Kategorie: Hier kommt alles rein!

Second Hand Shoes And Cats

I love to play tourist in my own neighborhood. Strolling along my streets. Today, Easter Saturday, a holiday, first day of summer … me and Khani having coffee, taking pictures (exploring my cookie pinhole camera, pictures will follow!), looking for shoes … there’s a musty but lovely second hand store on Adalbertrasse – two beautiful cats chilling in the sun, one from Ankara, the owner says, one from Berlin.
Khani found blue Adidas shoes for only 35 € and I took a picture. A perfect summer holiday moment.

Fatimas Hand Drawing

My world is gigantic and so small, all at once … I have passed by … so often … now I entered with my brother and his girlfriend … Fatimas Hand: a quiet beautiful bar in my Kietz / surrounding … so funny: me, entering, ordering wine, asking wine questions, hectically, all at once, and the bar tender woman projected a sympathico question mark in my eyes saying sorrymygermanisstillgrowing and I was like (how I love this I-was-like! Really!) ha, cool, no problem, repeating it all in remarkably fresh english … whatever: the white wine is Chardonnay, ice cold, very good, I love that bar, I love that atmosphere and I adore the drawing on the wall made by young artist Son-Of-The-Owner: we giggled our spring-longing asses off about (about?) the lovely 2-legged horse and the „Hodenschleudermann (untranslatable)“, heehee, keep on rockin‘!!

Altoid Pinhole Camera

I made a pinhole camera from an Altoid peppermint box. Tiny hole in the O. Inside anti reflex painted black. Put a piece of sheet film into the box, went to my neighbourhood Admiralbrücke / bridge and opened the lid I fixed over the little hole. Exposed it to the mild winter sunlight for one second.

This is what came out. The weirdest photo I ever took!

Byebye Zweite Hand

You don’t know how much you like your collegues until they are gone.

The Zweite Hand – the Second Hand – was an ad magazine (founded 30 years ago), once cool, now dead. Taken over by The Tagesspiegel some years ago, somehow saved, somehow left to die … whatever … I had a good time there and we had a yummy good bye party yesterday …
And I learned: fight for your rights. Not to party … that’s for free … but for decent termination pay. They sacked 11 people and wanted to get away with einem warmen Händedruck … nothing … no way … so we organized ourselves to gain at least, alas! a social RIP payment for people who worked there for half of their lives, come on, that’s what Gewerkschaften are for! Labor union, I mean. That’s what people struggled for 100 years ago. Ours is Verdi and I must say … thank you Jörg for fighting together with us until the end: sometimes it makes sense to not give up, to go out and inform the public, to go on strike even if you feel a little ridiculous. Do it. Know about rights and chances.
Yeah!
I’ll miss you (I smoothly swam over to Zitty, another Tagesspiegel daughter magazine, don’t worry about me … love my new collegues, I’m safe. Until …)

Hey Herman!

Me and my friends went out to have some drinks – now there’s a cool speciality, a quite new bar in the neighborhood: Herman! Schönhauser Allee 173.

They have hundreds of different beers, all Belgian! First thought that might come upon you: oh no, not that sweet cherry / strawberry / vanilla beer again *headache* – no no not true, I had a super caramel color, not sweet, tasty, „real“ beer called „Palm“, mmmh yummy …. they even serve some mysterious beer in champagne bottles!!

Bart, the charming owner, explored the world and landed in Berlin, he wears an interesting hairdo (somehow made me think of Napoleon) and answered to my question „why Herman?“ that he named the bar after his teacher. One of the good ones. Sports was it if I remember right. Not Herman Van Veen. Bah. Now he was Dutch, right?

Cheers and Prost everyone!