Ars Electronica

 

Ars Electronica 2008 Poster

 

 

 

I returned from Ars Electronica on Wednesday, after a Friday arrival.  Over the course of the intervening days I learned a number of things, not all related to Ars or Electronica.

Thing #1: That is a bad logo/poster (see above).

I don’t know what this style of illustration is called but I don’t like it.  It makes me think of 14 year old girls in Japan.

Thing #2: Linz has a bizarre demographic distribution.

I was immediately struck by the fact that, other than the other people visiting for the festival, there appeared to be no one my age in this city.  During the day the banks of the river would be covered in what appeared to be 16-20 year olds, drinking beer and shooting the breeze.  During the night (at least on Friday and Saturday) these same people would be drinking themselves into oblivion in a pedestrian area of the city filthy with bars.  It felt like these kids had taken over the city.

It was also here that I saw my first fight since arriving in Europe two months ago.  And I must say I enjoyed it.  Both participants were so comically drunk that inflicting any sort of damage on one another was out of the question.  Every time they made an attempt to throw a punch they lost their balance so completely you could only worry about them falling and cracking their heads on the cobblestones.

Thing #3: I don’t have the patience to be a programmer.

I worked a bunch with openFrameworks while at the festival.  openFrameworks describes itself as “a C++ library for creative coding.”  Basically, it is like Processing but built upon the more powerful (lower level, as they say) C++ language instead of Java.  And both of these are essentially attempts to make it a bit easier to use code to make audiovisual “stuff.”  

So, great.  But what kills me is when you get stuck – which happened a lot to me – just because you don’t know how to describe what you want to do correctly in the programming language.  It’s like trying to do a math equation but for some reason you can’t figure out how to write the number 3, so nothing works and you can’t do anything even though you know exactly what you want to do and how it would theoretically work.  I think the only way I could enjoy programming would be if I had a programming expert sitting next to me who would help me figure out how to “write the number 3” every time I got stuck.

Thing #4: A lot of this stuff is a colossal waste of time.

By “waste of time” I do not mean my time – if I don’t like something it only takes a few moments to realize it – but a waste of the person’s time who made the work.  There were a lot of pieces that fell into this category – for example the two stuffed pseudo-eagles that were both hooked up to complex mechanical devices that automatically made them flap their wings a bit and go up and down.  And keep in mind that this description sounds way more interesting than the actual thing.

I talked about it to someone else and we agreed that a lot of the problem lies in the fact that someone who is technically proficient is often not the same person who has interesting ideas for art pieces.  You rarely see the director stepping in front of the camera and acting in a movie because they realize that the movie will be better if they separate these roles.  Many of the Ars Electronica “artists” (and remember, this is supposedly the best of new media and interactive art) would be doing themselves a favor if they extended this analogy to themselves.

And then there are some people who are neither technically proficient nor have good ideas for interesting art.  These people are the worst, but the best at filling out grants.

Thing #5: Fight for your Rights!

On my connecting flight from Zurich to Vienna I was about to board the plane when I was informed that I was going to have to check one of my bags.  I had my video camera bag on my back – which is the maximum allowable dimensions for hand luggage – and a tiny blue backpack in my hand.  

At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about, then I assumed that I was just getting admonished for stretching the rules, and then I realized that she was actually printing up a tag to check one of my bags.  These were the reasons this pushed my buttons:

1. This was a connecting flight – so I had already flown on the same airline with exactly the same complement of hand luggage with no problems.  If they are going to bust you for hand luggage, do it at the initial check in.  
2. Lots of people had second bags with them – for example a briefcase or a bag of alcohol from duty free.  I guess there are exceptions for these “bags,” but, seeing as my bag was the same size or smaller than these “bags,” who gives a shit?
3. Who gives a shit?

When the lady started grabbing my bag to put a check-in label on it I explained that this wasn’t going to work because I had expensive electronics and hard drives in both bags (which was in fact true) which the airline will NOT replace if broken (also true).  At this point I was trying to be good natured about the whole thing, but that quickly changed as she adopted a very firm “policy is policy” attitude.  I fucking HATE that attitude.

