bach on sunday morning

....sundays in germany are very very quiet, almost zen like. you could not do much if you wanted to, since everything is closed - so it is the perfect day to sleep, hang out, day dream, write, see your family, eat christmas cookies - or listen to bach….. bach expresses the sunday feeling here in this country, the slightly melancholic, introverted, quiet side of the sunday. it is cold and dark outside, not many people on the streets...........

art.of living | in Europe

a few snapshots from Berlin....

one funny little tidbit on the s-bahn in berlin
(the above underground transport system) -
it smells!... usually like wet dog... the photo
is actually from a ryanair magazin...
so that means other people have noticed it, too...
hahaha
~~~~~


also - more photo art to be seen at
http://globalgrassroots.blogspot.com/

happy holiday season......

berlin to dublin...a quick 2 hour hop on ryanair

we just got back from a weekend in dublin, vitisting our good friend
ann o connor ---

it was fun even through the wind and the rain - we just used our time to visit more pubs then we would have done ordinarily... hahah
one of the funnier (or should we say - amazing... an example of the six degrees of seperation that we seem from anyone else at any given time....) on the streets of dublin, late sunday morning - we ran into a friend of a friend from denver, colorado

also - here a good article from travel and leisure on going to europe cheap..................
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13 Affordable Trips to Europe

From May 2008

By Reid Bramblett

With editing by Adrien Glover, Sarah Kantrowitz, John Newton, and Clara O. Sedlak

So what if the euro is up and the dollar is down? That doesn’t mean you should skip a trip to Europe this year. You can still find great deals, even in pricey places like Paris and London. The secret is simple: knowing where the bargains are.

Did you know you can see the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Pompidou in Paris for free, get full meals in London for less than $10, and spend the night in a Bavarian castle for $125? How about staying inside the storied Alhambra palace grounds in Spain for less than $150 a night, dining in Rome for under $30, and cruising on the Bosporus in Istanbul for $1? (No, that’s not a typo.)

See our list of 13 affordable European itineraries.

Here are some additional tips on how to shave hundreds of dollars off your next European vacation, no matter where you go or what the exchange rate.

Airfare: Do research through aggregators like kayak.com, then compare the results with fares offered by wholesale-style consolidators like Destination Europe and Airfare Planet.

Package Tours: Since you can book packages in dollars, they may save you money-but price the elements individually to be sure. Go Today, Gate 1 Travel, and Tour Crafters offer weeklong packages starting at $549 per person.

Transportation: Rail Europe has a variety of passes, but for any trip over five hours, opt for a faster, cheaper no-frills airline. Want to drive? Check the aggregators, as well as consolidators like Auto Europe. For a longer trip, a short-term lease of a brand-new Renault or Peugeot will be cheaper—and offer better insurance coverage—than a two-week rental.

Lodging: Find small mom-and-pop inns and B&B’s at European specialty sites like Venere and Booking. And consider the myriad of lodging alternatives—agritourism farm stays, cottages, private rooms, convents, campgrounds, villa rentals, castles—that are less expensive and more authentic.

Dining: Spend a pittance on a royal picnic. Just look for the daily markets you’ll find in most towns, and keep your eyes peeled for street stalls and carts selling roasted pork sandwiches and sugary crêpes. Or head to a pub, trattoria, or tapas bar for hearty, traditional dishes costing far less than at a restaurant. When you do dine at a temple of haute cuisine, go at lunch, not dinner: you usually get the same menu for less.

See our list of 13 affordable European itineraries.

Sights: The best things in Europe can be free. Those grandiose churches that showcase frescoes, stained glass, and architecture by Michelangelo and Matisse? Free. London’s top museums like the British Museum, Tate Modern, V&A, and others? No charge. Madrid’s Museum of the Blind and Paris’s Perfume Museum? You guessed it. Get a list of free sights and experiences in Paris, London, Rome, and Madrid at Europe for Free. Also, most European tourist offices offer discount passes for public transportation and sightseeing (a notable exception: the largely useless Venice Card).

Shopping: Sharpen your bargaining skills for Europe’s street markets, and you’ll return with more interesting souvenirs (and colorful stories) than the tourists who stuck to the overpriced tchotchke shops. If you research local prices at home and stick to the “stock shops” that sell overstock, last-year’s models, and slight irregulars, you can bring home a treasure for far less.

