepared.

Channel

A bus (ferry) stop

View through a bridge

On the seaside

A church

A seaside

St. Marco square and a duke palace

A parking lot

Who said this city is overcrowded?

A bridge

Maruš calls this a diet, I call this a massive portion of icecream (-;

A river gate

Entrance to the military base

Reflection

Channel

Channel

Another cheap trick on tourists. A waterfall…

Inside a Ferrari shop

Human slavery hasn’t died yet

Mary

They should be glad this boat transported them on a shore

No, this tower is really skewed

A channel

Cementery

The last picture shows again the Calatrava’s bridge

Saint Marco square

The next day we arrived to Venezia. After we got the accomodation in a camp, we jumped on the bus and headed to the city. The city is nice,
but it’s way too overcrowded. Despite the fact that the most of the city is too touristic, you can still find many streets without anybody.
And it’s also quite expensive as well – about twice more than the rest of places we have been to.

In front of the bus station

A bridge

Carnival masks

Carnival masks

The masks are sold everywhere

Crowded street

Entrance to the house

As I said, some street are without people

Beware of gondolas

Entrance to the house and a car… sorry boat…

A street

Entrance to basement… (-;

A cat

Channel

Kamča

Sea

Strange city, some buildings are without windows…

Locals

Boat

Laundry

Gondola driver

A touristic bridge

The main channel

Gondola

Traffic jam

Enrico

A sharp curve

A parking lot

We were not doing the last one (-;

Cathedral

Saint Marco square

Duke’s palace’

A bell

Kiosk and a fallen chair

Parking lot

Masks

Army, not a cloth shop

Gondolas are actually quite luxury boats

Beer time

(-;

Channel at night

Channel at night

Castle of Simione

In the night Enrico arrived from London, so our crew was complete. The next day we got off Milano and headed to Lago di Garda and later to Verona. The first stop was in Simione, a small touristic town in the middle of Lago di Garda. Well, I have just one or two pictures from there because my batteries flat down. So the rest is from Verona. In the evening we found an accommodation in some small village nearby, and had a great dinner with a great desert… (-;

Our crew leaving hotel

Kamča

Lago di Garda

Channel in Simione

Kamča, Maruš and Enrico

Verona arena

Streets

Guy selling newspapers and magazines

Piazza del signori

Piazza del signori

Market

A modern shop in an ancient house

Hungry Enrico (-;

Maruš was eating every word…

Enrico

A statue

A classy bike

An Italian classic

Ponte Pietra

Nice paintings

Riverside

Church and crane

A balcony

A nice house

Enrico

Falling walls

Tower of Duomo

Lion

Duomo

Sidestreet

Closing market

Police

Designed by red pepper (-;

Gate we went though

A gate I saw during random walk in the streets

This summer I went just once abroad. Me, Kamča and Marie went together to the northern Italy where we had a pleasant guide in an Italian friend Enrico. We have been to Milan, Lago di Garda, Verona, Venezia, Padova and Bergamo. There are pictures from the first day from Milano.

At the airport in Prague

Entrance to Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Maruš and Kamča

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Ferrari – not just cars… but also a lot of crap under this brand

The main square with Galleria Vittorio Emanuele and Duomo

Details of duomo

Bikes to rent

Bikes to rent

Kamča

Passing trams

Just a strange building

Golden organ

View through

A centre of all design

Kamča drinking from water fountain

Hmmmm, Italian classic

Yellow trams, Milanese classic

Sculptures in the park

Day after the birthday, we went to the park to play frisbee, and to drink some beers.

Maky

Míša and Sofie

Kamča

Sofie catching the frisbee

Matouš

Sofie

Nikola

Matouš

Me, Maky, Kamča and Matouš

Tourists…

Clock at the townhall

Vašek doing something with the model of the city centre

Vašek riding a motorbike

Sleeping Matouš

Nikola, me, Kamča and sleeping Matouš

Sleeping Matouš

Vašek and Matouš eating late dinner

Dissolved bonbon

We continued with building during the night and the next day. We finished the buildings inside, and made some roofs, and finished up everything. And how did we end? Well, quite simply, we ate the whole castle… (-;

Buildings inside

Putting floor on the walls

Nikola

Nikola

Some more water, please

Kamča

Pepa watching

The castle in the evening, the next day

The first tower was just assembled

Detail of the cheese tower

Castle from the back

The castle with the second, cheese and ham tower

Let’s eat it!

