I am officially into my last week here now—my last less than a week, actually. I fly to London on Saturday, and then back to LA on Sunday. I have enough time in London to hit up the TATE Modern, and maybe get me some high tea. The TATE is the reason I am studying art history, specifically Bill Viola’s Five Angels of the Millennium, so I really hope that is on exhibition right now.
Today was my last free day here—Wednesday and Thursday I have class, and then another genius idea from the Berkeley program to have us give our presentations on FRIDAY morning. Our last day here, and we have to spend at least two hours, likely more, making our own stupid presentations and listening to everyone else’s stupid presentations. For a one-unit class, we are expected to have a powerpoint, interviews, handout materials, and give a lecture that people will really learn something from. For one-unit classes, usually you bring cookies on the last day. This shit is ridiculous and a total waste of my time. I emailed a few curators some questions on the Backjumps show, but if they don’t get back to me I am hardly going to chase them down. I was going to ask the gallery attendant some questions, but he spoke less English than I speak of German. So that wasn’t going to happen.
I figured while I was here, I might as well see “ Die Schönsten Franzosen Kommen Aus New York”, a show at the Neues National Galerie. It is just a bunch of really famous French paintings from the Met in New York. It was insanely crowded even with their magic little line system. When you bought your ticket, you got a number than corresponded with a group time, so numbers 1100—1175 would be able to get into the exhibit as of 11:00am, 1175—1240 as of 11:10am, etc. I was number 1609, so I had until 12:50pm to wait. They had a text service, too, that would send you a message thirty minutes before your time to go in. I went to Potsdamer Platz to use the internet and then was about to buy a ticket for the Gemaldegalerie when my text came. I decided to just sit it out in the shade somewhere. The show was good, lots of neat things to see—my old friend Victorine Meurent in a matador suit, a Cabanel Birth of Venus, Matisse goldfish, Rodin, all the big names. There were just way too many people for my liking, and also in museum settings I have to deal with something I really hate about Germans. They push. They will elbow you in the side and then stand directly in front of you. While you are reading something, they will lean over and put their head directly in front of the label. They will not enter into the delicate dance that accompanies a crowded space. They will stand in front of that work or get to the front, everyone else be damned. I would hate to be inside a German building in a fire. Yelling “ENTSCHULDIGUNG” doesn’t seem very polite, so I am trying to learn to elbow back, just in time for returning to delicate dancing museum land.
It was nice to get out of that exhibit and head to the much quieter and less populated Gemaldegalerie, which has German, Netherlandish und Flemish from the 13th to 17th centuries, Dutch from the 17th century, German, English and French from the 18th, Italian, Spanish, and French from the 13th to 18th. It was nice to calm down from the hubbub with some sweet Northern European crucifixions. And then, you start hitting the big ones. Van Eyck’s portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini. His overscaled Madonna in the much smaller church. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs. Geertgen tot Sint Jans’ St. John the Baptist in the Meadow. Vermeer’s Music Lesson and Girl Putting on a Pearl Necklace. And just on and on. Raphael. A study by Botticelli for the Birth of Venus. Some Giotto and Masaccio. It was a nice review and catch-up.
I navigated the U- and S-bahn station without having to look at signs once. I know where I am going now.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Documenta
I would start with the tale of Documenta and Kassel, but y’all know how I feel about food. It comes first.
Sunday brunches—and brunch buffets—are kind of a thing in Berlin, which is great. Torey and I picked out a place called Nosh in Prenzlauer Berg, which was highly rated for food but warned the staff could be quite snobby. As Ms. Snoberoo, I decided to put forth the effort to let them know they were dealing with one of their own. I put on eyeliner. And wore black. So, basically, if you are in Berlin on a Sunday and willing to throw down a whole nine euros, Nosh is at 77 Pappellalle. You have no excuse. It includes juice. And even Susie made it on time. There was bread pudding, chocolate torte, tiramusu, quiche, salmon, spinach, chicken, bread, jam, nutella, sushi(!), pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, soup, yoghurt, homemade musli, peas, quinoa, cheese, cold cuts, egg rolls, and more. As soon as one plate was empty, the chef brought out something else. The pancakes were seriously, hands down, the best pancakes I have ever had. And now that I eat jam, they were even more delicious with jam. We ate and talked for about two hours and left feeling full, but not too full, and just so happy. There is nothing like a good food happiness.
So, Documenta IIIII IIIII II (12).
