Segveh

Been taking tram line 16 every morning to get to class. The class start time has been pushed back a merciful 15 minutes, meaning I can actually leave home at a breezy 8am. In the afternoon, after wandering around a while, I usually find myself in Heumarkt, and catch a bus home. I haven't biked to class – I don't yet know a smooth route. Sometime in the coming week I'll take my bike on the tram, and ride home in the afternoon. There's lots of room for bikes and such on the trams and buses, and carrying them onboard is normal practice. Something I hadn't expected, however, was the yuppie dude who rode his Segway onto the 16 Friday morning (oder Freitag Morgen). I didn't have my camera with me, so this Googled image will have to stand in its place. Anyway, I guess in Marienburg I should expect such things. And maybe I I also shouldn't have been surprised to see him carrying on a conversation using his hands-free Bluetooth sunglasses. Smokin' dude, smokin'.

Recently Played: The Renegades

I shoulda posted this a couple weeks ago, when Aki Kaurismaki's terrific new film Light in the Dusk was still screening in Seattle. (Missed it? Not to worry - you can already rent it at Scarecrow Video.) The Renegades' music features prominently in almost all of Kaurismaki's droll comedies. In the new one, he steps outside of the Renegades catalog, but if I'm not mistaken, this song appears on the soundtrack, perhaps for old times' sake:

The Renegades – My Heart Must Do The Crying

The Renegades were one of the all-but-forgotten also-rans of 60s British rock and roll. In 1965(?), the Birmingham group scored a respectable hit in the UK with “Cadillac,” which seems to be a reworking of a Vince Taylor song. Sadly, the kind of fame enjoyed by the Beatles, the Stones, or the Kinks would ultimately allude them ...at least in Britain. Italy, on the other hand, took a real shine to them and, for whatever reason, Finland adopted them as their most beloved rock band of all time. The Finnish fan base was so devoted, in fact, that some members of the band eventually relocated to Helsinki permanently. Kaurismaki, if you hadn't pieced it together, is from Finland, and his films are gloriously steeped in a particular kind of “outsider nostalgia” that the Renegades sit comfortably at the center of. Their music isn't too easy to come by these days, so here are a few more of their songs, which can be heard in other great Kaurismaki films, and in almost every mixtape I've made in the past five years.

The Renegades – Cadillac
The Renegades – Do The Shake
The Renegades – If I Had Someone To Dream Of

And yes, the Clash are indeed paying homage to “Cadillac” on London Calling.

German Class

Eight days of class completed, Köln feels like a whole new world. Don't get me wrong – the 40 class hours haven't miraculously gifted me with fluent German or anything. But neither do I feel completely helpless when spoken to.

Our teacher is outspoken and looks a little like a Santa Claus. In a booming voice, he taunts and humiliates us into quasi-functional German answers to his initially incomprehensible questions. He seems to speak a little of every language in the world, and is clearly very well traveled (due to his holiday stocking-stuffing excursions, perhaps?). This is good, because, as a class, we're something of a Tower of Babel. I'd imagined a class chocked full of Yanks, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a class consisting consist of: 2 US Americans (counting myself), 2 Russians, 2 Brazillians, 2 Turks, 1 Venezuelan, 1 Pole, 1 Portugese, 1 South Korean, 1 Japanese, 1 Spaniard, and 1 Tunisian. We range, in age, from 18 to 33. Most of us speak English, but not all, and everyone is very friendly. As far as why we're all here in Köln, love may not make the world go round, but it seems to make the world move around, as most of us are here to be with a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife (as well as to live, learn, and work, of course). We're all becoming fast friends, few of us knowing many people around the city. Sometimes during class breaks, this means resorting to Deutsch as a common currency of communication. Really, this is proving an ideal way to learn German, not to mention meet people from all over the world.

Later this week, Herr Lehrer (that's the teacher) is taking us shopping in an open-air market, where we'll be expected to identify produce items by name, and smoothly navigate transactions in German. Kelly didn't hafta sign any permission slips for this field trip, but all the same, I'm hoping there's a long rope we'll all be required to hold onto. Or at least that we're instructed on the importance of the buddy system.

Anyway, should the opportunity arise, and time and money are no object, I heartily recommend uprooting yourself, relocating to a strange land, allowing sufficient time to become desperately bored, and then devoting yourself to a full-time language course.

