Some cool artwork..

Found a artists' squat the other day in Gdansk with lots of neat artwork on the walls..

Rowing in the rain..

It's about as hard to leave this place as it was to arrive here!
The day before yesterday i meant to leave by train, until i realized the trains sucked; i had to spend an extra night somewhere just to wait for the next train.. but as i heard there are night buses.. so yesterday i went to get my bus ticket, but they told me there were no seats left, so i could only book my ticket for tonight!
So here i am, stuck in Gdansk with not a zloti left in my pocket!
But there are much worse places to be stuck in.. even with the shitty weather.. the Gdansk hostel is a great place to stay.. good atmosphere, free internet, free breakfast, free soup, free vodka!.. what else do you need in life?!

But this time i'm going!.. next stop Vilnius, Lithuania..

In the meantime, i went rowing in the rain with Owain, the ever drunk funny welch guy!

Malbork

Being the largest medieval castle in europe, Malbork is.. pretty big!
If you think of it, it's even larger than the second largest medieval castle of europe, so that makes it quite large as you would guess.. hum.
so, that's it.





But the weirdest thing about this town, is the amazing contrast between the beautiful red medieval castle (being the largest in europe, i don't know if i mentionned that) and the gray socialist housing blocks surrounding it!
Normaly, right next to the castle, you find the old town and further down only, the ugly parts of town.. be there you've got this:

Une souris vert-eu..

Qui courait dans l'herb-eu...

Another night at the hostel...

Sopot and the Baltic sea..

So today I took advantage of the cold grey weather to go to the beach!

I got to see the funky house, so i'm a happy camper!
(I think it was made by Frank Gehry, like the one in Prague.. but i'm not sure..)




And then i got to (barely) see the baltic sea!.. It's just there in the fog! can you see it?

Scary..

It's the best shot i managed to get, sorry..
But i swear this guy was really trying to be Hitler!
brrrrr!

The detergent store..

I don't know, i just thought this was kindda funny.. How do you run a shop that specializes in detergent?!

Camera world

You find a lot of these little stores around here, packed with old school cameras, most of them being cheap russian copies of Leica and other big names..
This place was particularly cool though.. (although the shop keeper wasn't the friendliest chap)

JPII Superstar!

The guy is just next after god in this country! You find him just about every -and any- where, in posters, books, galeries, shop windows... you name it!

Digital curse! (updated with pics)

No, don't worry, I haven't dropped this one (yet!)
But now that i have a cool new camera, these computers either have no USB connection, or crash when i plug something in, or have no imaging software to resize the images... you got the point; you won't get images everyday, Shanghai time is over my friends!

So anyway, i guess i haven't said much about Warsaw have i?
I was actually rather pleasantly surpised with Warsaw.. i had all these cliches of a completely destroyed city, and completely communist as well, bleak and grey.. but the downtown area is actually pretty neat.. It does feel like a much bigger city than Praha or Krakow, with bigger malls and more neon signs! I guess it looks like a capital city!
The "funny" part is the old town, which is actually about.. 50 years old! After complete desctruction of the city during the war, they decided to rebuild the old town as it was! And it looks pretty real indeed.. although once you know it, it gives it a little Disneyland feel!

Here are some -cheap- shots of the old city in Warsaw..





I met with Daniel Etter in Warsaw, a cool german photographer without a fohawk! Check out his work on danieletter.com it's good.. He's presently working on a project about the Holocaust, which took him to Poland.. and he'll soon be starting an internship in Paris with VII (http://www.viiphoto.com/) so if everything goes fine we might hear of him in the near future!

As i was hanging out with him, we ran into a neo nazis demonstration! I guess some of them haven't had enough of that crap! You get to see some really stupid faces though!