Everybody was a little shy, but Pepa got to the work really rapidly

Castle in the middle of destruction

Just keep everything clean

Me

Monkey and the deer

Almost eaten

After the destruction

When I arrived to Nikola’s place, there was just a desk with some perník with green topping on it. The construction itself had started just some minutes before my arrival and continued till early morning hours…

just the beginning

Preparing dough for walls

Refreshment… It was exhausting, specially for those at the computer…

The puppets watching us

Beer was served in small portions, but in a big amount

Serial killer’s face (-;

Then we started putting walls together with a glue from sugar

This is how was it put together

In the mean time, we were constructing the bridge from bonbons

Magor showing his great muscles

(-;

The bridge is finished (-;

Anička and Magor

Some walls up

Nikola licking her fingers…

Kamča

The castle from top

Dinner time, many hungry people, lot of great spaghetti with zucchini

Hmmmm

Now let’s make some water

It was a pain to get the jelly done

Busy Sylva

Nikola with jelly

Now it was the time to put the water where it should be

Nikola

Entrance to the castle

Sylva

People in the garden…

As the dark was coming, people were getting mad. Specially Supo, and the orange beauty Magor… (-;

Magor doesn’t know what to do… (-;

Magor riding Supo II.

Supo

Honzík and Pepa

Pepa

Maky and Kamča

A secret drink

Just don’t touch any food with hand

Sofie

Cheers!

Pepa

Václav

So it was that big!

Pepa and Magor

Supo on the floor

Magor, Pepa and Supo

Supo

Had

Supo is trying something with Anička

Anička

Sylva and Václav

So the next time, there will be some pictures of the cake.

Kamča, Nikola and Václav

A castle

Nikola’s and Sylva’s birthday party is an annual event that is gaining stronger and stronger popularity, and more and more people are coming. This year, we also did a birthday cake, but not a kid as the last time, but a sweet castle.

Doing snacks

Honzík

Sylva took care about the beer (-;

And Honzík doesn’t know how to start it up

Pepa passes through the fence

Sofie

Preparing our security guy

He even got a gun

They started eating so early!

Snack

At this party, no animals were killed or hurt…

When Nikola tells you she doesn’t smoke, you know what…

Sylva and her present

Kamča

Anička

Preparing Magor’s beer hand

It’s done!

And in action

Supo was a present himself

Ok, so for this time, we end here. The next part tomorrow, and as you might guess, it got a little wilder (-;

Nikola and a pig

Martin and Tomáš waiting

The last day of the weekend in Nový Hrozenkov, we went to a small trip (as usually) to a tourist cottage Kohútka on the Czech-Slovak border. MAP and website.

Pavlík, a happy guy

Kamča picking some forest berries

Landskape in Beskydy mountains

Cottage Kohútka

Mountain patrol

Pavlík

Two men prepared to fight

Martin and Bucina

Martin and Bucina and dog

A field on the other hill

Warning! A state border

When light signal is broken and there is snow, this is the schedule of allowed times going uphill and downhill.

Trisťa waiting for us

View thru the forest

Trisťa hunting something

Trisťa

Martin is showing us we are his best friends

Deer

Trisťa far away

Kamča picking some berries

View from Kohútka to the side we have never been to

Weighlifting competition in Nový Hrozenkov

Nový Hrozenkov is a village of weightlifters. As we have learned, the people don’t do anything else than lift these heavy weights. At the first look they are much more robust than the normal population. Just have a look at the women how strong they are!

At every village even, there must be a grilled pig…

So how does this competition looks like?

