Fotos aus Leverkusen: Dann und Wann

Compare/Contrast Leverkusen 2000 and Leverkusen 2010!
Then (click for bigger versions):
Bärbel, Nadine, and me:

Teddy, Nadine, and Jan:

Roland at the BBQ:

The Ellenberger/Bowers sibling soccer match, much remembered when I visited a couple weeks ago:

Now:
Me and Bärbel:

Me and Nadine:

Me and Jan:

Roland:

England, England

Last Wednesday after work I headed to the airport and caught a flight for a whole WEEK in England!
When I stepped off the plane, something was different in the air...then I realized it was the smell of fresh, green grass! Amazing, being somewhere where not everything is completely iced over and grey. The weather was so much better than Berlin. It really lifted my spirits.
I spent the first few days in London and then continued on to Oxford.
On Thursday I had some business meetings (fancy!) in London in the morning, then spent the afternoon at the V&A. They have an awesome and much-publicized show on right now called "Decode: Digital Design Sensations." The show was small, but awesome. It "showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small, screen-based, graphics to large-scale interactive installations." The first piece fills a small dark hallway leading into the exhibition and consists of patches of long and thin flexible plastic sticks with LED lights on the end. The overall effect is a kind of futuristic marsh grass. The lights turn on and off based on movement and touch and make a cute little beeping noise as they do so. I took a video:

And several photos:



Pretty neat, eh?
My favorite pieces, predictably, were the interactive ones. There was one with a big screen which, if you stood in front of it, registered your body's movement as if it was a brush moving across the page. So every flick of the wrist or turn of the head turned into a burst of color on the screen. I also spent ages playing with a piece that consisted of a bunch of black sand over a screen. If you cleared a space in the sand, multiple images of moving microorganisms would appear on the clear patch of screen. They would multiply over time and you could lead them around by creating passages through the sand. Another piece was a screen broken up into small boxes, each of which held a very brief video recording of visitors. You could stand in front of it and press the button, do something wacky or meaningful or whatever, and it would add your image to the bigger one.
I was also very taken with a piece that showed a map of the US made up of flight patterns.
Pieces from the show were scattered around the museum, and as I went to check out the smaller partner show, "Digital Pioneers," I encountered one that delighted me: a field of small mirrors standing on legs that would find the face of a visitor and turn to "look" at it! So I could stand in front of all these mirrors and as soon as one of them "noticed" me, the rest would all turn to me too.
"Digital Pioneers" was fascinating, showcasing the first artists who used computers to make art. The very first artists who worked this way wrote their own algorithms to get the computer to make images. Later when imaging software was introduced, those who continued to write their own algorithms were known as "algorists." One man, Desmond Paul Henry, adapted a military bombsight computer with a swinging component to hold a paintbrush and produced beautiful, ethereal paintings with it. It was a really interesting show, and I found myself wondering why it wasn't more prominently advertised.
I also wandered into their jewelry room, which was amazing and inspiring, and managed to see most of a show on recent fashion grads at the RCA before the museum closed and kicked me out.
The next day I went to Tate Modern with my Dad and cousin. The permanent collection was inspiring as always. I also took a peek at the just-opened show "Van Doesburg and the Internationl Avant-Garde," which was a dizzingly extensive look at the many fingers Van Doesburg had in the early 20th century avant-garde pie.
The next day...SATURDAY'S A RUGBY DAY!
After lunch with relatives, Dad and I went to see the England/Wales rugby match at Twickenham! It was my first time seeing an international match there--the only other time I'd been was for the Oxford/Cambridge varsity match in 07. I saw Prince Harry not too far from our seats! The game was close enough to be exciting and the stadium was packed with yelling, singing fans.

