Bottoms Up

A few weekends ago I went to the major department stores here in Berlin in search of possible American cuisine to serve up at our Thanksgiving dinner. At KaDeWe, I found an exotic assortment of food from all around the world under glass cases and being prepared right in front of your eyes. The gourmet food section is located on the sixth floor of the department store that requires an almost maze-like approach past boutiques of Louis Vuitton and Prada, Yves Sain Laurent and Tom Ford. This store housed riches from all across the world and is drug den for global shopaholics, or maybe just their most dependable dealer.

I was a bit light headed myself walking through the forest of luxury goods, eventually stumbling onto the gourmet food floor. Here in the American food section I found Mountain Dew cans that sold for €5.25 a liter, or €1.50 a can. Boxes of Swiss Miss, jars of Marshmallow Fluff™ and the largest selection of Salsa in Germany. As I wandered further I was dumbstruck by the price tag I saw on this bottle of liquor. It was priced at €17,500! That is enough to buy a car, or a boat, or enough scotch to last you a life time. It must taste A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, and almost makes the €1,595 bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII next to it sound like mouthwash.

If you want to learn more about The Macallan Lalique, bottle on the right, click here.

Feasting

We brought the American day of Thanks to Berlin where we hosted several of our closest friends, and their friends, for a Turkey feast and movie watching.



Thanksgiving seems to have originated from a very DIY spirit, making the most out of what you have. The Indians brought corn and fish and fowl and the Pligrims brought their refined turkey carving skills and cans of cranberry sauce. So in this spirit we asked our American and European friends to prepare dish or two, and bring forks (because we only have four). S cooked our 5900 gram turkey and I felt like we needed something to announce the event so I created the banner to hang at the end of our table above our very American poster.

It is not easy to find all of the familiar Thanksgiving dishes here in Europe so many of our guests had to improvise their recipes and bake to taste. There is no Stove Top stuffing, pumpkin pie mix, or pre-made pie crust. I thought I saw cans of cranberry sauce a few weeks ago but they seemed to have disappeared. Everyone succeeded in creating substitutes and the meal was amazing, with an additional European accent from dishes provided by our Danish and Swedish guests.



Dinner menu:

Red Wine
White Wine (Riesling)
Ice Tea, with grapefruit flavor

Deviled eggs
Green salad with pomegranate and walnuts

Dinner rolls
Mashed potatoes
Vegetable medley (orange & red peppers, carrots, and celery root)
Red cabbage, arugula, and rasin salad
Homemade stuffing
Spinach quiche
Turkey & gravy

Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin cheesecake pie & whipped cream
Fudge walnut brownies
Licorice candies



We hope each of you had a great Thanksgiving and we should now say what we are thankful for, well, we are thankful for each and everyone of you that keeps up with us and that reads this blog.

Preview, Bridge, Forum, Liste...

This past weekend several art fairs all converged on Berlin. One was held at the historical Templehof airport, serving as the location for Allied air aide to West Berlin and officially closed last Friday. Another was held at Messe, a large conference center on the western side of Berlin. Two others were held at hotels in Berlin. Ultimately art fairs are exhausting and often not the most exciting places to see artwork. There is usually a lack of cohesion between the art presented in the gallery's booths that is mostly on display for collectors and sales.

However, we thought this would be an opportunity to see a lot of art all at once and took the marathon trip to visit these over the end of last week.


Entrance to Preview Berlin at Templehof hangar


Preview overview

There was a free shuttle service provided from the Preview Berlin fair to Artforum Berlin across town. We had managed to obtain a free professional pass to Preview and were able to ride in a Toyota Prius across town. At Artforum we were expecting to have tickets on hold. The tickets were not there when we arrived but somehow we managed to talk them into giving us a free VIP pass.




Albert Weiss work on paper

I could not get very many good angles of the Artforum booths but the architectural features of the building were amazing for their 1960's kitschy German style.


Coatroom


Lounge (w/ mirror and glass terrarium)


Chandelliers

We also attended an opening in a pavillion on Karl-Marx-alee held in an old building that was built by the East German gov't to house communist art in the 1960's.


Capitain Petzel opening

Herbst & Halloween

backyard

Herbst is the German word for Fall. The season of Fall. After living in San Francisco for 5 years we have not had the opportunity to experience seasons and the changing of leaves. Berlin had a few spectacular weeks, a lot of yellow and a little red.



We had a relaxed Halloween. No Trick-or-Treaters. There were some people celebrating but it still seems like an imported American holiday. Just to create the holiday ambiance S carved a mini Jack-o-Lantern from an orange bell pepper.

Drill Baby, Drill

On Monday I helped a local artist, Dan Sieple, dig a hole for a well. He plans to pump out the water onto the pile of ruble nearby turning it into a fountain. This is an area of Berlin called Stadt Mitte and is a section of land where the Berlin Wall once used to stand but has not been redeveloped. What we discovered is that there is building ruble buried 3 meters deep underground that has been accumulating since WWII.

Photos of the Week

It has been a few weeks since we last posted, so I thought I would at least post some photos depicting the last week in Berlin.