So I told her I was getting on the plane with both of my bags whether it was against policy or not, and started walking down the ramp to the plane.  She caught up to me just as I was at the door to the aircraft and took my boarding ticket out of my hand and told me I could not get on the plane with two bags.  I assured her that I very well could get on the plane with two bags, then turned around and, without looking back, got on the plane, walked past the stewardesses and headed directly to seat 25C (luckily I had remembered it from my boarding ticket).

Once I sat down I opened a book and began reading, half-expecting the ticket lady to come down the aisle with security.  She didn’t.  Which I have to admit I was glad about.  I wasn’t really looking to take my civil disobedience to the next level.  And I also have to admit that I feel a bit bad for the lady – this probably turned another day at the airport into a BAD day for her.  Perhaps she had a lot of self worth tied up in doing her job “perfectly,” and I kind of fucked that up.  But I can’t feel too sorry for her.  She really was being ridiculous.

IFA = International Flatscreen Abundance

 

IFA Berlin

IFA actually stands for Internationale Funkausstellung, which sounds a lot more fun than what you would actually get to experience were you to attend this affair.  Which I did.

Let me tell you about it.  I promise that even if it is incredibly boring (not unlikely), it will be more interesting than what I had to go through to bring you this story.  I will try to keep it as brief as possible.

WHAT I EXPECTED

I guess I was just hoping to see a lot of cool gadgets.  I was hoping for prototypes and concepts and wacky materials and a general feeling of cutting edge experimentation.  But mainly, I really was hoping to see some cool gadgets.

WHAT I GOT

I got a lot of fucking flatscreens.  Not to mention flatscreen mounts, fabric to embed on the side of your flatscreen, armani/Samsung flatscreen collaborations, flatscreens with no edges, industrial flatscreens containing internal computers and dvd players, and epilepsy inducing universal remotes to operate aforementioned flatscreens.

There was also a lot of unrecognizable things that said HDMI, a few projectors and laptops, and the odd jewelry steamer.

HIGHLIGHTS

1.  My favourite part was definitely the China pavilion.  First of all it seemed like the same 6th grader designed every stand’s display posters.  Secondly, since this was the last day of the fair, they had hand drawn signs on pieces of torn out notebook paper indicating that they were now selling everything they had on display (at ridiculous prices).  This included perhaps my favourite item of the day – the poop alarm.  It plays a melody (or has a blinking LED light – there are two models) when it detects either urine or feces in your infant’s diaper.  The bad breath detector with 5 LED lights (the more lights, the worse your breath) took second.

2.  I also loved the VIP areas.  The major manufacturers (Samsung, Epson, etc.) had elevated or second floor “lounge” areas where you could enjoy a few drinks if you had the proper accreditation.  Somehow this seemed a bit like having an awesome gym at an old folks home.

Overall it was not a very gratifying 4 hours.  But at least I didn’t have to spend 54 hours over the past 6 days there like Nell and Maria did.

Nell and Maria

They were just two of hundreds of promo girls and guys who were, by day 6, listlessly walking around their booths’ displays.  I feel like they (the promo people) should all be encouraged (at least on day 6) to get very drunk.  Everyone would have a better time.

So, the IFA.  Don’t go.

Eight Days a Week

I came up with the idea for the eight day week some time ago.  I was having a boring night and realized that 21 went into 168 exactly eight times.  You say “big whoop”, I said “eight day week, baby!”  As it turns out you were right.  

The schedule I used was based on 14 hours of wakefulness followed by 7 hours of sleep.  You will see how well this worked.  The following are my journal entries for the week.

 

Charting out the 8 day week

 

 

MONDAY

AWAKE -> 10:00-00:00

23:30 This day was fairly normal.  Things will become a bit strange by tomorrow.  I haven’t been up at seven in the morning since – I can’t remember when.  The girl who I am subletting my room from just came in and told me about the 25 year old artist she works for as an assistant who is making tons of money and having her do all his boring and tedious work.  Great for him, but kind of annoying information to fall asleep on all the same.

