Berlin Residency Journal

What does one do on a Sunday? Why go to the Flea market of course. There on the very first stall was a cherry stoner. One euro and one pleased friend. What luck. Maybe it was because she'd gone to church first. For my part, I went to visit the perfect white bowl with which I have been having a distant love affair, and my breath caught; it wasn't there. Oh no. I registered the fact of its' absence, but my eyes continued to search. Feeling a pang, but knowing it wasn't meant to be, the phrase, ‘we were only ships passing in the night,' entered my head. Nothing will stop me coming back of course, in case it reappears. Will I continue to search the world's flea markets for a perfect white porcelain bowl priced less than thirty euros, preferably at twenty euros? Yes I still think it was too much. Twenty-five euros may have weakened me. The possessive stallholder kept us apart. He was obviously right that it would happen. Someone did pay thirty euros. But we have our history, that bowl and I. Ships that cross in the night.

From there we went to the Chapel of Reconciliation, the Mauer Wall Documentation , and the Hamburger Hof Contemporary Art Museum, where we saw the William Kentridge video installation. Somewhere just before this my blood sugar level must have dropped as I felt that I couldn't move another step. Fortunately the Felix Gonzales-Torres piece of the huge pile of shiny wrapped caramels was still on display, and crunching away on several made me feel better. Even more recuperative was the unmissable Kakao Cafe for the most sophisticated hot chocolate in the world. This, along with an attractively modest Indian meal on the way back to the studio, brought my friend's visit to a close and from the Haut Bahnhof on the overnight train to London, back she went

After bacon, eggs, a plum and coffee we went to the Gallery Goff+Rosenthal, on Brunnenstrasse to see an exhibition of American artists, ‘From Our Living Room to Yours', full of funky art objects. Sitting round a table talking to the extremely pleasant and friendly gallery director with one of the art pieces in the centre was somewhat disconcerting as it looked exactly like a big layer cake with icing that one would like to scoop out and lick a finger full, but it is made all the way through of solid oil paint. From there we did a bit of shopping. My friend, a textile designer and screen printer is also a magnificent cook and wanted to buy a German cherry stoner. This quest we pursued from one store to another without success. The reason given being that ‘cherries are not in season now.' But stainless steel does not have to be fresh we moaned fruitlessly. (Sorry). So a plum pitter was purchased instead. Plums are in season, as we knew from eating them. (But probably in Bolivia or somewhere, Peruvian plums anybody?). There was just time to fit in a museum as we had booked a dinner reservation for the restaurant on the top of the Reichstag, to circumvent the invariable long waiting queue to get in. Unfortunately, getting on the (wrong) train, meant we spent the time going back to where we had started, but taking photographs of the seat cover patterns. East Berlin is completely covered, smothered, in graffiti. Public transport circumvents any more, or is just responding to prevailing tastes, by using graffiti inspired motifs on the seat covers. Even chunks of graffiti are framed to decorate an S-Bahn station.

The Reichstag. What a tremendous experience. The restaurant reservation certainly made it a privileged breeze to get in and through the security checks. What a view at the top and the buzz of Norman Fosters glass dome. The restaurant, elegant, is not cheap, yet considering the wonder of it all, not as expensive as it might possibly be. But I should tell you that my friend said that the meal was on her and it did cost a bomb, one hundred euros for us both. Fabulous, memorable, a complete treat. Seeing Berlin lit up and laid out before us in the night as we walked outside on the roof, then climbed the winding ramp to the top, looking down at the violet seats of the parliament, everyone excited and thrilled to be there, the Reichstag open to visitors until midnight is a glorious glamorous experience. Who would have thought it? Something I didn't know is that my friend suffers from vertigo, but she was very brave.

Since we were interacting with the evening, I took her to see the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz for all that Hollywood razamatazz, and then we walked to the Modern Art Museum so that she could at least see the Mies van der Rohe building. Approaching, the building seemed to be shooting orange sparks. The whole ceiling was covered with moving orange rays of words pulsating towards us in parallel strips. It was a Jenny Holzer electronic text piece. The word ‘scorn' was constantly repeated along with phrases such as, "while you spend I save," scorn, "while you play I work," scorn. This went on for some minutes while one tried to follow the running words, to see what the pattern might be from one row to the next but it was relentlessly fast like a blitz, then Bang the words receded, then went dark, until Bang they started again, but this time in German. Midnight and no one else there and this wonderful art piece giving its all.

