1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
Traveling! Our passion for travel was the reason we started this. In every city we go, we meet many interesting locals who are interested in writing for us. Meeting people with a passion for their city is so much fun!

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Right now, we have quite a lot of technical projects, like the PDF-version of our cityguides we’re about to launch. It’s nteresting for our business, but it also means spending a lot of time behind our laptops. We prefer enjoying cities, and talking to locals!

4. Please tell us about ‘SpottedbyLocals’ and your aims?
www.SpottedbyLocals.com is a series of cityblogs that offers travelers the opportunity to experience cities just like a local, by offering local tips through a new network of blogs on European cities. On the 23 cityblogs real locals write about the spots they regularly frequent in their city, and update this information regularly. All Spotters are presented prominently on the site with their real names, a picture and a detailed personal profile. We met all our current 130 Spotters in person.

5. Are you working with other blogs and if yes, which ones and why?
Yes, we cooperate with a few other websites, who are also passionate about “local travel”. E.g. www.Tripbod.com, GoingLocalTravel.com and www.whl.travel. Together, we try to explain the benefits of “going local” while traveling:

• Understanding other cultures is good for the world
• Buying local is better for local businesses

6. Your TOP 3 city experiences and why?
That’s a difficult question… When people ask us what our favorite city is, we also tell them it’s the city we’ve been living in for the last 11 years, Amsterdam. It’s a compact city, but there’s more than enough new things to experience at any time. And it’s so beautiful… Every time I drive my bike around the Canals, I’m proud to live in Amsterdam

7. Your TOP 3 food/restaurant experiences and why?
1. A picnic on the riverside in Ljubljana in mid-summer 2009 with a bottle of white wine and plastic cups! They call it “the beach” in Lubljana:
www.spottedbylocals.com/ljubljana/trnovski-pristan
2. Meat galore in Zagreb at Bistro MZ in Zagreb. 100% local guests only, and Barbecue smell in your clothes, guaranteed.
www.spottedbylocals.com/zagreb/bistro-mz
3. Bangladeshi food in Budapest – Better than in Bangladesh (where I’ve tested the food too!)
http://www.spottedbylocals.com/budapest/bangla-bufe

8. What are your favourite websites and why?
I love catching up with our local writers (“Spotters”) on www.Facebook.com and www.Twitter.com – it’s so nice you can see what everybody is up to.

What makes the 3^rd ‘Pink Lake Festival’ on Lake Wörthersee so special? Is it an event ‘off the beaten track’, is it because it is held in a small town in the heart of Europe, is it the festival program or is it just the name?

It is definitely not the common ‘big city backdrop’, there are no parades for the titillation of curious ‘onlookers’, but in fact an international get-together for gays, lesbians and anyone in between, including friends of the community……converging from different countries and coming together in a beautiful small town…..embedded between a unique countryside and directly on the gorgeous Lake Wörthersee.

This year the 3^rd annual ‘Pink Lake Festival’, which takes place from September 2^nd to 5^th, 2010 is full of surprises. Hosted by ‘Wörthersee Tourismus GmbH’, the program for Pink Lake 2010 promises a colourful mixture of various events including entertainment, partying, relaxation and sports. The first night of the festival is the annual ‘Almdudler Trachtenparty‘ (Austrian Folk Party) at the beautiful Villa Miralago directly on the lake, where both entertainers and guests alike dress in traditional Austrian clothing, from ‘Lederhosen”……to “Dirndls.” The next night features the much loved Boat Night Party, cruising around the lake on several boats accompanied by great music. The final night includes the famous Black & White Party, with hot DJs and over 1000 guests from Austria, Germany and guests from across Europe. Many daily activities offer non-stop entertainment, and will take place during the festival on and around the beautiful lake, including swimming, hiking, biking, dating games….as well as simply basking in the late summer sun, chilling and cruising at the Beach Club. New this year is the inclusion of the new beach club ‘Sunshine Lake’s Beach Club’ at the newly opened ‘Lake’s – my lake hotel’. This beach club will operate as ‘get-together’ for all guests throughout the duration of the festival and the organisation will provide the guests of Pink Lake with the necessary information on all events.