 

TUESDAY

AWAKE -> 07:00-21:00

07:45 I am on the subway right now.  I have once again done my two for one ticket deal where I don’t stamp my ticket the first time, and, if caught (which happens fairly regularly), just claim ignorance of the stamping protocol.  In fact, when you buy a ticket the time is stamped on it anyway, so they can see that I am traveling on a recently purchased ticket.  Then the next time I use it I actually stamp it.  I don’t feel bad about this one bit since it is such a dumb system to begin with.  Why in the world do you need to stamp the time on a single use ticket that already has the time of purchase stamped on it?

I had to use the small bowl for my cereal this morning.  I hate that.  We only have one semi-reasonable cereal bowl and a number of roommates who aren’t exactly gangbusters about doing dishes.  I think I may have left my Kiehl’s shampoo in the shower.  Shit.

I’m feeling okay.  I feel like I am getting a jump on the day.  I feel a bit dumb that I never get up this early.  Everyone on the subway, almost without exception, is reading right now – newspapers, magazines, novels.  I have NEVER seen this before.  It’s as if a whole new category of people occupy the city at this time of day.

11:53 I am starving and am going for lunch.  Very strange to go for lunch at noon.

20:35 I worked like gangbusters today.  I kind of feel ready for bed as I watch Olympic highlights on Eurosport.  I love that they show Olympics 24 hours a day on this channel.  Then during the day there is another channel (either 1 or 2, it switches according to the day due to some strange licensing logic) also playing non-stop Olympics.  Right now on Eurosport they are doing this strange daily mash-up where they play clips of Olympic athletes making strange faces/actions alongside music cues that are meant to be funny.  Or sometimes they just play sound effects.  Right now they just played the sound of a horse  whinnying and pawing the ground with a clip of a javelin thrower making a similar motion with his feet and blowing his lips in a way that sort of matched.  Actually, that was kind of funny.

WEDNESDAY

AWAKE -> 04:00-18:00

04:35 Waking up in the dark never feels natural.  I had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night but got there after perhaps 90 minutes.  I am working from home until the subway starts running.

07:45 On the subway now.  The lady across from me is doing a Sudoku puzzle that she cut out from a newspaper.  I’ve done Sudoku myself, but only because there was nothing else to do.  I would not, for example, ever buy a Sudoku book.  I think that if you are going to spend time working on a skill it should give you something above and beyond only the pleasure of successfully doing it.  For example: 

1. Social Interaction (sports for example)
2. Money (trading stocks for fun)
3. Physical Objects (carpentry)
4. Health (sports, cooking)
5. Knowledge (reading, taking classes)
6. etc.

Sudoku doesn’t hit any of these.  It’s even worse than crosswords, which are essentially in the same category – it’s like television for nerds.  Sit back and disconnect.  Plus, I usually get the feeling when I see someone doing a crossword (especially when they are my age) that they are happy that I have seen them being so fucking erudite.

17:18 Another gangbusters day of work.  My productivity is through the roof.  Am going to have to stay up a bit “late” tonight as it is a friends birthday party at 18:00.  

20:25 Shit.  Just getting to bed now.  The 1am alarm is not going to be a pleasant sound.

 

THURSDAY

AWAKE -> 01:00-15:00

01:45 This sucks.  I hate it.  The roommates finished the milk and now I can’t have any cereal and I have nothing else to eat right now and nothing is open except doner shops.  I don’t know if I can handle a doner for breakfast.

02:27 I settled for a falafel.  It is actually pretty good.  In contrast to the eight day week.  I just made a little chart while waiting for my falafel and the eight day week officially sucks.  For some reason I thought that I would work five days and then have a nice three day weekend from Friday to Sunday.  But in fact my Friday is going to go from 10pm tonight until noon on real Friday, so I am going to be asleep from noon until 7pm on Friday.  So basically, I may as well have done a normal week and then just done an all-nighter on Thursday night and then slept from noon until 19:00 on Friday and I would be in exactly the same position.  And probably way less tired.  At least I am getting to watch some live Olympics.  I am kind of bored of watching the rowing though.  They have some many variations on the same theme.  One.  Two.  Four.  Eight. Kayak. Canoe. Boat. 500m. 1000m. And so on.  It seems a bit much.

