Innovation and Relaunch

Good morning, everybody! I wonder if anybody has wondered what became of this blog, its obviously huge blog-team and this mysterious wemo? Well, some guys got hired away by huge major blogs, some got their masters in social studies and are playing guitar now in Salzburg's old city, and so forth. But now a relaunch is under way. A new blog, maybe with more German in it.

Vielleicht sind Sie ja irgendwann über diesen Blog gestolpert, wg. Salzburg und so? Und dann waren die Texte alle so ... englisch? Und wer sollte dieser Blogger überhaupt sein? 
Na ja, zur ersten Frage gibt es jetzt Hoffnung. Blogger wemo hat einen neuen Blog eröffnet – und der soll großteils in Deutsch, österreichischem Deutsch sein.

So, here's the header photo, here's the link, see you there!
Also, auf ein Neues, Header-Foto oben, Link hier, man sieht sich hoffentlich!

At the crossroads (Robert Johnson)

Legal or not, let's have another (Google) street view of the RR Xing at BG OH, thinking of slow trains coming (Bob Dylan), of the crossroads where Robert Johnson might or might not have met the Devil in the late 1920s, thinking of a great Austrian-Australian musician by the name of Chris Schermer, and of our mutual acquaintance, Czech-born fingerstyle guitarist Sammy Vomacka, thinking of Austrian fingerpicker Peter Ratzenbeck, and finally thinking of guitar genius Harri Stojka (they're all geniuses, but there's got to be some variation language-wise) – you might wonder, why have I heard of the one or the other but never of the rest?

Well, there's no business like show business: there might be people of equal artistic stature, but some never reach the fame (or fortune) of others …

Those life- and streetwise among us know, you won't need the Beatles or mother Mary to teach you: Let it be!

Posted with two special dedications:

To

Djedje – taxi-driving heavy metal paramedic of Palestine origins

and to

Martin – guitar pickin', foot-stompin', hyperactive waiter at republic café, who's had a beer with late jazzer Joe Zawinul at Finkenstein way back in another lifetime.

God (whoever that may be) bless them all!

wemo

An aside from the blogwart: wemo isn't ashamed to be purely & simply a fan at certain times of his life.

Take it or leave it, as you will.

ARGE reflections

It is heaven for the 'reflective photographer': The ARGEkultur-Beisl in Salzburg-Nonntal, the bar and restaurant of the long-standing cultural cooperative.

It had to move from its old location due to the construction of big Unipark facilities, a campus-like new home for mostly the humanities of Salzburg University, into a hugely complex new concrete building, seemingly weird due to the tiny lot it had to be built on: a 'Restfläche' as we call it in German … residual space?

Winter and architecture

We've had winter turned on and off recently; here it's the area heating plant next to river Salzach, in the background Gaisberg in biting frost …

Prize winning architecture, most locals hate it for all the raw concrete.

St. Blasius & Mönchsbergwand

On the waterfront

Grinding sparks

Hard work for Salzburg main train station.

John Tires disappearing

Festival Halls

"Back there you see them festival halls, no idea what's goin'on in there; is for all them rich folk …

and front it's the pedestrian zone – rilly dangerous every morning, a man might'a be run over by a delivery van there …"

Order, order!!!

This the blogwart speaking!

This is a blog by an academic from Salzburg city!

What's going on, and where's that language coming from?!

Bring on the night, once more

By day it was labelled 'pink sun screens', by night it's colored 'concrete poetry'.

Remembering summer

… and one of my favorite hang-outs, with original pre-1989 East Berlin charms, and a garden bar that looks like a steel container but really is poly… poly… something synthetic, from a ship-builder's, anyway,

… which has reminded the sound technician of Elvis Costello's old song Shipbuilding, which everybody in the blog team seems to like and remember. Hello to old Elvis! Gotta send some sturdy spex round to his villa, some day …

Kunst am Bau?

