ch-ch-ch-changes

It's been a while. I went to Rome. On the day I came back from Rome my boyfriend came to Vienna. Three days later I spilt a glass of water over my computer and it broke. Then I went to Durham for a few days. Enough to keep anyone busy.

But when I was in England I also went to London for a day. For a job interview. And I got the job. And I danced around in my pyjamas a lot.

I'll be moving to London in less than a month.

my camera broke (my heart)

At the end of an otherwise lovely week, my luck ran out. It was a sunny day and I left the house to take pictures of some especially strange houses. I didn't even make it to the end of my street, however: my camera suddenly stopped working entirely. My favourite camera, the one that I found in my grandfather's wardrobe. Compared to my digital camera(s), this one has nothing but sentimental value - and yet I've taken most of my favourite pictures with it. I've always felt more comfortable with an analogue camera, anyway, and this one was especially easy to use. Boo boo boo.

lots of words about my face

Hello. This is me. Something has been bothering me, and I can't stop thinking about it, so I thought I'd share it.

Last week everyone who's working in my department got their pictures taken for our new website.
The pictures were taken by a professional photographer, and we had to show up at a specific time. I had to be there at 8:30 on a Monday morning. Having worked on the film set the whole weekend meant that I had gotten very little sleep and felt pretty exhausted in general, but I still got up early enough to wash my hair, put my favourite shirt on, take care of my skin and so on. This picture is going to be in the public domain with my real name attached to it - not like this blog, or a social network - so I wanted to look presentable, nice, clean.

I cycled to work. The photographer and her friend were already waiting. "A professional make-up artist will be there to assist you", the e-mail announcing the project had said, and yes, there she was, with an endless amount of colours and brushes. Now, I had done the make-up for the film the weekend before, so it didn't feel entirely alien. But that also meant that I knew exactly what I like and don't like. Or so I thought.

"Sit down, you're getting your make-up done before we're taking the picture."
"Umm, I'm already wearing make-up?"
"You are? No you're not. Where?"
"Everywhere? I just don't like to look as if I'm wearing make-up, I like it natural."
"But you're not even wearing mascara!"
"Yes I am, just not a lot of mascara."
"Why don't you like wearing make-up?"
"Well, because covering up my scars is enough for me and I'm glad if I don't have to do much more. I really don't want more than that. Do I have to get my make-up done now? Really?"
"You'll need it with the flash light."

And that was that. The make-up artist went to work. There was no mirror, so I only saw the result when the photographer showed me the pictures. I was non-committal because I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror afterwards, I gasped. This wasn't me. This was an incredibly tanned person with very smooth, painted skin, shiny lips, a bloc of blusher across her cheekbones, painted eyebrows and smokey eyes. I looked flawless. I also looked older.

I went home and washed my face, and I got angrier and angrier. I'm not a film star beauty and I'm certainly not flawless. Covering up scars or pimples or veins is fine with me, I do that myself. However, why paint another face all over mine? Why make me look conventionally beautiful when I'm not? Why did they think it necessary to put make-up on my face at all? After all, I'm young and alive, and lucky enough to be okay with myself.
Or I used to be okay with myself. I'm still young enough to remember vividly what it's like to be a teenager, to be uncomfortable with one's face and body. I couldn't be happier that I've grown up to be a woman not plagued by body issues, but that doesn't mean I'm super confident, it means that I'm indifferent to my flaws. Receiving the message that my ordinary everyday face was too ordinary to be photographed, even though it was only for work, was admittedly a bit of a blow.

I'm not a big fan of faking it in any way, and I thought that in the country I live in that was more or less an accepted point of view. If you look at pictures in magazines, even advertisments for big supermarkets or drug stores, they're hardly retouched, and if they are it's hard to see what has been done at all. The models often don't have perfect teeth; you can see that they shaved their armpits, you can see that their under-eye circles were covered with make-up and not edited away. The women on the street don't wear much make-up either, especially compared to other countries.
I like that attitude. That's why the mission to cover my face came as such a surprise to me. It felt incredibly regressive, even sexist: Why did I get that treatment when my male colleagues had nothing done to them? Why do I have to look perfect and beautiful? Why is it that when future visitors see my picture the first thing they'll think is that I'm a painted doll? A copy of other painted dolls, as my female colleagues got a similar treatment?

