Tourist Soup for the Petulant Soul
Æsthetic note: I am switching to Georgia because I understand it to be the easiest font to read on the Internets, and if your eyes fall out of your heads from struggling through Courier, there will be no one left to read my blog! Horrors! (This does not mean I don't still hate the South).
Today I was mad. I was really mad. I was Comical Rural Comparative (CRC) mad: I was madder than a wet hornet! I'm not entirely sure why. Probably something existential, definitely not something important. Anyway, after my weekly appearance at the primary school*, since today was fucking gorgeous (given the weather of the past few weeks, I feel justified in my profanity), I decided the best way to blow off this steam was a walk around Berlin. So that's what I did, I got off at Zoologischer Garten and decided I would walk up to Ernst-Reuter-Platz and from there back West towards things like Schloß Charlottenburg, the Battlestar Galactica Convention Center and the Funkturm (West Germany's Fernsehturm analogue).
So that's what I did, and I had a very nice walk down Hardenburgstraße to Ernst-Reuter-Platz, which were both much more alive than I'd ever seen them, and past the Deutsche Oper, which is my 2nd favorite shoebox in the world, behind the now-defunct Palast der Republik. I also detoured over to Richard-Wagner-Platz to see the subway station everyone has been telling me I just have to experience before I die, and it was indeed great, even if it didn't quite live up to the hype (people have seriously been talking this place up to me). Eventually, I found myself at Schloß Charlottenburg , and its accompanying cluster of museums. I took full advantage of the fact that Thursday is Free Day for Berlin museums and checked out the amazing one-two punch of the Berggrün and the Bröhan.
The former is a collection dedicated to "Picasso and His Time", and thus, devotes two floors to a great many Picasso paintings, sketches, sculptures, etc. as well Matisse and, naturally, the odd Braque along with some lesser lights and good, old Paul Klee gets the third floor almost all to himself. I picked up Goethe's "Die Tafeln zur Farbenlehre und deren Erklärungen" in the gift shop, having always been interested in Goethe's research into optics and color theory. And besides, the volume is published by the Insel-Bücherei (No. 1140, if you're interested), famous for their hardbound, enticingly-covered "Taschenbücher" (pocket-size books). I first fell in love with them when I picked up a collection of Rilke poems, "Der ausgewählten Gedichte erster Teil" (No. 400) for $5.00 at the very famous Strand book store in New York. The covers are a true rainbow of joy, and I love the glued-on title cards. So that made me happy. But Lord and butter! The Bröhan! The place describes itself as the "State Museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism (1889-1939)" (aside: if your state has a museum dedicated solely to one 50 year period of Industrial Design, you live in a pretty bitchin' state!). Pretty much everything in there looks like it was stolen from the inhabitants of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I about died. Also, Art Nouveau always reminds me of my grandma's living room. I even found a new favorite artist! Jean Lambert-Rucki, a Polish transplant in Paris, and the man responsible for this, among a great many other paintings, sculptures and furniture pieces. I'm going to have to get rich just so I can furnish my home with this stuff. Now, having been overwhelmed by the early 20th Century, I went outside, where I realized... I was still mad! I had forgotten about it, but here it was again!
I decided to walk from Charlottenburg to the Tiergarten and see if that made me feel any better. My anger made the walk something more akin to a trudge, but I had a good wander in the Tiergarten and a very nice sit on the base of the Siegessäule, where I watched a police escort whisk some black sedans (from which, I swear some dude waved at me!) with funny French flags waving from the hood down the Straße des 17. Juni. From there I seethed on down the road, and realizing it was getting late, took a hard left at the Reichstag, where, in addition to the always-hilarious line of tourists waiting to get in, and a bunch of shirtless sunbathers and hackey-sackers, a guy was flying the BIGGEST DAMN KITE YOU'VE EVER SEEN! Thing looked like he stole it from a parasailor, and indeed, Ben Franklin there looked like it was about all he could do to keep his heels dug desperately into terra firma, while he dipped and whirled this thing around. I passed all that by on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, though where my fire-engine red chariot awaited to transport me in 2nd class comfort back to Michendorf where my faithful Drahtesel (literally: wire donkey; figuratively: bike) carried me back home through the cool evening breeze.
Still mad, though. Damn. I went in to check my e-mail (there had been threats of a get-together on Thursday, and having heard nothing, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't because people had been frantically e-mailing me all day), and as soon as I told Paul Krause how mad I had been all day, he bit and asked me to tell him all about it. Suddenly, the reason for my rage felt exceedingly stupid, and my anger disappeared.
*Where I was given a copy of an album by Germany's latest musical sensation, the a capella group, Wise Guys. They have such lovely ditties as: a gospel song lamenting the rise of "Denglish" (the German equivalent of "Spanglish"); a fake news report with the awesome quatrain: "Der Börsengang der deutschen Bahn/ Das ist stark zu vermuten/ Verzögert sich voraussichtlich/ um fünf bis zehn Minuten." (explanation/ translation upon request); and "Buddy Biber" — a (long awaited, I have to say) German analogue to the Coasters classic, "Along Came Jones" — about a cartoon beaver who's always one step ahead of that nasty Forester Fritz.
