Wo is Magdeburg?

I've just spent the past week shuffling a ridiculously heavy suitcase between a youth hostel and a hotel in Magdeburg on my first teaching mission. What a bizarre and exhausting experience! After having a terrible time with a bunch of low level learners, I was then transferred to an intensive advanced business English programme during which I worked relatively long hours for the rest of the week with three very laddy lads who were employed in selling network communications products for an international company. They were really sweet and lively so my job was incredibly easy as they mainly wanted to make dirty jokes which were usually pretty unavoidable if I followed the teaching manual - HUMIDITY "Ask them where is sticky, warm and wet." being a case in point.
It's wonderful to be back at home again now. I love Berlin.

Do you have a father?

We had our Demo lessons today and, well let's just say mine didn't go exactly the way I'd planned it, but I seem to have a good few hours TP next week which is great because I'm rapidly running out of money, and I had thought that I might have to fly home and move back to the Ford. Which would have been awful. I also finally have a bank account here now so charges should be a little more reasonable.
Jeez....my head is killing me - either the result of cheap champagne after the training at 4.30 or the dirty Caipirhinia at 5.00. Ouch!

Blow up

Just saw this yesterday at a teeny tiny cinema somewhere in Prenzlauer Berg. The screen was all crackly and the sound was a little wobbly at times, and it was subtitled in German to boot (but at least it wasn't dubbed and so I got the chance to hear the beautiful tones of the youthful and educated North London accent once again - so lovely, so much more romantic than French). It was wonderful - this film is amazing. I'd seen it before but remembered it as being completely different to this. It's just so so brilliant. When people talk about the swinging 60s, the conversation usually turns into some Beatlesy love fest. Blow Up is at once cruel, distanced and heartwarmingly warm, it works so well that it maks me want to live in London. Which is bizarre. But then again 1960s London is a whole different kettle of fish, where else could you walk into an antiques store and buy a propellor - on a whim? I LOVE the mimed tennis game in the final scene, it's just perfect. Antonioni is a genius.

Job hunting

People here do NOT want to speak English. I guess this is fair enough but it makes life a little bit difficult when trying to go through bureaucratic stuff like registering at the AMT. Lucky I had one of my ex students to translate for me. I have a feeling job hunting could be a pretty traumatic experience.
Days are so long without having the course to fill my time; I'm just sitting at home emailing, eating, emailing, eating, emailing, eating, eating and eating... I'm gonna be huge pretty soon. Just can't resist that fine German Doner.

Guardian Berliner: Political correctness gone mad?

Holy crap! The Guardian Monthly is amazing - it's all the good bits from the Guardian in the week without all the crappy filler pieces. It's small enough to carry around you and sneakily read during class without anyone really noticing (or maybe they just don't care) and better still, it radiates a kind of coolness that makes people ridiculously interested in you - which is great if you're attention seeking and looking to gain people's approval. People think "Oh, you read the Guardian, that's pretty liberal and culturally aware. But hold on a minute...whoa there Nelly! That's no ordinary broadsheet, it's compact, colourful and exciting. " Et voila instant friends of the liberal left-leaning variety, which in Germany is no bad thing at all.

There is a certain irony here regarding the distribution of The Guardian in Berlin; namely, The Guardian modified it's format relatively recently to the "Berliner" size, which they felt was a more convenient size and more European. At the time of course, I thought this move was a wonderful move which would strengthen Britain's relationship with our sausage eating friends, who, if nothing else would be suitably impressed that we had adopted their newspaper formatting design.

However, since moving here I have my doubts about the motivation of The Guardian's editor. Now, ich bin ein Berliner and I have hunted high and low for this paper; wo ist es? There is no 'Berliner' to be found in this neck of the woods, which makes the whole move to this new 'German format' seem kind of cheeky if you can't actually get it in Berlin. In addition to this, I'm looking at the German newspapers and thinking "Hey, they don't actually look any smaller or different to the normal sized broadsheets back in England." Which leads me to the conclusion that it may have been a cynical ploy exploiting The Guardian readers' need to feel more integrated with the rest of Europe - "Who cares about the fact that we're stuck out here on this stupid little island, that we're sticking with the pound - just look at the European style of our left-wing newspapers!"

