Making Tracks...

the past is a different country. So is Bayern.

2007-12-22T22:47:00.000+11:00

We have arrived in Bavaria for Christmas with Katrin's family. We've hardly been here 12 hours and already we are stuffed to capacity with food from the ample "World War 3 Preparation Pantry". Here is Katrin taking some internet respite from regional culture:

But the thing I really love about her family home is the heater that stands opposite where she is sitting. It is a big, beautiful tiled oven complete with relief sculpture tiles at the top:

It basically functions as the glue of the household - not only does it heat the entire house from its strategic central position, but they dry their shoes by it, the towels from their showers, keep food warm as they eat (last night katrin's mother put the tray of pizza we in it while we ate the piece on our plate, to keep the rest warm for second helpings) and a range of other handy things.

But it will be nice to take some walks in the forest that backs onto the house...

Pretty huh?

In other news, I finally moved this week into my new house. My room is lovely, but sadly there is a rather unhinged woman who lives downstairs who has been complaining for two years about the fact that the floorboards are too noisy - her bedroom is directly underneath mine. The new landlord therefore wants to put in carpet and cover this beautiful floor.

I haven't really set it up yet as you can see, but the windows look out onto a nice central courtyard in the middle of several houses. The great thing about living here will be that I only ever speak German with my new housemates, one of which is a good friend. There is also a cute cat who lives here, but I am told that she takes a minimum of two weeks to get to know someone without committing violence on them. Hmmm.

bloody mary anyone?

2007-12-19T22:29:00.000+11:00

Last night I worked behind a bar for the first time in my life. It was obvious that I had no idea what I was doing... but I was working with a nice German woman and a nice Danish man. They were very friendly and patient. Hopefully I can get a few shifts there to make some pocket money, but given that the boss was sitting at the bar watching all night, I'm not incredibly hopeful. While they only have bottled beer (phew), most of the clientele prefer cocktails, and it's the kind of place where people end up when the bars they were in earlier have closed or become boring. Luckily for me, they were therefore so drunk that they weren't too fussy about whatever was in the glass I was handing to them. Ahem.

It's funny that I've actually made it to this age without having worked a bar before. But in the world of underpaid jobs, I have always been on the other side of the great border that divides hospitality and retail workers. My first job as a teenager was in a department store. For 6 years I learned how to run a check out, put things in bags, cut my hands on packing tape dispensers, and smile when customers threw objects in my face when they couldn't buy that incredibly shoddy excuse for a child's toy at christmas time. I didn't learn how to pull beers and serve drinks with sticky hands, sweep up broken bottles between the legs of sleazy drunk people, cut my hands on broken cocktail glasses and inhale secondary smoke. So I was actually pretty nervous about the whole thing. But it went off mostly without a hitch. And I figure it's high time I learned anyway.

Unfortunately, getting home at 6am this morning meant that I slept through my 7.30 alarm and was late to work at my other job as a receptionist in a call centre. Oopsy.

***

Sneak Preview

I have also pasted directly below here a contents list for two upcoming posts that I am constructing with photos. There are heaps, so it's taking a while. But you can get a sneak preview here:

drafted in February... Berlin Bumper Edition #2
1. Lesbian Koalas and other German news items
2. Hysterical Brisbane pair land in Berlin
3. Quotidian Cultural Experiences #1: Opera
4. My first demo - yeah yeah, it took a while
5. Miss Gulag, Gay-bashers in Moscow, and other berlinale highlights
6. camp counselor kate, or, How I learned to stop hoping and love the unemployment situation in Berlin, or, How working for a Siemens-commissioned call centre destroyed my soul
7. ALB: Antifaschistische Linke Berlin (my new temporary political family)
8. ....

drafted in August/September/October... Berlin Bumper Edition #3
1. London, New York, Paris: springtime! (plus Boston & Toronto!)
2. Skip Bloc and the G8
- lead-up
- the camp
- the blockade
- reflections
3. Alice moves in!
4. Queer historians meet for tea in Swansea, Wales
5. The only gay in the village? Driving through Wales with my sister and Dan
6. Summer camps & missing Berlin
7. The sad end of summer
8. Bathing in Budapest and Conferencing in Cracow
9. Swiss Alps, kids and cows
10. My mother's birthday
11. The Davison Elterns hit Berlin
12. The daily grind - I wish

Yet to be drafted...
1. My new house (it's great to live with a Heilpraktikerin!)
2. Christmas in Bavaria
3. Photos of the Stasi Prison at Hohenschonhausen and other tourist adventures
4. friends come, friends go - goodbye Alice & Claire
5. other things that I can't remember right now...

buried alive in a year of photos

2007-12-02T05:22:00.000+11:00

So as promised I finally started to go through my photo collection today and found it completely overwhelming. I didn't think I'd been that snap happy during the year! I have started compiling a selection for your perusal, some of which actually make me laugh out loud. But at least those back home will get a sense of all the folks who have been passing through this pocket of the world.

Today I have had the most gloriously lazy Saturday in ages. Out of bed at around 11.30. Breakfast with a friend at home at around 1pm. Wandered around the neighbourhood in a less than half-arsed attempt to find a costume for the birthday party I'm going to tonight. Got jack of it around 4.15 when the sky turned dark and since then have been sitting on the sofa doing some German revision (ahem, for the first time in MONTHS... my German is really crap for someone who has been here a year already).

My musical choice for today is the Sommersturm soundtrack (a teen gay film from Germany about a boy from a small town who loves another boy in his sport team). I have just discovered The Hidden Cameras (Canadian) and I'm totally in love with them. Check them out here.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to get out of bed early and make a beeline for the flea markets to see if I can buy a new bike. Not sure if I mentioned this to anyone, but my bike finally got stolen a few weeks ago. I was soooooo grumpy about it. But it's just the way things go here - the more bikes being ridden = the more bikes being stolen.

So, anyway, photos are on the way. But here's one to keep everyone happy in the meantime:

Mama and Papa Davison with a very Stalinist Papa Marx and Papa Engels... a likely match?

Til next time,
kd.

Good riddance Howard!!

2007-11-27T19:29:00.000+11:00

Contents:
1. Piss off John!
2. Not coming home... yet.
__________________

Piss off John!

That right wing, racist, homophobic, anti-worker scumbag has finally been dumped. After 11.5 years as the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard has been sent packing with a landslide loss. It was a long time coming, but the fact that he even lost his own seat (only the second Australian Prime Minister in history to lose his own seat in his defeat election) is definitely a sweetener.

The main issues he lost on can be counted as victories for the left: his participation in the Bush-led war in Iraq and his sweeping Industrial Relations laws, euphemistically (and sickeningly) titled 'WorkChoices'. And there were other issues he lost on too - his refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, to say sorry to Indigenous Australians, his government's policy of mandatory detention (read 'prison without charge') for asylum seekers, his willingness to let Australian citizens rot in that twisted hell they call Guantanamo Bay, his ferocious attacks on trade unions and student unions, and his policy of military intervention in Indigenous Australian communities - I read a report stating that in the communities where his Indigenous Affairs minister Mal Brough had made a 'real effort', 95% of the vote went directly to Labor. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the things the Liberal Party government did during the last 12 years (the Liberal Party is the conservative party in Australia).

On the subject of victories for the left, if you clicked on the link above you will have noticed the headline - Rudd claims victory. Well, I can certainly say that a victory of Rudd is NOT a victory for the left. Kevin Rudd is an arch conservative who we can expect to wiggle out of a vast majority of progressive reforms and in fact who will probably be incredibly right wing most of the time - let's just remember that he's effectively picking up where Paul 'free-market' Keating left off in 1996. However the fact is that ordinary people are going to be much better off without Howard.

Needless to say, the media have been treating Rudd like the new golden boy. The sheer size of the swing to Labor has produced some truly vomit-worthy stuff, the most hilarious of which was the 'Ruddslide' (note picture of Mr. & Mrs. Rudd frolicking through park with dog).

Nevertheless, we may as well live up the honeymoon while it lasts, although 3 days in and the cracks are already appearing. While they've already announced that they will make a formal apology to Indigenous Australians, sign the Kyoto Protocol and pull combat troops out of Iraq, their election promise to 'tear up' Workchoices is already being threatened by rhetoric about how difficult it will be to do that with what remains of the Liberal Party standing in the way. And it already looks like there are some major campaign battles on the horizon, with Labor maintaining complete continuity with some of Howard's most racist stances (see here for example).

Rudd also remains committed to having troops in so-called 'non-combat' zones like Afghanistan. And what of their approach to civil liberties and the 'war on terror'?

Let's just hope that Sharron Burrows' action of ripping up the Workchoices legislation remains a true indication of what Rudd will do, and then start getting organised to push the ALP further.

Not coming home... yet.

Several people have been asking me what's going on... I have been fairly wishy-washy about my return dates over the past few months, but:

My big plan was to be returning to Australia this December and begin a big scary study project (in fact I was supposed to begin my journey home yesterday on a flight to Buenos Aires, from where I was supposed to somehow get back to Melbourne ...yep - it was going to be a little complicated anyhow!).

But about 4 weeks ago I made the decision to stick around here for another while and put off my study for another 12 months. It was a difficult decision to make. You may recall my posts about how homesick I was this time last year. Well, ahem, the feeling hasn't exactly worn off I have to say. I crave the familiar. But really there's no big psychology about it - the long and short is I just miss my friends and now, going into winter again, the sun. And also I miss the activist stuff I was doing before I left, and I feel like my brain is turning to mush without that and uni. I really want to get stuck into my research (and the bulk of my initial research can't really be done anywhere other than Australia). But for now I will content myself with background reading.

But that reminds me - it's now been over a year since I arrived in Berlin. I had my one year arrival anniversary a couple of weeks ago. It's definitely colder at this time than it was last year. (hopefully I'll get a proper winter this time and then I'll be done with the whole romantic idea). There is so much that has happened over the past few months. Gradually over the next few weeks I will be able to fill in some retrospective reflections on my first year in Berlin, including photos from summer time. The g8 was interesting, and so was working as an English teacher to kiddies, as was speaking at a couple of academic conferences, and travelling to Paris, Budapest and Krakow with my lover. Lots of friends have passed through, some have left forever, others have moved here, and lots of new friends have been made and many operas have been seen. I've been unbelievably crap at communication with most people, but it doesn't mean I don't miss them.

