Berlin, second photoshoot

So where was I? About to be dislodged in Kreuzberg, I think. Of course I don't remember much at this far remove, but walking down the Kreuzberg street to get to Chez Gert und Laura was quite pleasant: lots of three, four storey houses a couple of centuries old, which gave the neighbourhood the kind of urbane feel I'm not going to get in Oakleigh. And square houses, which reminded me of Vienna—the last place I'd seen stately Middle European architecture. Trees in moderation, unfamiliar building colours. Unfamiliar enough to be interesting, familiar enough not to be alienating. Yeah, I could get used to it. Not all the houses were as wedding-cake as this:




—but that this wedding cake could be an apartment block was somehow reassuring to me: if I'm going to live in an apartment, the building might as well be a conversation piece.

Once out of the bus, we passed a fair number of quirky shops, as befits a neighbourhood like Kreuzberg. I thought one place was selling pet clothes, and no, it wasn't—but given the odds and ends it did sell, the guess was entirely plausible. The vaguely dodgy card shark joint with the motorbikes in the front window. (Quick getaway?) The bar with its drag queen owner prominently featured in the advertising, only the drag queen was female, and larger than life in several senses. And I didn't even notice the Button Shop. Owned by a Mr Button. Honest! Knopf, Paul.

It was in good spirits, engendered by the cross of funkiness and stolidness in the neighbourhood, that I barged into the entrance of Gert's building—after pausing to commiserate with Gert over the upcoming firehouse red paintjob the street frontage was about to get. (Some colours, we're unfamiliar with in the Anglosphere for a reason.) I greeted with similar joy the concept of a courtyard, opposite the entrance. A very civilised notion, this Atrium of Berliners, and I hadn't come across it elsewhere (because I don't get out much). You build these stolid square apartment buildings in a square, siehst du, and put a yard in the middle. Very cool. Conceptually, anyway: the actual performance was a bit more grey and jumbled than that, but it's a very sociable idea. For some reason, the information that some places do chain-courtyards, nested three or four squares deep, fascinated me: chain sociability. I *think* this is an instance of it:



I was less joyful to realise that I was going to have to lug my Suitcase of Immobility up four flights of stairs, with no lift to speak of. There, Berlin was unlike Athens: by the time Athens had surrendered its fate to apartment blocks, elevators had been invented. I'd like to think I was not so callous as to leave Gert to drag up the more immobile of the two suitcases. Really I would.

My recollection is that I barged into Gert's flat, greeted Laura, praised the layout of the flat, rushed straight into the kitchen, and grabbed some water that wasn't actually intended for me. I could be projecting or telescoping or something. But I was pretty excited to be there (the bright light helped), and kept quizzing my hosts about either what they'd been up to or all things Berliner for an hour. Whoosh.

The interrogation was how I found out about the Pilsner ad campaign "The Dignity Of Beer Is Inviolable"—prominently figuring on the wall. Asking what that was all about led me on a guided tour of the German Constitution (The Dignity of Man is Inviolable"; as the followup lecture from Dale established, a *very* big deal in Germany, and as Gert frowned, not the optimal phrase for a Czech company to base an ad campaign on.) Asking what on earth prompted the concern with Beer Dignity in the first place was how I found out about Hefeweizen–Grapefruit cooler. (Great blog posting about it, that, but don't you go saying bad things about Cloyingly Sweetened Lambics. I did think this stuff was more wrong than a lambic can ever be.)

Which meant that I had no choice but to imbibe it when I came across it, later that night:



And yes, that's the Deutschland cap. But back to the flat. There were some things about the layout of the flat that reminded me of flats in Greece. I guess Germany is a plausible source for Greek apartment aesthetics; there was something nicely spartan about the kitchen (although no Greek flat would have a roof that tall). The room that struck me as most Greek was the bathroom. Something about the tiles and the water heater. And as I rushed into the bathroom to immortalise it, my hosts chuckled indulgently, and ended up immortalised themselves. Bildhübsch, ne?




Because we had a timetable to stick to, after an hour I was out the door: Gert was going to show me All Of Berlin in three hours, and the best way to guarantee that was to send me up the Berlin Television Tower, from where you can literally, uh, see All Of Berlin. Nifty, eh?

