(A few notes from last weekend)

Friday
Aurel, Ottensen with Sebastien & Fred
then Sommersalon, Reeperbahn,
then a surreal wander through the red corridors
then back to Sommersalon
then KFC
then S-Bahn, fell asleep, ended up in Elbgaustrasse, back to Altona, fell asleep on wrong platform, feel asleep on S-Bahn & almost missed Othmarschen
home 0530 or something...

Saturday
recovery
drew the Head of Madonna from La Pietà by Michelangelo

Sunday
met up with Kasia for a cultural crawl in the city...
Julia Stoschek "I Want To See How You See" @ Deichtorhallen.
an outdoor rave/after-party by the river (?!)
Körber-Foto-Award 2010 / Michael Schirmer @ Haus der Photographie
browsing through photos in the bookshop
McFlurry
beer at Saal II, Sternschanze, watching the girls, boys and couples go by

Frühling Friday Lunchtime

Vanilla milk drink in right, Berliner in left
Fri.23.04.2010

I-IV 2010

 

Feisty feline

Larry the Literate

Despite this week being one of the busiest weeks at work, the fact that I'm over almost two weeks late with my rent and have had to grind out this weekend in anticipation for March's already-late wages tomorrow meant that I was forced to reflect a lot about my tenure here in Hamburg. Hindrances aside this reluctant weekend of rest has led me to read and 'study' - and reading is what I have done a lot since the turn of the year.

I've never really picked up a book of fiction to read leisurely until this year and it was spurred on by the limitation of having no computer and hence, no internet. This liberated me to seek for other, and more worthwhile, activities and one that I have wholesomely embraced is the act of reading. My landlord's living room walls are literally bookshelves from floor to ceiling which intrigued me in the long winter nights to discover something new. Since departing for Hamburg I've been reading books at an exponential rate where I find myself today even dabbling in a bit of deutsch literature (?!).

A little recap on what I've buried my head into then (in chronological order since October 2009):
- "The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton
- "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard
- "Sketches by Boz" by Charles Dickens (still reading...)
- "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde
- "1984" by George Orwell
- "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- "Atmospheres" by Peter Zumthor
- "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell

Ironically I've read a lot of English literature during a time when I'm not even in the country and in a sense I've got a newfound affinity for London as depicted in some of these tales, whetting my appetite for my return to The Big Smoke.

Ostern in Ochtrup

It was exactly five years to the weekend that I first met Markus "Der Superbauer" Rohling and it felt like destiny that I returned to the place where my life changed profoundly. I spent this past Easter weekend in Ochtrup, a village less than an hour from Münster to fulfil a promise that was long overdue. There were too many momentous occasions and intoxicated-influenced occurrences in this single trip to write about within this single entry but one worth highlighting was the "Osterfeuer" on Easter Sunday evening. One of Markus's friends, Timo had invited everyone round to his family farm to light a bonfire, a traditional ritual at Easter time in Germany. We could see from afar other bonfires from neighbouring farms and we were lucky enough to get the fire raging before the heavens began to pour upon the pastures. A shabby wooden passenger wagon was the place of refuge for the party to watch the Osterfeuer in (semi-)shelter before we drowned ourselves in Weinbrand (cognac and coke) in the party room with a jukebox on hand to keep the soundtrack lively and varied. I had pretty much been drinking the whole weekend from a monstrous 3-litre glass that by the time it got to Easter Monday I was glad to be having an alcohol-free evening.

The Easter break alleviated some of the uncertainty which clouded the past couple of weeks with regards to my position at work. However, this was transcended tenfold by the humble and humorous shenanigans I had experienced once again in this farmland in which a part of my heart is embedded (and the eggshell that I broke free from in 2005 - no pun intended).

Pictures to follow...

Fischmarkt follies

Nino, Kasia & I at Sommersalon

It was at half-eight on Sunday morning when I got home from the Fischmarkt after a night out starting at Sommersalon bar at the heart of the Reeperbahn (a bit of a change, but nonetheless it was with the company of the ever-present fellow weekenders Nino & Kasia and later, Sebastien) with a view to bopping to the funk at Astra Stube. The planned funk night disintegrated as the stalwart members of the band were not present and so random MCs descended onto the stage forming a circle in which each attempted to spit rhymes at the slowly-vanishing crowd, ourselves included. I recall one MC managing to incessantly repeat "AL PACINO!" for every other line, at which point we decided to scarper for Kulturhaus 73 for a brief while (Sebastien going AWOL at this point, such was the drunken compass he was following). So the trio involuntarily and spontaneously decided to head down to the Fischmarkt; it was my second time at this bizzarely lively recurrent event and we found ourselves munching on a currywurst before absorbing the buzz of the live concert in the Fischmarkthalle at what must've been 7a.m. Droves of people appearing to sway and shuffle to the peripheral stands in my hazy perception which was sharpened by the rock band belting it down the entire length of the steel-structured hall to rows of revellers savouring the last few moments of the Saturday just gone. We crossed paths with Alex and Michael arriving from their respective parties and with everyone in jubilant mood the weekend really couldn't get any better.

We agreed to meet up the next day but it so transpired that we didn't, so I took the chance, whilst in town, to check out Claude Monet's "Camille" (1866) temporarily being displayed at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as I had wanted to see it again for a while. The sight of it cemented what was one of the most memorable times I have had in Hamburg to date.