So after Warsaw, that I headed to Gdansk..
When not from word to mouth (no Juliette, not from mouth to mouth!), I usually find my hostel addresses on hostelworld.com .. really handy.. but for some reason, this time they just had no address for Gdansk, and neither did the reception of my hostel! But well, there's always people awaiting the tourists at the station to provide accomodation, plus info inside the station... i'll find something!
After 4 hours of sitting on the floor of a train and playing the guitar, i finally reach Gdansk at about 10:30pm.. and no one awaiting the tourists.. and no information whatsoever!... hum.. ok!
After some looking around, i end up in front of a billboard advertising for some expensive hotels (including some for other cities like Krakow!!).. and one youth hostel! with a couple of green lights next to it suggesting they should have rooms.. and even some directions on how to get there, awesome!
Now where do you take that bus from?.. not here.. not there.. it's on the other side of the station.. there it is.. but they don't run after 10pm anyways! oh but i can also take tram 12 and here it comes! i jump in it and... realise i'm going the wrong way!
No problem, i change at the next stop, wait for another 20 minutes, hoping they still run!.. and here i am in the right tram and the right direction! cool! the driver will tell me when my stop comes.. this should be the downtown area.. bit farther.. everybody gets off here, ok.. bit farther.. now that's the end of the line and the driver tells me i'm there!.. actually not quite, it's another 10 minute walk down the road.. YES! there it is!.. but... hum, looks pretty dark in there! where's the entrance? i guess it's pretty late.. Oh here's a window with a bit of light.. a dog starts barking like crazy as i approach, but i can't really see it so he must be behind the fence, i should be safe! I enter and knock at the door.. nothing.. the dog's gonna blow up if he keeps on barking like that!.. i knock again.. and i hear someone moving behind the door.. after a while, a half naked fat guy opens the door and barks at me about as loud as his dog, but in polish, something that must have meant "i'm the neighbour! can't you see the hostel is closed you foreign dickhead!"

Ok great.. so now i'm lost in the middle of nowhere -and of the night- with nowhere to go and no tram left! I'll just walk back to the crossroad and wait for a cab to show up..
After another while, one finally stops.. "a hostel? yeah, i'll help you find one, hop in!".. and the guy simply takes me to another youth hostel... just 5 minutes walk from the train station!!

No comment!

This morning i wake up with rain pouring over the city! It'll keep pouring for the most part of the day.. the hostel is closed between 10am and 3pm, so i'm stuck outside!
And then the digital curse hit upon me again as my batteries dropped dead at the end of the afternoon just when it finally stopped raining and the light was good again!

But i'll say all this was all a mix of bad organisation and bad luck.. allright.
Now i have to mention that Gdansk, against all expectations, is certainly the least welcoming city i've seen so far! The least welcoming people i mean.. whenever i want to ask for some help or directions, people just avoid my eyes, start walking faster, ignore me, prentend to not speak english... i really have to run into them and make them talk to me! Old, young.. just all of them! The whole city seems to tolerate my unwelcomed presence as long as i stay away from them!
Let's not be unfair, some people have been very helpful, but generally speaking they just don't want me here!

Aside from that the city is very pretty.. with a lot of danish influence it seems in the architecture..


Some shots of Gdansk in the rain..





Is that some sun showing?!





Oh, i was going to forget.. the supermarket!



And that was a part of a cool mural somewhere..




Anyway, i'll give it another chance for a couple of days.. try to hit Sopot which is close by and has a funky "dancing house" that i'd like to see..

That was Arjun Panday, live from Gdansk!
Peace out!

Back on track!

Allright.. i just knew i was gonna loose my audience pretty quickly if i kept on going with my text only version, so i went for a new digital piece of junk, that i'm already not super happy with, but with the requirements i had and the money i was ready to put in, that's all i could find!

So now if you would please excuse us for this momentary interruption of images on our network.. we're back!

Hi There! (ok, with every i said about haircuts...)

So here's Warsaw.. (did i say i was i Warsaw?!)

Oh, and i forgot...

