Flight into Exile

Football: Lazio vs Roma

exilewarriors — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:00:36 +0000

It’s derby time in the Eternal City as Roma battles it out with Lazio. Despite Lazio’s Seria A championship win last year, Roma have been playing consistently better than their arch-rivals. The combined scoring talents of Totti, Delvecchio and Batistuta (one of the year’s most on-the-ball signings) have kept the team at the top of the league this season, though some pundits put Lazio doldrums down to Sven Eriksson’s mind being on other things. Like managing the England squad, for instance…

Luminaria di San Ranieri

exilewarriors — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:00:01 +0000

This traditional Pisan festival is low-key but visually stunning. Celebrating Pisa’s patron saint, San Ranieri, tens of thousands of candles are placed along the banks of the Arno and along the buildings lining the Lungarno. As dusk falls, they are lit with spectacular results as the outlines of the buildings are picked out in dots of candlelight. On the second day, there is a boat race along the river between the city’s four ‘quartieri’.

Your Place in the Sun

exilewarriors — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:01:10 +0000

The trick to leisurely outdoor breakfasting during the winter months in Barcelona is knowing where to find the sun-trap terraces – harder than it sounds in this built-out city. The Rambla’s best hot-spot is at the extreme seaward end on the left, La Cava Universal, ideal for a mid-morning café amb llet in the sun. Alternatively, trendy Bar Ra behind the Boqueria market offers creative and healthy breakfasts and a lunchtime menù del dia, both accompanied by free UV rays, in a post-modern terrace-in-a-carpark.

Some Explicit Polaroids

exilewarriors — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:01:00 +0000

After a 15-year prison sentence, a reformed student radical is shocked to discover that millennial London is completely unrecognisable. Baffled by phonecards, Playstations and political apathy, this ageing former activist must forge ahead into a strange, new world. Mark Ravenhill, author of ‘Shopping and Fucking’, ‘Faust (Faust is Dead)’ and ‘Handbag’, threads a comic and shocking tale about the thrills and fears of embracing the future. Presented by Roadworks Productions in association with Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Exotic Flower Shop

exilewarriors — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:00:51 +0000

Flair is a new flower, plant and garden shop which opened in mid-April. Located in a vast, vaulted room on the south bank of the river, it is full of extraordinary, exotic plant life. It’s hard to believe that some of the plants and flowers – all very beautifully colour co-ordinated in whites, creams, greens with the odd splash of vibrant orange or red – are real. Many of them are tropical and nearly all are imported from Holland. Flair also stocks stylish garden furniture, fabulous vases, candles and sea shells.

Portrait of a Park

exilewarriors — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:59:37 +0000

A small exhibition of 30 photographs reveals the many moods of Sydney’s largest park. The black and white images were taken by Wendy McDougall and Brendan Read over three years and document the magnetic attraction Centennial Park has for Sydney’s citizens. A rider hits the Horse Track at dawn, Buddhist monks stroll, an old couple rest in the shade of a paperbark tree. Part of the exhibition explores its transformation from a resource-rich swampland that sustained the early inhabitants to the later inappropriate landscaping inspired by British Romanticism.

Dido and Aeneas

exilewarriors — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:00:46 +0000

The Maggio Musicale festival continues this week with the opening of Henry Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’. The setting for this short chamber opera, composed in 1689 for the girls’ boarding school where Purcell was teaching, is the exquisite and tiny Teatro Goldoni. The tragic story of the Queen of Carthage and her Trojan prince ends with Dido’s lament, one of opera’s most beautiful and poignant arias. Alessandro De Marchi, a Baroque expert, conducts a cast of fine Italian singers.

Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River

exilewarriors — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:01:27 +0000

Peek in on bird-eating spiders as large as dinner plates and a green anaconda that can reach 30 feet in length. See the ‘water monkey’ fish leap three feet out of the water to capture insects on tree branches. At Shedd’s newest permanent exhibition you’ll immerse yourself in a journey on the most mysterious and diverse habitat on earth. In one visit you’ll witness the changing seasons of the floodplain forest and meet more than 250 species that live there – piranhas, birds, sloths, insects, snakes, catfish, stingrays and caiman lizards.

Marilyn Manson

exilewarriors — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:00:41 +0000

California-based perv Marilyn Manson brings his Guns, God and Government tour to the godforsaken Libro Music Hall. Certainly the most intelligent and heart-felt take on devil-worship since Their Satantic Majesties, Marilyn Manson’s fifth album ‘Holy Wood’ will be the main course at this assuredly sell-out assembly of Vienna’s goths, geeks and curiosity seekers. The man described by Joe Liebermann as the greatest threat to American youth is supported by the equally threatening noise outfit, Disturbed.

Ludwig Reiter

exilewarriors — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:01:49 +0000

Bespoke yet cool shoemakers Ludwig Reiter have opened a new visible city-centre branch just off Kärtnerstraße. The shop is all confidence-inspiring bare boards and dark wood cabinets and the wares are as always highly desirable. Ranging from the magnificent affordable leather and suede trainers to the pricier bowling shoes and hand-made brogues, Reiter have one or two new lines including some funky electric orange pony hide jogging shoes and lovely ladies slippers. In short Vienna’s finest indigenous shoe shop.