messages on a car

2007 was great in so many ways, things changed, i returned home but by going and coming back i – of course – changed a bit as well. i still doubt my every very decision, but i probably again got a little calmer about making mistakes. they happen, but as god does not place dice,…

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God has got his phone off the hook

Today I somehow realized (again) what home really means. It’s no only the place that your life, your dreams, your every single day is connected to, but also a special feeling of being safe and sound. When I came home today, home, our home, I felt safe and sound, thanks to Astrid. Good night, everyone….

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2007, the hours.

in january i understood home is not a place, it’s a feeling. in february i learned that we are all made up of our dreams. in march, north korea seemed unreal. in april i settled home. in may it was round pegs and square holes. in june impossible was nothing and it were the ties…

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a little lie

Calm down people It’s just a little lie You know it doesn’t mean nothing And I realize you could be right I walk alone And you know I never felt at home I’m so hard to please And I have everything I need I believe.

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i found a reason

Oh I do believe In all the things you say What comes is better that what came before or as Van Morrison would put it: the best is yet to come. I believe.

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an orchestra of lives

exactly a year ago i remember myself sitting in the huge loft in brussels by myself. i went because of a decision that i made months before, a decision that in the months after i questioned so many times. by the time we grow up, making decisions in general seems to get harder and harder….

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creep

I dont care if it hurts I want to have control I want a perfect body I want a perfect soul I want you to notice When Im not around Youre so fuckin special I wish I was special I believe.

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meeting o.s.

when i first met him at the university it was for an interview. after we left my colleague told me he had felt like an outsider once we started to talk. it was him and me. now after almost year of emails, i will get to see him again next week. i had asked him…

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memories in a notebook

alzheimer’s disease leaves back nothing but emptiness. i get to witness it every day, i can hear his screaming, the battling, the inner war that only knows victims. it leaves back empty houses, torn families but no memories. it takes what we all are made of in some way or another – the memories in…

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nightly encounters

yesterday, while making my home from a birthday party, police stopped me. for the first time in my life i had to do an alcohol test. i told them i had two drinks before. after i was done (i had 0,08, the limit in austria is 0,5) we chatted for a second and they waved…

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who can say where we’re going

i went out with my hockey team last night. i don’t know, but at some part i ended up standing in a corner of the bar by myself. and all of a sudden images started flowing through my head. austria, sweden, finland, belgium – now being back here. all of a sudden i felt lonely….

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shots ring out in a finnish sky

päivi was the first finn i got to know. we met during the time i was in the army and georg had founded entree. after she left i vowed that i’d go there one day – finland, to see what is like. the rest is history, i went there for the first time on august…

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283 steps

the graveyard has one long alley, which divides the park into two sides. my grandfather’s grave lies right at it, close to the gate that divides us, the living people, from the memories inside. i saw the new marble stones encircling it right away and it looked beautiful, as beautiful as he deserves it. as…

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subtle is the lord, but malicious he is not

it comes back to believing. believing in what we do (do i?), believing in who we are and still doubting that we should stay that way. i have made so many mistakes over my professional career and looking back all of them could have been avoided in some way or another. but can you learn…

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daylight is short in fall

he wasn’t one of my close friends, but we had known each other over mutual friends for years, always meeting up at the lake where we spent our summers growing up together. he was only 25 and it wasn’t his time to go yet. even if we’ll never know what his last thoughts were, i…

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these nights

sometimes my memories of being a night-owl come back to life. then i sit here, just by myself, my head slowly calming. this day was a good, i learned that i had passed the exam i was so afraid of. it felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders, it felt like…

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over there

reminds of my grandfather who went over there as well – a different over there. but the pain he endured doesn’t tell where “over there” really is. just that he survived, scarred for life but alive nevertheless. Over there, over there, Where ours is not to reason why. Over there, over there, Where someone has…

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Good morning Vietnam

So many times, it happens too fast You change your passion for glory Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past You must fight just to keep them alive I believe.