Thursday morning I heard news of a train strike. People were saying the S-Bahn and some longer-distance trains were not running. I began to panic, just a little bit. I tried to look up the news but I don’t read enough German to figure out what was going on. However, I did catch this beautiful phrase ,,von 8.00 Uhr bis 10.00 Uhr’’. You know what that means? That means the strike was only going for two hours in the morning. Thank you, German efficiency. My train left that afternoon from the Hauptbahnhof within five minutes of the scheduled time. I love traveling on trains, if they had them go across the Atlantic, I would take the train over a plane any day. There isn’t quite anything like going 250 km/h across fields while your carriage attendant asks if they can bring you anything from the dining car (but not Milchkaffee. They don’t have that, for some reason). I arrived at the Bahnhof Wilhelmshohe in Kassel to find it pouring with rain. Rather than deal with my motel’s directions of “Take the 18 bus”, which is vague at best, I took a cab. As we drove, and drove, I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t exactly close to the city. My hotel was close to the freeway, but unless you have a car, that really isn’t helpful. So: Lohfelden:Kassel::Lankwitz:Berlin. My hotel was nice enough, I had a queen bed made of hard foam, which is a total pleasure after a tiny twin bed made of hard foam. It was quiet. Eric called as I was about to go try find food, and he caught me up on the news and almost fooled me into thinking he had Sydney at his place. I ventured forth to find food only to realize…the closest thing to me was an IKEA. Oh sure, there was a market, but things in Germany close ridiculously early. I ate half a bag of banana chips for dinner. At least my hotel had CNN in English—and NCIS, Blue Crush, Elektra, and Las Vegas dubbed in German. Also, there were more slugs than I have ever seen in my life, all added together, on the path from the hotel to the bus stop. They congregate in little groups to eat the dead ones, too. And giant ones. And they make this horrible crunchsquoosh sound if you step on one. Ick.
I woke up ready to get going and see some art! I got downstairs for breakfast, found yoghurt and musli, grabbed an extra bun and butter for lunch, and headed out. I got off the bus at the Hauptbahnhof station and then…didn’t see anyone. Anywhere. Where on earth was Documenta? Where were the giant arrows pointing in horribly general directions? I headed into the station and spotted a group of people standing in a circle looking at a map and all pointing in different directions. I also found an exhibition map, but made faster progress, and soon spotted an arrow. Ahhh, there are the people! I bought a ticket, forgot to get a student discount, and headed to the Museum Fridericianum, the first public museum in Europe. Then the documenta-Halle. Then to the Aue-Pavilion. Then the Neue Galerie. Then Schloss Wilhelmshohe, and finally the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof. Sadly, I did not make it to El Bulli in Spain, another documenta venue.
(I no longer trust iTunes. I just put it on random for my whole library and the first song it chooses is William Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Granted, it’s my own fault that I have that song, but still. Yet another tally mark against the existence of god; it joins mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and the fact that there are so few varieties of yoghurt in America.)
My favorite piece of all Documenta was titled “A dance for those of us whose hearts have turned to ice, based on the Choreography of Francoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (with Sign-Language supplement)” by Luis Jacob. It came with a little booklet that puts explains his theories: artist, rebel, dancer, anarchy, ruling classes, masters and slaves, art, chains, blah blah blah. I also could do without the woman in a coat and fur hat dancing and swinging around two shirts on hangers in the snow. As you walked in the room there were two chairs made from branches polished and varnished but otherwise mostly in their natural branchy state against a red wall, with a basket full of the little booklets between. In one of the chairs there was an older, well-dressed man, just completely and totally asleep. It was so perfect I feel like maybe it was part of the show. The entire room had pictures at just below eye level at the perimeter. There were two to five photos per page from advertising to art images, all sharing a common theme or shape or something, and then the page after that would pull from one of the previous photos and develop that, and so on. It was really fun; it provided lots of delightful moments and surprises—Hugo Ball as the Magical Bishop, for example. I hope there is good documentation of it in my catalogue.
I decided, to be on the safe side, to catch the third to last bus home. I made it back to the middle of town with enough time to go to the market and buy some food for dinner, then headed to the bus stop. I got on the bus without incident, and was kind of spacing out, looking out the window, when the bus stopped at Gesamwalde Haus or something like that, and then the bus was turned off. I was the last passenger. The bus driver told me to get off the bus. I did. And then he drove away. There were no more buses coming by that stop, which was odd as the bus was supposed to get all the way to IKEA on Friday. So, facing the option of going into the closing market on the corner and asking them to call a cab or hitch a ride to the hotel, I decided to walk. Oh, I panicked a little bit when I got a corner and couldn’t remember which way to go, and the bus stops had no maps in the map slots, but I slowly worked my way back by means of remembering we turned at the horses, went straight past the home improvement store, turned before the roof tile store, etc. Three miles ain’t nothing but a thang.
