a car drive starts this train tour, (I know, but it's just Slovenian train connections to Graz are ultra slow) so from Graz there's a direct train to Brno (via Vienna which goes on to Prague and Berlin)
(this is the start of mega🧵lasting for the whole week, hopefully. rest of posts will be unlisted)
now interrail ticket and seat reservation have checked out
the train is arriving to Brno main station. in Vienna the train got much more passengers but nothing critical, about half of seats were taken. someone had a reservation next to me but found another free pair of seats so we can all be comfy
I was able to get some SuperCollider code down during
I'll be meeting @zbiejczuk now and spend some time around and then go to perform at DINN session
Sunny, warm cosy Brno, with good friend @zbiejczuk taking care of me and some new friends like Tomáš Vtípil who hosted me yesterdays in his studio. Attentive audience - supposedly from improv and visual arts scenes - turned up and we've been off on a sonic adventure. I played 'Matt' and some Algoforte pieces (from MENT edition). We had a lot of interesting discussions.
Today I'm off to train to Prague, right after noon.
Train from Brno to Prague was packed according to seat reservations possibilities but I got lucky and got a comfy seat with a table in the bicycle compartment at the tail end of the train so I was able to polish the presentation during most of the 2:30h ride.
Prague is not as warm as Brno but @marysi of Synth Library Prague welcoming totally makes up for it.
Audience was great, and didn't mind pres' length too much. extra cosy conversations and tea after.
yesterday spent a free day with a bit of walking, having a coffee, thinking and pondering the Prague's bridges and the river, getting some work done, having more coffee, a late lunch with relatives in a nearby restaurant, enjoying some parks, working some more. the weather is not the best but it will do.
said bye to Marie and left very rainy Prague without problems apart from train having half-hour delay. worked more on the presentation most of the drive until getting off at Dresden-Neustadt where @noisio picked me and we drove first to accommodation and then to DIWO Week festival's venue - "stadtknd"
@metaknoten organizes this festival (DIWOweek) every year in a different space. it's Alvin's thing, somehow.
Great cozy atmosphere, awesome hackish artish content for the whole week. Grateful to have irl-met @knrd with whom we had dinner and talked all the important things and some other new amazing connections.
The lecture went quite OK, I'm quite satisfied with it now. Got lotsa interesting feedback.
Was trying to do a seat reservation for trains to Linz via Prague and bahn.de showed a bus replacement for the last hour so I changed my mind and reserved the seat on a train via Halle about two hours later.
The faster train at 12:45 was full (at least according to station announcement) and since I had no reservation I changed to a regional train to Seltzhal (not too full), and there took EC to Graz (full but not too much), where I just boarded 'express train' to Ljubljana, which will take 3 hours.
On all trains I had a seat next to me empty and I could stretch legs towards an empty seat opposite. I could type on my laptop and/or read.
My head is full of impressions from amro festival. So much inspirational projects and presentations, artistic as well as research ones. Producers very warm, full of heart, but never pampering. Egalitarian vibe with everyone required to wash their dishes. It feels like this is the best festival in the world, with so much critical creativity with thoughts of politics and aesthetic substance.
And to reflect on this 1st leg of my ambitious mini-tour this summer: train travel is most of the time quite relaxed. It takes more time than flying and car travel, but so less exhausting and the time can be used for easy reading and even working.
Interrail ticket allows great flexibility to switch trains, most seat reservations (mostly optional) can be bought online.
with a wave :flan_wave: to those at #amro who also have a fedi :fediverse: account (that I could find/get) this thread from my micro+tour 👆 this May ends here (and back in Ljubljana).
Next time someone calls themselves a 'futurist', maybe read the futurist manifesto they're alluding to..
"We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice."
Btw the techno-optimist manifesto quotes and references Marinetti who wrote both the futurist and fascist manifestos