Right Pronounciation

One of my favorite artists is HR Giger. If you want to know how to pronounce his name check out the video posted below. :)

Amsterdam

Woo hoo! I finally booked a flight and hotel for a week in Amsterdam. I hadn´t realized that the city would be that expensive during the summer vacation (also due to my late booking). An extensive search with our travel agent lead to expensive hotels rather far from the city center.
So I cut back on my wishes and booked everything by myself on the internet.



This will be my hotel for 8 days... tiny, perfectly situated in the centre of the red light district, close to everything and full of life.
The hotel has been rated as "pretttty dodgy", "rather depressing" and "dreadful". The club in the basement seems to be "EXTREMLY loud" till 5 am!
I´m only hoping that the shared shower and toilet are clean. But otherwise I´m pretty happy to have found an affordable accomodation right in the center of Amsterdam. See you there!

BTW: Zurich won the votes, but only by 26%. I was already looking for a place to stay there, but then decided that Zurich is a city where I am quite often anyway. So the Giger Museum still has to wait for a little while.

H. R. Giger

Which famous person would you really like to meet? I have been asked this question very often so far and I always had the same answer: Picasso! He´s my favorite artist, though I do like many others too and the choice is hard.

But a few days ago I read an article about another great artist: H. R. Giger. And I realized that he would be the person I would like to meet in real (and maybe I´m lucky as the artist is still alive). Hans Ruedi Giger is an Academy Award-winning Swiss painter, sculptor, and set designer best known for his design work on the film Alien (which earned him an Oscar in 1980). His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery and are considered disturbing by many. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí.



"Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is." (H. R. Giger)

I was surprised when I read the interview with him. His artwork is very dark and he doesn´t seem to be like that at all in person. And though he is famous, he is still a humble person and that impresses me.
Every year I try to get a few days off from my family and this year I would love to spend the time in Switzerland. As soon as I have the chance, I´m going to visit the Giger Museum in Gruyère.