October 30, 2005
suitcase explosion
tomorrow, early early, after more than a month,
i head home to NYC. i have mixed feelings about this. but i am excited to see everyone and start up old routines that have been all but lost.
after i took this pic yesterday my suitcase somehow exploded even more, another foot or two around the radius. i am mystified as to how i am going to get it all back in.
October 21, 2005
Milch
my body will be psyched to be away from the cheese and wine i'm sure.
little amsterdam
awww, today is my last day in Deutschland --- at least until next year. it's been good to me, what a fabulous trip.
today has had been a rough start and it's 10am and i still havent' gotten coffee so i'm twitching. but tonight i will be in London! so who cares right? *coffee!!!*
October 20, 2005
München Band
My last full day at work here in Germany! The actual vacation starts tomorrow night...
October 19, 2005
german food
top left = my din din last night
below mine? HORSE.
Beethoven Haus
Hi from across the strasse of Beethoven's Haus. Bonn, Germany
a bird in the biergarten
tonight i am going to a traditional biergarten in krefeld for dinner (as a goodbye from my company). apparently this is the "real thing". heh. i'll report back tomorrow.
night lights
i have a video where i turn 360' degrees here... every angle is gorgeous, any way you look.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
October 18, 2005
love letters
last night i had too much wine at a farmers house in krefeld. he was once the best pig breeder in the rhineland - i saw the pictures, no lie.
October 17, 2005
amsterdam, i love you
perhaps my favorite city in the world. (so far)
i heart amsterdam
on saturday, i fell in love with amsterdam. how can you not love a city filled with bikes, canals, beautiful buildings and bright colors everywhere????? it's like my dreamland.
October 14, 2005
berlin wall dancers
Düsseldorf tonight, Amsterdam tomorrow, and Sunday we go to Bonn!
It's my last weekend in Germany. :/
October 13, 2005
on the way to the flea market in the park
Berlin, Germany
Apollo
this is the dog that lives in my german house, he is a spaz
October 12, 2005
October 11, 2005
Biergarten in Oktober!
This is my german coworker Sandra and I taking part in some Munich Sunday afternoon past times. :)
Dogs and Bikes
i just went to a chinese restaurant for lunch. it was their three year anniversery there, so they gave us all a bottle of plum wine at the end. i came back to the studio and was asking my co-workers if they liked it and wanted it, and then i dropped it! it broke in the middle of the floor and now the studio smells like plum liquor. hilarious. only me, i swear.
October 10, 2005
Bavarian Jackalope
I found a bavarian jackalope! They are much uglier than their American cousins
October 07, 2005
wine and cheese galore
Last night I had wine and cheese and other delicious food with our landlord/hosts tina and stepan. This is looking downstairs from by my apartment door.
try to count the different kinds of cheeses...
my view
this is the window directly behind me right now. it's sunny and gorgeous in germany today... and should be all weekend. i have to get up at 4am tomorrow morning to get to cologne in time to fly to munich. oh my. but it will be worth it... sunny germany = real biergartens in munich!!!
too much wine, too much cheese
a night with our hosts with 10 different cheeses, great red wine, olives, sun dried tomatoes, and a variety of breads... topped off as usual with a fresh coffee with steamed milk, froth on top. my stomach is about to explode. i think i may have to go vegan in defiance. it's just all too good!
the most common themes in germany: cheese, wine, dogs, chocolate, bread.
i am making an effort here to say that tomorrow is the day this stops. there are sweets and chocolates around every corner here. it's a dieters nightmare really. today i came home to a six pack of kinder eggs on my table! although i have to say i am very excited about them. i got my first kinder egg this morning and i freaking LOVE the toy that i got inside. this pack i received on my table is halloween themed so i am hoping the toys are all monsters.
