Tinfoil on the Windows

Turns out the kebab joint down the street is entirely vegan. LOTS of goth traffic from the Felsenkeller venue across the street. J's been speaking Deutsche to the owner - a skinny, bearded and likeable long- haired fellow - and I just worked out he's Californian.

'Ein currywurst mit frittes und ein schwartzkaffe, bitte.'
'Sorry man, we're totally out of frittes. They have a habit of running out. Can do you bread though.'

I pretty much laughed my arse off.

So breakfast that morning, however, was vegan curywurst and fries in a remoulade. FRICKIN' TASTY. One thing J said that's dead on: when the Germans do something they do it right, and they really do organic well. Nothing half-arsed. With an organic lemonade. Cheap too. 4.5 euro. They play Motorhead and Biohazard. The skinny guy spends all day dishing up plates of hot fake meat and rich red sauce, everyone likes him.

They have a thing they do in bars over here: you may a deposit on your glass. You get it back when you return it. Saves on cleaning. Smart.

Felsenkeller hosted most of the gigs we were after and it was only 2 blocks away. Beer very soapy, however.

We saw Twisted Nerve (really good, and methinks the lead singer fashions himself on King Mob), Bollock Brothers (not too bad in a scousy, middle-aged football hooligan-by-way-of-punk kinda way), Madre del Vizio (godawful), Bloody Dead and Sexy (I left halfway through, J bought their CD) and Sexgang Children (polished, arty up the wazoo, Andy Sexgang reminds me of Dmetri after a lot of drugs and no quality control.) Again, photos, bandwidth.

Kebab joint working overtime at night as the street chokes with goths. Guys and girls in hoodies and kaffirs resting on longboard skateboards sit outside, on the sidewalk, eating massive pitabread falafel with both hands, laughing amongst themselves. One takes notes or sketches or something.

iPhone now keeping track of five timezones. Don't want to text someone at 3am their time.

One thing I like about the UK and Europe: old ladies bring their dogs into pubs and cafes. Just feels comfortingly sane.

Nary a tram ride where I haven't overheard the word 'schwartz' from a local.

When I do lapse into English out of desperation I find myself doing so in a softly-spoken Spanish - and only occasionally - German accent.

We skipped the club, knowing we'd be wrecked for tomorrow.

I'd love to illustrate the next few entries with photos, but I'll have to link to them later. The upload speed here is dreadful, so it's taking hour to get Flickr updated.

Friday 21st May, 2010. 1:46pm. Berlin.
Had about 3 hours sleep in the 48 prior to last night, and the lead in to that was pretty much a solid week of bad sleep anyway. Last night we shuttered all the windows, made the loft black as black, and passed out for nine hours. Woke feeling a bit drugged, but the foot-and-a-half of clouded remove that had settled on me was gone. The air was getting in and the sunlight was letting me see. Nice. Now I feel like I've arrived. Just in time to leave for four days, but we'll be back in Berlin for five after that.

I learned more German in one day as a result of being put up by a man who speaks very little English than I would have in a six-week course I think. I'm still at the point were suddenly needing to use German results in me falling back on English, only to remember the German phrasing two seconds after doing so. But the fact that I managed to go from zero to semi-competent in one day on heavy exhaustion... not too shabby. J seems to think I'm picking it up really quickly, and I have to admit that navigating the place in German does leave me feeling all cosmopolitan and shit. It's actually a really beautiful language, with a really lovely texture, that's gotten something of a bad rap aesthetically.

I never before noticed the German habit of using 'so' as a thinking word. I'm hearing it about the place but Klaus did it all the time. His place is very quiet - it was just him while we were there as his wife was out of town - and I'd periodically hear this deep, stentorian and warm "Zzooohh..." roll out from some other room. Made me think of some likeable giant, the Rockbiter from Neverending Story or Ludo summoning the rocks. It was really quite a sweet thing to hear every now and then.

We're getting a lift to Leipzig via the automotive equivalent of CouchSurfing. Klaus' mysterious and absent daughter Daisy arranged it for us. And then we're staying in a six-person sharehouse for WGT, which is going to be something of a party joint I think. I'm someone who needs a dose of space at least once a day usually, and all the gigs are at night, so as long as I remember to slow down a little when I can and then get into everything else when it happens I think I'll wind up having a really good time. Much as I love learning a new language I'm hoping to meet some English speakers at WGT. My brain could use the break.

