Category: Germany

Wack­en Earth

I got this post­card from a super­mar­ket in a small town in NW Germany near where the fest­iv­al is held. I hope it has genu­ine Rammstein tears in the soil sample, or I’ll ask for my €3 back

Dachau

On my way back from the Tyrol, I stayed in Munich en route to the airport, and visited the Dachau concen­tra­tion camp museum- it was the first Nazi concen­tra­tion camp and served as a template for many of the others…

Büren-Harth

Here’s some more photos from Germany. From Harth in Nordrhein-West­falen to be more precise. It’s a small village in the Sauer­land, a scen­ic forest region about a hundred miles east of Cologne, popu­lar for hiking and cycling.

Düssel­dorf

I spent most of August in Germany, teach­ing some school work­shops and going to Docu­menta art fair along the way. My first assign­ment was in rural Nordrhein-West­falen. The agency has a tend­ency to book you on flights at brutal times early on a Sunday, so instead I booked my own flight to Cologne on a Friday even­ing, and claimed it back off them. I have been to Cologne loads of times, and my colleagues were flying into Düssel­dorf, which I had never visited. So I decided to stay in Düssel­dorf, do a bit of sight­see­ing, and then meet up with the others before head­ing to the Sauer­land.

Profess­or Knatsch­ke

My univer­sity library had a massive stack of print­ing industry annu­als from the 1890s through to the 20s. I always enjoyed look­ing through them because the illus­tra­tions and articles they chose to show­case new print­ing tech­no­lo­gies were often really odd, and were good to photo­copy for collages and zines. Next to them on the shelf was a strange little book called Profess­or Knatsch­ke. It’s a comedy book writ­ten and illus­trated in 1912 by Alsa­tian satir­ist Jean-Jacques Waltz, aka Hansi, about a clue­less German profess­or and his daughter’s trip to Paris, mock­ing both the French and the Germans (but mostly the Germans) in a more inno­cent pre-WW1 pre-Nazi era. I always really liked the illus­tra­tions (and Elsa K’s obses­sion with making gifts embroidered with “inspir­ing” mottoes) , and now it’s avail­able free online as a copy­right-free ebook.

Dresden

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I spent a week in Dresden. When I wasn’t work­ing, I was explor­ing, either alone, or with my co-work­er Hazel. The city was completely flattened in the Second World War (point­lessly in my opin­ion- it happened right at the end of the war, and Dresden wasn’t an indus­tri­al target). The DDR regime didn’t do much to restore the old town centre, but after reuni­fic­a­tion it was all put back togeth­er as much as possible as it was before (they kept a lot of the stones in a ware­house). The the city is a strange mix of restored Baroque, super-spruced up restored build­ings, dilap­id­ated build­ings wait­ing to be restored, and randomly spaced gaps of bomb sites that haven’t been built on yet. The setting of the city is along the River Elbe- you can see the wide banks left empty here- it’s prone to flood­ing. The local accent also sounds very much like a Brummie speak­ing German.

DDR Museum

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I’m fascin­ated by the history of the Cold War. Both the polit­ic­al side, and the social history of people’s every­day lives. I’ve always been extra fascin­ated by the former DDR, both because I can speak the language and because they tried so hard to be a “model” Iron Curtain soci­ety. You read about people being “intern­al emigrés”. Being a good comrade and work­er on the surface, but intern­ally escap­ing to their own world via drink or just plain daydream­ing. I suppose that’s what I’d do in the situ­ation. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I’m currently writ­ing a zine about the trip this summer, so I’ll save them for there.

Starkes Vier­tel- photos of Dresden Neustadt in the 70s and 80s

When I was in Dresden, I bought a photo­graphy book by a local photo­graph­er. Günter Starke lived in Dresden Neustadt, the area just across the river from the histor­ic­al centre, in the 70s and 80s, and took a lot of photos. Despite the name, Neustadt is full of old build­ings that escaped bomb­ing during the war (it’s only new compared to the baroque city centre), and in the commun­ist days, the local coun­cil concen­trated on build­ing blocks of flats and hous­ing estates to house famil­ies.

Travels Without My Aunt

I’ve spent most of the past month trav­el­ling around Germany and Austria teach­ing. It’s for an extra-curricular school programme. You do activ­it­ies to boost the children’s speak­ing confid­ence in English, work on creat­ive projects, and put on a show for the parents with present­a­tions of the projects, and drama writ­ten by the students. You don’t need to speak German to do the job, and you never speak German in the classroom, but of course it comes in useful to under­stand if the kids are being naughty, and in your time outside the classroom.