2nd post about my offline weekend at the sea. I told you about a bike tour up and down the almost 475,3 glacial drifts on Usedom. It started to rain around noon and we went to see an exhibition in Zirchow near the airport Heringsdorf. Something about miniature worlds, just like in Hamburg or Berlin here and just a little bit smaller and with so much more love. So much love that I would never expect from the people here. All the love they could find for a little museum. <3 Its all hand made and a bit... hmm amateurish, but so charming. I wish I could have met a little fairy girl who tipped me with her magic wand and said: "From now on you're as tall as a thumb and you will have to live in this miniature world for the rest of your life!" I would have agreed happily.

Drifting again. Uhm..

Next stop a backyard museum in Dargen, not far away from Zirchow. All the funny old trash from the island collected in a big farm building area. Old cars, old interior from GDR, books, busses, toys.. e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g! Very interesting and with a little cafe.

Not much more babbling. You see, I totally enjoyed a few days off and I really did not miss a thing.
I never asked you to follow me, but this time... do it!

More information:
My Flickr stream
Museum in Dargen (german)
Miniaturwelten Zirchow (german, with beautiful umlaut fail (that is also part of their charm concept))

Isn’t it?!

Well, I took some days off last weekend, packed my bag without any digital networking toys and went up to the sea. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the communicating and surfing and blipping, tweeting and buzzing and bim bam and plong, but I wanted to test how it feels like without all that for a few days.

First day I went fishing with my dad, just like in the old days. We caught, not the eels, but like 10 basses and other fish thats, sorry mother nature, not worth to be mentioned. Well, mom fried it and honestly thats the only way I really like to eat fish. Second day no story, no pictures. Just drifting through the day. Third day a longer bike trip with my parents around the Usedom outback down to Kamminke at the uh uhm… Szczecin Lagoon uuuh. Thats how the English call it. In german simply Oderhaff.

I made two important mistakes on that tour. Do not climb embankments in sandals! Its easy to slip and fall down a few meters and decorate your arms and legs in blue and red. Second, mosquitos seem to be very hungry up there. Don’t give them the chance to taste from your uhm… yes actually precious and self-needed blood. Life gives lot of lessons. Mosquito bites are nasty and long lasting souvenirs. Embankment slides too.
So much writing again. Not a bla bla blog here.

I put some pictures up on my Flickr from the first 2 1/2 days. Rest later!

More information:
My Flickr stream
Kamminke
Oderhaff

We went there for watching the football game in the torrid heat. Kiki Blofeld is one of the now popular beach bars at the river spree in Kreuzberg. Its big area, very green, with funny dolls and chandeliers in the trees and a great old boat house with terrace. It also has a few bars, kicker and an outdoor billiard table, music i guess when no football, a little restaurant, diner, lots of space just to hang around and chill and water, water, water. 1€ for the entrance and the obligatory hedonism statement just like Bar 25 across the river or any other establishment in Berlin. Very nice!

A few more pictures on my Flickr stream.

More information:
My Flickr stream
Kiki Blofeld Website

I rummaged in my iMovie project folder yesterday and found an unfinished project with pictures from a photo session in February this year on Alexanderplatz. I remember me standing there packed in a warm jacket, scarf and mittens and camera remote, trying to make some good long time exposures from the scene. Brrr. Well I finally finished this one last night. Made a little sound track with Garage Band, put it together and brought on my Flickr account. (I recommend watching it in full screen, even if the quality is real bad due to Flickrs weird compression method.)

The title picture here was made in the same night, when I was looking for some warm up in the BUS 200.

Like promised, a second post with a few more pictures from my Hamburg trip last weekend. So I had a few hours before the train left and I spent it around the city and the Binnenalster watching what the crazy Hamburg folk is doing on a sunny sunday at the water. Just to shorten it a bit. They sat into those huge transparent plastic beach balls, zipped the zippers and blew them up and then they jumped into the water. All that was an art happening, not happening, event rather from the Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe Hamburg and Viva con Agua de St. Pauli.

I made a few pictures. Clickidi!

More information:
Article in Hamburger Abendblatt (german)
Event homepage
My photo stream on Flickr

Have been to Hamburg last weekend. Just a bit touristing and shopping. It was not one of those woah kind of trips, probably because I was only staying for one night and most of the time I had to stroll around the harbor for taking as much maritimities as I could. Did the obligatory boat tour, had 82347 fish with bread rolls and the visited the Fischmarkt around 7 in the morning on Sunday. I went to the Kunsthalle and took a look at paintings by Phillip Otto Runge. I spent way too much money on summer clothing (how naive) and stayed in the red light district. The hotel receptionist got the name Gundula. She was a lot like the witch duck in Donald Duck comics. Do you remember? I am sure she works as a mentalist part time. She had the most dramatic kohl lines that I have ever seen. That impressed me. That, the wanderer above the sea of fog from Caspar David Friedrich and… sorry, Hamburg.

