An amusing TV series sees British comedian and wit Paul Merton travel around Europe in a series reminiscent of Eurotrash, lacking that series' knowing camp but with a general ignorance of things continental as is wont of Englanders who haven't travelled much.
Any prejudices of Germany as humourless, boring or fascistic were instantly removed the moment he arrived and by everybody he met there, and with good reason. Even I had to chuckle at the "Appelsaft" shouting anti-fascist demonstrators, and next time I'm in Germany I want to do some "nacktivist" stuff too (nudist activities such as bowling and hiking - the only stuff I got to do recently was just the sex) or just stay in a prison converted into a hotel, with guard/staff as optional extra. The beer tub treatment for your skin (and a kip in the hay after) had to be seen to be believed and wouldn't fail being appealing to any beer-swilling Brits.
Not sure whether the rest of the series will live up to the marvellous fun in Germany, but I'm willing to be surprised too.
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
September 26, 2012
May 31, 2012
Hamburg, 2012
This is a very rich place because almost its entire old inner city is packed with luxury shopping, where you would normally have no need to go – unless you were a rich
tourist from a place where fake designer gear is rife and you want to ensure you got the real thing – but it is packed every day with locals and tourists alike, plus an assortment of beggars, street musicians and performers and lads sleeping off a hard night.
Hamburg has a proud past and is obviously quite self-assured as befits a trading city which has more in common with its overseas counterparts than its own hinterland. Its flag is a solid castle tower on a red field and is flown everywhere. It is a separate state in the German federation and has a long tradition of being independent minded.
Its port is vast and, as everywhere, following the ancient example of Brugge, its old docks and warehouses have been redeveloped into des-res housing, offices, shops and cafes.
The waterside architecture is stark, utilitarian and solid. Hamburg is not a romantic city, but it is quite beautiful. The old town ramparts have been transformed into a ring belt park, with botanic gardens and sprinkled with many water features in the old moats.
The city is so compact we used the bus only once and never got on the U or S Bahn. Everything we wanted to see and visit we could reach on foot and pedestrianized areas and streets abound. It makes for pleasant inner city living, but of course the vast bulk of the population lives in the suburbs.
We stayed in a gay homestay, hosted by Dietmar and Thomas, and which was a spacious loft apartment in the St Georg district, a few minutes’ walk from the Central station and also right in the middle of the gay community. On Pentecost weekend the main street was blocked off and given over to a three-day street fair and flea market, with performances, food and drink stalls and a dance party area. It was a multi-coloured, multi-cultural and multi-sexual event and was extremely popular with the locals.
The food was lovely, especially recommended is café Traum Zeit (Hansaplatz), owned and run by a New Zealander from Hastings.
Culturally speaking, Hamburg has a fine array of art on offer. The Kunsthalle (next to the main train station) houses renaissance and modern paintings and sculpture in a sprawling and rather confusing-to-navigate site. The Bucerius Art Forum (next to the town hall) has temporary modern art exhibitions: a photographic social history of New York City was moving, wide ranging and interesting. The Art and Design Museum had a vast collection of basically everything, from Islamic art, 17th Century merchant traders’ interiors, “decadent art” archaeological finds, Roman pottery, an exhibition on German rocker Udo Lindenberg, deco furniture and a tribute exhibition to fashion designer Alexander MacQueen.
In the Deichtorhallen, British artist Antony Gormley showed “Horizon Field”, a free participatory installation, where you climb up 7.5 metres to a suspended 2,500 square metre flat surface hung from 8 steel cables. The movement of people on the field make it sway horizontally, which makes for an unsettling experience, especially since the surface is covered in a shiny resin which reflects you into a black depth.
My main original reason to visit Hamburg was Miniatur Wunderland, a huge miniature world full of trains, planes and moving cars set in various countries and landscapes. It’s obviously a labour of love and a big team makes sure everything moves, crashes are repaired, rolling stock is maintained and visitors have a delightful time exploring all the details. The biggest fun is to search for small, mysterious scenes in the landscapes and around which you can spin your own story of what is actually happening.
Hamburg has a proud past and is obviously quite self-assured as befits a trading city which has more in common with its overseas counterparts than its own hinterland. Its flag is a solid castle tower on a red field and is flown everywhere. It is a separate state in the German federation and has a long tradition of being independent minded.
Its port is vast and, as everywhere, following the ancient example of Brugge, its old docks and warehouses have been redeveloped into des-res housing, offices, shops and cafes.
