German Joys

Birdsong Bleg

Does anyone know what sort of bird this is?

Bird Suedpark

I listened to it for half and hour and never got bored.

Where is the Collection of Books from the DDR?

A brief bleg for my intelligent, good-looking readers. A few months ago, I was leafing through a newspaper and saw an article about someone who had started a collection of books published in East Germany. The person had rented a big warehouse and already collected something like 200,000 books. I believe this person was some sort of entertainer who had some kind of link to the DDR. The plan is to create a big library of East German books, to preserve some of the cultural memory of East Germany.

Can anyone help me with the name of this person and of the project? Thanks in advance!

Brussels: Cemeteries, Pre-Raphaelite Beauties, Brewery-Galleries, Bingo-Pinball

Over the weekend, I visited friends in Brussels who were having a housewarming party. Naturally, I took the opportunity to explore a bit more of Belgium's capital, which I consider Europe's most underrated city. It's not gorgeous, but it's quirky, funky, and charming.

 

Here's a quick slideshow in which we see some scenes shot in one of Brussels' hundreds of pubs, some random shots of street scenes and storefronts and shops, and scenes shot inside of the Wielemans Cueppens brewery, which has been converted into a contemporary art gallery called the 'Wiels'. The renovation left many of the original brewing machines and gauges intact, and, as usual, they threatened to upstage the art.

 

Finally, there's a stroll through the Cimitiere de Bruxelles, one of many 'neighborhood' cemeteries spread throughout Brussels. The Cemetery was opened  in 1877 to house the remains of the city's most prosperous bourgeois citizens, and it is accordingly spacious and elegant.

 

Plus, a Belgian car with at 'Don't Mess with Texas' bumper sticker!

 

 

Now a quick bleg. While in various Brussels pubs, I noticed men playing an odd sort of pinball game. The upright screen of of the pinball game, instead of the usual cartoon/movie theme, instead displays couple of rows of what look like bingo cards, whose numbers can be illuminated. The pinball field itself is also not like a normal pinball game; it appears designed to sort the balls in to little compartments that, presumably, cause numbers oon the bingo cards to light up.

 

Does anyone know what these games are called?

 

[Illustration via Room 26]

'The Law of Las Vegas'

On Arte +7, you can still watch a documentary about a murder case in Las Vegas called 'Das Gesetz von Las Vegas' (g) here. We see real public defenders and real prosecutors gearing up for a case involving a nutty 70-year-old man who stabbed someone to death in an old folks' home. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Now a bleg: I would rather watch this documentary in the original English. Does anyone see a way to do that on the Arte website? If you can give me a pointer here, I'd really appreciate it.

What are You Called, Beautiful Bastard?

So a few days ago I take a bike exursion to the Urdenbacher Kaempe (g), a large nature preserve just south of Duesseldorf. It's located in an area that was 'reclaimed' for dry land after the Rhine river changed direction in the 14th century. Because it's still close to river level, parts of it still flood every year. It has meadows, orchards, riverside forests, and swamp-like areas that stay moist all year. In the early 1990s, a quasi-public foundation bought the entire region and declared it a nature reserve. There's a 'biostation' (g) ('nature monitoring station', approximately) right in the middle of it, keepin' it real.

I could rhapsodize for pages about this enchanting place, but I have more pedestrian things to do. For now, I'd like to call upon the hive-mind to help me answer the question: what sort of bird is this?

It stood on the bought of a dead tree, much more upright than a bird should stand, looking distressingly aloof. It's wearing tapered trousers and a morning coat, for God's sake! I clambered noisily through the underbrush to get this picture (best I could do), but the bird completely ignored me, as if I were a sniveling peon begging for leftover dormouse intestines from its midday meal.

I've looked through all my nature guides, to no avail. Can any friend of nature help a budding ornithologist?

Help Me Help the Black Forest Tourist Industry!

Hi there! I'm breaking the blog hiatus with a bleg. What an ugly sentence.

Anyway, I'm thinking of popping down to the Schwarzwald (which I've never visited) to do a bit of hiking. Must flee distractions of big city, also wish to relieve drudgery of the constant cogitating and writing. I'm thinking of the area near Todtnau, but am not committed.