But, if I sound a little sceptical about the motives behind the adaptations made to the paper, at least I think I have some idea about what they were trying to achieve. The recent pull outs 'Rodents and rabbits', 'snakes and lizards', 'cats' and 'dogs' are surely just an act of insanity. Free dvds - yes! But wtf do they expect people to do with a badly drawn poster showing different types of whales and dolphins????!!! I have no idea where they are going with this one, the only explanation I can possibly offer is that it is some kind of didactic form of loony lefty attempt to combat prejudice and to challenge pre-conceived notions about animals and fish ie. "There are many DIFFERENT BREEDS of dog, they have different coloured fur, barks, shapes but essentially they are ALL THE SAME. No one dog is better than any other; all dogs are equal in the eyes of God/Dog."

If my theory is correct, it's political correctness gone mad.

Last day teaching practise

So, its finally over. Today was officially my last teaching practise and now I just have a couple of assignments to do before I finish the course.
This month has gone so quickly and I can quite believe the rapid rate at which I have become increasingly slack. It started off with cooking "well, maybe we COULD go for doner again tonight...I mean it was really good yesterday", this then progressed to housework (after all, we do have a cleaner), then finally schoolwork - which is why I'm sat here at 11.30pm just starting 2 pieces of work which are due in at 9.00 tomorrow. I met a couple of people on the course who are also pulling regular allnighters which is reassurring.
One annoying thing about this place is the Earl Grey which tastes nothing like the stuff in Britain - it's completely bland, a black hole of flavour. Might have to get some shipped over pretty soon; I'm getting desperate!

Weird weird weird. What happenend to my last post?
Just one week left and loads of work to do.
Moving on Saturday. Man alive I'm gonna miss this cushy apartment. I don't want to leave, Friedrichstrasse is such a great area to live in - commuting from Charlottenburg is going to be kind of annoying I think. Although to be honest, I can't really remember much about that area of Berlin at all, so I guess it'll be a nice surprise when I move in next weekend.

Tony Blair: Response re. road pricing proposals.

A while ago I filled out a petition against the Downing Street road pricing proposals.
This is the response I received:-

E-petition: Response from the Prime Minister
The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" has now closed. This is a response from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website.

