21 (continued) and Day 22
Day 21 - Too Many Lasts
(continued)
Tonight was not the last Stammtisch, but it was like last week rainy, but unlike last week - or so I've heard - it was not quiet so good. But then again, Stammtisch is usually only the starting point from which people go to clubs and other bars. It was really rainy and miserable and Julia and I ended up being 40 minutes late. We wandered around in the chilly rain lost for a about 0 minutes before we essentially went back to the beginning and got there right. It's true, most people came not at 21:00, or 22:00, but 23:00 and was gone by midnight for another club. When I went two weeks ago, we went in the back way and it was like a Biergarten, which it is, but this time we went in the front and it's much more like a bar with lots of tables but not necessarily a whole lot of food. The fact that it was rainy made it confusing also because at the same time there were fireworks at Olympia Park a little ways across town, or so there were supposed to. Wolfgang helped us all out by telling us about the fireworks and taking the Straßenbahn with us. But I'm not so sure fireworks happened... [actually the Polish guy the next night told us they did happen and were pretty interesting because it was raining and everyone was holding there umbrellas up at the same time].
At first the only people who were there (at Park Cafe) that I knew at all were Julia (with whom I came) and Ali and Naz. Yagoda showed up, as did Kyril eventually and when the latter folks showed up I helped rescue Yagoda and then Julia from a really creepy 32-year-old Italian guy. I knew he was creepy when he started talking about how old we were and looked. He said I looked like a child and talked about how 20 is the perfect age, for girls I assume. When I said I was 22, he said something like "tragic," ewww. He was in level C1 but we had no idea what he was saying and I got to get away to hang out with Naz. When I went over to Naz and Ali, the first thing we addressed was my thin solidarity kaffiya-thing. Ali asked me if I knew what it meant and I said, of course and complained about how people wear it as a fashion. Apparently, whatever anyone wears in Milan can become a fashion! I told Naz about how I always miss the cool things like when Wolfgang sat at Austin's table - I must ask him if he said anything because I'm desperate to know something about some real German! Plus, what the hell does he do for a living? He's kind of a mysterious figure, honestly. He's very quiet the way I am when leaving or entering a situation, so he just sort of slips away almost unnoticed except that he's the tour guide and he's about 6'3'' and very thin, with a characteristic gait, as I call them where his arms seem to fall from his shoulders.
So, I spoke with Naz a while. She's studying law, which luckily really interests her, and she is leaving early to meet her parents to travel through much of Eastern Europe. Eventually, I went and rescued poor Julia who though speaking German was not having much fun and later I rejoined Naz with a friend of hers named Pavel, a Ukranian who's been living in the U.S. for 7 years. He's a kind of crazy guy, obviously very fun to drink with. We three sat at the bar and were visited by many people. By 22:00 cocktails were 5Euros because it was Happy Hour, which confused both Naz and myself because of how late it was. Diego came over and greeted us and told us about his seemingly tight schedule of going to other places to drink and dance. They talked about other times they drank and their own cocktail they made of Lectric Lemonade and something else, which I indeed tried, but I avoided getting a drink and though Pavel ordered me a Sex on the Beach it never came. I went back as all the Americans were clearing out and going to somewhere, but I didn't talk to a single person who knew where it was. Julia stayed, as did a Polish guy and I sat there for a while because there was space and they were speaking German. Daniela came and talked to me at the big, mostly empty table, which was really nice. I sat next to her the first few days. We talked about where she lives, which is this odd Catholic girls' dorm right near the Hauptbahnhof, luckily Marta also lives there, so she's not too lonely. But most of the people are German and she doesn't really know them. It seems many people have had some trouble meeting Germans because they are, or so I'm told, much more reserved than Americans, for instance. And as Wir Sind Helden sing, "Die Deutschen flirten so subtil."
I kept thinking about going back over to Naz or to Daniela's table, but I was comfy in the chair and liked the fact that there was German being spoken. The Polish guy talked about other places in Germany. I ordered a Spezi, which was refreshing and delicious and not at all like drinking my kleines Weißbier earlier. Julia and he talked about Berlin and how expensive it was and how München seems too German. I can't tell where the kitchy tourist crap stops and the real culture begins. It's true that people here love to drink beer, I have seen more than a couple of people in Lederhosen (at festivals, of course) and there are lots of women at restaurants dressed in a way that would seem demeaning to me. But Park Cafe is no good either, it's expensive and kind of touristy. Once you're in there, it could be any other place on earth.
