super sun before supermoon

Ok i am taking over this blog entry. Kent is all over the shop - possibly has something to do
with the Aldi beer he is drinking. All sorts of nasties inside!
it certainly has alcohol, and i'm enjoying that aspect at least!

(Lyn, did we tell you that there is an Aldi 2 mins walk from us?
We still walk the 15 minutes to the actual supermarket at the other end of our street,
BUT we can't go past the 2 euro tulips! They're fantastic!)

Anyway, in other news: went to some rather underwhelming art shows last night (where are all the people and alcohol may I ask? [well, i had 3 free beers!]), though there was some fun to be had, such as creepy red men sculptures (which we weren't entirely sure if they were real or not until we went right up close - they were not real), and accidentally traipsing large amounts of mud through a very schnufty white cube gallery (we ran away).
haha - this was pretty funny actually,
we walked in, everyone was drinking champagne,
and there was some mega-expensive chinese paintings on the wall
(just think, pink figures, occasional mao, and you'll be in the typical ballpark)
and we looked down at one point,
i think lucy was wondering why her shoe was sticky,
and we realised there were three sets of footprints leading in from the door,
looking for all the world like dog pooh).

take that, shnoofty art snobs!

we hightailed it outta there, giggling.


there was also some lovely hair-wall sculpture installation
(quote from the gallery statement reads: "this hair is straight like Asian hair" - profound) ...



But most importantly, SUN TODAY!!!

pretty flowers at lunch time (ugh - that is such a bloggy picture to put in.)

finally, after about 3 or 4 days of drizzling cold (about 3 degrees me thinks),
the sun gets its act together and busts away the clouds for some extreme pleasantness.


We dealt with this the way every self-respecting Melbournian should -
we went and drank some coffee in the sun.


we decided to go check out freidrichshain, another part of the old east berlin.
it was pretty excellent really.
bit like prams-lauer berg, with young families and stuff, but a bit more... um... hip.
what a ridiculous way to describe a place - 'hip'. LAME!!! it has more bars, so kinda qualifies as a happening joint. ('Happening joint'? now that is daggy. you have just un-hipped Freidrichshain Kent. Ugh.)
the image opening this post is frankfurter tor
(I added some more photos, so it is the photo of the fancy buildings!).
there's so little nice old buildings left that when you see some, they look pretty amazing, in contrast to all the rather scungy, commy-style grey boxes. it's weird, but the messed up state of the place has a certain charm about it.

check this dude out.
home made cello.
killer.
sounded pretty good too actually. inspires me to wanna make one!
(everyone collectively rolls their eyes.)
(typically 'loving' wifely support. thanks a bundle 'darling'.)


there's a lot of markets in berlin town. we stumbled on this one today, full of food stalls and sock stalls. apparently berliners are in desperate need of socks (10 for €6).
This was lovely just for some good old food-wafting smells (mmm chocolate, cheese, herbs, spices, meat products etc etc.)


we wandered about the place, checking out the shops.
there's also an awful lot of 'street-wear' shops. the sort that sell hoodies, crappy graphic tshirts and badges.
seriously, they are everywhere.
That, and homewares shops with polka dots. They are seriously into their dots here.

and street art. which is a nice treat for us. we like the little surprises you get in doorways, way up on the side of buildings, or on shop fronts.



we had some lunch in the sun, which was absolutely delicious.
Mmm pizza with two types of pig.
both the food and the joyousness of the sunshine.



and we're loving the value.
2 pizzas + half a litre of beer + one mineral water, mit gas = aus$14
not even bimbos/luck coq could compete with that.


and tonight, we're off to a house party.
berlin parties have quite a reputation to live up to, so we'll see how that works out.
although, we've heard they may be serving soup, so i dunno just how crazy it'll be.
unless of course the soup is laced with amanita muscaria.
(Kent is very excited and nervous.)
(pfft, whatever man)


And of course, to cap off our afternoon in the sunshine, more coffee at the beloved st Gaudy (jesus, check out my pants! are they not the single best pair of copenhagen dacks you've ever seen? killer.) before heading home for some ... well, blogging actually, before heading out to some more openings and soup parties!

