Cardiff

Home for a few days to do laundry, re-group and catch up on some work things.

Budapest

Today:

So fun. We started with a steep uphill ride on a cog railway... where we joined 'the Children's Railway', a training school for kids to learn on-the-job skills. Its a real railway, run by kids, that runs through the Buda Hills. It is magical and damn funny. Lots of uniforms and saluting... After that, a hike up to the highest lookout point over Budapest and stunning views for miles around. An empty chair-lift took us down, down down, then we zigzagged our way across Buda to the Bela Bartok house just in time for a guided tour. Pictured here is his quite study and if you look closely at his portrait you can see two bullet holes...

We ended the day relaxing in thermal waters... then out for a pizza. A truly memorable, fantastic day.

Yesterday:

Morning - shopping for food at the Central Market. A feast for all the senses.

Afternoon -  we went to the Gellert baths and relaxed in the healing waters...

Evening - big home cooked meal, washed down with fine Hungarian wine and concluded with Unicum! (And caught up with downloads of TV shows, Corrie and Flashpoint...) 

Vienna

After two fabulous,  intense weeks at the Gottweig Monastery, a few well deserved R + R days in Vienna! Saw the Rachel Whiteread Jewish Memorial. Went to the Nam June Paik show at the MUMOK yesterday, followed by a peppy little show called The Porn Identity at the Kunsthalle. Not every day you get to see full-on porn in a gallery and from the looks of the gallery goers (a higher than usual percentage of shifty looking unkempt older men...) the gallery did a great job of reaching new audiences! As well as objects and installations, there were lots of screens showing films including Richard Kern's Fingered, one of my personal favourites... and a lovely 'film intervention' piece by Martin Arnold. And at the other end of the spectrum we have Ron Jeremy, 'the hardest working guy in showbiz', looking a bit orange, a bit hairy and a bit greasy, having sex with scarily realistic, corpse-like, rubber sex dolls. Yumm. BTW, in the googling i did to find out exactly what material these hyper realistic dolls are made of (rubber? silicone?) I found a site with tips for homemade sex toys... Tip one includes melons and microwaves... eeew.

Austria....

Writing this from Gottweig Monastery,  back in Austria for the final module of the Media Art Histories MA programme. Todays lecture is by curator Nat Muller.