London Bloody London

Thanks to several books, many many conversations with friends and family, news stories, history and S.O.S.E lessons, countless hours of British T.V., David Attenborough, David Mitchell, David Bowie, David Tennant and, to a huge extent, Stephen Fry I have, for a long time, had a very clear mental image of London. Realising this as I began my descent into Heathrow Airport it became clear that London could very well disappoint me. Its not that I had a particularly idyllic image of the city, I was aware of it's shortcomings as much as I was of the things that earn it its status as one of the worlds great cities. One thing you hear time and time again when traveling is how in love everybody except Londoners is with London, and how readily and exaggeratedly Londoners will whinge and roll their eyes at the mention of the word. Nevertheless I was perfectly happy with my imaginary London and didn't want to face a reality that didn't live up to it. As it turns out I actually had nothing to worry about, coming out of the airport on the tube everything was just as it was supposed to be. The sky was sodden with neutral gray clouds, the suburban back yards generally consisted of only grass and a few green leaved plants with poorly, dully painted houses, and the ticket inspectors were almost invariably black men with cockney accents. Its was... not perfect, but just sort of right.

I had once again not booked a hotel before coming to the city, and so on the train from Heathrow to Cockfosters (lol) I realised that I didn't really know where to get off... as I wasn't sure which station was the most central, or the best place to be in. I was looking at the line map and saw on it names like Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Hyde Park... all these names that were already so ingrained in my mind, it felt like I was spoiled for choice. I think I must have eventually gotten off at Knightsbridge (why I chose that station I'm not entirely sure) because I found myself right in front of Harrods. I'm sure even the most austere anti-commercialst would have to put in a lot of effort to not be impressed by that store and those on its surrounding streets, the window displays and colourful, impeccably designed clothing that was on offer for public viewing. Unfortunately as I had just come off a plane I was pretty shabbily dressed and loaded with cumbersome baggage, and so- feeling rather out of place- I only took a short look around before trying to direct myself to a tourist office, or reasonably priced hotel. One thing I had already known about London was that the street layout is almost specifically designed to not be convenient to navigate oneself around. It seems as though the architects of city had this extraordinary plan for an enormous, extravagant and beautiful city, sparing no expense. Then when it came to putting the plan into action they realised that there was actually not enough space to fit it all into, so they just sort of smushed all the plans together so that this city with all its nicely planned out system of grids and blocks buckled and twisted and turned into this mess of squiggly lines and cul de sacs. Then they chose all the best, most iconic arches, buildings and parks and placed them randomly throughout the place.

Eventually I did find a hotel where I was able to stay for one night near Victoria Station, before having to move into a 4 star hotel for a discounted price (why it was discounted I'm not sure, but I wasn't going to ask questions) in Kensington, a suburb which exemplifies the British lust for cleanliness and civility. Even between these two locations it was surprising to me how much accent really does reflect the speaker's socio-economic status. If you walk into a laundromat or a street stall you can almost guarantee that you be greeted with a cockney 'allo... I was even called 'gov' once... and the accents increased gradually but steadily in their relative poshness, stepping up to pubs, then to cafes, museum attendants, hotel receptionists, news reporters, all the way up to Jeremy Irons, whose voice was used for the audio tour of Westminster Abbey, which was the first piece of real tourist-ing I did.