..to mention berliners little "style" problem.. it's not much but with just a little effort Berlin can be an even better place! So here are a couple of recommended easy fixes!
First, the "Fohawk". Stands for "Fake Mohawk" and consists of a terrible haircut where the hair is pulled up in a spike straight up the head (without yet having the guts for the real punk style mohwak).. Now every other kid in Berlin has a Fohawk, so please, that's gonna have to go!
Second, the "camouflage" army outfit. Way too many Berliners look like they're out on a deer hunt in the middle of the city, like any old redneck, so let's face it this can't go on any longer!
And i'm not even mentionning the old schoolers who still stick to the mullet.. come on! This should at least have been replaced by a Fohawk a long time ago!!

Allright, so much for my easy teasing of germans.

I also forgot to say, hey Tura, I've been looking for your family all over Krakow, but i just can't find them.. sorry!

..heading north to Warsaw tonight..

Cheers everyone..

Catching up...

Damn it i'm already mad late on this story! It's not that easy when you pay internet by the minute (and when you're as cheap as i am!)

Anyway.. As much as Berlin was vibrant with creative energy, Praha was, er.. vibrant with the easter week end!
The contrast was pretty sharp between the two cities.. Berlin is not a pretty city per say.. as i said, the former nomansland has become a really cool empty playground for architects, and some of the projects look great, but it seemed to me that the whole thing was really lacking some coherence.. you get a super modern building sitting next to some nice old church, but without too much care for harmony and next block is a bunch or remaining ugly socialist housing cubes.. but the city is definitely alive and packed with youngsters.. being one of the cheapest capital cities to live in in europe, it's become the refuge for many artists..
Prague on the other hand seems to have escaped world war II and sits comfortably on its past glory..
(well.. obviously these are my remarks from a 3 days visit, it is certainly subject to critique!)

I met with Pepe and Victoria in Praha.. a cool couple of cuban expatriates.. Pepe works in a school of cinematography and Victoria is a flute player in a cuban jazz band.. and as she had a gig on monday in a jazz club, i stayed an extra day to check them out.. really good stuff.. buena vista like.. (Max you would have loved the "guitar" player!)

Quick facts about Praha:
Coolest bar: Duende, on Karolyn Svetle, close to the river and Charles Bridge.. they even have guitars laying around that you may use! sweet!
Hello: Ahoj
Yes: Ano
No: Ne
Thanks: Dekuji
..Ok it's not much but that's what you'll get!

On my last day, as i wanted to get out of the city, i followed the advice of two australian girls and made an excursion in Kutna Hora, a very pretty town an hour north of Praha.. aside from neat narrow streets and colorful houses (which i carefully shot in black and white of course!), as well as a pretty impressive cathedral, Kutna Hora hosts a strange little church filled with catacomb like piles of bones and an interior decoration that must have been designed by the Adam's family!

Next, I slept on the train from Praha to Krakow, just last night.. Upon arrival in Krakow early this morning were some amazing landscapes of old style rusted locomotives, as well as an old rusted skatepark, in the shallow morning light and haze.. i whish i could have jumped off the train to shoot some pictures.. but i couldn't!

Having lunch at a terrace out in the sun, i shared my table with Sylvester and Evelyna.. the chat went on and we spent most of the afternoon together, while they taught me just about everything there is to know about Poland! (with Sylvester and me only speaking a very limited german, it was an interesting dicussion that made heavy use of my notepad!)
The poor economy and lack of employment that prevents Poland to enter the european union, and sends Sylvester out to germany to work without proper paperwork..
But also the coolest vacation areas, such as Wista, in the mountains south of Krakow, Mazury, a lake region north east, the beaches from Gdansk to Mielno, or the great castle of Malbork, south of Gdansk, wich is supposedly the biggest in europe, and that i might stop to check out on my way to Gdansk..
and tons of vocabulary too.. so here are some basics (sorry i can't put the accents right.. i compensate as i can, but it's impossible to pronounce anyway!):
good morning : dzien dobry
hello : tchencht
yes : tak
no : nie
please : prosze
thank you : dzienkuje
i'm looking for : ya chu kam
how much : ile kuch tu ye
payer : tzena (purists will notice the last 3 are pure phonetics!)
girl : dziewczyna
boy : chiopak
man : mziczyzna
woman : kobieta
pretty : pienkna
i like you : lubien cien
i love you : kocham cien
very : bardzo
check please : rachunek prosze
1 : jeden
2 : dwa
3 : trzy
4 : cztery
5 : piench
6 : szeshch (forget this one!!)
7 : siedem
8 : osiem
9 : dziewiench
10 : pziesiench

