Post war architecture in germany is, as I gather, a dying breed. Excommunicated from the fair land of wooded slopes and gingerbread cottages on charges of looming tackiness and assertive uglydom. Everywhere are cranes and such smashing the monstrosities away.

I've long had a rather bland taste for "pretty" buildings but living in Germany has taught me to tell my greys apart. Indeed I find that since 2002 architecture critic Oliver Elser and photographer Andreas Muhs have been documenting the surprisingly interesting and diverse aesthetic of what was largely state housing, especially from east germany and berlin (restmodern.de there's a link to photos in english)

This also gives me an excuse to indulge in a google- ahem suspect corporation ya-toy to memorialise a kind of archictecture that the blindness of those such as former me would seek to overlook and utterly obliterate. A final message.

Hannah Arendt.

I'm doing a seminar on her. I go to packed out public lectures about her, Freiburgers spilling into the aisles. The newspapers publish tributes to her. In Berlin they have art space exhibitions inspired by her.

They do not talk about her personal life. They talk about her ideas - her drive to understand the horrors of her century and to come out of it all affirming the 'vita activa'.

This makes me love Germany. A female philosopher ought get such attention, laudation elsewhere. But I do wonder if she would?

I got stung by an electric fence trying to break into Heidegger's hut.

Paris.


We had lovely weather and its stark contrast to my chilly german asceticism put me in the mood for indulgence.

French champagne (yes, truly), long walks in the public parks, reading in the old haunts of de beauvoir and Hemingway (tracing a movable feast) and those ubiquitous boutiques aided greatly in this effort.

Missed Karl unfortunately, but this gives me ample excuse to revisit his hood (near Montmartre!)


Now I'm back in Freiburg, back to scrounging scraps of food and listening to Mirah by myself, so dont hate on my hedonism too much, kind friends.