So, stay tuned for some pics and memories soon. And some more interesting content.

kd.

new york

2007-04-27T00:22:00.000+10:00

this week i am in new york!

back from the void

2007-03-05T23:35:00.000+11:00

okay okay, so it's been a while. i kinda dropped into a communication void, but let me tell ya, it's purely the result of me having a wonderful time. i know i promised i'd write more frequently, but.... bah!

so, for all those avid making tracks readers, i am in the process of drafting the second installment of the berlin bumper edition. it will be a similar kind of deal - chapter headings and everything to make it easy.

but for now a brief update:
- i am currently in france, hanging out with my good friend john. it is warm and sunny, and has shown me the value of having a summer once in a while... i've just been through two back-to-back winter seasons, first in the southern hemisphere and then in the northern and it's taking it's toll
- i now have five jobs, mostly piecemeal earnings, bits and pieces here and there, but should earn me some money so it's okay, and with 22% unemployment in berlin, i'm glad to have found anything frankly
- have developed some lovely friendships over the past months and have begun to get attached to this city of berlin - according to everyone i speak to, the summer is unbeatable so that's exciting - friends so far include katrin, silke, swantje, isa, jenny, lea, berlina, claudia, klaus, conny, doreen, laura and a few others are in the pipeline too
- have been spending my time going to german class, seeing many operas, attended a few excellent sessions of the berlinale film festival (mostly documentaries), participated in the writing, editing and proofreading of a thesis on postmodern english fiction for a new friend, visited my lovely cousins in belfast ireland in january
- have joined the state library
- have had many lovely visitors, including matt s, xanthe, jackson, lenine, jodie, and now marti who is currently staying in my room while i'm away
- am planning some great trips away, including london to see my dad and sister, hopefully new york and toronto to visit lenine (but this is dependent on money and time), poland again sometime soon, maybe prague for a weekend, and with any luck i'll make it down to budapest and if my dreams come true even to russia again (i have a strong wish to attend the second ever gay pride march in moscow - the first was last year and got a bit bloody so we'll have to see about the safety stakes...)
- am considering an extended stay to maybe study a masters, but not sure about this yet... it's all being built around my desire to be fluent in more than one language - the best way to do this is to stay in germany for a bit longer...

well, so that's a little brief update, but many fabulous stories and anecdotes and photos and philosophical musings are coming this way soon. don't give up on reading my blog - just maybe log in less frequently to avoid disappointment and boredom!

kd

it has only snowed once...

2006-12-31T11:10:00.000+11:00

the all too common refrain in berlin at the moment is that it's the "warmest winter on record for a hundred years". it has only snowed once so far this winter, and that was the day before yesterday. it was only for a few hours, but it was still very exciting.

you can see the snow out the window!

alexis and john, treptower park

winter gear for kids

as a damn fine cure for my homesickness, alexis, my sister, flew over from england for christmas, and my friend john came up from france on christmas night. it's been so good to spend time with lex, given that i hadn't seen her for more than a year. and it's been 4 months since i saw john so that has been exciting too.

lex and i spent a lot of time at the christmas markets (Weihnachtsmärkte) which were dotted all over the city until a few days ago. we drank many a gluhwein, ate a few good bratwursts and wandered around. berlin basically went into complete shutdown mode for three days - for the Germans, the big day is christmas eve, and then the following two days are general festive days. so everything shuts down - everything. not even the corner stores were open. the city was deserted, so we have all these photos of us wandering around major tourist spots but with no other people. but while we were at the christmas markets, we spontaneously decided to go on the ferris wheel which was kinda funny. the operator did that thing where they just spin your little seats around as fast as they can before the wheel starts moving, so you're spinning in multiple directions at once. eek. we had to take our gloves off and grip the poles to make it stop. but once we were up there we had a pretty nice view of the city at night.

when john got here, we decided to do a DIY walking tour of the old wall which was pretty interesting. in some places, new buildings have been built around sections of the wall that are still standing.

we also went to see Mozart's The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) at the Staatsoper... well we couldn't see much because we had 8 euro seats - lex and i were walking past the Staatsoper a few days beforehand and saw that it was on. they only had the worst seats left, but they were damn cheap so we bought tickets for ourselves and john.

after that we went to find some food, and ended up getting roarding drunk in a bar in Prenzlauerberg. john and i, neither of whom have seen that puppet film Team America World Police, had been watching some short clips from it on www.youtube.com that day. our favourite clip was the one where the actor is telling osama in a thick southern accent that he had put a "jee-had" on the enemies, and that if osama didn't believe him, he'd put a "jee-had" on osama too... we thought it was hysterical and so we started putting jeehads on everything. it was funny at the time... beer logic. well actually i think we were drinking whiskey, baileys, and for me hot chocolate with baileys IN it. mmm. i had a bit of a slip-up on the tram tracks on the way home, so the tram tracks got a jeehad too.

but speaking of jeehads, it's been interesting in amongst all this to monitor the media coverage of Saddam's execution. (whistle noise) gees, i mean, the day before, people were setting up all sorts of film crews and movie cameras to capture the moment from every possible angle. it would be good to know when george is gonna get the chop. and how's costello, or whoever it was, going on about how the death penalty was "the right of all iraqis". possibly a scary indication of a push to bring it back in australia? i'm not sure.

but back to berlin. after discovering a few weeks ago that my friend gigi has also recently moved to berlin, and is also learning german, we have been hanging out a bit. so me and john and gigi have been exploring some of the party scene here... the problem we have found is that in order to find the kinds of people we want to hang out with, we have to deal with really horrible thrashy punk music. this is a damn shame... what ever happened to booty shaking? we've been to a few queer lefty parties, and it's all head banging and mosh-pit action. in fact, when john and gigi and i went to one of these queer squat parties a few nights ago, some people staged a dancefloor protest. i think as a joke (sadly) the dj decided to put on a backstreet boys track, in amongst the thrashy 'we-make-bikini-kill-look-like-a-walk-in-the-park' rubbish. people flocked to the dancefloor, which had been flagging a fair bit, partly due to one person who was "dancing" a la frankenstein-meets-headless-chook, and without shame were singing along to "everybody! yeah!". but three people who had been doing similar frankenstein dancing though with less vigour, actually sat down in the middle of the dancefloor chanting "nein! nein!" while everyone got their trashy pop rocks off around them. look, as far as i'm concerned, it's whatever floats your boat. but thrash punk hardcore rock just doesn't get my toe tappin. and therefore, as john, gigi and i have concluded, we can't woo anyone with our smooth dance moves. it's a bit of a shame. but the search continues. perhaps - we hope! - new years eve will turn something a bit more exciting up.

but there has been some absolute gold in terms of parties. a couple of weeks ago, i went to a ladyfest (http://www.ladyfest.net/) christmas party which was excellent. lots of really excellent womens and queer trans performances, great women djs, and a special guest performance by rae spoon, a tranny folk singer from canada. i recommend rae to anyone - it's like the best elements of bluegrass and gospel music, but without any of the fundo-christian stuff and it's all been turned around with the lyrics. it's the best - i bought a cd even. it's called big white hearse - you can look it up online. i'm hoping that some of my friends who are visiting canada will get to see her/him. the following night my friend gigi and i and another friend alecia who was visiting berlin got wind through another friend of mine conny (a lovely new berlin friend i made through couchsurfing.com) that rae was performing again in a small gallery in kreuzberg, so we went along. here's a photo:

there was even a bit of yodelling. i think i could now be accurately described as a groupie.

but i've also been doing some other cultural things. lex, john and i went to see an exhibition at the technical museum on the guy who designed about 90% of the berlin u-bahn stations in berlin. but also in the same museum is an ongoing exhibition about the guy who designed the world's first computer, and they actually have the computer there in the museum. sooooo coool. it's a computer geek's dream. they also had a whole section of the museum dedicated to general technological history in the DDR - there was a pretty cool set up of a 1960s east german TV studio. john decided to have a bit more of a close engagement with the historical material...

but one of the most interesting things about the museum is that it's basically been set up in an old train station, and contains an excellent overview of german train history - i know kate f will be especially appreciative of this, but kate sadly there were no old men in long white knee socks with sandals. nope, not a single one to be seen. it was sorta disappointing. but there were actual real trains - at least one for each decade. they had been rolled in on the original tracks of the shed where the trains go to sleep, which had subsequently become the museum. probably the most interesting part was the 1930s and 1940s. they had one of the nazi built train carriages - the ones that government officials travelled in. but right next to that they had one of the cattle cars that jews were transported to death camps in - they had the door open, and some stairs, so you could climb up into the wagon and look/be inside. there were no lights inside the carriage - only the light from the door. it was a really interesting way of allowing people to understand more about the experience of hitler's victims.

i'm also trying to spend more time learning about berlin's history. i'm reading that anonymous journal that was re-published earlier this year, called "A Woman in Berlin". it's basically the journal of a woman who had been a journalist before the war, penned during April 1945 - the month when the Soviet Army rolled into Berlin and took over. it starts about a week or two before the Soviets arrive, and is a day by day account of her experiences. it's really fascinating to get this first hand account of how ordinary people experienced the end of nazi power in the capital, including the end of food rationing, the looting, the sexual abuse and constant rape that berlin's women were exposed to when the Soviet soldiers arrived, the overhead bombing not only by the German and Soviet armies but the Americans as well. as john and gigi and i were discussing, it's hard to imagine what war in a western city would be like these days. it's also interesting to think about how perhaps even the cellar in my apartment building witnessed weeks and months of communal bomb-shelter living. basically the cellar of every single apartment building became the bomb shelter for all the people living in that building.

apart from all that, i'm still trying to find a job - i figure that because it's been christmas that lots of places won't respond to my CV until after new year... this is what i hope. almost everyone i speak to laments the state of the employment market here in berlin! something should turn up though...

also i'm getting excited about going on some weekend trips - the polish border is only an hour away on the train, so i'm thinking of going to poland for a day or something. also, i found return flights from berlin to belfast for 60 euros, so i'm visiting my cousins in ireland at the end of january.

hmm, anyway, as usual it's late. john's asleep and i have to go to bed too. hopefully we can find something fun to do tomorrow night - if i had more friends here, i'd have a party at my place, because at least then we could control the music...

happy festive season to all, and hope you do something fun to bring in the new year too.
til next time,
kd.

my new room

2006-12-16T08:38:00.000+11:00

here are some photos of me tonight in my new room. i'm making a new pair of trousers because my red ones are losing their seat... there are only so many times one can patch...

and here are some more photos of my room...

berlin bumper edition!

2006-12-08T05:54:00.000+11:00

(this post has subject headings so scroll down to the bits you want to read, and ignore the other bits if you are not interested)

1. a general intro
2. st petersburg - the giant doll's house
3. dinner with dykes in st petersburg
4. estonia... not much to say really...
5. poland: reactionary catholicism
6. krakow is where the g-funk is at
7. auschwitz...
8. sunrise over slovakia
9. general reflections #1: when is a keffiye NOT a sign of solidarity with the palestinian struggle?

plus more!!!....

