Posts by Christina Feyerke

Terje Isungset playing the ice tuba during the Ice Music Festival in Geilo/Norway.

Norway: The Ice Music Festival

22.01.2020

A cool tribute to art and nature

The Ice Music Festival is a unique artistic and musical project arranged annually when the first full moon of the year occurs. It is an ovation to nature and to a resource treasured by mankind like no other: water. In its frozen state it is appreciated for a variety of purposes, from cooling drinks to posing as a temporary playground for more or less talented skaters. Here in Norway, it is even shaped by congenial creators into softly crackling, translucent musical instruments. Extravagant players elicit wondrous sounds in undependable, ever-changing acoustic colours coming from a harp, a cello, a tuba … some with clammy fingers wrapped in thick gloves protecting against the severe chill prevailing here. The festival site has recently been relocated from Geilo to Finse; the actual venue is located close to the Finse 1222 Hotel and the train station. Helpful to know that Finse is accessible solely by train during the winter months.

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Hotel Art Nouveau Berlin

A Berlin hotel: Close to a home story

10.01.2020

When planning a stay at a hotel, there is always a choice. Sometimes, preference may be given to a uniform and relatively sterile ambience. Chain addicts best relax when layout and appearance are identical in Paris, Prague or NYC. Yet: A genuine „home away from home“ will come in all different shapes, sizes and outfits – just as people’s residences do. The more variety the interior offers, the more likely it caters to a person’s individual needs. The management of the Hotel Art Nouveau (Garni) in Berlin Charlottenburg is readily being credited for taste and sensitivity and a talent for original style, design and quality food. Enhanced by their ability to create an international atmosphere by weaving cosmopolitan influences into their offering, the result is a smooth concoction of pleasing vintage components.

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TED Talk. Pico Iyer: The art of stillness

1.01.2020

In our hectic lives of constant motion and commotion, going nowhere at all could well be the key to more contentedness, says Pico Iyer, a travel writer with his heart and soul. A contradiction for a man crisscrossing the globe? Nothing is as urgent as sitting still, he says. To take the time to quietly lean back and indulge in a few peaceful moments a day, or to take the liberty of withdrawing for days, months – or years. And to contemplate to digest and organise the billowing mass of impressions inside our heads. An invigorating sabbatical may even provoke an entirely new approach and reveal a completely different meaning of life.

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