Manchester England

April 9 Freiburg Germany

I got up at 8:30 and went down to breakfast. The Deutscher Kaiser Hotel is laid out in a funny sort of way. The front door enters into the restaurant. To get to the hotel rooms you pass through a hall to the back of the house. That hall is also used by the waiters who get plates of food from the kitchen through a stainless steel pass-through that is about ten feet long. The whole main floor of the building, except for the kitchen, is dining rooms. I walked past the pass-through which had a big plate of cold cuts on it. All of the dining rooms were empty. I found a young man and asked about breakfast. He directed me to the back dining room and said he’d bring coffee. I took a seat. When the coffee came, just one cup, no pot, I was asked for my room number. I then waited for food to appear. In most places there would have been a nearby table, or tables, with all kind of stuff to eat on them. After a while it dawned on my that the plate of cold cuts in the pass through was the whole magilla. When I walked there I found much more. I guess breakfast in the Deusceher Kaiser doesn’t start too early. I took a couple of rolls and a couple of croissants and some prosciutto and cheese and butter. The prosciutto and cheese and butter was for the rolls. The croissants were fine by themselves. It all was tasty, although more coffee would have been nice. I would have asked for more but since I wasn’t sure when trains went to Frankfurt I thought I should get rolling.

Taking a dead reckoning course I came to the old wall of the city that has a big clock in a tower as part of it. The wall also houses a MacDonalds, under the clock, which has always bothered me. Nearby, tastefully in a building suited for it, was a Starbucks. I went in and had a medium cup of coffee in a china cup and got on line. Straight ahead jazz was playing with the first song being Twisted by Wardell Gray. Considering that I had been completely out of contact for twentyfour hours I thought there would be queries as to my whereabouts. Nope. I guess there are more important things in the world now to be concerned with. I did check my plane reservation and got the booking code. It was due to depart at Five. That flight, and the four gigs I would have in England, had been arranged by my old friend John Wojowski, who I had first met in 1997 when he had me as a guest at his KinoFilm Festival. Looking in my Eurail schedule I saw trains leaving just before the top of each hour with Frankfurt being a couple of hours away. There was an email from a guy, who contacted me through my website, wanting to know the showtime for Effect of Dada at a place called Lass O’Gowrie, which I didn’t recognize but thought it must be an alternate name for one of the gigs I did know about. I told him the information on the Now Showing page of my website was correct. I should have read the morning email from John in Manchester. It said he had arranged one more show in Lass O’Gowrie.

I posted a report on my blog and left at 10:30 with the expectation of making the 10:57 train. I continued in what I thought was the way to station. It was nice and warm, which was a bother since I was wearing my overcoat. I suppose a reasonable man would have chucked it in a garbage can or handed it to a homeless person. I came to a very busy road that I thought should have the station across it. Nope. I asked a young kid. He pointed me the right way. I was at the right busy road, at least a half mile away from where I should have been. I did make it to the station in time to buy a Trib and board the train. It was again the train from Basel to Berlin. It arrived already holding a bunch of passengers. I sat down in a compartment that already had a resident. The guy had strewn much of his gear about, I suppose to give the impression of other residing passengers who where away in the toilet or dining car, so people wouldn’t enter and he’d have the room to himself. Dickens would call that sort of behavior scrowdging. It is the sort of thing that no matter how misanthropic I may feel I would not allow myself to stoop to. I looked for a 1 hour reisplan but didn’t find one. I walked through two cars looking for one, usually found on empty seats and or tables, but didn’t find one. I assumed there none on this train, which is occasionally the case and returned to my seat.

The other guy had newspapers all over the middle table, so I didn’t get my computer out. I read the Trib. After Karlsruhe I went looking for the conductor. I asked if the train was stopping at the airport. He said no, that I would have to change at Mannheim, which was the next stop. That was the sort of info a 1hr Reisplans would give. At Mannheim I left the compartment never having spoken to the other guy.

I got an empty compartment on the next train but soon another guy came into it. He turned out to be an interesting guy. He worked for a steel company that made specialty parts. He was British, but lived in LA, and had just come back from their mill in Offenburg. He was also a musician who played jazz piano. We talked about various travels and how different it was from the the 90′s. I mentioned how back then you traveled with paper airline tickets which you worried about losing or destroying. I once showed up in SF for a New York flight on Frontier Airlines and when I found I had lost my ticket I to had to buy another one on the spot instead of them just looking up my purchase and issuing me a boarding pass. He told me that now you can use your Blackberry to check in at a kiosk by just pressing it against the reader. I imagine a lot of people must know that except for me. I told him about the Turbo Prop plane from Riga to Tampere that had rattled a screw out my eyeglasses. I didn’t notice until put them on and one lens fell out. I never did find the screw. He said had an eye glass repair kit. He had been carrying it on his travels for several years and never used it and that I was welcome to it.Before putting in the new screw I had to take out the sewing thread I used for a temporary repair. He said it had never occurred to him to travel with a sewing kit. I told him I had never thought to travel with an eyeglass repair kit.

Frankfurt is a very trippy airport. It is space agey modern. It has lots of open duct work and escalators encased in plexiglass that run through open air, just supported on the ends. The top floors have vaulted glass ceilings. It looks like it was based on the film Brazil. It is easy to find the Lufthansa counters there. In fact you can’t miss them. I found a woman controlling the entrance to the check in counters and asked about checking in. She directed me to the self service kiosks. I realize it is a small sample, but I have never been able to use one of those consoles to check in when the ticket has been bought by a third party, in this case by my friend John in Manchester. The console told me my passport was not recognized. After that I did get to speak to a human being who also had some trouble, but finally found my reservation. He made me ship through the heavy bag, which was at no cost. When I marveled at that he said “Lufthansa is not Ryanair.” It is also not American Airlines or United or lots of others.

I was in the security line when I rememberd I had a quarter bottle of red wine with a cork in it in my backpack. The cork had been put in it in Kiel a couple of weeks earlier and I had packed it with everything else when I left for Freiburg. Relizing that sort of liquid won’t get through security I went back out and found a place to drink the wine, I had brought a cup along with it, and eat another croissant, that I had put in my pocket before leaving the hotel. That was relaxing. That also prepared me for security, which was a real cattle call. Only a third of the stations were open and I’m sure a hundred people were in front me in the snaking line. I got out the Old Curiosty Shop to read as I inched along the serpantine path.

Security did have a nice wrinkle. The trays appear vertically on a roller line which runs along the passenger side of the x-ray machine. The trays come right back once they’ve gone through the machine. In other places they are usually collected at the other end and then put on carts to be ferried back and when demand exceeds supply things slow down. We were also not required to remove our shoes, at least not to walk through the scanner. They would need to be removed if one was chosen for a personal pat down. At least have got the personal touch, gender specific in stalls to the side, but I was not selected. After that it was passport control. I guess that is because England is not part of the Eurozone. The officer couldn’t find my entry stamp until I told him my entry had been in Copenhagen.

At the gate I presented my boarding pass. I was told I was way early. I replied that I didn’t know what time it was. He thought that was amusing. He said I should come back in an hour and a half. I asked about wireless and was directed to a gate not far away. There I found it was for-pay wireless. I wonder when that will change? The area was a lounge with chairs that could tilt back almost horizontal for resting. The only electricity was near tall tables with round bars to sit on instead of chairs. I guess they think the resting thing should not be carried too far. It occurred to me that I didn’t need to write on the uncomfortable rolling seat since there was no wifi so I went back to the gate. It then occurred to me at Starbucks I had not written down John’s phone number in Manchester. Once there I was to take the train to the central station and then call him.

