Prost, Cheers and Rock'n'Roll

Well then, New Year's Eve is only another evening, midnight is only another second but as so many people put such a great meaning into it I can't resist to go along. See you all next year, folks, and cheers for reading and commenting, remember to be yourself, tonight especially..

"Moneypulation" (it's a play on words, people!)

You know I'm always happy to forward little bits of conversation I catch somewhere here in Berlin. This time fate (you may exchange this word for any other possible word which pleases you more) made me stand in front of the still closed door of a library together wirh various people who were all waiting for the near-by church to ring its bells with the 12-o'clock-tune. Now what kind of people do you expect to find spending their time on a sunny day with the white snow sparkling under their feet, eagerly waiting to get into a room full of books? Exactly, nice and educated, open-minded and intelligent people. I mean, after all, not everyone reads books.. You can recognise in someone's face if he's the kind of guy who has been complaining about everything all his life and won't change his attitude for the rest of it either. Plus, he most surely reads tabloid and believes all of it, one more reason to complain. Imagine the complementary woman at his side and you might have an idea about the couple I'm talking about. They were complaining about the fact that the library didn't open a minute before 12 p.m. Complaining about the fact that the mother who was waiting with us allowed her son to use the little heap of snow next to them as a toilet. Ok well, I can sort of understand that, I found it rather funny but I can see that not everyone can have this madly enthusiastic humour of mine. But the most ridiculous comment was the woman telling him about a lottery shop where apparently people smoked a lot and the shop was always horribly smoky and smelly, so how on earth "am I supposed to fill in my lottery tickets?" she asked completely and seriously disgusted and outraged.
Why don't people give their stupid money, of which they seem to have too much of, to those people who sit outside in the streets the whole night long while I can't even bear a half hour walk without freezing? The chance of choosing the correct 6 out of 49 numbers is ridiculous, so stop thinking you're special, you're not the chosen hero or heroine, no old man with a white beard will come to you to say that you're the one chosen by a greater power.. but you can still save the world (staying loyal to my idealism..) or a small world at least. If you save one life, you save the world entire. Or the way Bob Geldof would say it: "Give me your fucking money!"

Observations in a train

There's an unusual lot of people inside this train. No space left on the seats, many people, like me, are forced to stand whether it makes them feel degraded or not, nobody asks. They probably think the homeless guy who's trying to sell his newspaper to the consum-sated travellers has a harder life than any of them. Still, one guy squeezes himself into a little space on the seats but by doing this he accidentally bumps into a young woman who in return looks really annoyed and readjusts her headphones. While I'm writing this herr forehead is still in wrinkles. Talking of "while I'm writing this.." it must look strange indeed, me standing in the middle of this underground train with a little pad of paper in my hand, writing, looking up for inspiration from time to time. One guy standing next to me is actually reading along, I'm quite sure, hello you, can you read this? Why don't you talk to me? People are strange. I just asked him why he keeps staring at me but he just smiled in silence. Whatever. Now he left the train and an old woman with one of those Russian fur hats has come into my view. Her lips look like she's a stubborn person and life has imprinted many worries into her face, though she probably looks much different when she smiles.
Alexanderplatz, she got out. So will I, in a moment.
(29th Dec. around 6 p.m.)

The exquisiteness of governmental Christmas trees

If anyone ever doubted the colour of snow: there's the evidence outside the window, it's definately white! And because I'm in Berlin, the best city of the world most of the times, I decided to share not only the look of my balcony with you but even better, I'm able to present you with the exquisite Christmas tree in front of the Reichstag itself! The exquisiteness of this tree is made up of ordinary light bulbs which don't get hot but stay cold all the time. Like some people do.

And a little lack of modesty from my side: This picture is brilliant, isn't it?

Thoughts in a car

Snow and sunshine don't go well together
the snow looks out of place
like an angel dressed in cellotape
because when you enter a castle
you don't expect to see a zoo..
though humans do use elephants for riding
so I've heard
and a fish and a bird can be together
but where would they live?
when humans strive up high to the top
like trees strive up towards the sun
who's more greedy for success?
lifeless, grey, depressing towns and apathetic, depressed-looking people -
what came first and what would change if we painted all houses bright orange?
The flowers chose a clever life-style
they vanish during winter time
and reappear when the summer comes
while we in our human ease
stick to the ground like old chewing gum
no wonder nature rejects us
we spit out unwanted rubbish, too.