Once I came to that area of the Thames it was like a heavy icon overdose. Depending on which direction you face as you walk out of Westminster station your focus is caught be either Westminster Abbey, the houses of parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye or simply the river itself, its like a sample palate of all things British... the architecture is so geometric and solid but not stern or sombre, as it is covered in joyful, playful ornamentation, you get an immediate sense of sturdiness and the physical and historical weight of the buildings. The abbey was always high on my list of things I absolutely must see in London so I made sure to head there before getting too distracted by anything else. I have to admit to being completely awe-struck as soon as I walked into the building, so much so that I was completely stopped in my tracks, and didn't really re-animate until one of the guides came to offer me a map, he seemed quite amused by my reaction. I was like that the whole way through the building, not only because of the sheer beauty and spectacle of every single aspect of the architecture and the design but also because of the meaning behind it all, and the names engraved into the tombs and walls, it was sort of like a historical Madam Toussauds, a walkway of Britain's all-time most important celebrities. The tombs and chapels built for the royals are very very beautiful, and being in the same room as Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, among others, in the Lady Chapel... a title which I'm sure could have been taken a lot more seriously before 'Little Britain', did send a few shivers down my spine. But for me, as I'm sure is the case for most visitors to the abbey, the most impressive part of the abbey was the poets corner, walking around this area dedicated to the likes of Keats, Dickens, Eliot (George and T.S.), Alexander Pope, the wall plaques naming the Bronte sisters, Oscar Wilde, Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Constant Lambert, Margot Fonteyn and the marvellous statues of Shakespeare and Handel... I love it. Its difficult to describe the feeling you get there, I wouldn't describe it as being particularly spiritual or anything wanky like that, but it was rather inspiring in a way, to see such a clear demonstration of the fact that history recognises the extraordinary importance of the artists of this empire, the people responsible for shaping it intellectually and emotionally commemorated alongside those who shaped it politically and religiously.

As it was reasonably close, from Westminster Abbey I headed across the river to the Hayward Gallery, as I had seen at the airport train station an advert for British Art Show 7- In the Days of the Comet, an exhibition which takes place every 5 years, and includes works by a selection of the most influential British artists in that period. As you would expect from such an exhibition of a large range of contemporary artists, there were some works that I thought were really beautiful and exciting, and about as many that I thought were a bit of a waste of time, but there was one artist whose work affected me much more than any others'. Charles Avery has spent the most part of his artistic career developing this imaginary world known only as 'The Island', and has produced several pieces of work exploring its peculiar inhabitants and the qualities of its landscape. Though the idea of it isn't just to construct a world that exists outside of the realms of reality, it was a metaphorical solution to the problems behind the creation of art and search for truth, these creatures like the brownbobs, incredibly beautiful cat-like creatures which are so nimble and elusive that you can never get within a few yards of them before they dart away, and which therefore have never been touched by human hands, or the grass which slithers and dances like an entranced snake and which, when the explorer asks if it is real, prompts the response from Miss Miss (the first local he encounters) that 'everything is real', which throws our normal ideas of the nature of reality and truth into question. Any attempt to bring these objects with such special qualities back to the main land is thwarted by the intense light of the 'real world'- the light of reason- which withers the living grass and renders the delicious cuisine sour and distasteful.

Also on my list of things I must see was the wondrous British Museum. I think I spent about 8 hours just walking around the ground floor of the museum, looking at the Egyptian, Greek and Mesopotamian artefacts... among the many things I learnt there was the fact that I spend far too much time on reading absolutely every caption I pass, though in this case I'm glad I did. I really believe that the British Museum is among the greatest and most important undertakings mankind has ever accomplished, it is a true wonder of the modern world. The fact that even up to 4,000 years ago the architects and artists of the age were able to create works that we still considered profoundly beautiful, among the most beautiful man-made objects in existence, is something that always surprises me, and its true even given a more modern view of beauty. The fact that body parts, arms, hands, noses, toes and fingers, are often broken off sculptures doesn't create an incomplete work, it creates a new one, a work that is edited and interrupted and creates an interesting interplay of textures between the smooth, finished curvatures of the busts and bottoms the many Greek Venus' and the rough granular spaces to which the bodily extremities were originally fixed. It adds to the element of elusiveness and mystery that you encounter anyway, in attempting to comprehend the impossibly great expanse of time that stands between you and the creation of these objects. If you ever feel the urge to go to the museum I recommend you go during the more inconvenient hours of the day, the early morning and late evening (on Fridays it doesn't close until 8.30 pm), in an attempt to avoid the tourist onslaught. The number of visitors isn't really a problem for me at all. It was sort of encouraging, in fact, to realise that this place was a real tourist destination, and something that people really wanted to see. What was unfortunate, somewhat ironically, was the apparent stupidity of the visitors. I can fully understand the appeal of wanting to stand in front of and examine the Rosetta stone... I felt it myself, but why in the name of damnation would you want to take a photo of it? ESPECIALLY a photo with you or your friend standing in front of it with goofy, awkward smiles. It ruins any purpose or aesthetic beauty that the object holds, it cheapens it for yourself or anybody, turns it into some kind of touristic whore. What is the point? Do they think it will serve as some sort of evidence to the idea that they are worldly and educated? Are they that insecure that they think that a photo of an important historical item standing next to an asshole is going to change the disgusted opinions of their friends and families? They lean one-armed on statues of Egyptian deities and lounge around on top of sphynxes... do they think they're funny? Do they believe that they have found some new and witty way of interacting with objects which are clearly marked 'DO NOT touch, the oil from your bastardly hands can irreparably damage these impossibly valuable objects, especially as you probably did not wash your hands after the last time you went to the toilet'. What is the fucking point?? It reminds me of a phrase I heard in a Fry and Laurie sketch; 'HE is a tourist, You are a holiday maker but I am a traveller'. I know it was supposed to demonstrate and deplore the smug, self-righteous way that some people will talk about the people they encounter when travelling, but in this case it really did seem true.