now some fine polish beers (polskie pivo): Okocim, Tyskie, Ziwiec and Warka
and we'll end up with some fine polish vodka : Zubrzuka, Gorzka Zoiandkowa, Szopen (Chopin!), Bols, Soplica

Allright, that's a lot for today; now you won't say i'm not sharing!
You may pack your books and leave the room quietly, but be assured there will be a exam soon on this important lesson!

That's it!

I'm done with the damp and cold weather of Berlin! Prague greeted me with bright sun and much more bareable temperatures! And if there's one thing I want to say it's "Woaoh!!!" Prague is absolutely magnificent! It totally lives up to its reputation.. Ok it's easter week end and packed with german tourists (plus me), ok the evenings are still a little chill.. but woaoh! Colorful facades, disneyland like castles (although it's actually the contrary!)... too bad you can't see my cool digital pictures! ha ha! Ok it's not funny.. but it keeps the suspens at its peak! "how much longer will he wait until he gets a new camera?? how long will he stay in prague? what's gonna happen to him??"...
All of this and more, coming soon on "joune in touristland"!..
Stay tuned!

Back from Dr Pong

Having read somewhere about the "new craze in berlin", and this new craze happening only two stops from here, i had to go check it out..
Ok, if it's not "The" new craze in berlin, it's definitely worth a visit! Dr Pong is a "concept bar" with a table tennis in the middle of the room and just anybody can join in the game.. (how do you say "une tournante" in english??).. i can't show you because, er.. did i already tell you that my digital camera was broken? (scheisse!!) so i'll try to explain:
everybody has a racket (that you can borrow at the bar with a 5€ deposit) and the game starts with, say, 20 people turning around the table and exchanging balls in turn.. every mistake is instantly eliminatory, so pretty quickly it comes down to a talented few running faster and faster around the table soon almost catching they're own shots! it ends with a dual between the last two, and then it starts over again and anybody with a racket comes back around the table for a new round..
no prick attitude.. everybody is fair play and the atmosphere is good.. you can make mistakes, you can drink beer as you play, and you can even bring in your own pizza! this place is obviously not money oriented!

anyway, it's about time for bed.. tomorrow is another day, and i have a camera to get!

Shit happens!

This time i'm out on my way for real!... My parents and i woke up at 3:30 in the morning yesterday and by 5 we were at the airport checking in.. that's when we decided we should make "the going-away portrait", and in the half-asleep excitment of the moment, i dropped my tiny digital camera and broke it!!.. smart start ain't it?
so until i find a solution, the first posts will be lacking some images!... (now i know what i shall do with the money you left me!)

Aside from that bummer, it all starts off pretty well.. i've just stayed the first night at my friend's house.. Mark also took me out on a city tour, through some of the famous spots; Check point Charlie, the Reichstag, the Sony center and the crazy architecture of the new city center, located just in between east and west "berlins" where the former nomansland (one word?) was..
And then Benjamin hooked me up with his friend Claus who'll be out of town for the week, so he's leaving me his appartment! Thank you so much Claus!

One day and i'm already correcting my itinerary!.. as i was told that Warsaw was depressing and Krakow the one to see, i'll head to Krakow instead.. but now that puts Prague almost on the way and since i've never seen that beautiful city, i might as well stop there for a day or two!

That's it for the day folks.. i'm already compensating for the lack of images with too much text! (bummer!!)

Good bye workmates..