17:20 Can’t sleep.  It is a beautiful sunny day outside.  This was a terrible idea.

 

FRIDAY

AWAKE -> 22:00-12:00

22:22 Fell asleep for a bit.  Feel severely out of it at this point.  It is everyone else’s Thursday, but my Friday.  Knowing this gives me absolutely no satisfaction.  The website I have been working on all week is just about done, but I just found a few more tweaks it needs from the flash programmer and there is no way to get her to do it before I go to bed tomorrow.

11:15 Just got back from a run – I am trying to tire myself out so that I might have a chance of falling asleep at noon.  Ran into a friend coming back home who was in a cafe having his morning coffee.

14:45 This is not working.  

16:50 “Saturday” is going to suck.

 

SATURDAY

AWAKE -> 19:00-09:00

19:10 I got about 75 minutes of sleep and feel delirious.  Now I have to go get dressed up in a suit for some kind of networking/party/swing dance event.  Philip sounded excited that he had gotten us on the list for it but I really can’t wrap my head around what exactly “it” is.

04:38 I am laying in bed eating a doner now and watching the Olympics.  I am still not sure what I went to.  It was kind of like a normal party combined with a high-school dance for grown-ups.  It felt very “organized.”  The highlight was the free food.  I am not sure why I feel like I must stay up until 9am but I am going to do it.  The US basketball team starts playing their semifinal in 3.4 hours.

 

 

SUNDAY

AWAKE -> 16:00-06:00

16:15 Finally some sleep.  I plan to do nothing remotely productive today.

05:30 Just got home.  Ran into a guy I knew from Montreal – Justin, who was a friend of a friend – at a bar tonight.  It was very bizarre running into him.  This is the second time this has happened to me in Berlin, where I am going out somewhere and I hear “Hey, Dan!” and turn and see someone who looks like they were just teleported in for dramatic effect.  We had a bizarre conversation, which I came out of understanding that either he was leaving soon or had no interest in hanging out or both.  It will still be semi-dark when I go to bed today.

 

EXTRADAY

AWAKE -> 13:00-03:00

13:50 I feel a bit more normal now, but these closing ceremonies are baffling me.  First they had the medal awards for the marathon winners and one of the guys – who won the silver – looked like he was going to fall over the whole time.  I don’t know if he was nervous or exhausted or both, but it was strange.  Then there was that London-Beijing-London bus that drove in and all this weird shit started happening.  I guess it has to do with passing on the torch.  I need to get outside.

01:30 Almost done.  I am very glad.  I am going to watch a terrible streaming version of Pineapple Express (just joking, I never break copyright law) and then call it an eight day week.

 

CONCLUSION

Don’t do this.  I repeat, this is a bad idea.  I have to thank the Olympics for making it possible for me to complete this week.  I really don’t think  I would have made it otherwise.  I am still curious about other variations on sleeping patterns, but the eight day week will not be repeated.  It doesn’t allow for any sort of sleep rhythm and kills your social life.  It’s terrible.

I found out about polyphasic sleep this week – which is where you sleep for 25-30 minutes 6-8 times per day; which works out to about three hours of sleep per day.  My roommate did this for six months during a busy period of school.  He said it really wasn’t bad after the first two weeks.  He quit it because it just made life too complicated – I didn’t really understand why that would be the case until he pointed out that he HAD to sleep every 4 hours or else he would get totally messed up.  So if he was out with friends having a good time he would have to take off for a nap after 4 hours.  Which, he was right, did not seem terribly practical.