The city is so compact we used the bus only once and never got on the U or S Bahn. Everything we wanted to see and visit we could reach on foot and pedestrianized areas and streets abound. It makes for pleasant inner city living, but of course the vast bulk of the population lives in the suburbs.
We stayed in a gay homestay, hosted by Dietmar and Thomas, and which was a spacious loft apartment in the St Georg district, a few minutes’ walk from the Central station and also right in the middle of the gay community. On Pentecost weekend the main street was blocked off and given over to a three-day street fair and flea market, with performances, food and drink stalls and a dance party area. It was a multi-coloured, multi-cultural and multi-sexual event and was extremely popular with the locals.
The food was lovely, especially recommended is café Traum Zeit (Hansaplatz), owned and run by a New Zealander from Hastings.
Culturally speaking, Hamburg has a fine array of art on offer. The Kunsthalle (next to the main train station) houses renaissance and modern paintings and sculpture in a sprawling and rather confusing-to-navigate site. The Bucerius Art Forum (next to the town hall) has temporary modern art exhibitions: a photographic social history of New York City was moving, wide ranging and interesting. The Art and Design Museum had a vast collection of basically everything, from Islamic art, 17th Century merchant traders’ interiors, “decadent art” archaeological finds, Roman pottery, an exhibition on German rocker Udo Lindenberg, deco furniture and a tribute exhibition to fashion designer Alexander MacQueen.
August 18, 2010
The mouse that roared
Fun with headlines:
Luxembourg attacks Germany
When Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, next meets his European counterparts, will he be heaped with praise - or brickbats? Germany’s economy is on a roll. It grew by 2.2 per cent in the three months to June, its best quarterly performance since reunification in 1990. But that has not necessarily gone down well with colleagues in other European capitals.
Unnoticed beyond his tiny country’s borders, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, earlier this month launched an extraordinary attack on German economic policy, according to the Luxemburger Wort. Germany’s success was based on “wage and social dumping,” Mr Juncker is reported as having said. “The way Germany went about improving its competitiveness, I would not like to see in our country.” Since the launch of the euro in 1999, German workers had seen a meagre 12 per cent rise in wages, whereas his countrymen saw a 41 per cent rise, he went on.
September 14, 2007
Frankfurt Airport excitement
During my stay in Germany there was a major terror alert on Wednesday which reportedly threatened Frankfurt Airport and Ramstein.
When I was due to fly out to Hong Kong on Friday, my check-in area at Frankfurt Airport was evacuated due to an unattended suitcase being left in the hall. The police only kept us a safe distance away instead of evacuating the whole building. This was during the late afternoon rush hour and passengers had a ring site view of the bomb squad first x-raying the suitcase, then simply had a dog sniff it and the rather brave bomb squad officer opening the suitcase and emptying its, what looked like Indian subcontinental clothing, in a heap on the floor. It was all over in less than an hour and check in was not that much delayed.
Here's a picture I took when the evacuation was in full progress:
When I was due to fly out to Hong Kong on Friday, my check-in area at Frankfurt Airport was evacuated due to an unattended suitcase being left in the hall. The police only kept us a safe distance away instead of evacuating the whole building. This was during the late afternoon rush hour and passengers had a ring site view of the bomb squad first x-raying the suitcase, then simply had a dog sniff it and the rather brave bomb squad officer opening the suitcase and emptying its, what looked like Indian subcontinental clothing, in a heap on the floor. It was all over in less than an hour and check in was not that much delayed.
Here's a picture I took when the evacuation was in full progress:
Caption this!
A picture from the Bonn conference trip, yours truly at the speaker's desk in the former German parliament
"My Dear Kompatriots, we have decided to start invading Poland to rid us from those terrible twins."
"My Dear Kompatriots, we have decided to start invading Poland to rid us from those terrible twins."
September 11, 2007
Cologne / Bonn / Hong Kong: Jetlag? Schmetlag!
And now for the extracurricular activities last week.
Cologne isn't the prettiest of cities but it has a rich history with lots of Roman stuff still being unearthed from the construction site of the new underground tram line, including beautiful mosaics and shrines.
The city got its name from the Romans: Colonia Agrippina, the colony of Agrippina. I'm not sure whether the Cologne people appreciate being founded and dedicated to the second wife of Emperor Claudius, whom she eventually murdered. But it may account for the rather freewheeling and fun-loving spirit that pervades the city. It's the centre of the annual Carnival festivities in the Rhineland and the nightlife was ravishingly good: the bars and clubs stay open very late and public transport, which allows you to take a beer on the tram, runs all night on the weekend.