I wanted to leave at about 1 o'clock-ish and we had to wait for our U1 train for 15 minutes. Julia and I tried to talk German the whole time. On the train, one guy sat across from another one and asked him if he wanted to read some of his paper. It seems that at times Germans are very friendly, especially on the U-Bahn, where they often sit facing one another. I went to sleep listening to Democracy Now after looking up the opening times of all the museums I have to go to.
Day 22: ,,Die Kraftprobe"
Today I got up at about 13:00. I had knocked over the alarm clock and never put the battery back in and set it, so I slept about 11 hours. But this was the first times, so I'm okay with that. Just as Julia promised, she made crepes. It was a fantastic thing to wake up to. She makes Swedish something-a-rather. I put strawberry slices and some powdered sugar on them and ate two the size of the plate. Another real meal in Germany - it feels good.
Today was unusually eventful, for me, anyhow. I got up late, so much of the early day was taken up by that. Julia and I decided to go to the Haus der Kunst. It was pretty rainy out and getting there wasn't a picnic, but it was alright. When we came out of the U-Bahn station, it looked like it was really uptown, it's actually just beyond Maximilianplatz and there were just tons (more) high-end boutiques and important government buildings.
When we got to Haus der Kunst, we had to decide which exhibit to go to because they had three different ones. We decided to go to ,,Die Kraftprobe," a retrospective of the 200-year history of the Münchner Kunstakademie. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to photograph anything and there were a couple of really good ones, but I took down their titles and artists for future reference. One pretty extraordinary painting is: Carl Schorn ,,Die Sündflut" 1845-1850. It's an apocalyptic scene of great Biblical flood, which some may forget was brought on by sin. Like many of the Alte Pinakothek paintings with such a theme, it consisted of people reaching upwards and seeming to be pulled downwards. Many peoples' eyes were hollow and practically everyone was in great pain. Mato Celestin Medovic ,,Die Ankunft der Kroaten am Meer" 1903 shows a pretty horrifying scene from the 7th century of colonists arriving on an island. The native people have unbelievable looks of shock and worry on their faces, which is made the more odd and terrifying by the light. It's hard to tell exactly what time of the day it is, but it seems to be early in the more between twilight and sunrise and although there are orange and yellow flecks on the people, the beautiful sky clashes with the occurrence. Franz Roubaud ,,Dante und Vergil in Inferno des Ersten Weltkrieges" 1915 is a haunting little painting that shows a scene of slaughter in WWI that is shown in some of its contradictions because there are wrecked cars, but also a horse seeming to be consumed by mud and blood. It's a pretty amazing (potentially) anti-war painting. I really liked seeing some art that was banned or written off by the Nazi regime
I was totally taken aback by some new (student) works about München art students in 1968.
PROJEKT <>: ,,Revolution ist herrlich, alles anders ist Quark!'' This consisted of several pretty wonderful video collage pieces. I really liked the idea of current art students connecting back to that history rather than just showing art from then or telling about the history from then - because this allows these new students to really engage with their more rebellious forebears. I got totally sucked into this little videos, most a combination of two or three TV screens.
Then I poked around the in book store, which made me almost go insane! It was marvelous. After this, we headed to Teamtheater Tankstelle. This time we did quite a bit of seeming wandering in the rain. Luckily, this theater is not very touristy, though it does seem kind of snoody. Julia had seen that it was sold out, but wanted to go see if this was true at the theater. We decided to be put on the waitlist behind 5 ofther people, but after seeing some of these people have wine beforehand, I do get hte feeling that they maybe came by car rather than public transport and that the rain did not hamper them. So, the entrance and waiting area for the theater is a Cuban bar/restaurant with a lot of personality. It's unmistakably Cuban not only because there are many Cuban flags, but dozens of images of Che Guevarra and much less of Fidel Castro. There's a great painting of the two of them in the middle of the bar. So, we went there to wait/eat. Julia and I both dried off and ordered grilled chicken with bacon and rice. It was unbelievably juicy and delicious. There was also salad, which I sampled and then quickly upchucked. It was only lettuce with salad dressing, but I couldn't hack it even though I tried.
