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.

Autumn blues

Today the network of the embassy crashed, which means that there is no intra- or internet or emails. The embassy is almost hermetically cut off. No work can be done, as the churning streams of information comes to a sudden halt, except clearing out old emails. Not even the usual overspringshandlinger (a Danish word for an action you do to avoid doing something else) can be done. Usually I will almost autistically tjeck out the news sites, my email, my facebook etc. Now all I can do is to rotate on my chair, make tea and look out of the window into the rainy and gloomy lead-coloured sky, which seems to hover just above the autumn treetops of Hirve Park.

I begin to contemplate on how dependent Western societies are on information technologies nowadays. I can’t imagine how my work could have been done just 15 years ago without the easiness of contacting and coordination people and doing information searching through the wires. Now we take this infrastructure for granted, as a part of everyday life. It’s a cliché, but its also true and it’s a bit scary. Especially when one is living in Estonia which last spring experienced the most severe example of cyber warfare yet encountered by any country. But no need to get heavy just because the sky is the colour of lead!

Autumn seems to be speedier in Estonia than in Denmark. Every day the trees outside the office windows are dressed in a bit more yellow and orange. Or perhaps I only fool myself into thinking it’s speedier because it’s an overspringshandling which I would not be able to do in the study hall at the university - contemplating on the colour of the foliage. Every day more leaves are lying on the lawn and less is hanging on the threes. And every day Andrus, the caretaker, can start scooping up the leaves again, like another Sisyphus. And every morning it’s definitely just a bit harder to get up and out of the bed. Every day, as the day shortens itself with a just few minutes, sleeping time lengthens a bit more. Lately the bathroom has turned into a serious bottleneck in the apartment, because all three of us wait until the last possible minute to get up and take a shower. We keep getting later and later at work. It’s heavy.

Work wise some of the early enthusiasm has also faded a bit as autumn blues and the hum drum of routines kick in. The tasks are still interesting most of the time, but the glossiness of being an intern at an embassy is certainly a bit worn by now. Or perhaps it is the 37-hour working week, which is beginning to catch up with the happy student?

Luckily it’s Friday today and I have the next week off. My parents are coming tomorrow, and I will go to Sct. Petersburg on Wednesday and meet with Kasper. It’s going to be nice. And what do you know? The Internet is working again. Huzzah.