Trimming your budget doesn’t mean sacrificing the quality of your trip. In fact, the less you spend, the less insulated you are from the local culture. Staying in a thatched Irish farmhouse, perusing old masters in Rome, or snacking your way through Spanish specialties for $2 a dish aren’t just the tricks of the frugal traveler: they’re the stuff dream vacations are made of.

See our list of 13 affordable European itineraries.

Also within this article:

• Another Seaside Escape
• London for Less
• The Bottom Line
• Transportation Tip

New York Artists Escape to Germany

By Damaso Reyes in Berlin

Leonard Cohen famously sang "First we'll take Manhattan, then we'll take Berlin." Now many New York artists are doing just that, turning their backs on excessive rents and the stifling conservativism of the post-9/11 city to carve out a niche for themselves in the thriving Berlin art scene.

When David Krepfle left his small hometown in Iowa and moved to New York in 1989, he had $100 in his pocket and dreams of becoming an artist. He found a loft in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as DUMBO ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass"). Back then, it was the kind of area where nobody cared if he used a chainsaw to make his art -- even if he did often get chased by thieves on the way home from the subway.

But over the years, as the neighborhood became the hippest place to live in New York, Krepfle's rent grew and it became a struggle to keep his home. Then he visited Berlin in 2001 -- and was so impressed that he joined the ranks of the New York artists making the exodus to the German capital.

PHOTO GALLERY: THE NY ARTISTS LIVING IN BERLIN EXILE

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)

"It felt like New York 20 years ago," he says, recalling his first visit to the city. "It had the same energy, the same kind of freakiness and underbelly, as New York had then."

Krepfle, who has now lived in Berlin for a year, is one of an increasing number of American artists who are leaving New York to set up a permanent base in Germany. More than 10,000 Americans now live in the German capital -- a number which has grown steadily over the past decade.

New York-based artists are inspired to make the move through a combination of rising rents, diminishing opportunities and a growing sense that the city's centrality to the art world has passed its peak. Gone are the days when up-and-coming painters such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg could rent a huge loft in Manhattan for just a few hundred dollars a month. Today those same lofts rent for upwards of $5,000 and sell for millions, forcing artists out of Manhattan and into the outer boroughs. But even in Brooklyn, spaces that rented for hundreds just a decade ago now cost up to 10 times as much.

Krepfle now pays €500 ($695) a month in rent for a studio in the up-and-coming eastern Berlin district of Friedrichshain. The boyish 46-year-old shakes his head and marvels at how much his storefront studio on a quiet, tree-lined street differs from his DUMBO loft, where he lived directly under the Manhattan Bridge and had to put up with a constant industrial rumble.

"This is the first opportunity that I've ever had in my life to make solid art where I don't have to worry so much about paying a big electric bill or a lot of rent," he says. "It gives me the opportunity to really focus on the art."

It has now been a year since Krepfle sold all of his belongings to come to Berlin. In that time he has found both a home and inspiration. The walls of his studio are lined with the work that he has created here: colorful, cereal box-sized images of contemporary news events interpreted through his unique lens. World figures like North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein are juxtaposed with images dealing with globalization, consumerism and the rise of radical fundamentalism of all flavors.

And it's perhaps not entirely coincidental that there's a political element to Krepfle's art. It's not just cheap rents which are enticing artists to come to Berlin -- many New York artists are leaving because they feel the place they fell in love with has fundamentally changed.

"I'm not crazy about living in America while George W. Bush is president," says David Henry Brown Jr., a painter and performance artist who recently had a one-man show at a Berlin gallery. The intellectual atmosphere of Berlin is "really open," he says. "I feel like I have taken off the handcuffs that were developing in New York."

For many artists, the event that alienated them from the United States was the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and their aftermath. While the attacks seemed to bring the nation together, for many on the left it heralded the start of a reactionary period in American history which made them feel less and less welcome in their own country. "You have a transition, especially catalyzed by 9/11, where New York becomes a corporate puppet," Brown says, filled with resentment.

