Kent doesn't seem too convinced on that post heading ... I'm not really surprised. What does that even mean?
nah, it makes sense! you'll get it when you read the post ...
after weeks of seeing this tower constantly on our periphery, we finally actually got to stand right under it.
everywhere you go in berlin is exactly 1km from this thing.
"Ok, so the tower is over there, which means we are ... somewhere."
This time, instead of being somewhere, we were there! Huzzah!
it's bizarre.
it seemed like we never got closer to it, nor further from it, wherever we went.
and every corner you turn, there it is, sitting just a little way off. ever present.
but on our way into town to check out the museum island, bang! we were suddenly right under it.
and it really is pretty huge.
(just like your face!)
we got our 'tourist' on today and thought we better go check out the museum island.
it's literally an island, as the name no doubt hints at, right in the river spree.
there's five big museums, each carrying a veritable shitload of important old crap (that we did not see).
apparently most of it had the bejesus bombed out of it in 1945 and it took decades to put them all back together again. there's some sort of irony in the fact that hitler was remorselessly parochial of classicism, and yet, under his leadership and as a consequence of his lunacy, the great bastions of classicism in his nation's capital were nearly obliterated by avenging armies from countries within which avant gardism would be most celebrated.
anyway, it's all back to now in its 'rightful' glorification of the past and lovely old shit,
though with a fair few rustic bullet nicks here and there.
this was a shock to me. what a grandiose and imposing cathedral.
i dunno, i just figured after the war and years of communist 'mis'-rule, there'd be no religious monuments left in berlin. isn't religion the opium of the masses in the eyes of the socialist?
I didn't think Berlin believed in Jesus either (not that cathedrals have much to do with that dude, but still).
well, whatever, i'm very glad this old tart is still sitting gracefully on the banks of the spree, coz while i'm no fan of organised religion, they sure do know how to commission some killer art.
something about the monumentality of the materials, the composition of the forms and the proportions of the shapes, lend this building a serious sense of imposing presence. well, not so much 'imposing', in a negative sense, just sheer ... material presence. like, kaflumf. it's a real, seriously existing, clump of reality, right there, unmissable.
Can anybody else see Kent actually standing on the lush green lawn, in a tweed suit, with a camera crew, talking all BBC like about angles and proportions and shit? He has a poncy british accent and some rather unsightly wire-rimmed glasses, and is doing some really special arm movements to go with those angles. Well, until he says 'kaflumf'.
look, that sort of critical analysis will not get me my phd, i'm quite sure, but you get my drift.
Oh Kent! Are you doing a phd?! Oh my! A PHD? I had NO IDEA!!!
fuck off bitch-face.
hahahaha!!!
also, scattered about the place ... actually, not scattered, that would be reprehensible to the ordered geometry of classicism ... are these gigantic bronzes. they're huge. and they're all themed around the human domination of nature. poor lions, getting trounced by ridiculously gorgeous, stick wielding, butt-naked, cerebrally-advanced walking apes. humans, eh? we are truly bizarre.
i can ponder relentlessly about the implications of our lust for land and the sadistic malevolence toward our fellow creatures, but in the end, what's not to love about a naked amazon riding a stallion.
epic.
(Even though when we were there, Kent said "Man, why did they have to put tits on that dude? That's just wrong.")
and look, if you had the manual dexterity to conjure up authentic realism in sculptural forms,
hewn from the very hardest of minerals thrown up by the earth's inner crust,
why the hell wouldn't you birth semi-naked chicks on horses.
bless.
pygmalion springs to mind - wait ... google check ... yes! pygmalion.
Don't worry - I don't understand either.
Basically though, I think Kent is saying that these bronzes were all fucking amazing and it was awesome
to see them just sprinkled among finely hedged gardens.
i'm almost tempted to say, 'and now here's one for the ladies'.
but that is just so ridiculous, i won't even mention it.
(When I read the above text, I was SURE Kent had included the unfortunate image of the back view of the previous lion and man on the horse sculpture, in all it's multi-scrotal glory. I am glad he did not. They were very overwhelming.)
check out this dude though. is he killing this beast or consummating their inter-species union?
either way, pretty amazing piece of work.
we really enjoyed walking around and basking in the monumentality of it all. we didn't actually go into the museums, which, may be tantamount to some sort of treason in some people's books, particularly as a postgrad in the fine arts, but we really weren't in the mood. maybe another day. probably. As if. You know we won't. but, you know, it was all old stuff (and muuuuuuum, old things are boooooriiiingaaaaah!). it's 2011 and we're in berlin. trudging through rooms full of broken toilet pots from a million years ago and stodgy old portraits of inbred aristocratic hicks from bavaria just wasn't high on our agenda today.
