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.