Puzzle me this…

Today after work I made a quiche and it was watery… but afterwards Andi and I played boardgames together! Super fun..

I should update about my oh so Jugenstil weekend last weekend but I’m going to get to bed early… and its really hot in the apartment.

Three more weeks and I’m back in the U S of A.

Puzzlemasters. Listening to Sinatra on a Thursday night…

The Week of July 13th: from upholstery to HP6 to Gladiators

After coming back from Prague, I jumped right back into work… to realize that most of my team was on vacation. I still had some work to do, however, with the interiors team. The task for that Monday (July 13th, yeah I’m really behind) was to show how a sound absorbtive fabric performed to scale on the seat of the chairs in the House of Music. Behold:

A pillow for the gods.

Other then random tasks, and this pillow, I spent the week archiving all the old models and get them ready to take to storage in a warehouse outside of Vienna. Wooo.

Actually, what I really liked was that one day I had to move all the team computers because we were rearranging where everyone was sitting, so I was getting really dusty and sweaty (the temperature in the office was above 90F). I was done with the task early and the team leaders both agreed the rest of the day was mine to spend as I wished. Perfect because it was beautiful outside.

I spent part of the day shopping (hey, can you blame me? By the time I leave the office, all the store are closed) and then went to explore near the Donau. I got off at Kaisermüllen and went looking for the Donaucity Church, designed by Heinz Tesar which is right infront of the Vienna International Center.

The bells of the church, behind is part of VIC

The entire church is perforated with small circular windows… and clad with some glossy metal. You totally don’t expect the inside to be made of wood.

The interior is actually very well lit by daylight - and although I don't think I would have made the gash in the roof - I like the two square windows on the corners of the building.

To my surprise it was a Catholic Church… with masses in English. I was able to go to one after swimming in the Alte Donau – the first one in English since my arrival. I continued to look around before then though.

A view of the VIC. With a rock garden.

Swoop up-close

SEG Apartment tower by CHBL - designed with lateral wind forces in mind. I didn't get a chance to go closer, as it was getting hotter and I was getting ready to go swimming.

HAHAHAhahahaha What the... ? I saw this on the way to the public beach - in the Donauinsel park, I think. It reminded me of Asia for some reason.

On Friday, a day much looked forward to by everyone in the Zeger household, I met Ulli and Andi at the airport to pick up Richi (all their nicknames end in ‘i’). Hans Yeger (father) was celebrating his birthday and the present was a ’surprise’ visit from their son (who forgot the ACTUAL day of the birthday, and booked his tickets back to Vienna a week later… therefore postponing a party that was actually supposed to be the weekend before. Sounds like something I would do.)

It was a great family weekend. We ate Indian food (fish and lamb/spinach curries) and I loved the mango dessert…

Family! A home away from home.

MMmmmmm Mango...

Later that evening, after playing many board games, we decided at the last minute to go see Harry Potter 6. And to my surprise, I found the little square I had been looking for but didn’t get around to finding.

HP6 was playing in English at Artis, your friendly neighborhood international film theater. Which, little did I know, was located just off of Judenplatz.

This Holocaust memorial was designed by Rachel Whiteread.

‘The blocky concrete structure resembles an inside-out library, with the imprint of rows of books, spines facing in, lining the outer walls. Inscribed around the base are the names of Nazi concentration camps. The work’s facade bears a dedication in German, Hebrew and English to the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust.’ (Art in America, Jan2001., S. Cash)

Needless to say, I expected more from the movie, but it was a good experience nonetheless.

Sunday the entire family all went to Carnuntum again… but this time for the Gladiator fights. It was a great time yelling for Perniculus (Steve, to his friends), Pegasus and Sephadorus to beat the evil out of their opponents. And actually, although they were only fighting with wooden swords and shields, they definitely fought and received bruises.

Fight to the death!!

The amphitheater... the fights... the Carnuntum experience.

Do the wave!

That is all I can muster for an update right now.

A post of post-Prague pictures

We are on a train passing through the Czech countryside heading from Ostrava to Prague.

Stare Mesto, the center of the oldest part of Prague...

this town square has buildings dating from the 1200s to the 1800s and amazingly enough they all look really good together!