I stopped at a pay internet terminal and put in a two euro coin. Then I could not get any action. I saw a guy use an identical machine a few feet away. I moved to his machine once he was done and put in half a euro. I could not get that machine to work either. I then saw a guy approach the first machine. I asked him how it worked. He had no trouble getting it going. That was because it was a mouseless computer but where the mouseless pad in my computer was it had un-marked space bars that I had thought were right and left mouse keys. The actual mouse keys were off to the side. Feeling like a dope I got on line and got John’s number. After that I used up all the time trying to compose a short message that was stymied by there being no capital shift key for the right hand. Or maybe there was one that I couldn’t recognize.

While I was writing a whole bunch of passenger queued up at the counter. I knew I had an aisle seat and saw no reason to join them. A while later I heard a guy say to some others that the flight was delayed 25 minutes. A while later there was an announcement that we could now get on the bus and be taken to the plane. I waited till the line had dissipated and shut down my computer and joined the last of the stragglers. Once on the bus I was glad I had waited. For some reason we didn’t move for at least fifteen minutes. It got warmer and warmer on the bus. Luckily I had finally gotten the bright idea to cram my overcoat into the backpack. Finally we got moving and were driven to the plane, which was a big jet for a tarmac boarding. It was a British Midlands flight operated by Lufthansa. We boarded from front and back. Since I would be in the 10th row I joined the longer line at the front. I found a large man seated in my seat. He thought he was in row eleven. I sat down next to a blond woman who was talking the man in the window seat. She was telling him and now was the time to buy property in England.

I was surprised when we were all given a sandwich. The flight was only going to take an hour and a half. I was even more surprised that they were not charging for wine. When asked what I would like I told them I would like a beer. I was given one of those half cans of Stella Artois. The sandwich was sliced egg on white bread, not something I have ever been given on a American plane. The captain explained, the first spoke to us, when we were by then over England “I am sorry I didn’t speak to you while we were on the ground but we were busy negotiating our departure.” I wonder just what goes on when they are late and have to hot rod it a little to nose into the take off line?

After landing I collected my bag and then went through passport control. For some reason the English ask more questions than most other countries. I just said I was visiting a friend and would leave in five days. I then passed through the nothing to declare line and headed for the train, stopping only to change some Euros into Pounds.

I exited the train at Oxford Road station. I called John Wojowski from a pay phone. He said he would be along in five minutes. That was all he said. 60 cents only gives you about a minute to talk on an English pay phone. To have an actual conversation you need to keep throwing in coins.

It was Saturday night. The last time I had been in Manchester on a Saturday night I had seen more public drunkedness than any other place I had ever been. Although it was still daylight I saw a young man in the station fall over drunk in front of me. John soon appeared, looking just about the same I as I remembered him except his once red hair was now mostly gray. Before going to his house we walked to the Lass O’Gowrie pub and looked at their upstairs room as a possible site for the Effect of Dada show. John had already made the deal but wanted me to OK it. The room was 18 feet from screen to back wall and could seat about thirty. The short throw meant the picture on the screen wouldn’t be very big. All things considered it was fine, so we cemented the deal. The morning after would have taking the 5:00am train to London where I could catch my flight back home to Portland.

On the walk to his house John pointed out landmarks so I would be able to find it again. We walked by the BBC building. I had stayed there once before, but that had been in 1997. It wasn’t far from the station. John fixed some pasta with a salad for dinner. I thought I was retiring early, but found it was almost midnight.

http://www.trendygadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/20070913050648873.jpg

Tags: eyeglass repair kit, frankfurt airport, freiburg, Karlsruhe, lufthansa, wardell gray
Posted April 11th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Meeting People on Trains

April 8 Kiel, Germany

I had left the alarm set at 5:30 as it was easier to do that then change the needed to be repaired thing. It went off on time and I got up. My destination that day would be Freiburg im Breisgau where I would show both Subversive Animation and Effect of Dada. It would be my last gig in Europe this trip. The luxury of only packing what was needed for a leg of the trip was over. Instead of attending to that first I made coffee and sent some emails and made a facebook post. I had offered Anne a trip to Enterprise for her birthday. The New York Times on line was still on yesterday’s paper. It was ten in the evening the night before on the West Coast. I read some news I’d missed. Anne posted a video of Joy singing, with gusto, in the FMC choir. Not exactly melodic, but with great enthusiasm.

I drank several cups of coffee and had toast with Brie cheese. I then packed and left, leaving the guest key in the lock. It was a pleasant morning with no rain. I bought a Trib at the station and got on the train. Seated across the aisle and in back of me was a blond woman. She talked on the phone for most of the trip. She had a sort of sing song voice. I saw how the rise of the cell phone had made the “quiet zone” cars appear. I dozed off but was awakened by her phone ringing. It was an 80′s pop tune with a sort of reggae beat which I think was called I’m Dancing.

Getting off the Kiel train I headed for the escalator. So did a hundred or so others. Trying to make my footprint smaller I pulled the heavy bag up a step where it teetered precariously. I looked up for no good reason and then felt the bag slipping. I then felt myself slipping. Ack, I was falling backward! Having the two shoulder bags with forty pounds between them didn’t help. I grabbed the banister. It pulled my hand up, but left my weight behind. Against the drag of the bags I got my other hand on it and things settled down. It had been darned close for a moment of my becoming like a tumbling rock crashing down through all the people below. I ignored the quizzical looks and went to my platform.

I had a half hour wait. I walked around looking at food. I considered getting a pain au chocolate at CroBag. They didn’t have any. All of the pastries looked German. At the fourth Le CroBag I finally found it, but by then had decided I didn’t really want one. A fifteen minutes till train time I went to the platform expecting to find it there. That train starts in Hamburg. It wasn’t there and didn’t come until right at the 10:24 departure time. I went to the very last car and found an empty compartment with no reservations. Sweet. I had barely settled into my seat when we rolled away. A tall woman with short blond hair came in with free newspapers and seemed to feel bad that none were in English for me. After she left the train stopped for no apparent reason and stayed that way at least ten minutes. It is a good thing I took the early train today as that did not not bode well for arriving on time. I decided I’d go to the diner car for a snack after my ticket was checked. That was quite a while later. The diner car was four cars away but I liked the walk. I did see empty compartments with no reservations closer to the food. I got a cafe au lait with croissant.

At Kassel-Wilhelmshone Prof Sandor Vajna came into the compartment. I found that he taught motion studies in at the University in Magdeburg. He was a tall bald man, sort of like Mr. Clean.

He talked about a whole bunch of things before I got a word in edgewise. That included the Gillbreath family that was headed by a man who revolutionized kitchen design based on motion studies and became famous in the book Cheaper By the Dozen, the TV show the Golden Girls, The SF earthquake, and things I am sure I have forgotten. Eventually he asked me to send him details of the Industrial Design show I had done at YBCA.

Just before his stop he brought up the topic of why English was selected as the official language of America. I told him there was no official language in America, although some politicians currently wanted to make one and they they were mainly motivated by constituents anger at having to press a button for English when calling a bureaucracy. I added English was the de facto national language, but there was no legislation or law making it so. He said it was the German general Friedrich Wilhelm August Von Steuben who had won the Revolutionary War, with George Washington being more of a figurehead than an actual fighting soldier. He said the decision for the national language was put to a vote between English and German and that they tied, but uncharacteristically the German deferred. He asked me to research it.

