the national animal of ireland

as someone once said...

...frrrrrrrrr

lovely irish people

went to dublin last weekend. visited enrica who's getting her way through the city. and the english language. and the irish people. looks like she found her own dimension...
not entirely true, actually, but still thought it was a cute caption! was a nice weekend anyway. lovely. great weather. kind of cold, but no rain at all. at all. left heidelberg with neverending rain. jacket, cap, clothes and shoes soaking wet. ok, i like to take the risk of biking around, even during the night, no matter the rain. but still, heidelberg is damn rainy. was raining when i came back too. and ireland, i mean, ireland! well, not a drop. which was cool because we could walk around all over the place. well not actually. we're weird people, so all over means weird neighbourhoods, the harbour, and such stuff. which is cool for us :)
aha, and i managed to see the sea again! we went to sandycove, this small village in the dublin bay, and the sight of the sea and its smell... just lovely! next time i'll have to pick up a city close to the sea, not just in the middle of nowhe... in the middle of the continent! sgrunt, if you want to see the sea from here you have to drive at least for 10 hrs. any direction. no way.
and in the sea, these lovely irish people having a swim at 11 o'clock! astonishing! was damn freezing! and there they were, having a swim, which apparently they do every morning... crazy! and they were so lovely and invited us to have tea and cake with them because one of the ladies had birthday!
yes i know it's kind of normal, but not that much here around... you really start missing some normal attitudes, then when you find them it looks like exceptional! though it's not!

my blog is sooo sad!

it's true, my blog sucks. i know i didn't advertise it, i kept it as a diary... but what's the point of a blog that nobody visits?!

and at the same time the life socks blog started, and although it's not the greatest success ever, it's still a lot of fun... and then yesterday they kind of forced me into facebook, which is another source of procrastination...

and no time left for my poor blog :(

gotta find a better strategy

no, i won't advertise it on facebook... no way

saturday night - science and jazz

lot of stuff last saturday...

first there was this "night of science" event happening in the region, basically all the research institutes were open to the public and offering talks and other stuff. i took part with my institute, we were just showing some astronomical movies on a screen in front of the big room where the big shots were giving talks... i just spent there a couple of hours, my german is not that great but i was curious about the public outreach of such an event... and indeed, it was very busy, people all over the place, families with curious kids asking questions... i managed to answer to a couple of them, desperately crawling with my hopping german, mostly repeating the same sentences i heard from the other guy just a minute earlier: not that i don't know what's happening in a cosmological simulation, i just don't know... the german words for that!

so after those two hours i had enough of explaining to curious kids that "the universe at the beginning was all the same everywhere but not actually the same"... i know it really sucks, but i had no better way to explain initial density fluctuations in german! that' s why a wise decision for me and the visitors was the one to leave...

wise for me because i went to a great concert -->
stefano battaglia, Re: Pasolini

cannot really explain with words what we felt during the concert, just that it was magic.
and that i fell in love with the drummer, who was playing and moving in the most adorable way!
and that stefano is really nice, we spoke to him for a while, showing off all our italianity, and with roberto the drummer too, obviously!

i'm still enchanted! if i were not that sleepy i would go and listen to the cd that i obviously bought after the concert. but i think i'll just go to bed


a couple of useful links, just in case:
stefano battaglia, pianist
roberto dani, drummer

fair trade

sometimes on saturday i work in a fair trade shop here in heidelberg, the weltladen

i believe in the fair trade concept, even though i understand it's complicated to fit it into our daily routine and more important even though i know it's just a temporary solution, a patch to some extent, to the problems that it's supposed to solve...

people there are really nice, and they are ok with my terrible german! but still, for me that's an issue... after a while i cannot stand a serious discussion in german, no way! tonight i went to dinner at some friends' place (the bio friends of the bio cake) and we had a discussion about fair trade issues. well actually i witnessed the discussion, but as usual i never took part, which is frustrating because it's really embarrassing that i've lived here for nearly 3 years and my german is still that bad...

and moreover, there are some issues about fair trade that i would really like to discuss with them, some thoughts that i developed before and after having started working there, but no way i can ever express them, not even in a one-to-one conversation...

example: we always discuss ways to get more customers in the shop, because the shop has often bad finances and if you believe in it and want it to work, you have to find the money somewhere. so we organise various events, we spread flyers all over the place to invite people to come to our cafe and have a drink there (fair drink!) or to come to us to buy their christmas gifts (fair gifts, obviously)... ok, fair enough, it seems... but still, are we only trying to get the customers of other shops and bars, are we only playing in the big competition game of trade or are we really doing a difference? should we push people to consume, even though the goods are produced fairly, only because this is the only way to keep being able to produce them fairly? shouldn't we maybe push people not to consume that much? if i don't need a chocolate bar, there's not much difference if i buy a milka one, a nestle one or a gepa one from fair trade: it still won't change the bottom line, i don't need it though i buy it... if, hypothetically, every western european customer wanted to buy fair trade products with the same consumistic tempo, would we still be able to produce that huge amount of goods in a fair way??

