Observing the map

One half of Kochstrasse is now called Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse which immediately makes the tourist map I picked up at the airport last week out of date.

On 11 April 1968, Rudi-Dutschke, a prominent activist in the left-wing German student movement, was shot in the head and chest by a young man named Josef Bachmann. It has been written that Bachmann was heavily influenced by a campaign against Dutschke by the mass media, particularily by the newspaper Bild-Zeitung who ran the headline "Stop Dutschke now!". Some students held the newspaper responsible, sparking riots and the siege of Bild’s facilities across the country.

Throughout most of its history, Bild’s head office has been based in Hamburg, but in March 2008 Bild moved its headquarters to Berlin. The new Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse runs from the offices of the left-wing daily newspaper ‘Die Tageszeitung’ to the base of a soaring glass high-rise which houses the new Bild offices.

I was speed walking down a street.
Suddenly a tall young guy ran up beside me. He was holding a microphone attached to a hard disc recorder. He said something incomprehensable to me as he struggled to keep up. I laughed.
“I can’t say, ‘I can’t speak German’, properly in German yet!”.
“What do you do here?”
“I am an Artist”.
“How do you find the mood in Berlin?”
“Relaxed.”
“It’s better than London?”
“It’s different.”
He told me I’d be on a radio station that evening then skipped across the road and went into a building.

The show that M and C both recommended to me separately is at number Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26 (formerly Kochstrasse 60) MK Galerie Berlin. This is not to be confused with Merry Karnowsky Gallery on Torstrasse. The gang of galleries at Rudi-Dutschke 26 are similar to the other local clusters at Zimmer Strasse and Lindenstasse. Every space had used the same floor paint that I’d used to paint the studio floor this week. I have paint finish envy. Two thin coats on a porous floor will not give you the showroom quality finish that these spaces have.

I visited the knicky knacky photography shop near where I’m staying. The man who owns it asked me where I’d come from, then told me how lucky I was to live in the same country as Paul McCartney. I told him he should visit Liverpool, full of strong swimmers from Ireland. He was interested in a zebra crossing near Abbey Road Studios. I told him this was in London.

When I told T the title of this blog she said “No! That’s that awful quote from the Berlin Mayor’s speech.”

It turns out that T’s auntie used to babysit the Johnson kids when their family lived in Brussels. She couldn’t tell us much about Boris as a child, with him being the eldest and keeping himself to himself. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is the eldest of the four children of Stanley Johnson, a former Conservative MEP and employee of the European Commission and World Bank, and the painter Charlotte Fawcett.

A change in temperature

“Forty two keelomeeters”, he said. We both smiled and nodded then smiled again. He was late and explaining that the distance he’d had to travel meant being any earlier was impossible. At least that’s what I imagined he was saying.

The car was large, a six seater. The back seats pushed forward to make room for the large mirror I had been carrying. Later on, when stopped at traffic lights, he jumped out of the car. He went around the back and opened the boot to check if the mirror was still intact. It was.

Turkish Techno reverberated around the space. The bass lacked the umph to spread further than the car.
“Sie hören möchten diese?”.
”I don’t understand”, I said.
He turned the volume down then back up and I tapped my fingers on my knee to the beat.

A took us to our first opening this week, which is ironic as she doesn’t live here. She was obliged to go having travelled from London to place a box in front of a wall for the exhibition and we were most willing to accompany her. It was a large and tasteful group show at the Former State Mint.

The short description of the Former State Mint (no money, no more) on berlin.unlike.net (the definative city guide for the mobile generation) states:
“the former State Mint now hosts cultural events. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll find some good old Deutsch Marks tucked away in the wall cracks.”

A got a small blue plastic cable tie from the exhibition's organisers which entitled her to free drinks. The quantity of free drinks she got at any one time depended on the attractiveness of the member of staff she asked. The better looking, the bigger the quantity.

I don’t think M understood my joke about the explosion. I told him it immediately after he’d told me about the conversation he’d had with the two government workers in the restaurant. They had said to him how surprised they were that the studio group were going through official channels, applying for planning permission for their new gallery. He expressed pride in his gang’s anarchic reputation and so I thought he would enjoy the story about D telling me to contact him should I want to blow up the studio. M looked at me blankly. I quickly changed the subject saying that the portions of food served in restaurants in Berlin are as large as those served in any American city. M did not response.

A dark curly haired American woman on the train stared at me for a long time, then opened her bag, took out a notebook and pen and wrote something down. I didn’t blush. This was good because I then realised she was writing down information from the poster above my head.

B’s performance the following night was fun but I can’t imagine it translated being so Brit specific and full of accent. The gallery opens just three hours a week but they’ve got a decent window shopping facade.

I’d arranged to meet L there. She texted me saying she was wearing sliver shoes. I was wearing metallic boots but tempting as it was I didn’t enter into a game of text back, instead scouring the floor to find her. She said she had been looking for someone who looked Irish and that I wasn’t what she imagined.