October 06, 2005
A Veggie in Kempen
i've been in germany a week now. i feel tired but great. there is not much chance to sleep with so many amazing people around all the time. my coworkers are really too much. last night we had dinner over stephanie's house in düsseldorf. her husband made a bunch of us scrumptious lentil soup and i got to meet her adorable new baby rosa. her husband stays home with the baby during the day while she works at the company. how great. i didn't see that much of düsseldorf, but the city looks very cute with small streets and curvy roads.
tonight we went to an italian place (at sandra's suggestion) in krefeld where i am living. it was really yummy and in an old converted factory space. i had wine, fish w/ potatoes (sooooo yummy), and veggies.... and a latte macciato to top it off. latte macciato's are cheap in germany. i am starting to have a little bit of a habit that i won't be able to keep up back home. uh oh.
lunch time has been filled with language barriers. no eating meat and not speaking german is difficult, as most everything in germany has meat in some form. i have to be able to point basically. silke came along at lunch today with christina and i and showed me some things i could eat at different places in kempen. i think i have a few more options now... today i ordered on my own in german. very basic, but it was a big step! i also bought a crate of water, which costs about 7euro, but there is a 3euro refund when you bring the crate and bottles back. water is incredibly cheap and everywhere. i had to go back to the non-sparkling because i wasn't drinking enough, it's harder to drink. i also bought a bunch of different yogurts to try out, there are millions. germans know dairy. a lot of people just eat cheese and bread for lunch. there are way too many pastry temptations... but i've been fairly good. most veggie things tend to be heavy so i am going to try and just buy some food starting tomorrow at the grocery store and bring it with me. it just gives me the most options and i don't need to speak german. that is the best part. i really didn't realize how hard it would be to communicate here. not that people are not friendly. even not speaking german they will try to make conversation with me. heh. tourists are definitely on the rare side in kempen.
the center of kempen is surrounded by a brick fortress. it wasn't bombed during the war and is preserved well. you can imagine where the horse drawn carts would come though.
work is picking up the pace. i like working in the studio and i am getting a fair amount done but we are on a tight schedule. meetings are half in german, half in english. i am getting used to that... sometimes i try and figure out what people are saying just by body language.
i have less time to write and be by myself, and not really quite enough sleep. but enough... on sat. early early early we wake and drive to cologne to catch our flight to munich and we fly back sun. night. this weekend will be a whirlwind, but i am excited. it's just 4 of us girls from work. i'm getting used to this flying around thing. i haven't flown from cologne yet though, this with be my first time there.
enough. time for an episode of six feet under (or maybe not, i also have sex and the city which is only a half hour... then sleep). it's comforting to listen to english. i don't miss nyc yet. i wish i could just keep traveling. i love all the new experiences. i miss my friends, but i know i will see them soon enough. for now, deutschland.
a berliner for a weekend
part one: friday. (the only part i had time to write thus far... it was a long weekend!)
really too much happened to write it all down. i lost the poetry in writing it by waiting a few days but i still feel the intensity of berlin in my memories. what an interesting city. the thing about germany is that i have no idea what to expect so i am constantly surprised or amused or horrified. mostly happily surprised/confused.
i flew in on friday with christina from düsseldorf. only 45min. in the air. quick. the flights say everything in german first, then english and often by the time they got to english i had stopped listening. so christina and i ended up paying 8euro for a tea, a coffee, and a water. ahhaha. we just laughed and laughed. the beginning of the confused weekend we assumed. the fact that we were splitting up in berlin was fairly frightening for me since i didn't know how much of my weekend would be spent alone, or if my host david- a friend of a friend who i had met twice previously (and speaks fluent german), would want to hang out.
i needn't have worried! david was the most fabulous host ever and was dedicated to making sure i had a fabulous time in his adopted city. when i emerged from the u-bahn (subway) it was dark and david came to meet me outside the stop. we walked to his apt. and right away i was impressed. his building is old and beautiful, apparently some high up figure in the 3rd reich used to live there but now it's apartments, and gorgeous big ones at that. the ceilings go up forever. the moldings make you cry, and the doors! there are grand doors into the rooms, with fancy old handles. he has 6 roommates, almost all international: french, austrian, german, and american (him). one french guy was gone, so i got his room for the weekend.
