Questioning My Reality: Switzerland

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Since I’ve been in Europe, I have started to notice strange time-space incongruencies. A whole day, or even days will go by, and I seemingly won’t even notice. Even more disturbing is the fact that I’ve felt more and more unable to have a grasp on the reality of the present. It’s as if everything that I do I’m viewing already from the past; actuality never occurred, only the memory of it. It’s an incredibly strange and disconcerting phenomenon.. This dreamlike state was never more perceptible than during my travels to Switzerland.

It all started last Friday night. Will [my American friend here with me] and I were discussing plans to go snowboarding. We’d brought our boards over from the states, but hadn’t really had an opportunity to go riding yet. Once several weeks ago we almost went, but outrageous train ticket prices closed that idea. So as it was already May 4th, we were really starting to freak out, as most mountains around the world had already shut down long ago. We were going to be preoccupied with school stuff in the next coming weekends, so this was really our only chance to squeeze something in before the season slipped away. So for much of the week we pretty much planned on going to Hintertuxglacier in Austria. However over dinner on Friday Continue reading →

Gardasee Video

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I put together a quick little video of my trip to Gardasee, Italy. It’s pretty fast, fun, and full of shenanigans. Yes, the song is annoying but it was kind of recurring throughout the trip so I had to use it for the video..

Italia

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This past holiday weekend, I got invited by an old high school friend to join him and friends on a trip to Gardasee, in northern Italy. There were about 15 of us, me being the only nongerman–which was awesome. Most of the time I’ve spent here has been primarily with other internationals, so it was cool to actually hang out with Germans in Germany….ha
Italy was beautiful. And the drive there in itself was amazing: through the Austrian Alps!

Driving south from Munich, it’s pretty basic German countryside: green rolling hills, with intermittent forested areas. However, approaching the Austrian border, the Alps just rise up out of nowhere. It’s just like flat fields, then boom, mountains. Once in Austria, it’s basically just an onslaught of stereotypically great views.. After the Alps, the landscape of Italy was completely different, but just as schön in it’s own way. Verry green, very steep terrain, with endless fields of vineyards..
At Gardasee, we stayed in a couple “bungalows” in this little vacation community, about 100 meters away from the lake. The weather wasn’t great, and it even rained on us several times, but we made the best of it. I’m pretty sure the BBQ grill was going the entire time that we were there, and there was always a cold beer waiting if you wanted one. The lake itself was absolutely freezing, as it’s surrounded by mountains, and the water is from snow-runoff. However that didn’t stop us from jumping in! Needless to say we weren’t in it long, but we all had a blast with our shenanigans.

We stayed at Gardasee for 2 nights, and then departed to the small town of Laives, Italy about 2 hours away. There was such a strange mix of Italian and German/Bavarian cultures, and pretty much everyone there spoke Austrian German. The style and architecture of the town reminded me so much of southern California; it was pretty cool to see some of the roots of much of socal’s pseudo-Italian style.
But anyways, the weekend was a great success, and great experience! I have a lot of videos, so I’m thinking of making a quick video about it.. We’ll see. As usual though in the meantime, there’s plenty of pictures :)

Rothenburg/Residenz/Tumblr

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3 things in this post, each cool, but maybe not cool enough for their own post..


So to start off, earlier this week I went to the medieval-walled town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. What’s cool about Rothenburg is that they’ve tried really hard to preserve its roots and keep it looking as authentic as possible. The whole town (besides what has spilled out due to growth) resides within the original huge stone ‘castle’ walls, complete with gates, bridges, moats, etc. It was a little bit of a strange feeling living within walls–it felt secure but also maybe sort of confining.. But anyways, definitely very cool.


Later on in the week, I decided it was time to visit the Würzburg Residenz, as it’s a world heritage site in the same city I live in.. When I started the tour of the residenz, I have to say I was expecting a semi-boring and bland tour of some oversized palace. However the Residenz completely blew my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such good artwork; 2D murals on the ceilings and walls would evolve into 3D statues. It was so well done that most of the time you couldn’t even tell where the change between 2D and 3D occurred. Aside from the artwork, the glitz and glamour of the place was astounding. I always knew it, but now I have proof that Texans were not the founders of go-big-or-go-home. There’s a room in the Residenz who’s walls literally consist entirely of mirrors and gold. Every inch of the place had some sort of decoration. They didn’t allow you to take pictures in there, or else my camera would’ve been on burst fire mode, but a quick google search returns plenty of results. Here’s a link to a basic shot of one of the entry ways. Definitely cool.

Last and probably least, I just wanted to shout out a quick fyi: I’ve been taking tonssss of pictures.. Many of these pictures are pretty cool and interesting in some way, but they don’t really warrant their own ‘blog post’. Sooo that’s why I have set up a tumblr ‘microblog’, which is basically just a photostream of randomness from my cellphone camera, each with a veryy brief description. You might find it interesting, maybe not.. lol. There’s a link on the front page of my site, or just click here.

Below are a few more photos, and as usual the rest are on my flickr.

Nürnberg

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Last week I got the chance to spend a day in the city of Nürnberg(or Nuremberg), about an hour southeast of Würzburg. It is definitely one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to. Classic German atmosphere, huge churches, a castle (of course), and a long, interesting history behind it all.