10. marriage encounter hits the streets of budapest (specially for the davos)
11. the amazing, death defying autobahn! or, how i made it into and out of dresden alive
12. general reflections #2: anti-semitism and the german left
13. Standard Tanz stole my heart away... or is it just a queer way to tango?
14. just me, a room, and a computer (oh and some lovely new housemates too)

1. Intro

strangely, as i began to type just then, my head was filled with the sound of robert plant belting out "it's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lone-ly time!" strange how these songs (no wait, *tracks*) pop into your head now and again and force you to reveal intimate knowledge of led zeppelin that you really would rather have kept to yourself.

hmm, anyway, here i am in berlin. i guess you could call it my new home for a little while. i know it's been a while since i wrote anything to this blog - for those of you who have been checking the thing more frequently, it's flattering, thankyou, but really you should know better eh?

and i guess by way of explanation of the led zeppilin lyrics, i have to make a public admission at this point - it seems the only principled thing to do. i made a rather large claim to several people before i left that "i wasn't the 'type' of person to get homesick." HA! i'm eating my words with so much cream on top right now that i think i will have to promise whoever those people were a beer when i do eventually make it back. i think i even held up my hands and made the bunny-ears gesture when i said 'type'... sheesh. well, i think i've just been through my first major bout of homesickness (which, it must be said coincided with some extreme PMT and the flu, and a harrowing few days wondering if my computer would survive both the australian AND the german postal systems... yep if i had taken a photo of myself it would have been a pretty sorry sight - lucky for all of you i didn't).

however, i am now beyond the dolldrums, for the moment at least, and am enjoying the liberation of unlimited internet access, so i've been getting into a bit of email, skype and chat action, which has been a good way to get in touch with a few people and feel a bit more connected to the life i have down there in melbourne.

but what am i doing? well, the main reason i'm in berlin is to attend german classes, which i have every weekday. other than that, i'm just having some time.

2. st petersburg - the giant doll's house

moscow train station, st petersburg

this was my first image of st petersburg, and the last image of my trans-siberian journey. i really liked going on that train trip - somehow travelling so far on a train just opens you up and you really get to feel the distances you are covering.

i think something that struck me about st petersburg was that it was like a big doll's house. and i'm sure that many of it's poorer inhabitants (like the rest of russia) feel just like Ibsen's Nora did. the city is only 300 years old really, which distinguishes it markedly from moscow - i think i have mentioned before that when you spend time in moscow, you really get a sense of it being this powerful medieval metropolis. st petersburg, by contrast, is like the urban version of eye-candy. take a look at this:

or this:

there is no question that it is stunningly gorgeous, but also sickeningly gorgeous in a way too, and i was surprised (pleasantly) at the number of other tourists i overheard making comments like "wow, you can understand why they wanted a revolution". when you look at a tourist map with headings over the major sights, it is as though every second building is a palace of someone or other. the winter palace is but one among many. and there are still many visible indications of the kind of wealth the 19th century russian bourgeoisie was steeped in:

38 "millionaya" street

this street is right next to the winter palace, and it's former demographic is clearly indicated by the street name. but despite all of these indications of former glory, there is also quite a bit of street graffiti - i think more than moscow. and i suspect much of the stencil art that i found was partly a result of the G8 protests that happened in st petersburg in july, because much of it was in english. here are some russian-language examples:

or my personal favourite:

this magnificent artwork appeared on the ground in front of a rather large bust of Frederic Engels - i mean, who would have thought that even a statue of the guy could throw new light on the 'Origins of the Family...'? Check this out:

it was a veritable playground.

and all this kiddie action was going on in the gardens in front of the smolny institute - yep, the HQ of the revolution. i had an appointment to go see the institute's internal museum (you have to make a one-on-one appointment with the staff because it's not really open to the public as such), but on the day i couldn't make it because i was visiting the peter & paul fortress instead. i sort of regret this, but i hope to go back there someday, preferrably with a russian speaker, so that i can see what must be an interesting colleciton. but for all of you fans of the russian revolution, here's a photo of lenin in front of the doors of smolny:

the smolny institute

anyone else who has read 'ten days that shook the world' or various other inspirational writings on the revolution, will understand how much of a strange rush it was to walk up the drive way and through the gates and past this statue into the doors of smolny. it was weird, exciting, and melancholy all at the same time. and it was the same at finland station.

hmmm.

but while we're on the topic of museums, i did go to one which was such a shocking throwback to an era that most museum people would rather forget. i think this picture speaks for itself:

this is the russian ethnography museum, but the ethnography - if that's what you can call waxy figures in stereotypical settings in glass cabinets - was not limited to russia. i think it is in fact the oldest museum in st petersburg, and is at the university. but it was so bad that i felt it was worth writing home about.

but again, while we're on the topic of museums, there are just so many in russia, and so many in st petersburg, that it is impossible to see them all. i mean, it took me two days just to whip, and i really mean whip, around the hermitage. after a while you almost become desensitised to the amazing artworks you are seeing. and so it is a great pity that i missed out on the russian museum, which is the biggest collection of russian art in the country, which would mean the world.

but i did take heaps of photos in the hermitage. most of them are kinda crap, very blurry etc, because you're not allowed to use a flash (i was shocked that you were allowed to take photos at all). but i took this photo especially for silvana - i think it's one of the earliest printing presses in st petersburg...

and here is another picture i took, of a piece of ancient greek pottery that i just found fascinating. i mean, i think anyone who has taken any sort of interest in the history of sexuality will be familiar with the prevalence in ancient greek art of sexual images between older and younger men/boys, but this image is of a woman using two dildos which, while not altogether uncommon, is an image that doesn't get much of a look in when it comes to ancient greek sexuality - "what? women?" i almost walked right by it, but i'm glad i chose to take a closer look.

but now, moving on from queer old culture to queer high culture, one of the definite highlights of my time in st petersburg was seeing the Marriage of Figaro (Mozart) at the Mariinsky Theatre for $10 (i was charged more as a foreigner, the russian woman sitting next to me paid $3, but my income was probably 10 times hers).

so why it was queer...? well, i don't know if you can tell from these photos below, but all the members of the 'peasant choir' section of the cast were cross-dressed. it struck me, because on the whole russian society really isn't yet jiggy with the homo thing, nor the cross dressing thing, nor anything that really transgresses quite strict and conservative ideas about gender and sexual identity.

it left me wondering as i walked away from the theatre afterwards what was behind their decision to do this. maybe they were just getting into the spirit of Mozart's times, when 'that sort of thing' happened all the time and was more or less par for the course, especially at the popular opera playhouses (i imagine not so much at the royal ones). alternatively, there may have been some modern gender-bending agenda going on in the st petersburg opera company which would be way cool, but highly unlikely. i doubt i will find the answer, but it was very exciting nonetheless.

but aside from that side-point, the performance was riveting, and amazing, and i loved it. i just rocked up five minutes before the show was scheduled to start, and bought a cheap ticket on the spot. the thing i noticed about the russian opera, is that all sorts of people went, and people weren't really dressed up to the nines, although a few were. but there were just heaps of "ordinary" people there - it was a saturday matinee, and i guess the super cheap prices make it more accessible to people. i mean, you would think this would correspond to a lack of quality, but it doesn't at all. the performance was magnificent.

i also found it interesting that they held up the russian flag at the end of the peformance, even though this opera is set in italy. i guess this is just a standard manifestation of nationalism... mmm, but anyway, it was pretty amazing to be in the mariinsky theatre.

also in st petersburg i met up with some people from this online thing called hospitalityclub.org which is an accommodation exchange community - it's really cool and most of the people i have stayed with have been from there. but i met up with some people from that and we went to see some small band gigs which was fantastic. one of the gigs was in this house at the end of the city - virtually in the gulf of finland we were so close to the freezing water. all it was was a room with a few plug in amps and some chairs (a la the orange and mustard coloured ones we used to sit on in primary school) with a vary mysteriously placed stage prop background which was a painted picture of palm trees, again like the ones my grade two teacher Mrs Spaull used to paint in primary school... go figure. and then just a bunch of people watching - like 20 people watching. no drinks, no bar, no music, no inbetween noise. bare bones gig. it was fantastic. and the music was pretty nice too. it was sort of russian folk meets atmospheric hippy meets experimental... nice.

and to end this section on st petersburg, here are a few selected pics:

this is me in lenin's office. LENIN'S OFFICE! this is in the Museum of Russian Political History, which is in the former home of the Prima Ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya who was a sort-of secret lover of Czar Nicholas II. She fled from Russia when it became apparent that the bourgeoisie were in for it at some point in the near future, and it was Bolshevik HQ in the lead up to the revolution, and the office is intact.

this is one of two of my favourite cafes/restaurants in st petersburg. it basically has not changed since the soviet era. it's just tables, chairs, a coat rack, and more pelmeni than you could poke a stick at - pelmeni are these delicious russian meat dumplings (sort of half way between a steamed dim sim and a raviolo) that you eat with sour cream. and that's pretty much all they served, and it was dirt cheap.

my other favourite cafe - they served delicious, massive, and dirt cheap pies - they cook these big enormous rectangle pies and cut you off a generous piece. it's not far from the mariinsky theatre, so i think a lot of people go there after seeing a show. it was a great place - they played jazz and had lots of old fin de siecle photos of st petersburg.

some funny buggers made me laugh a lot when i saw these two bus-stop posters along the nevsky prospekt:

not only are there still lots of official statues of these two still standing all over the place, not to mention relief sculptures on the fronts of buildings, memorials, streets named after them etc etc, but people use their faces as a graffiti medium! ...and remember timotei?

women construction workers. i had to take a few photos of building sights i saw. i mean, i have seen women working on construction sights before, and i have known many a woman-tradey. but this was different because on many of them there was almost a 50/50 mixture of women and men construction workers. i have never ever seen that before. they were doing the same construction work as men, and in some cases they were doing specialist rendering work on artistic facades etc also. you could tell they were women because they almost all wear head scarves when they are at work. i got a sort of kick out of it in a way, because it really was a confirmation that any ideas that women shouldn't or can't or have no interest to work in construction are simply sexist nonsense. on the other hand, it gave me pause to think about the particular economic conditions in russia that necessitate women doing this work - any work is better than no work, and i'm also fairly certain that it is not as a statement of anti-sexism that company owners hire women into these positions but perhaps has something to do with cheaper wages. and also, it is interesting and revealing of a broader structure of sexism the way that such a lack of material distinction between women and men and the work they can do sits alongside all these other conservative ideas about gender identity. i mean, for example, the number of women in russia i saw wearing knee high leather boots with - no joke - 6 INCH heels was seriously shocking, and the advertising and billboards are just saturated with images like Britney and so forth. i mean this is really exactly the same as the US and australia and what have you - i'm not trying to suggest that advertising is unique to russia! - but i guess as a proportion of the population the number of women doing their darndest to emulate these advertising images was really overwhelming, as a comparison to where i'm from. i mean, this is a country where on average the earnings are so meagre - one male anaesthesiologist (i don't know how to spell that) i shared a train carriage with told me he earned $200 US per month... one of the women working at the hostel i stayed at in moscow worked 4 days back to back round the clock with no sleep, because she needed the money. in this context, the roaring, saturating trade of this season's latest designer leather high-heal boots is just so contradictory. ah, but what would capitalism be if not a beast of many seemingly confounding contradictions?

hmmm, well anyway i obviously have hundreds more photos, but i'd better move onto the next section or this post will never end.