Dinner with Klaus last night at his favourite restaurant around the corner. Owner knows him. Had appetisers of fried sardines, veal in a cream sauce with capers and eggplant. I had the salmon with white asparagus. Amazingly good. Klaus had something more practical and traditional and I think J had the pasta. Toward the end of the meal Klaus' friend Katja came in and joined us for a glass of wine. She hasn't spoken English in a long time but does it well. Obviously nervous using it though. Ex-journalist, escaped from East Berlin when she was 17. Aside from a short stint living in scattered townships she's been a Berliner all her life. She lives in the apartments right next door to Klaus' shop. Hard not to imagine she secretly harbours feelings for him, given their close and affectionate friendship and the way she dotes on him, but that may just be me being obvious.

She told us about the family of swallows that nested in her eaves during winter, and on her balcony I think, in a pile of pine needles. Burrowed in. Would wake her every morning with birdsong, and when she opened her balcony doors she was greated with a great gusting cloud of swallows taking flight. She became quite attached to them. Says there are two she keeps an eye on, and named them both. Can't remember the names, but they were aristocratic and sweet.

We wanted to pay, Klaus beat us to it.

Next morning we ate breakfast at a bookstore cafe. I understood enough of the menu to see all the breakfast stuff involved cheese, meat and bread. So it was pumpkin seed and white bread for me, with thin slices of hot spiced salami, good Swiss, cream cheese, proscuitto and black coffee. Surprisingly not heavy and kept me going most of the day.

After that we returned to Klaus' apartments, J finished some work, I wrote an entry for this, we squared our gear and were farewelled at the door. Klaus shook my hand, kissed me once on each cheek and then we walked for the U-Bahn with our packs. Sad to think I probably won't see him again, and wished yet again I'd spoken better German.

I made an album of how we spent the day before leaving. The shots are annotated so I'll let them do the talking.


Around 3:30-4:00pm
Three-lane highway in either direction. I'm in a van, headed toward Leipzig. Two hour drive. J took shotgun to keep the driver company, given she speaks the language. Turns out to have been unnecessary as it's all happening in English. Deep, deep forests line the highway to either side. The occasional expansive green (or vivid yellow canola) field slides past. Techincolour beyond belief, even muted through the anti-UV tint.

The van has three rows of seating, I'm in the middle passenger-side. There is a Vietnamese couple behind me with a toddler in a capsule seat. She's pregnant, he has the look of a man resigned to his fate and seeks solitude in his earphones, and the kid is a giggling screamer but she seems to have a handle on keeping him hushed.

J and the driver talk education, goths, the weekend, the social system. I join in briefly and occasionally but the sound of the engine makes it difficult to contribute or even follow sometimes. Glad she did though. Still not used to the driver being on the side opposite to what I'm used to. If I'd volunteered shotgun I would have definitely gone and climbed into the driver's seat by mistake. Could have been hilarious. -ly awkward.

Wind farm up ahead.

So much hotter here than I expected.

Wind turbines widely spaced in a broad, deep field of green. Oversized. Like they're the only real things in the picture and we're all scale models down here. A dozen fans turn blades the length of lorries slowly and majestically in perfect, natural synch with one another. I think these things might just be the first manmade things I've seen in a long time that I consider to be both practical and truly beautiful. It's like watching twelve collosal, peaceful... things... turn to face their God against a flawless blue sky. My brother told me a German company has been hired to install a windfarm just north of Cooktown on the windiest point in the country - an old lighthouse promontory that families have been going to for ages. Everyone's angry it's going to make the place ugly. I can't imagine these things making anywhere ugly. I look at them and everything is suffused with "Its okay. Everything's going to be okay."

But yeah, it's hot: 22 degrees C. Which is cold by Melbourne standards but it's bright, and I'm sweating in my jacket. Gonna do this light.

New commando pants are serving well. Cash and receipts on left leg, phone and Moleskine and passport and map on right.

Passing Worlitz turnoff (how the hell do I get an umlaut on this thing?) God canola makes for a beautiful field, especially sectioned up by green bush and treelines half submerged in all that sunny Picasso-like colour.