I met up with Charles at a central bar, called Cox, a bar for "bears and butch men", which summed us up pretty much. It was full of black leather clad German blokes of all sizes and hair colours. Charles had already started chatting to a local, and soon we got a few guys joining in. I marveled at the sheer internationalism of the gay scene: here we were, a Belgian living in New Zealand, an American living in Denmark, an Irishman living in Spain and a Kuwaiti visiting his German boyfriend. If the world was run by gay men there would not be any wars.
After a few beers it was on to a cruise club across the road, which was also owned by the Cox bar people, and they named it Boners (no website). It has a large bar and backroom and a pretty broad dress code, including nothing. They run a great system of charging: you don't pay to get in but you have to buy two drinks or be charged an equivalent amount when you leave. It's very popular but not too crowded as to be stifling. The men seemed to me pretty sociable and keen to get it on with you. After making a lot of new friends in very dark corners we staggered home at 5am on the tram to our hostel.
I went to one sauna in Cologne, the appropriately named Badehaus (or Bath House), a massive complex conceived as a Roman villa, with a swimming pool between both ends of the complex. Both ends are also connected by an underground area where there is a maze and a steamroom and a beautifully massive spa pool complete with Roman-style mosaic. On the ground floors are a winebar, massage rooms and Finnish sauna. Upstairs are resting cubicles. Its sheer size warrants the need for a lot of punters to attend before it feels cozy, and you do walk enormous distances. There are no video rooms as such, only tiny seating areas around video monitors, which is a negative point. It's very much a place for the pretty people although there were men of all ages there. On the hour, one of the attendants bangs a gong summoning everybody to the sauna box where he proceeds with wafting around a large towel so everybody gets throughly scorched by the heat. I had experienced this service before in the Black Forest, and it is not for the faint of heart. The entry price of 19 euros is also heart-stopping!
Bonn is a small provincial city on the Rhine River with a long history too. It's rather pretty with its narrow pedestrianised city centre streets, university and Beethoven culture. And it's incredibly rich too by looking at just one indicator: it has two (two!) Bang & Olufsen shops. There isn't an incredible lot gay-wise. A local neighbourhood pub called Bobo's in the Jozefstrasse. A nice enough venue, very sociable and full of people who know each other. Great beer too, of course.
Around the corner from Bobo's is the sex cinema, in a basement attached to a groundfloor sex shop on Berliner Freiheit (there is a back entrance for all of you who don't want to be seen entering a sex shop on the main thoroughfare). It's a rather spartan affair in two underground rooms, one for hetero and one for homo movies, but there was a lot of traffic in between (perhaps it is true there are a lot of bisexuals in the world!). Enjoying the films is an arduous affair: the benches are wooden only, so bring a cushion. There is a backroom in the homo section. It costs 6 euros for an all day pass and it does have the feel of a dayroom for many men whose wives had gone shopping.
I had a 7 hour stopover in Hong Kong on the way back to New Zealand so enough time to take the Airport Express into town (at $18 and 100kph a far better bargain than the dreadful Airport Bus affair in Auckland) and try out the local sauna just off the Central Escalator on Hong Kong Island. It's called the CE and housed in a tiny building, as everything is in HK. Very warm and welcoming hospitality and a lot of international punters, which made up for the smallness of the venue. It just forces you to be sociable. Small steamroom, minuscule sauna box but well laid out, two shower areas and making use of all space available. Free internet too. I got to meet a Costa Rican, a Singaporean and a German I had earlier met in the Badehaus. Talk about the world being a small place!
Cologne isn't the prettiest of cities but it has a rich history with lots of Roman stuff still being unearthed from the construction site of the new underground tram line, including beautiful mosaics and shrines.
The city got its name from the Romans: Colonia Agrippina, the colony of Agrippina. I'm not sure whether the Cologne people appreciate being founded and dedicated to the second wife of Emperor Claudius, whom she eventually murdered. But it may account for the rather freewheeling and fun-loving spirit that pervades the city. It's the centre of the annual Carnival festivities in the Rhineland and the nightlife was ravishingly good: the bars and clubs stay open very late and public transport, which allows you to take a beer on the tram, runs all night on the weekend.
I met up with Charles at a central bar, called Cox, a bar for "bears and butch men", which summed us up pretty much. It was full of black leather clad German blokes of all sizes and hair colours. Charles had already started chatting to a local, and soon we got a few guys joining in. I marveled at the sheer internationalism of the gay scene: here we were, a Belgian living in New Zealand, an American living in Denmark, an Irishman living in Spain and a Kuwaiti visiting his German boyfriend. If the world was run by gay men there would not be any wars.