And here's the most obvious question: Why didn't I just make a fuss about it then and there?

grand madness

So I finally went to Brussels. As you may or may not remember, I have never been there, haven't had the time and energy to visit even though my best friend lives there now. In the end, all it took was a night spent on a train. There were only two things I wanted to see: Kevin and the Palace of Justice. We walked closer and closer to the huge building and I got more and more excited.
Here's why: W.G. Sebald has written a particularly memorable paragraph about it in his novel "Austerlitz", and Sebald is one of my favourite writers. For some reason, I found exactly this passage online. It's a long one, but it made such an impression on me that I still remember how I felt when I first read it. It sounded unreal, like something he had made up, one of those things Sebald keeps doing in his books where you can't be sure about fact and fiction. And yet, when I saw the building and walked around in it, it all seemed true.

"It was several months after this meeting in Liege that I came upon Austerlitz, again entirely by chance, on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels, on the steps of the Palace of Justice which, as he immediately told me, is the largest accumulation of stone blocks anywhere in Europe. The building of this singular architectural monstrosity, on which Austerlitz was planning to write a study at the time, began in the 1880s at the urging of the bourgeoisie of Brussels, over-hastily and before the details of the grandiose scheme submitted by a certain Joseph Poelaert had been properly worked out, as a result of which, said Austerlitz, this huge pile of over seven hundred thousand cubic meters contains corridors and stairways leading nowhere, and doorless rooms and halls where no one would ever set foot, empty spaces surrounded by walls and representing the innermost secret of all sanctioned authority.

Austerlitz went on to tell me that he himself, looking for a labyrinth used in the initiation ceremonies of the Freemasons, which he had heard was in either the basement or the attic story of the palace, had wandered for hours through this mountain range of stone, through forests of columns, past colossal statues, upstairs and downstairs, and no one ever asked him what he wanted. During these wanderings, feeling tired or wishing to get his bearings from the sky, he had stopped at one of the windows set deep in the walls to look out over the leaden gray roofs of the palace, crammed together like pack ice, and down into ravines and shaft-like interior courtyards never penetrated by any ray of light. He had gone on and on down the corridors, said Austerlitz, sometimes turning left and then right again, then walling straight ahead and passing through many tall doorways, and once or twice he had climbed flights of creaking wooden stairs which gave the impression of being temporary structures, branching off from the main corridors here and there and leading half a story up or down, only to end in dark cul-desacs with roll-top cupboards, lecterns, writing desks, office chairs, and other items of furniture stacked up at the end of them, as if someone had been obliged to hold out there in a state of siege. He had even heard, said Austerlitz, of people who, over the years, had managed to start up a small business in one or other of the empty rooms and remote corridors of that great warren: a tobacconist's, a bookie's, a bar, and it was rumored, Austerlitz added, that a man called Achterbos had once turned a gentlemen's lavatory down in the basement into a public convenience for, among others, passersby in the street, installing himself at the entrance with a small table and a plate to take the money, and that later, when he engaged an assistant who was handy with a comb and a pair of scissors, it was a barber's shop for a while."
(via here)

And here's a random bit of information from Kevin's guide book: "While the labyrinthine Palais de Justice is undoubtably grand, it is not easy to secure. Indeed in several high-profile cases criminals have managed to abscond from its precincts." Great.

sky blue

These days I...