Getting to the Television Tower involved the Berlin Subway, and the Berlin Subway featured the kind of ad that would get you some serious fines in Australia:



What does that packet say? *Mumble*... can... something-deadly... something... Why I have no idea what would be written underneath that strategically placed cigarette. Hats off!

In fact, that inspires me to take another breather. Next stop, Television Tower:

Berlin, first photoshoot

I'd already summarised my sojourn in Berlin as a timeline and a report. Having left it for so long, the experience is awash and faded enough that I can get away with just one more posting about it. A long posting, with pictures. And some ill-founded cultural critiques.

[EDIT: Crap. I have only one post's worth of memories without prompting from photos; with photos, this will go on a bit longer...]

The trip around England had the odd crank piece of commentary; and of course my every minute in Belgium was filtered through my own particular take on the Franco–Flemish divide, which should have gotten me in a lot of strife. They did not, because I was doing cultural critique as drive-by shooting: the commentary was confined to the page, and did not get shared with the locals. (In the instance of Newcastle, the commentary was coming from my friend Camilla, who was not a local anyway; and I'd hit my first of two walls in terms of exhaustion while in England—so I didn't blog about it much.)

With Berlin, I won't quite get away with the same drive-by tactics, because I ran my impressions past some actual Germans—Gert there, Dale back here; and whaddaya know, my impressions are not necessarily well founded. That's a useful corrective in case you're taking any of the blog content seriously. If you are, you might want to reconsider: the blog has ended up an excuse to string together stream-of-consciousness shaggy dog stories about lambics, which have only an approximate relation to the truth.

That said, my ignorance was of great benefit when I went to Berlin: I had the best time of the entire trip, and it was largely because I knew close to nothing about the city. I knew they had a Gate, and a Wall, and a Reichstag, and a Love Parade, and a Free and a Humbolt Uni, and some new glass buildings. That was it, more or less. As a result, Berlin surprised me a lot. I hadn't articulated or even thought about what I expected; in retrospect, I probably got my Axis powers mixed up, and was expecting Rome. I didn't get Rome; as both my German contacts so far pointed out to me (with some degree of bewilderment), Berlin never claimed to be pretty. But Berlin was unexpected, and that made it enjoyable.

I feel sort of bad that I enjoyed Berlin more than I enjoyed Newcastle; that of course is no aspersion on Camilla's good company while she was in town. It is very much an aspersion on Newcastle's weather: rain Saturday, gale Sunday, miserable either day. We'd made a brave attempt to explore the riverside; but most of the exploring of the city was done inside the Laing gallery, which confined the rain and gales to the paintings. (There was an exhibition of art about Newcastle, so there was still plenty of gales to be seen indoors.) Berlin was sunny and mellow, and had a street party on with grapefruit–beer cooler. Newcastle would do well to lift its game, and take some pointers from Berlin already. Though maybe not with the grapefruit–beer cooler. See if you can't get a better deal on gales, at least. Maybe move inland a bit, away from the North Sea. That's the ticket.

Ok, back to Berlin. Berlin has new glass buildings: this I knew already. The Central Rail Station, which was the first building after the 20 meters of Baden-Württemburg I saw, is a very recent construction—



—and lo, it was glass:



M'kay. Not to my taste, but whatever. I learn from Wikipedia that the 1882 Lehrter Metropolitan Rail Station (Statdbahnhof), which was a heritage listed building and had survived the war (unlike the Intercity station), was demolished to make way for the New Glass Building. This is my drive-by shooting commentary theme: Old Things get dealt with here more brusquely than I expected. It doesn't necessarily mean (as I'd assumed) that the past is denied. But it isn't necessarily kept around either.

The Rail Station is across the Wall from East Berlin, so it was not Ampelmänchen territory. But the tourists like that kind of thing, and tourists go to the Central Rail Station, so the hat-wearing pedestrian has made it across:




On the way from Central Rail Station to Kreuzberg: Anhalter Station. Or what's left of it: the facade has been left as bombed. I scooted by it quickly in the bus (as befits my drive-by social commentary); but it was a great facade. (This piece of the past, obviously, was kept around.)



Hm, this has gone on for a while. OK, break.

