The Early Years (2002-2005)

Now that I’m back in Singapore, this is the last post I’ll do about Germany for a while… as you might have noticed, photos of my journey are up, and I’ve written quick thoughts on two museums, the Ludwig in Cologne and the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, in Delta Sierra Arts, my reviews blog. And one last thing, here’s something I picked up at a German petrol station, a snack with a funny name:

The lusty month of May Crazy old woman calls cops because the pizza place won’t deliver just one slice Lindsay Lohan has lost her attractiveness Star Wars fans injured by their own homemade light sabres Female Thai prisoners need underwear The difficulty of getting into day care for dogs. What next, having to move to a good location because of the quality of obedience schools? But I love how the dogs are drawn in that classic Wall Street Journal style.

If I recall correctly, I remember the Economist noting that cultures have preferences for dealing with American imports - some use subtitling, like the French, while others, like the Germans, prefer dubbing. So over the last two weeks I had the somewhat surreal experience of watching Law & Order and Charmed in German. Some people get stuck with really lousy dubbed voices, such as Jesse L. Martin, who loses all the bass in his voice - on the other hand, Billy Crystal, who was in some obscure movie that I caught one Sunday, sounds more macho.

Yes, I was the DJ last night at Hideout. An “eclectic” set, with some entries from Modest Mouse, Ryan Adams, the Flaming Lips, and an excursion into beach house. Apologies for the tech issues, which affected the dynamics / volume of the whole thing, but I hope whoever was there had a good time. Here’s the set list.

Bad Godesberg is supposedly a nice residential part of Bonn, although it didn’t strike me as necessarily being nicer than the Altstadt. Since I walked around the area on Sunday in Germany, everything was closed: it was like a neutron bomb had hit the town. Walked down the shopping streets of Alte Bahnhofstrasse and Theaterplatz, and about the most exciting thing was a dog furiously trying to drink from a fountain, and constantly getting spritzed for his efforts.

On Saturday night, knackered after a long day at work, I watched the kitschfest that is the Eurovision Song Contest… I remember all the jokes about the contest when I was in the UK, and I remember the Diva International single after the year she won, but I’ve never seen the entire contest. What a cornucopia of cornball pop! To give a flavour of things, Switzerland’s entry was called Vanilla Ninja. Logically enough, Vanilla Ninja are a pop-rock all female band. And Latvia’s entry was a pair of blond boys singing a cheeseball composition called “The War is Not Over”. Meanwhile, Norway had a hair band with a guy wearing too much lipstick, like the Darkness without the irony. Or the musical skills. Faerielicious has her own responses to every band, plus a summary of the results.

I apologise if my entries on Germany have been absurdly lengthy compared to my usual mess of fun links (if you want one, here’s a recent BoingBoing bit on how monkeys learned to treat a robot arm as an extra appendage)

Since Saturday was a full working day, I had only one free weekend day, Sunday (22 May), and I used the short time to do the blitzkrieg tour that solo travel writers with deadlines to meet get used to doing: Beethoven’s house, das Kunstmuseum (modern art), die Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublick Deutschland (art/exhibitions hall - the name’s so wordy even the museum’s site has an abbreviated URL), das Haus der Geschichte der BRD (history of the Federal Republic of Germany - another mouthful of a name), das Museum Alexander Koenig (natural history), and the little castle of Godesburg and the surrounding neighbourhood of Bad Godesburg.

The elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, which Bonn is a part of, are over, and it looks like Schroeder’s SDU has lost quite badly to the CDU. Lots of noise in Dusseldorf, judging by the TV, but not many scenes of any sort in Bonn. (It only hit me later that the shuffle of people going into the Volkshochschule - high school - on a Sunday must have been voters.) If I’m understanding the TV right, it sounds like this is the first time the CDU has won in the state in ages… the incumbent premier Peer Steinbrück was talking about how the SDU has run the state for 39 years. He sounded really disappointed.

Randomly, this vaguely suggestive Archie comic cover made me laugh… From postmodernbarney. And Betty and Veronica look exactly the same except for hair colour. Discuss.

Went down to Cologne yesterday. The city’s Dom (cathedral) is the largest in Germany - wonder if Pope Benedict will make his way here sometime soon. The hike up the belfry was inordinately hard - the tower is 475 feet high, and after walking up 45-50 stories, my legs were about to collapse. It’s like a trick too - you reach what you think is the top, and then you have to climb another few stories to reach the real top. But such views. The cathedral was started in the 13th century and finished in the 19th century. Presumably in the past people were more willing to commit to a project that they knew would only be completed much later than their lifetime. For the glory of God und so weiter.

Am blogging from bonny Bonn, in eine Cybercafe - quite cheap really, 1 Euro pro Stunde… (which is to say, my German, I’ve discovered, is actually not so bad). These German keyboards kill me though, with all the punctuation nowhere near where you’d expect and the ‘y’ and ‘z’ keys swapped. Also interesting is that Blogger itself changes all its tabs based on the country you’re in - so “Settings” becomes “Einstellungen”… that seems weird, it might make it harder to blog about travelling.

Here’s the setlist for last Wednesday’s Hideout gig - nothing too out of the ordinary, but lots of fun. Was pleasantly surprised by the reception that the Joe Strummer version of “Redemption Song” received.

And… I’m off in a few hours! Will catch up on much-needed sleep on the flight.

Weird, I was editing a post and Blogger asked me to do one of those captcha things - where the word’s all fuzzy or curved or whatever and you have to type that in. New. Or maybe a Friday the 13th thing. Ah well, I’m no triskaidekaphobe, so I’ll guess they’re testing something new.

Busy packing for a work-related trip to Bonn. First time in Germany, despite all the time I’ve spent learning the language, so that should be fun. In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Sadly, Erin reports that no time travellers showed up at the Time Traveler Convention (the NY Times article on the convention is here), although she did have this experience: The other big highlight of the bouncing duties came when “Theodore Logan” claimed to be from the future. Even with the Keanu Reeves getup he was wearing, at first I didn’t process the joke. I asked him to prove it. “Wyld Stallions!” he said.

Good fun last night DJing. Absolutely knackered, so can’t say much. But thanks to all those who showed, it was slamming. Mr Brown has his take on what went down. I’ll post a set list soon.

In the annals of weird legislation, the Houston libraries are trying to define body odour as a nuisance: Now comes this little gem: banning BO. Last week, the Houston City Council passed a prohibition on “offensive bodily hygiene that constitutes a nuisance to others” in the city’s libraries.

Seeing that the 60th anniversary of V-E Day is just over, I thought I’d post this intriguing bit about a Singaporean who flew in World War II over Normandy: Singapore-born Wing Commander Tan Kay Hai was the first Straits Chinese to fly with the Royal Air Force and to win the Distinguished Flying Cross. He flew with 2 Squadron RAF on photo-recon missions in Mustangs over the D-Day beaches in June 1944.