Rheinsteig

As promised, the weather finally got beautiful again this weekend. Friday, with such promises in mind, I came home proposing that we spend Sunday hiking and exploring the nearby Rheinsteig. The weather wouldn't be nice for too much longer, and besides, what else is there to do on a Sunday in Germany. The Rheinsteig is one of Germany's largest national parks - so large that to cover the entire park one would take 20 days. I thought I had it all planned out - a route that looked like a good length and with a few hills.

Sunday we left almost an hour later than we'd planned, due in part to the previous evening's trip across the river to catch a show by local band NILG, featuring someone Chris knew from the UW almost a decade ago. Anyway, we took about an hour train ride south to the small town of Bad Honnef, where we would start our journey. However, my planning skills are not always the best, so I didn't really know how we were supposed to get from the train station to the park entrance. That became our first challenge, but after only one wrong turn, we eventually found the park. There we found a very detailed map of the park, however the "you are here" marking was no where to be seen. There were trail markings, but they were neither as frequent nor as detailed as we probably needed (the park is criss-crossed with countless trails). This just meant, pick a direction and start wandering. We soon came to a very steep hill, which we embarked up. The farther up we went, the narrower the trail got, until at the end we were scaling along a ridge of shrubs, hoping the loose rocks wouldn't slide out from underneath us. Of course at the top of what turned out to be Himmerich Hof was a beautiful view, as well as quite a few other hikers who'd taken much less risky routes up.
We continued back down on a better marked and less steep hill, until we found another map. This one too (like all the rest we would find) lacked the "you are here" marking. We thought we had some idea of where we were and which trail to follow, but we were usually wrong. Long story short, we made it out of the park after spending a total of three and a half hours there. Like all good German parks, there was a beer garden on one of the hills (which we didn't visit, since we still had to figure out how to home).
I learned about Chris's fear of beetles, as he contemplated the question of how many beetles lived in the park (more than there are people in Germany?). The forest reminded us of the Northwest's evergreen forests, and it was easy to forget that we were in Germany, until we were passed by mountain bikes ridden by Germans. Our original plan was to head north and board a train home at a different station than we had started at. However, we took a wrong turn somewhere and eventually found ourself dumped back in Bad Honnef, though at a different entrance. Perhaps that was all for the better, since we had a vague idea about how to get to the train station. Amazingly, my inner compass managed to work fairly well. This is something I always think will happen, but usually it fails. To continue our good luck, we waited less than five minutes for our train back to Köln, and had a seamless connection back home. It was a beautiful day in the sun, and wore us out enough to fall asleep early, so Chris could get out of bed much earlier than normal for his first day of German class.

Meet The Neighbors

If you take many inter-city trains around here, you can't help but notice the integration of land use. At one point on our ride to Liege, I glanced out the window and saw: a high rise apartment, a corn field, a golf course, a parking lot, a grain silo, a nuclear power plant. This was all at once, and without turning my head.

Sometimes you don't even have to board a train to observe this. Take Sunday, for example. Waiting at a crosswalk – the nearest crosswalk to our flat, as a matter of fact – Kelly and I saw just across the Rhein a cluster of somethings that hadn't been there before. We had a tram to catch, and there was no time for close scrutiny. That evening we were back at the crosswalk, and saw that these somethings moved, and that they were sheep.

It maybe isn't obvious in these pictures, but this is very much inside the city. You can see the Dom from here, and in fact could probably reach it by bicycle in fifteen minutes.
Anyway, they were cute. I took these pictures at the tail-end of our too-brief heat wave. I'd pedaled across the bridge to see them up close, and passed what turned out to be Köln's last hour of sunshine reading in a green patch at the water's edge, more or less pretending to live in a Rohmer film. And then of course the clouds rushed in. Heavy raindrops had almost completely rinsed the sweat from my shirt by the time I'd reached home.

Recently Played: Frank Bretschneider

Way back in June I mentioned that there was a new Frank Bretschneider album out on Raster Noton. Rhythm is the title, and I finally picked it up and have been feeling it out this week.

Frank Bretschneider – We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
Frank Bretschneider – The Eight Day People

Man, makes me wish I had a lab coat. If clinical percussion's your pleasure, Bretschneider's your man.

While I'm at it, here's a Bretschneider track from way back in the 20th Century, recorded under his Komet moniker. This, by the way, happens to be the first Bretschneider I heard, thanks to Brian and Iman's excellent ears. It's out-of-print too, so show some respect!