Nicholas as householder

In my latest unrehearsed role, I found myself on Friday in possession of a house. In fact, I wasn't even in town when it happened. (I was away in Sydney on business. And no, I don't end up owning a house every time I'm away on business.)

The role is still quite unreal to me; it won't mean particularly much to me until I'm actually overnighting there. And that won't be for a little while yet: the place needs some work. I did get some perfunctory weeding done Saturday—which is not what I'd been expecting to do just back from Sydney with three hours sleep. And I am ill at such numbers.

(The three hours sleep was of course because I've got the Yerevan Time bug from England: if I'm in a hotel and flying out before midday, I will wake up at 5 am. This bug is something I truly consider a bug...)

As for this past day, I started on my quest for furniture. Another experience I wasn't really prepared for. Case in point: the furniture joint I visited is 200m from the pub I've been defaulting at when at Monash for the past year-odd; and I'd never noticed it:


View Larger Map

The surprises don't end there. I ended up well-disposed towards the furniture joint's classic range of lounge suites. I really expected my taste in living room essentials to be more along the lines of Buck Rogers meets Art Deco: metal and straight lines and very little wood. But if you're shopping this close to Oakleigh, and you care about back support, you take what you can get; and you don't get the tan square leviathans that threaten to digest you, leaving nothing behind but a remote control and half a sock.

My more assiduous readers may have noted that I have an anonymous stalker on the blog. (Don't worry, I know who he is; in fact, dear readers, he's been named here.) The anonymous stalker has asked that I finish off my account of my previous voyage before I embark on this new voyage. I haven't, so I'll try and inelegantly dovetail them over the next few time units.

The time units are left unspecified...

Hot Bruxelloise Babes

OK, one anecdote while I'm still shifting back to my normal, antipodean, boring lifestyle.

Remember gueuze?



I had, as you'll recollect, formed an unhealthy attachment to this most excellent of lambics when I was in Brussels. On the evening of July 9, I was back in Brussels from Athens, in order to fly out the next day. (Work had flown me in to Brussels; Work would take a dim view of flying me out of Athens.)

Btw, we do still need to

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

even though I understand their plight marginally better after reading an on-topic newspaper article. Well actually I don't. The uniformed staff plead that Management is deliberately trying to kill them off by cutting down on services, and it's a war of attrition. That it may be. Yet as a poetaster once penned,

Olympic can be explained.
Olympic can be accounted.
Olympic cannot be excused.

I don't care if it's Management, the Italian Mafia, or commandos from the dwarf planet Makemake that are responsible for the flight being cancelled. You wear an Olympic Airways uniform, you apologise on behalf of Olympic Airways. Or you keep whining that both your managers and your customers are the enemy, in which case you deserve your fate. Pfft.

The Olympiaca delenda est digression is not all that called for, I must say, because the flight was a mere half hour later --- i.e. early, by Olympic standards. The locals have certainly adjusted. Overheard in the airport lounge:

What are you worried about? Have you EVER known an Olympic flight to be on time?

I'm surprised the flight wasn't cancelled: it was half empty. Still, we arrived at Zaventem Flemish Airport, more or less in one piece, and more or less within an hour of when we should. Zaventem Flemish Airport sure is complicated to get around; as I was trying to get to baggage collect, I thought I was testing out short-term memory treatments with a tail, pink eyes, and a white furry coat. I did eventually get there, with a whole bunch of Greeks around me chatting blasé about their surroundings; being from the diaspora, it still shocks me that Greece is now in the First World.

Of course, I was in Belgium now --- the torrential downpour in the middle of summer confirmed as much; and I was back to the delightful Belgian Dichotomy:



"Visit Wallonia!" and "Visit Flanders!" at the same tourist booth. Just Visiting Belgium doesn't really seem to be an option on offer. Decisions, decisions: French-speaking Belgium, or Dutch-speaking Belgium? Ah, bugger it, can I get a flight to Eupen instead? German-speaking Belgium, at least, has the advantage of being Neither Of The Above.

So the anecdote. I was overnighting at the Gresham Belson hotel, which advertises itself on wotif.com as an airport hotel. Well, it has an airport shuttle. And a screen with airplane departure times. But I've got a 30 Euro taxi bill that says "not quite Airport". Nice enough hotel, but "not quite City Centre" either. Which is OK, I was there to crash and not much else.