Since we didn't get into the show, we walked back to Sendlinger Tor, our stop and from there I showed her where the Kinos are because she wanted to see a movie. Most of them had already started at 21:00 when we were there. ,,So ist Paris" was just starting, but she didn't want to make me watch it even though I told her that anything with Juliette Binoche can't be terrible. ,,39,90" a French satire on advertising started at 22:30 and after meeting the Polish guy from the night before who figured he'd join us, we proceeded to wait until the showing, which was only about an hour because we had doddled and been trying to decide whether to go home or not. In order to wait we three went to a bar ,,Pils Pub" that seems to be for American and Canadian youth (as the waitress told us there were several of our countrymen and nearcountrymen there as well) and old German people. The Polish guy speaks really good German, so I mostly listened to him and Julia talk. We were in ,,Bierhimmel" said the sign and the music was all over the place. Luckily, we got to sit in a little enclave rather than have to face the other patrons.
It wasn't too long before we got to go to the movie. There was a solid 15 minutes of commercials and previews before the film, which I noted because the curtains close and then reopen before the feature for some reason, accompanied by the lights going up and then back down. The movie was dubbed in German unlike most of the foreign films, which were "OmU" (Originell mit Untertitle). The movie was pretty wild. The story about an ad exec is nothing new, but the style was pretty crazy. And the movie even had a moral that 1/10 of the amount of money that is spent on advertising worldwide could cut hunger in half. And this is after two fake endings! Satires made for a huge audience are always a little odd, like 'Thank You for Smoking,' but you accustom yourself to it. I thought it was a pretty decent film and regardless it was certainly entertaining and worth the 7,50 Euro (!?!) because the only other dubbed film I'll see is 'Knocked Up' (,,Beim ersten Mal"). Before deciding to go to the movie Julia asked me if I would regret it during my lifetime if I went, but I don't think I will, even if it wasn't as good as it turned out being. The film made me think a lot about Walter Benjamin and the way that art styles from DaDa and Surrealism have been completely absorbed into marketing. The deliberate falsity of this film and its continued degeneration into a commercial (after some important scene) really made me happy. And I think that generally saying that the money exists to do away with hunger is infinitely more progressive than asking ordinary people to fork it out. Luckily, the ads that I've been seeing in Germany have said, <> satisfies everyone, which acknowledges that there is enough, but also puts the onus on US to the correcting. Comparable ads in the U.S. are so moralistic, they make me want to scream - they focus solely on how our donation could save these starving kids as if we aren't already "donating" our taxes to the Pentagon. People with the least always give the most and that's a great strategy hand-in-hand with corporate welfare and welfare for the super-rich.
(continued)
Tonight was not the last Stammtisch, but it was like last week rainy, but unlike last week - or so I've heard - it was not quiet so good. But then again, Stammtisch is usually only the starting point from which people go to clubs and other bars. It was really rainy and miserable and Julia and I ended up being 40 minutes late. We wandered around in the chilly rain lost for a about 0 minutes before we essentially went back to the beginning and got there right. It's true, most people came not at 21:00, or 22:00, but 23:00 and was gone by midnight for another club. When I went two weeks ago, we went in the back way and it was like a Biergarten, which it is, but this time we went in the front and it's much more like a bar with lots of tables but not necessarily a whole lot of food. The fact that it was rainy made it confusing also because at the same time there were fireworks at Olympia Park a little ways across town, or so there were supposed to. Wolfgang helped us all out by telling us about the fireworks and taking the Straßenbahn with us. But I'm not so sure fireworks happened... [actually the Polish guy the next night told us they did happen and were pretty interesting because it was raining and everyone was holding there umbrellas up at the same time].
At first the only people who were there (at Park Cafe) that I knew at all were Julia (with whom I came) and Ali and Naz. Yagoda showed up, as did Kyril eventually and when the latter folks showed up I helped rescue Yagoda and then Julia from a really creepy 32-year-old Italian guy. I knew he was creepy when he started talking about how old we were and looked. He said I looked like a child and talked about how 20 is the perfect age, for girls I assume. When I said I was 22, he said something like "tragic," ewww. He was in level C1 but we had no idea what he was saying and I got to get away to hang out with Naz. When I went over to Naz and Ali, the first thing we addressed was my thin solidarity kaffiya-thing. Ali asked me if I knew what it meant and I said, of course and complained about how people wear it as a fashion. Apparently, whatever anyone wears in Milan can become a fashion! I told Naz about how I always miss the cool things like when Wolfgang sat at Austin's table - I must ask him if he said anything because I'm desperate to know something about some real German! Plus, what the hell does he do for a living? He's kind of a mysterious figure, honestly. He's very quiet the way I am when leaving or entering a situation, so he just sort of slips away almost unnoticed except that he's the tour guide and he's about 6'3'' and very thin, with a characteristic gait, as I call them where his arms seem to fall from his shoulders.