i was starved so after the tour we borrowed a fabulous old orange bike from ursula (his sweet austrian roommate) and went for turkish food. the neighborhood that he lives in kertzberg, is a big turkish area and food wasn't lacking. i was having trouble concentrating, i couldn't help but stare at everything and everyone. afterwards we visited his friend's apt. down the street. another gigantic apt. share, only slightly less awe-striking. we went to the roof where there was this cool roof terrace walkway built in the 70's by architecture students. there is also a sauna attached to one end, and a communal meeting room at the other. you could see some big berlin landmarks and thee moon and stars. very cool.
i got a call on the roof from isaac, another friend of a friend who i had actually never met before but had been emailing with. he lives in a neighborhood or two over called prenzlauerberg (that reminds me of willliamsburg a bit). anyway we talked about what we should all do that night and decided on this warehouse party that he knew of.
it was freezing(!) so we decided to ditch the bikes, get sweaters, and take the u-bahn over to verdig - this almost suburb of berlin where the party was at. we followed isaac's kinda sketchy directions and somehow, after walking for a long time in circles, came upon this party. you would never have thought there was a party back there from the street. it was deserted. but you walk down a stone driveway next to a big brick factory-like building with a smoke stack (quite beautiful actually) and then all the sudden you see a hundred bikes, then you walk around a corner and you see groups of people in circles speaking german, lounging on couches outside, and a big fire with someone grilling. music gets louder as you walk through that part into the building and it's just this gigantic huge room with video projections covering the huge far wall. there were large paintings on the other walls. humungous really to fill that space. there were random couches about, a makeshift bar to the right with fairly cheap booze and straight ahead a large pack of people dancing around a dj... my first dose of german party music. it surprised me that it was all american. a lot of older songs. some cheesy songs, a few great songs that were very popular in nyc two years ago, and some random stuff i had never heard. it's hard to describe. but when they liked a song, everyone screamed and went nuts. i kinda just dove in and danced - it took me awhile to get my rhythm but it eventually showed up. i just enjoyed myself scoping out the germans party style. eventually david and i headed back to the apt. and ended up eating cookies with nutella at 4:30am, among other foods i don't even remember. i was hoping to get to bed so that i could make sat. a big night out... i still had jet lag in my system and i think that most of the weekend i was on some crazy berlin fuel. maybe it was the nutella that got me through.
October 05, 2005
fountain explosion
for you art history buffs :
The Neptune Fountain was created in 1886-91 by Reinhold Begas and is considered by many to be the highpoint of the sculptor’s career. In the midst of the highly detailed group of sculptures and the many water cascades, the ten meter high sea god Neptune reigns supreme in an enormous shell carried by tritons and surround by nymphs. Four female shapes, each sitting at one edge of the fountain, embody the four rivers that once ran through Prussian territory; the Rhine (with a fish net and wine leaves), the Weichsel (with woods), the Oder (with goat and skins), and the Elbe (with fruits and cobs). Begas was very likely inspired by the Roman fountains of Bernini and by the Latony Fountain in Versailles. The Neptune Fountain was originally found on the south side of the City Palace - in1969 it was moved to its current location.
berlin wall graf
the idea of a gigantic wall miles long, full of art appeals to me outside of this particular social context. it was cool to be in berlin on reunification day.
now i am at work listening to german radio. not so good.
October 04, 2005
dr. pong (on Vimeo)
@ Dr. Pong, a bar in Berlin
View this video clip on Vimeo:
http://www.vimeo.com/clip=11825
hallo from berlin
hallo!
i had so much fun the nights before that i made myself a bit ill. so in this picture from yesterday i am all sick and touristy, but still happy. berlin was everything everyone said it would be. and hopefully soon i will get a moment to write about it!