babička in rožnov

we spent a few days with my grandma - my babička - in rožnov pod radhoštěm, a village in the east of czech republic. it was great to see her again!

and did a few little walks through the forests and the green green hills :)

krakow

my grandmother, the only one in the extended family who admits to believing in any gods, said to me before we went to poland: 'watch out ondro, they're fanatics over there. they're militants.'

incidentally the polish countryside looks like a bomb hit it. are they spending so much time in church that they can't do a bit of a clean up?

in krakow, at 10 o'clock at night, we passed a church (not the cathedral you see in the vid) and there were people chanting inside. i love the sound of chanting in churches/temples/mosques etc, and rushed in to make the recording you hear on the vid. the place was packed. i looked around at all the people - tourists surely? - but then i realised that i was the only one not chanting, and the people around me who couldn't fit on the benches we'ren't crouching down to get a better photo of the ceiling - they were kneeling down and praying to jesus and mary and john and the others. i had that mild sense of panic you feel when you're surrounded by people for whom the basis of life is an abortion of logic. after a minute i left and found g waiting outside. 'i couldn't go in' he told me. 'i can't be in confined spaces surrounded by fanatics'.

there were pictures of blessed pope john paul II all over the place. on trams, in parks, on buildings. hasn't sinead o'connor been clear about the fact that this man is the enemy of the people? get your rosaries off my ovaries jp!

please check your horoscope for more details.

6,000,000 dead in the congo since i left highschool...

the atomic bomb museum in hiroshima and the jewish museum in berlin are places where the inhumanity of man is presented in such matter-of-fact, excruciating intimacy, that one is moved by an overwhelming sense of empathy - based on our common experience of being human - and one's view of life is changed. auschwitz needs no introduction, we all know of the horrors that occurred there. but the way the site is mismanaged, turning sorrow into cash by way of duplicity, and churning thousands of people through dry presentations of items with no human stories - nothing personal that one could access the site by - left us feeling angry and cheated for days afterwards. information presented by signs and tour guides were often conflicting, sometimes leaving out facts, at other times exaggerating. surely the truth is enough in a place like this? what more could possibly be needed? what a terrible, terrible shame for the victims, and to all humans who have inherited this historical legacy.

i will make one note though. of the many hundreds of thousands of gays that died under the nazi regime, about 15000 died at auschwitz after short lives as the lowest rung of all prisoners. upon liberation, some were forced to complete the sentences (for sexual perversion) that the nazis had given them by british and american lawyers who saw their crimes as valid. they are the only minority group who didn't receive compensation from the german governments after the war. and yet, of these thousands of victims, not a single sign, not a single utterance by a single guide was made of their existence at auschwitz among the long lists that were presented of other peoples murdered there. how are any of auschwitz' victims served by the exclusion of some of their members from history? does this not reduce their suffering too? why does politics play such a role in what we are allowed to remember? and if ever i wonder whether i'm over-reacting, i only need to check into a krakow hotel and get a snigger from reception staff when we insist on a double bed and not two singles, or walk through a medieval town square during a glorious sunset where loving straight couples walk hand-in-hand without thinking twice, but where i - with a pang of shame and pain - choose not to hold my lover's hand for fear of having my head bashed in, and then i realise that i'm not over-reacting, and that the way we remember history determines the way we live our lives today. in fact, i'm simply not angry enough.

keep congo in your hearts.

český krumlov and the festival of the five-petal rose

we knew that we were in czech republic just by listening to the radio - suddenly the music was modern and funky, as if we had been suddenly delivered from the 1980s that still plague modern germany. we scooted on down to český krumlov for 3 nights to soak up the UNESCO world heritage buildings, but got sucked into a time warp and thrown back farther than the 80s. in fact we were transported all the way back to the middle ages!

WTF I hear you cry. we asked ourselves the same question when we found out that we had turned up during the medieval festival of the five-petal rose. as it turned out it was a celebration of all things medieval in a setting that lent itself to the experience – a 500 year old town preserved in its entirety. there were hordes of people dressed in medieval costume, medieval food, medieval music and dancing, live chess by people dressed as pawns, bishops, knights etc on a 20 x 20 metre chessboard, jugglers, jousters and more!

It all had the makings of a geek-fest that could go horribly wrong, but it was so well planned that it went horribly right. It was pouring with rain half the time but people were just really into the spirit of it – everyone was there to have fun. A busload of chinese tourists even turned up in medieval costume – it was wild!

At midnight we stood on a little island in the river under a cliff that overhangs the town. From the castle roof we watched fireworks exploding overhead as people called out in jubilation. I was holding G’s hand so tightly and in that moment there, I felt so wildly, presently, wonderfully, completely alive.

