Amsterdam

Amsterdam

After returning to Berlin from Prague, we left again early the next morning to fly to Amsterdam to spend our next two nights there. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Easyjet is the way to travel quickly and cheaply while in Europe. We had a one hour flight from Berlin to Amsterdam, and were there by 9am, giving us the whole day to explore the city. It was fantastic.

None of us had ever been to Amsterdam before either, and this time we didn't have friends who were already there, so we checked into our hotel and then went out and grabbed some lunch while looking over our little travel guide that we had with us. I'd also bought a basic "learn how to speak Dutch" book that I kept flipping through. As a language, it seems like a mix of both English and German. Because of this, I had a fairly easy time understanding it, which was pretty neat.

The first thing I noticed as we began to walk through the city was how cozy everything felt. The buildings lean down on every street, and it felt as if they were eavesdropping on our conversations or trying to tell us secrets. I wondered why they were all so tilted, and came to learn that it's because of how furniture needs to be moved in and out of them. Apparently, the houses in Amsterdam are so narrow that it's nearly impossible to move furniture through the doors and then up the stairs. Because of this, there are giant furniture hooks on the top of each building (you can see them in the picture below, particularly on the left side) that are used as leverage points with rope to pull all of the furniture up into the air, and safely swing it through the windows of the upper floors. Since this is the only way that furniture can get into these dwellings, there is also a great risk that comes with the process: the furniture could swing just a bit too far to the side and break through the windows of the neighboring buildings. This is the reason that they are leaning a bit forward. The slight lean decreases the the likelihood of such an accident by quite a bit.

Amsterdam

After lunch, the sun started shining, and we decided that we would go on a boat ride through all of the canals that run through the city. Seeing and learning about the city from the water was a really neat way to do things. Many people in Amsterdam now live in house boats along the canals, which were a lot of fun to buzz by and imagine what it might be like to live there. If you go, I would suggest a boat tour. I'm happy that we did it.

In the evening, we had a reservation for a tour of the Anne Frank Huis (Anne Frank House), which was not far from our hotel. As we made our way over, I could feel my heart begin to sink. Growing up, I'd read The Diary of Anne Frank several times, and when I moved to college a few years ago, I found it on my childhood bookshelf yet again. I sat down and read the entire thing in one afternoon, gawking at it's distant familiarity (since I hadn't read it in years) and amazed that such a young girl could have had such a piquant view of her unique situation and the world around her. (It also occurs to me often that Anne Frank's is only one of many stories surrounding the persecution of Jews and others in the era of National Socialism. There are millions of stories that were not left behind neatly in notebooks. There are millions of stories that were never told, and never will be.)

I thought that the museum itself was very well set up and put together. Otto Frank, Anne's father, did a great job of setting guidelines for the use of the space, and those guidelines have been fairly interpreted. It was interesting getting to see the space where the Frank family (and others) lived for years during the Nazi reign, and especially getting to walk through the false bookcase/door that lead up the steep and narrow stairs to "the secret annexe". If you're in Amsterdam and haven't seen it, it's worth a trip. Visiting this museum feels like one of those things that you just have to do when you're in a particular city - but I hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised.

As the night grew dark, we walked along the beautifully lit up canals to find somewhere for dinner. We ended up stumbling upon a great little restaurant near our hotel where I got the most amazing rabbit dish. We all thoroughly enjoyed our dinners, and then walked around a bit before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Amsterdam canals at night

My delicious leg of rabbit with potatoes and spinach

The next morning, we got up and grabbed some sandwiches and salads quickly at a small deli before heading over to Mike's Bikes for our planned bicycle tour of the countryside around Amsterdam. If you're going to visit the city and are looking for a bike tour, I'd highly recommend Mike's - they do all different types of tours, but we chose the countryside one which involved biking out to see some windmills and visit a farm where wooden clogs and cheese are hand-made.

It was a bit rainy, but the sun came out and the weather warmed up just as we were pedaling out of the city. Our guide, who was named Mike, but wasn't the Mike of Mike's Bikes, was fantastic and we had great fun on our tour. We stopped at an old windmill and learned a lot about it, and then came up on the small farm where we parked our bikes and were greeted by an adorable farm dog, who was more than excited to get a scratch behind the ears. I've been pretty pet deprived while living in Germany, and was excited to get to bond with a canine, if even for a second. After saying hi to him, we walked inside.