I am now considering doing something slightly more logical.  A 12 day week.  This would involve having two days every weekday.  A work day from 08:00-16:00, followed by a four hour sleep, followed by a “fun” day of exercise, reading and going out with friends from 16:00-04:00.  Then another four hours of sleep.  Then on weekends you just do normal days (hence the 12 days instead of 14).  I will keep you posted on how this goes.

Copenhagen Fashion Week

It was an inauspicious beginning to Copenhagen Fashion Week.  Apparently our press passes were on a press bus that was traveling around the city somewhere.  And this would have been annoying had we not been informed of the more annoying fact that our press passes were absolutely useless.

Clockwise from top left: Dino, Daniel, Philip and Jonathan

Apparently, getting accredited for Copenhagen fashion week (which I will call CFW from now on if it happens that I feel the need to call it by name again) means that you now have permission to contact all the shows you wish to attend yourself, and then they will check to make sure you are on the press list, and then grant you an invitation.  Which we hadn’t done.  We tried to explain that at Berlin Fashion week it was the shows themselves that had contacted us with invitations.  They pointed out that that was not how it worked at CFW and we couldn’t really find a way to disagree, so we took the injured pride route.  I think we dropped such classics as “we’re just not used to being treated like this,” alongside numerous unflattering and  mumbled comparisons to Berlin’s Fashion Week.

So, at this point we could do little but laugh (bitterly) about the fact that we were apparently going to get to see a grand total of zero fashion shows at the CFW which led to the unanimous and correct conclusion that it was time to go buy beer.

So, then, how did we end up going to see every single show on Saturday, including the “hot shit” Henrik Vibskov show and afterparty?  Well, I guess what we didn’t count on was how damn friendly and accommodating the Danish people are.  Or how much they apparently like Los Angeles and Mexico City.  Whatever it was this was how the conversations went (I decided to try calling up all of the show contacts as listed on the CFW website):

Me: Hello, is this (name of person listed as contact)?

Them: Yes.

Me: Hi, this is (my name) from Los Angeles and I was wondering if you might have any tickets left for your show tomorrow?

Them: Sure, who are you with?

Me: I am a freelance buyer for a boutique fashion store from Mexico City.  (Translation: I have a friend who is going to open a second hand clothing store in Mexico City)

Them: Oh, wow, great!

Me: Also I will be coming with four colleagues of mine from Berlin.  Can they also be put on the list?

Them: Sure, we look forward to seeing you.

And that was that.  What was perhaps the stranges/funniest/nicest moment was when after the Barbara i Gongini show (which was my favourite show by far) the woman that I had made my phone call with found me and apologized that she hadn’t recognized me when I had entered and put me and my “colleagues” in the front row where we were supposed to be.

Shots from Saturday

Other thoughts from the weekend which are temporally, not thematically, related:

1. Sterling airlines is crap.  The flight from Berlin is only about 40 minutes, but they were 40 uncomfortable hot minutes where they even charged for water.  This is the first time that I have been on an airline where I couldn’t even have a glass of water for free.  That should not be allowed.

2. Wooden floors in airports are not crap.  I only think I have seen them in Scandinavian countries, but they definitely give the airport a different feel.

3. I read in the International Herald Tribune that “The global television audience was estimated to surpass four billion viewers”, referring to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  I call (emphatically) complete bullshit on this figure.  As of July 2007 there were 6,602,224,175 humans on the planet earth.  There is no fucking way that over 4 billion of them watched the opening ceremonies.  In fact, I have not yet talked to a SINGLE person who watched the opening ceremonies.  I read an article a couple of years ago by a guy who did some simple math to prove that the Oscar’s in no way, shape, or form could draw the viewership of 1-2 billion, or whatever was claimed.  34 million (or about 10% of the population) of the humans in the US watched the opening ceremony, and although perhaps China had a higher percentage of viewers, the US is tied for first with the UK for most television watched.  And the UK drew 5 million (about 8% of their population).  India, also known as the second most populous nation on earth, has only won a total of 17 Olympic medals in its HISTORY – so how interested can they possibly be in the opening ceremonies?!  And 1.6 billion people on the planet live without electricity for Christ’s sake!

