kelle.de

the colour of the sky just before sunrise / the smell of the first raindrops on hot asphalt / climbing out of a tent heated up by morning sun into the fresh air / falling asleep on a train / going 80 kph on a bycicle or on ski / the lift-off of an airplane / the smell of electronic gear just after unpacking / riding the subway, especially when it’s fast, noisy, smells like machine oil and shakes like hell / the aestheticism of victorian and haute goth fashion / the fabulous affection and curiosity cats have / the aromatic scent of a forest, especially pines, resin, mushrooms, moss and lichens / going shopping in a huge supermarket while being hungry / a beer after a long hot day outside / the new born feeling after coming out of the sauna / the amazing silence and clear air and water up in the mountains / the slightly itchy feeling of a wound healing / running around like crazy on the tennis court chucking balls into nowhere / very long and gentle kisses / the hot, sandy and slightly yellowish flair of arid places / the naïve beauty of exuberant tropic rainforests and their inhabitants / the blinking of snow cristals / loosing oneself in a good book / the tastes and smells of viennese food: for example “käsekrainer mit fü senf und 3 schoaffn pfefferoni und an ottakringer” or “kümmlbratn mit knödl und kraut und an literliter”.

(list incomplete. feel free to contribute)

The story in the last post shall be continued soon. I need to find a good moment to get back into it. Meanwhile I think it’s ok to write some other stuff. Minsk is calling for another trip to take place soon; part two of the story hence will find ample inspiration.

Summer has arrived and the rain tries hard to continue falling, but failing more frequently in accomplishing its mission to reach the ground, turning into vapor by the scorching heat of the sunrays fingering through the fading cover of clouds.

Life has taken strange turns. While the world is rattled by civil war and personal tragedy amongst friends (broken hearts, death in an airplane crash, more death by cancer), ironically I find myself experiencing a lucky time. Sometimes it feels like an act of balance, walking on the narrow path of light while the world around is literaly falling apart.

The clouds are thin these days, and even the cold glare of the stars seems comfortable and bright, melting the ice cover that has hardened for a few decades.

Little is known of the city of Minsk or the country surrounding it. Only few went there, and even fewer returned. This is the story of Lt. Henry Salton who disappeared after being sent to Minsk for operation “double-fish-crossed”. He worked as a secret agent in the name of her Majesty the Queen of Britain. Britain is no longer an island, technically, because it has been connected by the tunnel underneath the channel separating the isle from the main European continent. This was Salton’s specialty. He was a technical specialist on underground structures and in his military training he had also undergone the programme of the special art of underground warfare, navigating huge digging machines and swallowing whole buildings into the ground.

In a fancy wooden London office somewhere near the houses of parliament, Major Cheekbane impatiently tapped his fingers on the heavy desk made from teak. Salton was late. He was still a young officer but would he ever learn discipline? Forgivingly he shrugged and smiled at himself: I am going to send the boy on a dangerous mission. He will have ample chances to prove himself. He leaned back in his large office chair and stroke his large belly. Many trips to London bars and pubs had begun to show effect, ever more so after the lifting of the 11 o clock curfew.

While wandering the mazeful corridors of the parliament building, Salton wondered what kind of assignment Cheekbane had spun up this time. “It will probably be the same stupid bug hunt as always.”  He was not looking forward to Cheekbane’s lengthy sermons. For a military officer he had surprisingly big difficulties to express himself in any efficient manner. Salton was not in a hurry for that kind of thing, but at last he had reached the heavy doors of the Cheekbane’s office.

The meeting was surprisingly brief. Cheekbane merely had handed him a large envelope with the lable: “минск” and told him to treat the assignent with greatest discretion. Then Cheekbane had told him “Thanks in Advance!”  and “Dismissed.”  Salton felt angry but as a good officer he could sense that there was no room for discussion. He saluted in German style with a sharp “Jawohl!” (due to the bill of unified languages it was legal to use any language of preference in official contexts).