Komet - 4'32”

An autobiographical aside: back in Seattle, when I use my Club Card membership at Safeway, I almost always get a “Thank you, Mr. Bretschneider.” There's a perfectly good reason for this, having nothing to do with electronic music, but I won't go into that here. There's also a perfectly good reason for Kelly, when she uses her Club Card membership, being called “Mrs. Dodson,” but I won't go into that either.

Michaelangelo Antonioni & Ingmar Bergman

We lost at least two great filmmakers last week. Michaelangelo Antonioni, in particular, was a favorite of mine. Rather distant right now from the up-to-the-minute cinephilia of the internet, I found out several days after the fact. I still don't know the particulars of his death, but for now, I choose to think that, like Anna in L'Avventura, he's merely absented himself from the picture. Also, with this cap on his career, I feel I can say from the safe refuge of hindsight that the best Antonioni film of all time is the one with Monica Vitti and the unsatisfactory plot resolution.

Ingmar Bergman also passed away last week. Bergman and I never quite aligned our tastes, yet each time I watch one of his films, I find myself liking it better than the last. So maybe I just need to see more of his work. Fanny and Alexander next, perhaps?

Anyway, I'm sure the two are having quite a discussion in that giant screening room in the sky. Mostly about women, I expect.

Liege

We just can't stay away from Belgium. We took a day trip to Liege, the third largest city in Belgium, and the closest big city to Köln. We arrived around noon, and walked around the old and new centers of the city, enjoying the beautiful weather. Liege is also the town where the Dardenne brothers (directors of fine films like Rosetta, The Son and L'Enfant) are from. Imagine our surprise, when sitting by the Cathedral (which seems nice and all, but pales in comparison to the Dom in Köln) eating lunch, we see Luc Dardenne crossing the plaza. Rather I should say Chris saw him and, to let me know of the spotting, he kicked me. Chris refrained from approaching him, though I think he regretted that later.

This great store front has led us to quite a debate. Is this pineapple-print swimsuit "classic" or "sexy"?

So, who are we kidding, one of the real reasons to take a trip to Belgium was to indulge in some fine Belgian beer. Armed as usual with some suggestions from our fine Eurpoean beer guide, we were very sad to find that the two closest to the center and the train station were closed due to renovations or had changed ownership. The other two suggestions were outside the center, so we hadn't planned on visiting them. But that all changed, as Chris impressed me with his French and figured out how to take a bus across the river, to find La Vaudrée. Turns out it was also close to another Liege train station, where we could board our train back to Köln later that night. Sitting outside in the sun, we started in on the binders listing 1080 different Belgian beers! However, we did manage to stump our waiter, and my first two attempts to order were not in stock.

Trying to Catch Me Ridin' Dirty

In an attempt to fit in more with the Germans, Chris had two options: the first was to get a faux-hawk, the second was to get a bike. In the long run, the bike seemed like a better investment (and a lot cheaper than the money spent on hair product). We picked up a fairly inexpensive used bike at one of the rotating Saturday Bike Markets. Unfortunately, within a few days the rear tire had gone flat, so we had to embark on the task of changing a tire. That is when we really got dirty. But we succeeded and all appears to be in order, and we did enjoy that feeling of great accomplishment after completing our task. All you bike riders would probably laugh at how long it really took us to do this, and may say we didn't have the full experience, since we changed the tire in the dry comfort of our kitchen, instead of on the side of the road. Now for those of you unfortunate enough to have some fine lyrics of Chamillionaire stuck in your head after reading the title of the post, let me try to help you with that. Instead I propose the catchy lyrics of C&C Music Factory's "Things that make you go hmm," which we sing almost every time we pass the car in the photo on our way to the grocery store or bus. That's right, it's a good old NYPD Police car. Don't ask us how it ended up in Köln, or if it even works, since we have never seen it move, but it always leaves a little smile on our face.

Recently Played: Tomorrow, Pink Floyd

Since we're on the topic of bicycles, how 'bout some two-wheeled 1967 psychedelia?

Tomorrow – My White Bicycle
Pink Floyd – Bike

Now, I don't mean to blow your mind, but note a striking resemblance between the bike described in that early Floyd track and my own, recently acquired bike. Its got a basket... A bell that rings... Things to make it look good.... Not to put too fine a point on it, but the similarity is uncanny. Dan Treacy may know where Syd Barrett lived, but I have a sneaking suspicion I know where his bike went....