Dog friend from the cheese/clog farm in Amsterdam

The second the door opened, I smelled the cheese. And after I took a few more steps into the cellar, I saw it too. We were greeted by a couple who own and fully operate the farm there, and they explained to us how they make their cheese. It's an interesting process that involves a lot of steps and a lot of patience. We also got free samples, which maybe was the best part.

The aging cheese at the farm lined all of the walls from floor to ceiling

Where the cheese is made

After the cheese demonstration, we continued into another room in the farm house where we were met with what must have been hundreds upon hundreds of both finished and unfinished wooden clogs. We were shown exactly how they were made and then learned what the different styles of painting on them mean. It was quite impressive, and though I was tempted to maybe buy some, I realized pretty quickly that wooden clogs would be one of those thing that seemed like a good idea at the time but that just end up being a pain in the butt to have in the future. Nonetheless, it was really neat to get to learn about them and their history.

One of the piles of wooden clogs waiting to be sanded and painted

After eating lunch at the farm and giving the farm dog one last good petting, we hopped back on our bikes and rode for several hours through the beautiful countryside before finally arriving back in the city. We walked down to the tulip market after that and looked at all the different kinds of bulbs, seeds, and plants, and then decided to head back to the hotel for dinner since we were all exhausted from biking all day.

On our way home, though, it started absolutely pouring, and we wanted to find shelter somewhere. We found a restaurant called Pancakes! near our hotel that we had heard supposedly served gluten free pancakes, and ducked inside. It was a cute little place, and they did, in fact, have gluten free pancakes. I got a buckwheat pancake with bananas, bacon, and chili peppers in it. It was delicious! The only thing that was missing was some dark chocolate...

My banana, bacon, and chili gluten free pancake

After braving the rain once more, we went back to the hotel and then ventured out for dinner. We found a cute little cafe that offered shelter from the storm, and decided to try all of the traditional foods that Amsterdam is famous for. This included "Bitter Balls", sausage made from raw beef, and brown cheese. We didn't find Kippers (even though it would make sense for the Kippermans to eat Kippers), which was okay because though Dad and Alice hadn't tried them before, I had. And I really didn't like them all that much.

Bitter Balls - breaded, deep-fried balls that are made of a
mixture of a bunch of kinds of meat. We're still not really sure...

After heading back home for the night, we got up early in the morning again and headed back to Berlin where we spent the remainder of their time in Europe. It was a fantastic adventure to get to go to Prague and Amsterdam, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity. It was also really nice to see Dad and Alice, and to have a little bit of back home be brought to Berlin.

As they were leaving to go back to the US, I was gearing up to go on yet another few excursions with the Hampshire in Berlin group to Dresden and Weimar...

Prague

About a week ago, I returned from a long and tiresome journey that lead me to Prague, Amsterdam, Dresden, and Weimar (with some really quick Berlin stops in between). I started off in Prague and then went to Amsterdam with my dad and stepmother, Alice, when they were visiting, and then immediately moved on to Dresden and Weimar with the Hampshire in Berlin group.

I'll break it up by place so that it might be easier to follow.

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Prague

When Dad and Alice came to visit me, we spent only an afternoon and evening in Berlin before hustling to Berlin's Hauptbahnhof early the next morning to catch a train that would take us to Prague. The four hour train ride was gorgeous; we got to see all of the mustard fields, the beautiful green, rolling hills, and even some amazing tall rock formations that had these little bridges connecting them way up high in the air. Riding the train in Europe is always lovely. You get to experience a whole different part of each country that you would have probably never seen otherwise.

Alice looking out the train window on the way from Berlin to Prague.

The reason that my parents picked Prague to travel to during the short time that they were here is because their good friends from Scotland and California were going to be there, and they wanted to meet up with them. When we arrived, their friends (who had already been there since the day before) were waiting at the hotel and no more than five minutes after we checked in, we were already out and about exploring the city. This was wonderful, because they had already had a whole day to get familiar with the city and scope out the best places to visit. None of us had ever been to Prague before, so without that, it probably would have been a bit daunting.

We immediately got some drinks and then decided to walk across the Charles Bridge in the mid-afternoon haze, and to check out Prague Castle once we got to the other side. The city was beautiful, unlike any other I've ever seen. Prague is also the furthest east I've been (in Europe, not counting China) and I've heard that the further east one travels, the more different things become.

Prague felt interesting to me because it was beautiful in a way that was also very sad. It was left untouched during the second world war, so the original city in almost its entirety is still in existence. It had a warm, dark, medieval feeling to it, with almost all cobblestone streets, and small, wandering alleyways in between many of the buildings. The river running through the middle of the city was also absolutely stunning, and even though the weather was a bit rainy and foggy while we were there, and we couldn't necessarily enjoy the sunshine, I felt a true sense of being somewhere special.