... have come to realise that I only really like a very limited colour scheme.
... listen to this playlist a lot.
... am finally happy with the living room wall because I've managed to incorporate many of the things I like: Giorgos Seferis (representing modern Greek history/culture), a polaroid of the male part of my family, this picture (my favourite), a picture of Lake Ohrid that I took when I went to Macedonia last year, a famous coffehouse owner (representing Viennese culture), past people having fun skating and Greek graffiti.
... discovered a bathroom at university that I had never seen before (no basilisk, but nice colours).
... use my tumblr as a kind of scrapbook for things I like: songs, videos, pictures, links, quotes. I've also decided to put all self-portraits there. I feel awkward doing outfit posts and yet I still take pictures of myself to document what I wear and what I like. It helps with my ongoing struggle to choose what to keep, what works for me and what to give to charity.
... watched "Scenes from the Suburbs", i.e. the Arcade Fire film. I walked into the cinema having no clue what the film would be about, but I liked it instantly. It basically combines two of my favourite tropes, the thoughtful teenage movie (a la Gus van Sant's "Elephant") and dystopia. Excellent. Then I watched "The Tree of Life" yesterday which was, without a doubt, one of the silliest films I have ever seen, platitudinous, obvious, boring, frankly I'd be able to construct wittier Christian metaphors. Random dinosaurs: never a good thing.

staring at the sky

Because I don't live in a vacuum of neighbourhood fun and games, here's something that happened in the museum today: I explained why aeroplanes stay up in the air to a group of teenagers and then went on to discuss the impact air traffic is having on the environment/the climate due to the massive amount of emission. Then one boy said, "But even if we don't take the plane, it won't have any impact because that plane will still be flying."
And I thought, Fuck this. How can it be that it is necessary to explain market-based economies and the principle of supply and demand to children as soon as you talk about the environment? It felt as if I was suggesting that the only power they really have is through being a consumer. How utterly depressing is that?
Not as depressing as when children think that all the garbage that they throw into the bin will be turned into shiny new things by a mysterious recycling animal, or that all electricity we use is renewable energy (I have yet to meet a child that isn't convinced that we only use water/wind/solar power) but still...

hair = evil

My hairdresser told me that you can get plastic surgery if you want your chin to look more defined. Apparently lots of famous people do that.
I also read an article about the "year-zero face" the other day.
Call me naive, but why is everything so crazy? It's not just about Botox either - the other day I talked to a (female) friend who used to go to art school where it was en vogue for women not to shave their legs/armpits. My friend didn't like the idea, to put it mildly. Why?
Whenever I read a magazine, there are articles about Brazilians and where to get your eyebrows plucked and stuff like that. I just feel totally out of the loop, is this the norm now? Even here in this most relaxed of countries where nobody seems to know about manicures or eyeliner?

A wise woman told me, "It's ridiculous, your mothers burned their bras and now you're putting them back on." It's true.

to whom it may concern

This is without a doubt the best thing that has happened in the run-up to the election. To the lovely Viennese people who read this, but don't really get it because they don't work with teenagers on a daily basis - it's a reference to this hip-hop song which is amazing/ridiculous for two reasons: 1) incredible accents, and 2) the video was filmed in the Kongressbad where I spent a lot of time during my childhood summers.
Going to vote now and hope for the best.

ewww party

1. possibly one of the best things I've ever found on the internet
2. old favourite
3. Darren Hayman, no further explanation needed
4. girl in video = are you me?

facial hair

A beard that is acceptable:

A beard that isn't acceptable:

For heaven's sake, Kapranos, you look like a magician, but only Dumbledore is allowed a beard in the magic world, DIDN'T YOU KNOW??

some rhymes in celebration of The Lodger's excellent debut album

the past two weeks, believe it or not
I'd lost my belief in indiepop
suddenly I was into a different scene
suddenly I preferred a Libertine
but it only lasted until today
'cause nothing's better than "So Said Kay"
and The Lodger sure don't like drugs
us popkids we like tea and hugs
and maybe a melody and a beat or two
oh indiepop, you still make me go oooh

us

Collecting shells on the beach of St Andrews, pretending the shell is my eye, black and pink and blue, looking "like an innocent Belle & Sebastian girl" in Kelvingrove Park, expressing disdain for Glasgow in general even though we had a good time.

shoo-shoo-shoo

Sometimes you wake up to the sound of it raining "torrentially and it sounds like someone has emptied about a million packets of dried peas" on top of the roofs of the cars outside. And you know you have to run from one library to the other all day, collecting books to read over the weekend. Then it's time to wear as many clashing patterns as possible.
I don't even have time to take any pictures other than the wardrobe_remix ones right now. Ugh.