3. dinner with dykes in st petersburg

on one of the nights i was out having a few drinks with some people from my hostel (some lovely germans from dresden who i later went and stayed with) i met three russian queer women. two were a couple, and they kindly invited me over to dinner. i think they were as excited to meet me as i was them. anyway, as you can perhaps see from this photo, "dinner" consisted of half a loaf of bread, some beef devon, some crisps, and a couple of beers.

i chose to put this photo up because you can't really see any of their faces properly, and i don't really want to out them on a publicly accessible blog so easily, and nor would i write their names here. but anyway, it was really nice of them to invite me over.

interestingly, despite the paultry size of the queer scene in st petersburg (there is one lesbian bar, and not really any non-pub social scene to speak of at all), they showed me some of the art projects they and their friends have been doing. they are very young (19 and 21) and only have a very very small bohemian/alternative set of friends, but the artwork they have been doing is hip and happening and really sophisticated. some of the photography work reminded me a bit of some of the projects in slit magazine, and there was also a short film still in the editing process about a teenage woman break dancer and a teenage boy ballet dancer, who got to know one another through the making of the film, aimed at breaking down stereotypes about gender and sexuality. it was a really damned fine film, and all the more meaningful and powerful because of the societal context.

one of them was saying (the one who made the film) that she had been kicked out of art school because she wanted to submit an art project on lesbian sexuality. this is a public university we're talking about. she said she was called in to 'discuss' the matter, and was basically given a dressing down, and told she couldn't submit it and to do another project. she decided to take her project and leave the university. way to go! but full on.

anyway, they were really cool, courageous dudes, and i hope they keep kicking the homophobes to the curb. both of them mentioned a deep desire to leave russia... but when they are paying the equivalent of about $400 australian dollars per month on a single room in a building where the door is virtually hanging off its hinges and one of the windows is cracked and they have to share a toilet, kitchen and bathroom with other people in the building (which for a lesbian couple in a non-friendly environment can be a pretty harrowing, gaping hole in the privacy department), and on the kind of incomes i can guess they would be on, especially since one of them has now been kicked out of school and therefore any student stipend she may have been on, ...they reckon it's pretty out of the question for a while yet.

4. estonia... not much to say really...

that sounds awful, but i was only there for 24 hours pretty much, stopping by on my way to poland. i caught the bus there from st petersburg, which normally would be about a 6 hour drive, but it took 8 hours due to the border crossing. getting out of russia was easier than i thought, but i was still clutching my precious train tickets and hostel booking receipts (to prove and justify my whereabouts for every day that i was there) tightly in my little hand, just in case anything got nasty. i may have been overly paranoid, but always better to be safe than sorry. in the end it was completely uneventful, but just took a long time.

the town of Tallinn is really pretty, but like so many other places in europe where there is an old town still in tact, it has pretty much become the domain of tourists and craft market vendors. lots of hand-made doilies, hand-made sweets, hand-made you name it they've got it, young budding actors and actresses making some humiliating cash on the side by dressing up in medieval outfits and selling sweet roasted nuts on roaming stalls, strange performance/displays in the town square by military troops, and a whopping MASSIVE mcdonalds right inside the gates to the old town, which is advertised far and wide around the city (there are other outlets elsewhere in the city, but that one stood out because it was inside the old town). it's pretty disillusioning. i can't imagine how disillusioning it must be for many estonians and russians who have lived through estonia's rocky history.

outside the centre of town though, where just next to the old town there is a series of big (and i have to say) ritzy shopping centres, it's a different picture - lots of people living ho hum in the same old apartment buildings. i stayed with a really nice married couple - she's russian, he's estonian, and their six month old baby. they are on their way to move to australia, because they find estonia sort of depressing, and think that life would be harder in russia with a kid. perhaps my admittedly bleak view of my short time in estonia was shaped somewhat by their own incredibly bleak and disillusioned perspective. and the weather was terrible too.

and maybe i was just coming down off my russian high a bit also. when i say high, i sort of mean that kind of high you get when things are just a little bit stressful or a little bit demanding of your energy, or a little bit challenging, so you get into this headspace of higher-than-average tension and it feels a bit like a come-down when you finally don't have that stress anymore... you feel a bit exhausted... i don't know, it's hard to explain but that's how i felt after leaving russia, so i think poor old estonia got the raw end of my attention span.

interestingly, the woman i stayed with was telling me about her memories of the Communist period. she was telling me about one time when she had asked her mother when was the happiest time of her life. she was subconsciously expecting her mother to say, without hesitation, the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, because that's the standard grand-narrative. but her mother's experience didn't reflect this at all. during the regime, she had been a skilled engineer, a university graduate, working on important projects and earning a fairly okay wage for Soviet standards. after the fall, she, like so many others, lost her government job and had to find work cleaning people's houses, cleaning hospitals, cleaning schools - basically worked as a janitor of sorts. but in answer to her daughter's question she said that the time in her life she remembers most fondly was the period when she was pregnant with and after the birth of her daughter, primarily because the government would offer income subsidies to those who were having children, and she didn't have to work for 3 or 4 years, but still earned the same amount as if she had been working in a wage-labour job.

i thought this was a pretty interesting story, and a nice little anecdote, that tells us something different about the ordinary russians who lived through the Soviet period, and the things they remember as being important to them. i don't think valuing stories like this at all means viewing the Soviet Union with any kind of rose-coloured glasses - in fact the opposite... you have to look at the realities of ordinary people's lives, rather than falling into the trap of seeing the cold war as a dichotomous power struggle. in fact, workers really suffered under state capitalism, just as they suffer under capitalism! but there were some strange and positive hangovers - like maternity leave - from the original revolution that i guess the stalinist party-aristocracy couldn't justify doing away with. not until later anyway. the period we were remembering was about the 1960s i guess, judging by the age of my host.

5. poland: reactionary catholicism (but lots of cool stuff too)

poland is fascinating. if i were to sum it up - which i wouldn't because i think it's a bit silly, but bear with me - i would probably say that the politics of the 1980s are still living the high life in poland. that and the fact that, as i said to my mother on the phone, Vatican Two really never made it to poland. i don't think i have ever in my life seen so many pictures, monuments, memorials, trinkets, crafts, decorations, souvenirs, or anything else you care to mention, all in honour of our now deceased John Paul II. god, i can imagine ole JP turning in the grave at the idea that the "radical ideas" of Vatican Two (1960-something), such as nuns no longer being required to wear full habits, and all sorts of other progressive changes to the catholic church's theology and practice, would ever be permitted to permeate polish society. as it happens he did a pretty good job of installing a man in the likeness of his own image (wait, there's some strange dual meaning there... i didn't mean it i swear) - ie, someone who would ensure that the conservatism and reactionary politics of his era would continue - just look contextually at the latest comments from Benedikt on the muslim religion being one of violence, or less shocking but equally conservative remarks about the main reasons the anglicans can't just yet rejoin the catholic church being those of women priests and the anglican church's (might i say paltry) acceptance of homosexuality... yep just another day at the vatican.

the old town of warsawa

everywhere i looked, especially in krakow, there were full length habits - in fact it's the only place i've seen, since i was a very young child hanging out with friends of my parents, where there have been nuns and priests under the age of say 40. i think this point is especially interesting in the context of what is becoming quite an acute issue for the catholic church - that of its aging clergy (both male and female). where once upon a time many of the parish priests in australia were coming out of ireland and scotland, i think very soon they will really need to be imported from poland, or perhaps some from some of the central and south american countries where the catholic church is still quite big.

but this brings me to another point - the particular quality of polish catholocism, or more correctly the polish catholic establishment. it could really not be more starkly different to the catholic establishment of, for example, central and south america, or other places like east timor. in these places, the catholic church has been, and is in some cases still, something of a progressive force - supporting progressive national struggles, or anti-capitalist campaigns. for example, i have heard (perhaps others can correct me if i'm wrong) that a sizable proportion of the EZLN, the Zapatista Liberation Army in Mexico, are practicing catholics (not that mexico is central or southern - i know that it's northern, but i guess i'm doing what most other people do and viewing it as part of America's political and economic south).

in contrast, the polish establishment is like a big bastion of the old venerable institution, distant from the people, distinct separation between clergy and congregation, politically stiflingly conservative.

anyway, enough of that, but what i did find interesting in an ironic way was just the reactionary narrative of the "defeat of communism" which is so opportunistically used to bolster conservative ideas. For example, no one ever says, "in poland, we supported and defended a huge democratic upsurge of polish workers and ordinary people." no, no, no! it's "we defeated 'communism'!" whatever that's supposed to mean... and the meaning is deliberately avoided too. in so many of the historic plaques i saw it was john paul this and john paul that - nothing mentioned about the fact that the Solidarnosc uprising really was a democratic movement of thousands of workers from the ground up, aimed at toppling what had been a debilitating and suffocating (not to mention at times deadly) Stalinist state capitalist machine.

and the irony of some things was just too great to ignore! take this for example - right next to a historical display on the street commemorating the Hungarian workers uprising of 1956, which showed pictures of a mammoth Stalin's head having been pulled off some statue or other, there was a mammoth statue of John Paul. i am in NO WAY trying to say that JP and Stalin were the same at all - obviously one killed thousands of people, while the other simply led one of the biggest conservative organisations the world has ever seen (though some have argued that his position on contraceptives may have in part contributed indirectly to many AIDS related deaths in africa for example, but nevertheless it absolutely cannot be said that he ever set out to get rid of people). one was a ruthless politician AND killing machine, and the other simply a ruthless politician.

the two cannot possibly be compared. but it just simply begs the question - if so much of the narrative now is about how much of a cult of personality stalin had... i find it hard not to see the cult of JP II as being of a similar mould.