Keep posted for some Special Edition entries to come
(watch out for Gross Eating Photos and Funny Foreign Words)!
i'm also thinking, art projects and unexpected flash fotos in ya face!

Lots of Love!
xxx

What we do on the days it rains.

Apparently, not a lot. Well, judging by our pictures at least - but we figured you were tired of pictures of us drinking coffee, and not interested in pictures of us in the supermarket, or by the bins. (Though we can provide these on request!)

Today really was a moochy day of joy, as was yesterday. There has been some Writers Reign work (gives us a good sense of purpose!) to do, a lot of laundry and general tidying. In between all the crazy wild Berlin fun, we've been drawing and cutting and painting and pasting like crazy. A lot of work in progress at the moment, but we've been pretty busy in our sketchbooks which has been big fun.

my studio in the kitchen

We've discovered the coffee at St Gaudy (thanks for the suggestion Cafe Kultur!) is truly the best (and cheapest) that Berlin has to offer so far (we'll keep you posted if there are any changes!) and they also make killer boiled eggs on toast.
yeah, it's a winner so far. personally, i feel kinda weird coming halfway around the world and drinking coffee in a place run by aussies and kiwis, but then, i sip their delicious caffeinated bowls (seriously, like pasta bowls) of delight and all the shitty dish water coffees of the last month slide from memory.

I discovered today that Germans have the smallest selection of cereal in their supermarkets, but with the highest proportion of chocolate-related cereal I have ever seen. (I may have purchased and tested said chocolate cereal and yes yes it is quite delicious. ooh, it's like, 1030pm but i am sooo gonna sample that shit now too. and while i'm here, there was talk of a video of me enjoying my own electronic repair skills in a recent post. just for laughs, it is here)

Kent enjoying all that clean

The house (ha, ok, medium sized room with bathroom attached) has been cleaned, thank you very much (no, thank you darling housewife...), all clothes put away, even the ones hanging over the bed head (which has been our quasi-wardrobe since we got here), the floor has been vacuumed (though how a piece of shit that small and pathetic with NO suction whatsoever can make SO MUCH noise is truly beyond me), and the crap on the floor has been shoved under the bed. Now our medium sized room resembles a medium-large sized room! It is very exciting, and allows space for all sorts of fun!

look how short my hair is!! :(
(In case I forgot to mention last blog entry, there was a traumatising haircut experience.
See lack of hair here and my school photos from year 7 for more information.
Those of you who knew me back then, you understand the horror.)

Being inside on a rainy day does make one yearn for Melbourne friends and family, coffee, blankets and disney dvds (for Kent especially [VOMIT, disney is evil]), but throw in a game of German Monopoly and Champagne for a friend's birthday on top of chocolate cereal and paper flags and rainy days here don't seem so bad after all!

mitte is the shit ... te.

haha - nice try lu
can't resist a kent-style play on words for a post title eh!?

Okaaaay, so maybe Kent should stick to the post titles.

Oh wait no, he's too busy posing.

fyi, i don't pose.
i just happen to naturally respond to camera proximity.
and your post title is more than suitably silly for our standards.
(grasping for straws a bit there aren't we?)

Berlin: always ahead of the crowd. I am pretty sure this was for sale.
"Being cool is so un-cool now. It is better to be un-cool - that is cool" (direct quote from my hairdresser.)


NOW. For our beloved readers, there appears to be some small confusion! For those who are reading this from their email rather than online, I would just like to reiterate that any text in RED (like now) is a LUCY comment, and any text in BLACK (like that) is a KENT comment. Just so you don't think one of us is writing the whole schizophrenic thing. Wow, I can spell schizophrenic! I didn't know!