At least it wasn’t raining. It was raining when I got back to Berlin, though. I looked up at the roof of the giant glass Hauptbahnhof and it looked as though a river was landing on top. And the train ride back gave me the joy of this sentence from this crap novel I bought at the bahnhof in Kassel (English language options are slim, and tend to consist of the same twenty authors at every place): “The air was hot and humid. It seemed to squat over the yard and buildings like a malignant Buddha" p.362, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. What the hell is a malignant Buddha? How do those two things attach themselves together in your head? Why would he be squatting? Is Buddha humid? My world gone upside down, man.
Sunday brunches—and brunch buffets—are kind of a thing in Berlin, which is great. Torey and I picked out a place called Nosh in Prenzlauer Berg, which was highly rated for food but warned the staff could be quite snobby. As Ms. Snoberoo, I decided to put forth the effort to let them know they were dealing with one of their own. I put on eyeliner. And wore black. So, basically, if you are in Berlin on a Sunday and willing to throw down a whole nine euros, Nosh is at 77 Pappellalle. You have no excuse. It includes juice. And even Susie made it on time. There was bread pudding, chocolate torte, tiramusu, quiche, salmon, spinach, chicken, bread, jam, nutella, sushi(!), pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, soup, yoghurt, homemade musli, peas, quinoa, cheese, cold cuts, egg rolls, and more. As soon as one plate was empty, the chef brought out something else. The pancakes were seriously, hands down, the best pancakes I have ever had. And now that I eat jam, they were even more delicious with jam. We ate and talked for about two hours and left feeling full, but not too full, and just so happy. There is nothing like a good food happiness.
So, Documenta IIIII IIIII II (12).
Thursday morning I heard news of a train strike. People were saying the S-Bahn and some longer-distance trains were not running. I began to panic, just a little bit. I tried to look up the news but I don’t read enough German to figure out what was going on. However, I did catch this beautiful phrase ,,von 8.00 Uhr bis 10.00 Uhr’’. You know what that means? That means the strike was only going for two hours in the morning. Thank you, German efficiency. My train left that afternoon from the Hauptbahnhof within five minutes of the scheduled time. I love traveling on trains, if they had them go across the Atlantic, I would take the train over a plane any day. There isn’t quite anything like going 250 km/h across fields while your carriage attendant asks if they can bring you anything from the dining car (but not Milchkaffee. They don’t have that, for some reason). I arrived at the Bahnhof Wilhelmshohe in Kassel to find it pouring with rain. Rather than deal with my motel’s directions of “Take the 18 bus”, which is vague at best, I took a cab. As we drove, and drove, I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t exactly close to the city. My hotel was close to the freeway, but unless you have a car, that really isn’t helpful. So: Lohfelden:Kassel::Lankwitz:Berlin. My hotel was nice enough, I had a queen bed made of hard foam, which is a total pleasure after a tiny twin bed made of hard foam. It was quiet. Eric called as I was about to go try find food, and he caught me up on the news and almost fooled me into thinking he had Sydney at his place. I ventured forth to find food only to realize…the closest thing to me was an IKEA. Oh sure, there was a market, but things in Germany close ridiculously early. I ate half a bag of banana chips for dinner. At least my hotel had CNN in English—and NCIS, Blue Crush, Elektra, and Las Vegas dubbed in German. Also, there were more slugs than I have ever seen in my life, all added together, on the path from the hotel to the bus stop. They congregate in little groups to eat the dead ones, too. And giant ones. And they make this horrible crunchsquoosh sound if you step on one. Ick.
I woke up ready to get going and see some art! I got downstairs for breakfast, found yoghurt and musli, grabbed an extra bun and butter for lunch, and headed out. I got off the bus at the Hauptbahnhof station and then…didn’t see anyone. Anywhere. Where on earth was Documenta? Where were the giant arrows pointing in horribly general directions? I headed into the station and spotted a group of people standing in a circle looking at a map and all pointing in different directions. I also found an exhibition map, but made faster progress, and soon spotted an arrow. Ahhh, there are the people! I bought a ticket, forgot to get a student discount, and headed to the Museum Fridericianum, the first public museum in Europe. Then the documenta-Halle. Then to the Aue-Pavilion. Then the Neue Galerie. Then Schloss Wilhelmshohe, and finally the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof. Sadly, I did not make it to El Bulli in Spain, another documenta venue.
(I no longer trust iTunes. I just put it on random for my whole library and the first song it chooses is William Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Granted, it’s my own fault that I have that song, but still. Yet another tally mark against the existence of god; it joins mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and the fact that there are so few varieties of yoghurt in America.)