and of course the other thing is that they (being the United States government mostly, being the ones in power these days) emphasise the grey, colourless lives that people had to live under the eastern communist regimes. but if you want grey colourless lives, check out downtown warsawa in the capitalist age:

you know, just because a building is made from silver glass rather than dull grey cement, it doesn't necessarily follow that the lives of ordinary people will be any more interesting or fulfilling!

the other thing is the old town - it's really weird right, because it's completely reconstructed. utterly. a bit like dresden. when you walk around the old town, you can see where they have used original blocks on the corners of buildings. but other than these, the entire thing has been reconstructed from photographs and artworks. incredible, because if you knew nothing about europe and world war two, you'd never know. it's one of those weird feelings that this kind of knowledge gives you in a place.

but by far the best thing about warsawa was the giant massive flea market. i met a lovely woman from brazil at my hostel who had met a lovely man from warsawa on a train. he was taking her to see the flea markets so i tagged along. this thing is massive - it was the first thing that caught my eye on the previous morning driving in to the city on the bus from tallinn. and instantly, when i went through the gates, i was transported back to the vietnamese markets of west melbourne, the vic market and paddy's market in sydney. only this was bigger. if i hadn't been trying to skimp on money i would have jumped at the chance to eat some cold rice paper rolls. as it happens i had just eaten an unsatisfactory yet filling breakfast of porridge.

i didn't know until that day, that there is a huge vietnamese population in warsawa. our host told us that the historical reason for this is that after Solidarnosc in the 1980s, many (i guess north?) Vietnamese people came to Poland on the assumption that they would find solidarity and solace there, sharing an experience of living under Communism. what they found, in fact, was a society that wasn't used to asian people, and so the usual 'migrant community in diaspora' thing has taken place, where many have been forced to adopt a career in outdoor market stalls to make ends meet, and the boundaries between the vietnamese and polish populations really hasn't been broken down much at all.

next to the flea market, which is located around the outsides of this decrepit, run-down stadium (used in the former regime... the markets began in the 80s i think he said), there is a vietnamese community centre. but unless you knew how to find it, you would never know it was there. there was a temple for praying, and various rooms that are used for community gatherings and events. it was such a starkly constrasted juxtaposition of culture - a pocket of buddhist vietnam in the centre of poland.

anyway, it was a really nice day, and definitely a highlight of my trip, even though we were only at the market for an hour and the community centre for about 20 minutes. our host was actually working on a series of art/community projects with a group of other artists. they made a film about the market, and have been doing a whole lot of creative work to try to break down divisions and barriers between the vietnames community and the rest of warsawa. it sounded really cool what they were doing. they organise meet and greet days jointly with some of the vietnamese groups and stuff, as well as the arty stuff they do. he was cool.

6. krakow is where the g-funk is at

now krakow is a cool, cool place. and when i say g-funk, it's not just a hideously daggy title for a section of my blog - krakow is full to the brim with jazz bars. everyone loves jazz, digs jazz, watches and listens to jazz. i went to several jazz bars while i was there.

so, i stayed with this glorious woman called Joanna who was the most generous host and we got on like a house on fire. and her partner was fantastic too, Koba.

me, koba and joanna at a jazz bar

the three of us got very drunk on very very many vodkas. interestingly, in poland flavoured vodka is the most popular, unlike russia where straight clear vodka is more prevalent than drinkable water. so i tried honey vodka, bison vodka (sort of herbed i guess), and lots of other flavours that i forgot for obvious reasons. i also tried this shot called a 'mad dog' or something, that is basically made of this stuff that is like 70% alcohol or something crazy, with tobasco sauce and something else. clearly the details have become vague... wo. talk about knock your socks off. i also tried this thing called 'bombe' - which is where you basically just plonk a shot glass full of vodka into a pint of beer, glass and all. i can't believe i survived to tell the tale. and for those who know me, i'm really not what you would call a massive drinker... fortunately i had been in training since beijing.

singer bar, kazimierz

this bar, singer, was one of the very first bars to open in this district of kazimierz - formerly the jewish quarter, later the krakow jewish ghetto, and these days the trendy student/young people quarter. it's called singer because, as you can just make out in the photo, all the tables are old singer sewing machines, and perhaps (though i have no information to confirm this and it's pure speculation) it's name may have been a nod of respect to the jewish victims of the holocaust. or maybe it was just a cool idea for a bar. whatever the case, it was one of the first bars to open up after Solidarnosc, and therefore is one of the oldest modern bars in all of Krakow. they played great jazz music and me and joanna had a fun time dancing away.

her house was just around the corner from here. everything is within walking distance in krakow. the first day i was there was this gloriously beautiful day, and 22 degrees, which, after 2 degrees in st petersburg only 4 days prior was like a miracle. it was sunny, and i was finally over my PMS, and i spoke to my mother and sister on the phone for the first time in weeks. this is the tree i was looking at while i spoke to them:

it was in the old yard of a gorgeous old church and as i spoke on the phone i stood in the sun and admired this tree.

other things i did in krakow included walking all around the old town, which unlike warsawa is not reconstructed, and remains in tact - also unlike warsawa, and i believe because of this historical difference, the krakow old town is actually the city centre - it's where most of the shopping is, the cafes, banks, bookshops, and various offices and churches and concert halls are. krakow residents actually live some of their life there. that said, the town square is still full of tourists (like me...), but there's not so much of a hollywood set atmosphere. there is one major historical quirk though, which is that krakow still has a town horn-blower. every hour, on the hour, a horn-blower opens the shutters of the tower of the cathedral (which is in the central square) and blows a little tune to each of the four corners: n, e, s, w. it was nice. and it was good to have some nice time in the sun before going to auschwitz.

7. auschwitz...

my visit to the auschwitz complex of concentration camps was not what i expected it to be. i expected it to be a really solemn affair, quiet and reflective, with time to digest and think. as it happened, there were so many people there, and the guided tours were so fast that it was difficult to take time to think at all. in some ways, because of the way that the tours are done and partly due to hollywood, it's hard not to feel a bit desensitised to the place, and to its horrific history.

i kept having the sense while i was there of knowing some of the history about it, but not really feeling the connection between this knowledge and the place i was in. for example, there was one spot in birkenau II where i was standing, and about 2 metres away there was a big blown up photo of the selection taking place - in a close up, you can see the shadow of the thumb of SS chief joseph mengele (i think it's him) giving the left or right signal - death or labour.

but even as i was standing in that spot, looking at the photo, it was hard to grasp what was actually happening. i then followed the path down towards the gas chambers where the condemned would have walked. that was poignant and struck home more than other things. but it was still hard with so many people shuffling about.

except there were definitely a couple of things that stuck in my mind about going there. i hope this doesn't distress anyone - skip to the next paragraph if you think you might get distressed... what was really shocking to me, and something i really hadn't expected was when we went into one of the prison blocks in birkenau I. birkenau II is the massive part of the camp where the gas chambers were, and where most of the cell blocks were those wooden ones we've all seen in the films. birkenau I, however was a former WWI army barracks, so the cell blocks were two story brick buildings. as we zipped in and out of them and got synopsised historical information, we came into one room up the top. i looked to my left and saw a big glass wall, like a giant museum display cabinet. behind the glass was an area of about 12 or 13 metres by about 5 or 6 metres, at waist height. spread across this area was what looked at first glance to be the wool of brown sheep spread out like it would be across a shearing table. i thought this to be somewhat unremarkable until just as i was about to turn away i saw the braid of a young person's hair in amongst the 'wool'. then i noticed the smell. it was in fact a sample of several tonnes of human hair that were found in various camp warehouses. but more horrific was the fact that this hair had not been removed until after death - meaning that it was someone's job to go through the gassed corpses and cut hair off, remove gold teeth etc. a lot of the hair was covered by a white, grey film of something - presumably the remains of zyklon b. across the other side of the room, there was another display cabinet with some rolls of what looked like tightly woven hessian backing for an old upholstered sofa. this is precisely what it was, but it was not made from hessian. it was the product of human hair. this means that there are still people out there in germany today, who may have an old sofa with this stuff on the back. perhaps they know, perhaps they don't, perhaps they fear it and don't want to investigate lest their fears be confirmed. i would find such a reaction understandable - there is an extent to which people in europe have to accept the basic facts of history, otherwise it would be impossible to live here. but it is the memory of this that will stay with me. i really am still reeling from when the moment of realisation hit my senses.

but this is just one part of understanding the phenomenon of the nazis biological racism and mass extermination policy. going to auschwitz was good for understanding the physical dimension of horror. it was also good for understanding the systematic methods of the nazis and their SS force. the camp, which stretches as far as the eye can see in some directions, was designed with such chilling functionality. but in terms of understanding the broader context of why the holocaust happened, you really would need time to go through the historical exhibitions in different sections of the camp, and even then would only be scratching the surface of some of the reasons.

in this respect, i found that when i went to the dachau camp outside munich 3 years ago with my sister alexis, i walked away feeling much more like i had engaged with the place, partly due to the excellent and engaging historical exhibition there. still i'm glad i went to auschwitz, but i think it would be worth going again, earlier in the morning, with a bit more time to read information and look at the exhibitions.

here are some photos i took.

1. guard watch tower; 2. inside one of the wooden accommodation barracks (only a couple of these remain standing - the rest were burnt by the nazis in 1945; 3. part of gas chamber (in this underground chamber, the corpses were brought after gassing so valuables could be removed before cremation); 4. the train tracks (taken from main entry tower, gas chambers are at the far end, with camp sectors to left and right.

8. sunrise over slovakia

this is a short entry, but on the train i took from krakow to budapest i woke up just before crossing the border from slovakia to hungary and the sunrise was beautiful so i took a picture.

9. general reflections #1: when is a keffiye NOT a sign of solidarity with the palestinian struggle?

when it's a fashion item across several european countries...

people wear these things in all sorts of colours without even the slightest skerrick of political reasoning. i have been seeing them around ever since russia. as you can see in this photo, if you don't like the red and white or the black and white ones, you can just buy one that has been dyed purple instead. yes that's right ladies and gentlemen! no longer do you have to wade through years of annoying political debate about sovereignty, factional background and tactics of struggle to work out whether you will wear red, black or possibly green, on a white background. now, ladies and gentlemen, you can choose! diversity! choice! forget the politics, and just concentrate on looking good! and not that people shouldn't wear them to auschwitz (in fact when done with progressive political consciousness this would probably be a very powerful gesture of solidarity among the oppressed of the past and present), but it was just weird to be at that place and watch people walking around with bright purple or dyed yellow arafatski, seemingly oblivious to anything but whether it matched their shoes.

it's a phenomenon that i've seen through russia, poland, hungary, and now here in germany. right here in berlin, despite the massive turkish muslim and moderately sized lebanese population here. i saw one guy selling them at a street stall in neukoelln, and i asked him whether most people buy them from him for fashion or politics, and he said decisively that it was purely fashion. anyway, i don't want to come across as being over-the-top alarmed, but it's a fairly different thing to melbourne. but possibly this is just because the melbourne fashion market hasn't cottoned on to this european trend yet... let's hope not.

