The Cold War returns

I’d recently come to assume that colds were something linked to being at work – they stopped when we stopped.  Until now that is.  I’ve got a horrible chesty cough with hot & cold running nose and am feeling very sorry for myself.  Doubly so because, well, we’re on holiday and it’s really annoying when you’re ill on holiday, albeit one of this extended length.

‘Enough, already!’ choruses everyone who has to go to work with a cold, or stay at home worrying about all the work they’re not doing.  I remember that.  Fair point.  So on to other things.

The 58th Berlinale ends this weekend, Berlin’s bewildering large film festival.  As we invariably miss everything at the London film festival, we thought we’d make the effort this time.

So we thought we’d avoid credit card charges by going along to our nearest kino and selecting tickets from the hundreds of films on offer.  But we hadn’t reckoned with the worst co-ordinated film catalogue known to man. 

The film ‘themes’ (documentary, shorts, etc) each had a separate colour coded part section in the catalogue, with film programme boards up in the cinema foyer showing what was still available.  This was also colour coded.  But not in the same colours.

Within the themes, the films were listed in a secret order; neither alphabetically, chronologically, or even by country.

So it was near impossible to pick something on the boards which hadn’t been crossed off, and cross reference it with the catalogue. Particularly as each time we did manage to pick a film, a lady came out and crossed it off.

After a while, we began to realise that nearly every film seemed to be about an abused peasant girl in 17th century China.  Or something similar.  Worthy themes all, but I’m fast becoming like my granny – always wondering why there wasn’t something ‘a bit more cheerful’ on.  And it wasn’t just us.  I watched as several people, exasperated, sat down on the floor to try and unlock the cryptic secrets of the film catalogue, chainsmoking as they did so*.

 *Which, as in the UK, is now banned in Berlin.  But Berliners seem to be taking a ‘flexible’ approach.

By the way, I’ve had a complaint about my other (architecture) blog, claiming that it needs ‘more pictures’.  Maybe so, but this blog has no pictures, and is still marvellous.  To head off the obvious response, I would point at that I don’t put pictures on here partly because 

a) it would interrupt the flow of the prose, preventing your imagination from going to work on my luminous word-pictures,

but mainly because

b) I cannot be arsed.  It’s really fiddly.

But to satiate this lunatic modern craze for looking at things, here’s a photo of the cinema in which the film confusion mentioned earlier took place (there’s an external view on my apparently less entertaining blog, at architectureinberlin.wordpress.com).  You can’t see the programme board, or the catalogue, so you’ll still have to use your celebrity-media-stunted imaginations. Enjoy.

What else?  Oh yes – part two of our Umwelt/campervan saga.  Just after I last posted, we were giving a friend a lift home, when we got flagged down at a police road block.  “HAVEN’T YOU GOT EYES?!?  DIDN’T YOU SEE THE SIGNS SAYING ‘UMWELT’, FOR WHICH YOUR VEHICLE HAS NO PERMIT STICKER??!!” the poilceman shouted at me. (He shouted in german, but his manner, gesticulations and my still very limited german meant that I understood).  I pretended to be an English tourist idiot (a role I’ve been working on for many months – I virtually live the character) and we sort of got away with it.

I say sort of, because we didn’t get fined or imprisoned, but we were forced to drive out of Berlin at that moment.  Meaning that we had to sneak back in via another route, fearful that we’d meet the same policeman, and the trick wouldn’t work twice.  I’m not yet comfortable with uniformed germans shouting at me.  Or indeed anyone shouting at me (in case the pevious statement offends any Prussian militarists).

Bye for now.

Jim.  (And Katie, who’s sitting on the sofa doing the Puzzler magazine. She sends hugs.)