Mother Of All Photo Dumps

It is a very, very beautiful Friday morning and I am sick.

I was also sick for almost the whole of very, very beautiful yesterday. I did not work out, ate plenty of food and avoided as much stress as possible. Sleep being the original cure-all, I took a hefty late afternoon nap in the hope that I might be up for a little bit of Thursday night fun (I have no classes on Fridays, yes I still get excited about three day weekends), but it mostly just meant I was both sick and wakeful when the sun went down. Before I finally hit the hay around midnight last night, I closed my steel shutter—or as I like to call it, ‘Morgoth, Devourer of Light’—in an effort to create the erholsam (wholesome or healing) womb of perfect darkness I needed to be fit as a fiddle stuffed with a million bucks come morning.

Aaaand I woke up still sick. Less sick, I suppose, but sick nonetheless. At least I slept in. My body has a thing where it would really prefer to be up at about 8 in the morning, regardless of how late I was up doing jumping jacks or racing rocket scooters the night before. Making it to 11 a.m. was an accomplishment. It was also not good enough for my “feel completely better tomorrow” plan.

New theory: I am stressing out so much about getting better—setting deadlines for healthiness, getting grouchy when my stupid body fails to follow orders, generally counting my feverish chickens before they don’t die of the fever—that I am actually hindering my recovery. How IRONIC, it’s a classic CATCH-22, etc etc.

New attitude: I am in shape, I eat healthily, and a long weekend is just beginning. I can afford to take it easy for another 24 hours or so. Today’s plan: ride my bike to some parks, read my book in those parks, take some notes/study some German if I get such a notion, see friends this evening, get some sleep tonight. That’s it.

OH and also first and foremost this blog post, DUH.

This is that big photo-dump I have been promising. I do not want it to take forever to write, so I am gonna try to let the pictures speak for themselves and only add commentary where it is especially important/interesting. Also, no fancy transitions. They do not pay me enough for continuity.

Berlin has an extensive network of water pumps, many of them still functional. The other day I saw a man washing his Mercedes with water from such a pump. Some are brutally efficient hunks of steel, others are more ornate. I took a picture of this one, discovered on a walk through Volkspark Humboldthain with my friend Lucy, because it was very well lit and when you pump it the sea dragon head on the left spews water all over the place.

A couple weeks back I took a long walk into the uncharted regions north of my apartment. I thought this MJ bust would be the most photo-worthy moment of the journey.
Then I found the Cuban embassy.In all the hubbub over Berlin being the capital city of German art and culture and architecture and whatnot it can be easy to forget that Berlin is also the real capital city of Germany, i.e. the seat of government and center of international relations. This reality usually asserts itself when I am killing time around the Bundestag (the monumental German capital building), the fashionable district where all of the countries with some weight to throw around built their big, modern, incredibly secure embassies. I guess I had just assumed that every country with an embassy in Germany had set up shop somewhere in that neighborhood.
But as it turns out, there was just not enough space on or around the glamerous federal campus for every one horse crap-country to get its own three-office suite; hence, this bizarre block of decades-old stucco-clad structures with flag poles, camera banks and high fences, most of them housing apparently still functional embassies, here in a less than prosperous district of hip little Prenzlauer Berg.

I dug the names on this little buzz box. I wonder if Cuban ambassador and I share a grocery store.

The Cuban complex took up half a city block, nothing next to the huge glass-n-steel things China and France and US have set up in the thick part of town, but downright expansive compared to most of the Botschaften (embassies) in this district. Eritrea, for example, had only one structure with a narrow band of soverign grass around it.(Side note: the main qualification for becoming the Eritrean ambassador is a demonstrated ability to find Eritrea on a map. And yes, this sign and the one above do say only "Residence of the ambassador," but the actual embassies were also part of the complex. Trust me.)

Same goes for Ghana, although they get bonus points for their cool flag:
Everybody in Cape Verde chipped in and bought a dog to patrol the embassy lawn.I wonder if the ambassador has to walk him.