Crossing the Elbe.

Random: a tiny, white, boxy, old-style two-floor house(?) overlooking a field by the river. Massive green plate, tiny white impractical folly feature. Narrow white bike trail running across the precarious-seeming top of the winding green 'dam' between the field and the river. Could look in the top floor of the 'house' from there.

Might visit Dresden before returning to Berlin. Klaus' inspiration is the collection housed in the castle there. He showed us a thick Teschen hardcover of what the castle contains. Spoils of war for August the Strong I believe. And gifts. When I get internet connectivity I'll see if I can find something online about it and post a link.

Invented a new word today: "Stahlbrotchen" (again, need extended character set): translates (I think, roughly) as "buns of steel.) We did a lot of walking yesterday, I did a lot of walking before that, and the apartment in Leipzig is at the top of five flights of winding stairs with no lift.

So, Stahlbrotchen.

I can see a farmer alongside a field, driving a flat wagon pulled by a team of two horses.


Around 5:30pm.
Driver dropped us off at the carpark across from the magnificent train station. A line of goths qeueing to get their wristbands from a demountable office placed there.

Got that sorted then headed into the station. Needed a map to find the apartment.

The interior of the train station - the main space - is mostly a two-tier shopping mall with the trains on the top level. It is goddamned gorgeous. Vaulted, gothic, and I realised that stuff like this was going to be everywhere. Also, the place was filled with people in black, with neon extensions or fuzzed-out leg-warmers, or PVC whatever or facepaint or leather and studs. It was a mallpopulated by 50% regulars and 50% schwartzenkinder (I just made that up.) It was actually really, really funny in a warm and fuzzy way. A mall half-full of stylish revenants doing really banal things, like buying pizza, recharging mobile phones, reading a paper, whatever. The locals are clearly used to it but still a bit amused. And a lot of the more mainstream stores have thei black stuff propped up in the windows.

Finally found a map by leaving the station and hitting the lobby of the Novotel across the street. Decided we need food. Had just sat down to get a plate of pasta and a glass of red when J's mobile got a text: Marek (the guy we're staying with) was leaving for his gig in 40 minutes. Reslung the packs, headed out, crossed the street, deciphered the tram network, and made it here just as he and his fellow musicians were leaving (Marek plays acoustic in a four-piece folk outfit called... Quellenthal? I'll check for a link once I get the 'net happening.)



Morning of Saturday, 22nd May, 2010. Around 5:30am. Walking from Statdtisches Kaufhaus near Augustusplatz in the centre of town to Kathe-Kolwitz-Strasse to catch a tram back to Marek's.
Before I left R gave me some assignments to do while away. One was to wake early enough to witness a sunrise, and describe the experience from start to finish. I realise now that what I noted as we walked wasn't exactly the experience of the sunrise but the experience of trying to get home at sunrise. I'll have to do this again. Anyway, here's an expanded version of what I tapped out as we walked:

Exited 'When We Were Young' (WGT's annual club/party that runs all three nights.) North on Neumarkt. Silence. J's boots. Street cleaner with trolley. Pale cobbles. Classic German architecture. Valleys of cut stone blocks and arched windows. Steel light. Chilly. Cold PVC pants. Click click. No one else around. Stopped for directions by a likeable guy, looking for directions to WWWY. Passed by lone cyclist. Pommes Genuss stand lit but shackled. Trash blankets the cruciform park we passed on the way to the club, back when it was dark. Squads and squads of rowdy, organised drunks had colonised it, making it their own, and now they were gone. Pigeons feeding on McDonalds wrappers, picking their way through clear glass bottles and smashed glass. The whirr of the Pommes stand's heating unit. Old lady pushes a trash cart past the white cafe tables to our right. Cathedral in salmon-pink light. A lone cab hushes past. Flock of pigeons from the park swoop past us from behind, through the wide plaza space. Four people wait for a tram, talking animatedly. We keep walking. Ravens fight on cafe tables. I photograph a chair installation. We get to the tram stop we need. There's a couple there, laughing. 20 minutes til next tram. We walk to the 13 route instead. Wandering ponygoth checks the timetable there, waits, leaves. Across the street a man places a thin vase on the gutter lip and phoographs teh flower leaning in it. We wait. Traffic. Tired. Sore feet. Longing for shower and sleep. 3 minutes to tram. Big building with moat sits across from us. Green letters read 'Kommunaler Sozialverband Sachsen'. Photograph dome and spires at far end of curving street with the iPhone against morning light. Tram arrives. Deep Hum. 15 and 7. Need 13 or 3. Sun glints off metal, blinding. Cold out here. Tram arrives, we leave.