Alaskan-born artist and experimental filmmaker Reynold Reynolds agrees. He feels the 9/11 attacks "made the city much more conservative, much less tolerant, much more a place of paranoia." He lived in New York for 11 years -- including during 9/11 and its aftermath -- before coming to Berlin in 2004 for a fellowship at the American Academy. "Some of the things that I did in New York would now be completely impossible," he adds, noting that throwing dummies off bridges would likely lead to arrest rather than a review in the New York Times. "Berlin is a much more inspiring place to be an artist," he says -- so much so that he recently signed a five-year lease.

Theorist and environmental architect Peter Fend, who had a studio in the World Trade Center, is another whose decision to leave New York was influenced by 9/11. "My reaction to the whole event was one of immediate anger about US foreign policy," he says. Fend first came to Germany in 1984, and his view of Europe and Berlin, where he has lived for the past two years, is perhaps more pragmatic than most.

"I go where I am welcome," Fend says, voicing his frustration with the New York art world's obsession with making what he mockingly calls "happy art" in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. "There's no love for Germany," he says. "There's some appreciation for where we are at but I can't say that I'm loving it. It's just a place to do exile."

But with New York rents rising inexorably, and a growing dissatisfaction both with the current administration and the increasing commercialization of the art world, it seems likely that more and more artists will decide to make the move to Berlin.

And for some at least, the German city has an attraction of its own. "My fantasy growing up was always New York and then Berlin," says Krepfle, a smile spreading across his face.

chocolocation..........

location location location ------------------------------
it seems like berlin gets better and better, the more we unwrap the chocolate wrapping...
we just went to our first art-night: vernissage berlin-style.

our friends sabine and gunther are here at the moment, which is always an event - for many reasons. we of course just enjoy seeing them and going out. they are also very bohemian and we all enjoy going out late in berlin.
but the other reason that makes it a fun event is that gunther looks a lot like bruce willis, so we have strangers asking him about it and often wanting to have their photo taken with him. it makes it even more believable when we all speak english together. it is really funny.
to top it off, one of the places we went to is 'white trash' - and they are doing a really good job to live up to their name.



i loved it. great place, not to go to all the time, but for sure a fun place to tak 'bruce
willis and girl friend' - hahaha




one of our projects while we are here, is to find the perfect 'duck'
(the old citroen's nickname here in germany) and ship it back to
the states...... hahaha - so ve has been searching..... here a snapshot for
all of you in the 'new world' who have not seen one -



we will keep you posted on that little undertaking.......

nbg fotos

Euro Travels

The last few weeks have been busy with travels and friends, the highlight being a quick trip to Paris with a girl friend. This is one of the things I love so much about Europe - within 90 minutes you can be in another great city in a different country, language, culture. It was phantastic.
And for anybody who ever thought that the Parisians are not friendly, you need to go and see for yourself how nice they really are. Of course there is an occasional rude waiter, but I have had that experience in every city. Over all every one was more then nice and helpful.
Most of them speak english, but I think it is always polite to first ask 'parlez vous anglais' - before you start rambling of in your own language.
We stayed in St Germain, on the cutest little side street called 'Buci' - that street was so perfect, it was at times hard to pull away to go out in other neighborhoods. Our little cafes and shops and restaurants were so charming, we would sit for hours sipping wine and watching people...

Back in Berlin it has gotten a little colder, but still nice and dry and the fall colors are spectacular. Today is Saturday and the best market is in Schoeneberg... so off we go - more later

Deep into fall now - we have even changed our clocks already - unlike the US, which I think will take another week or so of the 'summer feeling'. So now it gets dark around 5pm.... but there is something particularly cozy about being inside with blankets and candles. This IS my favorite season. We may even dive deeper into fall, by going for a couple of days to Dublin - meet up with our friend Ann O'Connor..........

One other fun thing to do on a cold, dark evening, is to go around the corner to the neighborhood vietnamese soup place. It is soo good and really cheap, it has become one of our regular spots!

A daily living kind of problem to solve now is our wet clothes. Our clothes rack broke and we don't have/don't want to use a dryer. So for the moment we hang clothes around the apt on various chairs and things (it is good that german washers tend to be pretty small...hahah)
I would like to buy one small enough to fit into our (very small) bathroom - but Ve would like one big enough to fit sheets and things.... hmmmm.....
off we go to the store
ciao ciao for now --

castle celebrations

random shots of friends and family -







first in italy and later in strassburg.......................