Bosnia & Herzegovina’s complex was a bit more impressive:
But it lost a little prestige on accounta it was right across the street from this burned-out house, which looked like it had been sitting in charred ruins for a couple of weeks. The Bosnian-Herzegovinian ambassador probably whined about it to the city until they stopped taking his calls.

Several of these squared-off little buildings are clearly unoccupied, which raises all kinds of questions. What happened here? Did Trinidad & Tobago finally score a cherried-out suite downtown? Did some brief little Eastern Bloc nation cease to exist? Who took down the flag for the last time? Was it dampened with tears, or dragged through the mud? Most importantly, who drives that awesome patchwork hatchback on the left?

Also located north of my apartment: a big ol block of these little private gardens that Germans are so fond of.Apparently it is a thing in major German cities to have a little plot of land in one of these complexes. When the city gets you down, you roll out to the garden and plant vegetables or flowers or trees or just set up a bunch of kitschy little lawn ornaments. If you get tired of shoveling dirt you can go into your little cottage and listen to a soccer game on the radio.It is like having a little backyard in a different part of the city. I would rather have it outside my door, of course, but I guess in a serious city like Berlin you gotta take nature where you can get it.Several plots were ringed with ancient barbed wire, which really got my goat for some reason. I guess it is obnoxious and aggressive and dangerous, while not really providing much security at all. I don’t like barbed wire.

I like dogs. This resigned, patient fellow outside the grocery store made me a little sad.

I feel like every fourth photo I take is a perspective-heavy shot of some long path with a dead-center vanishing point. Here is another one of the elevated U-Bahn line on Schönhauser Allee.

I guess ‘Marco Polo’ was copyrighted, so they decided to name this crappy clothing store after his long-lost brother of Irish extraction, Marc O’Polo.
Somebody got real frustrated with his old computer and just cold threw it out on the street.Take THAT, you stupid machine!

Maybe I am way behind the times over on the wrong side of the ocean, but round about these parts Coca Cola has started a major advertising push for the 0.25 liter Dose (can) of Coke. I guess the idea is, they will sell you less Coke for less money. Revolutionary. ANYWAYS, what interested me here was the slogan: ‘Volle Dose Happiness’ is nice little polyglot pun. ‘Volle” is German for ‘full,’ and ‘Happiness” is Englsh, of course; the wordplay turns on the word ‘Dose.’ Auf Deutsch we have a ‘Full Can of Happiness,” while in English we have a “Full Dose of Happiness.” GET IT? I sometimes worry that I am too interested in advertisements.

This is the nasty little piece of glass I found in my flat tire on the way home from the bike shop on the rainy day when my bike chain snapped and I hurt my knee:
Another memory from that crappy old chain snappin’ day:This anachronistic iron horse pumped out big black clouds of acrid smoke over the crowded tram stop while I sat there, hurting, wet and bikeless, coughing like a coal miner. I guess this was part of some sort of Train History promo where they demonstrated what trains used to look like back when black lung was a primary cause of death.

This is the real healthy-lookin’ vegetarian meal I have been eating once a day for the past week or so. Pasta with 5 onions and two cans of beans, tomatoes and garlic to taste. Garnish with toast and raw broccoli.

Some unusually optimistic grafitti. Maybe the artist just had his first child, or discovered heroin.

Lookit it is some human beings! Lucy is looking very demonic and Mariana is countering my camera with a camera of her own. I think this was Friday night at the Carnival of the Cultures.

This was my No Stress Allowed weekend. On lovely Saturday I dressed as the personification of America and spent the day expressing my culture’s love of riding bikes and climbing stuff.
Here I am with some other people on top of a titanic and mysterious old pump of some kind.
Panama hats, a steal for 39 euro-dollars. I resisted.

I had no map and my cell phone is useless in loud places, so I spent most of the weekend comfortably lost. This awesome church provided a useful meeting point on more than one occasion.Bonus: the dude with the blue sweater knotted over his yellow polo in the foreground. Awww yeah.

