Give it a Berl in Europe (II)

The pattern for my recent trips has been overwhelming numbers of people. But Berlin in Autumn should be fairly quiet, right? Whoops, no, I accidentally picked Reunification weekend and Berlin was in party mode. I read afterwards that Al Qaeda had threatened to attack the festivities, so somehow word of this event had reached the caves of Afghanistan while I was still completely oblivious.

This weekend it was 19 years since the Wall came down. They were celebrating by walking 2 massive marionettes (a man and a little girl) across the city over a period of 4 days. On Saturday afternoon after I left the Pergamon Museum I decided to go and see the puppets. Unfortunately, half a million other people had had the same idea.

Didn't I see all of you at an airshow recently?

The crowds were assembled on one of the main streets - the Strasse des 17 Juni - and the police had put up barricades to stop anyone else from joining the throng. But the Strasse runs through a wooded area on both sides (Tiergarten), so after climbing through a security fence and a short thrash through some shrubs I was in the crowd.

I wasn't even that close to the puppets. They had made their way from opposite sides of the city to the Brandenburg Gate. I got to watch them meet up on a big screen. The man took off the helmet of his diving suit (?), and then the little girl floated up through the air into his arms, and the crowd all clapped. I have absolutely no idea what that was about. Whenever I see Germans celebrating unity, I feel the desire to steal a motorbike and do a jump over a barbed wire fence and away. Don't know what that means.

So that was that, and ... wait, do you really think I'd give up just like that? Oh ye, of little faith. Sunday morning I got up early and made my way to Brandenburg Gate. It turns out my elbows are about the height of the average German's crotch, so I fought my way through the crowd, leaving a trail of hunched and angry Teutons in my wake.

The Puppeteers

The Little Girl, on a Boat, on a Truck

The Man is 15m Tall

Both Puppets in Front of the Gate

It was pretty damn cool. I visited our software vendor later in the week, and asked them what it was all about and they said they didn't have a clue. So it wasn't just me.

Someone in the crowd handed me a pamphlet advertising a free concert for organ donation. Sure, they promise a free concert and then you wake up the next morning in a bath full of ice with a lung missing. I'm not falling for that one. Again.

Here's a YouTube video. I saw the bit with the helmet coming off:

Give it a Berl in Europe (I)

My work has been pestering me to use up more of my leave: Aww, do I have to?

So, I went to Berlin for 4 days. Saturday, I had an early flight and had to leave home about 3am. I made it into the city towards midday.

The New Synagog

What's the name of that place where souls go to wait? Perg... perga...? Oh, yeah, the queue outside the Pergamon Museum. I don't know if my soul was cleansed, but it got a good wash in the drizzle.

In the middle of Berlin is Museuminsel (Museum Island), which has 5 great museums in a small area. In their Empire days the Germans, like the British, did a pretty good job looting some stonking ancient artifacts from the rest of the world. It takes some serious balls to steal one of the wonders of the world. The most special items at the Pergamon Museum are:

The Pergamon Altar (2200 years old)

The Market Gate of Miletus (1900 years old)

The Ishtar Gate (2500 years old)

The Ishtar Gate was the best. It's from Babylon, made of glazed blue bricks, and has a matching walled road that leads up to it. By the way, did you know that the US military used the site of Babylon in Iraq as a base, and a helicopter knocked down some of the remaining ruins?







I sat on the Pergamon Altar and was told off, so I wandered into the next room and leant against the Miletus Gate and was told off again. So New Zealanders aren't allowed there any more, but you should've gone because it was really cool.

As dusk was falling, I headed north to Humboldthain. Hidden in a park there is a WWII bomb shelter, built to hold 18,000 people and to be largely indestructable, which explains why it is still there: It withstood serveral attempts to blow it up after the war. The large platforms on top held heavy anti-aircraft guns, and small guns were lower down.

To get there, I had to walk through a heavily wooded park in the gloom and then climb up a small hill through the trees. It was desserted and fairly creepy. But it did offer a good view out over the city.

All Quiet on the Northern Front

Nothing to report this weekend. It was a write-off, because I went out clubbing with my former flatmates from Ireland.

It was quite successful, though. We got 4 Protestants.

I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue

This week I went to another show. You probably don't know it, but it's pretty legendary over here. It's a radio show that's been playing for 38 years called "I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue". I assume the name is deliberately similar to it's predecessor "I'm Sorry, I'll Read that Again". Is this starting to sound familiar? ISIRTA was also a predecessor of Monty Python and the Goodies.

"I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue" is a parady game show. It was created by Graeme Garden of the Goodies as a project that wouldn't require so much preparation, but since the whole thing is extremely scripted, I'm not sure how it would've helped. Until recently, the host was the awesome Humphrey Lyttelton, but he passed away last year. This year they've done a tribute tour with guest hosts including Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood. We had Jack Dee, who is one of the most popular standups here at the moment. The 3 regular players are Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Barry Cryer.

Their most famous game is called "Mornington Crescent", which is a game where the contestants compete by naming tube stations until one can get to Mornington Crescent. The gag is that while they argue over which arcane rule book they'll follow, there are no actual rules. They're just randomly naming stations and squabbling.

Anyway, it was pretty funny, but they mostly repeated material that I've heard them do before. And some of it wasn't all that topical any more. But it was funny, and I got to see a couple of comedians who were the funniest people in the world when I was 8 years old. Ironically, I was sitting so far from the stage that I could see into Tori Amos's back garden.