On our final day before heading east we headed out to šumava national park and did a little hike/got lost in the forest and bushbashed for a few hours. It’s so good to touch base with nature!

dresden

decades after the allies incinerated its inhabitants, another atrocity occurred in dresden: reconstruction. we visited this totally fake baroque city on our way to the czech pastures.

fleeing the reconstructed old town, we crossed the bridge and passed a group of angry protestors surrounded by police, screaming at the top of their lungs for a certain minority group to get out, out, OUT of germany. there was hate in their eyes and in their hysteria, and I felt that common fear one feels in the presence of angry fascist mobs. who did they want out of germany? the nazis! when did they want them out? now! i didn't even realise there were that many nazis left in deutschland...?

and then we reached the other side of the river and wandered up a street packed with nazis. everyone was selling hate-food and playing loud hate-techno with sub-sub-woofers that must have been screwed into the ground to make the pavement shake like it did. then at the end of the street was a park filled with drunken punks tattooed from head to toe, with the shit pierced out of every available and unavailable surface, crates of empty beer bottles littering the grass and hateful glares through hateful eyes. were they nazis or were they anti-nazis? were they extreme right or extreme left? all we knew is that we extremely wanted to get the fuck out of there.

We were left quietly pondering whether the city hadn’t been bombed 66 years too early…

the truth

should i tell you the truth? should i tell you that late one evening, while scanning the internet for reading material in german that i could actually understand i was visited by a projection of my future self? that he told me that i would take part in an epic battle against my as-yet-unmade nemesis right here in berlin, and that i would be aided in vanquishing her by a knowledge of the average price of a mojito in prenzlauer berg and a basic conversational level of german? that i would do well to join a bikram yoga club and wear the exact same tight red bathers that g had bought for me in thailand to increase my flexibility, that one day i would actually be able to touch my toes without bending my knees?

i was left with many questions that night. should i return to studying in order to maintain this lower-intermediate level of german that i feel that i am stuck in? how was it that those red bathers seemed to be so durable? and why did my future self have that silly haircut? or was it a wig? oh my god - was it a wig?!

a typical story, perhaps. but now we have reached our final week in berlin and it is time to leave. it has been nothing short of magical, and the last two weeks have been the best of an amazing lot. we are both so sad to go, but the time is right.

it was only last week, while overlooking a courtyard from a 5th story apartment near the overground train loop, that a stranger asked me: 'where is your home?' and i replied without thinking: 'berlin', and was almost shocked to hear myself say it. home is a feeling, and we both feel it here. perhaps home is potential. and berlin is filled with it.

goodbye berlin, we loved you. we look forward to seeing you again soon. and as for my nemesis, if you are reading this in the future, know this:

i am ready.

berghain

the berghain is a massive club housed in an old power plant in friedrichshain. we wanted to check it out before leaving the big B, as we knew that it consistently rates as the best club on earth. there's a bit of a random/exclusive door policy, and when we turned up, we saw hordes of people being turned away. the bouncer just points - into the door if you've been accepted, out the door if you've been rejected. it's quite unceremonious. there's no arguing - you must leave. i felt a little bit nervous when only one out of the fifteen people directly in front of us got let in, and a buzz of relief when we got the inwards-pointing finger. i realised 2 things at berghain:

1) with its 18m high ceilings and bare concrete slabs, advanced sound system, labyrinthine architecture and crowd of people that are actually there to party, berghain was quite probably the best big dance club i've ever been to.

2) i'm over clubbing: way over it.

unedited berlin ramblings

it's been weeks since i last vlogged, and i've got a backlog of videos that i have neither the time nor motivation to post, and so i've decided that i simply won't post them. perhaps just one - the visit of mother-in-law and sister-in-law to berlin. can't tarnish my record with the franco-family (franken-family?) so early in the european piece when they're expecting something. so at some stage you too can expect a delayed vlog with the in-laws. (edit: i've now made a simple slide-show and back-dated it to the entry before this one if you're interested in seeing pics of nicole and chantal's visit to berlin...) making videos is surprisingly time-consuming, and i don't feel like i'm conveying what i actually feel. i'm in a different place right now, so i need to get back to writing.

it's a warm day here in berlin - and that's the way i like it. the trees that line all the streets - which species are they? - weep in the heat, leaving oily patches of tears around their trunks. you can feel the little tears hitting you as you ride down the street and it's...almost liberating. i thought that the oil was relatively benign until i got some in my eye and it went red. maybe i was rubbing it too much. anyway, i don't take off my sunnies now.