At Frankfort a young guy came into the compartment who said he was going to Freiburg. He looked like Jack Bauer’s friend Tony in the show 24. He was wearing blue jeans and a button up shirt. His hair was cut so short it was just this side of shaved. An older guy also came in. He looked like Art Carney. He was wearing a dark suit with a red striped tie. Both guys took newspapers when the attendant came by with them.

At Mannheim Art Carney left and a large guy who looked like he could be a circus performer came in. He wore blue jeans and a black tee shirt. He had salt and pepper gray hair and gray mustache. He, as others I’ve noticed on this trip, was wearing a really big wrist watch.

Both the first guy and I got off at Frieburg. The circus performer looking guy said goodbye in Italian. He looked like a guy you could get along with. I checked my notes. I was to go first to the Deutsches Kaiser Hotel on Gunterstal Strasse.

I walked across the busy street and continued straight ahead. In the past I had gone south a bit and then followed the street car route. I figured this route should take me there eventually. I found a hotel information kiosk that did not have the Deutscher Kaiser Hotel listed, nor Gunterstal Str as one of the streets. That took a while to discern by carefully examining the map. From that I assumed the hotel was not on that map, which was limited in area. I was on the street that the running water in the stone lined ditch. I figured I could stop in the Schwartzkoff Hotel and ask for directions. Every time before they had gotten me a room in the Schwarzwaelder Hof Hotel. I somehow walked right past the Schwarzwaelder Hof Hotel and kept walking until I knew I was past the grid of the hotel locater map. I then asked a woman with a bike for help. She knew where Gunterstal Str was but her limited English was good for the direction but not good for just how far. I walked that way. After asking my way twice more I found the hotel. It was a warm sunny day and I was really glad to come to a place where I could shed my overcoat.

The hotel was big old wooden building. To get to the rooms I had walk through the service hall for the kitchen. In my room I found something I had never seen before. The shower was just inside the door. All self contained in itself. The toilet and sink were in room too small for a bath. This room had obviously lived a long time with its bath down the hall.

I walked to theater only having to ask directions once. Here you might ask, why don’t I get a Blackberry or some such item I could consult instead of asking strangers on the street? Well, what would be the fun of that? At the theater, which is in what used to be a small railroad station, I found that I was too early. The box office wasn’t open yet and my show would not be until 9:30 that night, four hours away. I walked back to the hotel to get The Old Curiosity Shop. Back at the ex-railroad station I found a place to sit and read. After a while the ticket girl came over. She had the document I needed to sign in order to get paid. A little while later she came by and said I would have to go get dinner by myself and the place across the street would be best.

All of the outdoor seats were taken. I went inside and found an empty table. The place was packed, both inside and out. I ordered the day’s special which was Forelle blau with potatoes and apples. All the waitress could tell me about it was that it was fish. I was surprised to find it was a whole trout, from nose to tail fin. It reminded me of camping out and cooking fresh caught trout over campfires when I was little.

Robert from the cinema came in around 8:30 and sat down. He also ordered the Forelle special. We were just as we were finishing Telemach came in. He was the other director, along with Robert, of the cinema. We then all went over to the theater. The early show, Revolution Road, was just getting out. Among them was the man who had been in charge of the cinema when I had first showed films there in the in 1998 and 1999. Both shows were listed as one double feature starting at 9:30. The first show was Effect of Dada and drew a nice crowd of forty or so. A somewhat smaller crowd stayed for Subversive Animation. I did ask the audience if anyone was there who had been disappointed when it was not shown the the year before. No one owned up to that. Afterwards Robert told me the one woman who had complained had not appeared.

I walked back to the hotel. It was close to one in the morning. I found the front door locked. I used the second key but it would only turn in the lock and not open the door. I tried it several times. I looked through the window and saw an employee in the dining room. I knocked on the door and waited. I then knocked on the door and waited longer. I then really pounded on the door, sort of like Daffy Duck, when demonstrating the correct form of door knocking to Porky Pig, in the cartoon You Ought to Be in Pictures. That got results. Two young people came to the door and after opening it glared at me. I showed them my key and told them it didn’t work. They both said that key was for the back door. I told them that now I knew and would make a note of it. I then went to my room and had a very nice night’s rest.

Tags: cheaper by the dozen, Freiburg im Breisgau, gillbreath, le crobag, Schwarzwaelder Hof Hotel
Posted April 11th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Politically Active

April 7 Kiel Germany

Stayed at home until two in the afternoon and then only went to the Post Office, via Sophie Mall, to send post cards. Then back at the house to write and etc.

Dinner was lentil soup with Arab seasoning plus fake meat that chewed like the real thing, prepared by Martina. Karsten and I then drove over to the other side of the river for his weekly, or maybe monthly, political meeting. His friend Mathias was waiting for us. He was a younger guy who’s English was only so so. He smoked hand rolled cigarettes that included filters.This was another German place apparently ignoring the no smoking indoors law. Karsten had a beer that came in glass with the name of the cafe on it, Bambule. I had a Hefewrizen Dunkel. Mathias had the daily special of lasangne (with salad, five euros) and a different dark beer. I liked the glass mine came in. It was a fluted glass with the stem undulating to fit the hand.

Karsten made a point of keeping most of the conversation in English except when he had to translate trickier stuff between us. A forth guy was supposed to be there, coming by train from Lubeck, and after we were working on our second beers Karsten said he didn’t think he was going to show up. The conversation was mostly about arranging demonstrations and other events around issues of housing, wages and employment. Mathias liked the story about the Portland demonstration that involved trying to projectile vomit red, white, and blue on George H.W. Bush. He showed me a political magazine he had called Wildcat (for Wildcat Strikes). It had a slick cover and was very up to date with news from Wisconsin and also Nuclear power issues. The best picture was from a demonstration in Rome where marchers carried white shields that had the names of a famous book and author on each one. Moby Dick, Tropic of Cancer, and Plato’s Republic were among them. Mathias thought it funny that Wildcat had been the name of a car in America in the 60′s. He liked my impersonation of the ad that ended with a growl. Now that I think about it, the growl was from a Cougar commercial. Well, that’s theater.

The guy from Lubeck arrived. He was closer to my age than Mathias. He had short gray hair and lively eyes. He ordered coffee. He then asked “Where are the girls?” Apparently Karsten’s political group included women who weren’t there that night. Claudia came into the cafe. That was coincidental. She came to play cards. It looked like the room had once been a cardroom. Above each table hung a pool table lamp on a long cord. Except for the one above Claudias’s table each lamp had been raised by having the cord shortened by being tied in a knot.. Over our table a coaster had been put in the knot to enlarge it.

I let the guys talk in German for a while and examined the menu. On the Kinderkarte pizzas were named by Sesame Street characters. The pizza with ham was an Ernie. The one with salami was a Bert. The one with mushrooms was a Kermit. Miss Piggy had corn and bananas. Karsten said Sesame Street had been shown on German state television from the beginning, in English. But it was eventually canceled because the show featured black characters whereas as German society did not. That brought up the topic of the BBQ stand that opened in the LIDL / SKY parking lot. It had signs saying Texas BBQ. On one corner of the tent was a large US flag and on the other a Confederate flag. I figured they didn’t realize that was a racist emblem. Karsten was not as generous and thought it was just awful. I told him about the small town of Lostine in the Wallowa valley where there is Confederate flag that can’t be missed as you drive into town. It is on a garage at the end of curve where your headlights hit it if it is dark. The Wallowa Valley has a history of racism that goes back to the Nez Perce war in 1879 and there is dissimulation about what the flag being placed there means.