The Invention of Slowness

To me, villages have a ghostly atmosphere. Maybe it's because due to an average age of 60 everything seems to move so much slower than in Berlin and for some reason I connect slowness with ghosts. Also- i guess- the evil side of me admits the thought that conservative slowness and the lack of innovation which can be found in villages is the cause of a society's downfall. I'm just being honest. I know it's superficial generalising but I'm honest enough to say that I catch myself thinking how primitive some of the conversations seem to me, how narrow people's horizon because their doorstep ends after a few 100m and they look at strangers suspiciously and Heidi Klum's new baby (or the neighbour's new husband) is much more interesting to talk about than the failed referendum in France or Angela Merkel's newest political enlightment. On the other side it's quite natural for people to be concerned with their closer enviroment, in former times all a human being was concerned about was the daily food, a proper hut or cave to live in and peace in the community.. although.. that necessarily leads me to the obvious conclusion that now- welcome to the 21st century- we should be more sophisticated and the fact that we are globally concerned is a sign of sophistication. By the way: where does discrimination start? I'm sure some people who read this would call my provocative comments on villages discrimination and will leave their hateful comments here.. let me just say: It's not! I know there is the odd exception! =)
There's one thing I admit though: I've never seen such a sweet tradition as "advent windows" in a big city as Berlin: People gather around some family's window somewhere in the village- each night a different place- and the hosts hand around biscuits and tea and read some kind of funny story to their little "audience" or sing together.. great idea and what's even better: it really doesn't have anything to do with the church! It's pure let's-get-together-all-23-evenings-before-Christmas-idealism.

Cheers to Willy Wonka

Traditions, the natural defense system of umans against disagreeable changes in their lives, help us to keep following the red cord through the labyrinth of our lives. Especially during Christmas time. While New Year's Eve is usually compatible with surprises, the odd surprise on Christmas Eve is deadly for the atmostphere (if it goes beyong a surprise wrapped in paper, of course!). So, the annual tradition of my life takes place in a tiny village in the South of Hessen which is where I spent the last few days among fields (not of gold..) and family. It's like diving into Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory, it's the place where the rest of the world seems far away, the place where mobile phones don't work and the existence of the internet is a well-known fairy-tale.. but the candy was fabulous! =)

Let's celebrate Easter instead..

Happy Christmas time everyone. Let's try to get over it alright. Don't harm yourself, things are only ever as bad as your attitude towards them. That's not true but it sounds good, I thought. I wish you lots of candles and smiles and happiness and whatever else is left you can possibly wish for.
Back on the 26th, I might stop by before but can't promise.
Lots of warmth to those who, like me, have to endure the cold, still lots of warmth to those who don't but need the warmth in their heart.

A patient listener for graffiti

My advice of the week, it's this: Don't ever try to paint a wall with a team of sociologists. Unless you have a spare weekend with nothing else to do and you're willing to spend these hours finding out how many opinions about a simple matter can possibly exist. t wasn't even the complete wall we wanted to paint but I guess in the end that's what turned out to be the main problem because it meant we had to mange to paint a straight line. By the way, the room concerned was the men's toilet in the institute of my university where some guys obviously had a deep desire for attention and the wall was a patient listener for their graffiti. And because students of Social Science are so amazingly social we decided to paint the wall so its original white colour would shine brightly again for all male toilet visitors. Or maybe we decided to do it because the housekeeper said we'd never be allowed another party if we didn't clean it up.. anyway, hours and biscuits later we had finally finished discussing the matter of how to draw a straight line and used the simple but -as i mentioned: very thought-through- method of holding a stick of wood to the wall and leading the paint brush underneath it. The cleaning of the aftermath was only a matter of 5 minutes, give or take a few hours.. Basically what we would have needed was one of those brilliantly useless paint brush cleaners which can be found on seen-on-tv-products.net..
Oh and by the way, surely it's not our fault that the "white" paint which strangely wouldn't get lighter after drying turned out to be dark grey after all?

