The Garden of Discordia

So, after a week of utter bumming around and hardly lifting a finger except when in the pool (yes, I have started to swim a bit again) I decided that my break from the world was over and that I'd better start doing stuff again. Among those stuffs, alas, I count my two 12-page essays.

Still, as Sunday evening rolled around, I realized that I was not going to get any studying done in the remaining hours before next week. No disaster, I did allow myself seven days of leisure... but I also realized that I hadn't left my block during the entire week (and my room only about half the days) and that was a bit embarrassing. So I hauled ass off to Potsdamer Platz and plonked myself into a cinema seat. When in doubt, watch a movie - it's almost Doing Something With Your Life.

( Saw 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' )

They also showed the trailer for MiB^3. It looks awesome!!!

Monday I finally got around to visit the Berlin Guggenheim. I've been thinking of going there ever since I learned that it was free on Mondays - because I am both a cheapass and utterly ignorant about modern art, so it's not like I expected to get that much out of a visit.

( My fail at comprehending very modern art )

Tuesday was spent writing stuff for work (still no essay, but at least I'm writing something beyond blog posts!) and going on a language tandem with a girl who wants to freshen up her Swedish before she does a project for her Masters. By the by, if someone has a room/bed/sofa to let to a nice student who is going to Stockholm for about 3 weeks in April, do gimme a shout.

Still, I don't want to slack off now that I'm not busy as hell in school. It's my goal to experience as much as possible of Berlin outside of both the university halls and my room. So, step one! Buy a Tip magazine and see what's on offer for the coming two weeks.

It's already paid iteself off, too ^_^ Because tonight they held a open discussion about the human/machine interaction in advanced experimental implants entitled "Werden wir Cyborgs?" (Are we becoming cyborgs?) at the Max Planck Science Gallery.

Since the two debate guests were an engineer working in brain-research and a philosopher/biologist working in ethics and medicine history, I figured I would probably not grasp every detail but also not be utterly lost.

Really glad I went there, it was very interesting both in what was said and how they had built the discussion. The audience were allowed to pick themes, by choosing among three short movie clips that where shown on a screen (Choose with laser pointers!!1! Empirical evidence I just gathered shows that if you give a bunch of adults, several of whom appear to hold at least doctorates, a laser pointer each they will turn into gleeful kids for the first five minutes). We also decided who was to "get the word" though I think both guests got to talk every time they signaled that they wanted. further questions could be asked either normally or sent in by SMS, which I appreciated very much. Mostly due to the "omfg a bunch of professors so not opening my mouth to speak German in here!!!" factor.

I learned interesting tidbits about the frontline of medical research, that we shall (alas) probably never be able to download an entire foreign language into the brain and heard many other interesting things. Some of it tied back quite nicely into the Body/Machine seminar I've had.

Then I got to visit the showroom of the Max Planck Institute and OMFG! SO COOL! Touch screens that wouldn't look amiss in the latest Star Trek movie, some kind of curved screen thing where it looks as if a molecule is hovering, amazingly beatiful photographs of cells and molecules in a room that I could best describe as iArchitecture. I'm going back during daytime to have a closer look, felt a bit tired right now. But that was seriously a room from the future, looking even better since it was in a classical old building by the Gendarmenmarkt.

How I love this city!

So Berlin's got a cold snap. Fine, I'm Swedish, I should be used to it right? Apparantly nobody told my skin that. Despite careful usage of moisturiyer on face and hands, I've gotten weird "scaly" spots next to my eyes. Not very visible )yet *sob* but they are dry, itchy and just feel weirsd. I am not supposed to have scales, yo. And my skin, which is finicky in the best of weathers, is not supposed to go weird on my face dammit!!

If anyone has suggestions, do feel free to share...

That I spent yesterday taking a three hour walk through Berlin, to show B-san and T-san the city since they had come visit me (and see Beast, the korean pop-band), probably didn't improve things...

Due to freezing-our-noses-off yesterday - especially when we went to an Asian Restaurant in the evening, it was so bloody cold omg, we decided to give the touring Berlin thing a bit of a break. Thus, today was mostly spent indoors: first at a nice big Sunday breakfast. Then, stuffed full with bread, ham and fruit, we went to the Musikinstrumenten Musem. B-san is interested in classical music, T-san recently did a bit of studies in the area and I'm a curius-about-everything music!n00b, so it was quite a pleasant visit. I feel that they could have put up some more signs talking about the history and make of the instruments, but the collection looked nice and in the audio guide, we could hear many samples of the exhibition pieces. Very nice, the latter really lifted the visit to something else!

Since a student ticket is a measly 2 euro and the café was also cheap, I can absolutely recommend everyone with a bit of an interest in music, instruments and historical items a visit. The museum is right next to the Berliner Philharmonie at Potsdamer Platz, and the building in itself is worth a look too.