However, I do seem to have time to discover the one thing I really, really want for christmas: Barry M's Touch of Magic must be the coolest thing you can put on your face, ever.



"A waterproof formula with added Aloe Vera stays on for up to 8 hours. Depending on the alkali level of your lips, determines just how pale or rich the colour will go."

ALKALI LEVEL? OK! I WANT!
Barry M needs to start selling their brilliant goods in good old Austria.

Cheer me up, cheer me up, I'm a tireless bore

What the hell...?

"Crisis means that the old dies and the new cannot be born."
Hell yeah.

"The grey barren land of city districts such as Simmering, Favoriten or Ottakring remind one of the Balkans."
This is a radio manuscript and I probably shouldn't publish this, but it made me laugh. It also explains things: Living in Ottakring, my fascination with South Eastern Europe is now no longer a mystery, but a natural progression from seeing Serbian crosses sprayed on walls all the time when I was little and having my father translate the hate messages to Croatians/Bosnians/Serbs that were everywhere. The "Öde" I apparently live in predestines me to do the real thing!
What rubbish.
The second thing I thought of was that the writer obviously hadn't read any Todorova.


I watched CNN/BBC and there was a fabulous bit about the highlights of the campaigns. I must say, even though I wouldn't have voted for him, John McCain is sort of awesomely funny. It's a real pity he played the angry right-wing conservative during the campaign. I dunno, but if he had chosen Lieberman as his running mate, it could have all worked out so differently. But then his campaign seemed to take over and his supporters started to go crazy about Obama in a way that was, well, disgusting. I mean, did you see the video of a rally when Obama was called an Arab and McCain had to defend him?



That's just plain crazy. (And I won't even start to complain how "Arab" is used as a way to denounce a person, a thing that hasn't even been questioned in any article I read about the incident!)
Anyways, I really liked Obama's speech in Chicago, it was nothing like any political speech I've ever heard. "Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared." Nice one! But I can't diss McCain. Even his would-be tough quotes are funny, i.e. the famous one about Putin which goes something like this, "When I looked at Putin's eyes I saw 3 letters: a 'K', a 'G' and a 'B'." I say: L-O-L.
But when all is said and done, this is the only thing that counts:



Fab!

Vote for your mum

Umm, nice headline, Time.com? Very dramatic and catchy. I really want to stay up all night and watch CNN/BBC/good old Austrian TV (I love the news people), but we're in the State Archive tomorrow morning and I have to work all afternoon, so sleep is the only option. Lisi and I did have fun talking about the election though. Then we watched interviews with Mr. Petzner (who the Daily Mail has apparently already tagged as Mr. Haider's "gay lover"?). Never have I watched anything that made me cringe and shudder so much., especially because he kept on talking about how the age gap had been an issue. It was pretty painful, really. Lisi then explained bits of the economy and financial world which was ace.
I learned a lot about theological discussions in the Byzantine empire today. And about corrupt monks in present-day Greece. It was fabulous and I couldn't stop grinning all day.

The best thing about election day may or may not be Fug The Vote - the best blog ever, Go Fug Yourself, has decided to let people vote on every hilarious celebrity outfit they make fun of. Cue manical laughter. Fab!

I shall leave you with the Time.com Poll which reveals nothing, except the fact that Obama-voters like clicking buttons on the website. I'm not even sure if Time in general is particularly Democrat-friendly, I just know that they had a big crush on Hillary back in the day. As for me, I wouldn't vote for any of the candidates because it does seem that even the Austrian Conservatives are more "liberal" than Obama/McCain. Also, being typically European I fail to understand how one can not want state-provided health care, although I'd be happy if someone could explain?

