not much time to write now but a quick update for ya! im going with tikki to a festival here in denmark called Linderup. her band, Mindscape is playing there tonight! so we're going this afternoon and going to camp out there tonight. if you want to listen to her music you can go find it on myspace by searching myspace for Mindscape Band. or something like that.

two days ago we went to Tivoli Gardens. Its an amusement park. nothing compared to 6 Flags but it has pretty landscaping and some pretty decent rollercoaster rides. there was a laser light show on the water at the end of the night. that was pretty cool.

tikki wants me to tell you about her bathroom because it is one of my obsessions and she is very proud of the pink colored walls. there is no tub but the shower area is pretty big. the spigot has a cradle on the wall but can be detatched like they all are here. i honestly dont have much more to say about it. decent water pressure. but ive had better.

i was hoping to write about this when i had more time but ill start it now just to get it out of me. CHRISTIANIA!!! this is the name of the coolest place in the world. it is this little enclave in copenhagen where hippies in the 70s sort of seceded from the city and govern themselves as sort of a separate entity. they even have their own flag. as of about 5 years ago it is no longer legal, but there is wide open cannabis trade in the town. they are selling hash and marijuana and people everywhere are either smoking one or rolling one. EVERYWHERE. this is a nice lake that people sit by. they sit on rooftops of houses. there are some restaurants and bars there and people are all just hangin out. its a little dirty in a way. but its so fun to walk by and look at the faces of all these stoned out people. theres lots of live music and art there as well. of course.

gotta pack for the festival!

Den Marks The Spot

Denmark is quite different from any other country i have been in so far. First I think that it is worth mentioning that recent reserch data by social psychologist Adrian White at the University of Leicester in England says that Denmark is the "happiest" country in the world. That is, they have the highest satisfaction with life. And from what I have seen so far, it's probably true. People are very nice here and everyone i have seen seem to be a very chipper mood.

But it makes alot of sense that they are happy. There is very little to worry about. They have such a great system. All healthcare is completely free. Everything. All doctors, hospital need. they dont have to pay a dime. However, when Tikki wanted to travel she did have to pay for traveler's insurance. Not everything in life is free. It cost her about 30 dollars. And she said it was only that much because she was planning to go to Croatia and that country is out of network. She actually needed to see a doctor and get medicine when she was there. But she didnt have to pay anymore than the 30 she already paid. And listen to this, not only do students not have to pay for school, they get a stipend from the government when they go to school. In Denmark you get paid to go to school! Back in the states, a perfectly good answer to the question, "What do you do for a living?" can be "I'm a student." But in Denmark that answer is would be alot more accurate.

There are, of course, still homeless people here, but very few. A Dane i met told me that the only homeless people here are ones that choose to be, because as long as you are a citizen of Denmark, you dont have to be homeless. If you want to, you can go to the government and they are required to pay you unemployment and give you an apartment as well.

Minimum wage here is around 20 dollars an hour. On the otherhand, things are very expensive. Very expensive. A beer in some bars can be about 10 dollars (4 dollars at a cheap place) and an average priced meal in a restaurant that isnt something cheap like MacDonalds is about 14 dollars. Thank god you dont have to tip! Also, you can't go to a bar that has live music without paying a cover of at least 10 dollars. America wins on that one. its easy to find free and GOOD live music in the states. Tikki said that the cover is so the musicians get paid so nobody minds to pay it so much. i guess im used to the fact that hardly any musicians get paid anything at all back home.

The taxes that people have to pay are ridiculously high. between 40 and 60% of their salary and there are extra taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol and even chocolate and coffee because they are things that are not considered healthy. But somehow it works out and these people are satisfied with their lives. i guess its because they dont have to worry too much. They know that they will be taken care of. And they still have democratic freedom and freedom to earn as much money as they want to.

