Slide Shows

My father used to have, or still has, an old fashioned slide projector for analogue photos dating back from the 70’s I think. As a kid I used to love sitting in the darkness before his big collapsible screen, watching pictures sliding by to the hypnotic buzzing sound of the machine and the regular whirring and clicking sound of its mechanics. The slide projector was only brought out on special occasions, often around Christmas. Usually our family would watch brightly lit photos from the previous holidays - each a postcard from last summer, which reanimated warm and vividly coloured memories. Sometimes we would also watch the almost unreal photos of my parents, taken when they were younger, before my sister and I arrived. These persons I had never met, but they seemed to echo my parents in unbelievable ways. Memories of the world that had existed before I had, and memories, which were mine and not mine.

I’m still very fond of thinking back to these occasions, these memories of past memories

But alas, nowadays nobody uses such equipment. A modern video projector or LCD-screen is simply not as cosy as an old-fashioned slide projector. There is something sterile and soulless in modern digital photos. They do not portray something analogue to a memory, but only a digital version, a fragmented version. Once again progress has ripped the soul out of an utility, drowned it in efficient design and killed its potential for nostalgia.

But here are some pictures from my recent vacations in Vilnius and St Petersburg anyways. One of them is, and one of them was in Eastern Europe. Both are interesting cities but also extremely different from each other. I won’t go into much detail because a picture tells more than a thousand words, as you know!

From Vilnius

Party mood after some very silly mojitos in a Coyote Ugly rip-off bar.

Street life in Vilnius on a rainy Sunday.

Caught in the KGB-dungeon in Vilnius. A quite scary place.

Even the designated guide can be in need of advice where to go? Praise the Lonely Planet.

From St. Petersburg

The Church on Spilled Blood, build where Tsar Alexander II was blown to smithereens in 1881 by Peoples Will terrorists. A study in ornamental opulence and gold, now you know why Russians are so fond of gold and bling bling.

Inside the Church on Spilled Blood. You can tell I really liked it!

The Stroganov family palace. Here the family chef invented Beef Stroganof!

The Peter and Paul Fortress with the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. This is where St Petersburg was founded, 304 years ago.

The final resting place for the last Tsarina Dagmar, a former Danish princess, within the Peter and Paul Cathedral. To here she was moved in 2006 from Denmark and and reburied.

Me, Kasper and Jessica. I went to summer school with Jessica in Shanghai and met her 3 months later by chance in Peter and Paul Fortress in Russia. What a small world!

The fabulous Winter Palace in the sunset. A true Kodak Moment. Its bling bling exterior and interior now houses parts of the world known Hermitage Museum.

Dvortsovaya Square seen from the Winter Palace with the yellow Staff Headquarters its double Arc of Triumph the background.

An amazing hallway in the Winter Palace with incredible paintings from the bible in the ceiling.

The beautiful and grand Jordan or Ambassador Stairway in baroque style within the Winter Palace.