latfh

[latfh]
Will catch up with writing when I get back to Berlin. For now, I present you: Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, Leader of the Libyan Revolution in 1969.

I'm S.I.C.K.

Ugh. Woke up on Sunday morning with what was definitely NOT just a hangover. It felt more like my skull was about to implode. Didn't get out of bed all day. I, like most Germans, blame it on the changing weather conditions.

My weapon du jour:

HOT TEA WITH GINGER, HONEY AND LEMON
Ingredients:

• a couple of slices of fresh ginger
• a couple of lemon slices
• HOT water
• a spoonful of honey
• Optional: milk/butter? Not really my kind of thing.

Serve in a yellow teapot. Drink while still hot. Get some bed rest. Sigh.

High brow // Low brow

>> HIGH BROW

I'm taking a two-week intensive language course in Persian (a.k.a. Farsi, Parsi, Irani) at the Technische Universität...

It has always been a little dream of mine to learn Farsi, maybe it's the writing, maybe it's the fact that there's a soft quality to spoken Farsi that really distinguishes it from Arabic. Plus, from what I understand, it's a total gateway into the Dari spoken in Afghanistan (!) So, cool, definitely.

It's also nerdily exciting to be able to read simple texts like this:
man allemani am//من آلمانی ام
>> (I am German)
(Sources: islamicart.ca; UTexas)

>> SEMI-HIGH BROW

I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm kind of itching for a tattoo...If I ever get one, it will totally be in Farsi, something along the lines of "I've seen half the world", with "half the world" written as the city Esfahan (which means "half the world") in Iran. Of course I will only do this after actually having visited the city in question. What thinkest thou? We're only young and stupid once, right?

>> LOW BROW

Germany's Next Top Model Monday night was so bad, it was good. The series kicks off with a casting. A slightly older but stunning Heidi Klum and two people I've never heard of (one of them is called "Q"...how Bond villain of him) pass judgment on a group of delusional teenagers.

There was so much screaming involved. And Black Eyed Peas played. And people falling in high heels:

(Can you guess which one is Q?)

I am NOT going to be watching this again this coming week. Or, SIGH, will I?

Culture Club

A film:
(or two, or three, or four...)

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 

Scroll over to see the answers (in order):

1. Legenda o Suramskoi Kreposti (The Legend of Suram Fortress)
2. Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza)
3. A Serious Man
4. An Education

(Kinoglaz.fr, info-palestine.net, The Austin Chronicle, Critic.de)

My favourite? Definitely A Serious Man, all about uncertainty, doubt, and trying to find answers when spirituality can't offer them. I don't think you need to be Jewish to "understand" this movie. It helps, however, to be a little bit of a nihilist. (It also helps to "get" physics.) No wonder this film is so popular in Germany ;)

For its acting, An Education was brilliant...definitely an escapist kind of movie, but you also leave feeling a little disillusioned, or, as Carey Mulligan's character, Jenny, says at one point: "I feel old. But not very wise." I couldn't shake the fact that Peter Sarsgaard was *woah* creepy, too...

The first film, The Legend of Suram Fortress, which I saw at the Berlinale, was a Georgian nationalist fable that propagated the kind of exoticized folklore that Soviet-era films loved to do. But SO pretty. Especially Georgian writing --> ამბავი სურამის ციხისა (the title in Georgian).

Oh, and Aisheen? Meh. Kind of disappointing actually, even though I did get to see it in West Berlin's coolest cinema, the Delphi Filmpalast.

The only good thing about the film was this awesome featured hip-hop group, DARG Team. I felt the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a documentary or not.

A trip:
(or: > 24 hrs. in Bern and Zurich)
Switzerland is kind of of on everyone's shit list right now, from Libyan leader Qaddafi calling for a global jihad against the little mountain state to German tax evaders sweating it out because they fear their financial secrets are no longer safe in Swissy.

Me? I really just can't understand what they're saying.




More pictures here.

An exhibit:
Bestiarium by Walton Ford at the Hamburger Bahnhof.
Eothen, 2001.

Walton Ford is originally from Larchmont, NY, and he specializes in large, jewel-toned, striking images of animals engaging in violent acts. The exhibit was all nature and brutality and the tenuous distinction between humans and animals. It was a little bit like Audubon gone to the dark side. Absolutely stunning.

A[nother costume] party:
I went as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction.

Am now considering dyeing my hair ;) What do you think?

The party was cool, a very international crowd (Americans, Frenchies, Mongolians ;) and we listened to Balkan Beat Box and Die Antwoord. So, a fun night!

ALSO, IT'S FINALLY SPRING!!!1!

Sorry for the silence!

Will be back next week...

Up next: political accessories and a Berlinale update!

Squee!! I got tickets to the Berlinale today!

(Berliner Morgenpost)

[...for a Georgian subtitled film called The Legend of the Fortress Suram.]

Competition for tickets was intense, though. I've never seen such buzz around Potsdamer Platz, which has quickly emerged as Ground Zero of the festival...although, to be fair, it's also V-day (Happy Hallmark card day, everyone!)

