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.

Of Ice and Men

Wednesday seemed a great day for science...erm, ice skating, I mean. There are 4 different places in Berlin where one can go skating, and we went to the one in the Wedding district. For some reason we got discounted tickets, a very good start :) We rented skates, quite uncomfortable ones, and went on the ice. One of the colleagues did speed skating for years, so he felt quite at home on the ice, and the other one was also quite confident even with the ground transformed in such a slippery material. So it was just me who fought with the elements and tried to stay standing with great effort :) After a few minutes of torture I adjusted my skates a bit, and suddenly everything became a lot simpler, and as the minutes went by I was better and better each round. As this was my 3rd time on ice, I had to re-learn everything I once almost knew, but at the end I think I reached at least the level I was at the last time I tried skating. It was very good, and it costs around the same price as it does in Bp., just without the crowd. I think there will be a next time too, but then I will have to try a different type of skates. Probably that won't make me a better skater, but they definitely seemed more comfortable :)
After skating we decided to head out for a beer, and on my suggestion we went to the place with the free foosball, Baiz. For some reason the bar was filled with gay and lesbian people (and no, it's not such a bar), which would be quite a strange sight in Bp. It was quite strange for the Eastern European eye :) We played quite a few games on the kicker table, they call it in German, and even met a Hungarian guy living in Berlin! He's Hungarian on behalf of his dad, and he spoke perfect Hungarian, of course. He was quite happy to meet us, and it was nice to meet him too :) Afterwards we played with an Irish guy too, but he was speaking such a flawless German that it was hard to believe he was from elsewhere :) All in all, the night was very good, meeting nice people and playing quite a lot. The nigth bus was easier to find this time, and we arrived home at around 3am. That left 5 hours to sleep before work. Great :) so Thursday was just a killer. Literally. I was quite annoyed all day, but the day passed well nevertheless. In the evening we went shopping to one Karstadt mall, it was okay, people are a lot more relaxed here than at home. And I bought a great Dredg CD at Media Markt for just 6€! I was quite surprised they have that kind of music on sale here. There were some other good CDs, some which I would not see at a Hungarian Media Markt. Strange. There also were a few DVDs on sale, with both German and English dubbing, I might buy one or two good movies next time I go there. Which probably will happen on the weekend.

No more words for now, I really have to do some catching up with sleeping! (As this was obviously written not on Friday just before 11 am :) )
M.