The Lubeck came home with us where Karsten gave him some posters. The posters were on the shelf that runs the length of the Arab room above the front door. Karsten had to get out an ancient looking wood ladder spattered with many colors of paint to get them. He then took the guy to the train station for the train back to Lubeck.

Tags: confedeerate flag, george h w bush, moby dick, platos republic, sesame street, tropic of cancer, wildcat strike
Posted April 9th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Emily Dickinson Meets Captain Blood

Kiel, Germany

On Tuesday I did something very remarkable, at least for me, as opposed to Emily Dickinson, or I imagine many people: I never left the house from waking up to going to bed.

On Wednesday I was turning that one day event into a trend when at two in the afternoon I realized I must strike out into the world or start writing poetry. Without top coat, but with a hat, I strode confidently to the train station and took the train to Lübeck. It was gray day, but not cold.

I didn’t know that Lübeck was different from most European towns in that the train station was not near the center of town. That is because Lübeck is a place of great antiquity and the old center of the city, sort of like Brugge in Belgium, was recognized as place to preserve before such a defilement could happen. My initial destination was the 15th Century Holstentor Gate. I walked from the station to a bus loading area where I found a posted map. I then followed the buses over a bridge toward the old city. There I saw the gate. It was the sort of thing Walt Disney tried to recreate in Disneyland.

On the other side of the gate was a mix of the very old and the nearly new. I walked up a business street that strangely reminded me of Ashland, Oregon. Near the top I could see a McDonalds. I looked to my left and saw something much older. I went through a narrow passage and then under the eave along a building easily five hundred years old. Ahead of me was a large brick church.

I went inside, contributing 2 euro, as asked. I was told the cathedral had been bombed in 1942 with most of the roof and towers demolished. There was also a firestorm. To commemorate that terrible time in a corner under one of the now rebuilt towers they left where they lay large bells that had fallen from their heights and smashed on the floor . It really impresses me how bomb destroyed buildings in Europe were so carefully rebuilt after the war. This one was a twenty year process. The original organ, which Bach and Handel had both played, was also destroyed. It has been replaced with one that has pipes thirty feet tall. Those pipes were high above the church floor at the rear wall of the central nave. It really is a huge place with three long vaulted roofed naves and short transepts on each side. Behind the Apse are statues. Most are missing limbs or fingers. The general feeling of the place was stoic somberness. I hope to return some day and hear the organ play.

It was raining, sort of a heavy mist, when I left the church. The old city of Lübeck is surrounded by water with the streets going up hill toward the middle. Those main streets have the most modernity among them. I walked along a diagonal street with many houses built in the crow step gable design.

One of the more notable was the Seaman’s Guild building that houses the Schiffer Gesellschaft restaurant and claims to be the oldest pub in the world. It is a meeting place for sailors from around the world. I wondered if my dad, long time member of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, had ever dropped in? I considered having a beer or something inside for posterity’s sake but decided to keep walking. It didn’t look like the heavy drizzle was going to stop.

Further along that street was another huge brick building from the middle ages. It was the Customs House building. Due to the rain I decided to head back toward the bridge to the train station. I didn’t want to take exactly the same route so I went a few blocks in the opposite direction on a narrow cobblestone street past houses hundreds of years old. I came to a business street and turned along it. There I came to the most interesting group of buildings of my visit. It was the Hospital of the Holy Spirit which was established in 1260.

Being pretty damp, from there I took a different diagonal road to the station. I crossed the Bridge of Statues. The statues were of Greek Gods. Mercury was properly shown sans outfit with the poor guy’s nether regions naked to the north wind.

Further reading about Lübeck would not be a waste of time. It has a very interesting history and was once a very rich city. In1375 Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV named Lübeck one of the five “Glories of the Empire.” The other four were Venice, Rome, Pisa and Florence. A whole bunch of famous writers have lived there.

Walking through the drizzle I was looking forward to buying a beer in the station store for the ride home. Darn the luck, my train was warmed up and ready to roll when I arrived, so I got on board and sat back and relaxed.

Tags: ashland oregon, brugge, emily dickinson, erroll flynn, Lübeck, McDonalds, pipe organ
Posted April 7th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Elbphitharmonie Kulturcafe

Hamburg, Germany April 4, 2011

I got up early enough to have breakfast with Volker and Esther before she went off to her job. I said goodbye to Volker a while later and walked to the S-Bahn and got off three stops later at the train station. Having no stated time to arrive in Kiel I went looking for a Starbucks and free Wifi. The Starbucks up the street from the train station in Hamburg was very interesting. It was in its own self contained building in the middle of a plaza. The building seemed to be about a hundred years old. There was very little seating on the ground floor but lots of tables outside. A third of the ground floor was taken up by a raised area with three computers with what looked like some sort of travel agency team manning them. The main indoor seating was upstairs. It was a big open room where old time dances could have been occurred. I guessed it was more probably for fraternal club meetings. Or maybe it had been the reading room of a library. There was an upright piano in the corner. I had started with a medium cup of Pike Place Roast coffee and then had a “Wild Blueberry” muffin with my refill. I am not sure what sort of wild that meant. I spent a lazy couple of hours getting caught up on things. Soft sunlight glanced off the brown wood table I had claimed for my space.

I walked outside outside and circumnavigated the building. I had originally approached it from the rear. It was a nice day. In the front was the table area. It was contained by a low stone wall that extended from the outer walls of the porch of the building. At the front of the tables, and still connected to the building by the low walls, was a fountain. It had a tower in the middle at least fifteen feet high topped by a statue of a lion. It was flanked at a lower level by statues of both a man and woman, both posing with what looked like Harbor Seals. Below the man was a plaque that read:

Gestfifit Von Den

Burgern Hamburg

1914-1926

There was also a plaque below the woman:

Demandenken en

Burgermeister

John Georg

Monckeberg

Atop the pillars in the front at the eaves level it said Elbphitharmonie Kulturcafe. A few feet below that, hanging between the pillars, was a sign that said Starbucks.

I later found out that before it became a Starbucks it had been a Burger King. When it was a Burger King the words Elbphitharmonie Kulturcafe had been replaced with Burger King. All things considered Starbucks was a step in a better and more tasteful direction.

It being a lazy day I ambled to the station and found a train to Kiel leaving immediately. I hurried and got on board. I left my bags on a rack at the front and took my seat. When we hadn’t left in several minutes I realized I had missed that train to Kiel. Sure enough, I was on the train to Lubbock. Luckily it didn’t leave until after I got off. I then found it was twenty minutes until the Kiel train. I bought the Trib and a bottle of Becks beers. It seems the height of indulgence to open a beer on a train and relax during an afternoon ride. George Will recently wrote an editorial claiming the movement for more trains in America was a Liberal plot to “diminish Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Oh? I’d like to see George crack open a cold one in his car and wave it as a salute to Liberty at the police passing by.

When I arrived at Kiel the sky had darkened and rain was pouring down. I went into the Sophie Mall to get out of the downpour. When I exited from the back a few minutes later I walked into blue skies that had replaced the storm clouds. I walked to Karsten’s house. There I found Martina in the kitchen. That was nice. It is more usual to enter the house and find it empty. Karsten soon got back from his errand of buying bike locking gear at a hardware store.