Landed at 9:20pm Helsinki-time last night. Sun about twenty degrees from the horizon, a smeared molten ball behind the clouds throwing out cold shadows in hot light.



Called J, let her know I was in, grabbed my pack from the turnstile and found the 615 Keskuseen bus. Had the stop name, but counted it as the 18th from the airport just to be safe. Proud of myself that I spotted it nine actual stops in and got off.

J met me, we went upstairs, I met Trond, Aano and Outi, witnessed a boot crisis, packed for Leipzig, we got three hours sleep with the sky still light at 1:30am and were on a bus at 5. At the airport by 5:30, and noticed a bunch of other people in black, with challenging haircuts, obviously traveling on a similiar itinerary. By 6:30 we were airborne. 9:30 we were in Berlin. Klaus picked us up at the airport. J considers he and his wife her German parents. He struggles with English, but then I struggle with German, so with J in the middle we make do okay. Been here a day and I'm already conversing semi-okay with people in stores and the like. German is much easier than French.

So Klaus takes us back to his place. Honestly, I couldn't lie about this and keep a straight face. Klaus is an artist working in reclaimed ivory, Chinese antiques, jewels, coral, and sundry other things and sells his works to Hermes and the like in Rome, Paris, Shanghai and elsewhere. His place is by the river, his front room is loaded with art and artefacts like a chair he made from antlers, swordfish snouts mounted on jade plinths, barracuda skulls projecting golden jeweled lances from their mouths, 100-year-old ivory horses from China... the list goes on. We get the place to ourselves for a week once we get back from WGT. I'll snap a few shots.

Klaus served us really good coffee in Moroccan china, pieces of rough-snapped chocolate, Blanc & Noir chocolates, and cookies. So sleep was out.



J and I went for a walk after while Klaus retreated downstairs to his workshop. Walked by the river, through the gardens, saw camels through a gap in the fence, visited a cathedral that was blasted to ruin in WW2 (and I got 2 Grand Marnier crepes that were so goddamned delicious and sensual to eat it was almost criminal)...



... and now we're in a bookstore drinking more coffee and doing netstuff before heading out to look for clothes. And tonight we're in an Italian restaurant, which is apparently very good.

And tomorrow we hitch a lift to Leipzig.

When we get back I want to check out a bar in a hotel on the Alexanderplatz that Matt recommended. World's largest fuckoff aquarium. 4-storeys tall. Barracuda and the like.

And finally: we passed this on the way to the Cathedral. The plan is to find someplace on the night that has people, a widescreen TV, and is serving booze.

Gatwick. Attempting to tap their wifi. Spent most of today on trains. A tad knackered. Three hour flight to Helsinki, navigate the bus system, catch up with J, shower and probably crash.

Net speed is better here I think. Might attempt to upload the last half of the Museum and Bridge albums.

I have no idea what time we fly to Berlin tomorrow. Was under the impression it was early-ish.

It was good talking writing with cavalorn last night, actually. I think he and Dmetri would really hit it off.

Still no word on the cabin. It may not happen. Shame, but then half of Helsinki is a great big pine forest. Very much down with the idea of days spent hidden in it somewhere with a laptop, a thermos, sandwiches, and this goddamnmotherfucking manuscript. I mean, my art.

One of the things Adrian and I talked about was about the whole well-refilling thing when it comes to creating for a living. Been about as bone dry and sore as it's possible to be for a really long time. Noticed that nothing's really fazed me for a while now. Not working for the trip (despite the occasional token argh), not the technicalities, not volcanoes, not finding myself outside London by accident on a day when time's critical. It's all good. Still, I've yet to face the Terrible Finnish Language Barrier, but... eh. My only real concern is the fact that I havent yet hit on a hook for an article. Gotta be one there though.

No Cenotaph for me. Postcard day. Mailouts. Poot. I'm sure it'll keep. Even if Fateless gets nabbed I'll be back before the proofs stage.