One of my favorite freedoms that they have here, similar to many, if not all the other european countries, is that they are allowed to drink in public. Now i know that it is about 80 years since alcohol was actually totally illegal in the U.S., but seriously folks, what is the harm with drinking in public? It cant be because people are not allowed to be drunk in public because you can get drunk in your house or in an establishment and then go out into public. The night before last we had a barbecue by the river with Tikki's roommates and their friends and the lawn was packed with lots of nice and happy Danish people. All of them and i mean all of them because i was looking, had bottles of wine and cans of beer beside them. What's wrong with that?

Lots of people ride bikes here for transportation. Public transportation and cabs as you might have guessed it are very expensive. Its nice though, alot of the streets have very wide lanes to accomodate all of the bikes. Everyone here waits at traffic lights. Jaywalking is sin. But you are more than welcome to drink a beer with a big smile on your face while you wait for the light to change!

As far as the Danish language goes, it is about as incomprehensible to me as Chinese and Hungarian. And frankly, it's not a pretty language at all, but it does sound nicer than Finnish and Hungarian. A few Danes have asked me if i think it sounds like German because they hear that alot from english speakers. I think i can tell the difference except when they are yelling real loud. These people have 3 extra vowels that i never even heard of, but at least their keyboard is pretty similar to ours. The Z and the Y are finally in the right place! ok so here's the vowels: æ, å, and ø (this is my favorite one because everytime i see it i look at the line through it and think "this is not the letter o," and i laugh). I really haven't been able to learn how to pronounce them yet. It involves sort of a muting of sounds with the back of your throat and positioning of your tongue. Or not that at all because really i can't do it. Accept I did learn how to say Copenhagen the way they say it and they all think it's really funny because when I do it apparently i do it with a specific regional accent. It sounds more like Ko-bin-haun. "Shkol" means cheers. "Tak" is thank you. There is no word for please, and you're welcome is the same like when the spanish say "de nada. - It is nothing. - Like we do, they say hi for hello. But they also say hi for goodbye. Usually they say, "hi hi." Which reminds me of Ilde, my friend from Budapest who says, "hello" when she means goodbye.

But everyone here speaks english. They have to because no one else in the world speaks Danish. And as prosperous as Denmark is, it is not a large or heavily populated country. But they love that and say its great for travelling because you can always have a secret conversation out in the open without whispering. Accept for the story one of Tikki's friends told me about the time they were on a train and commented about how fat and disgusting looking their neighbor was. It was funny to them until she piped up and said, "You know I'm Danish, asshole." Oops.

Doin it Right in Copenhagen

I dont know what I did to deserve this, but things are working out quite nicely for me here. I was greeted by my friend Tikki at the central station and informed that i will have everything I could possibly need while i was here. Of course, a place to sleep. Bedding, shower facilities, towel, toiletries, and computer access. She presented me with an atlas that had a nice little sticker bookmarking the correct page. and there was a little circle in pen indicating where the apartment is. I have my own bike with a lock. My own set of keys to the apartment. A cell phone. On the back of the phone was a little sticker with her phone number and the apartment number written on it in case i get lost. Did i mention i got a BIKE!? There was a chicken ceasar salad and fresh bread ready and waiting for us. I had breakfast this morning consisting of yogurt, bread, cheese, grapes and a peach. i was too full to eat any of the melon, ham, peas, other kind of cheese, and jelly. Tikki appologized for not having any butter.

She went to work this morning and i finally completed the online forms i needed to finish so that i can get my loans to pay for school. So glad that is over with. now i REALLY dont have to think about that stuff until i get back home. gonna have a little lunch now and take out the bike. see whats happenin in this great city that has been oh so good to me so far. i got my own bike!

sunday there is a music festival here and alot of "famous" Danish bands are playing. One of them is called D//A//D. apparently they have been huge here for the past 20 years. and rememeber that song alittle while back that went, "I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world..."? well they are Danish and they are playing the festival too. I've wanted to see them play live for years and now i finally have the chance!

amateur philosophising on art in berlin. its pretty deep stuff.