Last week I was busy with university stuff, but today I went out to Karlshorst to visit the German-Russian museum which hosts exhibitons about the Eastern Front and relationships between the two countries during the Cold War era.


The house where WWII ended - today museum

Karlshorst, for those that don't know, would be a serious contender to Most Boring-Looking Suburb Ever except I've lived for a year in Erkner and know that this ain't nothing when it comes to potential mind-bendingly boringness of east-Berlinish suburbs. I mean, they have an actual town center even if it's tiny and (at least on the side of the tracks where I was) mostly consist of drugstores.

Anyway - the reason the museum is out here, beyond Ostkreuz (and when you get east of Ostkreuz you're basically leaving all civilization behind... it's like passing Skogås in Stockholm; Suddenly COUNTRYSIDE!) is because it's housed in the historical building where Germany signed the capitulation regarding the Eastern Front in 1945. This is also, apparantly, the only co-managed German-Russian museum or cultural institution in the world.

It's an old school, with some really typical examples of Soviet-era victory and memorial monuments inside, like the huge Worker With Child and Sword In Hand stained glass window (which I think was either made of plastic, plexiglas or just really weird glass, yo) above the staircase and some red marble relief of... someone.

The exhibits were mostly photos, posters, letters or facsimiles thereof, with lots of text (in German and Russian, non-speakers of those countries must buy a guide) on glass signs on the walls. That last, by the by, seems to be the latest high fashion in how to build a museum in Berlin. Mostly, it looks nice, but not when you have black text in front of a dark grey wall -_-
Otherwise there were some uniforms, weapons, a few documentary films and bits and bobs of soldier stuff. The propaganda posters were interesting, as well as some of the the transcribed letters. Photos not so much.

They had a really creepy recording too, of a speech Himmler had held to some upper-level military people of some kind. It was just - holy crap, what he was saying, the complete dehumanization of the non-combattant enemy and the very frank realization that, yep, people listened to guys like these and then went out and murdered millions.

I'd say that I'm pretty much normally informed about WWII for a Swede of my generation, with more knowledge in some areas and less in others - a lot due to the first-hand account from my grandmother of course, and otherwise through a load of informative YA books which my library had at some time invested a lot of shelspace in. As such, I learned a lot of new numbers and some new facts regarding the Eastern Front from this museum.

Well worth the roughly three hours it took to read my way through it, especially since it's free of charge.

They also had the most hideous communist memorial trophy ever =D It was in several types of marble and gold and - guh, the worst of bombastic eastern design. Horribly wonderful.

I liked it. Not just the episode in itself, though I was pleasantly surprised by "A Scandal in Belgravia" after some internet reactions I'd peeked at, but also the entire social thing we made out of it ^_^

I, being the most tech-geeky of the interested parties, provided the episode and Lackaclaisical provided the couch and a brand new flatscreen TV (ohhh~). Then we ordered nummy Indian take-out and sat down to Sherlock.

Not going to talk much about the ep here, need to sleep (and re-watch), but I found it interesting that Mycroft showed so many different moods, Mrs. Hudson rocks and I am decidedly undecedid on the end. As I said, need rewatch.

Also, John's jumpers are getting truly hideous - though I do like sheet as a fashion statement, heh.

There were some minor computer hickups (my laptop had little battery left and kinda died just before the end and the other laptop lagged so the last 15 minutes were a weird experiences), but all in all, I think it worked out well enough that we'll do this again next week ^.^

Oh, and we of course all made approving noises when they mentioned Berlin. Temporary patriotic pride, or sumethin'

Yesterday I spontaneously visited the cinema round the corner with my roommate/landlady. Since we were both a bit bored, we decided to see what ran in the nearby cinemas*. Lucky for us, a movie that E. had heard good things about ran in the Babylon-cinema which is two streets behind our flat. It has a nice big screen too, although it must've been severely full of dust or something, because I kept coughing throughout the movie (but not loudly enough to disturb, I think, since E. said she didn't notice).

We saw This Must Be The Place To Be, a quite brilliant movie which I have not heard a peep about from, uh, anyone before E. mentioned it. An understated, touching movie with excellent acting from pretty much all corners. Throw in an interesting plot, told in a captivating, not too on-the-nose-writey manner and some excellent cinematography and it had me from about three minutes into the film. I highly recommend it - though try not to read too many previews, I went into the film completely blind and somehow, I think it made it even better?
The very barest bones of the story: An aging rock-star is bored and disillusioned with life. Change happens, truths are revealed and people open up.

Then today the international club at the university offered us discounted tickets for a concert with the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra. It was their 65th Anniversary concert, being played in the Berliner Philharmonie - quite the impressive building by the way! - which I had somehow missed so I was a bit underdressed. Whoops.