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alone in kyoto

it’s like feeling lost in translation – while you are trying to make good things happen, they don’t, or then they do, but you don’t get to see them. this week’s been hard, studying for this exam i have to pass. sometimes i feel so worthless in what i do in what i have done…

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Dear Mr. Raymond Williams

So we have left behind authoritarian and paternal systems of communication and are now enjoying the the virtues of commercialism, still looking for democracy. Are we? When I read your paper yesterday I couldn’t help but chuckle – the vision you were looking for is right here, in this blog and millions of others. We…

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mountains, sausages, hockey coaches

so we spent the weekend in the mountains – away from civilization (right, i brought my MBP) ready to breathe in some fresh air. i got my fresh air – actually i got about 10 times the fresh air i wanted because the small “hike” i was prepared to take developed into a close-to-eight-hours-and-25-km-let-us-all-join-the-SAS-after-this survival…

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everybody’s gotta learn sometimes

after a long time i met christoph again, the couple of beers i had on top of my painkiller (R.I.P. wisdom tooth) weren’t exactly the wisest idea in my life but the evening was fun nevertheless. i reminded me so much of what last summer felt – like a moment were time stopped and there…

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Free Burma!

Being a journalist I always wanted to change something about all the wrong in this world. I am not sure if I have succeeded in any way, but I know that at least I can raise my voice here. Free Burma! I believe.

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my last 96 hours

i flew to manchester. i grabbed a cab, the driver was telling me about his life in rural england. i met paul, did and interview, wrote it and we drove to manchester. i took the wrong train back, ended five miles off where the middle of nowhere starts. i found a nice person to tell…

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dodging bullets

i met a hockey buddy of mine in the city. three months ago he fell with his bike, well he crashed it, right into a whole and got kicked ooff it. his back was broken in a way that the smallest move would have tied him to the wheelchair for the rest of his life,…

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car crashes and other accidents

what a weekend that was. i started feeling really sick on sunday but wne to work nevertheless not wanting to leave my colleagues by themselves (especially because i leave for manchester next friday and i know what a hard week it is for all of us) – bad idea, the fever i had surpressed with…

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“have fun, never give up”

today, by coincidence i came across randy pausch. he is a professor at carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh. and he is suffering from incurable cancer. during his last lecture at cmu he closed with the title of this post. i promise. i believe.

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friendly neighbours

i went to see my local hockey team’s first season game in slovenija. ljubljana just joined our (austrian) league but they already seem to be an enrichment (though beating us). the best about the trip was actually what happened after the game. i walked up to my car which i had parked – quite frankly…

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good morning, bomber man

my regular schedule consists of me getting up, rubbing my eyes, walking up to my notebook and checking the morning news. today was – well – different. a 26-year-old threatened to blow himself up with a bomb here in klagenfurt. what caught my eye was the street name. it was the street next to my…

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two lost souls

We returned from Lienz yesterday, taking a break at the Weissensee, a beautiful lake in the midst of the mountains. We rented out one of the little boats there, steered it out on the lake, turned of the engine and just let it float. I closed my eyes for a while and with the boat…

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i failed, but then i gained

so it’s over and i didn’t make it. after a little more than a third i had a little accident while carrying the bike uphills through the woods. i barely made it out there, biked for a couple of more kms but then felt dizzy and my batteries were just plain empty. my legs felt…

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the night before the day

ii know it’s crazy and i never wrote about it here, but i am taking place in the red bull dolomitenmann tomorrow – an extreme race in the mountains near lienz. it’s a team event, cnsisting of a mountain run, a paraglide chapter, a canoo-part and mountainbiking. i am doing the mountainbiking and right now…

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Geilston Bay via Lindwood

It’s funny what can trigger your memory. Yesterday I drove past a bus, which in itself is not an unusual occurrence but this time I saw a destination on the front that I haven’t thought about for years. I must have travelled that route hundreds of times and as soon I saw it again, so…

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nessun dorma

This night Luciano Pavarotti died of cancer. He was my all-time favourite Tenor and even if I know there’s been a thousand other arias as beautiful as this one, Pavarotti changed Nessun Dorma forever. I listened to it almost all the way back from Brussels in my car and it never let me go. Dilegua,…

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mmm…coffee…

I didn’t discover coffee until about my mid-20s but since I did, I don’t know how I ever lived without it. It’s pointless to deny it: I’m hopeless addicted; to the caffeine rush, to the smell, to the taste and even more so to the good times I associate with drinking coffee. I was reminded…

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pulp mills and politics

Tasmanian politics has been dirty and muddy for a long time but right now it is particularly so. The proposed Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley has been an issue in Tasmania for over a year now and since the preferred RPDC process was abandoned in March, the ‘facts’ surrounding the proposed project just…

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