My favorite piece of all Documenta was titled “A dance for those of us whose hearts have turned to ice, based on the Choreography of Francoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (with Sign-Language supplement)” by Luis Jacob. It came with a little booklet that puts explains his theories: artist, rebel, dancer, anarchy, ruling classes, masters and slaves, art, chains, blah blah blah. I also could do without the woman in a coat and fur hat dancing and swinging around two shirts on hangers in the snow. As you walked in the room there were two chairs made from branches polished and varnished but otherwise mostly in their natural branchy state against a red wall, with a basket full of the little booklets between. In one of the chairs there was an older, well-dressed man, just completely and totally asleep. It was so perfect I feel like maybe it was part of the show. The entire room had pictures at just below eye level at the perimeter. There were two to five photos per page from advertising to art images, all sharing a common theme or shape or something, and then the page after that would pull from one of the previous photos and develop that, and so on. It was really fun; it provided lots of delightful moments and surprises—Hugo Ball as the Magical Bishop, for example. I hope there is good documentation of it in my catalogue.
I decided, to be on the safe side, to catch the third to last bus home. I made it back to the middle of town with enough time to go to the market and buy some food for dinner, then headed to the bus stop. I got on the bus without incident, and was kind of spacing out, looking out the window, when the bus stopped at Gesamwalde Haus or something like that, and then the bus was turned off. I was the last passenger. The bus driver told me to get off the bus. I did. And then he drove away. There were no more buses coming by that stop, which was odd as the bus was supposed to get all the way to IKEA on Friday. So, facing the option of going into the closing market on the corner and asking them to call a cab or hitch a ride to the hotel, I decided to walk. Oh, I panicked a little bit when I got a corner and couldn’t remember which way to go, and the bus stops had no maps in the map slots, but I slowly worked my way back by means of remembering we turned at the horses, went straight past the home improvement store, turned before the roof tile store, etc. Three miles ain’t nothing but a thang.
At least it wasn’t raining. It was raining when I got back to Berlin, though. I looked up at the roof of the giant glass Hauptbahnhof and it looked as though a river was landing on top. And the train ride back gave me the joy of this sentence from this crap novel I bought at the bahnhof in Kassel (English language options are slim, and tend to consist of the same twenty authors at every place): “The air was hot and humid. It seemed to squat over the yard and buildings like a malignant Buddha" p.362, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. What the hell is a malignant Buddha? How do those two things attach themselves together in your head? Why would he be squatting? Is Buddha humid? My world gone upside down, man.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Group Outings
After a few gorgeous—hot, humid, but gorgeous—days, for which I could wear dresses without leggings and had to worry about getting tanlines, I heard someone in my class mention that we would be getting thunderstorms this afternoon. I slumped on the steps of the Nikolai Kirche of Potsdam in Despair. Not only was I in Potsdam, again, but it was going to rain? Oh, cruel fate!
(First time in Potsdam:
Berkeley people went to Potsdam for the well-considered idea of “Let’s go on a bike ride around Babelsberg and Potsdam!” This is great, for me, but, umm, half of the people hadn’t been on a bike in ten years. One girl crashed, although she was fine since people weren’t really going faster than a walking pace anyway. There were hills, like going up Durant, which people who haven’t been on a bike in ten years and would take 15 minutes to walk up…oh wait, they did walk up. It is really precious, very pretty, Sans Souci is stunning, I finally had a döner kebap (delicious) but man. Not the best idea for a group trip. Also, they didn’t know where we were going and we kept getting lost. We lost our GSI person at one point and Herr Euba had to go back and find him.)
My day actually started off quite amusing. I was walking to the bus stop and Mr. Probably Has A Drinking Problem was walking back from the market and when he passed me said, “Well, there goes Ms. Snoberoo!” I replied that it was a lot of fun being so, and then continued on, thinking: that is the cutest insult ever. Snoberoo almost seems complimentary. Snobbybritches would have been harsher. Snoberoo just makes me think of snow bears.
The heavens had the kindness to open just as I got off the bus back at the dorm. It was still sunny and the rain was like water falling from a sprinkler—very nice, gentle rain, at least until about ten minutes later, when the sky clouded over and the thunder, lightning, and sheets of rain began. It has stopped again, and Torey might have just opened the curse she last gave on the bike tour—“I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend!” I cannot have rain this weekend, at least not tomorrow afternoon through Saturday afternoon. I am going to Kassel for Documenta and really do not need to deal with that inconvenience.