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network.
It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically, feasible.
That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance. This is a complex subject, which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.
But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so. We are, for now, working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area, but any schemes would teach us more about how road pricing would work and inform decisions on a national scheme. And funds raised from these local schemes will be used to improve transport in those areas.
One thing I suspect we can all agree is that congestion is bad. It's bad for business because it disrupts the delivery of goods and services. It affects people's quality of life. And it is bad for the environment. That is why tackling congestion is a key priority for any Government.
Congestion is predicted to increase by 25% by 2015. This is being driven by economic prosperity. There are 6 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997, and predictions are that this trend will continue.
Part of the solution is to improve public transport, and to make the most of the existing road network. We have more than doubled investment since 1997, spending £2.5 billion this year on buses and over £4 billion on trains - helping to explain why more people are using them than for decades. And we're committed to sustaining this investment, with over £140 billion of investment planned between now and 2015. We're also putting a great deal of effort into improving traffic flows - for example, over 1000 Highways Agency Traffic Officers now help to keep motorway traffic moving.
But all the evidence shows that improving public transport and tackling traffic bottlenecks will not by themselves prevent congestion getting worse. So we have a difficult choice to make about how we tackle the expected increase in congestion. This is a challenge that all political leaders have to face up to, and not just in the UK. For example, road pricing schemes are already in operation in Italy, Norway and Singapore, and others, such as the Netherlands, are developing schemes. Towns and cities across the world are looking at road pricing as a means of addressing congestion.
One option would be to allow congestion to grow unchecked. Given the forecast growth in traffic, doing nothing would mean that journeys within and between cities would take longer, and be less reliable. I think that would be bad for businesses, individuals and the environment. And the costs on us all will be real - congestion could cost an extra £22 billion in wasted time in England by 2025, of which £10-12 billion would be the direct cost on businesses.
A second option would be to try to build our way out of congestion. We could, of course, add new lanes to our motorways, widen roads in our congested city centres, and build new routes across the countryside. Certainly in some places new capacity will be part of the story. That is why we are widening the M25, M1 and M62. But I think people agree that we cannot simply build more and more roads, particularly when the evidence suggests that traffic quickly grows to fill any new capacity.
Tackling congestion in this way would also be extremely costly, requiring substantial sums to be diverted from other services such as education and health, or increases in taxes. If I tell you that one mile of new motorway costs as much as £30m, you'll have an idea of the sums this approach would entail.
That is why I believe that at least we need to explore the contribution road pricing can make to tackling congestion. It would not be in anyone's interests, especially those of motorists, to slam the door shut on road pricing without exploring it further.
It has been calculated that a national scheme - as part of a wider package of measures - could cut congestion significantly through small changes in our overall travel patterns. But any technology used would have to give definite guarantees about privacy being protected - as it should be. Existing technologies, such as mobile phones and pay-as-you-drive insurance schemes, may well be able to play a role here, by ensuring that the Government doesn't hold information about where vehicles have been. But there may also be opportunities presented by developments in new technology. Just as new medical technology is changing the NHS, so there will be changes in the transport sector. Our aim is to relieve traffic jams, not create a "Big Brother" society.
I know many people's biggest worry about road pricing is that it will be a "stealth tax" on motorists. It won't. Road pricing is about tackling congestion.
Clearly if we decided to move towards a system of national road pricing, there could be a case for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation. This could mean that those who use their car less, or can travel at less congested times, in less congested areas, for example in rural areas, would benefit from lower motoring costs overall. Those who travel longer distances at peak times and in more congested areas would pay more. But those are decisions for the future. At this stage, when no firm decision has been taken as to whether we will move towards a national scheme, stories about possible costs are simply not credible, since they depend on so many variables yet to be investigated, never mind decided.
Before we take any decisions about a national pricing scheme, we know that we have to have a system that works. A system that respects our privacy as individuals. A system that is fair. I fully accept that we don't have all the answers yet. That is why we are not rushing headlong into a national road pricing scheme. Before we take any decisions there would be further consultations. The public will, of course, have their say, as will Parliament.
We want to continue this debate, so that we can build a consensus around the best way to reduce congestion, protect the environment and support our businesses. If you want to find out more, please visit the attached links to more detailed information, and which also give opportunities to engage in further debate.
Yours sincerely, Tony Blair

Brrrrlin! Art for art's sake.

So I moved to Germany.
Berlin is fantastic, everywhere you look, every street you go down there's something amazing to see. It's incredible.
Artwork is really for the public and away from the stuffiness of "scene" or "business" or "celebrity" like in London. Space is utilised and scrawled graffiti and murals cover hundreds of walls all around the city. Plus it's a real juxtaposition of artworks because Europeans have all gravitated towards this cultural city hub so you never know what you're going to get.
Last night for example, we found a little log cabin with some models of a kind of twisted version of a Nativity scene in miniature lit by a neon blue strip lights. Next to the little log cabin was an open fire with people clustered around it and another, bigger cabin where we drank some mulled wine and thought about Christmas before warming our faces in front of the fire.
This place was tucked away on Auguststrasse and we were lucky to stumble across it.
Sitting by the fire my housemate and I met another American boy who was travelling around Europe and gushing with enthusiasm about Berlin.

