Dresden - 27th July 2007

As is my wont, I left München reasonably early on the Friday, wanting to get as much time in Dresden as I could, as I only had one night. As it was, I eventually arrived at my hostel mid-afternoon ish, chilled out a bit and talked with my roommate (a lovely Canadian lass by the name of Kim) before wandering out on a whistle-stop tour of the sights. Despite its small size, Dresden's a beautiful place, with many things to see. The old town has been completely rebuilt since the Second World War, and the architecture is amazing. I spent a couple of hours wandering around, taking pictures of all and sundry, before heading back to my hostel for a nap.

Later in the evening, Kim and myself hit the town for a bit, and once again I was impressed with what Dresden had to offer. We started in a punk bar below the hostel, and later relocated to a metal bar around the corner, and a good time was had by all :)


I had to leave early the next morning to make sure I was back in time to pick Matt up from the airport in Berlin, but nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed Dresden, once of my favourite places so far!

Innsbruck/München - 25th-26th July

On Wednesday I left early and, after saying my goodbyes to Mike and Lisi, got myself a train to Innsbruck, where I intended to spend my lovely summer afternoon. At least, I thought that was where my train would take me. In fact, it took me to some obscure Austrian village I'd never heard of, from which I had to take a replacement coach to a similarly anonymous (though quite possibly amazing) village, then another train. Eventually I arrived in Innsbruck with an hour to spare before my connection to München. This was obviously a little less time than planned, so I quickly headed off into the old town. Luckily Innsbruck is a small place, so it was actually perfectly feasible to see a good deal of it in the time I had. It's also a very picturesque place, and I had a great, if all too brief, time seeing sights such as the Goldene Dachl (a roof tiled with gold) and the amazing mountain scenery which frames the streets of the town. However, it was soon time to move on, so after a bite of pizza I hopped on my train to Munich.


Now, as it turned out, my friend Holly, who currently resides in Munich, had got her diary in a bit of a tangle and very nearly forgotten I was coming to visit, but nonetheless managed to meet me at her nearest U-Bahnhof after work, and we went for a bit of a beer and a catch-up. After said catch-up we then progressed across the city to eventually find ourselves at a dinner party held by some of her friends. The food was all very enjoyable (meat fondue!), though I was rather tired from my day of heavy travelling, and caught myself rather impolitely falling asleep during the video we watched afterwards. Oops!

The next day, holly had to work, and I took myself off into the city centre to be a tourist. A cheap tourist. The same company whose free tour i took with Jane and Dani in Berlin also off a Munich tour, so I hopped along for the ride. Munich's rather a pretty place, and we took in the Old town Hall, New Town Hall, Glockenspiel, Frauenkirche, Viktualienmarkt, Hofbräuhaus and some other bits and bobs. It's also full of history (though not as much as Berlin!), so it was all in all an interesting day. Later on in the afternoon I met up with Holly again, and she biked me (some of the way) to the Englischer Garten, which quite confusingly contain a Chinese pagoda and lots of German beer. After that, we had a quick freshen-up then went for pizza and drinks with some more of Holly's friends. Fun!

Graz, Austria (22nd-24th July)

My semester at Humboldt finally came to an end on Thursday 19th September. I spent a few days saying goodbyes to all the lovely people I'd met there, then on Sunday evening set off on my penultimate journey of the year. I'd acquired myself a ten-day Interrail card, and my first stop would be Graz to visit my friends Michael and Lisi. To this end, I booked myself a couchette on the night train to Vienna, a 12 hour express over the border to Austria. This in itself proved to be an interesting experience, as in our cabin were situated six bunks, all of which were booked. This resulted in me taking a top bunk, which I was quite surprised I managed to sleep in without falling off!

My connection from Wien eventually got me to Graz around lunchtime, where Mike and Lisi were waiting for me. They'd been having a bit of a busy time themselves, so after a bit of shopping we had a relaxed lunch before I dragged them into the city with me. Graz was the first "Germanic" city I visited 3 years ago, so it was interesting to see it again from a different perspective. It certainly seemed a lot smaller than the last time, but I still like it very much. The weather was very warm, so we didn't do anything too active, but had a stroll around the centre and up to the Schlossberg. We also ate ice-cream, which seems to be a legal requirement there.

Before too long, we'd seen pretty much everything, so we retired to the park. Here we met some of M&L's friends, drank wine and played cards, generally being lords of leisure for a few hours. As evening fell, we retired further to the flat, where we met more people and played poker for a while, until the effects of my long journey took their toll and I had to curl up for the night.