Entrance to Prague Castle

Once we got up to Prague Castle, Dad, our friends Gavin, Morris, Susan, and I all climbed the supposed 288 steps (though upon Morris' counting while walking back down them, he swore that there were only 284) to the top of the St. Vitus Cathedral, which itself is housed atop one of the greatest hills overlooking the entire city of Prague. The narrow, tightly-wound, hand-carved stone staircase to the top seemed to last forever as we climbed it, but every once in a while there would be a small window in the wall of the stairwell and we could peek through to see views of the church's enormous stained glass windows and the church's enormous cast-iron bells.

When we finally arrived at the top, we were greeted with one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen in my life. Even though the day was a bit cloudy, we could see all of the city, and beyond, sprawling into the distance. With Prague Castle and the elaborate flying buttresses in the foreground, it was impossible to not be taken by the entire scene.

View of Prague (with the Saint Charles Bridge right in the middle) from the top of St. Vitus Cathedral

View of the cathedral, with some of the castle in the background

When we finally made it back down to the bottom of the tower, we walked outside and wandered to the back of the castle grounds, where we found a beautiful terrace overlooking the city from a different angle.

View from the castle's terrace, overlooking Prague

Dad and Gavin also found a spot where they decided to do some impromptu performance art for a group of other tourists who only looked slightly amused - we thought it was hilarious, though.

Gavin and Dad as living statues... or something...

The rest of the trip, we hung out and just explored parts of the city little by little. We ate some really great food - including some amazing Indian food that I would recommend to you if I remembered the name of the restaurant - drank lots of good drinks (I did get my Czech absinthe, even though that almost didn't happen) and enjoyed each other's company. We were only there for two nights and one full day, though, so I would definitely go back in the future to spend more time there.

Freie Universität / Humboldt Universität / Hampshire College Berlin Program

[Hint: If you're a Hampshire College student considering this program, this blog post will probably be of a lot of help in relation to understanding how the unique program here works.]

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Hi everybody! I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm well. Though there have been rumors going around in my immediate family, I didn't actually fall off the face of the earth! Look, here's a picture of me finally meeting my childhood hero, Avril Lavigne... Okay, maybe not quite. Regardless, I'm living and breathing, and the city of Berlin has still been way too cold for this time of year in my opinion, but it's beginning to come out of its winter hibernation. Soon, summer will be here... Or so they tell me.

The reason why I haven't been able to keep up with these blog posts nearly as much as I'd like to mostly has to do with the fact that at the very beginning of April, classes began at German universities. Until then, I'd been taking part (along with the other five Hampshire College students who are here) in four-hour daily classes at the BSI Language School in Berlin Neukölln, and had been participating in many weekly events put on by the Hampshire College Berlin Program. These weekly events included film screenings in our studio space every Tuesday evening (usually involving films having something to do with Berlin and/or Berlin's complicated history), theater plays, musical concerts, many different types of gallery openings, day-trips to places like Potsdam and Ravensbrück, and other such activities.

Not only did these Hampshire College Berlin Program activities continue as university classes began, and at full-blast might I add, but I also picked up an independent study on top of all of that (working with Daniel and Anna Schrade, the Hampshire advisors for the trip). Things have been busy, things have been stressful, but things have also been a ton of fun. I haven't talked about university at all in my prior blog posts, so in order to inform future perspective program participants as well as my friends and family, here is my experience with it thus far:

The main university in Berlin that Hampshire College is linked up with is called "Freie Universität" (or "Free University") and is a large university on the outskirts of the city in a place called Dahlem Dorf. Because there are no private universities in Germany (and all degrees can be earned for less that 300 Euros per year), FU (I know, an unfortunate abbreviation) feels very much like a big state school. For me, I would compare it to the University of New Hampshire or UMASS Amherst. It's been a bit difficult adjusting to becoming a number in a really large school, when I'm so used to being not only a name, but an entire person at Hampshire College. The classes at FU are much larger, and I found out when signing up for classes that there are basically no music classes (other than basic theory) offered.

