moustache

after me also my cookies grew a moustache...

souvenir from st. petersburg

found these very tasty cookies in a small convenience store

lenin at VDNKh in moscow

art moscow II

well actually there was one other piece at the art fair which i liked. first i thought it is just another room under terrible condition, but the i saw that a finnish artist was responsible for it. well i still suspect it is a ready-made and he just put his name under it.

art moscow

about 2 weeks ago i visited art moscow. most fascinating to me where these stylish shopping trolleys. to my disappointment i found out they are not part of the show and not for sale, what a pity, another art fair i got home empty handed.

tomatoes

ruedi who wants to become a latvian found the ultimate never-ending tomatoe tree. i would also like to have one of those in my garden.

САША ОДЕКОЛОН

shopping in maxima still manages to excite me. especially today as i found this little treasure - "САША ОДЕКОЛОН". not that i really was searching for an eau de cologne, i guess i just couldn't resist the charm of sasha and also would have taken him home if he would have been full of ШНАПС...

weekend activity III

it might just as well be the last opportunity this weekend to grill shashlik.

house on fire

last week my copy shop in agenskalns was burning. somehow i managed to take a picture without depicting neither the shop nor the fire. i probably should have read these instructions first...

i don't gif up yet...

...but photobucket is gifing me some problems. old gifs are not shown for a while because photobucket is tired. so let it rest and come back later

how to become superstitious

ruedi wants to become superstitious. actually he already is, as he never shook my hand standing in the doorway or also believing he can only become latvian by saying "davai" and wearing a blue hat. but there are also other superstitions which he thought would be easier to remember thanks to the repetition gifs provide. so we created some together...

now especially in times of crisis i also must remember always to keep a little bit of money in my wallet, because otherwise the devil comes and takes a crap in it:


then if you kept at least on cent or santim it also comes handy once someone presents you a sharp object, because then you have to give a little bit money not to get into conflict:


well and the next one seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. it says if you put on your clothes inside out, you soon will get drunk. cheers:


the rest of the gifs we created you can see on ruedi's blog post

weekend activity II

right click - safe image - open image - zoom until full screen - watch -
once you watched it long enough: try to turn your screen, so that the arrow always shows in the same direction.

introducing rūdi

ruedi, among some latvians already called rūdplesis, is a swiss guy with the crazy wish to become latvian. check out his blog and see how far he already got. here you can see him enjoying a rest on a swing couch, or however these things are called.

mushrooming

cleaning and cutting mushrooms looks easy, but it was quite exhausting never-ending work, especially after running one hour through a forest trying to keep up with the mushroom specialists ansis and janis, picking up mushrooms, not picking up poisonous mushrooms and not to get lost in the same time.

weekend activity

right click - safe image - open image - zoom until full screen - watch

lost outside the city

at the dubulti train station people just disapear. but somewhow they always come back. in my opinion it is the most beautiful train station far and wide. the only one that can keep up might be this in lviv. in which train station you would like to get lost?

urban exploration

i don't know if this is good or bad, but latvia surely is a great place for urban explorations. just 50 km outside of riga in middle of the kemeri national park you can find the beautiful ugly sanatorija "Līva". building up this monster allegedly took 10 years and it opened its doors in 1988, containing guest rooms for up to 600 people and all kinds of fancy shmancy spa installments. Already in 1993 it closed and now it is completely plundered and vandalized. Currently it is said that the buildings belong to an arabian company with seat in italy, who have plans to build apartments in one building and in the other a three star hotel. good luck!

panorama from the top floor:


panorama from the first floor:



rigashadow.net.tc is a nice page where you can find more pictures of places worthy for urban exploration. i sure hope there won't be shadowy pictures of the "castle of light" very soon.

rigas streets

on riga's streets you can find quite a lot of so called "street art". but soon you can recognize it is all made by the same 4 or 5 people, they are just very active. in my closest neighborhood you can find at least two dozen pics of kiwie as they are all very similar they are ideal to gif:

before the rain came

came the storm

had twins for breakfast

today for the first time i saw an egg with two yolks. here you can see them swim around their older brother before they got mashed up. delicious!

a bucket full of rain

yesterday it rained a bit. good that i can swim.

more castles

also this castle i found on my experimental traveling. it might not be as impressive as neuschwanstein, but it is also not so far away. on the other hand this one is more difficult to enter, as there is a vicious dog guarding the place (like every other house in the neighborhood).

catboarding

catboarding is like skateboarding just much more fun. just replace the skateboard with a cat. watch me trying to make my first kick flip:

if you are well advanced in catboarding, than you can switch over to humanboarding, but don't attempt waterboarding, that could be bad for your health!

