Holy Shit February, and the past few days

Last night was the lange nacht der museen, an event that happens twice annually in Berlin in which most museums accept admission through a single ticket and stay open until 1 or 2am. Special busses take huge crowds of people all over the city to the numerous museums and exhibits that may be going on and berliners and tourists celebrate. My first stop was the Altes (old) museum for its show of egyptian art and the bust of Nefertiti. For some reason they had pieces by Alberto Giacometti attempting to represent ancient egyptian-style figures through his crude metal sculpture. I thought it was the most absurd thing and their presence almost would have detracted from the fine beauty of the egyptian sculptor's style if not for the utmost disparity and lack of inspiration. The most fascinating pieces in the exhibit were Roman style portraits from egypt which were undated but made me very curious.
After the Altes I went to an exhibit in the Deutschland Historisches museum covering art made between the WWI and WWII, impressions of the war and the nazi and socialist parties. Some of this stuff was truly incredible. Paul Weber made the most powerful prints, foreshadowing events 30 years in the future as critical artists and activists at the time knew to be inevitable given the state of affairs at the time. Scathing commentary and incredible depictions of terribly grim nature.
Sculptor Anish Kapoor had an installation at the Deutsch Guggenheim. The piece, "Memory," was a huge steel oblong object in one room with a window to the inside set into a white wall in the opposite room. With no lights on the interior the incredible whiteness of the wall pulled out the incredible blackness within. It was full of tourists poking their heads into this wall and ruining the effect by flashing it up, but I can imagine it's impressive power on a person in solitude and quiet which it reflects.
The last stop of the night was the Gemaldegalerie to look at classical paintings. Supposedly the gallery was featuring a comparison of Giotto to Rothko but there were no Rothko pieces and I'll have to see if that's elsewhere in the museum because I have no idea how the two could be related. I did spend a good deal of time with Gilles (an art history major in the same program as I) to cover the entire gallery which houses some terribly famous paintings by Carravaggio, Rembrandt, and other painters I appreciate like Watteau, Ruisdael, and Rubens.

I'm actually writing this blog in reverse from today which is Sunday back to Wednesday since I want to cover the places I've been if not just briefly to convey a sense of how much there is to do. Time goes very fast and very slow when you enjoy everything you do and are not settled into a scheduled routine (which will start tomorrow with 9am class everyday for five weeks), but even then time gets distorted in different ways for different reasons, not all of which we understand or care to put together so much, but at least I'm attempting to keep it together by writing about some solid things. Later in the semester is when I get to open my valves all the way and get into working my creative flow. I drip every now and then but it doesn't leave a trail I can trace back. I wonder if it evaporates, or rather becomes part of wherever it lands, like an oil stain which you may polish over but only further engrain.

Friday 30.1 was dinner my house with the cool kids I've befriended, James, Ariella, Ian, Gilles, and Ryan (my roommate), mostly the coolest of the bunch of Lexia Study Abroad students. We're a mix of the visual art kids and architecture kids and we've been bonding more than the others. People develop preferences, it's only natural when you want to have fun. Anyway we cooked a wicked dinner of Gnocchi and Tortellini with mushrooms and pesto and drank several bottles of wine and ate copious gummies all in preparation for a long night of clubbing. It was some of ours' first times clubbing, others seasoned veterans of the dance floor war (it can be scary out there). Truly too expensive to get into a club which was too small, is all I have to say. It was fun though going and coming and in-betweening. I thought I locked myself out of my apartment since Ryan broke his key earlier in the day and I was sure my key was in my room. Not until traversing town to James' place did I casually pull my key out of my pocket like it was nothing and just stand in awe for a half a second before laughing my ass off.

Wednesday and Thursday I visited cemeteries, Wednesday the Jewish cemetery and Thursday the memorial for Soviet soldiers in Treptower Park in East Berlin. The two were impressive in entirely different ways and encompass entirely different mindsets while approaching. The Soviet monument is a citation of power and honor in a time of most difficulty for the Germans, while the Jewish cemetery recalls a mass defilement of a race in a place meant to honor their presence on the earth. The resting places of the dead say a lot about the times. I think I'll want to return on my own some other time, as I've always had some kind of attraction to cemeteries and their whims.