Because I'd already crashed before even getting off the plane, I wasn't in the mood for much cultural exchange. No Arglé Barglé Saucisson for me this time; I was going to use the True National Language of the Low Countries: English. Just Call Me imperialist. Or, more to the point, So Over This Travel Bizzo.

So I'm in the cab, with an affable enough cabbie (though not Jovially Moroccan), and the following exchange ensues. Remember, No Cultural Exchange. All in English. And Unnatural Attachment to Lambic.

ME: So. When did this rain start?

CABBIE [Indeterminately Low Countries accent]: You know... I don't even remember any more.

*restrained laughter*

CABBIE: So, are you here on business?

ME: No, I was a month ago. Now I'm just flying out of here. Basically I'm going to fall asleep at the hotel.

CABBIE: I see.

ME: Although if there's gueuze out there, I may go out after all.

CABBIE: Ah, well of course! Brussels has plenty of <foreign lang="en" accent="clouseau">girls</foreign>! All cities do, of course, but Brussels has... so many different kinds to choose from!

ME: ... Ah. Sure.

CABBIE: But you know, you will have to go into the City Centre. There is not much happening where the hotel is.

ME: Ah.

Hm. ɡøz. ɡɜ^lˠz. ɡøz. Right. Well, my fault, really; the cabbie parsed probabilistically, and figured me for rather more natural types of attachments...

*sniffle*

Yes, yes, I'm back in town. And in the shift from 40° heat to 7°, I've managed to get first jet-lagged, then a cold, while being pretty deluged at work. Plus I crashed on return, psychologically as well as physically: the house looked pretty small, after the whole of England was my bailiwick.

I have work socialising tonight plus a lot of invoices to scan in (something I've managed to avoid at my peril so far), so I won't be updating for a little while yet. I did go out to Chapel St on Sunday, and snagged a book and a recording at Borders there. The recording was Bach's French Suites, which I don't know yet. The book was George Megalogenis' The Longest Decade, about the last two prime ministers of Australia, and how their agendas mashed together despite their protests to the contrary. I read it pretty scattergun —dipped into random pages, then went back and filled in the rest. Nicely written, with some cute anecdotes. Some surprise recognitions from me of 15-year old events...

In transit to Melbourne

Just updating people that I am now in Honk Kong airport, rather sleepless but (unconfirmed reports indicate) still alive. Back in something resembling action sometime in the next 48 hours.

Leaving Greece

Am leaving Greece (possibly in half an hour, possibly not) for Flanders. It's been up and down; but yes, there have been good bits. More news when I have more time. Once again.

This is not my town

You'll have noticed I've been offline for a little while. I was cooped up in my ancestral village, and am now in Sitia town, where I stayed as a kid: 1981 through 1983.

Needless to say—but it's still a shock when you realise it (again): this is not my town. This is not my culture, and this is not home.

There'll be more analysis when I get a breather; but this is also not my weather, and not much of an internet connection either. More detail when I'm back on more familiar terrain.

In transit to Sitia

Just letting my avid readers know that I'm in transit from Athens to Sitia. I have a spare minute to update the blog, because the transit involved Olympic Airways (yes, it's coming), and I was put on the Olympic bus to the 08:35 flight (wait for it) only to be taken off it ten minutes later (get ready, now) because we are boarding another plane a half hour later.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen,

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

The cute thing is, when we were taken off the bus, the woman next to me muttered

Να την κλείσουν δηλαδή να τελειώνουμε. Κι ύστερα σου λέει ιδιωτικοποίηση.

i.e.

Why don't they just close the airline down already. And they have the nerve to complain about privatising it.

I think this may be more pithily rendered in English as

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

Salonica: Coffee with Galerius

I had a morning catch up with my friend George Baloglou, who comes back to Salonica twice a year these days. It was going to be an altogether more philological morning than the preceding night.