Sunday we had a lovely roast lunch (mmm...Yorkshire pud) with friends including Dad's adorable godson, Merlin, and then I hopped on a bus to head to Oxford!
I hadn't been since Fall 07 but it felt as if I never left. Everything's the same.
Cole and I went to the Pitt Rivers on Monday and it was my first time there. Cole rightly describes it as "like a flea market." Very visually overwhelming! It's attached to a wonderful little natural history museum, too, and I enjoyed looking at all the weird and wonderful animals. And learning that the Latin name for a gorilla is Gorilla gorilla. Haha.
I also managed to make it to the recently renovated Ashmolean (it was under construction when I was last in Oxford) and it was really lovely--light and airy and open, which it certainly wasn't the last time I went!
I sighed inwardly as my return flight landed on a field of snow. As my brother said, you know it's bad when you envy English weather. All in all a great little trip with good company & good art.
Tomorrow I head back to Leverkusen for Karneval...that should be an experience.
Bis bald,
D.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, a holiday that I think only Americans & Canadians have ever heard of, but which actually (according to the wiki) has German roots. We watched the movie last night over at KMX and I made this recipe for mushroom and artichoke pasta. Yum!
I leave tonight for a week in England so I probably won't update til I'm back.
Bis bald,
D.

Letzte Woche

I need to post more than once a week so I can avoid these "week in review" posts...I'll work on that.
In the meantime, last week in review:
Tuesday was our fourth supper club! You can read all about it here. We had a Meditteranean-themed menu and were at full capacity again with 12 people! It was a good group and we had a lot of fun. Plus the food was delicious, if I do say so myself.
On Wednesday our friend Linda, who works at a gallery in Mitte, had invited us to their latest opening. I have been meaning to make it to the gallery for ages, and finally I went! The show was interesting and some other friends also showed up. New friends were made--in fact, I met a guy who participated in the same Halloween costume contest as I did! He had been dressed as the joker...I of course was a zebra. We had a good laugh when we realized. Small world...
Afterwards some of us tumbled down into Kreuzberg to go to the music quiz at Madame Claude's, where Charlie was quizmaster. We were at the back of the bar and couldn't hear too well, prompting half our team to give up. I wouldn't let the competitive flame go out, however, and moved to the front, squatting on the floor in front of the DJ booth. Another teammate joined me, and based solely on our efforts we ended up tying for second! So we weren't too embarassed.
The walk to the bus station through snowy Görlitzer Park in the near-darkness was gorgeous.
Thursday I went to morning yoga and in the afternoon Josh and I caught two movies in a row. Where the Wild Things Are, which I'd wanted to see for months, was a slowboiler of a movie, plodding along through gorgeous scenery without much actually happening. After that we saw Sherlock Holmes. The verdict? Certifiably badass.
Friday night we had a party at the apartment! After sleeping in (the first time in ages!) and going to the gym, I spent the rest of the day laying in supplies and cleaning the apartment. We had to shovel the snow on the balcony into piles so that people would be able to go out there to smoke. It also made a convenient outdoor fridge.

Soon enough people started showing up...then more people...then more people.
The cops came. They did not come into the apartment. They simply told us, with a smile, to turn down the music. We did, and told people to keep a little quieter. Josh knew, from previous party experience, that it was a three strike system, so we figured the first warning was not a big deal.
Twenty minutes later and some arriving guests tell us there are four cop cars in the street. Then suddenly 8 policemen are charging up the stairs and chomping at the bit to come into the apartment. We argued with them up and down but they insisted on shutting the party down, right there and then. No third warning. No respect.
We told them to stay on the landing, that we would handle it, but as soon as we turned to do so they swarmed into the apartment. Many Germans in attendance corroborated our belief that this was illegal.
They started turning on lights and kicking people out. Meanwhile I was standing in the hallway telling them to get the EFF out of my apartment, that I did not invite them in, that they had no right.
Able to tell that I was not a native German speaker, they spoke condescendingly, saying the police always have the right to come in to someone's apartment if someone else has made a complaint. This, I was told afterward, is patently false, but I started backing off because it occurred to me that I really don't know the law here, and I didn't want to cause too much trouble.
Until I noticed one pudgy old cop, who'd been particularly rude to me, standing defiantly in the middle of my bedroom, even though no one was left in there.
I told him to get out. He refused. This is my bedroom, I said calmly, you need to leave. No one else is in here. Get out. He refused. Tipsy enough to get bellig, I then started yelling at him to get out, and even attempted to push his arm. It was then that he asked for my passport. I refused. No. No. Why?!? No. But then all the other cops got in on it, saying to refuse was a crime, that it would be a 1000eur fine if I didn't comply, etc. Again, I would have fought more if I felt like I knew the law. But I didn't. And they insisted that it wasn't just a noise complaint, that someone in our neighborhood wanted to make a formal complaint, and that they were obliged, for this reason, to take down my information.
I kinda think that they were just bullying me because they could tell I was a foreigner and that they got pissed when I started fighting back so they pretended it was more serious than it was. Either way they acted really disrespectfully and all the locals who witnessed their behavior swore up and down that it was illegal and a few even took the officers' badge numbers and promised to report them.
The party was over of course but it was good while it lasted and most people ended up in the same bar downstairs so it was ok. Besides...now we are legends.
If and when I get something in the mail from the cops, I think we have plenty of reason to fight the charges.
Anyway.
Last night was considerably more tame. It was the Lange Nacht der Museen (long night of the museums), when many museums in Berlin are open from 6pm-2am and one ticket will get you into all of them. I had been excited for this for a while and headed out to start with the Hamburger Bahnhof, the contemporary art museum.