that is the main issue that i still cannot solve myself nor speak about with any of my german mates from the fair trade shop. but still is something having written it here...

a bio cake

a couple of days ago a friend of mine was trying to describe a weird guy he bumped into once, and used the expression "one of these bio germans", which might sound funny but also describes a lot of people here in germany...

tonight i went for dinner to some german friends who are really into that bio stuff, they buy only bio products, work for bio cooperatives and everything that goes with it. i'm not really into that, but i wanted to bring a cake so i had to come out with a bio cake... at the beginning i thought i could bake a macrobiotic cake following a recipe that i copied years ago from a book in some weird stand. i also thought i could bake a vegan cake. but first i could not find the tahini, which is supposed to be some kind of soy butter, then i realised no way i could be able to bake a cake without eggs, so the vegan/macrobiotic idea just blew away. but still, i managed to turn one of my usual cake recipes into a bio cake and the result was pretty good:

560 g bio wholemeal flour
500 g bio cane sugar
200 g bio butter
400 ml bio milk
6 eggs
100 g bio chocolate noir (to be chopped and spread around)
1 pck instant baking powder (although i wanted to try with yeast but i was running late, as usual!)

it was delicious, not sure if the bio stuff had any influence on that, but still, pretty cool recipe!

rain season

although nobody really danced for it, rain is back in our lovely gray heidelberg...
it's nice to know that the good old season cycle still works somehow, even though i have to admit i hate getting wet!
but i think i will still survive going by bike at least for another while

das leben der anderen

just for a change a serious entry...

das leben der anderen (the lives of others) is a german movie which came out approx one year ago and tells a story happening in east berlin in the eighties. it's actually a movie about the stasi, the state security police of the ddr. i finally managed to see it a while ago and i found it really good.

but only today i found a review, actually a comment about it, which my friend enrica wrote and with which i fully agree, and i wanted to post it here.
it's in italian, when i have time i promise i'll translate it


Brevi attimi di coscienza?

Le vite degli altri; regia di Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; prodotto nel 2006; vincitore del premio Oscar come miglior film straniero nel 2007; esce nelle sale italiane a marzo 2007.

Quando ho visto “Le vite degli altri” ero al cinema con Linda.
Linda è nata nella Berlino est del 1979. Alla fine della proiezione piangeva.
Non era stato il ricordo di un’infanzia infelice a provocarne le lacrime, tutt’altro, lei era perfettamente spensierata. Piangeva perché per la prima volta aveva sentito il significato della fuga (non percepita allora come tale) attraverso la Repubblica Ceca con i suoi genitori. Capiva finalmente il motivo per il quale alcuni volti che avevano popolato i suoi primi anni di vita erano improvvisamente scomparsi al suo ritorno a Berlino dopo la caduta del muro.
Il papà di Linda era un musicista e quei volti, quelli dell’arte, che se non uniformata al sistema veniva messa a tacere, sono gli stessi che il film racconta.

Gerd Wiesler , integerrimo e talentuoso capitano della Stasi, si ritrova, senza sapere di assecondare in questo modo i capricci sessuali di un uomo politico piuttosto che garantire la sicurezza e la sopravvivenza del sistema, a spiare l’unico drammaturgo che riesce ancora ad andare in scena nella Berlino est del 1984. Comincia così la storia di un’ intera comunità privata delle sue menti e della libertà di esprimere liberamente il proprio pensiero.
Il drammaturgo del film non affronta tematiche politico-sociali, tenendosi lontano, così, dalla censura e dalla morte, quest’ultima non determinata in forma diretta da coloro che detengono il potere, ma attraverso il silenzio che fa scomparire e che conduce, senza via d’uscita, al suicidio molti intellettuali, come accade ad uno dei personaggi del film, scuotendo il drammaturgo fin nelle fondamenta del suo io.
L’attrice, splendida interprete dei suoi drammi e sua compagna, è l’oggetto del desiderio e della rabbia del politico, la causa del cambiamento interiore di Wiesler e colei che rappresenta la figura del tradimento umano, combattuta tra l’amore per se stessa e l’amore per l’amato.
Ai tre quarti del film, il drammaturgo si ritrova a pubblicare clandestinamente su Der Spiegel, settimanale edito dall’altra parte del muro, un articolo sui suicidi che si verificano nella Germania dell’est e che sono taciuti dal regime. L’attrice, che aveva deciso di non assecondare più le voglie del politico per assicurarsi il posto in palcoscenico, ma di amare solo il suo uomo, si ritrova a tradirlo quando la pressione esercitata su di lei le diventa insostenibile; il capitano, dopo un lungo e ben descritto conflitto interiore, si ritrova a proteggere i due spiati fino alle estreme conseguenze.