... at night everything is still very much alive. With tourists.

Everywhere else we went that was outside walking distance, we took the subway system... which was about 1000 miles under the city. That means a really long escalator ride to the bellows of the earth. It was about a two minute ride. This picture was taken halfway down.

An amazing example of communist architecture - the TV tower in Prague...

Yes, there are black babies crawling on it.

Communism still leaves its mark everywhere... we saw these after crossing Charles bridge to get to the Mala Strana and Hradcany.

Walking up to the Castle is so much better in color.

We reached the summit just in time to see the changing of the guard.. with about a million other people.

Went inside this guy... Katedrala svateho Vita

and saw the most beautiful stained glass window by Alfans Mucha (a Czech art nouveau painter)

Outside the palace, we found a new greenhouse designed by Eva Jiricna, 1998

saw Hotel Josef by the same architect... Not as interesting as we were led to believe.

Could you call me an architecture student if I didn't see Gehry's dancing house? I don't think so. And with a purchase of a small coffee we were allowed to go to the roof!

Rooftop dining area... but that's not all.

We got to see Fred's interesting hair piece.

And a great view down river.

We walked around the area and I really like this church, but never came closer to it than this.

Returning to the square... we watched the clock... and the apostles that danced around it.

After mass at Matky Bozi pred Tynem (the church facing the old town square that looks surprised) we walked around and found this Kafka statue outside the Spanish Synagogue.

We also checked out some architecture by Jean Nouvel, but it isn’t worth putting in here… it was a very uninteresting mall called the Golden Angel. If you’re really curious, there are more pictures on facebook.

Phew, the post took a long time to get out there. I don’t know why I have been so unmotivated to update this blog!

( I apologize if the text under the pictures doesn’t show up very well…. I’n not exactly sure how to correct that.)

A weekend in Prague

A Friday afternoon lunch break at the office is a great time to update the blog… and I will be in Neusidler See this weekend with the Zeger family, celebrating Hans Zeger’s birthday so I won’t have time later.

Last week on Thursday, after all the plans were finished in Illustrator, Tyler and I asked for the day off on Friday to go to Prague – one of the cities on my ‘to do’ list this summer, followed by Graz, Linz, Munich, and Grafenegg. We will see how far I get in this list. Anyway that Thursday after work, we planned everything out, booked buses, hotels, printed out maps, buildings to see, etc. so that we would be ready come the morning. Which we were. We got on bus near the Prater that had a transfer in Brno, one of the main cities in Prague. Getting to Brno was great, watched a movie, and when we got off the bus we just had to transfer to the bus at stop 7 and head merrily to Prague, arriving at 2pm.

I don’t know what went wrong.

Four hours later, we find ourselves entering a city that looked like it was still Communist. Neither of us had ever been to Prague, so we didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps we were going in a back roads way?? We passed a huge black factory that hadn’t been used since the war. The bus parked and everyone got off at this little tramway stop so we did the same. We couldn’t find any signs in English anywhere, which would also be strange for a touristy city. So we asked an old woman getting of a tram, pointing to our map, where are we?? She just raised her hands to heaven and walked away. In my mind I was like, are we even IN Prague? so I just asked her that too. Tyler and I laughed like, how could we NOT be in Prague? So we decided to walk away from the area towards a busier intersection so we could at least find some street names and find ourselves on the map. No intersection seem busy… all the houses were a little crumbly and there was a storm coming in. We passed one guy and showed him the map, asked where we were. He took it from us, turned it over, looking at it, and said simply ‘This is a map of Prague’. Uh… yeah…. And he said, you’re in Ostrava, so we took the map back thinking that Ostrava was a small town in the vicinity that we could just get a bus to Prague from. Where is it on this map (area map)? His finger moved east of the piece of paper… very east. ‘You’re about 400 km away from Prague, in Ostrava’.

“$=%§($52ß593$%=()&

So we went back to the train station and started asking anyone how to get to a trainstation or airport. One guy selling T-Mobile phones pointed us in the right direction with his limited English, pushing us onto the next tram that went by. Having no other choice, we’re like, well how much more lost could we get? Not very. We ended up at the trainstation that had a train to Prague in the next 15 minutes. So we go on board and settled back to enjoy a nice long ride through the Czech Republic, as we were crossing the entire length of it anyway.