Potsdamer Platz is also the site of Berlin's two biggest commercial cinemas, the CineStar and the CinemaxX (and believe me, those names are as much of a mystery to me as are to any English speaker), not to mention the Grand Hyatt and the Ritz-Carlton, favoured by Hollywood stars attending the festival. The CineStar is actually one of the few cinemas where you can see major Hollywood blockbusters *in English*, which is why it's also a popular spot for American expats/tourists.

Films compete for a Golden Bear, which is conveniently also the symbol of Berlin. It's also pretty damn adorable.

(Hamburger Abendblatt)

The Berlinale is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year (did I pick the best year to go to Berlin, or what?), and I am majorly feeling the scale and scope of the whole event and its effect on the city. It's not just the dizzying array of films that's making my movie buff heart beat faster - short films, indie films, films about war, films in Japanese, Nouvelle Vague retrospective films -, there's also been a certain unmistakable energy to the city in the past few weeks, a kind of palpable sense of pride in the legacy of film-making that the city has to offer, and of celebration in what has become a lasting and meaningful/important festival.

Anyway. I was also planning on getting one of those Berlinale messenger bags that everyone who is anyone seems to be toting around, just so I, too, can be insufferable. Unfortunately, this year's bag looks like this:

FUGLY.

Last year's was *so* much cooler:

...and in 2008:

(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

*sigh* What do you think? Should I shell out 20 Euros for a bag this mediocre, even if it is somewhat special??

• Official Berlinale site
• German news coverage of the festival: Berliner Morgenpost, Tip and Zitty.
• A really cool photo retrospective on the history of Potsdamer Platz.

Phew! That took a lot longer to write than I thought it would....good night!

King Karl on German TV...

...bringing some much-needed glamour to Monday-night programming.

Hubert Burda, German media magnate, is fiercely channeling Mickey Rooney on the far right of the screen. Next to Karl is Burda's wife, the super-talented and gorgeous Maria Furtwängler. Also: (off-screen, but you can kind of see his crazy hair poking onto the screen) is the obvious star of this show, Reinhold Messner (German mountaineer who is officially BATSHIT).

Seriously. This is him:


So far, the show has gone something like this:
Burda: ZOMG I've disovered the Internet.
Lagerfeld: *giggles*
Messner: What is the Internets?
This is so weird and so cool.

Saunaing by moonlight // Mondscheinsaunen

(Not a sauna moonlighting as something else, mind you)
Pop quiz:
Are you
(a) an exhibitionist?
(b) a voyeur?
(c) an unassuming but curious sauna virgin?
Alternative answer: (d) Finnish?

So, I'm fairly certain I am neither (a) nor (b), and clearly not (d), but Saturday midnight sauna-ing on a floating ship was still pretty damn cool.

The concept works like this: in the winter, Fridays and Saturdays from 11 p.m. - 3 a.m., you can sauna, swim and shower (erm, probably not in that order...would it be reverse order? Probably.) to your heart's delight. Which, when it's cold and disgusting outside, is actually a really lovely state of affairs.

The evening began like this: after walking, no, gliding gracefully to the floating Badeschiff near Treptower Park with two friends, we paid 8 € to run from a separate changing room to the sauna room proper - i.e. OUTSIDE - clad only in bathing suits, towels and too-big yellow flips-flops printed with the Corona logo.

Luckily, once we got there, and got over the initial awkwardness of being surrounded by people in various states of undress, it was really worth it. The atmosphere was very chill and clean, but not anaesthetic. There was lounge-y type music playing, dimmed light, and S-shaped wooden chairs with plushy white felt blankets. Plus showers and two separate saunas, one heated at 65º, the other at 90º.

It also seems to have been stunning Euro twenty-somethings night. I heard, like, five different languages being spoken in the sauna, and there was a high quota of HOTNESS. Not what I expected from a sauna, but I guess the sauna-bar combination attracts a different set than the Hallenbad in Marzahn would. Also: the place HAS to be listed in a guide book or two.

Did I also mention it was super-relaxing? i.e. I don't think I had ever *really* had the full sauna experience, I guess. What was less cool were the (two) couples who were monopolizing the pool, ostensibly to engage in some kind of PDA-off, and the loner-creeper who paid 8 € to keep his clothes on and creep on people. But overall: fun!

So: a great night. I also now have a new, lovely verb to add to my vocabulary, because one of the lovely features of the German language is its near-dizzying capacity for compounding words, is sure to become a fixture: Mondscheinsaunen, or: saunaing by moonlight.

Tonight...

...Mondscheinsaunen on the Winterbadeschiff. More later!


(Flickr)

Le weekend

Here are some things I did on Friday and Saturday:
Friday, I went for a walk (plus a short subway ride) to Goltzstrasse in Schöneberg, which I like because of the high density of furniture and knick-knack shops...also a cute little bookstore called "Chatwins" specializing in travel lit.
*click click*

Translation: "We don't just want a piece of the pie, we want the whole bakery." Ahem. Fuck yeah. (near the S-Bahn Yorckstrasse)

It's funny, the longer I live here, the more comfortable I am with doing touristy things like taking pictures of neighbourhoods and street signs and the like. I also thought it was really cool that this one graffiti artist's tag appears to be Zeus.