autumn in the city

finally berlin feels like home again. this was not berlin's fault, but we felt a little bit unsettled for a while. that could be partly because our place had been rented out for about a year, and we had to make it our own again. and also because things do change when you are gone for a while. but the city changes in a really good way. in our neighborhood are many scaffoldings on beautiful old buildings that are being restored or even just painted (including ours). our little neighborhood park finally got finished, after years of being under semi construction. the apartment under us finally got sold and is being worked on. our neighbor above us had cancer surgery, but is doing very well.
we have a phantastic new vietnamese place around the corner from us that has become our new regular 'cold october night soup place'......
it is great to be here again and we wonder why we were gone for so long.

tonight we stopped in our little neighborhood bistro where the regulars hang out and we saw one of the old timers hans peter. he has lived here forever and seems to know everyone. we sat with him and his friend for a few minutes to catch up - of course outside, since berlin has caught the no smoking ban also (that is a whole story by itself, since the germans are fighting this more then any other country and there are still many places where you CAN smoke - but more on that some other time)
so as we are chatting with hans peter his friend is rolling a cigarette... plus doing funny things to the tobacco, like burning it for a few seconds before rolling it - and then added some little brown pasty like things... but we were not paying too much attention since he was not exactly part of the conversation. but then he got up and said he was going to smoke a few meters away, since 'you cannot smoke here' but we were welcome to join him and have some.
i had apparently still not completely arrived in berlin, since i was not sure what he meant and said 'no, that's ok, thanks' and then asked hans peter why he would not smoke here (kind of thinking like someone in boulder where often bars don't let you smoke in their little outside seating area either) - but as i was asking i realized that he apparently was smoking hashish.... hahaha ---
i should have added that this little neighborhood bar is an old hang out from the 60's - but even though, it is hard to imagine smoking pot right outsid of my brothers bar :-)

just a quick side note - i have not been writing much, because we are having internet issues in our apt, and when we are at the internet cafe for limited time, it is hard to have the creative juices flowing. those internet cafes are pretty fun and a fascinating social study by itself though. you see everyone from the traveler to the semi homeless to kids playing games to people making international calls yelling into the phone or a man that had to work out some ocd issues before he could pick up the receiver. the real money maker (1 hour online is only 1 euro, so the owners don't get rich on that) is the fact that you can buy anything from beer to junk food there, when most regular stores are already closed) this has become our international office and home away from home for many hours of the day....
see you there next time -------

almost in Berlin.... writing from Nuernberg

september 19 - euro trekking....

we just got back from our quick italy trip. our very good friends alexia and rob got married in the magical setting of a castelo outside san gimignano.

we are lucky enough to always be able to borrow my parents little car when we go on our euro trips, which is fantastic on gas consumption.

so we started heading south on wednesday early am.... it ended up taking almost 10 hours, with trucks and traffic and just occasional stops for gas and bathroom. but finally, around 5pm we arrived and minutes later on one of the small streets of sg ran into lauren and tyler, our friends from denver who were sharing an apt with us.

so our time in italy started with wine, bruschetta and friends and continued on that way....

the next 4 days were the most amazing travel time or the most amazing any time really - to be in a small town and continuously running into very good friends, old and new. there were 130 people at this wedding from argentina to teheran, and we knew a large number of them. so we would see people in the coffee shops, on the streets and at the market - it was amazing!! this is what it must feel like to live in a village - but with people that were handpicked to live with you.... hahaha

the wedding was at the castelo, about 30 minutes outside of sg. it was beautiful, even with a little rain off and on. and it was an amazing ceremony and fun party --

it was kind of sad to say a quick good bye at 3am after the wedding, to leave the next morning to go back to germany. this was like being part of a big italian family and now everyone was going home... another 10 hours north through the rain, but it was sunday, so at least this time there were no trucks on the road.

so now it is 'nuremberg' time again for a while. spending time with family, friends, sitting at our favorite cafes with newspapers, cappuccino and notepad. we are learning german, writing down stories, blogging and making plans.

most of it are travel plans... some others life plans. talking about our next few months and where to go. it already seems that time will be too short to do everything we want.

we want to go to strassburg and munich, i might do a girl trip to paris...
some other ideas are - dublin and copenhagen. stay tuned on more urban treks :-)

happy beginning of fall... or happy spring - depending on where you are :-)