Elegance, a certain purity …

our new railway bridge across Salzach river … check Halle 1 architects for more of this and other works; they are currently the most 'present' exponents of modern building in Salzburg.

But if you look at all this, isn't there something missing? Something extra, something one would like to glue to that pure concrete?

You got it: Kunst am Bau!

It does not necessarily have to look like a combination of Nazi and bad socialist art, but all too often it does. Here it's been slightly smoothed over …

Allegories of the railway system, the Austrian state, Salzburg province, and Salzburg city, all those who paid for it; I'm not giving details of this esthetic shame ;–).

Train station blues

Happy New Year!

May there be light at the end of whatever tunnel, a clear view of the road ahead, and not too many traffic jams.

I've calmed down now, found the conditions at the Zen monastery not all too inviting – no headsets or earphones while raking the Zen garden, no admission for Macs older than OS X 10.5, no photographs while meditating … So here's for a new year of practical life in the everyday world! wemo

In the neighborhood

NaNo-Update

National Novel Writing Month November 2009 is coming to a close. Yours truly has called it a writing day already a week ago, not minding the fact that he did not reach 50k. Around 30k I realized: what had started out as a collection of 'fragments & anecdotes' had taken on a subliminal logic that reached a peak just then – and suddenly I found myself tying in some loose ends, finding a conclusion, and smoothly shifting into edit mode.

What NaNo can do for you it surely did; helping along by daily word counts on your profile, encouragement by pep talk emails, and forums for the outcries and ideas you would like to share during the writing effort – still safely withholding most of your actual 'novel' to decide later, during the editing process, what is to become of those writings you did while your inner editor was on a vacation, hopefully.

Great project!

Bags & concrete

We've seen the light come shining with Marina Abramovich's vision of Mozart; now it might be time to look a bit further down to the right, where there's a depot for a bag lady's possessions. Just to remind us that there is a darkness not just at the edge of town but right here in the middle.

In Salzburg there are quite a few homeless people; some of them actually found themselves a home – in small turrets of the historic fortifications on Kapuzinerberg; now they are to be dislocated from these lodgings, with no alternative anywhere near. Salzburg Bürgerliste, the local Green party asks for support against this measure; please sign up here!

Buildings I love to hate, 1

Multi-cultural?

Spent an afternoon off in a café next to the main train station.

First I had eye contact with an Arab family, meaning We / I know, you're different and that's okay. Then I got a light from three young ladies who I thought were Muslim. The young bar lady, of Bosnian origin, told me they were really Serbian Orthodox.

Then I got a light from 4 young people of Turkish origin.

Finally the friendly bar lady and I gave some Londoners directions to the major beer hall of town, Augustinerbräu. I had mistaken them for Scottish.

Well? Well, the Austrian chancellor suggests the Social Democrats should be taking a tougher stance towards foreigners (in der Ausländerpolitik "kantiger werden"). What foreigners? What stance? A gentler, kinder, a machine gun hand? – Yours truly is neither in favour of any kind of violence, nor is he suggesting that the Austrian chancellor could be in favour of any such action. Yet to see how Austrian social democrats with their great tradition are giving in to racist and xenophobic populists makes me wish to build up some amps and huge speakers in front of the Austrian chancellery and blast it away with some feedback from Neil Young's guitar.

I don't really appreciate noise in public space, so the soundtrack is private and danceful:

The World of Arthur Russell, Go Bang. Soul Jazz Records, CD83

There are times, when it's really hard to find the right words, e.g. when yours truly is just fed up to the brim with the political situation in this lovely and peaceful country (yes, it really is, no matter what some 'real' Austrians are thinking when they're afraid of all those dark-skinned people). Then, at times the blogwart interferes to remind me I shouldn't post any comments that I might by sued for or registered by Staatspolizei or even military intelligence (don't think I'm that important …). Or the backoffice-crew stops by to administer some beer as a sedative while they invent some absolutely nasty puns that will never be published here.

Thanks anyway, lads, next round's on me!