Group laughing Pavel

Pavel wanted to show us again that he is not an average animator sitting all the time in front of his computer, but that he is also doing something more. So he brought his boxing gloves and started showing us how good he is… (-;

Pavel before fight

Pavel under Mimoň’s attack

Pavel and Mimoň

Pavel trying to beat Mimoň, but guess who is laughing (-;

Peťa and Karel

Peťa in bush

Don’t forget to hide your face when you attack

Pavel and Miloš

Pavel getting crazy, it’s better to run away

Miloš is still laughing…

Martin was showing us who is the king

Feel the pain

Despite the previous picture, Pavel was hardly loosing…

Missed one

Petra sleeping

As usually, we spend a weekend every year at Pavel’s weekend house strengthening our brotherhood.

Martin has a reason to be happy

Somewhere are tractors, somewhere are horses and somewhere

Beer

Our cinema

Some farm

Sheep

On the way to the water

Fields

Not a car, a house

River

Our crew

I agree, they are disgusting

Water

Village in the evening

In the evening, we didn’t want to drink with the others, but we rather separated and played pétanque.

The most important things for pétanque – wine

Pétanque balls

A train

Kamča

Oldřich is watching how good Martin is

The best one is leaving us

Wine….

Pétanque

Tomáš playing

The last day we spent mostly hanging out in various pubs. No wonder, it was way too hot. At night, we have seen a theatre.

Beerfather

Kamča

Kamča

Dancing on the cooking-stove

Warning: it is forbidden to play this movies on public

Horse sausage

Slovácké muzeum

Port

Theatre

Theatre

Kino Hvězda at night

Kino Hvězda at night

Triple with black glasses

We spent the second day mostly going around various pubs, sometimes we went to watch some film, and in the evening we went to concert of a band called Hm.

Like in a village

UFO…

Sex club

Trabant

Gardening

People leaving hockey stadium after some film

Sylva

Hm concert

RIght before the concert

Lonely violin

Hm……

Almost Magor

Old farm

Summer Film School (LFS) is not really a school of film, but rather an independent film festival with some additional tutorials and presentations about films for public. But for me it usually means watching some films in between visiting local bars. LFS takes place in the last two weeks every july in Uherské Hradiště. This year was the first year without former arts director Jiří Králík which had a good reputation for being arts director, but was horrible as a manager and what more he was loosing money, distracting sponsor and doing such crazy things. And as we know, you never want to loose or waste any money. You can find out more at http://www.lfs.cz/

Verča

This year, I went there for there for three days. LFS was not really bad this year, but I reckon the previous years were more interesting for me. Maybe in the previous year I spent more times in the pubs and then watching any film was kinda better… Or maybe I spent more time in cinemas… I don’t know… (-;

We were so lucky to wait half hour to get around this

A detail

We took train from Prague to Uherské Hradiště, but there were two unexpected accidents on the way. In the first one, we had to wait for about half hour to get from one track to another parallel because there was a train that slipped off the track and so we had to avoid it. Czech Railways couldn’t work any faster! And few kilometres before Olomouc somebody jumped bellow a train heading towards us, so we were waiting again…

Řezané pivo – dark top, light bottom

In Uherské Hradiště we stayed at Verča, a friend of Kamila. Later arrived also Sylva and my brother. The first day afternoon, just after we arrived, we went to a pub in an old farm for a luxury beer.

On the way to beer

Horses

Old farm

Kamča and Verča

Řezané pivo – dark top, light bottom

Horse licking iron

Path around Morava river in Uherské Hradiště

La pétanque is a traditional french game played all around France. Two weeks ago me, Kamča and Aurélien went to play it to the park in Nusle. Rules @ Wikipedia.

Aurélien

Aurélien also brought Pastis, anise flavoured French liqueor.

Kamča

Me

Kamča

Kamča

Railways bridge

Aurélien and Kamča

Kamča

Steak

Shama

Highway bridge

One of the cubistic houses on the way to the park

Štěpánka and Kamča at the map of local trails

One day when it wasn’t raining in Liberec, we went to a small walk behind the town to the forest…

Map of local trails

Filling bottles

Filling bottles

Štěpánka

Štěpánka

Potraviny – groceries

Where to go?

Laboratory of sports (-;

Štěpánka poured her soup over all the table

Zebra (= road crossing)