Life in Maribor

There are lots of outdoor cafes in the old city of Maribor and the tables spread right out over the streets which are closed to traffic.

Coffee shop patrons in Maribor town square

The Cafes are lively, full of people chatting over a coffee or a soft drink. Occasionally there is a table of beer drinkers, but mostly people sit for what seems like hours with a bottle of water or lemonade or a coffee in one of its many forms. The clientele are of all ages; tables of youngsters, tables of mature ladies, tables of families, tables of men, all of them chatting in the sun. Somehow life seems simpler here.

Families and bicycles

Medieval Maribor

Back in Maribor, looking out over medieval rooves as I walk along the 4th floor corridor to my attic room. How could you not love a city like this?

Austrian/Slovenien border

From the window of the train

This is the border between Austria and Slovenia, between Graz and Maribor a train ride of something over an hour. . 

At the border the train stops for some time; perhaps they change engines. This visit I had to change trains, from the red and white Austrian rail carriage into the Blue and white Slovenian one. The steps of the Slovenian train were high off the ground so people were lifting children up and heaving up baggage after them. I sat looking out the window thinking how these national borders affect the people who live near them. Now there is little difference between the two countries, but not so long ago this was the start of Soviet influenced Europe.

Music magazines

As I wrote from Sydney, I couldn't find a single music or art related magazine in the Sydney Airport magazine/book store. I was looking for Opera Today to read the article on Christine Goerke, one of the singers I sketched in New Zealand.

I checked at the book store at the Graz railway station and there I found four different magazines about opera, two about musicals, one about ballet and so many art related magazines I didn't bother to count them. There were just as many titles about computers, sport, cars etc as in Sydney of course, it's just that the offering was more balanced. Opera Today was not one of the four available opera magazines so I left with Das Opernglas.

Maybe Lyndon Terracini (Opera Australia artistic director) could arrange that at least one store in Sydney carries opera titles, perhaps the opera house store? Would that be too much to ask? 

Graz Kunsthaus

The Graz Art Gallery by the Mur River has a very unusual shape.

Model of the Kunsthaus Graz which stands outside the gallery

As with most European art galleries, there is an entry fee (8 Euro in Graz) and I always wonder how many more people would visit if the galleries were free as they are in Australasia. They might attract people who thought they were not particularly interested in art, especially on a wet day like Saturday. Instead I was one of a select very few who were wandering around the exhibits.

The first floor was given over to media art, a very crowded floor of media screens none of which captured my attention for more than 5 seconds. Media art can be wonderful, but just because things move doesn't mean they are interesting.

The work on show on the top level with those odd shaped window-tubes was much more interesting and worth the eight Euro entry fee. Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong, who had done a four month residency in Austria, was showing work created in Austria and back home in China. His paintings were very large and naturalistic but all of them were worth looking at. They were mostly simple scenes of people talking or looking, set against a backdrop of their locality but somehow they made you think up stories to fit them and I found myself going back to have another look at several.

Paintings by Liu Xia0dong. The round tube windows are a feature of the building.

The tube windows on the 3rd floor are unusual and the space is a bit awkward with few internal walls (or perhaps the internal walls had been taken out for this show) but that didn't detract from the paintings.

Liu had also made movies showing his method of working. I found them much more interesting than the media downstairs. The one I watched was a 38 minute movie about a horse market in China.

Screen showing movie of the work habits of Liu.

It showed the market, how Liu chatted with the peasants to see what was going on, how he sketched and then transferred his sketches onto large canvases. He had quite a few young helpers and my impression was that they helped not only with the set up and transfer of sketches but also with the painting.

At the top of the gallery there is a glassed-in balcony where you can look over the bridge crossing the River Mur to the city beyond. The river was turbulent and still the rain fell.

Graz, viewed from the top of the Kunsthaus

Tide turning for smokers

Germans are, as a nation, very concerned about health so it is surprising that so many of them smoke. Things seem to be changing though, judging by railway station etiquette. Areas for smokers on train platforms are now marked with thick yellow lines and on the stations I visited, smokers were using them.

Platform at Munich Ostbahnhof

On Austrian railway stations passive smoking is the norm as smokers still spread themselves right along the platform and it is impossible to find an unpolluted spot. . There were no smokers in the Graz station hall, but almost every patron at the Lavazza coffee shop in the station building was smoking so I bought a takeaway and sat outside the shop to drink it.
The Polish woman at breakfast told me that in Poland smoking in enclosed spaces and on station platforms is forbidden and that not so many young people smoke.

Austria is wet and cool

Before leaving Sydney I had seen television coverage of the heat and fires in Spain so I was surprised that Munich was cold (14C). It was also very wet and as my train to Graz sped through the landscape I looked out over sodden fields with puddled water and gushing rivers almost breaking their banks.

Swollen river between Salzburg and Bischofshofen

In Austria I had to change trains in Bischofshofen and was pleased my wait was only 15 minutes because it was even colder there.The Alps, soaring straight up from the railway line were very misty and romantic, a view easier to paint than photograph, but soon we were over the top and racing along wet green fields again, this time with typical Austrian Chalet houses.

Wet Austrian landscape

I wasn't surprised this morning when the television showed fresh snow on the mountain tops. Graz is wet but warmer - about 22C.

Austrian webcam: the caption at the bottom reads "Summer Operations from 21.06-16.09.2012"

Munich Ostbahnhof

On the long hours of the flights from Sydney to Munich I thought, 'This is too far - I must be crazy.'  Once I got here it didn't seem too far at all. Our bodies are programmed to forget the bad bits which is probably just as well.