Puppet theatre is a really big part of many German kids' childhoods:


So. many. memories! Also, such a classic.

This neighbourhood also had a really distinctive (and distinctively questionable) space age theme.

Later on in the day was sushi with colleagues, where I ordered fish and natto. Biggest. mistake. ever. but still kind of worth it. Looks like baked beans, tastes sticky, and has an after-taste of coffee. Have you tried it before?

Friday night, I went to an indie concert in Zapata on Oranienburgerstr., and it kind of reminded me of why Berlin doesn't really have the same indie scene as, say, London. Oh, and apparently there was a fire there Saturday night! o___O But still fun!

Saturday, I made pizza from "scratch"...suffice to say my kitchen did not look this pristine when I was done...there was a lot of improvisation involved!

I also watched "Fish Tank", which was absolutely brilliant, but also left me super-super-conflicted. It's definitely a film that needs to be seen to be understood, but essentially what makes it so difficult to watch is that we, as an audience, become entranced by the kind of general direction the film is headed, only to realize that when what was bound to happen eventually happens, it reveals more about our own morality and the weaknesses of our instinct than we are comfortable with. Does that make sense?

Watch the trailer here.

Life imitating art...

Time: Sunday evening
Location: My awesome Spanish-German friend's flat in Humboldthain.
Occasion: A "green" dinner with some of her roomie's friends in the IR Master's program at the Free University.

We played this game:

It was awesome. Michael Jackson, Haribo Gummibärchen and Hannah Arendt were all involved. We had green pasta with pesto verde and white wine, and delicious Catalonian bread with olive oil, tomatoes and salt.

What have you done to beat the winter blues?

Freezing weather and "Operation Kino"

Berlin right now:

(Style.com)
So much for escaping the Canadian weather! Luckily, it's also ridiculously bright and sunny. Which *almost* melts my Grinch-like heart when it comes to winter.

There's also some cool stuff to look forward to. Like the 60th international film festival in Berlin, the Berlinale.

I am super-excited, not least because I've already had a little taste of TIFF madness already, and because of the pre-Oscar buzz that the Berlinale is likely to attract.

I also FINALLY got around to seeing Inglourious Basterds last Friday, with a glass of red wine and good company in a little cinema on Oranienburger Strasse, and it did not disappoint.

A few observations:
1) This movie was pure CASTING GOLD. Tarantino is, among other things, really adept at writing strong roles for women, and his female characters also all share a very strong film noir quality. I think this is why I have a soft spot for him, because every time I see one of his films, I find myself really wanting to be Uma as Mia Wallace, or, in this case, the stunning and vengeful Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus.

Then there's the whole cast of extremely talented German-speaking male actors. I can't even begin to express how much of a breath of fresh air it was to see such talented and nuanced roles for German actors in an international film. Til Schweiger has seen worse. I also found Christoph Waltz absolutely breathtaking - excuse the unconventional word choice - and I'm pretty sure I squealed when Michael Fassbender walked onto the screen.

Also: this is the first movie I've seen with German baddies actually being played by Germans. A lot of makes this film so subtle and perfect can be summed up in its treatment of languages, and second languages, and assumed accents.

2) Stylistically, I also loved the way the film referenced the aesthetic sensibilities of the Nazi era and its inherent, perverse absurdity, especially in the film's constant references to the Nazi-era mountain drama "The White Hell of Piz Palu". It might be kind of ironic that red and black made such a perfect colour palette for the film.

3) On the violence: Tarantino may be accused of aestheticizing violence, but why begrudge him his fun when he does it so well?

Now excuse me while I go reread Susan Sontag's "Fascinating Fascism".

Endless Nights

"Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night." - Rupert Brooke

Apparently...

...Chuck Norris is the new HASSELHOFF.
[As always, pictures are clickable.]

Incidentally, the actor in the corner was in Casino Royale AND Enemy at the Gates. Yay for Germans playing baddies!

Also:
I was out shopping for glittery things today for a Bird of Paradise theme party (or, as we say in German, a "Motto-Party") I'm going to tonight. I don't think I've worn false eyelashes since 2005...looking forward to it!

I also took some detail shots of the Friedrichstrasse bridge. The combination of the wrought-iron German eagle and the graffitied Anarchist "A" are somehow very "Berlin."


Have a good one, everybody!

March 2010?

Istanbul//İstanbul//قسطنطينيه (European Capital of Culture 2010)

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.
-Alphonse de Lamartine

That's the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, I believe. I just love the sky line and how busy and layered everything looks. It's like there's no square inch of space left.

See what I mean? I've never seen a more enchanting or melancholic blue...below is a view of the Galata bridge.


This is the Cezayir Sokak, also known as "French Street" or the Montmartre of Istanbul, where people hang out to drink Turkish coffee or smoke narguilé.
More on Flickr: Istanbul
Sources: Biennale Istanbul, netfotograf, msnbc, Photoseek, Flickr.

Also: Amsterdam.

Going to the Weinerei tonight, where you pay 2 Euros and then get to sample different wines. It's very cosy and ideal for hipster-watching, which has become a hobby of mine ;)