On Tuesday we had intended to go up into the mountains and swim in a lake, but as luck would have it, cloudy skies were abound and the forecast was for rain. So we did what any sensible Austrian would do instead - we went to a cave. The Lurgrotte is a cave system over 10 km long, and has some amazing rock formations. The tour lasted about an hour and was very interesting, though I was disappointed not to see any bats. My disappointment was soon washed away by the amazing platter laid on by Lisi for lunch - Kaesekrainer (cheese-filled sausage), potatoes and fried egg on a bed of seived spinach. Outlandish to those from Ausland, but nonetheless a delicious concoction. The rest of the day consisted of another walk in the town (which was rained off and into the local armoury) and a visit to the Gösser brewery/restaurant/pub affair. Here we dined on Weisswurst, Brezeln and Bieramisu (yes, it is what it sounds like), and drank a number of delicious local beers, my favourite of which was the Schneeweissen. A pleasant evening to round of the first of my last cities :)

Nearly done!

Oof. It's been a busy old week or two, so it has. I've now done and received marks for the majority of my exams, and generally done pretty well. I still have one small assessment left, which I've not actually received yet, but when I do, I have pretty much the whole summer to do it and send it back, so now is time to relax :)

Last weekend was Gemma's birthday, so on Saturday we all went out for a meal at some mexican place near me, then later travelled on to the Kulturbrauerei, where Gemma had pretty much booked out one of the clubs. The food was very nice, even if the service was terrible, and the club was good, all kind of chilled-out and things. Also of note, I spent some time that evening speaking to Dom from Hollyoaks, as he happens to be a friend of Gemma's! He's quite cool, although his real name constantly escapes me. And I know I shouldn't watch things like Hollyoaks, but being a student, it just sort of happens...

I'm coming towards the end of my time in Berlin now, so I've also been wandering around a bit taking photos of the everyday sights I see and things I do here. Not had chance to upload them yet, but as I'm not quite finished on that front either, it'll have to wait a while. Work in progress, that is.

Very soon I'm going to be all systems go again...Sunday evening I take a night train to Austria to visit Michael and Lisi, who I've not seen for 3 years! After that I'm going to bob off to München to see Holly, then grab a day in Dresden before picking Matt up from the airport in Berlin. We have a few mad days here, a few more at WACKEN and then I have a couple of days to pack and everything before finally going home. Weird.

A Week of Culture

Well, last week was somewhat different. On Wednesday, myself, Johanna and my flat mate [sic] Martin went to the Berliner Ensemble theatre (designed by none other than Bertold Brecht, for those of you who give a hoot) to see Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Warten auf Godot in German). I'd never seen or read it before, in any language, so it was an interesting experience, and it was also great to see a play in a place with such importance to the shape of modern theatre. I'm not going to go into great detail, because if there's one thing I've learned this semester, it's that in-depth analysis of plays, books etc really bores my socks off if it's someone other than me doing it,but it was....good.

A day later, not to be phased by the onset of exams and the like, I trundled off to Columbia Club to see Porcupine Tree. Not in any normal sense of the word a "metal" band, Porcupine Tree are something of an enigma on the rock scene. "Prog" is the label more normally attached to them, though comments such as that which I read recently in a German issue of Metal Hammer, describing their latest album, Fear of a Blank Planet, as "one of the most important metal albums of this year so far" are not uncommon. Generally they enjoy a mutual respect from most parts of the music world as one of the most innovative bands going, and as such this lead to a very interesting crowd. Long-haired metallers lined up next to what, in England, may be described as "chavs", with a smattering of emo kids and old, Pink Floyd types to make up the numbers.

Personally I arrived towards the end of the support act, Pure Reason Revolution, by whom I was rather impressed. With a mixture of two frontmen and one frontlady, playing various guitars, keyboards and other bleepy objects between them and all contributing vocal-wise, it was one of the more interesting support acts I've seen for a while, and it was good to see such young musicians trying (and, in this case, succeeding) to do something innovative without resorting to banging their instruments on the floor or generally disappearing up their own arses. I advise getting their album if you're into this kind of thing, I'm doing so soon.

Anyway, during PRR's set I slowly and subtly made my way towards the front of the crowded room, like the seasoned gig-goer I am, and by the time the first clock-tickings of the title track of Porcupine Tree's new album sounded, I was in optimum position for the show. Which was stonking. None of them may look like consummate rock stars, but this was completely beside the point, as their music basically speaks for itself. They broke the new album up throughout the evening, playing old favourites and a couple of obscurities in between. All in all, a very good show, and 2 bands I'd definitely pay to see again.