Fat Tire Bike Tours has outposts in Berlin, Paris, and Barcelona. If they have any openings after I graduate I would seriously consider working there (if nothing else comes up). Torey and I did the Berlin Wall tour, which lasted from eleven in the morning to five in the afternoon. It was so much fun, even though it was pouring with rain for most of the trip. They have giant beach cruisers, much like my ironically named Twiggy, which are perfect for the city—Berlin is very flat, and has an alarming amount of cobblestone roads and sidewalks. Cobblestones are pretty and all, but road bike tires would not make for a comfortable ride. (Side note: High heels and cobblestones. Think about it.) The tour guide kind of somehow reminded me of my bother, and there were only six people in the group, two teachers from Chicago and two Scottish guys, then us. At one point in the tour, just before we stopped for lunch, we had the opportunity to go down (and up) a “hill”—a giant pit in the ground left from where a bahn station used to be. It was like biking on College the block before you hit campus. I was going so fast back up the hill that the chain came off, and I had enough speed to coast up the other side. It felt so good to be back on a bike, and I had a creepy clown horn I kept turned away from me, but I could have honked at people if I had wanted to do so. Speaking of clowns, I went to see the Cindy Sherman show at Martin-Gropius-Bau, which was excellent. So much amazing stuff, and then the clown series, which is just kind of disturbing in a way that torn-up dolls having kinky sex never can be. It was great to see the UFS and the Centerfolds, and then the History Portraits/Old Masters. The exhibit actually began with this two-minute video piece she had done in school, with a stop-motion story of a paper doll picking out clothes and getting dressed only to be picked up by the owner and stripped and put back in the book. The Bus Rider and Murder Mystery series were also delightful. I was going to treat myself to a catalog or book after seeing the show, but the ones I would have wanted were on sale for fifty euro, so I will just look on Amazon later.
When Torey, Susie, and I went to this club Soda in Prenzlauer Berg a week or so ago, we were crossing a street to look at the street sign and heard someone say hey really loudly. I turned to look back over my shoulder because the voice sounded familiar…and it was Michael. What are the chances? A city with millions of people and we run into one of the only people we know. Soda was a lot of fun, mostly because it has three rooms, two of which play not techno—hip-hop and rock, and then house in both half of the time anyway. We were melting in hip-hop so we migrated to rock, where we staked out territory below one of the only air conditioning vents in the place. We left at three, and it took only two hours to get home! At the bus stop at Potsdamer Platz, waiting for the M48, we had one person puke behind the bus stand, and another one pee! It smelled so great. I called Eric to whimper, because it was not four in the morning in California.
I went to the Kunstraum Bethanien/Kreuzberg the next morning, after a delicious breakfast at Bateau Ivre. I had a big bowl of yoghurt with pear, peach, johannisbeere, melon, banana, and mandarin orange for three euro, and then Der Franzose: a croissant, butter, baguette, some red berry jam I not only tried but enjoyed, and a milchkaffee for four. I love breakfast. The exhibit is titled Backjumps: The Live Issue #3. It was a print magazine at some point but now they have “live issues”—art shows, etc. The show was great, I am thinking now about how street art fits in or can work or does it work in a gallery context. There was a video that showed some graffiti, and some of the stuff in the video was by the same guy who did the stuff in that little alley in LA! So that was really cool to see and be able to get a name. In the bahn station on the way home, Torey and I noticed this guy standing, waiting for the same train as us. It was the same guy that had got on the bus with us that morning! And we weren’t at a major stop or anything, it was kind of an out-of-the-way place. We both get really tripped out seeing people like that.
Rachel and I decided to finally hang out, and I ran into her after class on my way to the bookstore to see if they had anything in English. We decided to check out this little bakery in the only shopping area close to campus and it was delicious and my milchkaffee came in a giant bowl. We are calling it our Newfeli. Later that evening we met up and had dinner and were just about to start some chill drinking when her corkscrew broke off in the cork. So we went downstairs because this guy Brendan from my class lives there and we were in one hall for five minutes while Rachel tried to remember which room was his and we yelled Brendan about ten times and then she thought we should try the other hall…and his door was open, first on the left. We ended up hanging out there with him and this guy from Humboldt (the California one) who is what you would picture from a person at Humboldt, but really cocky that he goes there, which might seem odd. I was the only person at the Osdorfer Straße S-Bahn, and the only person on my train car. It was creepy but also would have been fun in certain situations.