The newly opened ‘Lake’s – my lake hotel’ will be the official partner hotel of ‘Pink Lake’ 2010, press, journalists as well as invited guests and VIP will stay here and enjoy ‘paradise’ whilst enjoying ‘Pink Lake’.

Important partners and sponsors are ‘Kärnten Werbung’, ‘Wörthersee Tourismus GmbH’, the magazines ‘Queer’, ‘Mate’ Magazine, ‘Blu’, ‘Winq’ and ‘Name It’, ‘Almdudler’, ‘Pago’, ‘Villacher Bier’, Communigayte as well as the sites gay.net and gay-parship.com.

How to get to Pink Lake?

Easy by plane: Klagenfurt Airport offers direct flights to and from London, Cologne/Bonn, Frankfurt, Hannover, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Vienna. The trip from the airport to Poertschach is only a few minutes via taxi or rental car.

Travel by train, the train station of the town Pörtschach can be easily reached via both long- and short-distance trains.

By car from Vienna, Munich, Venice or Zagreb you are at Lake Wörthersee in approximately 3 hours.

Come and end your summer with a huge splash, at the third annual PINK LAKE international Gay Festival on the gorgeous Lake Wörthersee in Austria from September 02 – 05, 2010.

2. What do you like about what you do?
Being in touch with people all the time.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Being in touch with people all the time.

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
The “Blue Goose” is a 660 year old building, prime location in Salzburg, next to Mozart’s Birthplace and the Festival Hall, Salzburg’s oldest inn and its first arthotel, with more than 90 unique works of art. Our restaurant is a meeting place for both locals and guests, serving refined Austrian Cuisine. If you’re asking me, it’s the place to be in Salzburg.

Our aim is to create spare room for inspiration and individuality. You can work on that for all of your life.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
My agency does. Those guys are web 2.0 addicts! I only work with www.gaensehaut.eu, because I can hardly process my own information.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences
atelier sul mare, Cefalú, Sicily
Birkenhead House, Hermanus, South Africa
Hotel der Seehof, Goldegg, Austria

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences
Algir + the Algerian Desert
Great Atlas Mountains, Morocco
NYC
… and thousands of places in Italy

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences
Noma, Copenhagen
Hangar 7, Salzburg
Alain Sanderens, Paris

9. Any comments you want to share with us?
Please come to Salzburg and visit us, or at least visit our website: www.blauegans.at

My husband and I run a boutique culinary tour company, which we founded two years ago, called Taste Hungary. We organize customized food, wine, and market tours in Hungary, and we are currently organizing an exciting lineup of special food/wine themed events for the coming months in Budapest. We also own a small publishing company (www.kalligrafkiado.hu) through which we publish Hungarian translations of classic American children’s books. You can see more about my work at www.carolynbanfalvi.com.

2. What do you like about what you do?
I love what I do. I love being a writer because I can just go out and research and experience whatever I happen to be interested in at the time, and then write about it. Organizing and giving the culinary tours is lots of fun too since I can introduce travellers to all of the good things that I have discovered in Hungary. I also love that my days are always different, and I especially like when I get to travel for articles and research.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
The one thing that I don’t like is the difficulty in managing my time (which I am sure everyone who works for themselves has to deal with). I am always trying to do too many things at one, and I have so many projects that I want to begin, and not enough time in the day to start them. I need longer days!

4. Please tell us about your website/blog ‘TasteHungary’ and your aims
Tastehungary.com is the site for our culinary tour company. We just re-designed it, and we will be frequently adding new tour possibilities. The blog has been on hiatus for awhile, but I also plan to bring that back to life shortly, and to add content that will make people interested in Hungarian food and wine (and of course, our tours).