Plan for the weekend was mainly revision, but after a good day's work on Friday, I felt I deserved a break, so myself, Johanna, Hanna, Martin, Marcus and his brother went out for a few drinks, starting at Bar 103 in Kastanienallee and ending up rather unexpectedly in Roter Salon down at Rosa-Luxembourg Platz. It has to be said, not as much work got done the next day as hoped, but I did get my hair cut. Far too short for my liking, but isn't that always the case?

Freiburg and the Schwarzwald

Last weekend, as is my wont at the end of a month, I hopped on a train again, this time to the opposite corner of Germany to pay my good friend and housemate Clarissa a long overdue visit. It's quite ridiculous that we'd not seen each other for over a year, so despite 6 hours and over €100 worth of train journey, it was well worth it :)

I actually arrived in Freiburg slightly ahead of Clarissa, as she'd been home for a few days, so I took it upon myself to wander around a bit. It's a nice little town, maybe a bit bigger than Västerås, but prettier. However, due to it's size, I was perfectly capable of doing the rounds of most of the sights before Clarissa even arrived, and did just that. After taking lunch in a café Johanna recommended to me, that is. And most spiffing it was too, but I won't go into detail, as I feel I've already written enough about food to fill a seperate blog on its own, and I'm sure I'll mention more later, too.



Clarissa rolled in about six o' clock, and our plan was to drop things off back at hers, freshen up a bit then go out and see where the night took us. However, a year of catching up takes its toll, and nearly 7 hours later we were shocked to find it was nearly 11 PM. As the weekend went on, we eventually came to realise that we were spending most of it in our own parallel dimension where time worked completely differently, and as such shock at where the real world was up to became a regular occurrence on the odd occasion we saw fit to interact with it.

In any case, we did eventually make it outside to a little bar which soon became the "local" for the weekend. Here we ate, drank and made merry all at the same time, but not for very long, because they were almost literally throwing us out when they closed at two. Having both had travel days, we were actually pretty tired by that point, so slumber was the best option anyway.



This slumber continued at a leisurely rate until well into the morning, though we still managed to complete our agenda for the day. Upon arranging my visit, Clarissa had stated that she "hoped I liked trees", as that was pretty much all the area had to offer. As luck would have it, I am partial to a good tree, and the Black Forest certainly has them in abundance. With this in mind, we too a tram, a bus and a cable car into the nearest corner of it, and had a wee ramble around the hills etc. We don't have much in the way of real forests in England anymore, and as most of my travels have been train-bound this year, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite on this scale before. It was amazing, and I was very happy.

Upon returning to the "centre" of Freiburg, we had a bit of a nibble and a drink, which soon became a couple of cocktails, and before we knew it we'd lost time again. Despite this, we did eventually make it back home and then out again in time for a visit to Schlappen and then the local rock club,Crash, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary, or some such. As such, it was pretty busy and full of interesting types, our personal favourite being a pensioner in a suit and straw hat, with an impressive beard, who spent most of his time on the dancefloor. I don't know what it is about Germans, but they seem to have no shame in this kind of thing. It's great.

Sunday morning was once again late, so I shouldn't have been surprised or offended at the wry smile our waiter gave me when I asked for breakfast at 3 PM. But I was, and as he went on to speak to us in a combination of French, English and German, he gradually worked his way out of a tip, despite an excellent breakfast. Foreigners eh?

The rest of the day was spent pretty much in the same way, just in cafés, bars and Spielotheks...pretty much the only way there is to spend time in Freiburg, it seems, but pleasant nontheless. We arose a little earlier on Monday in order to take another extensive breakfast with another strange waiter before my train home. It was truly wondrous to see Clarissa again, and also fun to frolick in the Schwarzwald, a much-needed break before the onset of exams. This week, in between revising, there are two trips to the theater and a Porcupine Tree gig. More on that story later.

Midsommar!

As you will already know if you take notice of these things, last Thursday was the summer solstice – the official first day of summer. In England, not a place renowned for its summeriness (as demonstrated by the fact Sheffield is currently flooded), this is no big deal, but the Europeans, especially the northern ones, tend to make quite a fuss about it. Being as I associate on a frequent basis with a number of Nordic types here in Berlin, and with a view to my time in Sweden, it was inevitable I take part in the madcap schemes planned for the weekend.

These schemes began on Friday with a journey to Tierpark in very East Berlin, where hordes of (mainly) Swedish students were amassing on the lawn. By the time we arrived, the afternoon as sunny, but not ridiculously warm, blue and yellow ribbons and ballons were strewn around the vicinity and a banquet-sized table cloth lain out on the floor was slowly filling up with all manner of things both Swedish and edible. Within a couple of hours, all the food was ready, a cross (of planks appropriately purchased from IKEA) had been erected, and the guests numbered anywhere between 30 and 50. And thus we tucked in.



