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Hallstatt, Upper Austria July '17 I could cross so many spots from my "places to visit before I die" list in the last two or three years, including Iceland, Kutna Hora, Cracow, Auschwitz, and now the town of Hallstatt. It's full of tourists, but utterly beautiful. The bone chapel with the handpainted skulls was cool.

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Altes Hallenbad, Feldkirch July '17 Cat Power.

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Appenzell, Switzerland July '17 We went to Vorarlberg for a few days and had a nice hike in the Swiss Alps. That place was amazing. It was so fucking hot and exhausting that I just had to jump into that cold lake. But as you can see in my satisfied face, it was the best thing to do.

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Krems an der Donau May '17 I finally saw The Body and Einstürzende Neubauten playing live.

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Wien April '17

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Linz February '17 Long time since my last posting. I think the reason for neglecting this blog was that I had a fucking stressful time at work and university in the last months. It is more intense than I would have expected, but that's how it is, not gonna whine about it. Anyways, also nice things happened that I didn't write about, and that is what I want to catch up now. In February my band recorded an album. Our first one, so it means a lot to me. We weren't really active anymore since about 3 years and we almost were about to quit, but recording these last songs we wrote during the years was a thing we ultimately wanted to do. The recordings turned out great, I am more than happy about them. The record is not out yet, our artwork is still not finished and it is still going to be a long way. But I know already it is going to be worth it, if only for me personally.

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I am reading The Thin Red Line by James Jones and it's a masterpiece.

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One of our clients died

A 53 year old homeless man, passed away while sleeping in his tent. He was just about to marry a woman he got to know on the streets. His funeral was today, a month after he died. The city gave him a "poor man's burial" in the early morning at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof. I was there with two colleagues. It was my first funeral in Vienna and my first one of a homeless man. We walked 20 minutes through the cold and silent cemetery to the hall where they layed out his casket. Except us, there were three other people there. Only three people. For a 53 year old man who had friends and a loving family (once). There was his fiancée and two friends of her. We stood beside the casket and lighted candles, when the morticians came and put him on a car. We slowly walked behind it to the grave. After 20 more minutes we reached it. A simple hole in the ground with a wooden sign that only had his name on it. The mortician let down the casket. The few of us stood around the hole and threw some soil and roses in it. The friend of his fiancée dropped a bottle of wine on the casket. I loved that beautiful gesture. We watched the mortician shoveling up the grave for a while, then we left. Why am I telling this? It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Not only the death of a man, but the fact that nobody cared about it. It made me think a lot and I am sure I made an experience that changed my view on a lot of things.

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Wien-Leopoldstadt November ‘16 A quite normal Sunday at my job: One of our clients got a Hausverbot, then he called the police from a telephone box and said there is a bomb in a black bag. They came with five cars, 15 men/women, two explosives-experts and a search dog. They blocked the road and searched the building for the bomb. Of course without success. I can’t deny I had a lot of fun that afternoon.

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Kutna Hora, Czech Republic November '16 Oh and finally we managed to stop at the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora on our way to Dresden. A 600 year old church decorated with skulls and bones of 10,000 people who died of the plague and during wars. It's a unique place you can't find somewhere else in the world. Truly an intense experience.

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Dresden November '16 I spent the weekend in Dresden/Eastern Germany and I got treated good again, as you can see. Meeting friends, drinking beer, eating a lot of awesome vegan junkfood and seeing Dead Congregation play was great. Their drummer is a machine and they blew me away. Also stocked up my Pfeffi supplies. I love roadtrips.

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KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland September '16 "When the political prisoners arrived, the first thing they told them was: There is only one way out of here. Through the smokestacks." Not so long ago, this was the worst place on earth. A man-made hell. You can try hard to imagine what suffering people had to undergo there, but it's just not possible. It goes beyond all imagination. 1.5 million humans were shot, gassed, beaten, tortured, starved, froze to death, died of diseases, were burned. May this never happen again.

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Krakow and former concentration camp Plaszow, Poland September '16 I wanted to go to Krakow since many years. One reason was that Schindler's List belongs to my favourite movies and books. Most of the happenings took place here and Spielberg used original sets. And because I like to read a lot about the Shoah, I just had to see those places, period. First there is this little fragment of the old ghetto wall, the only one that is still left today. The second photo shows the memorial to the jews from the ghetto on their deportation site, each chair represents 1,000 victims. Then there's me in front of Schindler's factory, where he saved his workers from the SS. The building was used as a factory until 2002, today it's a museum. If you have seen Schindler's List (seriously, who hasn't) you will remember the scene where KZ commander Amon Göth shoots random prisoners from his house. Göth's real house is the one on the fourth photo. I got the goosebumps when I stood in front of it. The owner does not seem to share those feelings because otherwise he wouldn't live in that creepy thing. They are renovating it at the moment. If you walk up a little gravel path (called Abrahama) near the house you get to the site of the former concentration camp Plaszow. There is nothing left of it, only three memorials remind you what happenend here. The biggest one is The Memorial of Torn-out Hearts, which fascinated me. The five figures, representing the five countries of the victims, with heads bent under the weight of a heavy stone block, representing their slave work, have a crack across their chests, standing for their taken lives. There are huge letters on the back, dedicating the memorial to the martyrs of the Holocaust. Nearby, really next to it, there is a limestone quarry, where they filmed the scenes for the KZ. It is surrounded by barbwire. Obviously they don't want people to stroll around there. But the fence is broken on some points so you can easily get to the cliffs and even down there. It is completely overgrown with grass and trees today, but there are still things there that they left after filming. Like fences and the (fake) gravestones on the floor that you will also remember from the movie. And at last those really creepy old and rusty metal towers (on the right side of the photo). They are there since decades and you can spot them several times in Schindler's List, for example in the final part when they hang Göth.

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Krakow, Poland September '16 It was a pretty cool Summer. I could cross many nice places from my "things to see before I die" list. Now also Krakow. I have been to Poland once before, and even though I realized it was much nicer than I thought, I somehow still had a kinda negative impression. Until now, because Krakow showed me again that Poland is actually a really cool country and the cities are very beautiful. I liked the old houses, which we also have in Vienna, but the difference is that the ones in Krakow look REALLY old because they are all gray and not newly painted every few years. It doesn't make them look fucked up or something, but rather ancient and rustic. The old town is amazing and the former jewish district Kazimierz has a lot to offer, including nice vegan food. It was so good and so cheap and we ate many tortillas and burgers. And of course we took a walk through the (new) jewish cemetery, which reminded me a little bit of the one in Berlin, but it was much wilder, overgrown and there was that forest-feeling.

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Iceland

Goal achieved. I'm back from Iceland. I don't know what to say, besides that it was greater than I could have imagined and the best trip ever. We slept in a fucking cold and wet tent every night, drove 3.073 kilometers on the shittiest roads, spent a ridiculous amount of money on tickets, food, gasoline and rent, but without doubt I'd do it right again. Almost 10 years of waiting to do this were absolutely worth it. And I had the best company one could ask for. (Thanks for sharing my pleasure and suffering.) I could post hundreds of photos, but they could not give a glimpse of the beauty I have experienced. Maybe a few ones later. Now catching up on some sleep.

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Krapfenwaldlbad, Wien July '16

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Critical Mass Vienna, Reichsbrücke May '16