Phew.

Prague was spectacular after that… We arrived five and a half hours later than expected, but that evening we enjoyed a great traditional meal in a vaulted basement restaurant and wandered around before picking up a fellow traveler, Maria, from the Hauptbahnhof.

We spend the weekend seeing all the buildings and talking shop, taking a lot of picture. My next post will be one with all pictures, describing what we did exactly. I meant for this post to have pictures too but my work computer isn’t recognizing my external harddrive so that will have to be later.

This past week we have been cleaning the office and so Tuesday I got half the day off because it was super hot and I spent it moving around computers and boxes because the HoM team is shrinking. Because I was really gross when I finished that, I went home, got into my swimsuit and spend the rest of the afternoon in the Alte Donau, swimming in the river at a public beach. It was sweet, and afterwards I got to see a lot of really interesting architecture near the Vienna International Center, especially a small church. Again, pictures will come in a later post.

I have more to update from this past week but lunch is over… and I have to keep archiving. Woo.

No AC in the office

And we all have to work. There aren’t that many people from the team here because July is kind of downtime and national vacation month in Austria and Europe for that matter. Riding the U-Bahn in the heat is a whole new world of smells.

I have to update about Prague and I’m putting it off… so what else can I write about?

-got a haircut

-going to meet Andi in a few minutes to go to Tel Aviv beach near Schottenring.

This weather makes my brain slow.

… oho here is a neat link: http://www.wallpaper.com/directory/architects/2009

All top Architects under the age of thirty from all over the world and samples of their work. I was looking for Aptumarchitecture… come on Julie and Roger!

Sunday to Tuesday: Planning for the future

I said the website crashed on me earlier, so this is my attempt to retype everything that I have written:

Sunday Wolf Prix hired the photographer Erwin Wurm to take the first ever Coop Himmelb(l)au team picture! All the emails we received about the weekend really stressed the dress code (titled “the Architect”) which meant that everyone had to wear black shoes, black pants (long pants, mind you), white shirt, and black blazer. It was humid and warm at 9am when I left the apartment wearing the required clothes, so by the time I got to the shuttle buses at the offices, I was as sweaty as everyone else. About 120 people showed up, and then the shuttles departed to… the middle of nowhere. They had to hire shuttles because no public transport makes it all the way out to the this random rusty dockland/loading area place that we were driven to.

Here we are everyone! Where????

And then Prix drives in. The guy on the right in the brown shirt is Erwin Wurm – apparently they’re old friends, which is why he did the photoshoot.

Ladies.

So we take three different shots: The first we are all standing in rows, like an army and the executive board of Himmelblau is looking down on us from a loading dock. The second shot, everyone piles onto this truck used for dragging three cars at three different levels across the country – we are a commodity. The final shot by Wurm made me laugh. We all had to sit on the ground in our nice clothes, with our legs straight out in front of us, and looking straight ahead. This was the only one that I got pictures of:

Again, we're in rows - this is just a picture of everyone getting ready.

It was getting really hot at that point so sitting upright with legs straight and hands and arms at your side was like doing pilates in a sauna.

Afterwards, everyone piled into the buses again and drove to a place that had prepared lunch for us, compliments of CHBL.

The rest of Sunday was pretty lazy, so I was able to get up for work on Monday pretty refreshed. Tuesday I spent in Hornstein with Omama, because it would be the last time to do so. We woke up at 5am Wednesday morning to wish the pilgrams (Hornsteiners that walk from Wednesday to Sunday to Mariazelle) good luck and say our last goodbyes. Got back to Vienna and went to work.

Tomorrow, Tyler, Maria, and I are going to Prague for the weekend…

Dear Family, thanks for calling me at 7am this morning. I love you.

EL

First week in July: Hot and Busy

This week has been a lot of work trying to meet a deadline for this Monday which was pushed to Friday in order to allow the festivities of the weekend to be fully enjoyed.  Every summer CHBL throws a Sommerfetzt near the Alte Donau, which was what happened this Friday. I was kind of experiencing a burnout by Friday (because in addition to all the work, I went out a couple times with friends of friends from work – I finally experienced Flex, and came home later than was very wise) so my plan was just go to and work my shift (interns were required to be door men and make sure that everyone got a cd and raffle number) and then come back and sleep and be ready for Hornstein on Saturday.