Only to find it...closed? Turns out it wasn't participating in the long night. Neither were any of the Museuminsel museums except the Bodes, which I'd already seen. When I finally got my hands on a pamphlet with actual information, turns out most of the participating museums were small and not too noteworthy.
But I had already bought my kombiticket so I decided to make the most of it.
I saw the George Grosz exhibit at the Akademie der Künste and it was a good excuse to pop into that cool building for the first time. Pariser Platz looked lovely dusted with snow:

I saw "Utopia Matters!" at the Deutsche Guggenheim, which was an interesting mish-mash of an exhibition with works from Pre-Raphaelites as well as Russian Constructivists and others. They had a cool gift shop, and it was also a cool building with a glassed-in courtyard.
I stopped in to the Berliner Dom because I'd never actually been inside and it was absolutely gorgeous. Plus they were having a choir service and it was lovely, lovely, lovely.

I walked over to the Nikolaiviertel, the oldest neighborhood in Berlin (we're talking medieval) to a small historical house museum, the Knoblauchhaus, and a Rococo palace, the Ephraim Palais, which is a museum of Berlin history and art, currently with exhibits on artworks dealing with the Berlin wall. They're two museums I probably never would have gone to on my own time, so that was really worth it.
I then decided I was too tired to make it to the Jewish museum, and got home around 12:30.
I wish they did this nighttime museum thing more often...it was awesome.
I'm excited to head to England next week!
Bis bald,
D.

Leverkusen

So as I mentioned in my last post, I spent last weekend in Leverkusen visiting the family that I stayed with on my first trip to Germany, back when I was 12 or 13 years old. Sorry the post is overdue, but I was waiting on them to send me some pictures. Since the pics still haven't arrived, I'm just going to go ahead and give the general gist.
There's a great website here when you can find rideshares online so I had lined up two rides to and from Köln, which Leverkusen is near, for far less than a train ticket would have been. I got up and at 'em Friday morning to catch a 10am rideshare. Unfortunately I was tired and mildly hungover so my frenzied last minute packing managed not to include the batch of chocolate chip cookies I had baked special to bring to the family. D'oh!
After six hours in a car with strangers and no food (whoo) I arrived at Köln Hauptbahnhof (main station) right under the imposing cathedral, the view of which I still remembered from my youth (it is a sight one would not easily forget).
I remembered the Family Ellenberger quite well--Dad Roland, Mom Bärbel, and two very blond, very tan children: Jan, younger than me by about 5 years, and Nadine (Dini), who is my age and who I formed a pretty tight bond with when I was there the first time. We used to write letters back and forth on Diddl Maus stationary, but over the years we lost touch. I was kind of nervous to see them all again. Especially knowing that none of them speak very good English anymore and that my German was going to be put to the test!
Anyway I recognized Jan right away outside the Hauptbahnhof. He's taller but still has the same blond hair. We chatted away in German while we waited for the S-Bahn to Leverkusen. So far, so good.
They've moved down the street into Grandma Ellenberger's house, but the street still looked vaguely familiar, and we drove by the old house, which looked smaller than I remembered--it always surprises me when that happens, when things look smaller than you remembered simply because you were a smaller person the last time you saw them (although that wasn't true of the huge honking Kölner Dom). Bärbel came out to meet us--her hair is shorter and lighter, but she has the same welcoming smile. Roland looked smaller to me too (I'm much taller than both parents now!) but has the same loud, joyful laugh. Bärbel had made pear cake, and we sat around the table and chatted and caught up. My German was shaky at times but I think pulled through pretty well.
We all went out to dinner where Dini met us with her boyfriend, a footballer for the local second-string team, and we also met some family friends who I had supposedly met ten years prior but did not, sadly, remember. Again my German held up and I was feeling more and more comfortable with it!
The next day Bärbel made her famous goulash and it was just as scrumptious as I remembered. Then, since they had asked what I wanted to do, we went to Köln's contemporary art museum, the Ludwig, where I learned about some German artists I hadn't previously known of and saw some great pieces by artists I already knew. What a great museum--views of the Rhine and the Dom and a huge collection. I was really surprised at how good it was.
That night, we drove to Düsseldorf, which I hadn't realized was so close, for a round of disco bowling!
And the next morning I hopped back in a rideshare and headed home.
It was a quick visit but so good to see everyone again. And, most importantly, I found that my German is much more fluent than I tend to give myself credit for. If I had to live in a total immersion situation, I could totally handle it. I wouldn't be able to express too-complicated ideas right away, but I learned so much in that short time that I think it would come quick enough. It makes me feel a bit sad that I chose Berlin and non-German roommates, but then again, now I know that the skills are there, for whenever I may need them.
They invited me back for Karneval (the Rhineland's answer to Mardi Gras!) in a couple of weeks and I think I'm going to go and see if my zebra costume goes over better there than it did at Halloween :)
Bis bald,
D.