Having said all that, the next day I felt some responsibility to do some more of the conventional touristy activities in the city. This involved a trip to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. It was fantastically uneventful but at the same time quite strange. The guards did absolutely nothing for minutes on end, interspersed with periods of goose-stepping back and forth between the wall next to them and their original posts. Because it was so boring I decided to play a game involving the guards and my camera, it was called catch the guard off guard. I would zoom right up to the faces of the guards, close enough to see their facial expressions, and catch them every time the slipped up, when their focus was directed anywhere other than directly ahead of them or they yawned or wrinkled their noses. They were mostly pretty easy to get but one of them was particularly good at his job... it was almost impossible to find him deviating from his poker face. This meant that for long periods of time I had my camera pointed directly at him. Seeing as I was well within his line of sight I was sure that he started to notice me, and I eventually realised that what I was doing could very well be regarded as being a little creepy, not only by the guard but also by the people surrounding me. I thought this until I put down my camera, looked around me and saw that a number of other people were playing this game too, and intently focussing on this same poor guard. I did get a number of good photos of him though. because he was so composed and focussed the deviations he made from his usual stance were rather subtle and graceful, almost modelesque.

Later that day I did something rather strange and totally out of character, I attended the evening mass at St. Paul's cathedral. The immediate impact of this building's interior was, if anything, more breathtaking than that of Westminster Abbey. The walls and columns were just dripping and oozing with gorgeous, luxurious, decadent luscious loveliness, emanating from the cavernous golden dome in the centre of the building. I know that the catholic church has come under a great deal of criticism for their ostentatious cathedrals and finery, which apparently grossly deviates from the true meaning of Christianity. And I know that, given the many doctrines of this institution concerning the virtues of poverty, self-deprivation and restraint, the fact they are the owners and creators of such incredible and incredibly expensive structures and artefacts is wildly hypocritical, but its something that can only really be criticised given that consideration. As I find a lot more personal meaning in beauty and art than in religion I cant be anything but glad for the fact that this institution, one of the most powerful and influential of all time, has placed so much importance and put so much love and effort into these objects of devotional beauty, whether or not the purpose they were created for is real or not. The other side of being in buildings like this is the fact that you want to believe that they are wholly good, and can only possibly serve to the purpose of goodness and beauty. But the fact is that they have inspired and accommodated so much evil, bigotry and horror. Its a reality that is at times a little difficult to accept, the fact that buildings such as this encompass both the best and worst of humanity in one blow.