I went to the store and bought beer. I got Dithmarscher Maibock from a display rack. Martina told me that it was beer only produced in the spring. It had first been produced in the middle ages when Monks had to fast for forty days for Lent. It was created as a liquid that would substitute for food, a sort of Dark Ages nutritional supplement. It was tasty and I could see how it could soften difficult times.

It being Asparagus season we had asparagus and fish stew. Very nice. In general I would say cooking in Europe is more seasonally oriented than in America. Food from a box or a can doesn’t depend on the weather. We talked after dinner and into the evening. I then retired to bed and enjoyed a couple of chapters of Charles Dickens’ wonderful tome The Old Curiosity Shop featuring Little Nell.

Tags: becks beer, charles dickens, fasting, george will, hamburg, kulturcafe, lent, little nell, monks, starbucks
Posted April 5th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

DADA DADA DADA

Hamburg, Germany April 3, 2011

It being Sunday things were relaxed in Volker and Esther’s house. When I awoke no one was astir. I recalled a nearby Starbucks that should be a short walk away. There I could spend time on line posting a blog report. Since it had been such a nice day yesterday I went out without a cap or top coat leaving a note saying I would return at 10:00. I didn’t have a key to get back in. I had walked a block when it started to rain. Not sure just what direction I should go I asked a passerby. He didn’t speak English. He did understand “coffee.” He pointed in the exact opposite direction I intuitively thought was right. I went the way he pointed. It began raining harder. I walked to a business street. That wasn’t hopeful. I remembered the Starbucks as being at the edge of a park. A young guy was waiting for the light to change. He was eating the end of a loaf of bread peeking out from a paper bag. I asked him if he spoke English. I should add here, almost any German who is asked if they speak English, assuming they can, will reply “Just a little” or “Not very much.” This young man replied “Sure.” He didn’t think there was Starbucks anywhere near but suggested an upscale area a few blocks away. I walked there. It kept raining. By the time I got to the upscale area I was really soaked. I asked a passerby for Starbucks. I was assured there was none nearby. About then I realized I was lost. It began raining even harder. I had made a note that Volker and Esther’s house was on Heinrich Strasse, remembering it by associating it with Tommy Henrich former big league ballplayer 1927-1940 with the New York Yankees. A guy passing by on a bicycle directed me to Heinrich Strasse. On the corner there was a pastry shop. A bunch of people were inside buying stuff. I went in and got coffee and a donut. The donut was still warm and as good as a Krispy Kreme. The coffee was passable. The main attraction of the place were unlimited paper napkins so I could dry my sopping head.

Volker let me into the house. He told me there was no Starbucks anywhere in the area. I wonder where the one in my mind was? We had breakfast of bread, cheese and salami with cafe au lait. I turned down a brown egg. After breakfast we took a walk. It had stopped raining and turned into a nice day. Looming over most German cities is a TV tower. The height of the tower would be a point of pride for each municipality. The one in the former East Berlin is a doozy. The one in Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, is also a pip. It had restaurant at the top that revolved. That restaurant had gone out of business. We walked to the base of the Tower. There was a chain link fence around it, giving the whole thing a forlorn feeling. Signs were posted forbidding roller skating or skate boarding.

Across the highway from the TV tower was a large park. It was a destination place for people. Inside were several contained parks including a Japanese garden. We stopped for ice cream. Esther and I got cones and Volker got a cup. Smart man he. I was giving my cone an ambitious lick and the ice cream went flying, landing in the dirt. I don’t think the guy who scooped it had mushed it properly down into the the cone. Since it was early in the season I am sure he will improve and avoid further tragedies.

The park has a really impressive children’s area. Both Volker and Esther had played there as children and said it was unchanged. In the middle of it is a fiberglass mountain. It sort of resembles the Experience Music Project in Seattle, which is at the base of the Space Needle. The park mountain is hollow inside but I was assured no kids play inside as there is no ventilation and the stench from it being used as a public toilet is horrible. We walked back home through the business area of the neighborhood. A two block area was awash in Saturday night trash. It was a designated a “party area” and has been surrendered to loud bars and drunken revelry.

Volker and Esther subscribe to a vegetables and cheese service. Every week a box arrives with an assortment of organic vegetables and interesting cheeses. There is vegetable service in Portland but it has no cheeses. That is a German specific wrinkle, at l least for the time being. For dinner they tossed a bunch of vegetables into a wok and made a curry. Over rice it was great. We lingered over dinner and had to take a taxi to Metropolis for my 7:00 show of The Effect of Dada. Another good crowd showed up which looked scattered inside the big auditorium. As usual, everyone loved the show.

The 8:00 show continued the Dada and Surrealism theme with a Buster Keaton short and feature. The short was One Week. The feature was The Navigator. I was asked to introduce the show. I talked about how the surrealists loved Buster and didn’t love Charlie Chaplin. I think the Surrealists appreciated in Buster Keaton’s art that he always played a man interacting in a world seemingly one step removed from himself. Buster had an existential aura around him as though he was not so much taking part in reality or nature, but battling against it, sort of one man against the universe. In One Week he builds a pre-fab house of which the disparate parts have been jumbled. The result is a crazy house. In the Navigator he is placed on a big completely abandoned and adrift ship. Both show his ability to persevere inside an insane reality.

We took the S-Bahn home.

Tags: buster keaton, dada, experience music project, germany, hamburg, metropolis kino, pre-fab houses, skate boards, surrealism, sybil seely, tommy henrich, tv towers
Posted April 5th, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Everybody Dance!

April 2 Duselldorf, Germany

I was awakend by a bird that sounded more like an electronic alarm clock than a living thing. It would go peep peep peep peep peep peep – pause – peep peep. It then would repeat it in a very regimented way. Each peep itself was sharp and almost metalic sounding. Last fall I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle while I was in Europe. Maybe what I was hearing was a wind up bird. Bright sunlight had filled the room by the time I got up at 8:00.

The free breakfast wasn’t bad at all, but all I had with the not very good, and not enough of it, coffee, toast and a couple of croissants. I grabbed a banana to eat later on my way out. Back in my room I turned on CNN and actually got some baseball news. I left the hotel at 9:30. My intention was to walk to the train station but was talked out of that idea by the desk clerk. She told me it would be over a half hour walk but only three stops on the Metro. It was already warm and it looked like it would be a hot day. At the Metro I found didn’t have the coins to buy a ticket and the machine didn’t take cash. There are no attendants at Metro stops like in the subway in New York. There are also no turnstyles. You can ride a train without a ticket and the chance of getting caught is slim. I took my chances.

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I got to the station an hour and half before train time. I walked out of the station looking for a Starbucks. I gave up and went back inside and bought a Trib and asked the clerk if there was a Starbucks nearby. She said in the station at the opposite end. Sure enough, a real Starbucks with plenty of seating and free wifi. I posted a report on my blog and announced it on facebook. I walked to the platform five minutes before scheduled time and found a cryptic note on the board. It was cryptic only because I don’t read German. I was able to decipher, which was proved by an announcement, that the train was delayed 25 minutes. I went back to the Starbucks and sent Volker in Hamburg a message to adapt accordingly. Back at the platform I found a place to sit. There was an air of stoic resignation among the people waiting. It was present in their postures and in the tones of their voices. Many lit up cigarettes. The sunshine and warmth made it less bad. A train arrived but it was the one scheduled and not the tardy one. When the late train did arrive it had no signage saying it was the right one. All of the long time loiterers got on and so did I. The cars were of an old design with all chairs and no compartments. An announcement said it was a replacement train. I was amazed they could rustle one up in such short order. It even had a bistro car.