Letzte Woche

Last week on Wednesday I was invited to the birthday party of a friend of a friend who is also in my yoga class. Her name is Margo and she's a Latvian cabaret singer. There's a creatively vibrant group of Latvian emigrants here in Neukoelln that includes Margo; my friend Galka, a costume designer; my friend Linards, a VJ; and a woman who designs hats and has a small hat boutique round the corner from my flat. The birthday party was at the hat shop. When I walked in there were several performances and everyone was wearing hats and I asked some guy I had just met (turned out to be the shirtless cellist later) where he had gotten his hat and it turned out there was a make-your-own-hat station!!! So I made a lovely hat which was finished just in time to take part in the hat fashion show which involved climbing up on a ladder and saying your name, the name of your hat, and explaining something about it. I said my hat was called "Nocturne in Grey and Burgundy (I hope to god I didn't accidentally use someone's scarf to make this hat)." It was a smashing success!

O the Latvians...and o Berlin.
The next night, a friend and I returned to Magnet Club (site of the awesome Mountain Goats show) to see Thao with the Get Down Stay Down. It was epic! Magnet is such a small venue, so we got right up front and sang along and danced and when it was over she came down into the audience and we met her and chatted about the Bay Area and she signed autographs for us :)


It was an epic night!
The next morning I hopped in a rideshare to head to Leverkusen and see my original German host family for the first time in 10 years...but that's a story for my next blog post.
Bis bald,
D.

La Ville de Lumières

Finally taking advantage of my proximity to the rest of Europe, I spent last weekend in PARIS!
I arrived late Wednesday night and made my way to my friend's apartment in the 19th arrondisement, where I was soon happily passed out. The next day I met my friend for lunch after her morning classes and then we headed to the Pompidou, one of my fav museums in Paris (it's a toss-up between the Pompidou and the d'Orsay) for their Pierre Soulages retrospective. I had never heard of Soulages but apparently everyone at Annabelle's school was buzzing about the show. Believe the hype! It was great. The bulk of it consisted of his 3D all-black canvases with paint so thick it creates texture and shape. They reflect the light in amazing ways. He calls it "outrenoir"--"beyond black."

