Christmas 2009

These past days I’ve been doing quite a lot of video editing. Just like “Hamburg in Snow”, this one was edited quickly using iMovie. I reserve Final Cut for the more fancy projects, like the Resurrection Freeze. This time I found a nice track on ccmixter, a great site where artists contribute pieces (vocals, guitar etc.) which are used by other artists to create songs.

Hamburg in Snow

It doesn’t snow often in Hamburg in December, but this month has been exceptional and I’m happy to be in Germany at this time. Honestly, many cities which I would call “summer cities” because they are not an exciting sight during the winter time, are now worth a day trip.

Anyway, I had some time to spare so I edited a short video about Hamburg in snow, filmed at the city park.

Long long time ago…

Source of the latest gossip: the blackboard

…I went to high school here in Hamburg. It’s the Heinrich Hertz School (HHS), named after the famous physician. I graduated there and since doing my civil service at that school, I haven’t been there. It was really coincidence that the annual alumni meeting happened to be during the time where I’m in Germany.

There hasn’t been a meeting of my old class since we graduated and I didn’t see many class members today. They also had separate rooms for the graduation years. Let’s just say the room for “my” year didn’t suffer from overcrowding. Less Yamanote, more German subway.

Of course I took the opportunity to take some pictures of my old school. Yes, the paintings on the walls are legal – they were done as part of the art course.

Origami

Whenever I built a paper plane, it generally knew only one direction: downwards. But there are some people who are really good at folding papers and they could exhibit their work at one of Hamburg’s finest museum, the Museum fuer Kunst und Gewerbe. Jenny, Bettina and I went there and the museum staff didn’t seem to mind the camera (or they didn’t notice which I doubt somehow). Over 140 exhibits from 44 artists were shown and there were some really complex works on display. We also strolled through the permanent exhibition like the piano collection but skipped the porcelain one. The exhibit is running until 7th October 2007.

Aargh, the wallpaper is still breathing!

Today saw the death of the wallpaper – or so I thought before I tried to remove the last pieces. We went to my old apartment for another reason: A company called Willhelm Tell was authorised to install a new cable tv and internet connection. Of course, it will be of no use for me but still I had to open the door and wait for the cable guy (actually guys) to finish his job. While he was working, I shreddered the last pieces of the carpet while my mom cleaned the kitchen (merely for appearances, since they are going to wreck the kitchen and the bathroom anyway). When it became obvious that we didn’t have enough “white bags” (special plastic bags in which you can put up to 25 kilo of garbage – they are collected by the garbage men), my mom went to get some more. While she was away, I twisted off the cupboard in the bathroom and carried some of the white bags down. When she came back she told me that she went to the drugstore at the subway station Ritterstraße where they didn’t have the bags, then she went to the DIY store where they didn’t even know that such bags existed (as if there isn’t any garbage when you remove the wallpaper or work on your home!). Or maybe they have that magic formula to let garbage disappear – or at least teleport into the neighbours’ living room – not every waste can be put below the carpet.

Goodbye to the VHS

Has it really been two years since I started learning Japanese at the VHS? Looking back, I guess it would have been better to join one of the intensive courses at the university, since the pace at the VHS is quite slow. The problem of the VHS is, that it has the same holidays as regular schools. So there were weeks where there are no lessons at all and even if there are lessons, there are only about two per week maximum.

On the other hand, the teachers were very nice. Unfortunately, the options for learning Japanese in Hamburg are quite limited, there are probably more options available in Dusseldorf.

The wallpaper wars

I hate wallpapers,
the wallpapers hate me,
I’d rather sit under a big cherry tree.

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Originally we thought about driving to Berlin but I had to finish a few articles so we decided on the Hamburger Kunsthalle instead, an art museum situated near Hamburg’s central station. The other alternative (Celle, a small town in the south of Hamburg) was ruled out because the weather was not very good.
The art museum shows works by classic and modern artists and is quite big. The classic works are dominated by religious themes of course. There is also a nice restaurant inside. Currently they show a black cube outside which resembles the Kaaba, some art halls (like the one in Berlin) thought it might cause protests in the near east world but so far everything is quiet in Hamburg.

Nippon hour

One single hour full of Japanese language training: As usual it was time for language lessons with my sensei. She had a bit of a cold (which is not unusual considering the weather) and asked me what I did just listen to on my iPod. It was Every Little Thing (which I like very much, especially the slower songs) which is also well known to her. Just like last hour the lesson would start with telling what did happen on Saturday. I went to the “Lord of the Rings” exhibition which was of course interesting for my Sensei because she likes the movies. She was a bit amused though when I told her that I travelled to Berlin and back via regional trains. Ok, it’s a bit unusual but it’s definetely cheap
An ongoing contest of another kind is the “n desu” form. It’s not difficult per se but it takes time to be able to fluently transform the masu form to the appropriate “n desu” form. Since doing only one topic would be quite boring, she introduced the “normalisator” koto. It became obvious that “Japanese for busy people” – the book that is used by almost all Volkshochschule Japanese courses in Hamburg -  is serious lacking in the grammar explanations. The papers she prepared were much more clear and precise.
After Japanese I returned two DVDs at the central library and luckily they were not too late (which can get quite expensive, you know).

The Queen was not amused

Today was movie monday -it’s been a while since I was in the cinema. So we were going to see “The Queen” in a small cinema called Abaton. Abaton is a place to see the more ambitious film works. It’s situated near the university and also shows films in English language (with German subtitle). That’s why we watched the movie there and not elsewhere.
The movie was nice but a bit limited to Diana. Hellen Mirren is an Oscar favourite, though.
Afterwards we went to Jenny’s and ordered something from an Indian fast-food-take-away service. I don’t like the food much and I only ate half of my meal. We watched two older episodes of Gilmour Girls, deciding against Desperate Housewives which Bettina and I are not great fans of.
Jenny sort of half-accused me for not writing a story so I did start one late in the evening. “Weisheit” (Wisdom) is inspired by a “Club Wortwechsel” topic and it’s neither a parody nor something about Japan, so it’s something new for me .