Sunbathing

Last night I spent the evening with coda friend Regine and her partner Doris. They both live on Oranienstraße in Kreuzberg (the greenwich village of Berlin). She lives up on the fifth floor like Manuela, no elevator. To get to her place one as to go through this central courtyard that is protected from the busy street and covered massively with climbing vegetation going up to the top...she called this area the hinterhof and there were birds and it was very plesant to walk through.

Der Hinterhof

We also took her dog, Ginger, for a walk to see the rabbits in a nearby area called the Kinderbauernhof which is an area containing squatters who have been there since before the wall came down (which ran very close east of here). Berlin did nothing to remove these people as development encircled them and now it would be more difficult to do so because they have "always" been here. Walking throught the area was similar to walking through a gypsy camp, I imagined...We walked into an area where there were rabbits in pens and geese, donkeys and sheep. Many of the people here live in these mobile homes (they are actually called something else and I have forgotten the name) that are basically permanently parked.

We prepared a vegetarian dinner at her place of fennel and roasted sunflower seeds followed by an entree stirfry of mangold (chard), mushrooms, onions and pesto on pasta...very nice. Afterwards, we had kaffee and talk turned to, as it invariably does with many people I have met here, about the stature of the United States and what that idiotic excuse of a President is doing...I tell them, just like other parts of the world, the U.S. has been taken over by extremists. With that, and the fact that we´ll have elections next year that could possibly correct this bound of ours into the far right field, they seem consoled...kind of...






Going to Town, by Rufus Wainwright
Hey! I hear that Al Gore might be in the running...GREAT!!! I say, give it to him...he´s the one who actually won the race in 2000 anyway!! Fair is Fair! Can you imagine how better off we would all be...how many families would not have missing family members... New Orleans back on its feet! No pet goat and the WTC still standing...boggles the mind. He wouldn´t have been holding hands with the Saudis thats for damn sure.

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Being Saturday, this morning was market day...for breakfast I decided on currywurst and pomme...french fries. They made it extra spicy and my eyes and nose were running by the time I had eaten it all. The lady who prepared it had warned me. Also, at the market, I bought 100 grams of walnuts and 1 kilo of tomatoes...that was a lot of tomatoes and when I realized that was nearly 2.2 pounds I was too embarassed to say, wait. So...I am eating tomatoes the next couple days. With some bread and cheese...super!






Sunbathers in the Tiergarten

I spent the afternoon in the Tiergarten, southwest of the Siegesäule...to a popular sunbathing area...everyone there was nude...me too. It was great. Listening to ipod, reading, eating tomatoes...and soaking up the rays nackt sonnenbaden. I´m one of those when-in-Berlin people. This one older gentleman who was there brought two of his dogs on leashes, one irish setter and one spaniel. The one spaniel got a away from him and he had to go running after it, naked, while towing the setter behind him. What a sight as he bounded across paths with people just stolling along...not in the nude.

Adam and Andy

I did manage to see two of my favorite comic characters in the raw flesh here: Adam and Andy were here playing with their dog, Baxter. I didn´t horde after them for an autograph...letting them maintain their annonymity...only, I did get some zooms.

Afterwards, I walked to a Biergarten (not au natural) and had a glass of rotwein before returning here to the internet cafe in Wilmersdorf. On the way I watched the following scene of some water bird sitting on a nest in the water:

Tiergarten