Later on in the evening we all went to a squat-come-cinema-gallery by our house, which was amazing. Large metal letters and debris were scattered seemingly at random on the sand covered foor outside the building and inside was a labyrinth of workshops, installations and a rooftop bar where we watched short movies projected onto the wall of a building opposite us. The artists there were incredibly talented and a general social concern of anti-globalisation and more personal concerns about division and alienation were important recurrent themes. A lot of artists here are exploring how the ideal image of childhood can be corrupted; of course, given Berlin's political history, the need to express freely sentiments of alienation resulting from oppression is still an important topic. Its interesting to hear people talk about their memories of the GDR and the wall. Insane to think this was such a recent event.

I dream of Eugene

Oh God! The Pied Piper is ridiculously sexy and also unbelievably friendly - he even blew on my hands to keep me warm when my coat got stolen, and I think I fell in love with him at that precise moment. Wow. Some of that gypsy magic has seeped into me through the pores of my hands because I'm hearing Rat-a-tat-tat and da da da da da in the people's footsteps, the ticking of the clock and the blinking of an eye. It's amazing - Life after Hutz will never be the same.

Someone Likes Yoghurt! Part deux

Got to see Gareth and Emily this weekend as we went to Cardiff for Richard Herring's DVD recording of 'Someone Likes Y0ghurt'. He was hilarious, even though this was the second time around for me, as I saw him perform the exact same material about a year and a half ago at Divas. Pope jokes: they'll always be funny.

Ich bin Ein Berliner

Isn't it amazing how a morsel of good news can turn you entire life around and make the world seem like a better place?

I passed my CELTA interview the day before yesterday and am heading off to Berlin in less than a month and I'm so excited, I can't wait. Loads of reading and organising to do first but it's the happiest I've felt in months (despite the incessant nagging and bitching which has recently become part and parcel of my home life, but let's not go there). The sky looks brighter, career prospects appear more promising, and even the people around me seem a mite bit friendlier. Obviously it's all to do with personal attitude but I just feel the timing for a move is purrfect and flat hunting is incredibly excited as it seems you can get quite a lot for your money over there. Big on Ikea storage compartments and wooden floors, a nice little two bedroom place would appear to set you back less than 600 Euros a month, which sounds pretty good to me.

Most depressing day of the year: It's official!

According to the man on the radio.
Not for me though as it's my birthday tomorrow.
Although come to think of it today has been fairly depressing, but not really any more so
than yesterday.

Swinging like a hammer

Last Thursday's news in the Swindon Advertiser notes an incident in which a Year 11
boy was left unconscious after having been struck several times by a hammer on the
school tennis courts.
http://www.adver.co.uk/display.var.1118267.0.schoolboy_attacked_with hammer.php

As horible as this is, it reminded me of a newspaper headline Phil alerted me to a few months back while we were staying in Swansea: "Baby 'swung like hammer'" . Having never heard the term used in this way it seemed like quite a bizarre analogy to make, and was a departure from Swansea Evening Post's prediliction for "probing" news stories which are regular headline news, possibly a nod to the city's large homosexual community. I'm well aware that "probing" is sexual innuendo, as opposed to specifically homo or hetero; however, the term seems so synonymous in the popular consciousness with "anal" as say "pert" or "baps" - words which could just as easily refer to noses or bread (but usually don't), that I feel justified in mentioning it here.

Anyway, this got me wondering about other possible uses of the term "Swinging hammer".
The results?

• The Urban Dictionary suggests the RHCPs usage of the term in Dani California is a
• reference to communism. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swinging+hammer
• (but isn't everything these days?)
• Fotosearch gives 20 images of stock illustration ofswinging hammers
• (for some reason, here is just one)
• http://www.fotosearch.com/ART311/ind015/

• Probably the most exciting-sounding hit (pun intended): Swinging Hammer Scrub Mulching Mowers http://www.ryetec.co.uk/forestry_mulcher7.html

• The rest were pretty boring, and actually about tools which were "swung like hammers" apart from one hammer website in which the hammer was "swung like an axe", presumably to avoid using the word too much, and thereby having the article result in tedium .http://www.diydata.com/tool/hammer/hammers.php

• "Hang gliders and hammers… two items not normally related in the same breath…!"