After a few beers it was on to a cruise club across the road, which was also owned by the Cox bar people, and they named it Boners (no website). It has a large bar and backroom and a pretty broad dress code, including nothing. They run a great system of charging: you don't pay to get in but you have to buy two drinks or be charged an equivalent amount when you leave. It's very popular but not too crowded as to be stifling. The men seemed to me pretty sociable and keen to get it on with you. After making a lot of new friends in very dark corners we staggered home at 5am on the tram to our hostel.
I went to one sauna in Cologne, the appropriately named Badehaus (or Bath House), a massive complex conceived as a Roman villa, with a swimming pool between both ends of the complex. Both ends are also connected by an underground area where there is a maze and a steamroom and a beautifully massive spa pool complete with Roman-style mosaic. On the ground floors are a winebar, massage rooms and Finnish sauna. Upstairs are resting cubicles. Its sheer size warrants the need for a lot of punters to attend before it feels cozy, and you do walk enormous distances. There are no video rooms as such, only tiny seating areas around video monitors, which is a negative point. It's very much a place for the pretty people although there were men of all ages there. On the hour, one of the attendants bangs a gong summoning everybody to the sauna box where he proceeds with wafting around a large towel so everybody gets throughly scorched by the heat. I had experienced this service before in the Black Forest, and it is not for the faint of heart. The entry price of 19 euros is also heart-stopping!
Bonn is a small provincial city on the Rhine River with a long history too. It's rather pretty with its narrow pedestrianised city centre streets, university and Beethoven culture. And it's incredibly rich too by looking at just one indicator: it has two (two!) Bang & Olufsen shops. There isn't an incredible lot gay-wise. A local neighbourhood pub called Bobo's in the Jozefstrasse. A nice enough venue, very sociable and full of people who know each other. Great beer too, of course.
Around the corner from Bobo's is the sex cinema, in a basement attached to a groundfloor sex shop on Berliner Freiheit (there is a back entrance for all of you who don't want to be seen entering a sex shop on the main thoroughfare). It's a rather spartan affair in two underground rooms, one for hetero and one for homo movies, but there was a lot of traffic in between (perhaps it is true there are a lot of bisexuals in the world!). Enjoying the films is an arduous affair: the benches are wooden only, so bring a cushion. There is a backroom in the homo section. It costs 6 euros for an all day pass and it does have the feel of a dayroom for many men whose wives had gone shopping.
I had a 7 hour stopover in Hong Kong on the way back to New Zealand so enough time to take the Airport Express into town (at $18 and 100kph a far better bargain than the dreadful Airport Bus affair in Auckland) and try out the local sauna just off the Central Escalator on Hong Kong Island. It's called the CE and housed in a tiny building, as everything is in HK. Very warm and welcoming hospitality and a lot of international punters, which made up for the smallness of the venue. It just forces you to be sociable. Small steamroom, minuscule sauna box but well laid out, two shower areas and making use of all space available. Free internet too. I got to meet a Costa Rican, a Singaporean and a German I had earlier met in the Badehaus. Talk about the world being a small place!
August 28, 2007
On the road again
I am soon off to Europe again, but this time it's not a holiday. I have been invited by Deutsche Welle TV to attend the "Asia-Pacific and Europe Media Dialogue", organised by the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development next month in Bonn.
So not much bloggage expected for the next two weeks but I'll try to keep things up to speed, and hope to report from the Cologne, where I'll meet up with Charles to explore the local fleshpots and bear pits.
So not much bloggage expected for the next two weeks but I'll try to keep things up to speed, and hope to report from the Cologne, where I'll meet up with Charles to explore the local fleshpots and bear pits.
July 21, 2004
Wir Fahren, Fahren, Fahren auf der Autobahn
Out of Germany, that bastion of personal road freedom, now comes the disturbing news there may be more speed restrictions imposed on the Autobahn. Proponents say it would cut pollution and petrol consumption.
Never mind that the Autobahn system was constructed and designed with high speeds in mind - unlike the really dangerous goat paths that pose as roads in New Zealand.
It may amaze you that Prime Minister Helen Clark covering 200km in 2 hours by car is actually headline news in New Zealand, but given the second world conditions here, one should be surprised about how she did it rather than the tut-tutting by local peasants and other politicians. I loved the take by the BBC saying she was stranded on the South Island. And really, there is nothing worse that can happen to you when you got a rugby match to attend.