After a few days of staying at the hotel in Kensington I moved on to staying with the wonderfully hospitable and generous Kerri and Jonathan Stephens, friends of my cousin Diana, and their bizarre and instantly endearing cat, Molly, who seemed to be locked in a constant power struggle with her owners. It was just what I needed at that point to be staying with two people who, although I had never met or heard about before I began this trip, I had something in common with, and whose warmth and ease to talk to really reminded me of home. I had a couple of interesting conversations with Jonathan about his Buddhist faith which were, though I loathe the pun, very enlightening. On my second last day in London I had the very lovely experience of taking a walk with them through Hyde Park, something I almost definitely would not have done had I not been staying with two locals with such a clear and admirable appreciation for this sort of charming and simple pleasure. One of the things I found a little strange about London is the fact that, while the city appears to be completely overstuffed, they have somehow managed to find the space to fit in these large, idyllic expanses of park. Even the heart of the city is dotted with these relatively small patches of greenery, slotted into the spaces in between roads, ornamented with sculptures, benches and flower beds, and walled off from the sound and fury of the peak hour traffic. One of the features of this particular park was a number of reflective sculptures that had been erected in an otherwise relatively bare area, which provided the effect of making the landscape look almost like a collage, with geometric cutouts placed randomly throughout reflecting and distorting either other areas of the landscape or the sky, it was a beautiful effect and reminded me quite a bit of the John Stezaker exhibition. I felt like I couldn't thank Kerri and Jonathan enough for their hospitality, and this is largely to do with the fact they would quickly and casually brush off my attempts at thanks by saying that it was a pleasure to have me. I hope that in saying this they were being genuine rather than simply polite, as I'm sure that, even though I spent my time there sharing a fold out bed with a very loud and persistent cat, the pleasure was all mine.

One other thing I have to thank them for was their recommendation that I take a lot at the Albert and Victoria Museum, right next to the Natural History Museum in Kensington and only a few streets from the hotel I had been staying at. I didn't have a lot of time there as I went at the end of the day of our park outing, but the time I did spend there was well worth it. While there were a lot of really exquisitely designed and produced artifacts from various design eras from all around Europe which I could have spent much more time looking at I spent most of my time looking at the sculpture collection, which included probably my favorite collections of Rodin sculputres. It seems as though the unofficial mark of a large gallery anywhere in the world is that they have at least one piece by Rodin.

A great deal of my time in London was spent at smaller modern art galleries, through either talking to locals or exploring the city and seeing adverts I've discovered that this is a city in which the spirit of artistic interest and exploration are very much alive, which is something I hadn't really expected to find. I had always assumed that the British tendency towards cynicism and self deprecation had a lot to do with the fact that their command over most of the the world has been overtaken by the U.S, who for so long now have also been the world leaders in artistic exploration and innovation. It may well have been simply because I was easily able to read signs and converse with people who spoke the same language as me, but I saw and heard about more current and exciting art galleries in this city than I have in any other. As well as the Hayward Gallery I also went to the Whitechapel Gallery which was exhibiting a retrospective of John Stezaker's, whose minimally edited photographs and movie stills were very beautiful and which have caused a surprising amount of controversy for such simple works, and the very small Alison Jacques Gallery where the Scissor Sisters were curating an exhibition of works by Robert Mapplethorpe. Because I spent so much time looking around these smaller, less well known galleries I found that I had left myself very little time to Look around the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Saatchi Galleries (I've promised myself to spend a proper amount of time there once I am back there in early April). I did however get to see one temporary exhibition at the Tate Modern by Gabriel Orozco, which could well have be my favorite thing I've ever seen of any currently working artist. The work was so sensitive and personal... not always obviously beautiful in the aesthetic sense, but so clearly the result of a boundless love and appreciation for the beauty of life as we experience it every day, what Kandinsky so poetically called the secret soul which exists in everything, and that is silent more often than it is heard. His work is like a response to the institutional, manufactured world that has overtaken our lives more and more, decade after decade, but instead of rejecting it as cold artificiality he exposes all of the spirit, comfort and poetry that exists in it. I loved his photography series entitled 'Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe', which he created after buying a yellow scooter in Berlin, then driving it around the city, stopping every time he saw a scooter of the same model and taking a photo every time they 'met', and his 'La D.S', a Citroën which he sliced lengthways into three parts and then reassembled without the middle part so that it became a perfectly streamlined single seated car with no engine- thereby creating a stationary object that is perfectly suited to aerodynamic activity. The exhibition guide I was given included a quote by him saying that what people saw in the actual exhibition wasn't important to him so much as what they see afterwards, how their view of the world is changed, and this is the effect it had on me. It was almost like fate that as I walked from the gallery over the millenium bridge I saw the most absurdly spectacular sunset I have ever witnessed, the sky literally looked like it was burning up. The horizon was ablaze with a dazzling golden trim while the rest of the sky shone a brilliant fucia which was reflected in the water of the Thames... the sky interrupted by billowing streaks of the soft yellow undersides of clouds and the river interrupted by deep, deep blue ripples of water. It was one of these completely unplanned and unexpected moments that you almost cant believe you could have been so lucky to have actually experienced.