I also almost missed the entire thing, because the bloody bus didn't run on time! There was supposed to go a bus seven minutes past the hour, then another one at sixteen minutes past. When it was twenty past and no bus in sight, I hailed a cab... Still got there last of everyone in my group, but not too late. On the way back, at least the subway co-operated nicely.

The pieces were:
Olivier Messiaen - Les offrandes oubliées
Frédéric Chopin - Klavierkonzert Nr. 2 f-Moll
César Franck - Symphonie d-Moll

Because I am a classical music dunce, I can't say more than that I enjoyed it, had a good time, and recognized bits of Chopin from movies and the radio.

Tomorrow, there's a literature day which I wish to visit. Which means I should really try to get some sleep if I want to be awake enough to enjoy it.... Double-hopefully, I'll actually be able to sleep with my ear feeling this tender. At least the friggin seven o'clock in the morning roof-repair men don't work weekends.


*Berlin utterly pwns Sweden when it comes to cinemas; At home, there's one chain + like 2 "arty" cinemas if you're lucky enough to live in a large city a.k.a. Sthlm. Here? There's like fifteen, at least, and they all show different movies. Colour me impressed

I've increased my social life with, like, 245% since I got to Berlin. The downside is that when I'm not doing anything, I'm utterly exhausted. I think the evening stuff go down a bit now that university is starting, although I'll certainly try to be active and do something at least once a week. However, I can also feel a marked improvement in my mood compared to how it usually is in October- ( Winter depression talk cut )

ERASMUS-party
On Friday, the evening started in Steffi's new apartment, where I made the happy discovery that if you mix the sparkling whine from Lidl with peach juice, it is not only tolerably but actuallly good. Considering that the sparkling wine costs ten cents less than the peach juice, I had some serious doubts about the drinkability of the stuff...

After that, we made our way to Kino International, where they had a party evening for ERASMUS students. Since I'd messed up my schedule on Friday and thought I had more classes than I did, I failed to buy tickets before and so had to pay a horrible 6 € at the door.

Entering this club, btw, was a very "German" experience. First we had to show ID. Then they checked the bags. Then a girl took our money/pre-booked tickets, checked that we were students, stamped us and gave us a little ticket. Three steps behind her a man took that little ticket back and finally, once you got up the stairs, you could stand in line for the wardrobe. Despite that, it was pretty efficient (except for the wardrobe, but that is an international problem afaik)

Unfortunately, the music turned out to be less than great. I'm no expert on club music, but I found the beat hard to dance to and the clubbing expert in our group agreed. Hopefully next party will be better, though I think we've agreed to skip the ERASMUS events as they often seem to suffer from dreadful DJ's.

E.G.A.L.
Tonight, I visited an amateur show wherein a friend took part: The theatre troop Stageink's "Eine Gala aus Liedern (und mit allem, was dazugehört)".

It was quite entertaining and the advanced level of tech was a positive surprise! They even had a full live band with drums, guitar, bass, cello & piano. The cello in particular lifted some pieces miles above a playback experience.

My favorite pieces were the (German) Scrubs song, that is, J.D & Turks "Guy Love Duet", or whatever it's called, it was unfortunately not introduced. Several of the Elizabeth pieces were also very good (the singer in top hat had a good voice and an impressive stage presence), of which the only ones title I remember was "Milch". Good song and Oscar, the girl in the uniform did a spiffing job. To my great surprise, I got to hear a very nice performance of the wolf song, from Ronia the Robber's Daughter!! I totally didn't connect the title with that song when they introduced it, but from the first tones all the memories came back (and most of the lyrics too). Impressive, considering I haven't seen the films since I was like twelve. Otoh, I watched it maaaaany times before that ^_^

They also performed the Time Warp, which was alas a bit ruined by the microphones not working for everyone, including the male lead singer. Luckily, they did it again as the extra song at the end, and that time everything technical co-operated much better. (is there an English word for "zugabe"? Or do they use encore, perhaps?)
Which reminds me of the only really negative thing about the evening (except the lack of a program I could buy; Matt, plz improve to the next show? Some of us have a scrapbook to fill ;) - a loudspeaker or something made a really annoying buzzing sound. Sounded like my old speakers, actually, before I manage to ground them. Luckily, while annoying the sound wasn't too loud and during most songs I could forget about it

All in all, the show was varied, entertaining and the singing provess of, well, everyone impressed me mightily. With a glass of champagne, it was quite a nice way to spend a Sunday evening and I look forward to the spring show.

Oh, and from a pure geek bias, I of course approve of opening any gala with two Harry Potter choirs ;)

...and then she went Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! because the tribute night to Die Ärzte, a multi-band cover concert, turned out friggin awesome! out of 8 bands, I only really felt one were bad )and they could play, but they totally lacked energy and/or stage presence), it ended with all the bands + some audience + plenty of beer *cough* on the stage of Kulturbrauerei singing Zu Spät and Westerland after a pretty fantastic 4 HOURS of music & jokes by/about/related to my favorites favorite band in the world.

