What became of the frog?

Maybe some of you remember the controversies following the opening of the first official exhibition at the Museion of Bolzano. The bone of contemption was a particular artwork, showing a crucified frog. What followed were long and fierce public discussions about respecting religion or feeling insulted, paired with claims to have the thing removed. However, hardly anyone seemed to find their way to actually analyse the work in question and the ideas the artist might have had with it (proving what people tried to reject - that bolzano in fact is a little too provincial to easily digest modern art).
After leaving Bolzano I lost track of the matter, until it reappeared this morning at the breakfast table. A quick search brought the result that (fortunately, in my opinion) the decision was reached to leave the exponat, even though some parties are aiming for more control on exhibitions to come (which I wonder if it will not ruin the purpose of a modern art museum, which should spark off controversies to make people think).
In the course of browsing on this topic I found a post on an interesting blog, dedicated to the issue of democracy and media in south tyrol. If you are interested in these issues (and understand German) I highly recommend you to look through it. Even if I do not agree with everything stated there, it is food for thought as well as refreshingly contrasting to some of the south tyrol media.

finnish humor

Linda Lines, a Finnish ferry company excels with a particular kind of humor.
After the scene is set already by fog, rain, storm, and some waves, only the matching soundtrack is missing. Something relaxing, calming, maybe?
Like - the soundtrack of TITANIC?!?!?!

packing again

after recovering from the wedding by spending some relaxed days in and around vilnius (with typical lithuanian weather) we're getting ready for the next destination of this journey: tallinn. hopefully joining for this part are olga and andrejs which hopefully will bring the eeepc so we can test the gratis wireless theyre supposed to have there ;)
will go now, to prepare for the 9 1/2 hours bus trip which i guess will leave me rather tired. (btw, i noticed some strange thing: there are all this stickers in busses here, with prints like 'united airlines berlin' or 'freistaat bayern'.. i wonder if this is where all the used german vehicles end up.. sometimes it actually nearly feels historical which is great fun!)

arrived

after a wonderful flight Lithuania greeted very nicely with a lot of sun, but luckily less boiling temperatures than Bolzano :) Vilnius was the first place to be visited and I really like the old town, which is so varied and quite spacious, which I found surprising.
On the next day, we travelled to Visaginas and a house in the countryside where I attended the first 'hen night' of my life. Good fun, and also very multicultural :) In the end everybody scraped together some English and also some of my Russian reappeared, which caused amusement.
One thing is also quite interesting: I'm now meeting the families of my friends ;)
ok, wedding preparations need to go on ;)
have a good time

Getting ready to fly

Time was rushing by very quickly, so now I find myself already checking the timetables of the trains to go to the airport. Somehow on my return to it this time Munich showed me a friendly face and when meandering around it yesterday, some sense of 'home' came to me which I did not expect after these few days. (I also realised that I dearly need to brush up on my historical knowledge of my town, on my way from elementary school to university I managed to forget nearly everything..) Now I wish you a nice time, maybe I will write something from Lithuania, maybe not..
best wishes :)

finished!

i'm done with my first paper!! can't believe it but it feels great :)

politeness

i often happen to stumble across or deliberately stepping on these invisible ropes of 'DOs and DON'Ts' and the result of my social clumsiness sometimes are not so pretty.
however, i started to see some of these behavioural rules with less spite as it ocurred to me that they might not be so dishonest after all. Instead, these rituals might convey an archaic, but nevertheless important message, roughly translatable in 'i've seen you, realized that you are there. i don't have anything against you and pay you my due respect'. That would be a statement i could find a compromise with.

Does time fly?

I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
-- Lane Smith, quoted in "Who's News", Time for Kids, September 25, 1998

anticipation

lovely feeling that tingling at the hairline -like balancing on way too high an edge..

What does it mean to you?

Being in the middle of the European Championships, the issue of patriotisms surfaced again. It's a part of culture that feels a bit strange to me, and I wonder how you feel about it. Should one be patriotic, and why (or why not)? And what classifies as it?

In this sense, I invite you (even ask you) to share your ideas on the matter with me. To get started, I will attach an extract from a dictionary.