Gabriel Orozco- My Hands are My Heart



Gabriel Orozco- La D.S.

Gabriel Orozco, from his photography series



John Stezaker

John Stezaker

Chris Avery, sketch from 'The Islanders, an Introduction'

Germany- a place I have been to

By the end of my week in Norway I was literally flying solo around Europe without any valid I.D, any credit /debit cards and access to money, and had been awake for two days straight, so I felt very ready to begin my time in Germany with a clear head and clean slate, but fate could not pass up one more opportunity to fuck me over. In order to get from Amsterdam to Dresden I had to transfer in Frankfurt. As it was a particularly windy day both flights were delayed, which it seems was also the case for the flight that my suitcase was on, as when I arrived in Dresden it did not, and I was told to expect them to be delivered to my hotel at 9am the next morning. This wasn’t particularly helpful, firstly because- as I hadn’t a working credit card- I had not booked a hotel, so I had to make up an address to give them (69 Wagnerplatz, Dresden) and then phone the airline when I had actually found a place to stay. Secondly, I had packed all of my dance gear in my suitcase, and had an audition the next day at 10.30 am. This might have worked out fine had my suitcase been delivered at 9, as it was supposed to have been, but of course it wasn’t delivered until midday. Considering that organisation and efficiency are the only aspect of the German people that are universally considered to be a good I can’t say I was altogether impressed with the sainted Lufthansa. In compensation for the lack of luggage I was given an overnight bag, compliments of the airline, which contained among other things a container of ‘skin whitening moisturiser’. I couldn’t possibly make a cheap joke about that… it would be too obvious. All I’ll say on the matter is that I’m glad to see that 7 decades on they’ve found a much more subtle way to go about that business.

Until I got to Germany I didn’t realise how much I know of it is due only to the second, and, to a lesser extent, the first, world war, any knowledge or impression I have of this country is polluted by the facts of this relatively minute period of its history. Whether or not I want to (and I don’t) I find that it’s almost impossible to see this place outside of that context. Every new piece of information about its history, every city tour and museum visit serves as evidence, a piece in the puzzle of how Germany came to its present state from the early 20^th century, as well as to the 20^th century from the depths of its earlier history. This condition is especially true in Dresden, a city that everybody knows at least one thing- and usually only one thing, about. The actual facts of Dresden’s decimation in world war II are almost unimportant when it comes to that event forming a preconception of the place, all you need to hear is the tone of voice that people talk about it in. ‘Ah, Dresden…’, they say in piteous tones. It is a symbol of the war as much as Auschwitz or the Nuremburg rallies are, but unlike just about any other of these symbols Dresden forces the rest of us, the countries of the allied forces, to accept our share of the responsibility and shame of the atrocities of the war, which we are otherwise not at all used to doing. Of course I know that feeling guilty for crimes against human decency which I had absolutely no part in is ridiculous, but then so often one hears Australians talk about the war being the fault of the Germans, not some Germans, in the same way that the holocaust was tolerated by the Catholic church thanks to the collective charge of deicide on the Jews. The sword has to cut both ways, and I feel this silly, inexplicable sense of guilt that’s been programmed into me in the same way that my blame of the Germans has.

It does sort of look like a bomb went off in the town, right in the centre of the city. Only the force of this bomb was not destructive, rather it was to cause everything in its range to be plunged into the renaissance. It was a time bomb. The outer city is pretty and very charming in a simple, quiet way, but is very unremarkable, and as you come into the central tram stop and pass the building to the right of it you’re all of a sudden confronted head on by the remarkable Zwinger, which stands there in front of you like a symbol of resistance to the modern culture of mass production, concrete slabs, and the colour teal. It is so intricately and thoughtfully designed, with all the extravagant joy and enthusiasm of the baroque. The restraint and timeless style of the Bauhaus movement definitely has its place but sometimes you just need to stand in front of a big, gratuitously decorated German palace that just stands there and says ‘get the fuck out of my way.’ In one of the wings there was an exhibition about Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony, for whom the palace was built. To put it mildly, he seems like he would have been a dangerously eccentric and megalomaniacal mad man plagued by the gnawing inability to accept his own mortality and therefore obsessed with immortalising himself through art and comparing his life to the myth of Hercules, which is what the exhibition was based around. It was relatively small but very interesting, as it explained a lot about the connections between classical and renaissance culture, especially the European nobility’s obsession for oranges which I had previously been puzzled by. It also helped me to realise what a huge lot of marvellous history and artistic legacy to thank the nutty Germans for.