Since I have the time, I'll try to write some more about what I have been up to in Berlin.  The first two days i spent walking around by myself.  It was a good break from spending the whole day everyday with someone like when i was in Prague and Budapest.  I had time to explore more on my own.  Even though I was mostly determining the pace in prague and budapest too, its still different to have your own solo personal pace.  Thinking, watching people.  The first day, Thursday, I did alot of walking.  I went to the east side gallery, the 1.3 km long stretch of the former wall.  There is alot of cool graffitti on it by artists that were commissioned by the city to decorate it and other artists who just took matters into their own hands.  took a ton of pictures of it.  Then I went to a market area and walked around.  And since most city museums are free on thursday i went to a museum.  it had mostly 19th century paintings and sculpure.  It was nice i guess.  Then i went to the mall.  yeah that was weird.  a mall.  but they had h&m there and thats like the cheapest place (even in europe) to buy anything that seems at least alittle fashionable.  wow, is this as boring to read as it is to type?  

ok well since i just mentioned the art museum i can talk about that for a minute cuz the next day i went to the hamburger banhoff museum for contemporary art.  and before that i went to an outdoor sandsculpture exibit.  the sandsculpture exibit was so cool.  These things were huge and for the project they had to bring in literally tons and tons of sand.  It was an international competition.  I couldnt believe what they had made just from sand.  took many pics of course.  

in the museum they had alot of modern art.  a few peices from picasso, andy warhol, and other people who are well known in that medium but whose names i dont remember.  There was alot of metal sculpture.  i liked that.  and there was alot of photography which i also like.  So the whole time i was there i was really trying to figure out what kind of art i truly like.  i mean i guess that andy warhol stuff is important and everything because he was the first to do what he did.  and i know i like picasso cuz the colors are cool and it just looks funny and weird, but there is just so much art that i dont understand and i dont get it but i want to. --  Ok well forget about rennaisance art.  I gave up on that in Florence.  Its ugly and dark and all the faces of people look the same, and frankly i don't really care about Jesus so any art that has to do with him (which is what, like 85% or rennaissance art?) is not interesting to me at all. -- but back to the more modern stuff.  A big white canvas with a streak of green on a diagonal through the middle and some polka dots.  I mean, it looks ok, but i really want to know why it is hanging on this wall in this gallery that i had to pay to get into cuz its not thursday anymore.  I know that this is not the most original complaint of all time.  i have heard it before myself from others but what i feel like iäm trying to say is that i want to like it.  no, thats not true, i dont have a special need to like it.  I just want to know why it is so important to other people.  i guess thats similar to the interest that i actually do have in jesus.  i want to know why and how it got to be so important to so many people.  ok so until someone can really explain it to me im giving up on splotches of paint and simple squiggly lines as art.  

large metal sculptures are amazing.  cuz they are large and they are metal and they were somehow sculpted into something.  so im all about that.  

But then we come to photography.  So here is something i think i know at least alittle about.  took two semesters of it in high school so im not a complete stranger to it.  but there is definitely stuff here that i can get into and stuff i really have a hard time getting into.  so the harder (dare i even say bad?) stuff first.. pictures of still life buildings.  run down shacks, abandoned buildings, warehouses, barns, little houses even.  gas stations... stuff like that.  ok so good, the composition is good.  the right kind of converging lines.  but what am i looking at?  its just something that was just there.  standing still.  I kept thinking to myself that these arent bad pictures at all.  I just don't know why i am standing right here right now looking at them.  I would like to look at them though.  but only like if i was there and i took them and i wanted to remember what it was like when i actually saw it i person.  Or even if it was a friend or a relative of mine that wanted to show me some neat pictures he or she took when they were in this or that place.  and id say the same thing to them as i would to this artist.  Hey, thats a pretty neat picture.  But the difference is that if its a friend or something then its cool cuz at least then we could talk about what that place was like or why they wanted to take a picture of it and etc.  i mean, there's lots of fuckin buildings and barns.  there's a million gazillion things in this world and they can all be captured in a photograph.  But i need a REASON to look at it!  For example, they had some pictures of amazing sunsets over water and mountains and hills and valleys.  purple and pink and yellow and blue skies.  icy mountain tops, glaciers, wild animals.  with that i can really say, wow!   look at that!  ok here was another exibit that i saw there.  each photograph was a very very large print in black and white of a big tree.  Upside down.  Seriously.  Now i know iäm sort of poking fun here and all, but why does it have to be upside down.  its a really nice tree anyways.  I would be happy to look at it right side up.  its not bad for me that its upside down, but i feel like iäm missing the point.  and if the point is to make me think more about trees or to think about what it means to me personally to see a tree upside down then it really doesnt mean anything to me at all.  so like, what is the artists big accomplishment here?  is it the nice picture that he took, or is it the amazingly creative way he decided to hang it?  

