The Giant Sand Castle

If you have one and-a-half hour to spend in Barcelona, what are you gonna see? I opted for the Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's mega project, still under construction after 90 years.

Now this thing is weird. It looks like some giant sand castle made by some overenthousiastic wonder kid.


Still under construction - the whole thing is full of strange elements like the fruity colored bulbs on top of the left wing arches (click to zoom).

The tower looks more like a minaret than a church tower.


Now what is this thing? This looks like some Stalinist thing in a dodgy ex-Soviet republic.


From the distance the thing makes more sense. And you can't really say it's ugly anyway.

Show off stuff

As you all know, whenever there's something like a World Exhibition, a Football World Championship or Olympics, countries try to go the extra mile when it comes to building their prospective cities of the so-called future.

This is the Estaçaõ do Oriente in Lisboa, Portugal. It was built for the 1998 World Exhibition. Even though I'm no fan of contemporary architecture I like this one.

Goin' Kitch in Kiev

Couple of weeks ago in Kiev I was again sorta amazed at the Slavic preferences in terms of colours and the general display of flashyness or impersonated wealth. Personally I think this tendency has its roots in the Eastern Orthodox church, as the churches are the worst of all when it comes to the excessive use of gold, bright colours and decorative thingamajigs.

Kiev is a cool place however with lots to see and a pack of cigarettes costing only 0.60 euros - even cheaper than Georgia. Hotels are very reasonably priced and mostly up to western standards. Transportation is cheap, beer is cheap, woman are cheap. What else could you possibly want.

Minas Morgul

This is the parliament building of Georgia, on Rustaveli Ave. in Tbilisi. It as built during the 50's, and clearly this is a result of Stalinst architecture that spread over the Soviet Union in the 30's.

At night it looks like a fortress, or some palace of evil from a movie. It's truly impressive. The building actually has a square courtyard in the centre, and as it is built up against a hill, it really seems to rise up from the low point (Rustaveli street level).

The building was constructed for the bigger part using forced labour from German POW's. It took them approximately 9 years to build this structure. Whoever survived the construction was allowed to go back to Germany.