For our second class excursion, we went to the zoo! The first animals through the door were alpacas, which was just terribly amusing to me given my recent preoccupation with llamas, alpacas, and all things Peruvian or Erics in Peru. There were also elephants. One elephant was standing with its back to the ‘audience’ and people were gathering and then it: 1. Shat. 2. Peed. 3. The baby stuck its trunk up to the other ones bum. 4. Baby puts a piece of fresh poo on head and looks terribly pleased with itself. Then tapirs, which I got to see in a zoo, and Eric missed out on in the Amazon, a deer type thing that stood so still I thought it was a statue at first, and a panda that acted like a fat old man. There was a pack of beautiful white wolves that just kept trotting in circles and every now and then one would stop and look at the people behind the plexiglass and it was just heartbreaking. They shouldn’t be in such a small space. After the wolves I managed to forget the depressing side of zoos by watching a brown bear scratch its back on a tree and then the sea lions. I love sea lions, they are the happiest animals in the zoo. The penguins all just stood there staring at the fake rock wall, and then one scratched its head with its foot, wings out for balance, which was really cute and surprising.
The Pergamon museum is very impressive. You buy your ticket, get it ripped, walk into the exhibit hall, and BAM. The Pergamon altar. Holy god is that thing huge, and powerful, and just…wow. It is difficult to process that it is there, so close. It seems like they like sneaking things up on you there. You walk through the Ishtar Gate at one point and then turn around to realize its huge and blue and covered in lions, and then the glory of the processional way does not hit you until you are all the way at the other end of the hall. The Pergamon also had statues of or with dogs, which makes me happy. One was likely commissioned by a Roman family as a memorial for the family dog. He is scratching his head with his back leg in the statue, and his mouth is open, and he looks so dog-y. Good job, unknown sculptor.
The Berkeley people had an exciting trip to Weimar last weekend. Torey and I bought vodka/wine for the four hour bus drive, but decided the whole situation was so sad that drinking would really not help. We had six girls in our room at the hostel, and then an extra bed. A knock on the door introduced Cz1ois;>*5#gowski, this Polish guy whose name we could not pronounce even after he showed it to us on an ID. We later heard from another guy that he had asked to be in a room with girls, probably so he could walk around in his tiny, tight little boxer briefs. Poor Torey had the bunk below him and got quite a show when he heaved himself up. She and I made the decision to take the city tour in German, and we understood only one thing well: Goethe had this muse, and they wrote thousands of letters to each other, and he said something about a gingko leaf being a symbol for the merging of man and woman, and that now Weimar is obsessed with gingko trees and all products from, or inspired by, them. We then had hours to do nothing in Weimar, so we ate ice cream and bought books and read. A tour of Goethe’s house in English was given later in the afternoon by an elderly woman who seemed to think that Goethe was perhaps some incarnation of Jesus Christ, amen. A group dinner was served at 8p, Creeper drank three Long Island Iced Teas, and apparently when people went out later that night, he was doing shots at the bar while other people chilled with beer because “I thought that was what you were supposed to do at a bar.” He was practically carried back to the hostel. I was happy to stay in and sleep. We went to Buchenwald in the morning, which was sad and thought-provoking, and well, what can you really say about a concentration camp? We drowned our sorrows in more Weimarian ice cream and homework on the ride back.
Last night our new, fun Berkeley excursion was “Twelfth Night” in German on a boat that has been made into a little theater. We stopped at a strandbar before, where I talked to my mum and Chris went and bought three drinks for himself all at once. There were a lot of bugs and I was apparently the mosquito bait just like my mum, because no one else has bites. The intermission was after eleven, and some people left then, worried about being able to get back to our dorm. Torey and I were considering it, but did want to see the rest of the play. I am glad we did stay, because when Herr Euba sat down, he made crying baby noises and said in a silly little voice, “Oh no, I can’t stay, I don’t know how to get home. Waaaa!” It ended around midnight, and as we walked back we saw Chris at the bar. Euba said, “Chris, first the bar!” and Torey said, “Immer (always).” Oh, Mr. Alchypants.
(First time in Potsdam:
Berkeley people went to Potsdam for the well-considered idea of “Let’s go on a bike ride around Babelsberg and Potsdam!” This is great, for me, but, umm, half of the people hadn’t been on a bike in ten years. One girl crashed, although she was fine since people weren’t really going faster than a walking pace anyway. There were hills, like going up Durant, which people who haven’t been on a bike in ten years and would take 15 minutes to walk up…oh wait, they did walk up. It is really precious, very pretty, Sans Souci is stunning, I finally had a döner kebap (delicious) but man. Not the best idea for a group trip. Also, they didn’t know where we were going and we kept getting lost. We lost our GSI person at one point and Herr Euba had to go back and find him.)
