really.lol

berlin

Notes from Granta 165 (Deutschland)

berlin cities germany literature books history

2023-12-27

p8 WG Sebald was the last German author to make an international breakthrough. He grew up a few miles from the Austrian border, grew up in England, and considered himself a student of Peter Handke of the Grazer Gruppe. Wenderoman authors Monika Muron and Uwe Tellkamp turned to The New Right. Later authors of the genre bucked the trend: Lutz Seiler, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Felix Stephan. p9 The best West German art came from people who saw the Americans not as liberators but as those who ran a system that allowed the Nazis to integrate into the new government and elite: Gerhard Richter, Jörg Immendorf, Alexander Kluge.

Bells

berlin cities journal

2023-06-25

The church bells in this place, my god. They toll for 10 solid minutes every week night and for God knows how long on a Sunday morning. For a short time today there was a relentless tolling of the bells and a old timey horn honking at once. Chaos. This sort of thing is charming and atmopheric out in the countyside where the sounds have space to drift from afar. They are apocalyptic in the city where people live next to, under, on, and indeed inside the belfry.

Boating

berlin nature city sarah journal

2023-06-13

When the sun came out in Berlin, people started climbing into the canals in their inflatable boats. When I rode my bike over Elsenbrücke, I even saw them floating along the Spree in their dinghies, with a bag of beers and a fishing hat. One evening, I saw a lone paddle boarder in the middle of that wide river. It is the done thing, I learned. The Excursion 5 Schlauchboot is available for less than €200 and can be fitted with a little electric motor, or a floating beer cooler that you tow along behind you.