^C: kosheen, intersport arena

damage hide u catch overkill chances avalanche slip & slide, suicide empty skies guilty hungry all in my head

oh yeah. there was kosheen at the posthof in linz. since zombiequeen asked me if i would like to see them too, i joined her, for i thought kosheen live would be cool. and somehow... yes, it was cool, but kosheen was quite... hm, let's say different from what i knew so far. there was the frontwoman and singer with her recognizable and unique voice and there were the two DJs. but what they performed was far from kosheen songs i knew. in fact, if would have not listened to the lyrics, i wouldn't have recognized any of their songs. pretty strange listening to songs you basically know, but don't recognize at first. on the other hand, what they made of those new versions was really enjoyable. it was more of a rave ("we're gonna raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave!", shouted by the vocalist) and was really pure techno. songs and smash hits like "Catch", "Hide U", "(Slip & Slide) Suicide", etc would have perfectly fit at any techno-parade/-party. the downside was, that after only about five or six songs one knows from their releases (and one yet unreleased song) this all really ended in a techno-party. the singer stopped singing and was merely dancing and from time to time shouting some slogans. honestly, i think she was pretty drunk - she drank one bottle of wine and had just opened another one when we left. but all in all i guess kosheen had as much fun as we had. it's an experience i can really recommend - to techno- and/or kosheen-fans. oh yeah, some pics. since i was too lazy to walk around (and the concert hall was crowded too) i had no good view to the stage. but i guess you get a slight impression of how it was (- besides all concert pics look the same if you're not in the first row, don't they?)

from the 16th to the 17th of january i had a very nice trip to graz. in the course of our tamperproof design lectures at the university of applied science in hagenberg an excursion to the philips plant in graz, gratkorn was planned. it was scheduled for the 17th of january (including an exam). so i thought it's a good idea to visit my brother and have a look at the house he and his wife are currently erecting. this is why i already left for graz on the 16th in the afternoon. unfortunately when i arrived it was already getting dark. nonetheless i got a good impression of how the completed house will look like. (in case you're interested, here are some pics of the house and the time we spent afterwards). the next day i had to get to gratkorn (which is about 20km distance from graz) to the philips plant. as i brought a colleague to the hotel the day before i already knew the way. the day at philips itself was pretty interesting and loads of fun. we got a good pizza, loads of coffee and soft-drinks, cookies, etc, etc, etc. of course i took some pics there. seing some stuff we heard about in the lectures in practice was pretty interesting. the atmosphere in the company was pretty relaxed and cosy. there are areas where people can meet to take a break. in these places taps for softdrinks (like ice-tea, orange juice, soda, apple juice, etc) are situated and every employee can get them for free. additionally you can find cookies, fruits, etc there too - and again for free. pretty impressive.

since this will be a really long (and of course boring) bLog-entry, i added some pix to spice it up and bring joy to your eyes... yow, as reported in my last boringLog-entry my girlfriend and i went to prague. the stay lasted from the 31st of december 2005 to the 03rd of january 2006. although it's the fourth time now for me (and the second time for zombiequeen) that i've been to prague, i still enjoyed this town so much. especially the gothic-style of the buildings, the statues, etc is what fascinates me most. this also includes decayed buildings and factories outside of prague. we went there by train which took us about four hours from vienna to prague. since we arrived on a smaller railway station and it was saturday the 31st of december, most shops were closed and not too many people were around. this turned out to be a problem since we didn't know how to get to our accomodation. fortunately some policemen helped us searching on a city-map hanging out at the station. it took them ages to find it, but they finally told us what metro to take, where to change to which bus-line and where to get off. they were actually the only friendly czech people we met at the station. the accomodation was fine and it took us about 30 minutes to get there from the center of prague, which is pretty ok for the "top-season", as it was announced by the booking-agency we used for our hotel (if you ever plan to go to prague, it's definitely a good site i can recommend. i used it twice to get a hotel/accomodation and the service was excellent!). later we drove back to the city again, had a good pizza, loads of impressions and loads of coffee and tee, since it was pretty cold. the turn of the year we celebrated like hundreds of other tourists and czech people near charles bridge and at the bank of river vltava. for hours the sky was lit by rockets and the streets were filled with sounds of firecrackers. after midnight we were walking around a bit to various places, all crowded with people, all happy (and maybe drunk). the atmosphere was friendly, nice and untroubled. later we tried to get home, which was more of a nightmare. although a bus was scheduled for 01:35 and 02:05 no bus arrived at the station. so we started walking and tried to get a taxi. after a very long while we finally got one that brought us home safely (there was loads of snow on the side roads). the next day (01.01.2006) we drove back to town had a really good "breakfast" (apple-pie and cappuchino) and then continued our tour through prague. although it was sunday and the 01st of january, surprisingly a lot of shops had opened. since we were pretty tired from walking all day long in the cold and still a little hangover from our "let's wait 1h for a bus that never showed up"-experience from the day before we went home pretty early and stayed in bed and enjoyed czech tv and a little reading. on the 02nd of january we planned a shopping tour through prague. zombiequeen knew a cool shop to get clothes and i wanted to get a bag for my camera. so we got up pretty early and drove to town where we arrived at about 10:15. unfortunately at this time no breakfast is served anymore - absolutely bad luck for us. there ain't even a breakfast at McDonald's - the guy looked at us in wonder when we asked for a breakfast... so we went to a normal shop, got us some pastry, some cheese, a yoghurt-drink and some sweets and had breakfast at the river vltava surrounded by seagulls. this in fact was more fun than staying in a coffee house, but also it was colder... we continued this trip and found some lovely shops, including this one with all sort of cat stuff. on the next day we had to get up early again - our train left at 10:25 from prague... all in all this was really a wonderful new year's eve and weekend. oh, and here's the link to the gallery with the pix included here and of course lots more... have fun.