Siamo più liberi noi oggi? Certamente non viviamo lo stesso tipo di pressioni del drammaturgo e dell’attrice. Non viviamo quelle pressioni perché non le percepiamo più. Il sistema (quello globale) è diventato talmente perfetto che lavora alla base. Il mondo corre. Gli uomini ( se pur sono stati una volta consapevoli) vivono la sua frenesia perdendone coscienza o incontrandola solo a tratti e in rari casi. Gli uomini diventano genitori, che per lo stesso meccanismo perdono il crescere dei loro figli, lasciandoli orfani del loro insegnamento e creature di un’istruzione sempre più scadente e di una comunicazione, quella che passa attraverso tutti i canali di cui oggi si fregia la nostra libertà di espressione, manipolata dall’ansia della produzione, della crescita e del guadagno economico di coloro che sono già al potere ( attenzione! non parlo del potere politico, ma di quello economico che regge al di sopra di tutto le fila del gioco).
Ed ecco che il sistema ci nutre del voyeurismo imperante in ogni pacchetto televisivo regalandoci l’illusione di poter vestire l’abito del protagonista, che nel giro di qualche mese, a volte di pochi giorni, si consuma senza soddisfare la nostra sete di essere.
Lo spettacolo da spiare passa da appositi contenitori alle nostre case e poco importa se lo si fa attraverso la cronaca nera; ciò che conta è essere presenti. E’ questa l’unica attestazione che sembra rimanere del nostro esistere?
E quando anche il telegiornale della prima rete di Stato è così solerte nel proporci la real soap del momento, dimostrandoci così che anche quelle oasi nel deserto, che pochi telegiornali costituivano, non esistono più, qualcuno potrebbe gridare ad una novella dittatura?

La dittatura dell’economia globale non ha più bisogno della Stasi, siamo diventati noi le spie delle vite degli altri (prodotte secondo le logiche dello spettacolo), senza che il sistema abbia bisogno della nostra delazione, quel che conta è la nostra assuefazione ed il nostro imbonimento.
Si rischia, così, di vivere nel porcile dell’opera pasoliniana e ce ne accorgiamo sempre meno. L’unica cosa che ci fa appena scuotere è quella che tocca le nostre pance, vivendo, sembra, nell’attesa che il maiale ci divori.

Il dono di alcuni film, e di ciò che in generale riesce ad essere arte , soprattutto se riuscissimo a fruirne nei rari attimi di calma, è quello di far brillare, anche se fiocamente, il barlume di coscienza che distingue l’essere pensante dal resto del creato. Questi oggetti d’arte contengono in loro stessi il passato, il presente e i tratti di ciò che potrebbe essere in futuro, basterebbe fermarsi a leggerli per allontanare da noi la vicina soglia del porcile.

Enrica Gatto

life socks: a reality

if one wonders why we always complain about that... well here's a live example from today.

i wake up, go to have a shower and remember i put the towel in the laundry yesterday. which is still drying in the machine. i know should not use that machine too much. not very sustainable. but with this cloudy gray german sky you never know if your laundry is going to dry outside...
anyway, i go pick up the laundry and guess??? didn't work, it's all still wet! so i spend half morning hanging everything outside thus making the whole drying machine effort useless.
feel stupid.

am late, go out in a hurry, try to pick up the car. i never use the car but actually needed it tonight. and guess?? the battery is totally down!!! what if my dad is right and i should have come and turned it on sometimes?? damn, i hate it so much when he's right! plus it hasn't been that freezing these days! anyway, go to work and try to find someone with those wires to recharge the battery. at least that's what i thought. and then everybody start telling me these stories about broken battery and how much you have to pay for a new one, or these small little animals like rats or hamsters that like biting the wires in your engine and basically destroy your car!!! i was getting crazy...

but still, sometimes life is colourful, just like socks... so the mean guy with the beard who's in my office found some wires from his neighbour and we recharged the battery and it was just fine... he's not that mean after all ;)
but then i had to drive all the time because i was afraid that if i turned the engine off then the car wouldn't have started again...

so i travel 60 km, including going to mannheim and see a jazz concert, which was pretty good. charlie haden and brad mehldau, shit they're really good, just the acoustic of the place was awful. after all, what do you expect from a round church?! but still, nice evening in the end. didn't expect it though from how the day started

does it have to be that difficult?

hey it's really difficult to get a space for a blog!

i know i am totally ignorant about everything plus i'm lazy and not really in the mood to start learning about any computer tricky thing...

but i thought it was easier! i just thought i could play around with iweb and then easily publish what i had done there with the easy and user friendly mac style of what you see is thank god what you get!!! and instead... i am writing my new post online! this is so humiliating!

anyway... i think i'll just go to watch friends with my roommates and eat the tons of chocolate that appeared by mistery in the flat during the weekend... not the most efficient way to spend a sunday evening, but still, better than browsing the net in search of something i'm never going to find...