Ich weiß nicht, wieso ich euch so hasse, (I dont know why I hate you so much)
Fahrradfahrer dieser Stadt. (The bike riders of this city)
Ich bin alleine und ich weiß es (I'm alone and I know it)
und ich find es sogar cool (I even find it "cool")
und ihr demonstriert Verbrüderung. (While you demonstrate communality (sortof))

Ich weiß nicht, wieso ich euch so hasse, (I dont know why I hate you so much)
Backgammon-Spieler dieser Stadt. (The Backgammon players of this city)
Ich bin alleine und ich weiß es (I'm alone and I know it)
und ich find es sogar cool (I even find it "cool")
und ihr demonstriert Verbrüderung. (While you demonstrate communality)

Ich weiß nicht, wieso ich euch so hasse, (I dont know why I hate you so much)
Tanztheater dieser Stadt. (Dance theatre of this city)
Ich bin alleine und ich weiß es (I'm alone and I know it)
und ich find es sogar cool (I even find it "cool")
und ihr demonstriert Verbrüderung. (While you demonstrate communality)

Ich bin alleine und ich weiß es (I'm alone and I know it)
und ich find es sogar cool (I even find it "cool")
und ihr demonstriert Verbrüderung (While you demonstrate communality )


'Freiburg 0.3' by Tocotronic



You fill in the electro beats. I'm off to a gig night tonight called 'Plastic Pop Up Club'. It sounds twee enough for my tastes but as the kids here wearily intone - "mal sehen".

Freiburg.

The name somehow tones awkward and heavy. Its the name of more than just a middlingly cutsey university town. Its a whole bloody year.

I've been postponing writing about Freiburg, fearing that whatever I would say about it would become solid, an inescapable lived thing.


The truth is: it's green here.


Not black. I hoped for black. The Forest, the ascetic philosophical existence, windy peaks, heathcliff it's me.


Instead I've been landed with an emerald green city'chen'. In so many ways.

1) It's no metropolis, in the Sydney, Vienna, Budapest stakes. 20 minutes walking and its rolling whatsnots and spiky hedges.

2) Ride-bike kids, with recyling in wicker baskets mow you down, bellowing 'Achtung, Achtung!' as they swoop through the cobbled streets to a twisty network of alley cafes.

3)Finally, and of most concern: I myself am green. PInned in with all the other no hopers without a word of german to their names, reading off a photcopied map, eager and pleased to find free public toilets.

Some travel notes. The scanty offerings of a scungy traveller.


Vienna (with Karl and Danny):


Todesangst at the Opera.

The Volksgarten and its green chairs.

Egon Schiele.

Hunderwasser Haus and red wine at an angle.

The placenta and New Years Eve revisited at das Haus der Musik.

Second Hand shops.


Around Austria (with Karl)

Salzburg. The bells thundering in our church-hostel. Every hour.
Avoiding men got up as Mozart.

Hallstatt. Swans and a chance to read the paper.





Villach. Scrambling up the alps, overlooking Italy to get to the highest place I’ve ever reached. Familial contentment.

Bratislava: (with Karl)

Glimpsing an eastern bloc chessboard landscape from the feudal castle walls.

Peering in on Porgy and Bess.

Budapest: (with Karl and Jack)

The, ah, fireworks.

Rembrandt’s 400th.

The house of Terror – a building where both Nazis and the Communists had by turns tortured and interrogated. The awful coalescences of history.

Learning to waltz next to the singing fountain on the Danube.

Prague:

The 10% of the old Jewish graveyard visible.

Gorgeous Municipal house with its Gutfreund drawings and Jugendstil exhibition.

Being the most demanding and fiddle-some trio at the museum of mechanical instruments.

Attending a Czech mass. The ‘cult of mariolatry’ imposters.