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 …)