Today I was mad. I was really mad. I was Comical Rural Comparative (CRC) mad: I was madder than a wet hornet! I'm not entirely sure why. Probably something existential, definitely not something important. Anyway, after my weekly appearance at the primary school*, since today was fucking gorgeous (given the weather of the past few weeks, I feel justified in my profanity), I decided the best way to blow off this steam was a walk around Berlin. So that's what I did, I got off at Zoologischer Garten and decided I would walk up to Ernst-Reuter-Platz and from there back West towards things like Schloß Charlottenburg, the Battlestar Galactica Convention Center and the Funkturm (West Germany's Fernsehturm analogue).
So that's what I did, and I had a very nice walk down Hardenburgstraße to Ernst-Reuter-Platz, which were both much more alive than I'd ever seen them, and past the Deutsche Oper, which is my 2nd favorite shoebox in the world, behind the now-defunct Palast der Republik. I also detoured over to Richard-Wagner-Platz to see the subway station everyone has been telling me I just have to experience before I die, and it was indeed great, even if it didn't quite live up to the hype (people have seriously been talking this place up to me). Eventually, I found myself at Schloß Charlottenburg , and its accompanying cluster of museums. I took full advantage of the fact that Thursday is Free Day for Berlin museums and checked out the amazing one-two punch of the Berggrün and the Bröhan.
The former is a collection dedicated to "Picasso and His Time", and thus, devotes two floors to a great many Picasso paintings, sketches, sculptures, etc. as well Matisse and, naturally, the odd Braque along with some lesser lights and good, old Paul Klee gets the third floor almost all to himself. I picked up Goethe's "Die Tafeln zur Farbenlehre und deren Erklärungen" in the gift shop, having always been interested in Goethe's research into optics and color theory. And besides, the volume is published by the Insel-Bücherei (No. 1140, if you're interested), famous for their hardbound, enticingly-covered "Taschenbücher" (pocket-size books). I first fell in love with them when I picked up a collection of Rilke poems, "Der ausgewählten Gedichte erster Teil" (No. 400) for $5.00 at the very famous Strand book store in New York. The covers are a true rainbow of joy, and I love the glued-on title cards. So that made me happy. But Lord and butter! The Bröhan! The place describes itself as the "State Museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism (1889-1939)" (aside: if your state has a museum dedicated solely to one 50 year period of Industrial Design, you live in a pretty bitchin' state!). Pretty much everything in there looks like it was stolen from the inhabitants of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I about died. Also, Art Nouveau always reminds me of my grandma's living room. I even found a new favorite artist! Jean Lambert-Rucki, a Polish transplant in Paris, and the man responsible for this, among a great many other paintings, sculptures and furniture pieces. I'm going to have to get rich just so I can furnish my home with this stuff. Now, having been overwhelmed by the early 20th Century, I went outside, where I realized... I was still mad! I had forgotten about it, but here it was again!
I decided to walk from Charlottenburg to the Tiergarten and see if that made me feel any better. My anger made the walk something more akin to a trudge, but I had a good wander in the Tiergarten and a very nice sit on the base of the Siegessäule, where I watched a police escort whisk some black sedans (from which, I swear some dude waved at me!) with funny French flags waving from the hood down the Straße des 17. Juni. From there I seethed on down the road, and realizing it was getting late, took a hard left at the Reichstag, where, in addition to the always-hilarious line of tourists waiting to get in, and a bunch of shirtless sunbathers and hackey-sackers, a guy was flying the BIGGEST DAMN KITE YOU'VE EVER SEEN! Thing looked like he stole it from a parasailor, and indeed, Ben Franklin there looked like it was about all he could do to keep his heels dug desperately into terra firma, while he dipped and whirled this thing around. I passed all that by on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, though where my fire-engine red chariot awaited to transport me in 2nd class comfort back to Michendorf where my faithful Drahtesel (literally: wire donkey; figuratively: bike) carried me back home through the cool evening breeze.
Still mad, though. Damn. I went in to check my e-mail (there had been threats of a get-together on Thursday, and having heard nothing, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't because people had been frantically e-mailing me all day), and as soon as I told Paul Krause how mad I had been all day, he bit and asked me to tell him all about it. Suddenly, the reason for my rage felt exceedingly stupid, and my anger disappeared.
*Where I was given a copy of an album by Germany's latest musical sensation, the a capella group, Wise Guys. They have such lovely ditties as: a gospel song lamenting the rise of "Denglish" (the German equivalent of "Spanglish"); a fake news report with the awesome quatrain: "Der Börsengang der deutschen Bahn/ Das ist stark zu vermuten/ Verzögert sich voraussichtlich/ um fünf bis zehn Minuten." (explanation/ translation upon request); and "Buddy Biber" — a (long awaited, I have to say) German analogue to the Coasters classic, "Along Came Jones" — about a cartoon beaver who's always one step ahead of that nasty Forester Fritz.
posted by Matt at
3:05 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home