First a little about how CHBL operates during a party:

1. Make trendy fliers, a cd of himmelblau hits from 05-09,  and raffell prizes (feat. were some CHBL bikini’s, rings from BMW Welt sketch, and other random stuff the industrial design department came up with).

2. Rent a summer camp looking building near on the banks of a river with an open bar.

3. Get DJs and play some remixed oldies rock songs that Wolf Prix can dance to (which he did. Which I have video footage of)

4. Keep if professional until about midnight when each team has a “meeting” – by which I mean shots.

5. Finally the DJ plays some sweet jams – so you dance with everyone from interns to team leaders.

** Optional: Swimming and playing volleyball (clothes are also optional).

Saturday I went to Neufeld in the morning with Stef and a friend of his from Golan – they both had diving licenses and wanted to test the waters. Neufeld sea used to be a coal mine or something along those lines and filled with water so the water is really deep (approx. 50m) and clear. And cold. So I sun bathed and waited for them. I went swimming and turned a little blue, so I didn’t go back in – but I guess it’s supposed to be warmer once the day wears on.

A view of the sea... and Stef's army bag.

Excuse me, I have places to go on my Slide-Boat, outta the way swimmers, this is a moving party.

I went to lunch with Omama, Kuma, and Onkle Paul afterwards and spent a little time visiting Peter Eberhardt before returning to Hornstein for a nap and a little walk afterwards.

What a great picture.

Hornstein... also the location of the first "Annoying Americans looking at your ..." Thank you Rosemary!

Love the Esterhazi colors!

At the end of the walk I ended up at the cemetery above Hornstein to visit some other relatives.

The night ended with a heurigen in Hornstein and then a night drive back to Vienna. I will be back on Tuesday though, to give Omama a proper goodbye.

I’ll update later because this stupid website crashed on me and deleted everything I just wrote. I’m going to get icecream with Andi. We just finished cleaning the apartment and after sweatin’ it up, we need something cool. I’ll be heading to a mass at Stephansdom tonight – hopefully I wasn’t wrong about the time!

Love to my family and friends,

Oh, and I hope everyone had a happy fourth of July!

EL

Humidity in the morning

is one of the worst experiences I’ve had here. Recently it has been cold and rainy and I don’t know which I prefer. Sweaty hotness that results in a fuzzy stupor all day or walking into work with wet feet.

So I am waiting here at CHBL for another task… although I don’t think that my time with Illustrator has come to a close, rather more like a momentary pause. I handed over the drawings this morning to the super friendly graphics department and I’m waiting to hear back from them. I totally forgot that June had only 30 days (Mom, why didn’t you ever teach me the knuckle trick?? Now I look like a fool!) and so the internal competition between interns ends tomorrow at noon. Guess who decided to party and not work on a design? Yeah, but I guess it was worth it because MJ was played, danced to, toasted to, blahblahblah.

Did I mention that I LOVE meeting knew people??

This is a stream of conscious post, I guess.

Speaking of which – THANK YOU SO MUCH ROSEMARY FOR THE LETTERS!!! I LOVE READING THEM! It’s like your here with me and talking. Stream of consciousness from you in letters makes me lol all over the place. I read them while watching Grey’s Anatomy with Andrea, so the letters combined with the show (which I have never seen until I got here- don’t worry friends, I won’t get addicted, but ITS SO HARD NOT TO!) was too much stimuli to handle, which resulted in outbursts to Andi like OMG she’s a lesbian!? and HOLY CRAP this letter is 8 pages long!

Man, today I can barely keep my eyes open…

Check out this jellyfish picture:

It is a springboard for the idea for the interior of the theater. This morning before lunch I had relatively little to do, kind of inbetween tasks (like now) so I went downstairs to the basement, which smells like catacombs and sweaty interns, to check out the material room and get some ideas. Then I asked Eva (in interiors) about if we need to know materiality and she was like no, it will be plaster. Okay

Well, I have a task. Interior elevations in CAD, here I come.