So, I spoke with Naz a while. She's studying law, which luckily really interests her, and she is leaving early to meet her parents to travel through much of Eastern Europe. Eventually, I went and rescued poor Julia who though speaking German was not having much fun and later I rejoined Naz with a friend of hers named Pavel, a Ukranian who's been living in the U.S. for 7 years. He's a kind of crazy guy, obviously very fun to drink with. We three sat at the bar and were visited by many people. By 22:00 cocktails were 5Euros because it was Happy Hour, which confused both Naz and myself because of how late it was. Diego came over and greeted us and told us about his seemingly tight schedule of going to other places to drink and dance. They talked about other times they drank and their own cocktail they made of Lectric Lemonade and something else, which I indeed tried, but I avoided getting a drink and though Pavel ordered me a Sex on the Beach it never came. I went back as all the Americans were clearing out and going to somewhere, but I didn't talk to a single person who knew where it was. Julia stayed, as did a Polish guy and I sat there for a while because there was space and they were speaking German. Daniela came and talked to me at the big, mostly empty table, which was really nice. I sat next to her the first few days. We talked about where she lives, which is this odd Catholic girls' dorm right near the Hauptbahnhof, luckily Marta also lives there, so she's not too lonely. But most of the people are German and she doesn't really know them. It seems many people have had some trouble meeting Germans because they are, or so I'm told, much more reserved than Americans, for instance. And as Wir Sind Helden sing, "Die Deutschen flirten so subtil."
I kept thinking about going back over to Naz or to Daniela's table, but I was comfy in the chair and liked the fact that there was German being spoken. The Polish guy talked about other places in Germany. I ordered a Spezi, which was refreshing and delicious and not at all like drinking my kleines Weißbier earlier. Julia and he talked about Berlin and how expensive it was and how München seems too German. I can't tell where the kitchy tourist crap stops and the real culture begins. It's true that people here love to drink beer, I have seen more than a couple of people in Lederhosen (at festivals, of course) and there are lots of women at restaurants dressed in a way that would seem demeaning to me. But Park Cafe is no good either, it's expensive and kind of touristy. Once you're in there, it could be any other place on earth.
I wanted to leave at about 1 o'clock-ish and we had to wait for our U1 train for 15 minutes. Julia and I tried to talk German the whole time. On the train, one guy sat across from another one and asked him if he wanted to read some of his paper. It seems that at times Germans are very friendly, especially on the U-Bahn, where they often sit facing one another. I went to sleep listening to Democracy Now after looking up the opening times of all the museums I have to go to.
Day 22: ,,Die Kraftprobe"
Today I got up at about 13:00. I had knocked over the alarm clock and never put the battery back in and set it, so I slept about 11 hours. But this was the first times, so I'm okay with that. Just as Julia promised, she made crepes. It was a fantastic thing to wake up to. She makes Swedish something-a-rather. I put strawberry slices and some powdered sugar on them and ate two the size of the plate. Another real meal in Germany - it feels good.
Today was unusually eventful, for me, anyhow. I got up late, so much of the early day was taken up by that. Julia and I decided to go to the Haus der Kunst. It was pretty rainy out and getting there wasn't a picnic, but it was alright. When we came out of the U-Bahn station, it looked like it was really uptown, it's actually just beyond Maximilianplatz and there were just tons (more) high-end boutiques and important government buildings.
When we got to Haus der Kunst, we had to decide which exhibit to go to because they had three different ones. We decided to go to ,,Die Kraftprobe," a retrospective of the 200-year history of the Münchner Kunstakademie. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to photograph anything and there were a couple of really good ones, but I took down their titles and artists for future reference. One pretty extraordinary painting is: Carl Schorn ,,Die Sündflut" 1845-1850. It's an apocalyptic scene of great Biblical flood, which some may forget was brought on by sin. Like many of the Alte Pinakothek paintings with such a theme, it consisted of people reaching upwards and seeming to be pulled downwards. Many peoples' eyes were hollow and practically everyone was in great pain. Mato Celestin Medovic ,,Die Ankunft der Kroaten am Meer" 1903 shows a pretty horrifying scene from the 7th century of colonists arriving on an island. The native people have unbelievable looks of shock and worry on their faces, which is made the more odd and terrifying by the light. It's hard to tell exactly what time of the day it is, but it seems to be early in the more between twilight and sunrise and although there are orange and yellow flecks on the people, the beautiful sky clashes with the occurrence. Franz Roubaud ,,Dante und Vergil in Inferno des Ersten Weltkrieges" 1915 is a haunting little painting that shows a scene of slaughter in WWI that is shown in some of its contradictions because there are wrecked cars, but also a horse seeming to be consumed by mud and blood. It's a pretty amazing (potentially) anti-war painting. I really liked seeing some art that was banned or written off by the Nazi regime
I was totally taken aback by some new (student) works about München art students in 1968.
