Industrial remains - Ostrava, Czech Republic

I guess I'm in post-pictures-of-empty-places mode. This is a former industrial complex that has been converted to a large concert venue. I attended the Colours of Ostrava two summers ago. Rufus Wainwright, who was performing, talked during his set about how he imagined many people died in this place. I'm sure he was right - it probably manufactured all sorts of nasty chemicals and I can't imagine that there was a strong emphasis on worker safety during the Communist era.

Don't lick the walls.

The Colours of Ostrava venue

Colours of Ostrava music festival is held in a massive former industrial complex of some sort (yesterday I posted some photos from this year's festival). It seems like the type of place that processed or produced a variety of things. Perhaps heavy metals of some sort. Maybe chemicals. Whatever its previous existence was, it now is the location for a huge music festival. I'm sure its been cleaned up a lot since its active dates, but I still wouldn't want to spend too much time there (or lick the walls).

This is a Lubitel shot I took of a small section of it:

Some photos from Colours of Ostrava

As promised, here are some of the photos I took at Colours of Ostrava festival in July. I didn't take pictures of all the bands we saw. Rufus Wainwright and The Flaming Lips got the most attention from me (mainly because I had the best vantage points for shooting during those shows). Not too bad for the little Canon G9, eh? Enjoy!

Rufus Wainwright

Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips

A confetti extravaganza!

Amazing!

Look at this picture and guess what it is...

It's confetti from the Flaming Lips show at Colours of Ostrava that landed in my jacket hood. I was covered with more of the stuff. Why did I have so much confetti on my person, you're asking. Well, I got to stand right in the front row and had the joy of an unblocked view of the show (unlike the Antony and the Johnsons show where a 6'7" behemoth of a man blocked most of my view unless I closed one eye and tilted my head). We waited over an hour in our spots, which isn't much of a wait to my mind. The show was great and worth skipping dinner (though we snagged some roasted cashews as we were leaving around 2 am). After the show ended, the crowd, which was huge, seemed ready to party well into the wee hours. We just hit the road back to the hotel to crash.

Hotel challenge

Our original hotel in Ostrava was, unfortunately less than ideal. It was on the main drag, which wouldn't have been bad except that we had no AC in our room (contrary to what we were told) so we had to open the windows. However, the noise was so bad it made sleeping pretty near impossible. At 9:30 we packed up and went on a quest for a new hotel. Surprise surprise the entire town was booked solid. We drove all over the place checking hotels (because, trust me, you usually want to cast an eye on the place before you book). Finally, we gave up and headed to the next town, Frýdek-Místek to look. First place we found was lovely, quiet and had windows we could open! What a joy.

After settling in, we drove back to Ostrava to the music festival. What an amazing place...it's an old industrial complex that has enormous rusty old structures and is just beautiful in its decay. Lots of photo ops. Tonight we saw Rufus Wainwright who played a great show...what a beautiful voice he has. After that we went over to the Kronos performance but we were still reeling with the tremendous R.W. show, the efforts of the day and perhaps a little woozy from all the herb that was being smoked around us that we decided to call it a night.

After getting back to the hotel, I was checking my emails and was sadly surprised to see an email from one of the hotels I had emailed this morning about a room. It was the one hotel that we tried to locate but gave up on when couldn't find it driving around Ostrava. The email said, "Yes, we have a free room for you." Sigh. Oh well, it's just the way things go sometimes when you travel.

Here is a view from our current hotel:

 

Driving to Ostrava

Unlike our experience last year, we were able to pick up our rental car, get back to the hotel and get out of Prague without a problem. Diving to Ostrava was also a pretty easy endeavour (though we were impressed/horrified at the fearless passing the Czechs do on the road - absolutely crazy passing speeds and such small margins for error). Getting to the hotel once we arrived in the city was the challenge - we had the wrong address so each place we went to was "correct" but not the actual hotel. We even wound up in one of the sketchier areas of town - I was quite happy that the hotel wasn't actually located in this area. Eventually, we talked to the people who know where things are - local cab drivers who pointed us to the hotel, which was about 5 minutes away by foot.

The weather is quite nice, though our room's a bit on the hot side especially because we need to keep the windows closed since we're in the local party-area. Colours of Ostrava starts tomorrow so we get to see Rufus Wainwright, Kronos Quartet, and Mogwai the first day. The 2nd day has many more events during the day through to the evening including Bobby McFerrin, Antony and the Johnsons, and the band that actually got us to commit to the trip here - The Flaming Lips.

Hoping to sleep well tonight..I was really really tired this afternoon.

We saw a lot of this kind of view today.