At Dortmund that train terminated and we all got off and boarded a more modern replacement train across the platform. I went into an empty compartment but was soon joined by an older couple who were speaking a language I didn’t recognize. I would guess it was a Slavic language. They kept up a lively conversation for most of the trip. No conductothe old curiosity shopr arrived to check tickets or give out free beer vouchers. I got deeper into The Old Curiosity Shop.

Hamburg is one of my favorite train stations. It is laid out sort of like a football stadium. The tracks are on the playing field and the concourses are accessable by stairs and escalators at each end. I got off the train and walked toward the South escalator. Looking up I saw Volker and Esther waving at me from the top. The train was almost and hour late. That didn’t leave time to go to their flat and then to the theater. The event would be the film Hellzapoppin at 6:00 and my Lindy Hop and Jitterbug show at 8:00. Dancing was to follow. Volker suggested we get coffee. I suggested we drop all my appurtenances at the theater first. It was a warm day. The Metropolis Kino was built in 1957 and at the time was the largest theater in Hamburg. It had 70mm and Todd A-O. It is now on the wrong side of the tracks from the train station. The other side is all upscale shopping. The Metroplis side has bars and sex shops and even small grocery stores. Past the Metorpolis in a nicer area we found a cafe with sidewalk seating. The sign in the window said it was a Bistrotecque. I ordered a chef’s salad. Since I didn’t understand their order I was surprised that it was pie. I was pretty sure there would no time for dinner later.

A crowd of fifty or so came to see Hellzapoppin. The program had been written about in a feature article in the newspaper. There might have been more people but it was possibly the first really nice Saturday of the the year. I should not have been surprised when it hit the screen and was dubbed into German. That compromised most of the repartee between Olsen and Johnson but since that’s not exactly Shakespeare, and not much of a loss, the film was still enjoyable. All of the musical numbers were in English and all of the running around and slapstick was universal. The evening had been co-sponsored by one of the local Lindy Hop clubs. A young woman introduced Hellzapoppin at length using words Harlem New York, Savoy Ballroom, Swing Music, and Frankie Manning more than a few times.

I’d forgotten to take the slips of paper out of my reels that list the contents before giving the films to the projectionist. That allowed me to visit the projection booth to get them. To get there we had to go outside to an alley and then up a fire stairs. I was told that was fire code to keep the film isolated from the rest of the theater. That was done even though showing of flammable Nitrate film had stopped by 1957. The crowd was closer to 100 for my show. That is much better than my shows here last year. Even with that many the crowd was spread out in the big old place. Everything ran smoothly and looked good on the huge curved screen.

Metropolis Kino Lobby – Soon to Become a Dance Floor

At the end of the show I got a lot of compliments on it. I was introduced to both Volker and Esther’s moms, women of my age. Most of the crowd then went into the lobby where a dance floor had been created in the uncarpeted area where tables had been All were dressed for a special occasion. A DJ provided vintage dance music and most everybody danced. So did I. I danced with a whole bunch of women. They knew the basic Lindy without being expert but all had personal style. I really had a ball. The music was eclectic with most of the tempos being what the hep cats used to call “Business Man’s Bounce.” That was just as well. Dancing generates a lot of heat. The woman tending bar told Volker that she had never seen so many smiling faces at the Metropolis.

Tags: charles dickens, Frankie manning, hamburg, haruki murakami, hellzapoppin, jitterbug, lindy hop, metro, metropolis kino, raymond scott, the old curiosity shop, todd a-o, turnstyles
Posted April 3rd, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Portable Screenings

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April 1

I again got up at 8:00 which allowed me to say goodbye to Mani as he left for work. It had been a very pleasant four days thanks to his hospitality. I made coffee and had toast and then took a shower. Mani had been given some black soap by a girlfriend who got it in Syria. Very odd to use soap that produces black suds. I packed up and left the apartment. I left the key in the mailbox. It was already warm and wearing the over coat was something of a bother. I walked to Starbucks and took off bothcoats befor ordering coffee. I didn’t post a report. There was an email from John Wojowski in England. He said the one University gig wanted both Effect of Dada and Subversive Animation but that the time slot would only allow half of each program. What? Would they ask a musician to play half of a song? I replied I would like to show all of Effect and half of the cartoons and hoped that would be OK. I did say I could take a couple of things out of Dada if he had a splicer. There was an email from Düsseldorf telling me no one could meet me at the station and I should take a taxi to the museum.

I packed up and left the Starbucks and walked in the sunshine for two blocks directly to the down escalator into the train station. At the press and book store I bought the Trib. Walking straight ahead I came to Gleis 6 and went up the stairs to find my train waiting for me. I walked the wrong way and came to the end without finding first class. I walked the other way and when I heard the whistle I had still not came to the Bistro car. I chanced walking one more car length on the platform and then climbed aboard. Walking through cars I finally smelled cooking, passed the dining tables, walked through the first first class car, and at the end of the second found an empty compartment with no reservations listed. As I entered the compartment the train began to move.

Traveling without a wristwatch or a telephone I am sure is unusual. Knowing what time it is helps being on time for appointments. I’d been on the train for a while when I wondered what the time was. My ticket had been checked by both a Swiss conductor and later a German conductor, I had finished the Thursday crossword (hampered by my lack of knowledge of much of what has happened in my lifetime of not watching much TV or listening to modern music, Thursdays usually stump me) because the theme was baseball and music. One clue was the name of a pitcher on last season’s World Series Champion San Francisco Giants team and also the name of the singer of Help Me Rhonda. That of course would be Brian Wilson. Other names were Kenny Rogers (NY Yankees pitcher, Eddie Fisher (1966 Baltimore Orioles pitcher), and Dave Stewart (1989 Oakland Athletics pitcher). As we were were coming into the station of Freiburg I looked in the 1hr reiseplan and saw from the schedule that it was one in the afternoon. If I stayed on this train to the end of the line I would be Berlin at 7:37. Instead I will change at Mannheim in a little more than an hour. Instead of going to the Bistro car for a snack I will wait and get something in the Mannheim station between trains. The train I get there will take me directly to Düsseldorf.
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At Karlsruhe a man and woman came into the car. He was my age and his wife was younger. We got in to a conversation and talked about movies. The man was British but now lived in Germany. His wife didn’t say much so I’m not sure where she was from. They seemed to be very well traveled. He mentioned that they had recently been in Las Vegas and also mentioned being in Toronto and Florida. They said they made a mistake going to Las Vegas in August and the heat was just un-bearable. He said, with his wife making sympathetic sounds, that they had literally run from hotel to air conditioned car or vice versa and hardly spent a minute out doors. Just taking a walk was out of the question. They were just going to Mannheim where they would get a train to Frankfurt.