This stand was selling vodka and Russian delicacies and vodka. The wood carvings were super cool, but the dudes running the place were the real attraction here. They were very drunk. They sang along to what seemed to be a ten-minute version of the Russian national anthem, blasted at deafening volume over the crowd, and during some 30 second timpani breakdown the dude in the officer’s cap chugged a good portion of a bottle of vodka, then held this salute while the dude in the fur cap poured more shots for people in the crowd and himself. I did not see them sell any food.

Some nice Coke-can sculptures:
Aw Yeah American Hamburgers:Happy as I was not to be America’s sole representitive at the Carnival of the Cultures, I still didn’t buy a burger here, because (A) these were definitely not Americans running this stand, so they don't know a burger from Shinola, and (B) right next door was a much more authentic German grill stand with this expansive free-swinging lazy susan grill hanging by chains from the ceiling. I want one:What I got was a v delcious pork chop sandwich with fried onions. Mmmmmmm.

On the way home I found a new and perfectly lit graveyard. I stopped for some solitude and photography by the light of the setting sun.

Riding bikes in a cemetery is a no-no, so Bikey had to wait by the gate.
I liked all the watering cans, hung on the watering can rack with care.
I wish I could have captured the fragrace of this place. It smelled like good spring earth.

This huge famly plot was cool,But I found the inscription vaguely creepy.It reads, “He who lives in the memory of his loved ones is not dead. The only really dead ones are those who are forgotten.” Gave me a little shudder.

Child grave are always sad. “I loved nothing in the world as much as you.”

The cover photo for my breakout spoken-word album, Sunshine On The Graves Of Liselotte Rauchstädt And Heinz Wilde:
I eventually found the far edge (graveyards always seem to go back further than you expect) and discovered a low fence and the Berlin Wall Memorial, well lit with a little girl out front to provide scale and thoughtful historical perspective.
I left the graveyard and worked my way around to the Wall Memorial, where I got this shot of Bikey in front of one of a series of comics that I recognized from the Northwestern German Department’s exhibition for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. CONNECTIONS.

This dog was so beautiful in the sunlight:I wonder what she’s looking for.
Maybe this shifty city cat, who almost made it over the wall before I could photograph his butt.
That night I met up with Maxie and Rachel, a couple of Berliners I met through my sister’s roommate Daniel, for a cookout and trip around the town. Here is the excellent portrait I took of Maxie and myself on the train:I think this one has a real "last known photograph" feel to it.

Some people have been complaining about all the pretty, shallow, bourgeois fountain photos on this blog. Here is a picture of a real nitty gritty fountain of the people to appease them:It is a bunch of pipes draining water from a construction site into a dumpster. REAL ENOUGH FOR YOU, AMERICA?

Back at the festival on Sunday. Some quality copyright violation on behalf of veganism. The text reads “Dogs are also just pigs,” and Droopy’s sign sez “Eat Me!”

I took a picture of this sign because1. It reads “Lamps from 100 Years,” which strikes me as a fairly grandiose name for a lamp shop.
2. It is in comic sans, an irritating and over-used font that makes a certain sort of typographically-sensitive person want to leap screaming out the window.

On my way to the parade I was struck by the sheer size of the crowd making its way down this broad avenue.
Look at them all.
When I first saw this man carrying a comically oversized inflatable bottle of Corona, I assumed he was part of some clever marketing campaign.But this second photo reveals a female companion who carries a smaller but still oversized inflatable bottle of Corona, which suggests to me that this couple somehow obtained these at the festival and is now hurrying back home with their trophies.
The crowd was 10 deep along the whole parade route. I was tall and obnoxious enough to get a spot where I could see pretty well, but photography was pretty much out of the question. I did get this shot, notable for the huge puppet in the lower right and the two folks hanging out in windows in the upper left:
And this picture that features both1. The outrageously fabulous black man wearing red leather knee-high rollerskate boots, a corset, a red taffeta skirt and huge floppy red feathered hat. This guy was completely in his element. He would roll up to a group of people and vogue for the cameras, then sashay over to a new audience of adoring spectators.
2. The jerk on the right who kept blocking my view with his camera and inspired me to not take anymore photographs.