So saying over four billion people watched the opening ceremonies is not only wrong, it is fucking RIDICULOUS.  It is like a lie that a kid tells when they have no ability to comprehend proportion – it reminds me a bit of the time I showed a photo of myself in the cockpit of my uncle’s plane to my grade two class for show and tell and then went on to say that I had accidentally pressed a button (semi-plausible exaggeration) that started the plane (implausible, but perhaps buyable by a class of grade twos) and then we took off and flew down to the Antarctic and landed on the ice (the plane had skis on it at this point) and then flew back.  I still cannot believe that Mrs. Malenfant kept a straight face.

My excuse is that I was seven years old, but this is the International Herald Tribune for Pete’s sake.  If the percentage of people watching the opening ceremonies around the world were roughly equivalent to that of the US (very unlikely, but China could possibly make up for some of the countries dragging the percentage down) we would have a grand total of 660 million viewers.  I doubt that four billion people on earth even realize the Olympics have already started.

Sorry to belabor the point.

4. This is perhaps the single greatest invention I have seen this year.  I want to shake the man’s hand that designed this.  The sad thing was that we only saw one of them at the Copenhagen airport.  I love the idea of a whole airport full of people zipping around on these things.

And that’s all from Copenhagen Fashion Week.

Late Nights…

It was a long weekend.  Or perhaps a late weekend would be more accurate.  I ended up going to bed after 8am both Friday and Saturday night.  That never happened in Los Angeles.  Or, for that matter, anywhere else I have lived in North America.

I remember the first time I stayed up all night “partying” – it was in my second year of university and I was dating a girl who liked to go to raves.  So I spent 50 bucks on a ticket for a “rave” in a huge warehouse in Toronto and another 30 bucks on mushrooms and tried to have a good time.  It didn’t really work.  I just couldn’t figure out the appeal.  I don’t mind dancing but after 30 minutes I’m pretty much danced out, which left about 8.5 hours to figure out what to do with my non-dancing self.  I couldn’t really lose myself in the music because it just wasn’t that great.  You can’t talk to anyone because it is too fucking loud, and plus I didn’t feel like I had much in common with the people who were there and actually having the time of their life.  So I just tried to make it look like I was having fun while secretly tormenting myself by keeping an eye on the girl I was dating (it was tenuous) talk and dance with other guys.

In the morning when the bus pulled up to take us back to our university I felt so glad to be getting the hell out of there that I almost forgot what a rotten time I had had and managed to get roped into a few more raves before I broke up with the girl.  I don’t know if there is any moral to the story other than raves are not very good, but it seems like most of the planet has already wised up to the fact at this point.  Progress.

This past weekend involved zero raves, and also didn’t involve any real reasons to stay up until 8am.  But what seems to happen is that, here in Berlin, you end up doing multiple nights out wrapped up in one.  For example, Friday I went out to a movie in the evening and then back to my place for drinks with a friend.  At around 1:30am she left since she had to get up early for a tennis lesson.  If I was in LA now my night would already be effectively over.  But I was in Berlin and I had an invitation to a party where an acquaintance was DJing.  So I went.  I stayed there for about an hour until it got broken up by the police.  By now it was about 3:30, so I decided to do the sensible thing and and jump on my bike and point it homeward.  On the way home I passed numerous people whooping it up and so when I saw a sign for the Bang Bang club – which seemed to have ads all over town, and which I had never been to – I thought, why not, and parked my bike.  So by the time I was eating a chicken doner at 7am, I had had three separate nights out rolled into one.

I caught myself complaining about the closing time of bars in Los Angeles on numerous occasions while living there this past year.  And I do still agree with myself that it is slightly absurd that the government can essentially say “Fun’s over!”  I doubt our founding father’s (or yours, I was born in Canada) would have agreed with this governmental invasion of private life.  But.  As previously mentioned, I never had a weekend when I stayed up until 8am on consecutive nights while in Los Angeles.  And perhaps this is actually a good thing.  I am definitely not convinced of the fact – maybe New York has the right balance with their 4am last call – but I admit to the possibility.  Plus it allows for an illegal scene in LA which has that exciting illicit feel to it.