experimental traveling

experimental traveling is fun and there are lots of different ways how to do it (more you can find out here). i was just walking out of my flat and turned on the streets, i never turned before and i was quite surprised to find this castle and other sights in my immediate neighbourhood, which i never saw before.

ding dong

yesterday i was walking through a fancy neighborhood in tornkalns. there are lots of villas hidden behind big fences, but not only the fences and the barking dogs behind them make you feel it is a highly exclusive rayon - the mere fact that even doorbells have their own little houses made me gasp.

if you liked this gif, you will like even much more David Shrigley's doorbell animation. go visit it and watch it in full screen!

soft drink recipe

in my notes i found this great recipe my old flatmate once told me for a tasty soft drink. i would like to share it with you!

so here it goes:

cucumber dream (for 4 servings)

difficulty level: 3

preparation time: 2 min

ingredients:
4 slices of cucumber
4 glasses of water

method:
1. fill 4 glasses with water
2. take a cucumber and wash it (not in the water glasses!)
5. quickly dry the cucumber
6. slice off 4 thin slices slices
7. put the slices carefully in the glasses (one each)
8. stirr it.
9. do not mix it with alcohol

now you can enjoy your drink! if you want to start with some easier recipes, you might want to try first one of grandma's soft drink recipes. but once you get a hand of it, you should really also try out the cucumber drink, it really is worth the effort!

squarepants

while riga is full of monuments of dead poets, when i was in berlin i came across a monument of a real legend. there were always two people posing in front of it, so i couldn't get spongeboob for myself, but instead i got a new gif...

spring cleaning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Spring cleaning is the period in spring time set aside for cleaning a house, normally applied in climates with a cold winter.

from gifmemore, the free gifer:

my neighbour must have had bad a very cold winter:

development help

my flatmate works as a volunteer for the latvian red cross. they got a huge package from denmark containing cute bags of pig crackers. as they didn't know what to do with them, the volunteers where asked to distribute them to their friends. i of course was very happy about this unexpected present, but when listening to the radio i got a bit suspicious why the danes didn't want to eat the delicacies themselves, can you guess why?

shashlik

the shashlik season is open, that's nice, just a pity that also the moskito season started, but let's for once concentrate on the good news, enjoy:

overfishing

"Overfishing occurs when fishing activities reduce fish stocks below an acceptable level. This can occur in any body of water from a pond to the oceans." source wikipedia; picture: 12 fisherman and a baby buggy behind the monument of victory, riga, 15th of may; comments: none.

against the stream

yesterday when i was in pardaugava sitting at the daugava i noticed that the water is flowing in the wrong direction. the best explanation for it is probably the log wetting device which is situated upstream and uses up much water. even if it doesn't make sense, at least like this it is easier to swim against the stream.

wet logs

ha, with this title i should get a lot of clicks on my page! sorry to disappoint the ones who searched for something else, but i really show wet logs and nothing else. why they are wettened i don't know, but i guess they are being prepared for their journey on the river, like this they can already get used to water.

show me your washline and i'll tell you who you are

agenskalns is full of beautiful clotheslines and this one here is particularly interesting. instead of skimpy underwear it features a dish towel, a plastic bag, a shower cap, a hand towel and another plastic bag. what does this say to us about the washing habits of the owner? i don't know, i only wonder if it is ecologically wise to wash plastic bags? i guess one has to be particularly careful not to wash the new plastic bags from maxxxima, because they degrade much faster, and who knows what could happen...

victory day

on the 9th of may i gif you 9 gifs of maybe the most colorful and controversial celebration of the year.

change!

always when i leave latvia for a while, when i come back i am looking what has changed. even when leaving for only a couple of days, you can be astonished about what’s new. this time there’s no new government, no friends had gone west, no casino has opened in the neighborhood, the bread prices are still the same and even no cat has died. the most striking change this time is the fantastic new milk package. it has far the best design with it’s minimalist approach. it just says piens (latvian for milk) on it. because there is no cow smiling on it they decided to also write moloko on it so that also the russian minority will understand what it is. hope other products will follow this nice example.

dream jobs

if i would have had this fantastically strange toy in my childhood, then for sure maybe i would have wanted to become a policeman when i grow up.

attention please

in late march i walked along lake lucerne when the following sight struck me. two little boys fishing with their mother. nothing wrong about that. i just remember when i was fishing for the first time with my father some 20 years ago, but he told me and my brother to always keep quiet not to scare the fish away. maybe nowadays fish also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and don't care about being quiet anymore. on the other hand they didn't catch one single fish while i made this gif...

hang loose

the last few weeks i was just hanging around like these clothespins. well i wish i would have. whatever, now i finally find some time to update this blog with old gifs and some new ones.