Working with these unfamiliar paints is a problem because the colours mix differently. Again I didn't get the yellow that I imagined I'd bought. It means that I will have to do a lot of experimentation and buy whole ranges of paint to make the colour come right. It is frustrating, but live and learn girl, I guess. Letting what I'd laid down to dry (it's wrong), I went out and visited some of the dozens of commercial galleries near here on Linienstrasse and Auguststrasse to give myself a break. Floating up above these narrow old twisty streets now given over to art and mammon is the exotic dome of the 1857 Neue Synagogue, which was attacked during Kristallnacht in1938 and then again damaged by Allied bombing in 1945.
In the evening was a dinner with the promise of a ‘typical English meal' cooked by my English/Welsh artist friend in his rambling large flat heated by ceramic tiled coal stoves in every room, that he shares with two friends. What a treat – a large roast leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, roasted parsnips, gravy, mashed carrots and boiled cabbage plus a lot of beer and red wine. What could be better? We all fell to eating as if we hadn't had proper food for ages, still continuing the lively conversations. An anthropologist, a geographer, both German, a Czech studying architecture, a Bulgarian in PR, and we two painters, had lots to say about rock and roll, architecture, clubbing, the state of the world, and how we view Berlin, as well as much reminiscing of past dinners. Perplexingly the other guests all held up the parsnips and asked what they were. He had bought them in the local market but they all said they had never eaten parsnips before.
At midnight coming out, the world was heaped in fluffy white with large snowflakes swirling. I love the quiet hush that snow makes as it insulates any sound.