The inside of the Zwinger

Beautiful and interesting as it was to just roam the streets of Dresden I feel like I would have gotten a lot more out of it had I stuck to some more organized plan, but one thing I’ve found particularly difficult whilst in Europe is walking in a straight line… I’m far too easily distracted, so planning my days has turned out be a rather boring waste of time. Unless I know exactly what it is I want to see I usually just end up going into any building that I find interesting and that is open. One such building I was very lucky to stumble upon, as the entrance I came to it by opened onto a rather narrow and uninteresting road which was being partially blocked by scaffolding, contained the Kunstkammer collection, one of the most stunning, extravagant and extensive collections of art treasures in Europe. It felt like I had walked into Scheherazade’s cave of wonders; the walls glittered and danced with light reflected from the dazzling gold, silver and gem encrusted artefacts, so superbly made that they seemed to emit a light of their own. Cases and cabinets displaying dramatic scenes from classical and biblical mythology, cutlery crafted from ivory with gnarled handles of coral, and the eggs, tusks, horns and shells of bizarre and exotic creatures, a panoply of colours glistening from the gems which studded and coated these objects like lichen growing over a granite boulder. Each object more absurd and decadent than the last and not a single one ever put to practical use. I know plenty of mad, sensible people who would condemn this as a terrible waste of money and resources, who suppose that such costly items should have a real point, but to me they are the point. To steal some words from Oscar Wilde; the man who calls a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. Art treasures are really pretty, really really pretty, and it’s such a shame that the humanitarians of the more recent centuries have realised how terribly exploitative of both labourers and the natural world these undertakings are, before this modern age of consideration and restriction every possibility was open to designers and the aristocracy, and every opportunity seized- particularly in Germany, it seems.

The world's largest green diamond
belongs to the Kunstkammer

One of the real treasures of Dresden seems almost to be hidden, but craftily so, in the most obvious of all places. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister is located in the most recently built wing of the Zwinger. Built after the death of the elector Augustus it was designed by Gottfried Semper, and opens onto the stunning opera house that was also his design. The gallery is secreted underneath the archway which leads out to the street, off to the side and behind a pair of large wooden doors. Given the grand, open design of the rest of the building those dimly lit double doors are the last place one would look to find a gallery filled with the marvels of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, Cranach the Younger and Elder, Metsu and Titian, just to skim over the cream of the crop. The gallery is also very proudly the home of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which is mounted on the wall at the very end of the long corridor of open arch ways, so that as you edge your way gradually towards it through the preceding rooms you are initially able to catch only a small glimpse of it. As you come closer and closer it begins to loom up above you, like the imposing figure of God Himself, its towering presence eventually becoming impossible to ignore. And like the image of God that so many people have tried to describe to me it seems the personification of all that is wholly and unequivocally good. There is no pain, no comment on the hardships and emotional torture of reality, no tricky subtext to weave through. It’s just an image of vulnerable, beautiful, youthful potential and maternal comfort- warm, pure and perfect. Other works that I saw there and which have not left my mind since are Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (a poster of which I bought at the gift shop, but ended up not being able to get a tube large enough to contain it in and eventually abandoning it at the central train station to be found by some other art lover on their lucky day), Poussin’s L’Empire de Flore, and Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy.