In any case, below is a video I made with Philip on a weekend where we went to bed early and got up to see who we might find strolling the streets between 8 and 10am.  It’s up to you to decide which side of the argument it supports.

1st Impressions of Berlin: Part 2

Here we are, back with the final installment of my initial Berlin impressions.

Berlin Apartments (memory = toss-up, reality = toss-up)

When you tell someone you are going to Berlin they tell you how you can get a gigantic place for next to nothing.  At least that’s what they told me.  So that’s what I expected.  The second part came true.  The downside was that my room was exactly the width of the length of a bed.  It was like living in a hallway. This made it terrible for hanging out; the arrangement of people and furniture made you kind of feel as if you were on the subway.

After living in this apartment for 6 months I was perusing Craigslist and came across a studio for rent that was 800 square feet and going for just over 300 euro – right on the border of Kreuzberg and Neukolln.  It was an exceptional place if you did not mind the lack of kitchen or shower (I didn’t so much).  The lesson to be learned is that Berlin (and perhaps this is true everywhere) really is a city of compromise when it comes to apartments (or maybe it is yet another of the “cheap, good, fast: pick two” paradigm).

Presently my apartment is basically the same shape as the first apartment I lived in – a long narrow corridor.  This time, however, it is also located directly above the stage where live bands play four times per week in the bar below.  In addition, my flatmate, who I like, is a packrat and the apartment is full of crap.  I hate that.  The upside is that the location is impeccable.  I am in the middle of Mitte at Rosenthaler Platz, right at the bottom of Kastanienallee.  My future room, which I am moving to at the end of the month (this one for 310 euro), is in an apartment with 4 other people closer to my age and with a gigantic 550 square foot room.

Final verdict: Berlin is still a cheap place to live and if you have the luxury of arriving first and taking a month to find a place you will most likely end up with something pretty stellar.

Washing Machines (memory = small with lots of buttons, reality = small and extremely slow with lots of buttons)

I don’t know if this is another one of those silly German power saving ideas, but when I went to do my laundry yesterday I had two loads and I was able to watch an entire mountain stage of the Tour de France from start to finish (about 180km, at an average of 34km/hr) before my clothes were finished.  As for the buttons and dials, I still have no clue.  I mean, basically we are dealing with a spinning metal cylinder that water can go in and out of.  How many variations can one really achieve with these elements?

Artists (memory = slightly annoying, reality = even more annoying)

This isn’t totally fair, since it is also one of the reasons that I like Berlin.  But give me a fucking break.  I am tired of the kids who have just graduated from university and go around telling everyone they’re a poet.  I like to play basketball in my free time but I don’t introduce myself as a basketball player.  Because it doesn’t make any sense.  So if you like to write poetry, terrific, but don’t call yourself a poet.  And the second part of the annoyance factor is when the other people around eat it up and encourage them.  Which they tend to. So there is this delusional world of people here who go around calling themselves artists and who generally spend all their time drinking and talking about their artistry.  

So there we have it.  First impressions of Berlin.

1st Impressions of Berlin: Part 1

I arrived in Berlin just over a week ago.  Since then it has been sunny for approximately 15 minutes and the temperature has not gone over 23˚C.  I have noted that during this time it has been sunny every single minute with highs of between 27 and 31 in Los Angeles.  Did I mention that I came here from Los Angeles? Somehow, I knew this was going to happen.  My presence in Berlin has been indisputably and historically linked to crap summer weather.  I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking you don’t believe me.  But we’ll see what you continue to think once I present you with the evidence:

EVIDENCE

• Berlin, Summer of 2006 – beautiful, sunny and hot (I am not in Berlin)
• Berlin, Summer of 2007 – crappy, not often sunny, not often hot (I am in Berlin)
• Berlin, Summer of 2008 up until July 10 – beautiful, sunny and hot (I am not in Berlin)
• Berlin, Summer of 2008 after July 10 – cappy, not often sunny, not often hot (I am in Berlin)

So there we are.  If that isn’t proof enough for you then you probably still believe that we are all related.