Love Lucy (I did, however, just make a typo on my own name. But I fixed it. Sigh.)

yeah man, you can totes tell the dodgy grammar is mos def lucy's. Fuck you.

Anyway. Kent and I have discovered some truths, mostly about ourselves. One is, that we are every bit the gigantic Yuppies we always feared and despised. This is a little bit upsetting. But what can you do? So today we may have accidentally gone on an out-of-control shopping spree around Mitte.

look, i wouldn't call myself a yuppie, per se.
yuppies, to my mind are more generally associated with
housing investments, share portfolios and careerism.
but, it is fair to say, we do like things to be
clean, generally well-ordered and made with care and consideration.
Ah but this is the new yuppie Kent. I don't think people who use the term 'yuppie' even know what terms such as housing investments, share portfolios and careerism, even mean. Yuppie is now for people like us (people who say they are artists or creative types who swan around sipping their lattes while clutching several shopping bags and an iphone.) - it's ok. Anyone else have a view? How interesting!

i am not, nor ever will be, a yuppie. no sirree.

Mitte cops a lot these days, because it is 'so cool' and 'so touristy' that it is 'so shit'. But it's not! Well maybe, I suppose because we were there ... being so cool ... and so touristy ... and so shit. I mean, it is quite nice. There is quite a lot of quite cool street art which plasters the uglier bits of nicer buildings.


We checked out the Jewish quarter (well, the ex-jewish quarter really) and found some amazing architecture. Then went inside and KA-BOOM accidentally bought clothes. I do believe tourists are the only ones with multiple (or any) shopping bags in Berlin, I felt very conspicuous. And very yuppie. It was a new, rather unpleasant sensation. Odd.

note: hand-held camera in hand (we should have seen it coming).

erk! look at me. the 1990s version of me wants to kick myself in the balls right now.
Haha, your past self thinks you're a loser Kent!
no no, not a loser, maybe a sell out though.


There is a heap of paste ups adorning the streets, smiling down on you from crumbly buildings.

ok well this one was smiling up from the building, what with being near the ground and all ...



It ain't Berlin without Bowie. He is pasted on the walls and seems to be playing in every shop you walk into. Power to Bowie.

i don't even know WHAT this is - fairy? child? turnip? all of the above? I LOVE it!


Little nooks lead to slightly bigger nooks, where one would expect beer to happen a little later (this we may check out).



Found yet some more nice cafe goodness, enjoyed my sojamilch cappuccino (thank you very much) - though did I mention Germans don't put chocolate dust on cappuccino's here?! What the hell?!
i'm cool with that actually. if you want chocolate, order a heiss Schokolade.
besides, i consumed hot chocolate everyday for a month, time for a break.
(this excludes the amazing milka daim blocks of pure heaven chocolate gross)
It's not the point. I don't even drink cappuccinos usually, cuz they are too frothy,
but here they are made like flat whites. So that is why you get them. Duh.


The ever-elusive TV Tower. The creepy thing is that this thing is like the sun. It doesn't matter where the hell we are in the city, we can ALWAYS see it and it is ALWAYS that far away. We can't seem to get any closer to the damn thing! But it is great to know "oh we're near the TV tower, so we must be ... near ... somewhere."

Kent having a rather vintage-blog moment.
(Can you even say vintage-blog? Well that's new. Or old. Gaaah.)
jebus, i look like a giant in that chair. what i wouldn't do for a decent arm chair in this place!

Made it home in time for some very sweet drawing sessions and cups of tea. Our bird paste ups are on their merry way (slowly slowly - at this stage I usually get about a third of the way through one, and then decide I don't like it anymore and want to try something different. And that is why I am now over here, typing about thinking about making things, rather than just doing it. I have purchased a (yuppie) notebook so that I can write these ideas down myself, rather than bombard you guys!
yeah, what's with that? finish a damn bird already.
It's fucking finished! Fucker!!!
and again, liking moleskine, acid-free paper notebooks, does not a yuppie make.
who wants to draw on toilet paper?
bogans - that's who.
Kent ... I don't think anybody draws on toilet paper ...
though you certainly could here, what with the toilet paper being like fricken cardboard.