Yes, me too..

...I can't stand to see the same article of mine on top of the page for one day longer ;)
Something else I think I won't be able to stand much longer is (sorry, but..) Angela Merkel's face, together with her way of talking. It's like she learned all those nice phrases by heartand practises her fake smile and thoughtful gestures in front of the mirror. I mean, let's wait and see how much more praise she'll get off her international collegues, like during the recent debate about the EU finances. Schröder at least was able to speak heartily and improvise like a real showmaster, wasn't he? Can't we please have him back, as long as there's no better alternative? And what's the hype about "the first female Chancellor in Germany" anyway? If there was real equality nobody would stop a second to wonder if a woman could do the job. Norbert Lammert actually dared to say: "This is a strong and important sign for all women!" What the hell do women in Germany need a strong and important sign for? And is Merkel really a strong sign? What most women need is our own little revolution but Merkel is exactly the person not to encourage what I have in mind. She seems to be more of a "get-back-into-your-cave-and-stay-there-woman", all she seems to be interested in is her own success but she doesn't encourage other woman to do the same.

The flags, the banners, the shouting, where?

Some of your theories and opinions will at some point be proven to be right, or at least be confirmed. My latest one was that there will be no more real revolutions, not even or maybe especially not including students at universities. A sad but true experience was the day two students, one of them being myself, had the brilliant idea of sympathising with our fellows at another uni in Berlin who were known to be on strike at the time, so in between lectures we decided to use our spare time to get together some people to accompany us because surely they'd all be happy to come along to at least watch the demonstration. To our great amazement though there was nobody showing any interest at all to support! Ah well, great revolutions always started off with few people who believed in their ideas, of course not everyone was ready to be convinced immediately.. So off we went to our fellow university. But where were the masses of determined students on strike? Where the flags, the banners, the shouting? After interviewing various people who barely knew what was supposed to be going on, after walking around through endless buildings and yards, feeling rather like tourists visiting a strange little village, we tried to scare two porters by announcing the big scary strike awaiting them in the form of many furious students. Then we headed back to our uni, were a little late for our lecture and had to sneak in behind the professor in front of everyone, with everyone staring at us indifferently, nobody knowing what little rebellion is left in society.

Because winter is the season in which we hardly ever see the moon

The Moon
You can take the moon by the spoonful
or in capsules every two hours.
It's useful as a hypnotic and sedative
and besides it relieves
those who have had too much philosophy.
A piece of moon in your purse
works better than a rabbit's foot.
Helps you find a lover
or get rich without anyone knowing,
and it staves off doctors and clinics.
You can give it to children like candy
when they've not gone to sleep,
and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old
helps them to die in peace.

Put a new leaf of moon
under your pillow
and you'll see what you want to.
Always carry a little bottle of air of the moon
to keep you from drowning.
Give the key to the moon
to prisoners and the disappointed.
For those who are sentenced to death
and for those who are sentenced to life
there is no better tonic than the moon
in precise and regular doses.

Jaime Sabines

The pain of a breaking facade

Who can guess the thoughts of the first person who discovered a mirror? Maybe it was a little child looking at its own image in the water, never told anyone, never got any fame for its discovery.. or a couple sitting at the shore of a lake suddenly realising their double staring back at them. One of the so called historical facts is just that already 8000 B.C. some sort of mirror existed in the form of polished bronze and in the 13th century, who would have guessed that, it was in Germany where someone managed to place a piece of metal against the backside of a flat piece of glass which was the beginning of the moving story of the real mirror! Today mirrors inspire lots of wise people to develop lots of clever thoughts about these shiny objects, like: Life is like a mirror, we get the best results when we smile at it.. Life, like a mirror, never gives back more than we put into it.. or my favourite: When looking for faults use a mirror not a telescope.. What the world really needs though is a mirror which doesn't break.. like mine did today. I don't like realising that it's just a bit of glass with a thin reflecting layer underneath, we like to keep up the facade even if it only concerns small details in our daily life, like little mirrors.