At Mannheim my next train was just across the platform. I went down the stairs and to a station store where I got a Magnum ice cream bar. Back at the train I found two first class cars at the very front. Both were crowded. I left the heavy bag in the doorway area and went looking. I hung my coat near an empty pair of seats and put down the two small bags. I then notice that the both seats were reserved from Mannheim to Koln. Right then the rightful owners of the seats arrived. I found a curious seating area that was half of the engine. It was a quiet zone with just four rows of seats and oversize windows It also had no overhead racks for bags. I put the big bag in the overhead rack in the main cabin. I took an aisle seat next to a business man. There was a very cloying smell of perfume, I assumed coming from one of two women across the aisle. Too bad there were not artificial scent free cars in addition to the quiet zone cars. My chair was one behind the front row. In front of that was a glass wall and door that separated us from the engineer. Above him was a glass ceiling. With all of the glass and being right in the front I could get much better appreciation of just how fast these trains go. Out in the country I’d guess this one got up to 130 mph. In the car ends there is usually a place that lists the trains speed. I have the listed speed on German trains go over 200 kilometers per hour. I believe the TGV trains in France go even faster. That is why when I missed a connection two years ago in Lyon on the way to Limoges, both in the south of France, I was routed through Paris to get there and got their in time for my gig.

The free snack was again Knusper Kugeln. The train pulled head first into Koln but backed out. After that instead of rushing into the future we were leaving it behind. At Koln an old woman with unnaturally red hair left the car and took most of the cloying perfume with her, still leaving memory of it to remind people where she had been.

At Düsseldorf I walked to the posted map in the big hall, exactly the same one I had looked at last fall, and then walked to the museum. It did seem a longer walk, but last fall I was not burdened with all my possessions. There I met Mathius, the second in the command at the museum, and Florian who had booked me. I gave Florian the two reels of films and then took a taxi to my hotel. It was a small place like so many that I have stayed at in various German towns. It did have candy in a bowl at the counter which had caramels in it. Yumm! I dumped my stuff in my room and then walked back to the Museum. The walk was along the Rhine river and took about fifteen minutes. It was nice just walking unencumbered on a warm day.

Florian and I had dinner at a Lebanese place around the corner from the museum. It was on a walking street of restaurants. Florian told me that around the corner was the longest bar in the world. Wow, maybe I’ll drop in on the way home after the show. The food was good. I was given an option of rice or French fries. Gosh, that doesn’t sound Lebanese. Being one with the place I had rice. Florian had gotten the job at the film museum right out of college three years earlier. In the summer he would drive around towing a trailer holding a portable 35mm projector to small towns in Germany and show feature films that had not played in their local cinemas.

Back at the museum it was an hour before showtime. I asked to see the museum. Florian turned on the lights and left me alone. It really is a nice museum. There are rooms full of costumes. There is a room dedicated to Lotte Reininger and puppet animation. There is room holding dozens of projectors of various types and a display of various formats that have been used from 8mm to 70mm, and with both 9.5 and 17.5, formats I have films of in my archive. There is also a room of pre-cinema with Zoetropes and even a Theatre Optique Praxinoscope. I watched an Astaire-Rogers dance on a Mutoscope. It was very nice just being alone with all this stuff.

I was able to check emails in the museum office. I had neglected telling Volker when I would be arriving in Hamburg the next day. I went to the German Rail site and got the schedule. I told him I would arrive at 15:31 and look for him.

My show was the first of the new calendar. Maybe that is why only three people showed up, a man and two woman, individually. Mathius felt bad for me. I told him I had done hundreds of shows for crowds of one or two. I felt bad for them that the money from ticket sales would not cover what they paid me. I gave a nice introduction to the three customers plus Mathius and Florian. I also spoke at the reel change and at the end of the show. All three customers, Mathius, Florian and the projectionist all very much enjoyed the show.

I got the films from the projectionist, the payment from the Mathius, and a goodbye from Florian, before walking to the hotel. It was Friday night. I forgot to check out the world’s longest bar. I did pass through many people enjoying the walk along the Rhein and the warm evening. I was passed by a family all on bicycles including small kids, none going very fast. I walked by a group gathered around a guy playing the guitar and singing. I managed not to get lost. In my room I got CNN on the telly. It was opening day for Baseball. I hoped for some sports news. The room had white walls and art prints on the walls. There was a nice print of Picasso’s Three Bathers from 1918. It is of three woman at the beach. One is wearing a purple swimsuit, another a red suit. A third is wearing a striped suit of blue and white and is dancing. It is the sort of print that might bring sweet dreams.

Tags: baseball, berlin, black soap, Düsseldorf, kenny rogers, Knusper Kugeln, las vegas, Lotte Reininger, picasso, praxinoscope, san francisco giants, syria, Zoetrope
Posted April 3rd, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

With Albert Einstein’s Ghost

March 31

I heard Mani in the kitchen so I decided to get out of bed and be sociable. He was just finishing breakfast which included drinking milk instead of coffee or tea. We made arrangements for dinner together again that evening at six. I got coffee started as he got ready to depart. After he was gone I had the excellent rye bread, the shape of and nearly as dense as a brick, with butter. There was all kinds of news in the Trib left over from yesterday. An item from the Tuesday Science in the Times was about tests that showed athletes are better at crossing busy streets than non athletes but not because of any physical difference in their mien, but because their eyes and brains react to things faster. Heck, any football coach could have told them that. All great running backs have to have speed and strength and agility but what separates the mediocre from the best is vision, specifically peripheral vision. When I was a sophomore in high school we had a senior quarterback, Randy Massie, who had over a half dozen very long broken field runs during the season. The coach, Newt Kier, said Randy had the widest peripheral vision of any his athletes tested. The report also found neither athlete nor non athlete did well crossing busy streets while talking on the phone. The tests were done using virtual streets so those who failed to cross safely were not actually run over.

Having only the one day report to post I didn’t spend much time on it before grading it as ready and leaving. I went out with just the sport coat and did get lightly rained on. It wasn’t cold. The Starbucks was busier than usual, I suppose because it was earlier in the day or possibly the rain drove people in doors. I asked for a medium cup which offered in a paper cup because there were no clean medium cups. I demurred and was given a big cup not completely full. It was such a big cup holding it in one hand was a little clumsy. I can appreciate how they’d think it insane to ask for a refill with that.

When I sat down a nice jazz version of of the 40′s song Candy (I call my sugar candy) was playing, led by a tenor sax. Frank Sinatra singing The Summer Wind then came on. That reminded me of hanging out at the Frontier Room in Bell town years ago. Summer Wind was one of the few songs on the Juke Box I’d put a quarter in for.

Seated in front of me was a woman holding a baby and talking to her friend across the table. Neither of them used their phones. The baby turned to me and gazed intently and smiled. That is a wonderful thing about babies. There is so much immediacy with them. We really could learn from them about living in the moment. When it was time to go the baby really yowled when put in her stroller. The mother spoke to me and I told her I only spoke English but I sure understood the baby’s language.

After using up the allotted time I realized I hadn’t sent Düsseldorf an email telling them when I’d arrive. I also hadn’t remembered to stop by the RR station and get an itinerary for the trip. It was still raining, but just a little. I walked to the station and got the itinerary. I would be leaving at eleven the next morning. That would allow my normal morning and get me there at four in the afternoon. I then went to the cyber cafe and emailed the museum and they got right back to me and said someone would meet me at the station.