On offer, amongst other things, were köttbullar, various types of herringsil, crackerbread, potatoes and a range of cheeses. To go with this, pear cider and Vodka (snaps substitute), and to go with these, Snapsvisor – Swedish drinking songs, which I was surprised to recognise a couple of. It was a most luscious spread, topped off later by excessive strawberry consumption. And dancing around the midsommarstång, something which has to be seen to be believed.

After a couple of hours, Mr. Rain started to feel a bit left out and attempted to join in the festivities, thus causing us to take them inside. Later on, the fun continued in not one but two clubs, until the break of dawn. Well, when in Berlin…



Though not as madly into the whole thing as the Swedes, the Berliners were also celebrating midsummer this weekend, and to that end myself, Johanna, Jenni and her 2 Finnish visitors had a wander down to the island in Alt-Treptow, where word had reached us there would be a medieval festival in order to celebrate the “Sonnenwende”. After a little confusion at the fact the festival wasn’t in the main park itself, and a wander down the river, we eventually found said island, and, along with it, said festival.



The poster had promised, amongst other things, a medieval market, music, dancing and knights, so it was a bemused group of ERASMUS students who wandered through the gate into an area not much bigger than my back garden. Yes, there was a medieval market, but as to just where the knights were meant to joust, and indeed where they were at all, we were somewhat uncertain. However, the market felt pretty authentic, and after a look around it, we settled down at a table to watch the music and dancing. The audience wasn’t huge, but numbers began to swell as the show went on, and it was both a pleasant and interesting experience, with a great range of quaint and intricate wooden instruments being put into use.



However, we tired before too long, and while the Finnish girls went off to do more sightseeing, myself and Johanna took to exploring our general area a little more, having never previously been to Treptow. After an hour walking through the woods and the park, we came to the conclusion it was big. However, we did eventually find our way out, and decided to stop for food and ice cream at a bustling biergarten on the way. The ice-cream was good, but the real attraction soon revealed itself in form of the ‘entertainment’ provided. There was a small stage, occupied by a DJ spinning the kind of “classic disco hits” one would expect to find at a family reunion party or wedding anniversary - Whigfield, Cotton-Eye Joe et. al. And dancing to these songs, in all their timeless glory, were the largest group of tipsy, elderly Germans anyone could ever wish for. And they were really going for it. Pointing in the air, hip-thrusts every which-way, the lot. Dani, if you’re reading this, you would have loved it. Some of them were even wearing bum bags.

A fitting end to a glorious weekend’s celebration of a festival I’ve never even paid attention to before, I feel. The next weeks promise to be busy: there are only 3 weeks of semester left here, and as such my time is drawing to an end, but before I finally return to the hallowed land known as Engl, I’m going to be on the road again to visit Clarissa in Freiburg, as well as friends in Graz and Munich, before catching a bit of Dresden and showing Matt the delights of Berlin. Then there’s Wacken. And somewhere in the middle of all that I have some exams too. Joy!

Type O Negative

So, as I was saying…a few weeks ago, I was going to see Type O Negative at Columbiahalle in Berlin. And see them I did. And it was one of the strangest gigs I’ve ever been to.

I suppose the clue should have been in their surprise opening track, a cover of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Not many bands would open on a cover, least of all one so far away from their own stylings in its original form, but then, Type O Negative aren’t many bands. They proved this further by continuing at full pelt (if the term truly fits) through songs mainly from their new album, Dead Again, for 40 minutes before disappearing off the stage without having spoken a word to the audience.

This turned out to be a theme for the evening. Whereas most bands, when doing a headline gig, would go out onto the stage and play for 90 minutes to 2 hours, briefly disappear and then return once, possibly twice for an encore of no more than 3 songs, Type O disappeared off the stage no less than four times throughout the evening, each for about 5 minutes, and only once at a point in the set where one would traditionally expect an encore. To be honest, I found this a little frustrating, though it didn’t seem to unduly bother most people. I doubt very much whether anyone else would have got away with it though!

Another thing that was strange was the fact that Kenny, the guitarist, seemed to be singing a lot more than he does on the records. He actually has a very good voice, so I didn’t mind at all, but it was strange nonetheless, especially as I don’t remember him singing much, if at all, the last time I saw them. What was also funny in this respect was that, last time I saw Type O Negative, I knew none of their material, whereas this time I was quite familiar with most of their back catalogue, but still didn’t recognise a lot of what they played. Nor did they play the songs I expected off the new album, save for The Profit of Doom. Still, Type O Negative have never really been a band to do the expected, and they pulled off a good gig in spite of it. As only they could.