This is the first batch. Go and look at it. Click Click!

More infromation:

My Flickr Stream
Hamburg on Wikipedia

Oh ye ye.. that was a few weeks ago already. My dad came for a visit and after some rainy days we had a beautiful saturday and decided to take one of the tourist boats up and down the river Spree. Means from Treptower Park over to the Schloss Charlottenburg in 2 hours and the same way back. As much as I hate those tourist tours, tourist humps, tourist places and everything tourist related here, but the boat tour was nice stroke for my water-loving, sea-missing heart.

So what was so lovely about it?! Beside the totally egoistic fact to be on the water for 4 hours, of course a look at all the things that you do not see from that particular perspective, when you’re on the land. Like the Oberbaumbrücke, all the government buildings, museums, churches and hidden areas right by the water in the east and also west of the city. Oh my, I actually dont wanted to write such long posts here. Well, I recommend it no matter if you’re a new berliner or living here for 10 years now.

Just a last hint, that you will ignore and step in the same trap like I did. As I said, a beautiful day, sun and no clouds, warm, but not too, because of the usual wind on the water. I took my jacket off, only wearing a tank top and ding dong I got a terribly and I am not overdoing, a terribly sun burn on my shoulders and nose. So if youre sensible and ingnorant like I am, dont forget sun milk, or leave the jacket on. Pictures on my Flickr account, like always.

More information:
Stern- und Kreisschifffahrt Berlin
My Flickr Stream

Just something little before the big post comes about the boat tour yesterday.

This is my beloved cat Daisy. Ouu, I hear you giggle. Daisy is not the prettiest cat on the planet and by god not the nicest and most polite one here. She is a little devil, fights the other cat, catches birds, kills them, destroys a lot of things and bothers me with her irrepressible urge to get all attention in the world. But then sometimes, when she is sleeping under her brown blanket, only her head sticks out and she looks like one of those funny teddies from Star Wars or when she comes when I am sad and rubs her nose against me or at night when she sleeps on my pillow just right next to my head and is purring quietly…

Ah well, she is the funniest fur ball in the world.

I made this shot with a cannon on sparrows, like germans say. She was 1 meter from me behind the window while I was sitting outside on the balcony, pointing the tele zoom on her.

Okay this is just a short part of the whole story. The rest later. You press your thumbs and I kick my butt.

This is about my secret love for the Futuro House. I was biking through Treptower Park and along Plänterwald on the weekend and found this little gem on the other side of the river Spree. I knew we have a Futuro House here in Berlin and it would have been easy just to mark it on a map but this way it felt like seeking and then finding easter eggs.

The Futuro House for those who are not into plastic house loving is a kinda prefabricated house from the late 60s. 100 were built and a few are still intact like in Sweden or New Zealand or Florida and one in Berlin – Number 13 btw. This one belongs to personal property now and I have no idea if there is a chance to visit it.

The other Futuro, previously in Düsseldorf was shipped to the arctic as a home for scientists and researchers there. This one belonged to Charles Wilp (artist) and was even visited by Warhol and Christo earlier, before Wilp had to take it down from the roof of his house. You know, german restrictions. Well its dancing with the polar bears now.

Oh right, where is it? If its enough for you just to look at it like on this picture, you just take the route I took. Along Treptower Park then leaving the Plänterwald behind and right behind the power plant in Rummelsburg you see it lurking between the trees. If not, you have to go to the former Funkhaus on Nalepastraße and ask them for letting you in their garden just to drool on the Futuro House. Good luck!

More information:
Wikipedia Futuro House
List of all remaining houses
NY Times article

Becoming and Decaying is the title of a photo exhibition at the c/o Altes Postfuhramt in Berlin Mitte. I like photo exhibitions, photography is my beloved hobby and I love to see what and how others do.

The Ostkreuz Agency for Photographers curated the whole thing and it was about the coming, the being and fading of urban realities. Like (spoiler!) the becoming of Dubai for example with all the big construction sides and then the being in Manila with pictures from the edges of poor and rich living and the fading. That was my favorite part of the exhibition with pictures from Prypiat.

Prypiat is a place in the former UdSSR thats only like 4km from the Tschernobyl area away. So when the reactor crashed, they had to leave immediately and had to leave all their things behind. Now the nature does not care too much about radioactivity (except the human nature) and its getting back in this place, with trees that grow right through a parlor and funny little squirrels sniffing around in an old music room. Okay the last thing was fantasized by me, but I bet it would have been like that if they were not disturbed by the photographer.

Anyway, go and look at it. Its not one of those super nice must see exhibitions, but the Postfuhramt is always worth to be visited. Oh, and I loved the portraits.

After that I had a nice little walk through Mitte with a new friend and took some pictures here and there. On my Flickr.

More information:
C/O Berlin Exhibition Information
Ostkreuz Agency for Photographers
Wikipedia Prypiat
Flickr Stream