Besides, Kent has clearly already seen it all, given those avid descriptions above. We have both clearly fallen into the land of indulgent travels, which mostly involves deciding where to have coffee next.
(dear professors, if you stumble across these ramblings, i have a grain a salt i can provide, just ask)
so, off of the island, with its order and power and giant naked people, and back into the streets of contemporary berlin, with its actually visible gentrification (seriously, you walk into a cafe to get a coffee and when you get back out there's a new apartment block on the street as well as some fresh 'fuck off yuppies' graffiti and a smashed window to go with!), casual dress everyday, and random pooh smells (mostly they come from Kent - all those bratwursts are trouble).
and omg, we opened this door into a bookshop ...
... and it was evident once we got inside, that this was not a door at all.
it was actually the pearly gates themselves and we had inadvertently stumbled into sheer heaven.
every conceivable art book you could imagine was inside.
thousands upon thousands of gloriously printed, seductive, mouth-wateringly delicious pages of pure and unadulterated heavenly beauty.
we stayed about 20 minutes before we overcome with stabbing pains in our chest, mild nausea and escalated heart rate levels. i could quite comfortably live inside this shop, only needing the occasional delivery of food and coffee to keep me alive.
Oh my god. What is it about astoundingly fabulous bookshops consistently coinciding with a rather sudden and urgent need to use the toilet RIGHT NOW? Regular bookshops never cause this. Is it because those pristine dust jackets with the embossed titles dipped in a shrink wrap packet from the gods cause such heart palpitations that it causes your entire digestive process to vastly accelerate? It is the same with second hand books. Something about the combination of must and (I want to say foxing? Mum, what are those stains called?) stains on the paper, and that rather cold cottony feel of the paper ... hang on, I need to go to the toilet.
Seriously though - there was one particular second hand bookshop in Camberwell Junction in Melbourne, that I would specifically go to the toilet before hand, it was that good. Unfortunately nothing helped. I could hold on for about 20 minutes, before tragically bolting out and around the corner to find the nearest borders, where the atmosphere was about as stale as a melba toast (why are these things food?) that my need instantly evaporated. Alas, and thank goodness, that book shop has closed down (which is a real shame - it was very good). Anyway, back to Berlin.
I appreciate that the snap above does not really convey the joy that was the labyrinth of this bookshop. Upon walking in, it looked like a regular amazing bookshop, until you realised that every corner was not a book nook, but a whole new room of books! Just when I thought I was about pass out with the ecstasy of it all, the chappy quietly and pointedly calmly SLID ONE OF THE SHELVES ASIDE TO REVEAL ANOTHER LAYER OF BOOKIE GOODNESS. I stared at him open mouthed, watched him smugly saunter away and then grappled at the closest shelving unit, successfully clattering something to the ground quite loudly. (This shop was like a library, there was no music playing, where customers serenely glided like spirits, silently taking books of shelves. The only sound to be heard was the slight moistening of one's thumb to turn a crisp and delicious page. By comparison, I am pretty sure Kent and I looked like a pair of rather stupid Labrador puppies.)
speaking of food - we trundled back toward prams-lauer berg via kastanienallee for a lunch stop.
i am loving the schawarma plates here.
its like souvlaki (have we gone over this before?) but laid out into sections of veggies and meat.
amazing. We were clever enough to not share a platter this time. This shit is the best.
I do apologise for this particularly toilet themed post - I don't know what it is about today. But I found this intriguing.
Yes what? Yes I can use you? Yes I did? What do you want from me?! It drove me nuts as I gingerly had to turn my back to it.
apparently, this street is referred to as 'casting-allee', a play on its name, because it's the haunt of actors, models and musicians. but that must be in summer coz it's pretty quiet at the moment.
we've been told, like, a million times that it goes off in berlin in the summer.
next person that says it and i'll be like, 'all right all right already! jesus!'
what else....?
oooh - lucy bought a hat!
Yes, I did. I have been prancing rather pretentiously around the flat while wearing it, then more pretentiously sitting at my desk while wearing it, pretending that I am especially important and probably famous, and eventually reluctantly taking it off and putting it in the wardrobe.
Because I don't wanna look like one of those gits who wears hats inside or anything ...
(I am trying pretty hard to resist running to the wardrobe to put it back on, and put a 1940s style male reporter voice on while I narrate verbatim what I am currently writing to Kent.)
as always, she looks amazing.
nyaw - you're so sweet Kent!
photos will come later.
And just to finish - I thought this was pretty cool. Kentaur mit (with) Nymphe?
Looks like we have a new nick name for Kentus. Heh heh!
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