The philology started with me going berserk with photos of the Kamara, "The Arch" --- better known as the Arch of Galerius. This was the emperor Galerius' (305-311 AD) triumphal arch in Salonica, which he had made his capital:

And as George and I had mentioned in our book, you can still see the elephants on the Arch. If anything, you can see the elephants more clearly now; it looks like some restoration (or chiseling) has gone on:



Round the corner form the Arch, of course, the Rotunda: the Tomb of Galerius (then Church of St George, then
Suleyman Hortaci Efendi mosque, now Rotunda museum, and if some Salonicans have their way, the future Church of St George again.)



When I was photocopying the entire Aristotle University Early Modern collection in 1996, I would walk by the Rotunda and into the grounds of Aristotle U. No photocopying today though.

The Arch is opposite the new, concrete, punchy Church of Our Lady of Déxia ("The Right Hand", as in "Holding the Baby Jesus in her Right Hand." The re-contextualisation to "Our Lady of the Right Wing" is pretty obvious, and has already been thought up.) Our Lady of the Right is not very pretty, but she is imposing:



Less imposing, and also less welcome, is the entrance of Subway and Starbucks into the street between Our Lady of the Right and the Arch. They weren't there four years ago. At least they're as inconspicuous as they can be, all things considered.



George met up with me, and took me on a tour of his new apartment, by Navarino Square. A classic Salonica street view out his window: an explosion of balconies, laundry, and TV antennas:



We walked up to his mother's place, mainly so I could sample some of his mother's nurse's Mariupolitan dialect. It turns out George would be a better linguist than me anyway: he was quite deliberate about subtly eliciting dialectal oddities.

Oh, I should report, shouldn't I? After all, Mariupolitan is reasonably obscure (although there is a recent grammar: Συμεωνίδης, Χ. ϗ Τομπαΐδης, Δ. 1999. Η Σημερινή Ελληνική Διάλεκτος της Ουκρανίας (περιοχής Μαριούπολης). Αθήνα: Επιτροπή Ποντιακών Μελετών.

Well,

• It's Greek with a Russian accent (duh)
  
• with Northern vowel elision
  
• and a spot of Pontic syntax. Lots of enclitic πα instead of και for "and/even".
  

George has noticed a lot more: ότι... ότι for "either... or", φαγίζω as the causative "feed", 'ράδιν for "tail", σπουδάζω for "hasten". Like I say, George should have been a linguist.

There was book shopping as well—and some mailing books back to Australia, given the weight of my suitcase: The latest couple of Studies in Greek Linguistics proceedings, a commentary on Greek grammar by Konstantinos Minas (who always has something interesting to say), and a handbook of Modern Greek historical linguistics by former Wikipedian and Greek linguistics blogger, Theodoros "Dr Moshe" Moysiadis. Oh, and some more dialectal Asterixes. Including the Cypriot one.

On the way back, we went past the ever bustling Navarino Square,




where we happened on the palace of Galerius as well. I took photos; someone else took a lot more. The digs are in a lot better nick than I remember: looks like sometimes restoration actually works out.

George was rather taken with this spot:



The Avenue of Cats: half the cats of Salonica suns themselves on the top of the palace wall, and occasionally (it being Libyan weather), in the shade at the bottom of the dig.





The bizarre thing about the Palace is how tightly tied in it is to contemporary Salonica. Archaeological site or not, Dimitris Gounaris St is a pretty busy promenade.





The palace of Galerius, of course, faces directly back to the tomb.



And George does too. George has requested the following caption:

	Και θα 'ναι τα πράγματα μέσα του κιόλας ωραία ερείπια (Οδυσσέας Ελύτης, Άξιον Εστί)
	And things inside him will already have become beautiful ruins... (Odysseas Elytis, Dignum Est)

Salonica: cousins hit da town

Alighted at Salonica, oh, eight hours later than I was supposed to. The oblig debrief followed, including not just my Salonican cousins Chris and Nick K, but also my Athenian cousin Nick L, up from Athens to be shown A Slice Of Life On The North Side.

Yes, I know that means there are three Nicks in da house. And these aren't my three cousins called Nick Nicholas, either.

Greece being Libya, noone really dares step outside until way after 9 pm, and socialising takes off after 11. I wasn't up for that much; but as my Athens taxi driver pointed out, "Oh, sir, I don't think your relatives are going to let you relax all that much." As always, I will need a holiday from my holiday.