10. marriage encounter hits the streets of budapest

i discovered this when marriage encounter came up casually in conversation, as it does. one of my hosts in budapest, steven from ohio, jumped up and said suddenly - "i've seen that on a car!!!!" we then went on a hunt through several streets where he thought the car in question might be. eventually, bingo.

11. the amazing, death defying autobahn! or, how i made it into and out of dresden alive

on my way to dresden from vienna, me and my driver cracked about 170km. on my way from dresden to berlin, probably about the same. one one of those journeys it was also raining for some of the time. i can't believe i'm still alive. i can understand if you were brought up driving that fast that you would be very used to it. in fact, one of my drivers expressed his deep frustration that his car didn't have enough horse power so 170/180 kms was the fastest he could actually go. what was really scary was the fact that we were in the SLOW lane. yup.

dresden was really cool - here are my friends anne und sven who i met in st petersburg:

i stayed with a friend of theirs, rene, who was generous and lovely and showed me around the suburb where they all live, as well as the city. rene lives about 3 steps up a little road from the river elbe - ah! die elbe... sehr schoen!

one of the best things we did in dresden was to go visit a travelling exhibition from the US holocaust museum, called "deadly medicine" at the deutsches hygiene museum, on the biological experiments conducted by the nazis in the lead up to their mass extermination project. there was an excellent, excellent section on the history of the eugenics movement which i would recommend to anyone interested in that. here's the poster for the exhibition, and a link to an online version of the exhibition.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/

it was a fantastic exhibition, and dealt also with the history of experimentation through the late 1930s on people with disabilities - these experiments provided much of the biological knowledge that was then used later to justify the mass extermination of impure people.

12. general reflections #2: anti-semitism and the german left

since arriving in berlin almost four weeks ago, i have observed many things, seen many things and have started to explore some of the political side. one thing that has been something different for me is dealing with a large section of the far left who support the state of israel, and believe that supporting the palestinian struggle is a manifestation of anti-semitism. there have even been phenomena like sections of the far left waving american flags at demonstrations, and even a tiny minority actually supporting the us invasion into iraq because the middle east, by and large, is anti-semitic in their desire to destroy the state of israel and therefore any blow to these middle eastern countries is a blow against anti-semitism.

this last example, however, really is a tiny minority of a most extreme view. it doesn't represent the majority of what i'm describing. still, the fact that there is such a large section of the far left (not the moderate or reformist left, but the radical anti-fascist, autonomista left) who really believe that it is anti-semitic to criticise zionism is something new to me.

hmmm, stay tuned for more on this, because i do want to write something more substantial and informed about who thinks what here - i don't know if anyone else is interested, but i'll put some stuff up in future posts anyway and you can read it if you want.

13. Standard Tanz stole my heart away... or is it just a queer way to tango?

Standard Tanz (shtahnd-art tahnnz) is what die Deutschen call ballroom dancing. this is by far the most exciting thing i have started doing while i'm here. every sunday night, at a bar called SO 36 in kreuzberg, from 18:00, there is gay and lesbian ballroom dancing, complete with german showtunes music. it is the. best. thing. ever. here are some pics:

so at 18:00 there is a dance lesson on a different dance each week that goes for about an hour and a half, and after the lesson more and more people arrive and the dance floor is PACKED for the rest of the night, with people dancing jive, tango (both argentinian and european), mambo, samba, salsa, foxtrot, cha cha, and various forms of waltz. it's 6 euros entry for the night, and no extra cost for the lessons, plus there's usually some form of variety show in the middle with give aways etc. it is really the most incredible thing.

i've decided i'm going to go every week, and come the Lesbian and Gay Seniors Tea Dance in march 2008, i'm gonna find me some older dance partners and knock their socks off with my moves. (for anyone who doesn't know about this, it's held annually as part of midsumma, but often doesn't actually take place until the Victorian State Government's Senior's Week, which is usually a bit later in March. it's usually held at matinee time and is one roaring party. i went in 2005 and it was great.)

but seriously, it's heaps of fun, and it's one of my best meeting people strategies at the moment.

14. just me, a room, and a computer (oh and some lovely new housemates too)

that was the scene when i moved into my new house 6 days ago. i had a borrowed bed, not yet set up, but other than that there was seriously me in this deserted room with a chair and finally my computer. i felt like something out of the matrix, tap tap tapping away on my keyboard, needing nothing but my web connection to keep me going, only i wasn't wearing black leather and let's face it, i couldn't do martial arts to save my life, although i might manage an off balance semi-high kick if threatened.

it is great to finally be connected again, rather than having to constantly pay exhorbitant rates in internet cafes, using computers that don't do all the things you want them to and don't let you change them. still i've met some pretty nice folks in internet cafes. heaps of the internet cafes around town are owned and run by turkish or arabic people. there is one that i have been to a few times, even though it's totally out of my way to anywhere. it's in the heart of neukolln, which i guess is berlin's coburg - turkish and arabic shop signs everywhere, baklava and doner kebab pit stops on every corner, and great fruit, veg, nuts and bulk food stuffs stores everywhere. anyway, the first time i went in there, i was just typing away, doing my thing, when i noticed the guy next to me, a friend of the owner, was watching some footage. i looked over, and it was footage of palestinians being subjected to harrassment by israeli soldiers, and then some other footage of us military activity in iraq. i indicated my opinions, and then we proceeded to have a fairly basic conversation in german (it was basic because i don't really speak german...!). anyway, it was pretty nice to have a moment of solidarity.

also, i bought baklava from a place a few doors up from there, and when the guy heard that i spoke such crappy german he asked where i was from. i told him, then he said he had cousins in australia, and so did one of the other guys working there. they were pretty excited about telling me that. i was pretty excited about eating baklava, and told them so. it was nice.

anyway, i'm supposed to be waking up in two hours for german class so i'd better finish up. yesterday morning was one of the first frosts here in berlin. although, as everyone keep saying, it's one of the warmest winters in 100 years. i guess all you folks in australia, especially in Victoria, are having some "warmest weather in 100 years" of your own. the fires sound crazy. and the smoke drifting across the city... full on. but i have a bike now, so i'll maybe be riding over some more frost on the way to school.

so, my posts will be far more frequent from now on, thanks to broadband internet. if you have read all the way through, thanks - i'm stoked that you found it interesting enough. even if you didn't, i hope you got something out of this entry to take away with you.

til next time,
x kd

politics in vienna

2006-11-08T02:16:00.000+11:00

so, on my first day in vienna, i went to one protest in solidarity with striking teachers in mexico, and one public meeting about iran. there were about 100 people at the demo, and we marched to the Mexican Consulate. As you can see from the pictures, there was an autonomist flavour to the rally, but it was cross-partisan mostly. From what I have heard, autonomist politics have declined in popularity since their renaissance following the anti-capitalist demonstrations in 2000. here are some pics:

i don't know who organised the iran meeting, but the speaker (there was only one) was Bahman Nirumand, and Iranian academic from Germany. From what i could understand he was making good arguments about the political situation surrounding iran, and the US strategy in the middle east in general, but it was a fairly 'mainstream-left' public meeting - i know that it was not organised by the far left. And there was a big fight in the discussion time because the Zionist lobby was there en masse. i was there with two comrades from Linkswende, the IST group here in Austria. from what they were saying, it has been good to see the Zionists suffer a few defeats (they definitely lost at this meeting), because for a while there they were winning people over. the comrades say that the Lebanon-Hizbollah debacle has really boosted this shift. yay.

other first impressions of vienna:
it is so strange how different it is to be in a country that was never communist, having just been to china, russia, estonia, poland and hungary. it feels familiar, it is expensive, and coming from my experience of growing up in the west, not half as interesting. the entire city of vienna is a bit of a mozart museum, very much on the cheesy side. but there are definitely some hip and happening things here. i think i'd need to stay a bit longer to become really interested though. perhaps i will pass back through later on in my travels...

more on budapest

here are some links to footage of the Fidesz rally i took with my little snappy-snap camera (meaning the footage isn't top quality, but it's there if anyone is interested in watching middle-class conservatives stroll down the street with candles...)... i'm putting this here mainly so i can delete these files off my memory card!!

til next time,
kd.

(and i promise i will write and upload photos about the other topics (st petersburg, poland etc) when i can access the photos i took there)

goodbye budapest

2006-11-04T09:07:00.000+11:00

well, i'm about to leave budapest in about an hour. this city has been so beautiful - in some ways it reminds me of hobart, especially when looking across the river from the pest side to see buda on the other. there is something similar in the landscape - red roofs over undulating hills, interspersed with green, gold, orange and red trees.

first, to report on yesterday's events.

the protests ended up being quite subdued - i think the position adopted by most of the protesters, even the far far right, was that it would be inappropriate to go rioting on a day of national mourning. from a right-wing nationalist and anti-socialist/communist perspective, it would have been the height of disrespect to do so. in the end, there were pockets of demonstrations around the city. here's a picture of the rally the extreme right had in "Freedom Square", in front of the now desecrated communist memorial obelisk. As you can see, there were only about 2 or 3 hundred people there, showing that they are a tiny minority.

these smaller demonstrations seemed to be all but ignored by most people - the only other people in freedom square were journalists and a handful of police, and not even many passers by or tourists were present. so they were small and insignificant.

however it was the 500,000 strong candle-lit march that was possibly more noticeable and noticed by the rest of the population. this was the Fidesz party's organised demonstration.

the march had two aspects - one was a requiem for the victims of the crushing of the 1956 uprising, and the other more prescient aspect was a protest against the police brutality that occurred on the 23rd october, two weeks ago.

(this photo is a little blurry but you can get a sense of the candle-lit atmosphere and the number of people - it was massive.

i went through the crowd doing a vox pops on why people were there - most cited the reason of opposing police violence ("this should not happen in a democracy") but despite the attempts of some to portray it as simply an anti-state repression manifestation, the overwhelming majority of people i spoke to, when questioned further, admitted that probably 90% of the march, if not more, were also Fidesz supporters and voters. and when i asked what the class-composition of the rally was, it was overwhelmingly admitted to be pretty much entirely middle class. this is not to say that many people there really were passionately opposed to police violence of all kinds, and i believe that many of them would have marched in a rally called by the left against police violence also. however it seemed clear that the anti-socialism had blurred with support for Fidesz and also with condemnation of the Socialist Party's police force. i asked a few people about the working class - where were they in all of the events of the past two months. they have more or less been absent - partly this is due to the absence of effective and well-established class organisation. since the fall of the Soviet period, it has according to some people i spoke to, not been long enough for truly strong and independent trade unions to become established well enough to participate in public politics. i'm going to investigate this stuff further though.

i don't have much time to write more now, but you will be able to read more about the politics of what has happened in budapest in my forthcoming piece in Solidarity Magazine (how's that for a seamless plug!!!!)...