yesterday we went out to großer müggelsee - the biggest lake around berlin - and had a bit of a paddle about. we walked from the train station to the edge of a narrow part of the lake and then through a tunnel under the lake to the 'untouched' far bank, where a trail led through the woods. there were piles of rubbish everywhere - all around the rubbish bins, lining the paths, in the forest, in the water. i was shocked. i sort of expect mass dumping in third world countries, but in the capital of the EU's economic powerhouse? it made me think of a time in high school when fu jie - one of my friends from china - and i were talking about national parks in australia. in response to a comment i made about how well preserved they were, he told me about a magical nature reserve near guangzhou that was so highly prized for its natural beauty by the chinese that they considered it sacred. i remember him using the line 'people take only pictures, leave only footprints'. it sounded amazing. when i went there in 2006, 10 years after this conversation, i found that the place was a fucking dump. people left their footprints alright, trampled all over the plants. they also left plastic bags full of rubbish and bottles thrown deep into the forest. then i felt angry with fu jie. how could he compare that shit to what australia has got? how can people just dump rubbish into the forest? i wanted to collect some of the rubbish - both then in china and yesterday in germany - but then i'm always struck by the sisyphian nature of such a task and i think: fuck you. fuck all of you.

anyway, back at großser müggelsee there were these enormous swans that chased everyone out of the water and then guarded the lake-front for a while as if they were getting off on being the dominant species for a few minutes. g had impregnated me with the fear because he's previously been attacked by a swan, and on that occasion came off second best. but the sunshine dappling through the trees and the sound of water washing up against the shore was too much - the lake was calling to me - and so i managed to push through some trees on the bank and out into the water before the swans had a chance to destroy me. g overcame his fears and joined me in the water. they say it's the cleanest lake in berlin and it was wonderful splashing about in the sun with the little fish. i must say that i stunk like i'd just crawled out of a rubbish bin and had to have a shower on returning home and change all my clothes.

today we visited an old bunker built by hitler and friends to shelter ~ 1500 people during the war. in the end over 4000 people crammed themselves into it. it was unique in that it was built above ground and was quite an impressive structure. it later became a banana storage facility during the DDR era, then was the site of rave parties and underground fetish sex clubs in the 90s, and was finally bought by a millionaire who constructed a penthouse on top of its 5 stories and filled the bunker with his private art collection that he opens for private tours at the weekend. the combination of art and nazi bunker/fetish venue made for a wonderful 90 minutes of guided art tour. no photography inside unfortunately.

we had some pasta afterwards around the oranienburger/friedrichstraße corner and after our previous bad experience with the meaty risotto served by the man with the shit on his face we've struck that corner off our potential eating list and won't be trying any more of the 20 or so restaurants in the area. you shouldn't either if you come to berlin.

i'm no longer studying german. as of about a fortnight ago i stopped cold. i realised that learning a language is a mammoth task, and i'd prefer to be fluent in fewer languages rather than able to communicate in many. i'm enjoying my french more than ever, and i can feel the steady pull of czech, drawing me gently towards it as if i were on a small boat on a lake at night, surrounded by fog, and i'm being drawn to the shore. the sheer effort required to maintain a language is not something that i can afford to expend on a language that i won't be using in the future, so i've put german to one side. i can't cut the cord completely. i love it too much. maybe i'll pick it up again in the future, but it needs to be pushed away for the time being.

the other major things that have happened since the last vlog are our visit to copenhagen and g's ex boyfriend's visit to berlin. both had very wonderful and very terrible aspects to them, and i'm not sure that i am in the right headspace to revisit them on this blog. incidentally, the blue-eyed danish men were possibly the most beautiful humans i've ever had the pleasure to lay eyes on (and then brazenly keep my eyes on for as long as possible) in my life. the women were invisible: a common complaint in northern europe. mum: it's not just women over 60 that are invisible - northern european women off all ages and gay men over 40 are invisible too. or so g tells me.

we've been experiencing a lot of berlin, checking out the lakes and forests, walking along the river, going to the circus, the theatre, the opera, to underground music and dance productions, galleries, open air parties, everything. berlin is one fucking amazing place. i miss it already and we haven't even left yet. we should have left on monday but extended our stay a couple of weeks because we were too in love with berlin, and not in the right head space for tourism. we leave soon, and the time will be right.

i have often spoken of a point that i reach when i'm travelling where i finally feel 'free'. it usually takes me a couple of months until the weight of whatever i was previously doing just slips away and i find myself in a completely different mind set. i realised that i've arrived there just this last couple of days. i'm next to the open window with a weeping tree just outside and the sky is a cloudless ceramic blue and i could just float on up, right into that cloudless sky.

wolves in berlin