Munich was 14C and very wet.  I took the S-Bahn to Munich Ostbahnhof where the coffeeshops were just opening. There were very few patrons at 6am when I got there but lots of people pausing in their rush to work when I left at 8am to catch my train to Graz.

Oz culture

The magazine/book store at Sydney airport has stands and stands of motoring, computing, home and garden, baby and 'women's interest' mags but not a single art or music magazine. I wanted to read the article about Christine Goerke in Opera Today. Instead I bought 'The Economist'.

Siegmund painting

The painting Siegmund is finished and I have left it sitting on the easel so it will be the first thing I see when I walk back through my door. A full photo is online at artsmitten. 

Mortimer: clever and erudite

John Mortimer's clever and funny autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage turned up on the top of a pile of books during my spring clean and I have been taking great pleasure in re-reading it. (Mortimer is best known for his creation Rumpole of the Bailey.)

Today I am reading page 190 in which he writes about Peter Sellers being like a blank script which others could write on. 'I don't think it is common for actors to provide such a degreee of blankness for others to write on,' he writes and notes that the 'Peter Sellers character may be more common in daily life than is comfortable to realise.'

Street Art in Woy Woy

In Woy Woy this morning one of the laneways was being given a fresh look.

Street artists working in Woy Woy

The bit they had just completed

Siegmund takes over

I thought my visit to Wellington to sketch opera singers might result in several small oils on canvas but instead, when I got home, Siegmund (alias Simon ONeill) leaped onto the large (about a meter high) canvas I had on my easel. 

Siegmund - Detail of painting underway

I have been working on him over the last weeks, in between saving things from the gales. It is interesting how paintings have their own life. The artist is just there as a servant really.

Hot and windy (and cold)

Far out! It was 29C today (after long weeks of cold weather) and so windy that anything not tied down was blown away. There are a lot of power outages and my lawn is covered with Eucalyptus branchs and twigs.  I picked the lone remaining daffodil (see below) and put it in a vase inside where it revived.
Addendum: (26 Aug) today at 10am it is 13.6C outside and not muuch warmer indoors. The heat pump seems to think winter is over - probaby needs a service.

Daffodils need springtime weather

Sydney doesn't do spring. Sydney has winter (and yes, often much cooler than people expect) and then summer. Between winter and summer there is a short period when you are not sure whether the day will be winter cold or really warm. I am reminded of this looking at my daffodils. 

In most places daffodils last long enough to enjoy them, but in Sydney you watch them poke through the soil in cold July but by mid August when they finally flower the season has changed. Today there is a hot wind blowing from the north and the few daffodils the birds didn't decapitate will only last a day or two. It's wiser to stick to hybiscus I suppose.

Cheap but expensive

On the spur of the moment I bought a bag of licorice allsorts yesterday. I hadn't eaten licorice allsorts for years but liked them as a kid when they were half the size and probably twice as expensive. The ones I bought were large, beautifully formed and cheap but they were also inedible. Cheap licorice allsorts are an expensive way to fill your rubbish bin. 

They not only tasted disgusting, they smelled worse than new Ikea mattress I have airing out in my spare bedroom. Perhaps they both have the same chemical composition.

Things come in threes ...

The shed roof that was left hanging over the fence by the high winds was taken off last Sunday by the very helpful SES men. They folded it up (it was so rusty it almost fell apart) and put it inside the shed which they straightened and tied down.

I poured myself a glass of wine, congratulated myself on managing the damage and turned my laptop computer on, only to find ... oh dear, the blue screen of death.  I spent endless hours nursing the laptop to life again and then immediately burned my files to a DVD drive ... just as well as the computer updated itself then died once again and now no amount of nursing helps. So it will join the shed on the scrap heap

Then my TV died. I had had it repaired about a year ago so I looked up the documentation to see if it might still be under warranty. I eventually found the invoice (after deciding I really must update my filing system) which showed the TV was mended in September 2011. So that was good .... but before I took it to the repair shop I read the instructions again and discovered that I had been pressing the wrong start button. It still works if you press the right button. How do you forget which button is the start button so suddenly? Maybe I just expected everything to break.

In the meantime I hauled my very old laptop out of a storage box and eventually figured out the password. Then I discovered that it can't read DVD discs. So if I need any of my files I will have to wait until I have a new computer.  Perhaps I may never need them ....

Blown off in the wind

The high winds blew the garden shed in last night and left the shed roof hanging over the back fence. As I moved boxes of ceramics this morning I was hoping the still strong wind gusts didn't blow the rest of the  shed down on top of me.  State Emergency Services say they will come and remove the roof later this afternoon so it doesn't do any more damage. I think the old shed is a goner.

Disappearing roof

Shed is a goner

I feel for those people who lost the rooves of their houses in the storm.

Wild weather in Sydney

Wild winds and stormy rain showers have hit Sydney - it is cold, wet and rainy. The apparent  temperature is 3.8C (actually 11C) due to the very strong winds. Rooves are blowing off, there are power outages in some areas and all manner of stuff is blowing in the wind. As I ran out to take the washing off the line I was nearly hit by the top of a very rusty whirlygig that blew off  a neighbouring house.  I hear sirens as I write and am glad it is not me in the ambulance.

I am in Sydney and wondering what is happening up the coast. A woman who lives down the road from my place was on the radio saying that the tin roof of the house next door has just blown off and landed on her roof. Fingers crossed the big gum trees withstand the wind.

Valkurie in Wellington

  The Valkyrie paintings from rehearsals in Wellington, NZ, are now online .... with a little story.

Pietari Inkinen conducts the NZSO

Simon O'Neill sings Siegmund