Dev in 10. Hang in there, liver.

Today's fun hostel feature: whenever a drunkard bumps into the panic bar on the fire escape every alarm in the building goes off. This happened three times during the night and twice over breakfast.

Woke at 8, recharged and updated over Corn Flakes, got a proper breakfast down the road and then tubed it to Liverpool Street Station via Moorgate. ed_dirt was meeting me on Bishopsgate Road in two hours so I found a Pret with access to the Cloud and got a coffee. Tried to reorient myself on where I was with Fateless, wound up feeling desperately lost. Couldn't remember what the hell I was doing with it. Had a better grip on it after an hour or so. Got a text from R, who was curled in bed in Melbourne trying to stay warm. Put a smile on my face. Watched a scene unfold in the eatery as I was packing up: a tall French guy with a Seventies-era cop moustache-and-shades, wearing a blue Autobot hoodie, kaleidoscope pants and golden shoes was trying to fast-talk something out of the manager for free. As I left she came over and asked if I'd like a coffee. I explained I was okay and about to leave. She said it was on the house and I could take it with me. So that was pretty cool.

Matt was waiting for me where we agreed and he took me over to the Ten Bells just off Fournier(?) Street. Next to a 3-400 year old church. Great place to drink and in all likelihood older than my actual country. At one point I needed to use the bathroom and discovered the place was actually built atop what can only be described as a secret piss dungeon. Impressively awful enough that I had to take pictures. The only wandering monster I encountered while wading through the ammonial miasma was a half-drunk punter who seemed to ask himself 'what is this leather-jacketed man doing down here with a camera?'

Matt's one of those people who are really easy to talk to, and we back-and-forthed for about ten hours about... God, what did we talk about? Travel, England, prison, relationships, absent fathers, comedy, literature, movies, life and death, photography, Cuba, France, Germany, growing up, small towns, booze, drugs, mistakes, Jack the Ripper, Huegenots, kids, cats....

He and his wife were good enough to put me up in their seriously beautiful place, two of his four cats colonised me, Matt made a tasty-as-hell fish dinner and eventually we passed out a little after midnight.

Woke this morning, had a cup of coffee, said goodbyes and wandered back down Brick Lane. The previous night Matt had pointed out the Standard as the best curry place in London. He took Tom Waits' tour manager there once and the guy was blown away. Dmetri's been telling me for nine years now that I need to get a curry from Spitalfields, and I've missed it again. It was 9am when I walked past. Even if it hadn't been shut at that hour I couldn't have faced curry for breakfast.

Rather than walk staight back to Liverpool Street Station I wandered around, found Petticoat Lane as the vans were unloading the stalls for the day. Just walked around with the sun on my face. But I do want to get to the British Museum today, so I cut it short, took a few shots and then headed back to Camden. Better get moving.

The ash cloud has shut down Heathrow again, but so far Gatwick flights to Helsinki are still operating.

Full Flickr album here.

Last night we drank pints of good English cider and watched the sun go down over Camden Lock. I'm going to walk around today and take a few shots for Fateless verisimilitude (not that I really need it at this stage. It's just a kick being back here so long after writing that scene.)



Kicking myself that I didn't align the photo more carefully but... eh.

I keep thinking about Doha though. It was so goddamned desolate. Dry, hard-packed clay. The whole place was one big hazy pancake of it. Made me want to just pick a direction and walk. Wishing I'd gotten some shots out the window on approach (instead of departure) as the architecture of the area really leapt out: the kind of boxy, narrow, stepped, rectilenear architecture you just don't see in the Western world - themselves arranged in rectileaner plug-and-play patterns. And some beautiful salmon-pink mosques contrasting with the sandy colour of everything else. It was really something.

The contrast between Doha from the air and London really got me as well.

Flickr album here. Maybe 15 shots. Can't really correct or mess with them on a Eee, but I probably will once I get home.

OK, better do some Fateless before the market, then the Dev. Turns out reddragdiva can't make it due to last minute family things, which is a shame.

Photos fromthe going-away thing are up here. I'm only sorry I forgot about the camera 'til halfway through the night; there's a bunch of people I wish I'd snagged shots of.

(And if there's any shots of you on there you'd rather weren't, just let me know and I'll take them down.)