Later on I sat down in front of the church to take a breather and got a nice low-angle, dog’s-eye shot of this woman’s outstanding turquoise ensemble.

ART SALEFRESH ART GET IT WHILE IT'S HOT

A very pretty little hilltop meadow I discovered by accident and read some of a novel in when I had to wait an hour for the pool to open.
I see this Winnebago around my neighborhood on a regular basis. It is presumably owned and operated by pirates. Not only is there a skull & crossbones decal on the back window and the huge Jolly Roger flying on the roof, the dashboard features a human skull (presumably that of a former nemesis, or possibly an accursed forebear) and a smaller, fun-sized Jolly Roger. I guess they just cruise around Berlin drinking beer and sometimes doing a little light terrorizing and pillaging if they get bored.

MORGENLAND (roughly, TOMORROW-LAND) is a very forward-thinking, optimistic name for a Spätkauf (sleazy late-night convenience store).“We shall find the answers to all our questions…in MORGENLAND”

This little kid was pointing at something I was supposed to drool over and then purchase, but I was too taken by the model German child’s miniature Canadian tuxedo. That kid is so raw. I’ll be he smokes 2 packs a day and would kill anybody who said anything against his mother.

I take four out of five courses through Humboldt University, and one, German Political Thought, through IES, my study abroad center. It is a fairly interesting course, though our extremely enthusiastic professor is hindered by a fair-to-middlin’-to-kind-of-crappy German language ability among his students and a generally apathetic attitude. Wolfgang (the professor) tries to keep our interest by organizing field trips to a couple select locations in the milleu of historically interesting crap that is Berlin. Here we are at the extremely serious front door of the Stasi (Staatsicherheit—East Germany’s infamous secret police force) interrogation prison, where political criminals were brought directly after arrest to be psychologically tortured until they confessed and could be sent to a different prison to serve out their sentence. Yeah, it was pretty horrifying. Our tour guide served two years here in the mid-70s. He was a dicke, rote Kerl (chubby red faced fellow), weather-beaten, who recited his lines as if he had done it a million times before. He smoked not one, but two cigars during the course of our two-hour tour.

Here is one prisoner’s description of a brutal beating he received while interred here. I took a picture of it so I could make fun of a typo. So, you were savagely beaten with a “steal” ruler? Really? Earlier this same day I saw a transit sign that warned me to “stay clear of the kerb.” Come on, professional translator. This is your job.

Last Saturday afternoon afternoon my friend Johanna and I ate some Vietnamese food and then went to a park to sit in the sun. It was a very nice.

Later that evening, I rode my bike to a different park to meet up with Phil, our Austrian friend Chris, and a big group of Chris’s hilarious, fun-loving Spanish friends. (Chris speaks many languages and is a sociable guy, so he has all kinds of wacky international friend circles. These Spaniards drank beer like it was the antidote and sang, well and loudly, as they walked.) I climbed a tree, scratching the hell out of my forearms in the process, then layed in the grass and watched the sun go down. I photographed this sunset because it was reasonably picturesque and my camera seems to have been specially designed to photograph sunsets.
Still later, we went to a ridiculous and crowded bar where a goofy German in a blue tie played doo-wop and boogie-woogie and I danced until I was physically unable to continue doing so. When I made it home at 3 in the morning, morning blue was already creeping into the night sky. Berlin is a nice place to be in the summer.

THERE, almost caught up. I have not taken many photos this week, so you can expect the next post—and ideally, posts thereafter—to be about stuff that has happened (will have happened?) in the relatively recent past. Also, I will try to post something about all the excellent mail I have been receiving, because it is great to get mail and I’ve gotten some very nice things from a lot of people.

But that is for the future! Tonight I take it easy and sleep, for I am on the edge of sick and I do not wish to ruin my weekend by being all sore-throated and whiny while the sun shines. I hope you are all very well! Write me postcards, and please do comment! It is good for my EGO.