This after a Friday evening spent playing Settlers of Catan and Munchkin until laaate (got home at four-ish. AM.) and a Saturday day which began with a spontaneous visit to IKEA because we totally needed a spagetthi strainer and a lkfmnhj-thingy, which you turn pancackes etc with, for the non-stick pan followed by a equally spontaneous stanidng around watching the inline skating marathon as it passed by our subway station (but we ran home and dumped the IKEA stuff. Since when do they not have paper bags, the bastids?) and that was really nice, sunny, happy people, swoooosh and they'd inlined past.
Alright, the accident we saw because some dumb fuck just couldn't wait or go around so that a poor marathonist rolled into her bike which she saw fit to drag over the marked street just before a new big heap of inliners were coming in - that was less fun, more ohshit!! But the inline person seemed fine and rolled away after someone helped hir up & the stupid woman with a bike got booed out, a soda can thrown after her and an angry lecture from someonein an Official Jacket, so all was well.

AND THEN I went off to spend something like five hours dancing and getting to know some people whom I will meet again at the Abwärts concert and now my feet are falling off, but I am so happy =D

♥ YAY BERLIN ♥ YAY DIE ÄRZTE ♥

Last but not least: YAY ♥ I ♥ WILL ♥ SLEEEEEEEP ♥ UNTIL ♥ SUNDAY AFTERNOON

I was gonna buy a ticket to some little multi-band "Tribute to Die Ärzte" event her in Berlin, sounded fun. And so I check out the Badeimster page to see if there's anything official about it, they list DÄ parties and whatnot sometimes

And what do I see? DIE ÄRZTE HAVE ANNOUNCED A NEW TOUR FOR 2012!!! With ticket sales starting in 2 days

*makes whimpering noises at the thought of almost having missed this*

For those readers now confused, Die Ärzte (die beste band der welt ♥) are a German punk-rock band that I've been a great fan of for ten years now* and they always have GREAT concerts. And the Berlin concerts in particular tend to sell out in 0.2 seconds or something like that.

Well. We can't have that, so at midnight on the appropriate date I'll be F5-ing my computer like mad.

But! There is a cloud on the sky - my debit card was refused when I tried to buy the "tribute to DÄ" ticket, for unclear reasons. There's money in the account and my login works spiffily... but I think that because the German website isn't equipped for our fucking Swedish credit card e-security measures, the bank refused the transfer. Can't have that >_> If worst comes to worst, I'll ask my sister or someone to buy the tickets from Sweden and just fork over the money, but first I'll try to solve it here. Deutsche Bank apparantly has offices in Sweden too, so after my visit to Burgeramt, off I go to see if I can get a EC-card. Hopefully, those work online. Or I'll just have to pay for a credit card too, I need to be able to order online tickets and stuff!

But still...

OMG DIE ÄRZTE ARE TOURING WHILE I'M IN GERMANY YAY YAY YAY!!!!

*It was slightly odd to realize that, since it is now exactly ten years since 9/11 and I sat in a living room in Erkner watching what happened on the screens, that means it's been ten years since my first time living in Germany

We'll finally get Mononoke in cinemas! Typical, when one of my favorite movies from Studio Ghibli finally shows up, I'm not in the country ^^; Oh well, at least I caught Porco Rosso.

Nevertheless, if you are in the country, take the chance to see Prinsessan Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) on the big screen without having to visit your local anime con.
If it's like most other Ghibli movies, it will turn up both in dub and sub, although probably not in too many cinemas :/

Later on, we're likely to get a cheap DVD too, but the quality of both subs and overall production has varied wildly there. Good enough for kids mebbe, but if one is an anime collector they can be a bit iffy... Still, some Ghibli movies have had a tolerable quality considering the price (which makes them a rarity among Swedish anime DVD:s, lemme tell you!

Today everyone else were all UPPCON! AHMAGAWD IT'S UPPCON AGAIN!!!

This is the orange elephant in Swedish anime fandom. You plan your cons around it, heck, I'm pretty sure a lot of the anime kids plan their yearly budgets around it... And for the first time in approximately five years, I'm not responsible for anything karaoke-related! Or anything else for that matter, I'm just going there to work at the Nerdy Bookstore's table and have fun in my free time ^_^

But despite being so busy for The Big Con (or moving), several people took the time to fix things for Our Cute Lil' Con recently, which I have just collected and sent to our webmaster.

For instance, my little pet-project at BLYG:
( Discussions, lectures and workshops: Ho-Yay, queerness in shojo-manga, homoromanticism in EGL & much more! )

Gotta tell you, I'm pretty psyched and proud. It's gonna be so much fun!

& now off to bed and tomorrow off to Uppsala and the eleventh (my tenth!) UPPCON!!!