Giorgione- Sleeping Venus

I almost feel like I shouldn’t have bothered to leave Dresden. There was still much of it that I hadn’t seen, and so much of the next few towns that was just not worth the train fares. Hannover looked like it was designed by the colour blind, Magdeburg by committee, and Dortmund by Microsoft. To be honest when I was in those towns I rarely felt like leaving the hotel. I was becoming terribly fed up with being alone, and found that actually I was just so much happier chatting to my friends online for hours and hours than leaving them to explore the cold and bland outside world in the hope of finding something new that would please me. I could have done this in Dresden, too, and in fact I did spend literally a whole day there speaking to Eleanor, Toma and Paddy on skype, watching them yawn and struggle to stay active and coherent until the early morning hours. That day was among my happiest in Germany. But in Dresden I really did have the will to pull myself together by midday most days because I knew there was something to look forward to out there, this was not the case in Hannover, Dortmund or Magdeburg. I don’t know what it is about Germany that got to me, but everything bad just seemed worse in that country.

After a few days of doing barely anything I decided that I really couldn’t stand to spend the rest of my time in Germany stagnating in either Magdeburg or Dessau, so I booked a ticket to Berlin where I was sure I would feel better. This strategy meant that, as well as being in a much more inspiring and exciting city than Magdeburg, I would only have to spend a few hours of my Sunday in Dessau, which I had been warned is regarded as one of the most ugly, boring and stupid cities in the country.

I have mixed feelings about Berlin; it was quite the opposite of Bergen. Bergen was all surface and no substance, Berlin’s buildings were generally very unattractive, and though I’m sure the Tiergarten is very lovely in summer, at this time of year it is nothing like the idyllic sanctuary from the industrialism and commercialism of the city that has been described to me… plus I spent quite a bit of time trying to shake a man in a big black trench who seemed to be following me. It’s not until you get inside the buildings that you realise how much there is to see. There are a couple of notable exceptions though, on my first day in Berlin I headed to the Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin’s largest palace. Sophie Charlotte really knew how to decorate the shit out of a palace, not that the whole interior was particularly to my taste.  So many of the wall decorations in particular were gaudy and way overdone, and the room where she kept her enormous porcelain collection, while very impressive, was equally absurd. On the other hand the oval rooms that overlooked her French baroque inspired garden, covered on one side by huge arched windows and on the other by mirrors, thereby bringing the splendour of the gardens indoors by means of their reflection, were really wonderful to be in. It has to be said that whether or not it’s your taste her devotion to the fine arts and her idea of beauty is rather inspirational, not to mention the legacy she left with the help of Gottfried Leibniz in the form of Berlin’s Academy of Sciences

Sometimes it's okay to go a little over the top

Across the road from the palace were a number of galleries and museums, two of which I was able to visit before closing time, one containing a collection of art nouveau and art deco artefacts and the other containing a number of paintings and sculptures from the early 20st century. Around this point I was starting to come down with a cold, which I think it’s fair to say is largely the fault of the museums. I often find myself staggering round the floors of various galleries, reading and re-reading captions that go completely over my head thanks to the several areas of my brain that have fallen asleep. When I realise this is happening I look at my watch and almost invariably find that it is approaching closing time, and I realise that I have been wandering around the same or adjoining museums since the opening time, having missed breakfast to get there in time, and so not having eaten all day. I’m sure that, had I read this of somebody else, I would have thought it a quite stylish devotion to the arts, but in actual fact it’s more like a slavish devotion to the distracting and the mildly interesting. This is proven by the fact that one of my days wandering round Dresden included a trip to the National Museum of Hygiene, which was surprisingly completely uninteresting, and I say it was surprising in all sincerity… given that my expectations were so low I expected to be fascinated by something, anything, but there was nothing. It was completely dull.

Thankfully I didn’t find any such museums in Berlin, I was very impressed by all that I visited, particularly the gallery of early 20^th century art opposite Schloss Charlottenburg, which contained a room of works by Matisse and a large collection of Picasso’s. Picasso is always interesting, but I’m pretty sure that this was the first time I’ve seen the works of Matisse in real life. Seeing them for the first time I have to say I didn’t really get it, they didn’t do anything special for me… I listened to the audio commentary and failed to recognise anything other than the technical descriptions. But I’ve found that a few of them have been constantly on my mind since leaving the gallery, my memories of them growing fonder and fonder. As Eleanor’s facebook status once read- ‘It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to change the world’, his works have not only changed the world but also my artistic sentiments… unfortunately I didn’t see it until they weren’t there.