Anyway, back to the Autobahn speed limit proposal. This would be a grave mistake for the German economy, which is built on the manufacture and export of automobiles that can go faster than 100kph. If there is nowhere in the world that you can go fast in your expensive car, why would you buy it in the first place? You might as well buy business class plane tickets instead, which, incidentally use far more kerosene and pollute much more than your car.
(Disclaimer: I don't have a driver's licence and I have never driven a car)
Never mind that the Autobahn system was constructed and designed with high speeds in mind - unlike the really dangerous goat paths that pose as roads in New Zealand.
It may amaze you that Prime Minister Helen Clark covering 200km in 2 hours by car is actually headline news in New Zealand, but given the second world conditions here, one should be surprised about how she did it rather than the tut-tutting by local peasants and other politicians. I loved the take by the BBC saying she was stranded on the South Island. And really, there is nothing worse that can happen to you when you got a rugby match to attend.
Anyway, back to the Autobahn speed limit proposal. This would be a grave mistake for the German economy, which is built on the manufacture and export of automobiles that can go faster than 100kph. If there is nowhere in the world that you can go fast in your expensive car, why would you buy it in the first place? You might as well buy business class plane tickets instead, which, incidentally use far more kerosene and pollute much more than your car.
(Disclaimer: I don't have a driver's licence and I have never driven a car)
September 21, 2003
Bad Herrenalb
If you thought it could not get any tinier, here we were in the middle of the Black Forest, in a little town (pop. 3500) called Bad Herrenalb, just south of Karlsruhe. Don't ask why we were there or stayed 2 nights, but we did.
As the name implies, it is a spa town with many natural springs, some of them hot. Since we are suckers for spa pools and saunas we legged it to the local thermal baths. I like to imagine that it was again the Romans who got there cos there was free hot water, and fought the German tribes for the right to a hot bath. And of course I also like to imagine what the Centurion awarded to his cohort that actually found the hot spring first...
So we followed in a good tradition, and the Germans don't do things by half: no, the massive Finnish sauna, Turkish, Russian and Black Forest steam baths were all textile free and also mixed gender. This meant there were very few signs of any cruising (if any at all was happening, the delectable guys were held on a tight reign - a naturist one of course - by their wives and girlfriends). Just comes to show again that any males trying to expand and explore their sexual freedoms are actively being sabotaged by their women - but that is my theory anyway.
The staff was quite active in a non-erotic way: one woman poured the scented water over the heated stones and waved her towel creating a heat blast that sent the temperature gauge to 95C and it actually singed my nipple hairs! I hadn't quite realised that the Finns have invented a whole S&M scene by themselves. If purgatory is like this I'd like to stay a while!
We stayed at this biker chick's place and of course her biker boyfriend had us drooling like a spring in Springtime. Blond mohican haircut and eyebrows, and I really wished he kept his arms down by his sides cos I was really feeling weak at the knees - maybe too much Finnish sauna heat. The biker chick also had a son of 17 who was quite curious about the girls in NZ. He fancied himself quite the ladies' man, and he really pulled it off, having more dress sense and bigger moussed hair than many a gayboy. I guess that's what metrosexuals look like.
As the name implies, it is a spa town with many natural springs, some of them hot. Since we are suckers for spa pools and saunas we legged it to the local thermal baths. I like to imagine that it was again the Romans who got there cos there was free hot water, and fought the German tribes for the right to a hot bath. And of course I also like to imagine what the Centurion awarded to his cohort that actually found the hot spring first...
So we followed in a good tradition, and the Germans don't do things by half: no, the massive Finnish sauna, Turkish, Russian and Black Forest steam baths were all textile free and also mixed gender. This meant there were very few signs of any cruising (if any at all was happening, the delectable guys were held on a tight reign - a naturist one of course - by their wives and girlfriends). Just comes to show again that any males trying to expand and explore their sexual freedoms are actively being sabotaged by their women - but that is my theory anyway.
The staff was quite active in a non-erotic way: one woman poured the scented water over the heated stones and waved her towel creating a heat blast that sent the temperature gauge to 95C and it actually singed my nipple hairs! I hadn't quite realised that the Finns have invented a whole S&M scene by themselves. If purgatory is like this I'd like to stay a while!
We stayed at this biker chick's place and of course her biker boyfriend had us drooling like a spring in Springtime. Blond mohican haircut and eyebrows, and I really wished he kept his arms down by his sides cos I was really feeling weak at the knees - maybe too much Finnish sauna heat. The biker chick also had a son of 17 who was quite curious about the girls in NZ. He fancied himself quite the ladies' man, and he really pulled it off, having more dress sense and bigger moussed hair than many a gayboy. I guess that's what metrosexuals look like.
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