home sweet home

due to public demand, I let you into my bedroom (which is also my office and loungeroom)...
My room is rather small, it only has 14sqm, but because it has high ceilings, there is a sort of echo when I speak loud... so I tried to cover the walls in posters, which I try to replace with a bit more grown-up decoration. But hey, I just moved in!

artsy fartsy rock'n'roll

A night of extraordinary splendor: Jung & Artig, the young supporters of the Berlinische Galerie called to a very special party in the gallery itself.
seldom have I seen so many sooo arsty people in one place, so übercool djs and visuals, giant blow-ups, real rock'n'roll and art, art, art

Thrifting Friedrichshain

It is sunday again, and due to popular demand I will not tell you about yesterday in Cottbus and last nights extraordinary party at the Berlinische Galerie, but some more about me settling in.
I already told you about the Trödelmarkt here at Boxhagener Platz. I went there today again, which is a very trendy sunday thing to do, as I learned from all these Blogs about living in Berlin I discovered recently. Anyway, here are some impressions from my thrifting experience today:

if you look closely, you might recognize a mirror in my next post...

the women selling these rings made of old key board letters commented on the remark of a shopper on the rather high prices "I neither live nor work in China". true.

a furry rucksack

nationalsocialist literature dating 1944

REKI in Berlin

I generally don't like facebook. But last week I got an unexpected message I was extremely happy about: Reki, the Japanese flatmate of my good friend Jiyeon in Melbourne stopped in Gerlin on her trip around the world. She had been in Berlin for the last past days already, but could not get on the net to contact me. Then she did, I send her my number and we actually met at the cinema Babylon, where we went to see some interfilm curated shortfilms. It was so great to see her and it was only then that I noticed my heavy Australian accent in my English.
We had a couple of beers and a nice talk about the good old times and suddenly Melbourne did not seem that far away.
She is off to Prague now and then Vienna and Budapest. I wish Reki all the best for her travels and hope to see her again some time.

note to self: get a new camera

the other day I went home from work and had to wait for the subway, I disocovered an old gas filled balloon under the roof of the station. I loved the theme and tried hard to take a good picture of it which only revealed the short commings of my poor old crappy compact camera...
I feel sorry to say this because she served me so well, but I guess with Christams comming up her days are numbered...

my favourite combination

Oh gosh, I gotta keep up with this blog! Time is running fast, so here just a short report while on a concert I went to last thursday...
My flatmate Nadin and her German though swedish speaking boyfriend (!!) told me about this guy from Göteborg playing in a nice littel club in Mitte. It is called Schokoladen and I had passed it by with Claudi somewhen. And a place with that name stuck to my memory like sticky melting chocolate to fingers... *yummm*
Anyway, that night there were three bands playing, the first were two guys fooling around with all kind of electronic stuff, a guitar, drums and a xylophone. With one track they were playing ping pong with the ball making sounds when it hit the table. Very funny. Unfortunately, I cannot remeber the name, but will definitely look it up for further concerts!



Then Björn Kleinhenzmann entered the stage, performing good old singer songwriter stuff. He got really pissed because there were so many talking while he was playing, which on the one hand was annoying indeed, but the way he complained made him look pretty arrogant. I liked his music anyway... and his way of mixmatching his socks!



The last band of the night looked somewhat familiar. They were called "like a stuntman" and after hours of torturing my mind where I had seen them before I simply googled them and guess what? They played back in the days of Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 at Initial! Oh what a small world

Helden

Heroes are scarce in this world, and ever since superheroes have retired to the screen, we have to make our own heroes.
One of my mine back at uni was Holm Sundhausen, Professor for Southeastern European History at the Freie Universität Berlin. I have probably touched all the books he worked on, I cited him extensively in my Master Thesis and hardly came accross serious contradictions in his work. As with every hero, I idealize this man of course, nevertheless, I feel outright admiration for what he did and still does.
And now guess what: He presented his latest book, "Histroy of Serbia in the 19th and 20th century" at the Südost e.V. the other day! Of course I went there, listened and actually knew what they were talking about. Six years of uni finally made sense after all!



bloody camera...

Brunswick free ride

All of you who always wanted to get an impression of where I lived the last month in melbs, here is video journey along Lygon Street and Brunswick Road... che nostalgia!

via athousandshipwrecks

Thrifting around Fridrichshain #2: The Trödelmarkt

den Fernsehturm im Blick auf der Frankfurter Allee

I awoke this morning after a long night out with my flatmate Jessica in Mitte with a smile on my face and a glimpse of sunshine through the curtains: Sunday is fleamarket day! Tere is a big one around the corner here at Boxhagener Str. There was a grocery market yesterday, so I already knew the place and headed there straight away. Since I could not fit any more futniture in the car when I moved here, I had to leave all things chair behind, which is why I am sitting on a cardboard stool right now. But it serves me well, actually.
Anyway, I set out to find a nice and cosy armchair and actually found one! Here it is:
sorry for the bad foto, but it is late and Ulli urged me to post a picture. I promise more shots of my new room, as soon as I am satisfied with it!

Streetartig: F'hain

While walking through my new 'hood', I could not help but notice all the paint on the walls. Instinctively looking out for familiar tags and figurs, I noticed a striking similarity among Melbourne and Berlin street artists...
here are some from the streets around Friedrichshain

something a bit more artsy

nice try

decoration outside a t-shirt shop

el bocho, whose work we saw in artsy fartsy gallery in Cologne

Thrifting around Fridrichshain #1

Saturday started off slowly with a peek into the closes op shop. Humana at Frankfurter Allee is massive, 4 storey building stuffed with at times highly overprized second hand clothes. The quality is average, the clothes rather boring and apart from a range of large size 70s dresses nothing special. I bought two skirts for a total of 10€, but only because I needed something to go with my thick woolen pullovers. Second hand is a massive trend over here, and most of the shops sell basically crap at prices higher than the new stuff... Oh how I miss Melbourne!





After a few hours I needed a coffee and found this tiny little coffee hole

The latte was reasonably priced and finally big enough (though I did not like the ugly glass it came in), they had a wide range of European newspapers, that were a few days old though and unfortunately no Süddeutsche so I had to read Frankfurter Allgemeine.