A couple of unrelated items to add today.
First, on both Saturday and Sunday, there were more anti-Harz IV marches. The first one drew 50,000 people, the second, apparently, considerably fewer. The second was advertised as a "Sternmarsch," or a "star-march," with several different starting points. That may have been too hard for the hard-core hungover unemployed, or else maybe everyone was pooped from marching the day before.
The ultimate reason for this is that Saturday is going to be a national holiday, perhaps the most hated one of all: the Day of German Unity, guaranteed to spawn a riot or two, and a lot of ill-will around the still unhealed wound between East and West. It's a good day to either leave town or else stay indoors. But they seem to be celebrating it all week, since there's a Ferris wheel set up at the Brandenburg Gate, and a lot of bratwurst stands.
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The graffiti scene here continues to get wilder. From scrawling on a flat surface, to using a stencil, to pasting a sheet of paper, now we have the crochet graffitists! I'll have to post a picture of these, because they're just too weird to believe. A long, green, stemlike structure is anchored in a flower pot, leaves are meticulously added, and various stuff is integrated into this sort of vine-like plant of string. I've seen two so far, only formally similar, enough so that you can tell they're the work of the same person or people. I should photograph them before the inevitable vandal comes along.
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And I don't want to leave the impression that I didn't get anything out of PopKommm, either. Taking the S-Bahn there in the mornings, I finally saw the huge Centro Italiano, the wholesale market for the Italian restaurant and deli trade, with retail prices for the rest of us. I went there today and was fairly impressed. Easy to get to from here, too.
The other thing I got:
A cold.
Off to honk some more.
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1 comment:
Hey, why is it that only other blog owners can post? Now I've created some totally lame-o blog that just pollutes cyberspace and will lie dormant because I don't really feel I have anything that spectacular to share with netizens on a regular basis. Unlike Berlinbites, which is always an enjoyable, insightful read.
However, there are some things that need to be set straight about the Popkomm entry. First of all, Germany does have a cenralized organization for promoted Teutonic tunes abroad. It's called German Sounds (just so that everybody'll understand, unlike the frogs who arrogantly leave the name in French...)
As for the quota debate: not only really arcane, but also totally unnecessary. Recently, 6 out of 10 entries in the German top 10 album charts we by German artists. German hiphop and more recently, homegrown reggae/ragga by the likes of Seeed, Gentleman or Jan Delay are selling like hotcakes. Not to mention the German recording industry's madwoman in the attic, Volksmusik, which will still sell until that segment's buyers (usually 55+) are under the grave. So no, Robbie, Gwynnie's hubby, Christina, Britney or Marshall don't have the German charts entirely in their mits.
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