Don't be a snake, use your brake!
100 cassette covers — oh geez, I loved those. There are still several of those BASFs in my parents’ flat; my English-learning father used them for recording BBC programmes and some late 70s Italo Disco. To me, eight years old at the time, they seemed to be the essence of modern design; things seem to have changed since then, but still I cannot help liking the general style.
Don’t be a snake, use your brake! Hold your horses! Be fair, don’t be a hare! Less is more indeed! Slow down in our town! Drop the power, go 50 miles per hour! — Renders speechless.
In other visuals — These are some very nice posters from the Designs on the White House T-shirt project, a competition for hip Kerry shirts started by people who noticed (as explained in the about section) that existing shirts were “pretty vanilla”.
And, oh, oh, 40 minutes of Jason Kottke’s voice!
Tallinn
The last month has been total craziness. Quite unexpectedly, we have been invited to attend a cultural journal conference in Tallinn. The following week was a mixture of joyful expectation and general uneasiness (as far as I’m concerned, the uneasiness gradually subsided, at least until the moment of boarding the plane — the first plane in my life! — at which point the only words of wisdom I could remember were those I heard in Venice after attempting to get off the boat at a wrong stop: “Stay on board”). Shortly before departure day, we received from our — fantastic, as it turned out — host the following letter:
Dear colleague,
the time of the 17th European Meeting of Cultural Journals is getting closer and closer. In the following I am giving some practical tips for getting around in Tallinn.
When you arrive in Tallinn by plane, then in front of the terminal you will find a line of white Opel-taxis waiting (Tulika takso). Those must be reliable. A ride to the Reval Park Hotel (Kreutzwaldi 23, at the corner of Kreutzwaldi and Gonsiori street, just beside the Politsei park) will take 10 minutes and cost you around 60 kroons. (Probably it is also possible to pay by card). People looking for “local experience” can try bus nr 2. Its intervals are 20 or 30 minutes. You should take sure that it goes to the city (Reisisadam) and NOT to the suburb called Moigu.
You can buy public transport tickets from the bus- or tram-driver. In this case it costs 15 kroons. If you buy it from a kiosk (Üks bussipilet, palun — One bus-ticket, please. Kaks/kolm/neli/viis/kuus bussipiletit, palun — 2/3/4/5/6 bus-tickets, please) — then it would be 10 kroons. The ticket can be used only once on tram, bus or trolleybus — you have to make holes into it. If you have made it a principle to avoid taxis, supply yourself with a map.
Reval Park Hotel advertises itself on its home-page as “an existing hotel”, probably meaning “exciting hotel” (the excitement is supposed to derive from the casino under the same roof). Some of the guests are accomodated at Poska villa guest-house. It is situated near the Kadrioru park (founded by Peter the Great). The meeting will take place next-door to the guest-house, at the “Self-Help and Advisory Centre for Elderly Citizens”.
As I am writing, the temperature in Tallinn is record high for this time of the year — 28 C, but it has been forecasted to get cooler during the next week (14-18 C).
I wish you a safe trip to Tallinn and I hope that the Meeting will turn out a memorable experience (in a positive sense, I mean).
Indeed, it couldn’t be more positive. Everything has turned out great — this has probably been the first trip of my life with no organisational surprises whatsoever. The conference was inspiring, the city — wonderful, modern architecture around the impressive and colorful Old Town, clean, friendly, full of young people, cafes, wi-fi areas and occasional seagulls flying by.
Tallinn advertises itself as a constantly developing capital; the — probably quite distorted as we know it — local legend tells of a a green man living in a nearby lake, who (for what reasons, we haven’t been informed) plans to flood the city after it is finally built. Each year he visits the city gates and asks whether its formation has ended; each time the answer has to be negative — Tallinn is perpetually under construction. I wish Warsaw or Lodz would resemble this “developing” city.
With big conference-load we haven’t been able to explore the city as we would like to, but the first impression makes one want to come back.
I also rather regret not being able to visit this Moigu area, which we were especially told NOT to go to.