"One day when I was painting the black took over the canvas. And in this extreme I saw, in a way, the negation of black, the different textures reflecting the light to differing degrees. Out of darkness came light, a pictorial light whose particular emotional force provoked in me a desire to paint--I like it that this violent color induces an inward reaction. My instrument was no longer the black but this secret light it radiated, all the more powerful in its effects for coming from the greatest absence of light. That is the path I followed, and in following it I am always discovering new horizons."
We also discovered the Atelier Brancusi next door--Brancusi's studio reassembled in its entirety in a small building specially designed by Renzo Piano. He bequeathed it to the French government on the condition that it be shown complete, as he considered it a work of art in itself, with finished pieces carefully arranged next to raw materials, tools, and works in progress.
That night to celebrate Annabelle's birthday her boyfriend took us to a fondue restaurant where we shared a cheese fondue and then a chocolate one. Suuuper healthy. and delicious. The cheese fondue had wine in it--enough that I tasted it immediately--and the boyfriend claimed this was necessary in a fondue. Who am I to say?
Afterwards I headed by myself to the Cité Universitaire to meet two other old friends from Brooklyn and we had such a grand old time that we were up til the RER started running again...I got home around 7am.
The next day I again met Annabelle for lunch and we went to a restaurant known for its falafel. Yum! The Picasso Museum is closed until 2012 apparently (sadface) so we headed to Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery, where I had never been. We splurged on a tourist-y map of the famous graves at a newsstand. An hour later, having tramped through half the cemetery but only having found a few of the people supposedly buried there, a security guard informed us that a) the penalty for walking on the grass is they take your shoes (his idea of a joke) and b) our map was wrong and a scam. Go us. Luckily he gave us his map and we ended up seeing a good number of famous graves, including Proust, Balzac, Bizet, Oscar Wilde, Gericault, Chopin, and of course Jim Morrison (had to do it). We missed, unfortunately, Seurat, Moliere, Apolloinaire, Eluard, Ernst, Daumier, Corot, and a host of others, but it was getting dark and cold and our feet hurt.
There were also lots of other interesting monuments and I took more pictures at the cemetery than anywhere else (does this say something about me? I mean I did write two papers about Greenwood Cemetery as a young'un).

Wilde's grave was covered in lipstick kisses (kinda cute) and scrawled messages (not so much...it's called defacing, assholes). When I ran my fingers over the carved letters of his name, I got lipstick on them. Um. Gross. Thanks Oscar!

I was more interested in the awesome trees round that part of the cemetery...full of big black crows. The place was also crawling with black cats. Wtf? Do they do that on purpose to make it creepier?

Gericault's grave was hilarious. It was topped by a lounging figure daintily holding an artist's palette and brush. Below was a bronze version of his painting The Raft of the Medusa. It was surrounded by a fence made up of the letter G and little hearts. Can we say inflated self-importance? Although it did help me recognize the grave.

That night, Annabelle's roomie hosted a party at the flat for the combined birthdays of Annabelle, the roomie's boyfriend, and one of their friends. She cooked a whole ton of delicious "nibblies" so I sat and stuffed my face with French cheese and pate while everyone else spoke French. Haha seriously though, it was funny, I attempted to listen and sometimes people took pity and spoke English to me for a while.
I soon headed out to meet a friend at "Le Rhummerie," a bar devoted to rum, where I sampled two of their famous mango mojitos and went home happy at 3am, despite having to transfer to the bus because the Metro stopped running. Even in Berlin they know to have the trains run all night on Fridays and Saturdays. Ah well.
On Saturday it was raining but Annabelle and I decided to make good on our plan to visit Versaille because I'd never been! It was really cool and surreal to be there. Of course I'll have to go back again someday to see the gardens in full bloom, and to see Marie Antoinette's mini-palace or whatever it is. Still, the rainy day had its own aesthetic charms.



This random deer head was not explained:

Neither was anything really...the audio guide was appallingly bad. It left me thirsting for more...I'm adding biographies of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon to my reading list.
I met Courbet in a hallway full of busts of famous Frenchmen (no women):

His beard was magnifique.
That night we went out for drinks, I tumbled home at 2, finished packing at 3, and got up to catch my flight at 6. Woot!
I was back in my apartment in Berlin by 11am, and back to work today. Craziness.
As usual after visiting Paris I now want to a) live there and b) learn French. I plan on starting goal b when I leave Germany. One language at a time.
It was funny how when I encountered a person who did not speak English, my instinct was to try German before English. It was no more likely--in fact probably less likely--that they would speak it, but I guess I've just gotten used to busting out the German when I have a communication issue. That's a good thing, I think?
Bis bald,
D.