What I'd like is a fairly secluded smallish B&B pension-type place (7-15 rooms), with lots of hiking opportunities nearby. I don't need spas or saunas or stuff like that, although if they're provided I'll use them. Just basic accommodations, and no buses full of tourists with screaming children. Or, for that matter, buses full of screaming tourists. No screaming is all I want. Is that too much to ask? What's more, this should all be pretty damned cheap, such as under 50 eur/night.

Suggestions are much appreciated. And yes, I'm sure this blog's demanding and discriminating readers will piss on the Black Forest and suggest other, hipper/more dangerous/more obscure places to hike. You're welcome to do so, but I really think I ought to see the Black Forest at least once. Everyone always asks me about it when I visit the States.

Daniel Vom und Zum Küblböck

A simple question for you, my sleek, sophisticated readers. I was just reading a review of a new biography (g) of Adam von Trott zu Solz, a member of the Kreisauer Kreis (g) of the German resistance to Adolf Hitler.

As his name indicates, Adam von Trott zu Solz was a member of the German titled nobility. Generally, these people are called 'von' (from) something. Some of them, like Adam, also have a 'zu' (to) in their title. Another example is the Prussian legal reformer Karl vom und zum Stein (g). Now, in Trott zu Solz's case, I can see the 'zu Solz' as a place designation, that is, it could literally mean 'Adam from the town Trott in the region of (or near the city of) Solz'. But Karl's name, literally translated, means "Karl from and to the stone," which evokes an image of a Prussian official repeatedly running away from, and then back to, a large rock.

I have asked several Germans why certain members of the nobility have not only a 'von' but also a 'zu', but have yet to get a clear answer to this question. Can any of you help me? 

What to do with all those unwanted SUVs?

Ship them to Germany and turn them into mobile sausage stands!

Does anyone happen to know what model/year Citroen this is? I was chased away by a minion of Meilenwerk before I could scope a nameplate.

"Tastes Like the Rising Sun of Anatolia"

A quick bleg for my beloved readers: last night, a bunch of friends were discussing a movie, made in Turkey in the mid-1980s, which depicts a Turkish guy who "steals" a German police uniform and goes around pretending to be a cop. At one point, he's offered a drink of raki, a Turkish anise schnapps. He tastes it, and says: "Ahh. It tastes like the rising sun of Anatolia."

I have been advised in no uncertain terms to watch this movie, but none of my friends could remember its name. Little help?

'Decomposition of the Soul' on DVD?

It's time for another bleg. I'm looking for a DVD of a 2003 documentary called "Decomposition of the Soul," about Stasi psychological terror tactics (Zersetzung). The documentary apparently had a theatrical release in the U.S. and U.K. in 2003, and has been broadcast on German stations. Here's a review by the New York Times' critic:  

A German and Belgian co-production, “The Decomposition of the Soul” ... offers no palliatives, though partly because it’s a bore.* It takes more than a worthy subject to make a good documentary, after all; it takes intelligent, specific, directed filmmaking. The German-born Ms. Toussaint and the Italian-born Mr. Iannetta have seized on a fine subject and, in Hartmut Richter and Sigrid Paul, former Stasi prisoners, found witnesses who put a face on a national calamity. Yet they have made a film as austere and barren as an old Stasi prison hallway.

The filmmakers basically employ one strategy: they shoot interviews with Mr. Richter and Ms. Paul inside the Stasi’s former prison (part of it now a museum) in the East Berlin district known as the Hohenschönhausen. These survivor-witnesses, who were arrested on different charges, alternately walk through the building’s desolate halls and rooms, movingly relate their stories on camera and stare silently into space, sometimes while their voice-overs continue. The filmmakers are big on silence, which perhaps they mean to seem poetic, but mostly feels like padding.

Ideally, I'd like to buy a version (1) on DVD; with (2) English subtitles. I wouldn't mind seeing this film myself, but a friend of mine who's very interested in the Stasi would also like to see it, and English subtitles would help him a lot.

I made a few perfunctory efforts to find this movie on DVD, but had no luck. Then, I thought "why not see if my good-looking, ultra-sophisticated readership can find this movie for me?" Go to it, you beautiful bastards!