cafe anna blume ... nähe kollwitzplatz

a cafe named after a poem ..by kurt schwetter - that is a combination of cafe and flower store

cafe leonhard

here we are ... about a month later - just arrived in berlin a few hours ago... and headed straight to the 'stuttgarter platz'. we have kind of a love/hate relationship with cafe leonhard there. the place is a fantastic example of a mixture of minimalism and cozyness. the lighting is perfect, so is the location. particularly if you can sit outside and people watch.
the waitstaff is a little hit and miss. the are not exaclty bad, but none of them ever smile, and for someone who has lived in the US for a while, that takes a little getting used to.

cafe gallop

it was a nice day in the middle of arctic cold days here in denver - and we decided to head up to lo-hi... denver's not quite northwest neighborhood. it is not the actual highlands, so that is why the 'lower highland' name for it.
on 32nd and zuni is a place called 'gallop', that sounded interesting, so we wanted to check it out.
overall very pleasant, actually european feeling - particularly since they served coffee plus wine or other spirits. very civilized:) exposed brick gives it that very cozy feeling and the baristas were friendly.
it was a little hot, with the sun burning through the window, and they only remedy for that seemed to be an open door. so i am not sure how that would be on warmer days.... also a little odd was that they did offer wireless - plus had a kind of an unwelcoming note by the register, regarding people with computers. hmmm .....

the philosophy of coffee shops...

it is a new year and a new decade .... not technically speaking. we actually have another year, but that is apparently how we view time - so who am i to walk against the tide. there are more important things to fight for.
we have been in berlin for 5 years now... depending on how you count the years i guess. eduardo's 50th birthday in 2005 was the moment we decided that we wanted to have a home base here. we moved our 'stuff' there that same summer, but did not actually start spending time until spring of 2006 .... so, either way, we have been here for a while. i will continue talking, blogging and philosophizing about berlin.
but, my new life phase directs me to the coffee houses of the world.
today we met good friends at cafe europa here in denver..... more on that shortly ~~~~

winter solstice .....

it is not quite winter yet ... but it feels like it - the weather, the holiday spirit, the short days and dark nights... and it feels like change. at least in my life it does.
it has been a transformational period in my life - these last 2 months. and now it is almost winter solstice.
so i am making a few changes to my blogs -
grassroots is staying the same, still talking about politics, still creating art!
art of living is changing direction - you can read up on my changes there ...
and this little blog here has changed from berlin talk to coffee talk.
not that berlin is changing, it is still the city we love, we live and work and
blog out of - at least part time. but it is not a new foschini project anymore, so i am shifting my focus to something i am doing at the moment, right now:
sitting in a cafe somewhere around the world. i am an expert at coffee houses.
i drink coffee | i write | i am a philosopher and designer | and i travel the world
_________________________________________________________________________________

more to come shortly, but my coffee is getting cold and it is getting cold ...
talk to you next time;)

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.......