Five

1. I've been looking at necklaces for ages, wishing I had a tiny bicycle dangling between my collarbones. One of these would be nice as well:

Bows & glasses

penguins & stags

dolls & purses

tea cups & tea pots

But even though I am sorely tempted to buy one of these, my fear of internet purchases luckily prevents me from spending heaps of money. In the end, I just "made" one myself using an old favourite of mine, wooden Christmas tree decoration.

2. Yesterday Andrei and I met up for breakfast and ran around in mountains of autumn leaves. Or he did. Having breakfast is one of my favourite things to do. For one thing, being out early in the morning feels much better than being out late at night as I hate the dark, but love the tranquility of the morning hours. For another, it's food I like, and you get tea as well.

We just don't know!

3. This morning started out by listening to Elastica, especially the brilliant "Stutter". This is such a good song, it always makes me want to get on a stage and go wild. Singing about a man's problems in bed in such a way must be fun fun fun! Accordingly I felt like channeling Justine Frischman. But all that remained of that intention was my brother's shirt. It's a sad thing, there is not a single item in my closet which would scream, "ROCK'N'ROLL! HEROIN! DAMON ALBARN'S GIRLFRIEND!" My life's pretty tough that way and I end up looking like a bore.

4. The day didn't end with Elastica either. I started listening to the A Good Crop compilation once again. I've probably mentioned it before, but it's a free download provided by the people of Eardrums and it's basically a collection of awesome indiepop. If you're inclined that way musically, do download it. I've never heard a better indiepop compilation before which means a lot coming from a person who spends half their time reading indiemp3.com....

5. Odd things: I saw a man with curled eyelashes on the bus today. It might have been all natural, but it looked slightly strange all the same. My dislike for curled eyelashes is quite impressive in general though. Ugh, why would you use one of these:



Just say no!

Politics turned soap opera

TIME has started speculating about "Austrian Far-Right Leader Haider Outed in Death?"
Dear me, they're a bit slow, aren't they? However, the article is sort of fab if only because it made me laugh and laugh. It's sort of awesome to see Austria's newspapers and politics analyzed by an indifferent American journalist who seems slightly puzzled by all the dramarama and quotes Michael Fleischhaker: "Either he explains what was so special about his relationship with Haider, or he stops playing the role of successor and widow at the same time," blogged the editor of Austrian newspaper Die Presse, Michael Fleischhacker.
What isn't funny though is the link below the article which invited you to "click here for a photo gallery of Austria's house of horrors". It's not entertainment!

?

I'm still alive. A colleague took this picture at work yesterday, with his fancy iPhone. It was da lolz, to be honest.
Will post when everything's not weird anymore!

conversations

I talk about the PSP and similar things with a bunch of eight-year-old girls:
Me: I'm not really into those things. I didn't even have a gameboy.
Tiny girl (dismissive): Well, yeah, they didn't exist back then!
Me (amazed): Umm, I'm not that old. I'm only twenty-one!
Tiny girl (disdainful): Ye-es. That one can see. You look really young.
Me: Err, ok. I'm going to just...go over there.


It's such a joy to work with children, especially little girls. They manage to tell you that you were apparently born in prehistoric times and look like you're not supposed to do workshops about science all at once.


I hurry past the Greenpeace and newspaper vampires in front of the university who want me to give them my money. Young man jumps at me:
Me (arrogantly): Don't even try, you're wasting your time.
Male: You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. Will you marry me?
Me: Err, thanks. But no thanks.
Male: Why not? I'm beautiful!
Me: Really? I have to go.

Party hard

I finally looked through Andrei's photos on his flickr profile.
There are quite a few from his birthday party back in August where Luke Leighfield and band played in his livingroom, we ate Russian food which Andrei had cooked and everyone got drunk and started playing instruments (cue my facial expression on the second picture). An odd night it was - it's bizarre to talk about British politics with a drunk and overly friendly British bassist. I remember cycling home thinking that the past few days had been a bit much (again: facial expressions!) and trying to figure things out. Can't say I managed.