In other vital news, Kent has FIXED his headphones (there was a previous incident, that went something like "oh my headphones aren't really working properly, I know, I will just cut them open with a pair of scissors, oh no, I broke them - *sob"), which I know you were all waiting with baited breath to hear about. The above is pure, unadulterated Kent joy. There is a film of this, which I hope I will figure out how to post shortly.
in my defence, they were actually fucked. the inside, sealed plastic jack connection was cactus
and there was 2 alternatives:
1. chuck 'em
2. fix 'em
i'm a sculptor (oh god here we go) so it's an unwritten law that i should be able to concoct something. and, i must blow my own trumpet here, coz the internal wiring was enamel coated, which means you cannot simply twist positive and positive together, negative and negative together, and kapow, they work (which is the standard way, with speaker wires). so, with some clever work with a scalpel (thanks lu), the delicate positioning of a cigarette lighter and some gaffa tape - voila! - fixed baby!!
Kent in his brand-new leisure suit.
side note: if i wear a certain combination of all my new clothes,
i am the very epitome of the eastern european ketamine/ghb dealer. it's a bit tragic really.

see !! -
I would like to note that this photo was voluntarily posted by Kent.
only to illustrate a point, dear.
plus, i be one groovy mofo.
(eeew - i made myself vomit a little)

Another great day for our heroes, ducking here and there, drinking coffee, donating our services to the economy, and doing what we generally do best (moseying and indulging) - thanks Berlin! You are SO un-cool!! (Meaning you are cool. I think.)

sour kreuz blurgh

just a quickie post today

we went to check out a part of town called kreuzberg, see what all the fuss was about.
it's supposedly a pretty happening area of berlin.

maybe monday wasn't the best to time to go coz it was kinda boring. (Understatement: was quite boring.)


and, good lord, what a butt ugly shambles too.

sorry to piss on you kreuzy, and i was serious about the timing,
we know we totally came to check you out on the worst possible day for ya.
mondays in berlin are like sundays elsewhere. it's a recovery day, not a show-off-you-wares day.
fo sho it ain't.
nonetheless, you is one crappy looking berg.
though to be fair, I am pretty sure the building above looks like that every day.
(there's satellite dishes everywhere - surely you can mount them on the roof people. just saying.)

and yes yes, i know you suffered through years of neglect, so i ain't blaming you for your down-on-your-luck, sewer-stinking, spit-covered-footpath, shambolic state of affairs. and i know you have some great shit going on behind your vomity roll-up doors.
granted.
so i do feel bad saying you is one ugly assed burb.
i really do.

but facts is facts.

you ugly!

thankfully, street art adorns your walls and adds some visual flavour.

i think we were put on the back foot pretty early
when we went into a cafe to get some coffee, as you do,
and lucy ordered a milch-kaffee mit sojamilch
(which is exactly what it sounds like, a milk coffee with soy milk),
and the waiter dude was all like , 'wha?' and she said it again and he kinda scoffed and was all like,
'ha! no. we haven't succumbed to the soy coup yet'.
douche.
it's not a fad, it's a freakin' necessity if you're allergic to milk, ya moron.
This wasn't that bad, what was worse was the couple sitting next to us who proceeded to stare at me for the entirety of our stay (I made a quick exit as soon as Kent was done to get myself an ACTUAL COFFEE [by this stage it was well into the afternoon, I had had no coffee at all by this stage, was menstrual, everything was bad, you understand]) as well as have a detailed discussion (in German of course, so I couldn't even eavesdrop!) about sojamilch. I am LACTOSE INTOLERANT you fuckers!!! At this stage I was thouroughly missing the comforts of Prenzlauer Berg's fabulous array of flavoured sojamilch options.