5. Are you working with other blogs and if yes, which ones and why?
I frequently do guest posts for other blogs, and I also work with the Hungarian food blog www.chew.hu.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences and why?
I like the Altstadt in Vienna because it doesn’t feel like a hotel. I love the outdoor sauna with a glass wall overlooking the Alps at Hotel Schloss Lebenberg in Kitzbühel. And I recently had a really nice stay at the Székelyko Kuria in Transylvania.

7. Your TOP 3 food/restaurant experiences and why?
Whenever I travel I always try to seek out the local and authentic specialties and foods of the area. I always visit the local markets when I travel. It is hard to just pick three great food experiences, but here it goes: Cracking open Maryland blue crabs spread on newspaper in Washington DC, feasting on seafood at a marisquería in Valencia, and eating in the garden under the chestnut trees at my mother-in-law’s house in the Hungarian countryside (with some nice Hungarian wine, of course).

8. Which food/restaurant concept would you like to share with us?
One thing that everyone who comes to Budapest should experience is eating at an étkezde (also called kifozde). For the traveler seeking authenticity and a true slice of Budapest life, these places are the jackpot. There are small eateries, usually only open for lunch, with absolutely no frills. They serve traditional Hungarain food, and a meal won’t cost more than five or six euros.

9. Any comments you want to share with us?
I’d like to persuade everyone to come visit Hungary. Allow at least several days for exploring Budapest, and then head to the countryside to check out the wine regions. Tokaj is my personal favourite, with gorgeous scenery, Medieval cellars that stretch back for kilometres, and delicious wine. What most people don’t realize is that Tokaj produces more dry wine than sweet, and the native varietals (like furmint and hárslevelu) are definitely worth trying. For reds, Szekszárd is a great place to visit, and of course Villány is the best-known red wine region. Budapest has an ever-better dining scene, many market halls, traditional coffee houses, and quirky bars.

Come, see, taste and enjoy our new Ring Doughnut!

1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
That I never get bored about my job and can meet many people, I am very curious, I like to write and speak to my guests both resident and prospect.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Tripadvisor.

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
Since its conception Ripa has strived to stand apart from the typical roman hotel.
The hotel has chosen to make a cultural and artistic statement, daring to use a modern minimalistic style in a classical city. Breathtaking in its simplicity, the hotel provides a lively and wellcoming atmosphere of functional luxury that is typically italian. The 170 rooms and suites are designed to optimise space, light and comfort.
Our meeting rooms on the first and ground floors are fully equipped with the latest facilities. The Suite is a 400 sqm of multifunctional space, designed for events up to 160 Seats, up to 250 pax standing / Privé up to 30 pax. With a unique location in the heart of historic Trastevere in Rome.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
No.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences
Former Es Hotel Rom now Radisson Blu
Sanderson Hotel London
Hotel Armentarola S. Cassino (Bz) Italy

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences
S.Cassiano (Bz) Italy
Isle of Djerba
Maldives
Isle of Phuket (Thailand)

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences food
Ristorante DaIsolina in Canino-Viterbo(Italy); for the ambience
Inn the Park London, food and beverage
La Pergola in Rome (Italy)

9. Can you offer possible readers 3 things they absolutely need to do/visit/see when visiting your city?
Sunset At Fontana Paolina in Gianicolo, Visit St.Ivo alla Sapienza baroque Church, Via Del Governo Vecchio for fashion shops. Rome is a vast 3000 year old indoor-outdoor museum where you can find ancient monuments, art treasures and architecture in churches, galleries and protected ruins. All within easy reach of the hotel. Alternatively Rome offers design, green parks, cultural festivals, street cafes and shopping to enjoy.

10. Any comments you want to share with us?
Life is wonderful if everyone thinks and behave positve there would be no war in the planet!
I chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.

