Oslo City Hall
If you’ve already watched Barack Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech today (if you haven’t, at least give it a read), you probably caught at least a glimpse or two of Oslo’s stunning City Hall. I attend an event there each summer, and can’t ever get enough. At first glance, it’s not an inspired piece of architecture from the outside, but it grows on you. Inside is a visual feast.
Everywhere you walk you’ll face fabulously massive murals. The first one below, in a reception room, is one you won’t find in any city hall in the USA. At bottom are two of several reliefs on the exterior near the main entrance.
More pics of Oslo City Hall here, and more pics from Oslo here. A little more about visiting Oslo (last updated in 2007) here.
Oslo City Hall, originally uploaded by pirano.
LJ Pic of the Day
The holiday lights were flicked on in Ljubljana last week. I’ve been here for nearly six years now and novelty has yet to wear off. The city looks quite appealing and festive. This is castle hill in the old town center.
Ljubljana 0178, originally uploaded by pirano.
Jancis Robinson on Slovenian wines
Better late than never. Just found an article published more than a year-and-a-half ago by renowned wine writer and critic Jancis Robinson, but still quite useful.
“Slovenia’s is possibly the most unusual wine culture in the world,” Robinson, author of The Oxford Companion to Wine, wrote in this piece on her website, entitled “Slovenia – land of extreme winemaking“.
She also has 150 detailed reviews, but you have to pay for those.
goriska brda, originally uploaded by pirano.
November pic(k)s
Thrilled I finally got to watch, listen to and dance along with Youssou N’Dour last month! This was taken at the Salle des Etoiles in Monaco, probably my favorite pic shot in November. Here he was singing this. A few more shots of the Senegalese legend are here.
The rest of my nearly-dandy dozen from the month, shot in Monaco, Milan, Venice and Ljubljana, are here.
Previous pic(k)s of the month: [Oct 09] [Sep 09] [Aug 09] [Jul 09] [Jun 09] [May 09] [Apr 09] [Mar 09] [Feb 09] [Jan 09] [2008]
Youssou N’Dour 09, originally uploaded by pirano.
October pic(k)s
Somehow, I missed a month with this monthly review. Maybe because it took a while to recover from this hike to Kamniško Sedlo, a mountain ridge/pass in Slovenia’s Kamnik Alps. It’s not something I usually wake up for at 6am on a Saturday morning, and the steep hike, for an unfit misfit like myself, was predictably unpleasant. But in the most pleasant sort of way. Stunning views. According to SLO wiki, it’s 1903m (6243ft). This is the view to the east, with the well-known Logarska dolina (valley) down to the left. All things considered, one of my favorite pics shot in October.
More shots to and from the top are on flickr here, and a few more on Facebook here.
My meticulously selected dandy dozen+ for the month, all shot in Slovenia, is here.
Previous pic(k)s of the month: [Sep 09] [Aug 09] [Jul 09] [Jun 09] [May 09] [Apr 09] [Mar 09] [Feb 09] [Jan 09] [2008]
Kamniško Sedlo 11, originally uploaded by pirano.
Santomas, Slovenia’s priciest wines, in brief
A nice write-up late last month in the Financial Times about Santomas, one of Slovenia’s priciest wineries. I’ve tried several and don’t think that they’re unworthy of their €10-25/bottle price tags, but as UK wine writer and consultant Caroline Gilby points out, they, and others like them, are not at all an easy sell internationally:
Personally I like the Santomas label, but they are on the pricey side and need to be hand-sold by people who can explain they are wines unique to that corner of Slovenia. It’s the position for most Slovenian producers, as they are unlikely to be able to hit the volumes and pricing required for true mass market exposure, they need a niche.
The winery’s website is here, and some reviews here and here.
Feed the World + 25
Band Aid recorded this on November 25, 1984 (you would have known that if you’d have read this recently). I have to say, watching these faces and hilarious hairstyles does make me feel a bit old. And I never feel old.
Scuba diving in an Austrian meadow
Actually, it’s the Grüner See in Austria’s Styria, which almost completely dries out in the autumn and fills with melting snow in the spring. Stunning little film, complete with submerged benches, trail markers, and hiking paths.
Rotating Kitchen
By Dutch artist Zeger Reyes.
Not everyone has a spare 11-and-a-half minutes to watch a kitchen rotate. So here’s a sped-up 61 second version.
Ljubljana’s newest bridge
Construction of a new bridge over the Ljubljanica, mesarski most, connecting the central market with the river’s north bank, began late last month. Here’s a video via the daily Dnevnik of what it’s going to look like. More about this and related projects here.
Pollution in China
Some terrific –and terrifying– photos of pollution in China, by Chinese photographer Lu Guang. He recently won a $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant for his documentary project aptly entitled, “Pollution in China”. Check out more here.
How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan
Good NYT report on the decision-making process for what is now his war.
Two days later, Mr. Obama flew to West Point to give his speech. After three months of agonizing, he seemed surprisingly serene. “He was,” said one adviser, “totally at peace.”
Ljubljana 110, originally uploaded by pirano.
Kundera on ‘Kafkan’ stories
Came across this entertaining vignette last night in Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel (1986):
In one of his books, my friend Josef Skvorecky tells this true story:
An engineer from Prague is invited to a professional conference in London, So he goes, takes part in the proceedings, and returns to Prague. Some hours after his return, sitting in his office, he picks ups Rude Pravo -the official daily paper of the Party- and reads: A Czech engineer, attending a conference in London, has made a slanderous statement about his socialist homeland to the western press and has decided to stay in the West.
Illegal emigration combined with a statement of that kind is no trifle. It would be worth twenty years in prison. Our engineer can’t believe his eyes. But there’s no doubt about it, the article refers to him. His secretary, coming into his office, is shocked to see him: My God, she says, you’re back! I don’t understand – did you see what they wrote about you?
The engineer sees the fear in his secretary’s eyes. What can he do? He rushes to the Rudo Pravo office. He finds the editor responsible for the story. The editor apologizes; yes, it really is an awkward business, but he, the editor, has nothing to do with it, he got the text of the article direct from the Ministry of the Interior.
So the engineer goes off to the Ministry. There they say yes, of course, it’s all a mistake, but they, the Ministry, have nothing to do with it, they got the report on the engineer from the intelligence people at the London embassy. The engineer asks for a retraction. No, he’s told, they never retract, but nothing can happen to him, he has nothing to worry about.
But the engineer does worry. He soon realizes that all of a sudden he’s being closely watched, that his telephone is tapped, and that he’s being followed in the street. He sleeps poorly and has nightmares until, unable to bear the pressure any longer, he takes a lot of real risks to leave the country illegally. And so he actually becomes an émigré.
Here’s a review of The Art of the Novel, originally published in The Guardian in 1988.
We, by Jaume Plensa (Prague 03), originally uploaded by pirano.
Happy birthday Prešeren!
France Prešeren, Slovenia’s most famous poet and writer, would have been 209 today. Above is a pair enjoying a mid-afternoon snooze last Spring in the square in Ljubljana which bears his name. Words and phrases he molded form Slovenia’s national anthem, a sing-along most consider a drinking song.
So, in the name of Prešeren, who lived to be just a few years older than Elvis, let’s praise and remember good song writing.
Ljubljana 0154, originally uploaded by pirano.
