Berlin

I go to Berlin to see my friend Nuno and to visit Art Forum, the official Berlin art fair. I get to see Berlin's best sides. The weather is warm and sunny, there is not only one art fair, but there are three. There are a lot of gallery openings and big museum shows. I also see "Kaprow City", a new play by Christoph Schlingensief at Volksbühne which is a great anarchistic mess. Quite a few of the actors seem to be retarded. Nevertheless it's interesting to watch them play.
The city is superinspiring and relaxed. The greatest thing about berlin is its liberalism which makes a lot of things happen.

A Photo Shooting

I get a job as set designer for a photography campaign. A photo series is shot for a (female) hunters’ calendar. The concept is to make catwalks in nature, where the hunters get watched by stuffed animals. It is a huge production. We are around 15 people on the set.
The hunters are dressed in beautiful clothes by a fashion designer. The style is somewhere between the Habsburg Empire and Fellini. We shoot on various locations near the Ötscher in Lower Austria, on a mountain at 1800m altitude, by a waterfall in Styria and at Neusiedler See.
In two trucks we transport around 200 stuffed animals from bears and deer to birds. The whole setup of carrying around dead animals is rather bizarre and also interesting.
The photos turn out to be beautiful and surreal.

Mallorca

I am invited to Mallorca to attend a friend’s wedding in Port d’Andratx near La Palma. The wedding takes place in a little church at the seaside. Then we are taken to the port of La Palma and have a three hours cruise on an old wooden ship.

In the evening we are invited to a beautiful finca in the mountains where the wedding party takes place.

The next days we rent a car and drive around the island. We discover beautiful landscapes of mountains, rocks, forests and a deep blue sea. I begin to understand why that many people either go on holidays to Mallorca or buy a house there. The climate is extremely pleasant, too.

Sinaia

is a mountain resort in the middle range Karpats in Romania. We visit the Peles Castle, the summer residence of King Karl I., a member of the German Hohenzollern family. Karl I. was made the first king of Romania (1877-1914) after 400 years of Turkish occupation. He was called 1866 by the Romanians to unite the provinces of Wallachia and Moldova and then was declared king of Romania in 1877 after an independance war against the Ottoman Empire.

On the way to the castle we pass a blind bear which is held as a tourist attraction (want a picture?). We have lunch in a restaurant where we meet the Lover Cat. A Siamese cat approaches Ioana. She sits down on the floor in front of Ioana and watches her for two minutes, which is probably the time she needs to figure somebody out. Then she jumps onto her lap. Ioana caresses her and the Lover Cat slowly makes her way up towards Ioana's neck. She then starts to lick it and does so three times.

Fat Boy Slim

We go to the Romanian seaside to a place near Constanta. Fat Boy Slim plays a dj-set in a resort called Mamaia. Some 10,000 people are expected to come.
He starts his set with the vocals of "Praise You" mixed with a music and beat different from the original. The gig takes place at the beach. The stage is huge, it has video projections and dancers.
Norman Cook grins like a Cheshire cat during his set. I very much suppose that he is on pills. He sometimes takes a break from dj-ing and sits down on the edge of the stage smiling at his audience.