My day actually started off quite amusing. I was walking to the bus stop and Mr. Probably Has A Drinking Problem was walking back from the market and when he passed me said, “Well, there goes Ms. Snoberoo!” I replied that it was a lot of fun being so, and then continued on, thinking: that is the cutest insult ever. Snoberoo almost seems complimentary. Snobbybritches would have been harsher. Snoberoo just makes me think of snow bears.
The heavens had the kindness to open just as I got off the bus back at the dorm. It was still sunny and the rain was like water falling from a sprinkler—very nice, gentle rain, at least until about ten minutes later, when the sky clouded over and the thunder, lightning, and sheets of rain began. It has stopped again, and Torey might have just opened the curse she last gave on the bike tour—“I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend!” I cannot have rain this weekend, at least not tomorrow afternoon through Saturday afternoon. I am going to Kassel for Documenta and really do not need to deal with that inconvenience.
Fat Tire Bike Tours has outposts in Berlin, Paris, and Barcelona. If they have any openings after I graduate I would seriously consider working there (if nothing else comes up). Torey and I did the Berlin Wall tour, which lasted from eleven in the morning to five in the afternoon. It was so much fun, even though it was pouring with rain for most of the trip. They have giant beach cruisers, much like my ironically named Twiggy, which are perfect for the city—Berlin is very flat, and has an alarming amount of cobblestone roads and sidewalks. Cobblestones are pretty and all, but road bike tires would not make for a comfortable ride. (Side note: High heels and cobblestones. Think about it.) The tour guide kind of somehow reminded me of my bother, and there were only six people in the group, two teachers from Chicago and two Scottish guys, then us. At one point in the tour, just before we stopped for lunch, we had the opportunity to go down (and up) a “hill”—a giant pit in the ground left from where a bahn station used to be. It was like biking on College the block before you hit campus. I was going so fast back up the hill that the chain came off, and I had enough speed to coast up the other side. It felt so good to be back on a bike, and I had a creepy clown horn I kept turned away from me, but I could have honked at people if I had wanted to do so. Speaking of clowns, I went to see the Cindy Sherman show at Martin-Gropius-Bau, which was excellent. So much amazing stuff, and then the clown series, which is just kind of disturbing in a way that torn-up dolls having kinky sex never can be. It was great to see the UFS and the Centerfolds, and then the History Portraits/Old Masters. The exhibit actually began with this two-minute video piece she had done in school, with a stop-motion story of a paper doll picking out clothes and getting dressed only to be picked up by the owner and stripped and put back in the book. The Bus Rider and Murder Mystery series were also delightful. I was going to treat myself to a catalog or book after seeing the show, but the ones I would have wanted were on sale for fifty euro, so I will just look on Amazon later.
When Torey, Susie, and I went to this club Soda in Prenzlauer Berg a week or so ago, we were crossing a street to look at the street sign and heard someone say hey really loudly. I turned to look back over my shoulder because the voice sounded familiar…and it was Michael. What are the chances? A city with millions of people and we run into one of the only people we know. Soda was a lot of fun, mostly because it has three rooms, two of which play not techno—hip-hop and rock, and then house in both half of the time anyway. We were melting in hip-hop so we migrated to rock, where we staked out territory below one of the only air conditioning vents in the place. We left at three, and it took only two hours to get home! At the bus stop at Potsdamer Platz, waiting for the M48, we had one person puke behind the bus stand, and another one pee! It smelled so great. I called Eric to whimper, because it was not four in the morning in California.
I went to the Kunstraum Bethanien/Kreuzberg the next morning, after a delicious breakfast at Bateau Ivre. I had a big bowl of yoghurt with pear, peach, johannisbeere, melon, banana, and mandarin orange for three euro, and then Der Franzose: a croissant, butter, baguette, some red berry jam I not only tried but enjoyed, and a milchkaffee for four. I love breakfast. The exhibit is titled Backjumps: The Live Issue #3. It was a print magazine at some point but now they have “live issues”—art shows, etc. The show was great, I am thinking now about how street art fits in or can work or does it work in a gallery context. There was a video that showed some graffiti, and some of the stuff in the video was by the same guy who did the stuff in that little alley in LA! So that was really cool to see and be able to get a name. In the bahn station on the way home, Torey and I noticed this guy standing, waiting for the same train as us. It was the same guy that had got on the bus with us that morning! And we weren’t at a major stop or anything, it was kind of an out-of-the-way place. We both get really tripped out seeing people like that.