First of all, we got married two weeks ago!! See Photos here:



Then we spent our honeymoon weekend at Tropical-Islands which is Europe's largest indoor tropical park.



Since then...


This building by our apartment has been covered in a wall of light.


Attended an opening at Autocenter.


Only 80 cents! German-American humor.


An exceptional exhibition at Program gallery, projecting videos onto existing architectural features.


German playgrounds!


The seasonal drink, a hot glass of fresh peppermint tea.


The noteworthy, final exhibition of Homie gallery.

(Sorry they are all cell phone pics but it is better than nothing...)

Day Four, Part 1: Sat. June 7th -March

pic found online from March looking south toward Freiburg and the Black Forest

Glad to finally be getting back to the story... : )

So, to begin with I wanted to talk about little bit about geography. That was one of the things I was really curious about...Were there similarities between this area of Germany and Missouri that caused so many Germans to settle there?




On this map you can see how Leipzig (the first place we stayed) is just south of Berlin...and then we traveled down to Freiburg, which is in the southwestern corner of the country...not far from either France or Switzerland.


View Larger Map

On this google map you can see right where I am about to talk about...the street where Helmut lives...and if you zoom in you can even make out the church I will talk about shortly...

On Saturday morning, first thing after breakfast at our pension, Irene took us over to meet Helmut and the rest of her immediate family and to see the family's house and village, March.


This Helmut's house where he lives with their mother, Maria. Basically, Maria lives on the bottom floor and Helmut lives on the second floor. In this picture you have a good view of the solar panels that he just installed on the roof. The power is not directly for the house but he sells the electricity back to the city.



Side driveway.



Back of the house. When I took this picture I would be standing where there was a barn previously. That had recently been torn down and the yellow part of the house and deck added.



Above the front door is the names of the builders of this house in 1929. I believe the M.H. stands for Maria's husband's father (both were named Martin Hunn), and the Th.G for his wife named Theresia Gaymann.

The white marking on the door is somehow related to a Christmas ritual each year...kinda like passover but different. All the houses in the area have these markings left by kids to bless the house year round.



Here is all of us (click for a bigger picture).
Back row: Helmut and Irene's sister Lydia, and Irene
Second Row: me and Maria
Third Row: Helmut's granddaughter, Helmut, and Helmut's son


The doorbell.



After we all meet each other and got a tour of the house we walked just down the block to the village church. The foundation of this little cathedral dates back to sometime around 1100. This is where all the records would have been made for family genealogy. It was a really beautiful little church that is still regularly used.









And just across the street from that is the two houses who was owned by our distant shared relations...the two brothers Anton and Paulus. I don't remember now which lived in which house...but one lived in this one...



...and the other lived in this one next door on the right. Keep in mind Anton moved to the States in the 1840's so these houses have to be at least that old. Most of the houses in this area are the same, very old and very well maintained.

By Hand

Last Thursday I decided to choose a direction (NE) and ride my bike in that direction until I was lost or tired. I do not know which one happened first but I saw a lot of the city that I had not seen before. I made it all the way out to Weißensee (White sea) which is a small lake near the edge of the city. Along the way there were lots of social housing complexes mixed in with older neighborhoods. In one of the courtyards of a housing complex I saw this monument and thought it was worth posting.



I guess Ernst Thälmann was part of the German Communist party in the 1920-30's and was jailed for speaking out against Hitler and the Nazis. Remember, Nazis and Communists are not synonymous; in fact they did not get along. It is an impressive monument but the kind of heroism and display of power that are looked down upon with American monuments.

Also, did you ever wonder how German sidewalks are made????? Well, now you know. By hand. Every single stone is pounded into place forming distinctive patterns. This photo was taken out of our window. If you want to know what the process sounds like, come sleep in our bedroom for a night. On second thought, you might not get much sleep.

Day in Photos

Yesterday I spent most of the day riding around the S-Bahn loop that circles the city looking for locations to buy studio materials and took some photos.

German Technology

This will be a short post about some "new" technology we spotted in Alexanderplatz yesterday, and some older East German technology that was "newly" discovered.

First up, a robotic billboard that moves around in public space freely. It even has sensors so as not to bump into people mesmerized by its dance.



Second is a massive nuclear bunker just outside of Berlin that was built to house the East German government in case of nuclear attacks. Have you ever seen the move 'Cube'? Well it is no longer fiction. I do not want to give away too many of the details but this is the most impressive thing I have seen in a long time.



UPDATE: OMG! I just signed up for the last two available tickets to tour the bunker. It will be resealed indefinitely in October to preserve the interior.