On a different note, I had 2 emails today asking if I'm sick of England and heading home soon. I'm rather surprised at that - I didn't know I had that many readers. The answer to both parts would be emphatically "No".

Wapping Big ARRRdventure

Unfortunately, it was another weekend of missed opportunities. The original plan was to go to Portsmouth to see the hull of the Mary Rose before they take it off display until 2012. On Saturday, I put it off until Sunday, and then on Sunday I checked the website and couldn't work out if it had already closed or not. And it's not worth doing a 7 hour round trip to not achieve your goal. (See Bristol and Bournemouth).

In case you weren't aware, Saturday was "International talk like a pirate day". Yes, that's an actual thing - I Kidd you not. It started me wondering about piracy in English history. So I did some reading, and headed for Wapping in East London to salvage my day.

Wapping

I quite like Wapping. In older times it was the dock area of London, but more recently it was refurbished under Thatcher, and it seems quite pretty now. It uses the waterways to good effect.



You may recall that last year, I went to the site of the Tyburn Tree, where London executions used to take place. Pirates, however, were not executed there. They were hanged at Execution Dock, which was a gibbet on the low tide mark of the Thames. This was because the admiralty had jurisdiction over the sea. The tide would then be allowed to rise and fall 3 times over the victim before they were removed, tarred, and hung up as a warning to others.

The exact location of Execution Dock on the Wapping waterfront is a point of contention. Here's Wapping New Steps, which is one suggested location:



And Wapping Old Steps:


You get the point - there's nothing much to see now. But down the road is the Prospect of Whitby, which is a pub that has been there since 1520, and where smugglers and pirates used to meet. I find that pretty cool.



By London standards Wapping is pretty central, but it takes a while to walk there, I can tell you. It didn't help that this weekend was Skyride, where the roads were closed down for cyclists to take over the city.







Besides missing seeing the Mary Rose, when I got to London I found that I was also missing Open House London - the weekend when normally-closed architecture all across the city is open for exploration. I missed it last year too, because I had just arrived in Cambridge and needed to hunt for a flat. Damnit.

If I was a pirate, I wouldn't have to wait for the official weekend to enter these buildings...

Showing Up

Okay, I haven't been doing much recently. But I've been to see a couple of shows.

A few weeks ago I went to the "Corot to Monet" exhibition at the National Gallery in London. It traced the development of naturalism into Impressionism in the 19th century. It was pretty good.

Tonight, I went to the big exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum for this year "Darwin: Endless Forms". It's celebrating 200 years since Darwin's birth, and I thought it might be some of his personal effects, but it was better than that. It covered the impact that evolution had on culture at the time. First, with the changing views on nature, and then the Victorians hijacking it to argue that lowerclass people should be left to die because it was natural selection, the development of strong female characters in art and novels based on Darwin's theory that the female of the species controls sexual selectivity (as can be seen from the peacock's tail display), and the influence he had on the Impressionists. Really well done. The Telegraph called it "the show of the year", and I would agree with that.

Friday night I went to see Tori Amos in London. "From the Choirgirl Hotel" is one of my favourite albums. Her music was excellent, but I was up the back of a huge theatre, and I could only see her as a small gold dot in the distance. Those of you in New Zealand may have been closer to the stage than I was. She's pretty impressive, though. There's none of that wasting time speaking to the audience - she just rolls from one song into the next with hardly a pause. She's a bit of musical phenom: When she was 5 years old, she won a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music. At one point in the concert, she sat facing the audience with both arms stretched out to the sides, and played the grand piano on the left and an organ on the right. It would've been better if there was a screen, but I'm glad I went.

That's all I've got. The weather's turning bad really fast now. It's all downhill from here.

I've Been Drinking

Having been here over a year now, I'm getting nostalgic.

Take drinks for instance: I've had Sissi, and Fristi, and quite a few Swedish pear ciders (Kopparberg - that's good stuff). I've had a cookie-dough flavoured bottle of milk, that I won't be revisiting except in my nightmares or if I burp really deeply. I had a sauvignon blanc from a small antipodean country in the South Pacific that was revolting. I've had Orangina and Dr Pepper, both of which I think could do well in NZ. In the Netherlands, I drank a 2L bottle of some luridly green monstrosity called "Green Punch". I've had more than my share of Lipton's Iced Tea. The iced tea and peach one is better than it sounds. In Italy, I had a thimble-full of Lemoncello, that turned out to be far more than I wanted. In Ireland, I had Jameson whisky and cranberry juice.

I've been to Cambridge's milkshake shop, proudly boasting 160 flavours of milkshake, where I had the following conversation:

Me: Hi. Can I have an orange milkshake, please?
Her: We don't do orange.
Me: Okay, I'll have a lime one.
Her: We don't do that either.

It was Monty Python's "Cheese Shop" sketch, brought to life.

But this one rates as possibly the oddest: For your vicarious pleasure, I present "Sonda Frutti Carrotti", which as you can see is a blend of carrots and apricot juice.



I was bored, and it was for sale at my local co-op. It's probably Polish. Apparently, in Poland they assume that foods go together if they're similar colours. I look forward to their upcoming strawberry and pig's blood juice.

The first mouthful was great: It was all apricot. The second mouthful was extensively carroty. The third mouthful was back to apricot. I don't think I want to go back for the 4th.