Rachel and I decided to finally hang out, and I ran into her after class on my way to the bookstore to see if they had anything in English. We decided to check out this little bakery in the only shopping area close to campus and it was delicious and my milchkaffee came in a giant bowl. We are calling it our Newfeli. Later that evening we met up and had dinner and were just about to start some chill drinking when her corkscrew broke off in the cork. So we went downstairs because this guy Brendan from my class lives there and we were in one hall for five minutes while Rachel tried to remember which room was his and we yelled Brendan about ten times and then she thought we should try the other hall…and his door was open, first on the left. We ended up hanging out there with him and this guy from Humboldt (the California one) who is what you would picture from a person at Humboldt, but really cocky that he goes there, which might seem odd. I was the only person at the Osdorfer Straße S-Bahn, and the only person on my train car. It was creepy but also would have been fun in certain situations.
For our second class excursion, we went to the zoo! The first animals through the door were alpacas, which was just terribly amusing to me given my recent preoccupation with llamas, alpacas, and all things Peruvian or Erics in Peru. There were also elephants. One elephant was standing with its back to the ‘audience’ and people were gathering and then it: 1. Shat. 2. Peed. 3. The baby stuck its trunk up to the other ones bum. 4. Baby puts a piece of fresh poo on head and looks terribly pleased with itself. Then tapirs, which I got to see in a zoo, and Eric missed out on in the Amazon, a deer type thing that stood so still I thought it was a statue at first, and a panda that acted like a fat old man. There was a pack of beautiful white wolves that just kept trotting in circles and every now and then one would stop and look at the people behind the plexiglass and it was just heartbreaking. They shouldn’t be in such a small space. After the wolves I managed to forget the depressing side of zoos by watching a brown bear scratch its back on a tree and then the sea lions. I love sea lions, they are the happiest animals in the zoo. The penguins all just stood there staring at the fake rock wall, and then one scratched its head with its foot, wings out for balance, which was really cute and surprising.
The Pergamon museum is very impressive. You buy your ticket, get it ripped, walk into the exhibit hall, and BAM. The Pergamon altar. Holy god is that thing huge, and powerful, and just…wow. It is difficult to process that it is there, so close. It seems like they like sneaking things up on you there. You walk through the Ishtar Gate at one point and then turn around to realize its huge and blue and covered in lions, and then the glory of the processional way does not hit you until you are all the way at the other end of the hall. The Pergamon also had statues of or with dogs, which makes me happy. One was likely commissioned by a Roman family as a memorial for the family dog. He is scratching his head with his back leg in the statue, and his mouth is open, and he looks so dog-y. Good job, unknown sculptor.
The Berkeley people had an exciting trip to Weimar last weekend. Torey and I bought vodka/wine for the four hour bus drive, but decided the whole situation was so sad that drinking would really not help. We had six girls in our room at the hostel, and then an extra bed. A knock on the door introduced Cz1ois;>*5#gowski, this Polish guy whose name we could not pronounce even after he showed it to us on an ID. We later heard from another guy that he had asked to be in a room with girls, probably so he could walk around in his tiny, tight little boxer briefs. Poor Torey had the bunk below him and got quite a show when he heaved himself up. She and I made the decision to take the city tour in German, and we understood only one thing well: Goethe had this muse, and they wrote thousands of letters to each other, and he said something about a gingko leaf being a symbol for the merging of man and woman, and that now Weimar is obsessed with gingko trees and all products from, or inspired by, them. We then had hours to do nothing in Weimar, so we ate ice cream and bought books and read. A tour of Goethe’s house in English was given later in the afternoon by an elderly woman who seemed to think that Goethe was perhaps some incarnation of Jesus Christ, amen. A group dinner was served at 8p, Creeper drank three Long Island Iced Teas, and apparently when people went out later that night, he was doing shots at the bar while other people chilled with beer because “I thought that was what you were supposed to do at a bar.” He was practically carried back to the hostel. I was happy to stay in and sleep. We went to Buchenwald in the morning, which was sad and thought-provoking, and well, what can you really say about a concentration camp? We drowned our sorrows in more Weimarian ice cream and homework on the ride back.
Last night our new, fun Berkeley excursion was “Twelfth Night” in German on a boat that has been made into a little theater. We stopped at a strandbar before, where I talked to my mum and Chris went and bought three drinks for himself all at once. There were a lot of bugs and I was apparently the mosquito bait just like my mum, because no one else has bites. The intermission was after eleven, and some people left then, worried about being able to get back to our dorm. Torey and I were considering it, but did want to see the rest of the play. I am glad we did stay, because when Herr Euba sat down, he made crying baby noises and said in a silly little voice, “Oh no, I can’t stay, I don’t know how to get home. Waaaa!” It ended around midnight, and as we walked back we saw Chris at the bar. Euba said, “Chris, first the bar!” and Torey said, “Immer (always).” Oh, Mr. Alchypants.
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