deconstructing mark
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Sunday 20.4.03 | GOOD, yes, right. Now typing this for the third time, after Angelfire decided not to save my first attempt and then the computer in this lovely Ghanaian internet cafe crashed just before I was about to upload version number two. So anyway, apologies for the silence of recent days – been spent wandering around, talking to and at Liz, enjoying the sunshine and getting to know Berlin a tiny bit more. I’m getting used to the fact that this is slightly larger than Nice and I will never know it as well, but nonetheless I think by the time I leave I will have taken ist pulse, especially if I do as much as I have in the last few days. On Wednesday I met Liz at the airport and we had lunch in the uni cafeteria with friend of mine from Melbourne uni. Not the most auspicious of starts, perhaps, for my guest, but soon made up for by our visit in the afternoon to the museum of gay culture. Interesting, informative, certainly lively, its only downside perhaps was an ever-so-slight lack of content – a photographic exhibition which was doubtless engaging but perhaps a little repetitive (all about behind the scenes in the underbelly gay life – drag acts, show queens, the lot) and a very skimpy history of gay culture in Germany. But worth seeing nonetheless, made all the more worth it by the glass of wine we had afterwards in the late afternoon sun. Went home and stocked up on goodies to eat (including a surprisingly palatable bottle of wine which cost 75 cents or around 40p) before hitting the sack. We managed to get up spectacularly late on Thursday and decided to tackle the almighty Alte Nationalgalerie where a selection of Germany’s art treasures from around 1700 onwards are housed. We managed to get around about half of it before admitting defeat at around 6 – the size of the place means that you really do need more than a day to see it all, especially with the excellent audio-guide included in the very modest 3-Euro entry price. Definitely a day worth spent, and a gallery I shall go back to in order to gawp in more detail. Went to a bar in the evening to get pissed, just to make sure that we weren’t being too snotty with all the art and things. Rah. We didn’t know exactly what to do on Friday as we hauled ourselves out of bed late again, and, it being Good Friday which the Germans take rather seriously, didn’t know what would be open and what not (did that sentence make any sense? I suggest not given that my ability to fling English phrases together seems to have waned somewhat) – so anyway, we ended up doing a massive walk around the city, taking in various parts, sights, views and smells, all very civilised and suitably exhausting. We had decided to go out on Friday so had a meal and then went to the Ackerkeller (a must for any visitor, surely,) which is possibly the smallest, dodgiest yet cosiest club in East Berlin. Really an experience not to be missed. Yesterday was spent going to Potsdamer Platz, the new shopping complex in the West which used to be wasteland and is now super-chic and so forth, and then over to Warschauerstrasse, which is in effect the opposite – bleak, communist, cold, windy, and very, very interesting. Drank an afternoon coffee over there before heading back and farting around a little. Went out for a drink last night having had supper in, before getting up at 5 this morning –nice- to see Liz off. So a very satisfying few days, then. Admittedly, I have not managed to curb my spending and have done no work, but what are years abroad for? Monday 21.4.03 YESTERDAY'S picnic in the park with the SOCRATES crew started out OK but the more people (mostly Finns, actually) who turned up the grimmer it got, until people basically branched off into their own separate language groups, rather defeating the object of the exercise. So was glad to leave after a couple of hours to come back and actually start some work. This may sound strange to those of you who know me in the slightest, but it was actually quite refreshing to sit down and actually use my brain for the first time in a while... :-) Off to see the Jewish museum in a mo and then to the airport to prepare for the invasion of B and Gary. So again, apologies that there will be nothing written on here until Thursday, and even then it will be after we have all recovered from the mother of all hangovers that shall no doubt have inflicted herself on us, if that makes any grammatical sense at all. Until then. | |||||||||