Seeing as I have lived in Berlin previously there hasn’t been that new city excitement, but instead a comfortable process of rediscovery.  Some of my rediscoveries, in no particular order, and how they measured up to the memory.

German Toilets (memory = crap, reality = crap)

Why?  There are some experiences that you wonder this for the first encounter, then you accept and grow accustomed to it; for example when you see Japanese people reading vertical text.  These experiences are different from our own, but are not necessarily non-sensical.  They can often be interesting as they remind us of the arbitrary nature of so many things we take for granted.  Round prongs vs. Flat prongs in power outlets.  Coins with holes in them.  Forks vs. Chopsticks.  

Sometimes we even become aware of a better way of doing things.  The two paper L-technique of rolling joints taught to me in France, the yellow signal light coming on just before the green to tell you to get ready to go, as seen in various European countries, the total absence of traffic laws for scooters in Korea, and so on.

And sometimes we become aware of worse ways of doing things.  And then there are German toilets. Imagine this: instead of your excrement gently sliding into a basin of water where (unless it’s a floater) the smell is fairly benign, it lands on a bone-dry shelf.  And sits there.  And sits there.  Until you finish and flush.  It stinks.  The conductivity of smells through air is much faster than through water.  

I have asked Germans about this and no one has been able to provide any explanation.  None.  A baffled friend I had visiting from North America dubbed it, appropriately, the “crap shelf”.  Which is exactly what it is.  It is like taking a crap and setting it on a shelf where you can both smell and observe it to your heart’s delight.  I could possibly imagine this being something that came out of Eastern Germany due to government monopolies, shady contracts, and a scat-minded engineer, but as far as I can tell these are still being manufactured and purchased.  This may be the single most baffling thing about Germany.

Partying All Night (memory = great, reality = slightly less than great, but close)

I don’t know how many nights I cursed the 1:30am closing time of bars in LA.  Probably close to all of them. But I do know how many times I thanked the law makers of california for the 1:30am closing time of bars in LA.  Approximately 2-4 times per week.  And I do know when.  At 9:45am (when my first alarm would ring). And to be more precise, 9:45am on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday, Thursdays and Fridays.  

Now, I don’t necessarily have to get up at any particular hour for the next 73 days, but the point remains the same.  As much as I hated having the government decide when the fun was over, it did keep me from getting fired from my day job.  Or, to be more general, it allowed me to continue functioning as a semi-productive member of society.  Here in Berlin I was hanging out with a friend who told me that she hadn’t been to bed before 5am in weeks.  When she told me this it was 6am in the morning.  On a Monday.  I woke up at 3pm that day.  You can see where this is going.

Additionally, the 1:30am closing time in Los Angeles encourages a dynamic after hours scene and lots of illegal places that will serve as long as they have customers.  As well as more house parties.  And I love house parties.  Wasn’t there someone who said something about necessity being the mother of creativity?

The Euro (memory = crap exchange rate, reality = crap shelf exchange rate)

Come on USA!  Get your shit together!  

Germans Re: US beer (memory = idiots, reality = still idiots)

I once bought a couple Germans visiting me in the States a 6-pack of Becks so they would shut up about “American Beer”.  They went on to complain that the Becks in the US was not the same as the Becks in Germany.  At that point I realized that they were completely full of shit and gave up.  My thought on beer is: Who gives a shit?  I know a lot of people are not going to agree with me on that one, and I don’t agree with myself in the sense that I do not like most dark beer, but how much fucking difference is there between one pilsener and another?  The answer, whether you like it or not, is not too damn much.  I drink PBR and I like it.  So there.

I AM INTERRUPTING THIS COLUMN TO CRASH BERLIN FASHION WEEK, BEGINNING TOMORROW.  

NEWS WILL FOLLOW.