DeutscheBahn offers a “Bayern Ticket”, which allows 5 people to take the trains anywhere in Bavaria for a 24 hour period for only €30. So the roundtrip transportation for the whole day was only €6/person. In Nürnberg, we visited Nürnberger Burg (Nuremberg Castle), which is over 1000 years old, Nürnberger Felsengänge (Nuremberg ‘Rock-corridors’), 300+ year old beer cellars cut out of the bedrock, and manditorily, the Bratwursthäusle bei St. Sebald, which not surprisingly has the best brats ever. If you’re in Nürnberg, I recommend going to all three.
I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

More photos on flickr here.

Würzburg!

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Let me introduce you to my new home: Würzburg, Bayern (Bavaria), Germany. It has a population of about 160,000 people, four universities, a castle, and is the second sunniest city in Germany. Pretty ideal place to live.

Upon my arrival, the first thing I noticed was how incredibly picturesque the town is. I felt like I was in a movie; rolling hills, cobblestone streets, medieval-style architecture, sweet cars, etc. Everything is so organized and clean, the public transportation is flawless, people never J-walk, recycling is a big deal, and a bottle of beer is the same price, or often times cheaper than a bottle of water. haha. The people are reserved, but really nice when you start talking to them. Und natürlich, the food is awesome.

I’m rockin a small like studio apartment which is on a hill above the city, and very close to Universität Würzburg. I’ve met several students from the universities here, and turns out there are lots of people from across the world here. Fortunately almost everyone speaks english but unfortunately that means that I don’t get as much German practice as I’d like..

I recently got a tour of the facilities and studio that I’ll be working with, and it’s easily the nicest photo/video setup I’ve ever seen. I’ll describe it more after I’ve had a chance to use it and maybe grab some pictures with/of it. But let’s just say I’m stoked for this year.

So much has happened in the short time since I’ve been here, that’s its really difficult to remember everything and write about it.. But I’ll try to keep the blog up-to-date with my most current ramblings and shenanigans. Also, I’ll be posting pictures to the blog, but because of the amount of photos I’ve been taking/plan to take, not all of them will make it onto the blog. So if you’re interested in seeing more, I’ll link to my flickr photostream for the whole shibang.

More photos on flickr here.

Hasta Luego

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Or rather, bis später. Yesterday/today I hopped the pond for a 6 month jaunt over in Germany; a 1.5 hour plane ride to Dallas, a 10 hour plane over Greenland to Frankfurt, and then a 1.5 hour train ride to Würzburg. So 36 hours after getting up ‘this morning’, I’m going to bed..

I’ll post more, including pictures and all, once I get more situated, but for now a quick panorama of the Frankfurt-Flughafen Hauptbahnhof (airport maintrainstation):

Preview – Levi the Poet

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On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to help shoot two videos for a well-known local poet, Levi the Poet. Before the shoot I had heard of him, but hadn’t really heard any of his work. I had no idea what to expect, so at first, I was a little thrown off by his style and delivery. However after listening to him finish his second take, I was completely sold. His message is gritty but awesome, and his raw and unapologetic approach are so refreshing in the politically correct world of today. I’m so glad that I have the chance to help Levi out in the production of these videos.

Since Wednesday I’ve put many hours in the editing room, and it’s paid off in the form of the quickest video turnaround I’ve ever pumped out: one day for a 6-minute video. It’s still a rough cut though, and will be headed for color grading, motion graphics, and final sound equalizing. That job will go to two other very cool guys I met, Scott Wells and Asher Barrett. The video is scheduled to be finished sometime next week, so in the meanwhile enjoy a couple iphone pics from the shoot and the edit:

Update:
Here’s the links for the two finished videos.
http://youtu.be/D5BRb9uzhRE
http://youtu.be/B28zpGQNm5k

They both turned out pretty well I think, and it’s awesome because they already have a combined 60,000+ views in just a few weeks. Glad I could help out Levi..

Jesse & Lindsey Wedding

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Late last night, after much technical difficulties, Drew and I finished the edit of Jesse and Lindsey’s wedding, from last weekend. While our footage wasn’t necessarily top notch (dark lighting…), I think that in the end we were able to produce a pretty good video. Tell us what you think!

Flor Azul

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Today marked the 10th day that I’ve been working as an intern on the Blue Flower/Flor Azul project with artist Federico Muelas. It’s been a lot of fun–usually it doesn’t feel like work, and I’ve been learning a lot. Federico is a really awesome guy, who has a great sense of humor and is just all around a joy to work with.

The project itself is basically a huge b&w LCD screen, of sorts. It’s hard to describe exactly because it’s a new technology that hasn’t really been used before, so this could potentially become a big deal haha. It’s apparently going to be the most energy efficient “screen” in the world, because it uses ambient lighting as it’s primarily light source. I don’t know a whole lot what I’m talking about, so if you want to know more about the piece itself, go check out Federico’s website: www.federicomuelas.com.

Here’s a panorama shot I took with my phone from the 7th level of the scaffolding:

A couple days ago I brought my Canon and tripod to capture some time-lapse shots of the day. I had the dual motive of wanting to capture the action up there on the scaffolding, and to try out the intervalometer function on the new MagicLantern firmware I installed on the camera. Turned out to work pretty well:

A final cool bit of information is that the project was featured in the Albuquerque Journal today, with just a brief spotlight on and description of the work. (It was pretty funny when the journalist came up on the scaffolding for questions and pictures because he was extremely afraid of heights ha)

Overall, this project has been a blast and all the people I’ve met through it have been awesome. We’ve got about a week left on it, and I can’t wait to see it completed!