-------------

while in budapest, i've been staying with a great group of people who are all foreign students at the university here doing masters in sociology and political science, Jen, Steven, Wyatt and Marko. 3 of them are from the US, and Marko from Croatia. they are all mad as cut snakes, but super lovely, and the main decorative feature in their loungeroom are the lebanese and palestinian flags hanging on the wall.

i feel like i'm at home for the first time in 6 weeks! they had a halloween party on my second night here complete with a jack-o-lantern steven made, which was full of their fellow students too - from Romania, Croatia, Belarus and many other places, so it was really cool to talk to all these people from countries that we don't get to learn about very often. They are all doing a one year masters degree at the university. I spoke to a really interesting woman who is going to write her thesis on something to do with the effects of the Romanian Communist regime on the Roma.

anyway, i really have to go right now, but budapest is super beautiful, and i also got to see some of the underground night life with a friend of the woman i stayed with in krakow (i'll write about krakow in a few days time - my memory card has been playing up and may not actually work until i get my own computer back in berlin, so everyone will have to wait for more photos.

in upcoming editions, expect to read about the following topics:

st petersburg - the giant doll's house
dinner with dykes in st petersburg
estonia... not much to say really...
poland: reactionary catholicism
krakow, so pretty
sunrise over slovakia
general reflections #1: when is a keffiye NOT a sign of solidarity with the palestinian struggle?

and more...

but now, off to Vienna.
x kd

protests in budapest tomorrow

2006-11-01T20:55:00.000+11:00

these police officers were today preparing for the protest action tomorrow - there are reportedly between 20 and 40 groups planning protests, to coincide (to put it mildly) with the last of the commemorative events of the 1956 uprising. they are in front of the television building.

this is them yesterday in front of the parliament building.

contrary to what some may believe, these protests are NOT left wing. what began back in september as a broad-based public response to the prime minister's admission that he was telling lies, has now become overshadowed by the efforts of what are essentially fascists or neo-nazis, who are given platforms by the conservative party Fidesz. From people i have been talking to, one of the main visual features of the protests has been the presence of red and white striped flags - these flags gained popularity in the 1920s and 1930s as a symbol of the Hungarian brand of Nazism, and this is definitely what most people associate them with today.

tomorrow is the commemoration of the crushing of the 1956 uprising - the day the soviet tanks rolled into budapest. there are several official ceremonies planned, but in addition, the leader of the conservative Fidesz party (strongly supported by several extreme right wing nationalist groups) has called a mass demonstration by candlelight in the afternoon (it's getting dark at around 4.30 now). but many of the protests are scheduled to begin earlier in the day. there are various gathering points, and i heard one woman in a bar tonight predict as many as hundreds of thousands of people protesting (across a varied political spectrum) tomorrow. we will see. it will also be interesting to see what the response of the police is, as there is a rapidly developing consensus that many of their responses to the earlier protests were beyond brutal, which is becoming a further topic of public outcry. the politics of what is going on are difficult to grasp from the outside, especially because i don't speak hungarian! but i'm slowly starting to make sense of the situation.

i've got to go right now but i'll write an update tomorrow - and hopefully i'll have some photos of the demonstrations... provided i'm not locked in a hungarian gaol for being a bystander... but seriously, i'm actually hoping to be getting a ride around all the major spots with some friends, one of whom is a journalist for one of the budapest newspapers (ooohhh, embedded!!).

why hostels suck

2006-10-25T06:54:00.000+10:00

because there are always so many misinformed, stupid australian drongos filling them to the rafters. the number of times i've had to literally get up and leave a table due the conversation is laughable.

seriously, why would you go across the world, seemingly to expand your mind, if all you're going to do is constantly talk about strip joints and how gorgeous eastern european women are ("i think they have a different bone structure or something") and then proceed to talk about how you now understand why eastern european men think the way they do...??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's exasperating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i try to put up a fight, but then when my protests even fall on the deaf ears of the women present, and not to mention other men, i have no option but to walk away.

photos? some day perhaps...

2006-10-14T00:37:00.000+10:00

so i'm obviously still learning how to drive this blog thing, especially where images are concerned.
hopefully will sort out soon.
kd.

nevsky prospekt, 9am

2006-10-13T15:47:00.000+10:00

i'm on nevsky prospekt! i'm ON nevsky prospekt! ha! oh i wish i had my copy of ten days that shook the world with me so i could do my own revolutionary walking tour!

ahem, anyway, putting my excitement about that aside, just a quickie to say that in my last two days in moscow i saw:
- my favourite gaugin painting
- other pieces by matisse, picasso, degas, rodin, toulouse-lautrec, munch, monet, diego rivera, other gaugin pieces, delacroix, van gogh, and so forth (and it wasn't just one or two pieces each, it was like 8 or 9 pieces each. my jaw dropped every time i turned a corner. they were all in the same gallery. unbelievable. all the european travellers at the hostel were like, oh yeah, that's cool. but for me it was so great to see all these things in the original.
- the bolshoi ballet!!! i know i know, i'm not usually what you'd call a ballet fan, but i figured when in moscow... and it was pretty good i have to say. but i probably wouldn't go again.

that's all.
kd.

stalking lesbians in novodevichiy cemetery

2006-10-10T03:39:00.000+10:00

so, it sounds bad, but really it was totally innocent, or desperate, depending on interpretation! finding the queer scene here in moscow has been one goose chase after another, so i've been finding myself playing spot-the-lesbian (i don't know if anyone else has been to europe but all the visual coding is totally different here - gee wizz i sound like such a pomo... "visual coding" question mark! anyway, you get the point - what looks like a lesbian to me is really a hip and funky straight woman, it's confusing). Anyway, so i've become a bit of a dodgy stalker.

seriously, the only way i found this club i went to the other night, which was the fourth place i had tried, was after i thought it didn't exist because it looked like the building was under major construction... anyway, so i was dejectedly walking down the street in the other direction, when i saw three potentially queer looking women walking past. i thought to myself 'aha! i should follow them!' then realising how bad that was, proceeded to have this big internal debate about the politics of visual judgement, following women, stalking, balancing all those things with the fact that i'm a traveller just looking for some of my own people to hang out with for an evening and having seriously put myself in a lot of danger walking down many a dark moscow alley at night time only to find strip clubs where there had been lesbian bars advertised, or finding men-only gay saunas where women's nights had been advertised and being laughed at not only by the bouncers but by all the people on the door as well, and THEN being told that it would cost me $30 to enter a club as the only woman because i was not only a woman but a foreigner as well.... i concluded that it was justified to at least walk in their direction.

my internal judgement paid off! i found myself inside a really small but really diverse queer club, where people were just having heaps of fun, and there was even a nice boy who spoke a smattering of english and helped me with the cloak room.

anyway, back to the cemetery. i was wandering around moscow's most famous cemetery today (second only to lenin's tomb - i'll get to that later) and on my way to visit alexandra kollontai i saw to women holding hands and wandering around the cemetery. these were not the usual hand-holders that are ubiquitous in moscow - women in russia are incredibly affectionate in public in general, and often friends walk around holding hands with fingers intwined or with their arms linked - it is super lovely to see, but also a little confusing for the reasons i've already mentioned. i immediately sat down and wrote out (thanks to my trusty phrase book) a garbled message that went something like this: "hi, excuse me please, i am lesbian from australia, i here three days, what is there to do at night?"

needless to say they initially looked at me like a weirdo when i stopped them and asked if they spoke english. when they said the expected no, i showed them my awkward message. they said nothing, just motioned for a pen, didn't smile, and wrote down the name of the club i already knew about, gave me back my pen, and moved on. they didn't look very impressed, but later on when i saw them again one of them smiled at me. this was great, because smiling is just not done in russia - people don't smile. they are incredibly polite and courteous but it's not accompanied with any fake smiling or whatever. it's both good and bad i guess, or maybe just a little different.

anyway, to continue with the dead theme... mao, lenin, kollantai, gogol, chekov, kruschev, stalin, zetkin, dzherdzhinsky, eisenstein - i've seen em!!! lenin was clearly the highlight. he looked a lot more pastey and waxy than mao i have to say, but i guess his dead body is at least 40 years older so it's to be expected. i actually went to see him twice. the guards thought i was a freak.

one of them stopped me just before the door of the tomb and said "you go again? why?"
i said "i don't know, just because".
"why?"
"i don't know, just because..."
by this stage he's clearly laughing at me on the inside, but all that shows on the surface is a wry smirk.
"why? your eyes don't work the first time?"
"yeah, yep, that's it, i couldn't see properly..."
at this point he cracked a smile, finally, and off i went a second time.

and it was exciting that i did. i happened to see what i assume is the entire remaining moscow chapter of the old communist party - there were about 17 of them, and they were all above the age of 70. they had some sort of procession with banners and soviet flags up to the mausoleum, clutching some papers and having an empassioned speak out. they held a vigil for about half an hour, and then marched back out of red square. i didn't get to talk to any of them, but heard some of them singing the internationale. the leader was a woman who had an old workers cap on, and long grey plaits. her t-shirt was tucked into her tracksuit pants. she was great.

anyway, to all my socialist buddies, lenin says hi. or as i prefer to call him, "not-lenin". there's currently a debate going on in russia about whether to exume him and finally bury him beside his mother in st petersburg, but it's so controversial that it's unlikely to happen for at least 5 years.

in other news, and this really is NEWS - you've probably heard about it already. on saturday, while i was in this very city, a daring journalist who has been reporting with a critical edge on the chechnya situation was found in the stairwell of her apartment building here in moscow, with two bullet wounds to the head. on sunday there was a protest of about 3000 people at Pushkin Square, only a stone's throw from my hostel. but i didn't find out about this until later that evening when i returned from my day's outing, otherwise i definitely would have gone down to check it out. it's pretty full on. the BBC world service was reporting it as clearly related to the fact that she was reporting the way she was. apparently she was basically presenting a line that russia was being imperialist about chechnya, but not necessarily in the same way that reporters from the west do (ie with an opportunistic edge). so, moscow has been in a bit of a tizz for the last couple of days. however, at the kremlin today, all was calm as calm can be - no sign of any national murder scandal at all. apparently they are now reporting that they have footage of the assassin on video tape, but who knows what will happen with that.

hmm, so much else to report, but i'll leave it at that for now. moscow is totally amazing, and totally expensive. the whole city is like a pickled city - contrary to popular belief and ruling claims in the west, the soviet era in russia was not a walking path of destruction of history. in fact it's the total opposite. there is SO MUCH well preserved history here - it's really bloody amazing. i mean, if you want medieval ruins, they're here, just in the middle of everything else. if you want 11th and 12th century iconography, it's here and always has been, and if anything it has been lovingly cared for. if you want 18th and 19th century masterpiece artworks, you'll see more here than you will anywhere else. if it's architecture, ballet, opera, old theatres, historic sites and buildings, memorials, museums, trains (i know you love it kate f...) - moscow is the place for you. and all this exists alongside the most modern and amazingly bewildering modern scene. shopping is MASSIVE. people love it. high-heeled shoes are massive, as are the heels. clubs, pubs, street drinking, fast cars, drugs, hotels, cafes, and youth culture... it's all here. it's like a version of london or paris but without the western pretensions. it's totally amazing and mind-blowing, as is the metro and all it's every-day splendour. i'm looking forward to my next three days here.

anyone is welcome to email me or post comments - i'll try to remove the restriction on posting comments so that anyone is able to do it. also, i'm planning to make at least weekly and if not, fortnightly, posts to this blog, so if you check it once a fortnight you should be able to keep well informed of my comings and goings.

til next time,
kd.