The soldier training programme Salton had followed was one of the best in Europe. Besides some physical exercise which mainly involved riding the bicycle to and from military academy, the courses consisted largely of cultural content, like music, culinary knowledge, foreign languages and some bit of history. The university campus consisted of a triangular shaped patch of lawn. Most of the classes were held outside while having opulent picnicks. The soldier cadets would sit orderly on the blankets provided by the squad leader and eat and drink and chat at the same time in order to practice their abilities to focus on multiple tasks simultaneously.

In the course of this education, Salton had acquired many intercultural skills. Combining those to a whole pattern made him a dangerous fighting expert, especially when operating underground vehicles such as humongous digging machines. While captured deep below in the cockpit of the vibrating giant, the many different thoughts would create a sufficient amount of positive distraction, preventing him from making errors. Occasionally he also listened to Sibelius and other works of great composers.

[to be continued]

[a spam email]

This beauty
left just her hat on.
couldn’t

he’s tattooed
I’m deductions
implicit heirs

speckled sliding native

So, I managed to get to Macedonia in one piece and am now at the PPE Summerschool 2008. PPE stands for Prolearn, Palette, and EATEL. The 2 latter ones being the (EU ?) projects actively supporting the summerschooling activities, the former one being the original project that started out all the summerschooling. Having been here since 2 days now, i have had the chancs to intense discussions with the other participants. For example with Ambjörn, discussing the socio-scientific problem of “knowledge emulation”, which is generated through the everlasting fight for social influence and inside the scientific community just like in every other resort. One of the effects is the “ivory tower” phenomenon, i.e. building of stronghold institutions that only let people participate if they submit to completely incomprehensive and volatile conventions, like specific jargon type and so on. An effect that , by the way, can even be noticed slightly right here, in the summerschool.

The surrounding conditions, anyway, are really great and there is already a lot of photo material that has been uploaded to flickr. Check out the picture repository and get an impression. It looks very holidayisch, but most pictures actually were taken in the weekend so far.  Right now things are in fact quite busy, sitting in lectures, and preparing interesting things to be presented on thursday afternoon at the same time.

So much for now, more news shortly.

Time is running out. There are many things I still wanted to do in Vienna, but things went very quickly, and I’ll be moving to the Netherlands very soon now.

On the one hand, this means many positive things, like career, nice and welcoming country & people, beautiful nature and relaxed athmosphere of Limburg. But on the other hand, I feel quite uneasy about just leaving Vienna like that. Somebody very clever (=myself) once said: change always also means loss.

So cold and dark Vienna might seem during autumn and winter, so sunny and friendly it appears in spring and summer. Go to www.weingutamreisenberg.at , which is one of the most beautiful Heurigen-locations in Vienna and see for yourself.

In my dreams, there seems to be one particular thing that persists throughout almost every dream i can remember. The ability to fly . It requires a lot of energy and skill. It’s not something you just do. You have to concentrate and find the right state of mind in order to be able to lift off. It takes most effort to get off the ground. At an altitude of half a metre or so, there seems to be some kind of critical point where it’s very unpredictable whether you will crash-land again or gain further altitude. It’s possible to fly up to 30 metres high, depending on the terrain below. There is the constant danger to loose concentration and fall down, therefore it’s unwise to exceed 10 metres. Getting off the ground can be made easier if you start on a slope where you can jump into the state of flying. Unfortunately there is never any guarantee that it works everytime. I like to fly at very low altitudes, like 1 or 2 metres high. I enjoy the curious looks of the other people and the combination between emotional tension and physical relaxation. I wonder if flying is actally healthy. Maybe it’s a new kind of medicine: “Fly like an angel, but stay alive.” Anyway it feels like something completely normal. Whenever I miss the bus to take me to school or work, I might just decide: “Well, let’s just take the straight way and fly it.”

Waking up being tied back to the ground again, feeling the discomfort of 1G pinning me down, it’s truly disappointing to discover that the convenient ability to fly is but an imagination.