so besides the pretty landscapes, i really did see some photos that i liked alot.  not surprisingly they were ones that had people in them.  people posing was ok for me some of the time, but i like the ones that captured some kind of action the most.  my favorite was the collection of pictures of a bunch of arabs (turkish maybe? im not sure) who were sitting around smoking from a big pipe in the middle.  it must have been hash or some kind of marijuana cuz these guys were STONED out of their minds!  it was great!  the looks on their faces.  their eyes!  They looked like most of my friends just with darker skin, wearing jilbabs or kaftans or whatever and turbans, etc.  they were laughing and just hanging out blowing smoke out of their mouths.  now its not just cuz i like seeing pictures of peope when they are high that i liked these.  well, yes im sure it had something to do with it, but really it was because it took me to a different place.  somewhere i have never been.  something i have never seen.  and i know that it is real.  it exists or at least existed when this picture was taken.  

On sunday i went to the art space called Tachles.  Cool name because it is yiddish for purpose. I guess i think thats cool because i like things that reference jewish things and dont have an overtly or even jewish feeling at all.  there is nothing jewish about this art space.  Tachles is one of the many legal squats in berlin where artists can live and work and make and show art for free.  some of it is pretty dirty and smells like piss and beer in the stairwell.  they only recently were forced to put windows into the building because someone fell out of one and died.  there is a nice cafe on the first floor.  They also had alot of metal scuplture there.  alot of the paintings they had for sale were very urban.  mixing politics and sex and sarasm.  alot of colages.  i liked almost everything i was looking at.  i wasnt really sure why.  i just liked it.  maybe because i related to it.  maybe because i felt like it was current to me.  maybe it was too easy though.  but maybe too easy is good for me. 

Ok so im getting there.  this was one of my goals of the trip.  to try and refine, better yet to define my tastes in art.  especially because ive never taken an art history course or any art course besides photography in high school.  But like i said, im coming along.  My brother Max refuses to let me or anyone in our family forget about how when i was about 11 or 12 years old i taped a collage of pictures of naked women all over my bedroom wall from old porn magazines (dont ask me how i got them).  i liked to look at them.  so that's art too, right?

Berlin is not a small town in Iowa

Today will be my last day in berlin.  This afternoon I will hop on a train to Copenhagen, Denmark to visit a friend i made when i was in Croatia.  Copenhagen really wasn't a part of my original travel plan, and even after being extended the invitation to stay there, the timing wasn't supposed to work out either.  I was supposed to be in vienna by now...  or somewhere else.  But not still in Berlin, the closest point on my so-called-itinerary to copenhagen.  Not that it's even so close at all.  About a 7 hour train ride.  Slightly above average.  For me at least.  So Denmark it is!

