Things to enjoy

Besides all the hard work we do every day we are here to enjoy life and I think a good and relaxing way to spend time is with inspiring creations of other people, like good music, movies, or books.

Music

I really enjoy listening to music and going to concerts, mostly rock, metal, and electronic music.

Some bands and musicians I like (in no particular order):

  • Tool (saw them recently in Vienna)
  • A Perfect Circle (saw them in Hamburg)
  • Seether (seen multiple times)
  • Thrice (up next in November 2019)
  • Breaking Benjamin (seen twice)
  • Audioslave (saw Chris Cornell solo in 2016)
  • Rammstein (seen twice, 1997 at Bizarre Festival and 2019 in Copenhagen)
  • Opeth (seen multiple times, first time they played support for TON in Cologne 2003)
  • Leonard Cohen (saw him performing live in Hamburg in 2013)
  • Lana Del Rey (beautiful voice and lyrics, great production)
  • Massive Attack (seen twice, Hamburg 2006 and Berlin 2018)
  • Portishead (on the list)
  • Kraftwerk (on the list)
  • Deine Lakaien (seen multiple times and will be there next time for sure)
  • Creed (never seen the original line-up but been to Alter Bridge)

I grew up with bands like: AC/DC (saw them in 2001), Guns N’Roses (seen in Hannover 2017), Led Zeppelin, Roxette (seen in 2015), Nirvana (grunge still gives me goosebumps), Marilyn Manson (disappointing show in 2001), Sepultura (saw the Cavalera brothers multiple times), Pantera, Theatre of Tragedy (loved them, seen multiple times in the early 2000’s), Böhse Onkelz (seen 1995 in Klagenfurt), Kyuss (enjoyed various live performances of John Garcia over the years), Type O Negative (seen twice, Cologne and Hamburg when Peter Steele was sick), The Doors (saw Ray Manzareck playing solo piano at jazz fest in Austria in 2000).

If I would have to make a choice my all-time favorite band would probably be Tool.

Movies and TV Shows

Originally, I subscribed to Netflix because of Black Mirror. Stranger Things was great, too. I’m mostly into Sci-Fi, film noir, Neo-noir, and drama movies.

Some of my favorite directors/writers and movies:

  • Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Only Lovers Left Alive, Patterson)
  • Christopher Nolan (Interstellar)
  • Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Prometheus)
  • Fritz Lang (Metropolis)
  • Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Psycho)
  • Lars von Trier (Melancholia)
  • Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth)
  • Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City)
  • Quentin Tarantino (everything)
  • Brit Marling (Another Earth, The OA)

And yes, The Matrix, which probably is my all-time most-watched movie, closely followed by Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.

Books

When it comes to books I’m more into scientific and philosophical material than novels, though I’ve read the classics of Georg Orwell (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), and Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf, Siddharta) in my youth.

I like Brian Greene’s way of explaining the models of modern physics (The Fabric of the Cosmos) and German philosopher Richard David Precht’s straightforward thinking (Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele?, Die Kunst, kein Egoist zu sein).

Also, I would recommend everyone to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - it’s mind-bendingly hilarious - and Austrian psychologist Paul Watzlawick (The Pursuit of Unhappiness, How Real Is Real).

Let’s keep on scratching the pixels of our existence.