Us

This morning, ding dong. Gückman gets the door, he's expecting someone, Turkish, boring I don't understand so I lazily click through the Dirty Words Turkish dictionary, am distantly aware of them hauling the (kaputt) computer chair out the front, then there's a light like a camera flash and the two men, workmen, blue collar laborers, have their tools out and no gear on and are welding the broken bits back together (Weldıng ıs a fabrıcatıon or sculptural process that joıns materıals, usually metals or thermoplastıcs, by causıng coalescence.) little metal sparks are birthed and buried in the stormy gray graveyard fabric, and the men stand in our doorway like it's their business, but I suppose it is, and they ask us for a cup of water and exchange the para, money, and are off into the sloping cobblestone street.

• The sweetest of the sweets:

German Love, I Will Give It To You

Extra vigilante

My mom on working in hostels:

"I stayed in England for 5 months.  I left quickly because my girlfriend that I started out traveling with took up with our landlord (an Italian) and I brought 2 french students home for the night because they had been fired at the hotel and needed a place to stay.  Well it turns out that the Italian landlord was a nazi and started up with the french jewish students.  I left with them - done with england and didn't want to stay with the Italian nazi.  That's when I headed to Paris and took off from there to croatia, where I met up with Lenny.  I did not have fun traveling by myself.  I was constantly harrassed and followed.  Is it different now?  It's cool that the Turkish family has sort of taken you in.  Send me pics of you working and the family.  What is the name of the place?  I want to look it up online.  P.S.  In the old days a single woman traveling alone had a very tough time in Turkey.  Please be extra vigilante.  Love mom"

Island of Lost Boys

Theresa is finding lace trimmings in multi hued fabric stores, lanced with decorative coat hangers and children’s things.

She’s at the pillow-making stage of growing up.

Shopping for bargain bags of rice, forfeiting sleep and drinks for school, turning off the electricity, brewing loose leaf jasmine tea in a tall china teapot, painted toenails and nice mattress, soft lighting and impromptu bookshelves, the maudlin smell of clean laundry, eating salads in bed, starting a DVD collection, gold plated fleamarket candleholders leaning behind manhandled stacks of disposable photos, dark bottles of wine brooding in the corner and readily used blow dryers curling hungrily over the muted carpet.

groceries

regnet

one of those rainy Berlin days.

Zimmer

Homework

with tea, heater, candles

PHOTODIARY PART IV

Remember that one time in Norway?

when the waiter was an asshole.

and tried to give me a straw.

Christmasmarkt at Potsdammer platz. You light the candles, the top spins, they're traditionally placed beneath the christmas tree, which isn't erected until only a few days before Christmas eve, which is spent with family. Then the Christmas tree remains in the house until sometime in January.

Krakow

Prague, with this boy. We got lost on the way back from the bar. I took my shoes off and he took his off too, because he thought he was a gentleman. I thought he was stupid. I pretended to be French to throw off the late-night lurkers who took to a bedraggled girl shoeless in tights.

My room in Friedrichshain in Berlin - my roommate's work.

Tacheles in Berlin

Sex on the Beach

Creepy dolls in Wedding, Berlin

First weekend with girlfriends in Berlin.

Sound of music at a Bayerische bar

Something else somewhere drunk in Berlin.

Getranke

Greece had some snow days, I spent one of them in a suburb in Athens, biding my time with old blues songs, and Viennese hot chocolate, and British tea mix, cinnamon and something else.






Berlin: a Portrait
saw Helmut Newton exhibit. jesus, what a genius.







All the freaks come to Berlin, in the best way.






classic,
Clarissa, aka Mademoiselle Kla a trash punk burlesque dancer and quiches and tarte baker at Ohlàlà Tarte-shop.


You're leaving the homeless sleepy girl sector.

Pop

Pop-culture deprived, pop-culture depraved, shop allure derived, teenage girl misbehaved.
she forgave the enslaved, for they've paved the ways delayed.





PHOTO DIARY ENTRY III



Capri. shorelines.



Political event in a square in rome.




'auntie's' hostel in Venice.





Venice leaves me speechless. The magic, the magnetic, the twilight and square corners.





lovebirds. Love them. A wonderful valentines day well spent. Met real life guidos and they fascinated me on some guttural level. Debates on dancing differences in European and American cultures. shook off the lonely tagalong who liked me because I made Calvin and Hobbes references.




Budapest. Good, unexpected type of night.






budapest, the expected type of night.






I remember drunken us thought this stairway to be so significant to our nightly endeavours.




These girls. They kill me. They say things like 'knickers' and 'innit.' Some of the sweetest sweets.





Greek princess day, or something else.







Seeing Das Dschungelbuch with my teeny cousin. Who was terrified of the tiger. I bought her lots of popcorn because I can't help it, she's adorable and naturally the German bossy.




Berlin Wintergarten Theater




strawberry bag.




Bought some old photographs from the flea market.











The German cat, Mishu, adores honeydew melon.