1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
Being creative… This is what I love since being a child. I always used to draw, to sing, to play instruments or to write…Also a good thing is to get in touch with lots of different people around the world. And also working with people, who feel the same passion for art like me.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Hm, this is a difficult question. I think there is nothing I don´t like…. maybe sometimes there is too much work, but on the other side this is also a good point. Haha…

4. Please tell us about ‘C-Heads Magazine’, include your strategy and tell us about your future goals and target groups

C-Heads Magazine is all about photography, music, art, fashion, trends and lifestyle. We show talents, newcomers and well-known artists from all over the world. We think, that art is an important part of life. The playful side of life. Breathtaking pictures tell stories. Music that touches and supplies the soundtrack of life. Fashion that can show, who you are and what you want to express. Art that shows our individuality and connects us to each other.

Our target group are people around the world who are interested in any kind of art. A big target group of course are artists themselves, like stylists, make-up artists, fashion designers, musicians, illustrator and so on… the list is long.

A special point in our magazine is, that there is a chance for everyone to get into the magazine. This is our Be-Inside concept. We don´t mind f.e. if you are a star photographer or someone who just loves doing photography during your free time. When at the end the pictures are what we like you can make it into the magazine.
Future Goals: it would be great if we could get more and more well-known and of course it would be great if we can continue doing what we love and live from it. We would love to have C-Heads Magazine also in a printed version at one point! But this is really talking about the future.

5. How is ‘C-Heads Magazine’ positioned?
The good thing is, C-Heads Magazine was the first Austrian Online Magazine. We started this project, when the idea was still fresh and new. So we are like a primary rock in that scene.

6. Are you working with blogs/websites and if yes, what is your favourite one and why?
Being honest, I am not so much into blogs any more. I owned a blog myself some time ago. But at the moment there are too many of them, and most of them are repeating the information.

7. Your experiences with the creative industry in general?
In my opinion the international creative industry is mostly very professional , well organised and open minded. So i have lots of good experiences with it.

8. Which future trends do you see for the creative industry, especially in Austria?
I think that Austria´s creative scene is going to getting more and more attention in the future. There is a lot of potential in the new generation. I hope that the scene will be able to progress by opening their borders. Working together more and more tolerance between the different scenes is an important part of that.

9. Your TOP 3 magazines and why?
TUSH Magazine is awesome. Full with very good high quality and innovative fashion photography. I also like ID Magazine and V Magazine. They are always so colourful and fresh in a way.

10. Any comments you want to share with us?
Yeah, maybe strange, but everyone should try to make this planet into a heavens place…. so it´s all about love. Thanks a lot for the interview!

NJAL, the leading global business directory for the avant-garde fashion design industry, continuously strives to support new fashion design talent from around the globe by providing a destination site for consumers to reference and buy directly from their designers. Now, with this limited edition, NJAL decided to partner with 3 exciting new designers, all chosen for their unique sustainable sensibilities and eclectic style.

Patrick Mohr is one of Germany´s most current upcoming designers, his loose-fitting t-shirts silhouette provide a perfect template for the style of the NJAL Organic Collection, Spon Diogo is a design duo that did provide the unique print for the 3rd unisex t-shirt. London based Japanese designer Aoi Kotsuhiroi did apply her individual poetic imprint to the collection. And this is perfectly translated on the “Nowhere” Tank Top.

NJAL maintains to focus on championing the industry´s eco-fashion sector, that is the reason why their t-shirts are made from organic fair-trade cotton, a “must-have” for fashionistas and available via the online shop notjustalabel.com.

The shooting at the Grand Hotel Wien was done by Andreas Waldschütz, a great photographer, active in the field of art, music and fashion. In the past he has done projects in Capetown, Berlin  and Paris, he strongly believes making a visual difference, we do not only believe that, especially when visiting his current exhibition “Sand People” in Vienna, we definitely support that. In this exhibition he shows fashion photography against the backdrop of a Namibian ghost town and the desert, amazing photographs.

The idea behind the premium car brand Infiniti was to create an entirely different kind of car for an entirely different kind of driver, and this idea is proven to be successful. They looked deeply into the rich Japanese heritage, especially the Japanese aesthetic known as ‘Adeyaka’, a concept containing the notions of grace and vibrant sensuality, and combined it with modern, progressive luxury. They call this design philosophy ‘Vibrant Design’.