Stockholm, Sweden: On Assignment

We just returned from a brief trip to Stockholm, 3 days to be exact. S was needed in her new role as artist assistant to help complete a piece at the residency program IASPA. We left Berlin Monday morning with a tripod, a video camera, and prepared to explore a new city

Sweden is a rather wealthy country, with a high standard of living and everything is expensive as a result. However, most everyone speaks perfect English along with Swedish and probably a handful of other languages. So we did not have trouble navigating after we figured out just how much money we needed to convert, first taking out 300 Kroner a piece then 700 Kroner more just to be safe. We caught an express train from the airport into the city center and entered into the great labyrinth that is Stockholm's subway tunnel system. I assume that Stockholm receives a lot of snow and winter weather during the year, as a result there are entire sections of the city that you can navigate underground through the subway tunnels without every seeing the light of day. Many of these tunnels have been created to resemble a network of caves and decorated with ornate murals and tile work (see above photo).



Sweden is an ancient port city located about halfway up the coast of Sweden where a river meets the ocean. It is a very old city, having never been bombed in either of the two World Wars, with buildings dating back to the 1600's and a history of viking inhabitants (or at least that is what all of the souvenir shops would have you believe). A hotel was arranged for us near the city center and the residency program was located a few subway stations on the other side of the river. Upon arriving in town we stopped at a Max Burger for lunch. This was my first fast food experience in years, but the food looked relatively fresh. This Swedish hamburger chain was very concerned with maintaining an image above your average McDonald's, they had an Express option where you could order your food from a computer and then retrieve it from the express line. In the regular line you chose from a simple menu with a lot of dipping sauces where they listed the amount of CO2/carbon offsets that you were purchasing with each meal. I can only assume to compensate for the consequences of factory farming and mass transit that are necessary for a fast food chain. Anyway, I guess you could say they sold "guilt-free" burgers. [Correction: with a little more research I have learned that they are listing the amount of carbohydrates on their menu, but the first impression is funnier.]



We then headed back into the tunnel system because S needed to meet WN at his studio and get to work. After years of navigating subways in several different countries our learning curve is pretty high. Even with all of the signs in Swedish we found the correct platform, luckily numbers and colors are a universal language. Sweden is also home to another 'universal' language, IKEA. IKEA is an amazing store that sells modern, modular home furnishings. They do not just sell furniture, they sell "solutions for living". If you have never been to an IKEA store I highly recommend it just for the experience alone. Anyway, here in the land of IKEA they were running an impressive new design for an ad campaign that consisted of a series of larger than life portraits, where the persons face is made up of small pieces of furniture from their catalog of every color and shape. These lined the subway lines and were all over the city, but I digress...



[Spoiler Alert: Stockholm may not be for those with weak stomachs.] While we were waiting on the platform photographing IKEA posters something entirely unexpected happened. About 40 feet away someone fell onto the train tracks. We heard a loud THUD, then people yelling and scrambling about. Before anyone knew what to do you could hear the train coming down the tunnel, everyone leaned over the tracks and started waiving their arms in both directions. The man stood up and was obviously dazed, blood was dripping down the back of his head and he managed to lean over to the platform where 4 or 5 people pulled him out just as the train stopped short of where he was standing. It was unclear how it happened, whether he was pushed, drunk, or has a poor sense of depth perception. Unfortunately, on my second day in the city I was standing on a platform where the victim was not so lucky. As I sat down on the bench, everyone else jumped up and gasped. All I saw was the train stop short on the tracks and the driver with his head in his hands. I have also heard that in Scandinavia, with its nearly 24 hours of daytime and 24 hour nights, the rate of suicide is quite high. Let's just leave it at that.



Maybe this fountain of mythical creatures, can help turn around the mood of this story. Either way, this is the fountain that greeted us as we arrived near the residency. We met up with WN and he gave us a tour of the facilities. After dropping off the camera equipment we went to our hotel, ran several errands to gather materials, they got to work and I wandered around the city, then we all met up at a Chinese restaurant for a meal and a night-cap.



On the second day, S spent the entire day working and I caught up on some reading around the fountain. We met for lunch then I took off see the Modern Art Museum, located on a small island in the middle of the city. I exited the train a little early so I could walk past the Royal Palace, then followed this bridge with the golden crown over to the island with the museum. The island looked like a colonial park with buildings resembling Monticello and a large sailing ship docked nearby. I was under the impression that the island was the geographic and historical center of the city. The exhibitions at the Modern Museum were not disappointing, and they have the largest collection of Duchamp work in the world (for anyone interested). After I bought a $3.50 can of coca-cola I headed over to the central station and the Kulturhuset, Stockholm's cultural center complex.



This area is a hub of activity, where people walk across the black and white triangles all day long or just sit on the adjoining stairs as if watching a parade of the latest fashions from the nearby designer boutiques. The Kulturhuset is a five story modern glass fortress that houses a theater, a comic book story, the city library, several galleries, a dance club and much much more. It is the Swedish equivalent to what the Palast der Republik could have been for Berlin, but that gets into the politics of former East Berlin and communist governments, so I'll just use pictures.


Kulturhuset, Stockholm


Palast der Republik, Berlin circa 1980 (currently being demolished)

I ate dinner in the cafe at the top of the Kulturhuset, then rode the subway around for a while and went back to meet S at the residency. We stayed late into the evening to finish what they had begun because we were scheduled to catch a flight the next morning, even though the Olympic Ping-Pong games on the TV in our hotel room nearly made us late.