Matisse- Blue Nude Skipping

 The next experience in my art tour of Europe was the Helmut Newton Gallery of Photography. If you don’t already know it, Helmut Newton is the shit. His photographs seem even more lifelike than reality does at times, it was difficult to walk past a single one of his photographs without staring like a Peeping Tom… which is what it felt like sometimes,  given how lively and provocative his nudes are. Upstairs was a collection of photos by his wife June, who worked under the pseudonym Alice Springs, a few of which rated highly out of the gallery’s entire collection, but whose work as a whole was not as impressive, as a few photos betrayed the fact that she was capable of error and mediocrity, which Helmut’s did not. It was impressive enough just to see the letters written between the couple and their friends and to read the captions beside the pictures, given the huge number and quality of celebrities, artists and everything in between that they socialised and worked with.  It was like intruding on a frozen conversation between a group of people so influential on modern culture that they were practically (and, in the case of Grace of Monaco, actually) royalty.

 I always had a feeling that one of the major problems I would have with Germany was the language. English speaking people generally agree that it’s not the prettiest language of all, but it wasn’t the sound of it that I disliked so much as the fact that everybody spoke it. I know that rightfully I should have been at least a little embarrassed by the fact that I was the outsider who didn’t understand what everybody else was saying… but actually, and I know how unfair it is of me, I sort of just thought of them as being quite silly and annoying for not being bilingual. This was especially problematic on my first night in Dresden. Never mind organising the delivery of my luggage, checking into a hotel in the first place and explaining that I was having luggage delivered proved impossible without the use of Pictionary. (I know it somewhat contradicts what I was saying about the language barrier being a problem, but as I was writing that sentence I just realised how much more fun life could be with an increased dependency on Pictionary). In the end I began to enjoy speaking to sales assistants and checkout chicks who didn’t understand what I was saying past my tone of voice and physical gestures, it presented a great opportunity for me to try out creative new off the cuff obscenities. A transaction would end and I would smile sweetly whilst turning to leave give the cashier a cheery ‘felch dribble’, or ‘cock frottage’. The more I did it the more confident and imaginative I became with my use of language until one time when I had just said my parting words to a cashier and a woman in the queue behind me burst out laughing.

Speaking of cock frottage; around the end of my time in Berlin I finally had a reasonably proper conversation with a brothel madam. I was on my way to dinner and had just passed by a woman standing in front of a red door when she called to me, telling me to come inside if I wanted to. Seeing a sheet of paper next to the door with a list printed on it I assumed it was a restaurant and told her that I had already decided where I was eating that night. Not quite sure whether I was joking or not she handed me her business card, which I laughed at, having finally realised that she wasn’t trying to sell me dinner. Not unnaturally she took offense to this and proceeded to insult me as I continued on my way, calling me immature and insolent, and any number of other German insults. Brothels… you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

On my last day in Berlin I looked at the list of things to do that I had compiled on my last night in Magdeburg and realised that I had achieved less than half of them, but in the end had seen about as many things that had not been on the list. This list included, among other things, the Bauhaus archives, which I would recommend to anybody with even the slightest interest in design. The Bauhaus movement was the mother of all of modern design, and it’s fascinating to observe the objects and read about the people who radically, permanently and entirely changed our everyday landscape. Its legacy is seen in some areas of Berlin, not all the buildings are drab… but all too often the marriage of form and function tipped way too far in favour of function, and completely miss the point.

This isn’t the last I’ve seen of Germany, after some time in London and France I will be staying in and around Geissen, in the South West of the country.  I hope this branch of my trip has just been very clouded by a huge come down from my Nordic drama, and that in actual fact I don’t dislike this country. I know that it has a magnificent and important history, and that the grandeur of old Germany is still well and truly alive in its culture to this day. But I know these things second hand; I’m yet to experience them myself. I flew out of Berlin in the early afternoon when it was still light, and from above what I saw were block after huge block of buildings encircling huge courtyards. It looked like a microscopic view of a plant, showing all of the cells, with water features or centrepieces usually inside, reflecting a nucleus. It was a fantastic and unique view of the city, one you would not have imagined from ground level. It’s a fairly neat summation of my feelings towards Germany- a country whose beauty has to be seen from a distance.