I decided to look for the art museum. I had seen a sign for it on my walk to Starbucks and had a general idea of the direction to go. I hoped to find a street map to narrow it down. Just walking I found several huge and gaudy buildings that could house a museum. One said Gymnasium and another said Casino. A third was a hotel. I walked through the big clock in what must have been part of a city wall a long time ago. A nice thing about this part of the city is that all the sidewalks are set into the buildings and subsequently covered and out of the rain. I went into the big Munster Church. It was from the mid 15th century. It was not as mammoth as the cathedral in Koln but still of good size with a really nice honey comb ceiling design. It also had a lot of stained glass windows. I then went into a smaller church, that seemed even older, but in the foyer could only look through bars at the inside of the church. I suppose the foyer was kept open so people could light candles during off hours.

I finally found a street map and saw the art museum was practically at the foot of the bridge near the sandstone statue of the man with his dog. I also saw a listing for the Einstein house. I went there. It was a small apartment up a flight of wood spiral stairs. There was a long hallway/foyer from the stair to the sitting room that looked down on the street. Going back in the apartment toward the staircase was a small room that was made up as a nursery followed by the the bedroom in the larger room at the back. Now a museum instead of a place people live the foyer is no longer used and museum entrance is through the bedroom. Albert and his wife Mileva lived in the apartment 1902 to 1909. Only one other person came into the apartment while I was there. After looking around for quite a while and taking some notes I asked the woman at the front desk where the cooking had been done. She said that there was no water in the flat and all cooking and bathing was done in shared common areas below. An apartment above, that they didn’t live in, was also part of the museum. In the bedroom there was now a small auditorium where I watched a video of Einstein’s life. The sitting room had many back lit plastic banners with a history of Einstein’s life. That room had half a dozen people in it. All of that I could probably read on wikepedia, so I left.

When I finally got to the Kunst Museum it was five o’clock and it had just closed. I walked back to the flat. Mani soon came in and said that there was slot for my washing to be done. He took the clothes down. I offered to help but he refused. Maybe there was a rule against non resident laundry being done. Dinner started with a salad of greens, kohlrabi and roasted pumpkin seeds. Very tasty! The main dish was potatoes baked in cheese with onion and ham That also was very tasty. The red wine was Roare (check that spelling) and very good. Mani said it was a favorite of his and that he had visited the winery in Italy. After dinner there was Grappa, a sort of whiskey made with grapes. That is something I would normally shun, but this seemed a sort of festive occasion, not every days includes a visit to Einstein’s place as well as a six hundred year old church, so I had a couple.

http://images.travelpod.com/tripwow/photos/ta-00af-30a4-f5ce/munster-cathedral-of-bern-bern-switzerland+12887386606-tpfil02aw-31355.jpg

Tags: einstein, juke box, Munster Church, peripheral vision, pumpkin seeds
Posted April 2nd, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Again Breathing Easily in Bern

I got up at 8:00 and again found Mani already gone. He works as an elementary school teacher. The reason I hadn’t seen him yesterday was that he worked at Lichtspiel after school. There was a note asking if I would like dinner at 6:00. Yes, that sure suited me. I made coffee in the Italian coffee maker, one of those brutal looking metal ones that have an upper and lower chamber that screws together after water is put in the bottom and ground coffee in the middle. Then it is placed on a burner where the water in the bottom ends up as coffee in the top chamber. The best thing about the system is the coffee is very hot when poured into a cup. There is no toaster in Mani’s kitchen. I had bread with butter instead. I have never seen a loaf of sliced bread in this kitchen. The bread is always what in America would be called “artisan” bread. Small dense loaves often with nuts. Very tasty with butter.

After finishing the coffee and bread and butter I worked on my post for the blog. It would consist of the previous four days and would get back up to date. Knowing I would have just over an hour to work on line to add the links and art I wanted it to be ready to copy and paste when I got to Starbucks. By eleven o’clock I was ready. Looking out the window I saw the streets were wet with rain but that no rain was falling and the pedestrians were walking without hats or umbrellas. I decided to go out wearing the sport coat but not the overcoat. That proved a good decision as the sun had come out and the day was warming up. I bought a Trib at a news stand. It was nice to have not read any online news for a couple of days and again be in a more natural rhythm of news in the morning paper than the 24 hour news cycle that the world wide web has made possible.

At Starbucks the drip coffee was again not ready. I asked if only Americans requested it . I was told it was just Americans and Japanese. Live and learn. I asked about refills. They were puzzled. In Switzerland the idea of a free or low cost refill on a cup of coffee is still unheard of. I wondered how long that could last. When I was first in England in 1997 the refill was a sinister idea to them. Ten years later, at least in Starbucks, it was common place. I ordered a medium cup. Another difference here, as opposed to the USA, is that when ordering coffee a house mug is the default option with a to go paper cup by request only.

I found a small round table next to an electrical outlet. To make sure I could get everything done in the time allowed I worked off line for more than an hour. I then got on line and right to work. Working as efficiently as possible I still didn’t get it done before the wifi shut down on me. I went looking for the toilet. I discovered a staircase. I took the upstairs option and found another room for people to sit and drink their coffee. With no service bar is was larger than the area below. Wow, I had no idea. Downstairs there were as many people seated outside as inside. The walls of the building were actually floor to ceiling glass doors. On a warm day all those walls would open and the whole main floor would be one with the plaza. There might be a hundred people sitting at this Starbucks this minute drinking coffee in China cups.

The toilets were downstairs with no sign pointing that way. The doors had key pads. I got the code from upstairs. I was surprised to find that the toilet was multi use. The now common American idea of private single use bathrooms in public places had not gotten here. The idea of handicap access was also not considered. It could be those two things came together as a pair in the USA.

I walked to the cyber cafe to finish the post. I hoped to get it done in the 6 minute window. I put my one Franc coin in the slot and then blanked on my gmail password. Damn. That sort of thing is generally situational. It can also be inopportune. We get so comfortable with our use of laptops and their ability to remember what we need. For this simple job I would need different passwords and user names for gmail, my website, and Facebook. I eventually relaxed and remembered the passwords and got to work. I used up the three one Franc coins I had come with and got more. When I got the blog item posted and announced on Facebook I then added a fairly pathetic second Facebook post summing up the blog item in case people didn’t want to slog trough the minutia they’d find there and also complaining about how much trouble writing out and posting all that minutia took. I then walked out of the cyber cafe into bright sunlight and joyfully rejoined the natural world.

I spent an hour or so just walking around. Bern is a very old city and the oldest parts are very pedestrian friendly. I have forgotten to mention that the walk from Mani’s apartment to the Starbucks is nice in itself. In between is the high Lorrain bridge. On the neighborhood side it is guarded by a sandstone statue of a Gazelle. On the city side it is guarded by both a sandstone statue of a seated man and a dog and a seated woman with deer. The man and woman gaze stonily across the road at each other and have done so for nearly a hundred years and will continue to do so until they erode away or are removed in the name of progress. In the middle of thee there is view of the Alps in the distance and a river far below. I have been told that if ever I am in Bern in the summer we will go swimming in the river. It occurred to me that the problems I had posting the reports on the blog were exacerbated by their covering several days each. I was now caught up and could post a daily report that would take much less time. With that epiphany and the load off my mind I took the pleasant walk back across the bridge, stopping to look at the alps, and went back to the flat where I took a nap.

For dinner that night I made another Greek salad with the fixings from the day before. Mani made a very tasty risotto. They clashed culturally but tasted fine together. After dinner we talked late into the evening over red wine about the state of education and the problems of the world. That sort of thing is possible in a kitchen with a table and no TV or internet access.

Tags: lichtspiel, rain, risotto, rye bread, starbucks, switzerland
Posted March 31st, 2011 by Dennis Nyback in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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