Dagies Blog

Some beautiful aspects of winter in a big city: My crowded Hasenheide (“Rabbit’s Heather“) park! Kids and parents riding the sled. And you know what? The sun sent out a million of photons and ten of them were warm! Particles or waves?!

Yeehaa, this morning I looked into my balcony flower box and guess what I discovered: sprouts! Sprouts! Popping out! Green! Newborn! (I’ve had this box standing there for years, a small biotope, the plants live there on their own and can do whatever they want, every now and then I add tomato plants or cat grass …). Welcome, tulips and daffodils!

Ice age in Berlin! Temperatures fall miles below zero. Bike lanes are meanly frozen over, I’m a coward, I take the bus. Look out of the window, try to ignore my sneezing neighbors, see a dirty grey city.

Antennas up, I see more than a dirty grey city: a blackbird in a flower pot on my brother’s balcony on New Year’s Day, a (probably) sparrow hawk working on his or her nest …

Hello January! Hello fresh new year!

Slowly preparing to hop over into the next year – I look into the crystal clear sky and see Venus and Moon shimmering through my street trees. And for those with good eyes: can you spot the sun glasses hanging in the twigs? Look look 😉

One of my alltime nicest favorite Kreuzberg bars is the Würgeengel (El Ángel Exterminador, Luis Buñuel). It’s like a warm red hole that you can come to after a long days work. Meeting my brother. Having 2 glasses of delicious red wine. And what a bomb Berlin is right now, it’s pulsating with people from all over the world and we felt like a little eye in the hurrican because we’ve lived here for 20 years. Seen some changes. Call it home. (I grew up in the middle of Western Nowhere and I lived there only 19 years, ha!)
Unluckily the temperatures fell below 0 Centigrade and my bike lock froze. Had to wake it up with matches I always carry with me. Winter survival kit 😉

I love it when worlds collide. I had a late morning-coffee-date with Khani today at Biocompany (they sell organic food in Berlin supermarketwise, quickly growing, expanding. Smaller organic food stores die. Is the world that simple?) but we didn’t enter because the café was crowded with baby buggy pushing parents who allowed their breed to chose between 6 different sorts of croissants and made us feel sick so we preferred to go to the place where reality hurts: Kaiser’s Supermarket (directly @ Kottbusser Tor) with an inbuilt café where you get your coffee good and cheap from probably extremely exploited but extremely friendly and relaxed employees and can watch the outside world passing by which means noon beer drinkers and junkies and tourists and dogs and sometimes straying people from god knows where and neighbors. Sometimes it just feels good to be there for some time and watch them and like them. Especially on Christmas. Why? Don’t know.

I noticed a pair of sneakers hanging from a wire in front of Kaiser’s, reminding me of my Los Angeles days *sigh*, and the woman hanging there (not from a wire) told me there were 3 pairs 3 days ago. We wished each other a good day, she continued her day begging for money and I taking pictures.

Xmas night? I spent it with my very small very beloved very patchworky family at my brothers place and I guess we had a precious good time and a goose who had a good life before it was killed and good red Italian wine. Later when I went back home on the Underground I felt … good in Berlin. Love to y’all 😉

The Kottbusser Tor and the Making Of photo taken by Khani. Get your website ready!!

Music was my first love and it will be my last. This is a song I always remember. And a truth.
Party weekend! Saturday: The Milchbar (Milk Bar) in Kreuzberg hosted the fantastic „Oberkreuzberger Nasenflötenorchester“ – a bunch of guys with nose flutes bombing the house with nosy versions of „Eloise“ and other alltimefavorites. Incredibly rocking and rolling and shaking. One leading guitar, some electronic samples and 8 rocking guys with funny flutes. Sexy.

I was there with Khani and Nadine (who just came back from her 3 months job-stay in Heidelberg and celebrated with us her happy-homecoming feeling) and then we met Jule, an old friend of Khanis, who proudly presented us her „Kleinert-Splint“ at her hand (she had thrown some garbage in the garbage can, pressed it down with her hands not knowing about glass splinters and got her hand nerve cut and torn tendon … outch) – she had a 2 hours surgery (general anesthesia) and they repaired all they could repair and left her with that Kleinert-Splint which allows her finger to bend somehow. Looks cruel but very interesting!!
There’s a plastic thread stabbed through her thumb tip connected with the wrist joint …
This Kleinert magician guy was born as a farmers son in Montana, his mother pushed him supporting his career profession wish and he, well, read it here german and here english

Today, Sunday, different scene, different music, same soul 😉
Berlin-Köpenick, Schlossplatztheater, Les Gosses, a duo of two women, one singer (Frederike Haas), one accordeon (Sirid Heuts), sliding us down to Paris, down to Edith Piaf century, down to small leather suitcases, big love stories with sad endings, harbour ladies, travelling rapscallions.
Rapscallion! What a beautiful word! I learned it using leo.org to whom I want to say thank you by the way. And thank you too to those two Gosses /Gören / Ischen/ Brats for the power you gave me this evening, a very very dark day, the day before Solstice, / Equinox – the power of singing and the beauty of music and the esprit of survival.