PROJEKT <>: ,,Revolution ist herrlich, alles anders ist Quark!'' This consisted of several pretty wonderful video collage pieces. I really liked the idea of current art students connecting back to that history rather than just showing art from then or telling about the history from then - because this allows these new students to really engage with their more rebellious forebears. I got totally sucked into this little videos, most a combination of two or three TV screens.
Then I poked around the in book store, which made me almost go insane! It was marvelous. After this, we headed to Teamtheater Tankstelle. This time we did quite a bit of seeming wandering in the rain. Luckily, this theater is not very touristy, though it does seem kind of snoody. Julia had seen that it was sold out, but wanted to go see if this was true at the theater. We decided to be put on the waitlist behind 5 ofther people, but after seeing some of these people have wine beforehand, I do get hte feeling that they maybe came by car rather than public transport and that the rain did not hamper them. So, the entrance and waiting area for the theater is a Cuban bar/restaurant with a lot of personality. It's unmistakably Cuban not only because there are many Cuban flags, but dozens of images of Che Guevarra and much less of Fidel Castro. There's a great painting of the two of them in the middle of the bar. So, we went there to wait/eat. Julia and I both dried off and ordered grilled chicken with bacon and rice. It was unbelievably juicy and delicious. There was also salad, which I sampled and then quickly upchucked. It was only lettuce with salad dressing, but I couldn't hack it even though I tried.
Since we didn't get into the show, we walked back to Sendlinger Tor, our stop and from there I showed her where the Kinos are because she wanted to see a movie. Most of them had already started at 21:00 when we were there. ,,So ist Paris" was just starting, but she didn't want to make me watch it even though I told her that anything with Juliette Binoche can't be terrible. ,,39,90" a French satire on advertising started at 22:30 and after meeting the Polish guy from the night before who figured he'd join us, we proceeded to wait until the showing, which was only about an hour because we had doddled and been trying to decide whether to go home or not. In order to wait we three went to a bar ,,Pils Pub" that seems to be for American and Canadian youth (as the waitress told us there were several of our countrymen and nearcountrymen there as well) and old German people. The Polish guy speaks really good German, so I mostly listened to him and Julia talk. We were in ,,Bierhimmel" said the sign and the music was all over the place. Luckily, we got to sit in a little enclave rather than have to face the other patrons.
It wasn't too long before we got to go to the movie. There was a solid 15 minutes of commercials and previews before the film, which I noted because the curtains close and then reopen before the feature for some reason, accompanied by the lights going up and then back down. The movie was dubbed in German unlike most of the foreign films, which were "OmU" (Originell mit Untertitle). The movie was pretty wild. The story about an ad exec is nothing new, but the style was pretty crazy. And the movie even had a moral that 1/10 of the amount of money that is spent on advertising worldwide could cut hunger in half. And this is after two fake endings! Satires made for a huge audience are always a little odd, like 'Thank You for Smoking,' but you accustom yourself to it. I thought it was a pretty decent film and regardless it was certainly entertaining and worth the 7,50 Euro (!?!) because the only other dubbed film I'll see is 'Knocked Up' (,,Beim ersten Mal"). Before deciding to go to the movie Julia asked me if I would regret it during my lifetime if I went, but I don't think I will, even if it wasn't as good as it turned out being. The film made me think a lot about Walter Benjamin and the way that art styles from DaDa and Surrealism have been completely absorbed into marketing. The deliberate falsity of this film and its continued degeneration into a commercial (after some important scene) really made me happy. And I think that generally saying that the money exists to do away with hunger is infinitely more progressive than asking ordinary people to fork it out. Luckily, the ads that I've been seeing in Germany have said, <> satisfies everyone, which acknowledges that there is enough, but also puts the onus on US to the correcting. Comparable ads in the U.S. are so moralistic, they make me want to scream - they focus solely on how our donation could save these starving kids as if we aren't already "donating" our taxes to the Pentagon. People with the least always give the most and that's a great strategy hand-in-hand with corporate welfare and welfare for the super-rich.