Straight away we were ready to go on the Fat Tire Berlin Bike tour. Already it was raining but we were not deterred. First we had breakfast at the top of the Galleria department store with its great view looking out at Alexanderplatz, then we joined the three other cyclists with Tom the guide, and off we went. Just to trap us the skies cleared as we set off and so I didn't put on waterproof trousers or top. Big mistake. Once we were far enough away from the Fernsehturm the huge television tower where Fat Tire's office is, that it was too far to go back, it started pouring. Undaunted we pressed on and occasionally the rain even stopped for a few minutes. The rain did not put a damper on the joy of cycling around Berlin even if one might wince at the word, but a lunch break for Bratwurst and hot drinks came just in time to thaw out my hands and feet. With us on the tour was an artist from South Carolina and her doctor husband. As they turned up to go bicycling, they introduced themselves as "Joseph and Mary, we've left the Kid at home". After the tour they invited us for afternoon tea at their hotel so that they could introduce me to a Berlin artist whose sister, lives in South Carolina. They were such very warm and friendly people. She is small, sweet, fair curly-haired, blue eyed, with a lilting Southern voice and an open nature. Her paintings use her experiences such as when she worked in the Philippines with the street prostitutes. Their friend turned out to be French but has lived as an artist in Berlin for more than twenty years. It was such a pleasure, by unlikely chance, to meet up with these artists and lanky humorous Joseph. We did have a short rest and a bite to eat before going out in the evening, my friend's first day in Berlin, a full one. In fact we cut it so fine we took a taxi so that we wouldn't be late. That is extravagant but the performance written and acted by Lindsay Annis was certainly worth it. It was spectacular. My Ulysses taken from and adapted James Joyce's Ulysses. It was sharp and funny, the performance ribboned through with personal references about finding a flat in Berlin through an ad, and then another, and also references to the production. The sound effects exactly, austerely, creatively imaginative. As was the sparse choreography. It was as I remembered off Broadway used to be before it got into being boring clichéd Fringe. Now here in Berlin I felt the same intense excitement. And you know what? She's got a studio at the Milchhof. That is so great. The elation of the performance buoyed us up and we went to Gorky Park at one thirty in the morning for bowls of Borsht. No problem. Welcome to friendly-to-artists Berlin.

A friend from London arrives today. She's coming by overnight train and will arrive at 8:30 am. My plan is to take her on a bicycle tour of Berlin too, but this time with a regular city tour that Tom guides so that she gets orientated. What is the weather going to do? After I had sent her the directions how to get from the Hauptbahnhof station by the S-bahn to Alexanderplatz she texted me that her guide book said that she would be arriving at Ostbahnhof, which threw me, and I had to stop and laboriously text her, (I'm crap at texting), that she definitely was not etc. until finally the penny dropped-she had a very old guide book. My goodness why didn't she look at her ticket? Guide Book perils are something to add to the list of travelling warnings. Soon I'm either going to be fit or dead. Especially since I felt I had to do some housekeeping today, (steps back in amazement), and cleaned the floor in the anteroom which will be the guest bedroom for her. Even Tom from the office was amazed when he passed by. Now it looks quite cosy but how comfortable that inflatable bed really is, I'm not sure.

As soon as we got our bikes from the Fat Tire Bike Company it began to rain. After some dithering and then putting on both rain trousers and those clear plastic tops that all Americans seem to carry, off Sarah and I sped in a light drizzle, Tom leading the way. Our first destination was to go further into the Eastern Zone to Friedrichshain where a mile of the Wall still remains, known as the East Gallery. After that we cycled up Karl Marx Allee. Sarah is a speeder while I hang back a little and look around, even sometimes taking photographs So she set the pace with Tom asking him questions and I kept up but liked cycling at not quite such a ferocious pace. We got back to Alexanderplatz just as the light was failing, much exhilarated.