I have a part time job in a publishing house, nice little island, share the room with a collegue. Lately there was a curious stinking cloud lingering in our room: vomit. Pure vomit. Disgusting. Where did it come from? Not me, not him, for sure. It took us a while to detect the spring: a Ginkgo fruit! Ripe, incredibly healthy, incredibly stinking. The Ginkgo tree is called „Duck Feet“ as far as I remember, in Japanese, because the leaves look like. Why do I tell you this story? I have no idea. Today was the first half-sunny day in an endless row of grey heavy dark days. I go nuts here :-O Berlin stinks but is a healthy alternative maybe. For now.

I think I can tell it right now even if it’s some more days to years end, this was the best concert of the year.

The LIDOin Belin-Kreuzberg hosted Giant Sand. “What is essential for music is the lower part of the whole body“ said Howe Gelb in the end of the concert and even if I don’t quote it 100%ly right right right right now (2 o’clock morning, 4 or 5 Astrabeers inside) I say I totally agree. And disagree because I love my brain and its vibes (upper part!) but it leads too long and far away reminding me (plus the 20 understanders) that I bet on the wrong horse 5 years ago … and again it leads me somewhere else (highways!) and back to the concert … dream audience! The place is gold, the time was more than right (Berliners! Need! Warm! Music! Now! Especially! With! Hot! Vibes! Inside!) I felt that each and everybody was there totally absorbing the music with an open heart. I never before experienced a concert before in my life with so much testosterone around me and I enjoyed my stay being not the oldest person around because the musiclovers started at the age of 50. Or 40. I felt young. Maybe I erase everything written here tomorrow.

Anyways.

Sunday night on my way to the best Pizzeria in town (Il Casolare, Grimmstr. 30) I saw two very big stars in the sky, one above the other, really fat, more like planets. I mean, stars are planets anyway, what a beautiful constellation, Andreas, stargazer, can you blog me a comment and tell me who they were???

Back in Berlin, riding on my bike through a park again, it’s dark and grey but I know: in 4 weeks the days will start to get longer again! Thinking about that I found a heart and I heard and saw hundred tweeting birds on a tree top!
Happy wintertime 😉

What I really begin to like about this WORM place is beyond other the beautiful bar.
They made everything from recycled material – I especially like the tables and chairs – and they got little chewing gum sacks (for spitting them out before drinking!)
So clever!

Second Workshop day – out door experiences! 4 groups on the tracks and traces of coincidence, finding things and filming their trip. To be processed tomorrow …
I went with Esther, walking. It snowed. At one corner we were attracted by kitschy organ music (Holland clichee 🙂 and found a half covered organ from at least 2 centuries ago playing joyfully for itself.
What will the others have found? Was coincidence playing with them? We’ll see …

The Worm isn’t only an inviter of short film makers but also a host of illustrious events such as tonight a bunch of guys presenting the Cassette Culture of the ex GDR (release of book+DVD) – very fascinating insight in the 70s and 80s underground of East German music.

And then, featherlike snow outside, warm synthesizers and red wine inside, there was Tarwater playing.

Somehow makes we want to be a hunter and collector of weird sounds. I’m quite sure that we’re going to set up a super 8 wabi-sabi band here on Monday …

On my way do Rotterdam yesterday (first plane then train no boat so far) something really funny happened … there was a young man on the train looking for the toilet and he mistook the emergency break for the toilet door handle. He just pulled it, it went all smoothe, almost like in slow motion, far too easy for an emergency brake in my opinion. The train slowed down and me and my fellow travellers burst into laughter realizing what happened. The young man just stood there, fully ashamed, and then came another friendly young man, obviously an employee, checking what had happened, he saw the desaster, said „don’t do it again“ with a smile and the train continued its way. A great example how to solve problems of misbehavior!

I went on my bike from Alexanderplatz along Karl-Marx-Strasse (East-Berlin) and I saw a sad old house on the left, dead windows, void. With metal bars on the roof that obviously held letters before its death. I can’t remember what was up there, they look very cyrillic. Does anyone know? The first 2 look like an E and a P … (P = cyrillic R).

… well voted 😉

Just wanted to let you know about my old-fashioned Kreuzberg-feelings (I’ve been living here for more than 20 years now) and I found out that it’s really the part to be. Tough, hardly beautiful, green. Fuck Mitte, spit on Prenzlberg. It’s Kreuzberg.
There are a lot of great stores to buy Berlin fashion in the Oranienstrasse. Well-priced and fantastic. More info later, I just happened to fall on a warm dress today that will keep me from my winterfreeze. Thank you.

Peel a ginger root and slice it into thin slices or pieces. Boil a liter of water, add the ginger. Cover it and wait 20 minutes. Add honey and lemon to taste. It helps! Cheers! Drink it hot!

I was biking through a park and found a little flock of mosquitos, they were dancing in the late afternoon sunbeams – up and down vertically like playing elevator. One up one down, close. Friction generates warmth, I guess. Keeping the last summer particles! (unfortunately I couldn’t capture them with my camera. Just believe me.)