The problem with letting Nick K photograph his cousins is, he'll make sure Salonica Babes are in the shot:



The problem with letting Chris photograph his cousins is, he won't wait until I'm paying attention:



or we're standing still:



The problem with letting Nick N photograph his cousins is, he forgets to.

The problem with Salonica nightlife (Ictinus St) is, it's night, so you can't clearly see the ten zillion Young Salonican Things out for coffee and whatever else comes their way:



When time for the inevitable midnight snack came (this being Greece, after all), we ended up at Derlikatessen:



I'd already found out about Derlikatessen from Notis' blog: it's a hybrid of delicatessen, and Greek ντερλικώνω "eat way too much" (from Turkish dirlik, "comfortable living").

These being Greek souvlakis and not Australian, even their most dirlikli souvers (the δικάβαλα, double-wrapped) were still quite comfortable eats: delightfully thin pita, soft pork, mustard-compatible. Exactly what you'd want at midnight. Cool pre-war style signage, as well.

The nightlife is the upside of Greece: even of a Monday night, Young Salonican Things ambling around at midnight, having a laugh, sharing cigarettes, packing into small dark bars and outdoor cafés, not getting particularly drunk. All very pleasant and mellow. If only:

• The weather wasn't Libyan
  
• You didn't have to get to work at 7 am
  
• There was any notion here of customer service or collective responsibility
  
• Olympic Airways was not involved in arriving here at all
  

Oh, I may well have forgotten to mention this:

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

Athens, the prequel

My time is limited to blog in Greece—too much partying with my cousins lined up; I'm benefitting from siesta time to do what catchup I can. My woes with Olympic are not done: my return to Athens tomorrow has already been delayed by ONE AND A HALF HOURS. Say it again folks:

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

I'll summarise what happened in Athens on 2008-06-29, now that I have what few photos I took in order. The SIXTY photos I took in Berlin will need to wait for another siesta.

I emerged from the metro at Constitution Square at 5:30 pm. Behind me, Greek Parliament:



Around me, lots of dozing stray dogs (yep, I'm back in Greece), who know better than to be lugging suitcases around Athens. Ahead of me, a token fountain, the kerfuffle of Athens streetscape,



and 35°C under the shade:



All very, very Libyan. As my friend George pointed out to me today, I have never been in a Greek summer before: I've always managed to time my quadrennial visits to Greek around either autumn or winter; and when I used to spend summers as a kid, it was 25 years ago, and Crete (which does not count on either account as a Greek summer). None of this Lawrence of Arabia weather crap.

I made my way up to Upper New Smyrna, and my Deutschland cap had the predicted effect. I was too busy talking to photograph, though I did catch a shot of the view out my uncle's balcony at 5 am:



(And there's always bagels on sale outside Dafni metro station)



I didn't go photographing my Athenian relatives yet; that's for the return trip, if Olympic Airways ever get me there. Oh, before I forget:

HELP BANKRUPT OLYMPIC AIRWAYS

But I cannot deal with the fact that my cousin Maria is 16; she's still meant to be 4, isn't she? Or that my uncle George is back to having a goatee: a preview of what I'll look like at 55. Warning: white hair like a [googles] rock 'n' roll Gandalf.

I was too busy doing catchup to watch the game (Germany lost. Damn.) Because I didn't particularly care about soccer (apart from the fact that Germany lost), I mostly talked to my aunt Dimitra. My uncle George did have his cousin Spyro over for the game, and I got to watch a fair bit of performance art, between both George and Dimitra, and George and Spyro.

I'll draw a semi-discreet veil across the details, this after all being a public blog. :-) But the George/Spyro show was a lot of fun, in a Beavis & Butthead kind of way, and Spyro got the line of the night:

—Αυτός κοιμάται όρθιος και πλερώνει ξενοδοχείο!

Hm, how to translate pithily. Well, Greeks say "he's asleep standing up" to indicate someone is a dullard. But that's not all. In Spyro's version,

He's asleep standing up—and he's still paying for a hotel room!

(As in, he's booked a room to sleep in, which is pretty superfluous if you're asleep standing up. Then again, he is sleeping standing up to start with.)

(It's funnier in Greek, trust me.)