..Today is my last day at work (and for once i don't even have a camera with me!)
This post is for my workmates who handled my stupid jokes so patiently for years..
Thanks a lot for your support, teachings and friendship (and your gift!!)
I'll keep you posted..
Cheers mates!

My new toy..

Got my Mamiya 6MF from ebay.. cool toy for my trip.. (just expensive and cumbersome as i like them!)
i first started playing with 35mm film to try it out.. it makes these cool shots where the whole surface of the film is exposed.. (well, i think it's cool!)

SNCF: toujours râleurs!

Nerver on time, always grumpy! thanks Mike for this excellent pun!
Could anyone tell me why exactly they're going on strike *again* on tuesday?? solidarity with the students? or pure habit maybe??

and off he went..

had to say my first goodbye last night.. to my brother.. for most people i'll be leaving for 11 months, but that wasn't enough for him! he had to leave a month before me to make it a full year without seeing me!
so anyway we partied one last time at cecile's last night and it was fun.. (that dog knows how to party!)
i'll miss you bro!

Mayday! (or the worship of holy may 68)

Everyone knows about that "strikes" culture we have in france; any time of the year, if there's not someone on strike, you're probably in the wrong country!
But what people may not be aware of is that we're trained for it from school!.. every year students find a good new reason to go out and yell in the streets, occupy universities.. and if there can be some confrontation with the police, then comes the real fun: may 68 reenactment!
'Cause that's what it's all about: no matter what the new topic is, each year, as sunny spring days come, comes the ritual time of going out and fighting with the police to celebrate holy may 68.. americans have their spring break, we have our spring strikes!
Oh i'm not blaming! I did my share as a student! high school, university, i did them all! can't even remember what i was so eagerly fighting for or against (some type new youngsters contract probably, the CPE of the time) but at least i was happy to miss some classes and sit in the sun instead.. and what good is school if doesn't train you for your future work life anyway!

No way back..

Not like there was any.. but this time i ordered my plane ticket to my first destination: Berlin. (I know i said "no plane", but well.. that should start after berlin!)
Anyhow, I'll take off with EasyJet on tuesday morning, april 11th, at 6:45 am!.. i must get used to low budget life, which explains the early flight.. and since there are no trains at that time, i already booked a night on the appartment floor of my dear friend and colleague Bertrand.. thanks mate! :-)

VisaToRussia

Got it!
In the end it was more scary than painful..
I used visatorussia.com to get my invitation (the cheapest one i could find). $30 for the invitation letter and $20 for the detailed bullshit program of what i'll be doing there each and every day for a month.. all received by fax
Just so you don't get as confused as i was: http://visatorussia.com/, http://waytorussia.net/ and http://www.intelservice.ru/ are all one single agency!
I also had to call VISA (the credit cards.. tel: 01 41 85 88 81) for them to send me an insurance certificate.
A photo and the offcial form that i downloaded off http://www.action-visas.com/
54€ to the embassy and a week later (which is this morning) i got my one month visa..

In the process you also get to visit the beautiful ambassy of russia in paris, which pretty much resembles a huge concrete bunker where people welcome you with a warmth approaching siberian temperatures.

In sharp contrast, the embassy of mongolia is nice suburban pavilion. No one is standing in line two hours before it opens. You just ring the bell like when you're going to your friend's house. Basic but nice decoration, carpets and real wood furniture and they even smile! "you don't have your insurance certificate with you? it's allright, you'll bring it along when you come retrieve your visa!"
Only in the end i didn't get the visa.. it's only valid for 3 months from the date of issue so i should just wait a little and get it just before i leave..

My *second* photo exhibition!

promess, after this one i quit for at least a year !

This got to be a joke!

May I introduce you to the official website of the ambassy of Mongolia in France...
http://www.ambassademongolie.fr/

The end of an era..

I'm not sure wether it made me sad or scared yesterday, when I was visiting a beautiful photo exhibition about the Seine at the Conciergerie de Paris, and I overheard a guide talk of "the time of film photography"...
In many people's minds, the time is already long gone...