but y'know, hey, it's your town, man. we don't have to like it.
that's a.ok.

we found a pretty cool clothes shop, had some really good stuff in it,
like, par examplay, the pants i already bought in copenhagen, which are just fabulous (does anybody else think that that just sounded über campy? [yeeah, I just spent 15 mins trying to google 'shortcut key on a mac for an umlaut over the u. I am dork, what can I say? I know what I can say, I am a dork who now knows how to umlaut that shit up.] sorry Kent, back to you ... ),
although $100 for a tshirt, whilst it was a killer tshirt, was just not doing it for me today.
(Me thinks somebody is hinting for a birthday preseeeent!)

i did, however, totally dig your lamp sculptures and your fern bath.
Me too - Kent, we should totally have a fern bath when we move back to Melbourne. As in, like the one below, not, we should have a bath together with some ferns. That would be weird.


so. that was one part of an otherwise really hyped little neck of the woods. (I concur.)
no doubt we'll back to sample it's various other bits and re-investigate it on a more inviting day.
so all that harsh testament above, coming as it does, from a spoiled western academic type from the antipodes, must be taken with a grain of salt. (We really are brats aren't we.)

'twas but a mere first impression of a clearly hardened and suffered surface.
Oh stop being so nice Kent. It was a boring suburb (not its fault) that has been glorified by one too many pretentious magazines proclaiming it to be the only 'real' Berlin left. What the fuck does that even mean?! Just because I like the park at the end of my street and enjoy my decaf-vanilla-soy-mocha-latte-extra-froth* I'm not in real Berlin?! Fuck off!

*Quite an exaggeration. Like I would drink decaf.

boing

exciting news

! spring !

finally Kent's wit runs out.

haha!
lucy's probably gonna hate this photo opening this post - but it's cute as.

Fuck you Kent!!! I would like to note that this is KENT's late night souvlaki, that he shoved in my hand before running off, thus my 'Eh?!' expression. What the hell is happening with my lips? Yikes.

the art productivity continues apace.
we were playing around with some giant birds, testing out some options,
and have a vague idea to produce a series of large paste-ups of long legged, birds of spring.
above, lucy's testing out some pattern options.
the bird on the left is more like the direction we'll probably take, with long spindly legs about 1.5m.

yesterday was a pretty long day actually, we headed out, firstly, to the nature museum.

billed as the 5th largest nature museum in the world, we super excited and all prepared to be wowed and enthralled at the vast array of the collection.



sadly, we were underwhelmed.
it was a good collection, no worries there, but not that big. i think adelaide has a reasonably similar-sized collection. it was worth a look still, and we got to see some huge dinosaur skeletons, about 43 000 small samples of crystals and, terrifyingly, a room devoted to the 'art' of musuem-quality taxidermy.
that was horrific. you could imagine the details, no need to elucidate them here.

this, however, was equal parts hilarious to the horror.
an early example of taxidermy. so atrociously and poorly executed it makes you laugh.
until you realise a beautiful little wild animal was hunted down in africa so that some douche bag in a white coat and pipe could practice getting his anatomical construction skills together.

yes, taxidermied baby birds stuffed into taxidermied mummy bird.

seriously, the wonder was lost when we went to the bird section and and and there was a duck and a ... quail (? maybe?) with a whole loot of little cute as taxidermied ducklings and quail-ettes and we were all like "woooooah sooooo cuuuuuuute" but then like "oooooh nooooooooo!! who kidnaps ducklings only to kill and stuff them?!" WHYYYYYYY?!?!!?

and...

oh.
my.
god.

this monkey - argh! ! ! !

it may be hard to make it out properly here, but this face was mounted on a mirror.
it has its right eye left empty which means you could look at it,
line up your own eye and... bang... you were the monkey.
i tried to capture here as best i could with the camera angle and stuff, but if you click on the image to make it bigger, you should see my eye there. in situ, it was fully in place.

i cannot articulate how provoking this effect was.
it.
freaked.
the fuck.
out of me.
seriously, it nearly made me cry. even thinking about it now.

of course, my natural inclination now is to make this into an artwork.

anyway, i don't wanna give the impression that the joint was a misery guts of a place.
it was good.
as far as these things go.

there was this one amazing climate-controlled room with flasks of fish.
it looked more amazing as a space than anything else.