Infiniti is a Japanese premium car brand, existing in the US by more than 20 years, producing powerful limousines, coupés and crossover car models. The 1^st Infiniti Centre was opened on October 1^st, 2008 in Paris, followed by centres in Madrid, Amsterdam, Prague, Istanbul and many other cities, now Infiniti is presented at 35 centres in total.

On June 28^th, Infiniti entered the Austrian market by presenting the overall philosophy, the brand and the different ‘beauties’ at a press conference held at The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel. The brand Infiniti will be represented by the well known and successful car company ‘Spes Automobile’ in Graz and the new ‘Infiniti Centre Austria’ will be opened  officially in the 1^st quarter of 2011 in Brunn am Gebirge.

Until the opening, future ‘Infiniti-rebels’ can enjoy the luxury of a hotel together with the luxury of a car @ The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel. Besides a nicely decorated corner in the lobby and an official ‘Infiniti-Lounge’ as of September 2010, interested parties can also look & feel cars like the Infiniti G37 Sedan, G37 Coupé, EX, the wonderful FX and pretty soon the new M…sorry…not only look & feel but also drive.

Besides that, The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel will develop the 1^st ‘Enjoy Infiniti @ The Ring Package’ as of September 2010, again a new approach that supports 2 premium brands.

More information on this, I would say ‘more-than-premium-car brand’ can be found on the website www.infiniti.com, press materials and images on www.infinitipress.eu or by contacting Ms. Michaela Potisk (michaela.potisk@infinitipress.at) for PR matters or the newly appointed centre manager for Austria, Mr. Karl Frittum (karl.frittum@infiniti-wien.at) for test drives.

Enjoy life, enjoy The Ring, enjoy Infiniti!

2010 is the 20^th anniversary of the Jazz Fest Wien, and again the organization was able to bring international top stars, in order to present a music which performance is increasing year after year. Jazz music is lived through and by personalities and one can view how jazz music performed with these personalities, bringing a list of new talents through the past few years. Also the oldest but also newest music of the 20^th century gets highlighted by the fact that it integrates other music arts, to create new music and on the other hand influence other music arts again.

Top acts of the Jazz Fest Wien 2010 that show this performance are Jamie Cullum, the young british musician that combines piano with punk and pop-appeal, the legendary Jeff Beck, a “jazz artist” who combines blues, pop, rock and jazz to a unique kind of music. Also a very warm welcome to Gilles Peterson, an artist that brought back jazz into danceable music in the eighties, called “Acid Jazz”, and during the Jazz Fest Wien he will work together with a young Cuban artist, someone who inspired the listeners of the Bueno Vista Social Club as much as many piano players did: Roberto Fonseca. British meets Cuban spirit … as much exciting as the music of the French electro-specialist AIR or the new choir project of the voice acrobat Bobby McFerrin. A famous legend is definitely Herbie Hancock, his act will definitely be a highlight and again place itself among the legends that performed at the Jazz Fest Wien, legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis or Santana. Besides male acts Jazz Fest Wien also focuses on women. The Canadian singer and guitar player Terez Montcalm will raise the female quote, and Juliette Greco and Melody Gardot will show that the French “chanson” is not far away from celebrating jazz. We should also not forget Randy Crawford. With Al Green a soul legend will perform in the Vienna State Opera and with the Austrian artist Wolfgang Muthspiel, who won the European Jazz Prize, we will see a European art of playing jazz. More to come and more to see, that is for sure, all artists, legendary or not, creative or traditional, all will again raise the importance of not only jazz in general but also the Jazz Fest Wien, this year again with a huge and interesting program.

Grand Hotel Wien & The Ring Hotel, Vienna´s Casual Luxury Hotel, are the official partners of Jazz Fest Wien and support the organization since 2006.