Berlin has been amazing.  I really love it here.  It is the only city that I've travelled to so far that i could actually see myself living in.  Its just so full of flavor and art and music and history.  Aside from the graffiti, and the very Punk western neighborhood of Kreutzberg, it is very clean.  People are friendly too, and they look you in the eye when they speak to you.  When I was looking at my map and trying to figure out which direction to go, people came over to ME to aks me if I needed any assistance.  That happened 3 times.  That has never happened to me anywhere else even once, and i stand around plenty with a big map unfolded in front of me with a furrowed brow and puzzled face.  My friend and gracious host, Nina told me a story of a friend of hers that is supposed to illustrate the old school German Berliner way of acting and thinking.  Her friend had fallen down in the street and not even knowing it yet had actually broken her arm.  But in the meantime she was just lying there.  A man who had not seen her fall walked over to her and asked her if anything was wrong.  She, probably disorented, replied no.  So he said to her, "Then would you please stand up and get out of the way because this is a public thoroghfare and there are people who are trying to walk here."  But then she told him that she is actually not alright and that she has just fallen.  The man said, "Well why didn't you say that in the first place?"  And he picked her up, took her to his car, and drove her to the hospital.  The story is meant to illustrate that even though there is a certain cold way about this man, he has concern for people's well being and the wellbeing of the city.  Sort of a Socialist way of thinking.  In America I would like to think that if we someone who looks like they are in trouble, hopefully SOMEONE will at least ask if they need assistance.  But if that person is just lying there drunk or something and doesnt require assistance, we will just walk past them.  No one I know would tell them that they should really just get up and get out of everone's way.  And i don think that it's just out of fear for their own safety.  I think that it's either because they really don't give a shit or even feel like "who am I to tell HIM to get out of the street?  it's not my job.  i'm not in charge of them or the city.  i'm not the police."  -- Now iäm not stating any personal opinions on how i think things should be.  I dont really know how it should be.  But i do find it really interesting to think about

.  So in all likelyhood i will never actually live here.  I dont want to learn a new language or move to this side of the world.  I'm pretty comfortable in America.  but it would be great if i could just transport everything that i have learned about and seen here in berlin to a small town in Iowa or something. 

berlin II

hello again.  still here.  went to the art space called tachles yesterday.  walked around for hours.  went to the top of one of countless abandoned warehouse buildings.. watched 1.5 german films from the late 70s early 80s.  really still feeling the division between east and west berlin.the people have not forgotten what has happened in this country and even tho the wall came down almost 20 years ago the history feels still so current.  may take a day trip today to pottsdam and ride bikes around the parks and castles.  the transprtation in this city.  public transport that is, is very efficient.  lots of bicycle riders too tho.  man i had so muc more to say.  i wish this blog could just spontaneously be written as the ongoing monologue of thought comes to me in my head while im all out and about town.  ok the obvious stuff..  clubbing is insane here as it is the birthplace of techno music.  the first three nights i didnt get home until sunrise.  oftly chilly.  mostly cloudy.  rains at least a little every day.  oh i bought a pair of pants.  and got to do laundry.  again.  laundry and the constant lack of clean clothes are forever the thorn in my side.  but i do love this city.  just walking yesterday along the remnants of the wall we ran into some youngsters who had a whole set up of props and asked us if we would make a story out of them and act it out improvised so they could film it.  we gave them the story but were too hungry to act it out.  taking lots and lots of pictures of graffiti and street art.  seeing all sorts of bathrooms and showers.  so far ive flooded my friends apartment twice.  once by not properly closing the shower door and again today by sort of tipping the toilet over while it was flushing.  i think that KLUTZ is a german word so.....  i guess im totally appropriate for this city.

Berlin

been here since wednsday.  this is the first city that ive been in so far that reminds me at all of new york and chicago.  a variety of people.  crazy music scene.  the dogshit on the sidewalk and, graffiti, and warehouse buildings with artists punks and sqatters is reminiscent of brooklyn.  i was supposed to be on to munich today but i made another friend and am staying alittle longer.  checked out of the hostel last night.  but it was a very very cool hostel.  i think i liked it so much because for some reason i was very popular there.  known by all as "the music man" or "the funk man"  -----  shoot.... must finish later...