Department of mysteries anyone?



Woah! This is a fish in a jar - fucking freaky shit, no? I kept hearing "Luuuucy, why did you let me diiiiie?"

"I thought we were friiieeeeends" BAAAARGH!


after that, we nicked off to the contemporary art show down the road.
(ps - 'nicked off'...? being in a foreign language culture really messes up your own natural lingo.)
(pps - see! 'lingo'?!)

lots and lots of art.
LOTS.
i'm gonna try and write a review about some of the stuff we saw and see if i can get it published.
if i can i'll post it up here.
so i won't ramble on about that now. (Cuz it was pretty boring - though to be fair, awesome fucking collection. But made less awesome by security guards following you into every corner - look dude, I ain't gonna steel a 10 metre Andy Warhol. I just wanted to have a LOOK. Gah.)





and then...
we saw a collection of short films about animals (twas an animal themed day apparently)
in a little place we almost couldn't find.
It was quite weird.
For the record, our fabulous hanky-map of Berlin did an epic not-so-fabulous-after-all fail. The gallery was NOT where the map said it was.
But we found it, with some super-bold doorbell ringing on my part.
where they practically apologised for charging us €1 for a beer.
What we thought would be an epically cool vibey film viewing ended up being Kent, myself and three very nervous Brits, being shut in a dark room of quiet viewing.
lucy learnt about seahorse males carrying the bebbies in a pouch,
and that video art, for the most part, bores her into a stupor.

Oh no, I already knew that. It wasn't even video art really. Donkeys pissing on the floor is NOT THAT INTERESTING. I don't give a shit how good your lens is. I just thought it would be a little more fun drinking beer and glancing and a little less sitting in a lecture theatre and not speaking. It was like being at school!

sometimes, it truly is gruelling.

and then we were off to drinks and magicians and 7ft german men at the bar (i stood next to this dude, and i didn't even reach his shoulder. i actually felt my ego shrivel. and yes - i said my ego...) and strange little german men fawning over our norwegian drinking partner and discussions about paper wrapped inside souvlakis in melbourne.

we finally acclimatised to the berlin hours and actually stayed up until 230am!
'twas a fun evening at a local bar called wohnzimmer with renee and stefano.
i kept getting the surly pregnant bar chick, who just glowered at me whenever i said anything in deutsch,
and lucy got the friendly (and sexy) spanish bar dude, who seemed well flirty.
quoteth my wife, 'i could so have picked up if i wanted'.
nice. (It's true - he was into me.)

and we had an old drunk english magician come and play tricks at our table
...and gyrate his creaky old hips in renee's face. (He was seriously into Renee, kept saying "tricks for the lay-deees!" while humping near her head.)
his tricks were ok
(they were quite good, except he kept doing maths related tricks,
which were lost on me, and then cracking up and saying "oh no I made a mistake ho ho ho!")
he finally left, after we spattered some loose change into his top hat (he was not impressed),
to wow the other punters with his charms.

Note to self: as soon as an English man discovers your Australian-inity, he WILL latch on like a mollusk.

fun times.

so, to really piss off lucy - some more drunken goodness.
(ps - lucy just looked over my shoulder and screamed,
"nooo! you're so mean. just 'cause you're GOING BALD!!")

It's true. He is. Photos to come. This means war.

just for that... one more!

Fuck! You gonna die Kent!