Well technically I just went to Berlin. I stayed for about a week - between two friends places both of which I met in Addis Ababa. The happening place to live is Kreuzberg its basically right in the center of the city just south of the river. Coincindentally most of the people that I know and met in Berlin live there. The rents are quite cheap - maybe around €400 for a decent size place.
Some weird statue in Kreuzberg
This is sort of a central place around Adalbertstraße and Oranienstraße. This is a very Turkish part of Berlin.
Clara
I met Clara in Addis about a year ago. She came as part of a group of students associated with INSTITUT FÜR RAUMEXPERIMENTE a special section of the Berlin art school taught by Olafur Eliasson. Most of the students spent about 3 months making work in Addis. They had a studio space setup in the fine arts school - it seemed like a pretty good exchange with the students here. Towards the end they had a show in this big open space around Sidist Kilo.
Clara is currently involved in a project with the Museum of Ethnography. We went and visited to see the films installed.
One side of the dual channel video she made.
Some of the 'collected' works house in the museum. Sort of a questionable area as well - where these obejects were taken from and their provenance is in questioned for me.
Additionally they've got a small exibit on doner kebab. Apparently there are 720 mil doner kebabs sold over the whole of Germany yearly.
Later we walked around Mitte and saw a few sights.
There's also this dude - the Berliner Bear, theyve got loads of them all around the city painted in different fashions.
We checked out a couple of galleries.
There is another Hamburgerstraße. I don't know exactly what Holland and Germany's fascination with Hamburger is. More to come.
They are reconstructing a very old castle and moving the Ethnographic museum as well as the a South American art musem there. This is also related to Clara's project. That's also the TV tower in the background - really iconic part of Berlin its stands out quite well.
You can buy a souvenir gas mask.
The Berliner Dome
Thats mostly what happened the first couple of days. Ill post more about Christmas Markets as well as all of the cultural institutions in the next few posts.