'ole siberia ain't what it used to be...

2006-10-01T18:41:00.000+10:00

siberia is beautiful. i can say that easily because i'm on a cushy holiday, and not in a gulag, in case it wasn't obvious.

i don't have much time to make a long post, but i've just spent two days up at lake baikal - this is the biggest fresh water lake in the world and holds about one fifth of the world's entire fresh water reserves. i have eaten a lot of great food - chinese food was fantastic too, but it has been good to have some stodgy bread and a bit of cheese!

i have burned my hand in a banya (sauna) because i was clumsy. this was even after i burned my foot with water from the samovar on the train here from bejing. i'm hoping my face won't be next...

i've had some pretty interesting political discussions so far - while up at the lake village, i was staying at the home of a woman who used to teach in the local village primary school (about 150 students at its peak) during soviet times. she pulled out a copy of the little book they used to have to use during their lessons with the children before perestroyka - it was called "lenin is with you always". if that's not a horrifically eerie title i don't know what is. anyway, it was filled with all sorts of glorification poems and songs - it was essentially a songbook with a few prose bits here and there.

anyway, both she and the guide that took myself and the other traveller (a woman from hong kong) on a 10km hike along the shore of the lake, have both said that they either knew people (or in the case of the 25 year old guide) who cried and cried and cried when ole joe stalin died.

eventually in the conversation i came out as a trotskyist, and it went remarkably well, although the overwhelming response is that it's stupid to think we can have anything like communism without the same thing happening. but no real answers are proposed in place of it, even though it's clear that they believe bush is the worst thing that ever happened, and there are clear problems with liberal democracy.

but right now my time's up.
suffice to say the above conversation happened over vodka.
tomorrow i get on the train again for moscow, which will be a five day slog. the landscape in these parts though is absolutely breathtaking, as was the gobi desert in mongolia.

til moscow,
kd.

mao before breakfast

2006-09-26T17:05:00.000+10:00

so, i know that's an icky thought (ewww, pastey) but that's what i did this morning. i had to beat the rush on the queue - as it happens about a thousand or more other people had the same idea and i got stuck at the end of a massive queue anyway.

it was weird and a little upsetting to witness the spectacle that is dead so-called "communist" dictators. so much deference and reverence. but i think it is due to a combination of things - the hundreds of armed guards, ushers, and officials have a lot to do with it! i also think there are still some true brainwashed believers out there, perhaps thinking everything is just great, or possibly wondering what went wrong and coming to seek guidance from the big guy.

on my second day here i went to the forbidden city - the traditional seat of power and residence for the ming and qing dynasties. out the front of the forbidden city is a massive structure with a too-flattering portrait mao's big smiling face shining over tiananmen square - right above the space where the massacre happened. i took some photos of people having their photos taken with him. i found it upsetting but more than anything angering - angering that such a disgusting distortion is what people think of when they hear the word "communist". i've had to bite my tongue a lot when discussing chinese politics with other travellers who just throw words like "propaganda" and "surveillance" around in association with "communism" with absolutely no critical engagement with how downright one-sided that is, or not even one-sided but just plain wrong. i have argued with them, but have had to bite my tongue when i have become frustrated, contenting myself instead with saying something like "but do you think the west has less propaganda and surveillance?"
sheesh.

other than that i've taken lots of photos of the wacky things beijingers do in public. lots of spitting, gurgling, belching, farting and yawning louder than is probably necessary. i've never seen people hock such big loogies with that level of passion and energy. it's almost a sport.

beijing is certainly a sensory experience. the sun is hot, the smog tastes and smells strong, the dust in the air is thick and settles on you no matter what you do, the streets are often stinking from the sweet aroma of shit and piss wafting up from the sewer grates, your snot is black, and you are often touching people. in a city of 15 million there is no other way.

but in a city of 15 million people, everybody also lives their lives on the street - there are people everywhere all the time. whether it's playing checkers or mah jong, ballroom dancing in the park at 10am on a weekday or learning contemporary dance, doing aerobics on a seemingly random street corner next to a massive motorway in the evening, walking a little mini-dog, DIY karaoke in the park, fishing in the lakes, chewing the fat, chewing pumpkin seeds and other seeds and spitting off the husks, doing nightly exercises, wandering, sleeping, snoring, selling, buying, lounging, or most importantly, riding a bike. it makes you feel safe to walk around at night - if anything ever happened (which it doesn't feel like it really would anyway) there would always be at least 30 or 40 other people and probably more within your immediate vicinity.

travelling on beijing streets has probably been the most awe-inspiring activity though (other than the 10km hike i did on the great wall the other day - my leg muscles still hurt bad), especially on a bike. seriously, it's kill or be killed, and it takes some gumption. there are traffic lights, and they are sometimes sort of loosely observed, sort of, but not really. yeah, traffic lights. whatever! no one ever puts on their brakes pretty much. cars just career around the corners, pedestrians and bikes in the way but who cares? bikes don't care either, and nor do pedestrians, but there is obviously a hierarchy of who's gonna die in the arse if a collision occurs. which miraculously doesn't seem to occur very often. or not that i've seen anyway.

but there are thousands of bikes. millions even. there are lanes for the bikes that are wider than the car lanes. every traffic light pretty much has a little bike symbol set of lights. it's really fun to just cruise around. it is so flat that you never ever have to go up or down a hill EVER.

it's also been really good to stay in a hutong. hutongs are the little tiny weeny laneways that criss-cross beijing filled with tiny little weeny "houses" (these are usually rooms the size of a wardrobe that function simultaneously as a bedsit, shop, restaurant (with some seats out on the street and the pot/cooker on the front door step) and sometimes even a gambling place for cards or mah jong. sometimes people wheel their beds out on to the street and sleep there. most people don't have a toilet in their house, let alone more than one 2m x 2m room, so there are lots of public toilets along the laneways that everyone uses. but the great thing is that a lot of people wander past the hostel and strike up conversations, or stand around having loud and evidently hilarious conversations about the foreigners.

many people are currently learning other languages (english is most common) in preparation for finding work during the 2008 olympics and have been keen to practice. i've sat out on the street a few nights, sinking a few 2yuan beers (2 yuans is about 20cents - these beers are tallnecks too, though you'd easily pay 40yuan in one of the more public ex-pat bars), chatting to people. one guy i spoke to didn't speak english, and i obviously don't speak chinese, but he had been learning german for 2 years, so we were able to have a very rudimentary conversation in german which was really cool.

i think my time at this internet cafe is nearly up but here's a few other random things i've seen/observed:
- a motorcycle shop called "Chrome Horse"
- all the little kiddies trousers have no bum and the kiddies don't wear nappies - they just have a big split in their pants i guess until they are toilet trained
- through a window i saw a young apprentice guard/soldier get pretty severely beaten in the head by his superior while his comrades looked on... he had obviously done something that displeased the superior
- a hardcore woman who was a bike parking inspector - in the busy shopping areas you have to park your bike in the designated areas and you pay 1yuan to the inspector. this one woman was seriously hardcore, but she let me take a photo and even smiled afterwards!

til next time folks,
kd.

beijing on a thursday

2006-09-21T17:09:00.000+10:00

so i have officially started my journey.

the flight was pretty good, even considering that there were not one, not two, but THREE school groups on the flight! well actually i think one of them was for pony club or some such. the biggest one was a group of 12 or 13 year old high school students - i cannot imagine the stress of being one of the coordinators.

but yeah, so far i've had a big massive long sleep, and taken a walk around my corner of beijing. i had to sleep until midday today, mostly because i didn't get much last week, but partly because i'm now on holiday and I can. i didn't get much sleep last week because for those who don't know, my sister had a serious horse-related accident on friday last week, was rushed to the austin hospital by air, and went in for 6 hour surgery on her lower vertebrae on monday. tuesday she was looking better, but it's all been pretty distressing and stressful for the whole family and i nearly delayed my trip.

anyway, hopefully my posts will get a lot more interesting from now on!
beijing seems to be in a state of total flux at the moment, due to preparations for the beijing olympics. one of the main boulevards i walked down today had scaffolding and billboards erected flush with the street on both sides for a couple of kms - all the buildings behing the billboard facades, most of which look like they were residential and small shops, have been reduced to rubble, with a couple of shop keepers here and there still setting up their goods on what used to be their footpaths. small trade still seems to be bustling in and around the rubble though.

more soon.
kd.

Starting out

2006-08-23T02:01:00.000+10:00

So, I've never kept a blog before, and I'm still learning how to do it. But I figure I'm leaving real soon, and it's about time I got my head around this web technology business.

Well, this is I guess the official beginning of my travels. I have packed up my job, am packing up my house, have no study commitments, no relationship, and the good fortune of a redundancy payout (it's bloody good to have worked for an organisation that cares about workers rights!). I leave on 20 September which is less than a month away and I have so much to do.

My plan is to start in Beijing, hang out there for a week, and then jump on a train to St Petersburg, stopping in Siberia and Moscow along the way. After that I'll end up in Berlin where I'm going to live for a few months and learn some more German, and after that check out a bit more of Europe - hopefully going down into Eastern Europe and Turkey. I'm also planning on visiting my sorely missed sister in the UK, say g'day to the family in Ireland. After that I return home via Buenos Aires, Santiago and Auckland. I'm expecting the whole thing to take me anywhere between 4 and 12 months.

So here's to my plans, and wish me luck.