Saturday bloody Saturday

Friday evening was nothing special, it was just too cold to move out, and I kinda enjoyed the first evening of the week alone. It was just the usual TV-shows-and-a-tea-evening. And the weekend also started as usual, I went to shop for whatever I'm going to eat during the weekend, and I tried to get a replacement for my lost sweater. Well, they have pretty ugly stuff on sale at Karstadt, so the replacement project will have to wait a while. I don't consider the morning wasted, per say, but I did spend a lot of time on things that were not really necessary. The plan for the afternoon was visiting the Dalí exhibition, so I headed for East Berlin again. 20 years ago this would have been a lot more exciting adventure :) The exhibition was nothing special, sadly, only 50 or so lithographies were on display, and only one single painting. The pictures on exhibit were good, though, they got the "Mad Genius" message through, but still, it was a lot less than I expected it to be. But since these prints were made in series by the man himself, if I had a few thousand euros to spare, I could have an original Dalí at home :) After the exhibition I hurried home, I had to get dinner ready and eaten quickly, so I can get to the last Neal Morse gig on time. So I just ate up stuff that was still in the fridge, and headed for Terra Incognita...Really, the "venue" was pretty far away, and hidden well behind a lot of communism-era 10 story houses. The "church" the concert was held in was just another small building, nothing church-like in it's appearance. Luckily, there was a guy smoking in front of the building, and as he saw me not finding my way, he was kind enough to show me where I wanted to go :) And the gig... Most probably not only the last worship gig Neal had in Berlin, but also the last I ever went to. Yes, he played his rock songs in an awesome way again (what a tremendous acoustic guitar solo!!), but this event was even weirder from the atheist POV than the one before. The church was one youth church, and it was the "let's stand up and raise our hands to the air and shout HALLELUJAH!"-kind :) The "worship" part of the gig was a lot longer than the one before, and the people there really seemed to get that feeling. Neal had a few good and really funny stories to tell, played his songs (waaaay too few of the rock ones, sadly), and then came the crazy part. I think he called it a "prayer", but it seemed more like a healing ritual to me :) In fact, I felt like an anthropologist finding and examining a strange tribe in the jungle :) The people stood in a circle and howled and cried and sang, to ask for the healing of a little girl, as far as I was able to tell. I did not want to seem impolite and leave, or even sit down, but all this was very incomfortable. I am very glad to have seen Neal Morse live, but I will try and pretend not to have seen him act "silly" :)
But well, it was not that bad, all in all, and it was at least not cold in the church :) Sadly it was on the way home and while waiting for the tram - and it was only like -2C! The cold wind only made it worse, though. So I got home, went to bed, and today I woke up to see snow covering everything again :) But now, I think my laundry is finished, so I'll just go and get them, and leave you to do more important stuff than reading me :)

M.