I also found a charming story about "Old Pedro", a Mexican trailer park resident and silly know-it-all "Walter the gringo" who goes hang gliding over Mt. Whitney. Some nice pictures, and lots of hammer swinging, because apparently Walter was meant to remove his counterweight hammer from the hangar prior to his flight, but being the arrogant young upstart that he is, he forgets about the a common flyers’ "warning decal which read REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT" because, TREATING EVERYTHING AS A JOKE, Walter figures this warning "more as comical than necessary". Oh, the fool. The story is called "Hammer bound for Hell" , which is a great title and it's worth reading for that reason alone. http://www.learntoflytrikes.com/story_HammerBoundForHell.htm

Yo Sushi!

Pretty good for a first attempt, eh?

The Sonic Marble Run

Above: The Sonic Marble Run at the Grant Bradley Gallery.

Usually I'm pretty sceptical of sound art, but Oliver Jon Pigott has done something amazing with this. Using metal tubing, wires, CDs and pipes, speakers distort the sound of rolling marbles which splinker, plonk, and clang their way through this gigantic version of the 'Mousetrap' game. I met a woman who had taken her toddler here the other day and couldn't resist coming back on her own for a second go.

Happiness
These last couple of days have been fantastic! Yesterday, for example: after weeks of fruitless searching, I finally found the guitar of my dreams in Dan's tiny guitar shop, which is tucked away in a tiny street, just down the road from Zero Degrees. It's a really beautiful acoustic guitar and is quite reasonably priced too. Now I just have to wait until Monday to pick it up so that Dan can give it a make-over by rubbing his "magic sparkly spunk juice" over it. Can't wait.

I now have a Spanish guardian angel who always seems to be looking at websites on tango classes or wandering the streets of Bedmo whenever good fortune strikes. I stared at his back for evidence of strapped down wings today but his jacket was too puffy to tell for sure. Still... I have my suspicions.

Eviction imminent

We were served with what those in the biz commonly refer to as a NOSP (Notice of Seeking Possession, cheers Marches) yesterday. This was kind of exciting I felt. Two months to get out. It's good in a way because it should kick us all into gear a bit and force us to make a decision about what to do with the rest of our lives. Either that, or we're homeless. I think it's because everything in the house keeps breaking; lights, shower, boiler and the landlord would rather sell up than invest any money fixing the place. Oh, well, it was short but sweet...

Downtown 81

Happy New Year!

2007 Already, whoo hoo!

We went to a New Year's Eve party at fingerless hoodlum Andy Skellam's luxurious penthouse apartment in Clifton Village and drank copious amounts of whiskey and beer (but strangely no champagne). It was a fairly small, exclusive gathering consisting of housemates James and Marietti, fello hairy Buddah Dan, and a couple of other people I didn't really know, but they seemed very nice.
We played charades using only one word or the power of mime to guess the celebrity in the top hat, which exposed my sheer ignorance of any figure in the public eye. The best example of this would be my description of Boris Becker as "That Tory guy with the hair" to the bemusement and amusement of the entire party. Same first name though, so pretty close I thought.
After much dancing and singing we shouted at Andy's neighbours who actually pay a lot of money to rent houses around that area, perhaps under the misconception that it's a nice area and that drunken twentysomethings won't be leaning out of the windows screaming "Happy New Year/Andy's got gonorrhea!" at them. Ha! The fools.
At the end of the evening Alex broke the zip on my boot which was a real problem because our house is about an hour from Andy's, my drunken logic led me to believe that cutting across the zip with a pair of kitchen scissors would in some way help me to re-thread the zipper. Thank God Dan dissuaded me from this course of action and Andy had to bind my boot up with some string like a young Chinese girl for the long walk home. I was amazed that it lasted the journey. That's why NOT to buy cheap ass Primark footwear!

Beautiful songs by The Fingerless Hoodlum:-
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=99931195