Taking this into account, I looked outside of FU for classes that interested me and were more inside of my area of study. Though we are technically full-time students at FU, we were also (thankfully) encouraged by our advisors to look at Humboldt University (same size/feeling as FU, just in more interesting buildings that are inside of the city instead of outside of it), Berlin's Technical University, and elsewhere. I ended up finding a class at Humboldt that interested me, and after going to a bunch of classes and seeing what I thought I'd like, here was the schedule that I ended up with:

• "Film in der DDR / DEFA" - a film class based solely around watching lots of movies from the GDR (former East Germany). All in German. LOTS of work. (Freie University)
• "Deutschkurs" - a weekly German language class focusing on the history and culture of Berlin in the 1920's. (Freie University)
• "Hörstunde: Kammermusik: Von Händel bis Hendrix" - a listening hour (actually 3 hours) every week which focuses on the fluidity of the concept of chamber music. All in German. (Humboldt University)
• "Berlin Soundscapes" - an independent study involving doing research on the history of some of Berlin's train stations, collecting found sounds, composing music, and mashing them all together.

I'm happy with my schedule, and think that it's just the right amount of work for me. Some weeks, I have a ton of work, and on other weeks, my workload is relatively light. It lets me feel like I'm taking part in something academically stimulating while also giving me some time to still explore and enjoy the city. I would highly recommend keeping that element in mind when choosing your courses for the program.

Another thing that has been strange is getting all grades for the semester. I hadn't realized how used to receiving written evaluations I'd become, even though I do get letter grades for all of my Five College courses back home anyway. In Germany, instead of getting an A, B, C, D, or F, you get a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (respectively). BUT even though all of these things have felt a little strange, I'm managing and everything is going just fine.

Here's a photo that I took a few weeks ago of the outside of the main
FU building as I was leaving my class for the afternoon.

Here's a little guy doing yoga on top of a street sign near FU.

I think that's all there really is to say about my experience in German universities. I've also been doing a lot of travelling when I'm not in class (and okay, sometimes when I'm SUPPOSED to be in class). I understand that that will make a much more exciting blog, which I promise to post soon. It's going to involve a LOT of photos, so it's taking a while to finish.

Thank you all for reading, and check back because I'll be posting a few more blog posts this weekend.

Liebe Grüße!

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p.s. If you're a perspective student for this program and have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me - my email address is in the right hand column of this page.

Satch Hoyt Studio Visit (Response #4)

Here is another of my response papers for the Hampshire in Berlin program. We visited the studio of artist Satch Hoyt in Berlin's district of Wedding, and loved getting to talk with him, see his studio, and go to a fantastic restaurant that he recommended for dinner afterward.

If you're not familiar with Satch or his work, I highly recommend that you visit his website: satchhoyt.com .

(I have several more blog posts in the making, and apologize that it's taken me so long to finish them. Once university started, things got really busy for me, and have only gotten more busy since. Please check back soon for several more blog posts on University in Germany and my recent travels to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Prague, Amsterdam, Dresden, Weimar, Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and more.)

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Visiting an artist’s personal workspace always brings about a strange feeling for me; even when you’re invited into these spaces, there’s no way to stop feeling like you’re intruding a bit. Most often, a studio space, especially a totally personal one, is the space in which an artist experiences their own artistic process, which can be an extremely intimate, personal, and (at times) grueling thing. When I heard that we were going to visit Satch Hoyt’s studio space, this inner conflict of excitement mixed with caution came over me. I was enthralled to get to see him in his own environment, surrounded by his work, but also didn’t want him to feel like we were taking up his space in a way that would be uncomfortable or detrimental to him. I became extremely aware of this as we walked through the courtyard of his building, back to the Hinterhaus where his studio is, rang his buzzer, walked up the stairs, and found him waiting for us in his doorway. His torn and tattered jeans, grungy white Birkenstocks, simple t-shirt, cardigan, bandana, and the serious yet playful smile on his face said it all: he was in his element here; this was entirely his space.

            As I walked through the door and into the space, I felt a huge smile come over my face. Looking around, I could tell that this really was Satch’s space; it was a space that was just an extension of himself and his imagination, and a physical manifestation of his creativity. It was clear that he had taken the time to think about the placement of every single object in the room, from the collection of unsharpened pencils on a coffee table in the corner to the forty-or-so multicolored darts that were sprawled across the floor as if they were coming out of an old transistor radio. We were invited warmly into Satch’s world, and despite my prior worry, it immediately felt great to be there. The openness with which he showed us his space and talked about his life and work amazed me. Nothing was off limits, and all questions were addressed head-on. As he showed us his visual art pieces, and played us some of his audio work, I couldn’t help but admire this quality in him.

            What struck the strongest cord with me was his sound work that he showed us. Naturally, I tend to take more toward auditory things, and his work with sound very much played into this quality that I possess. It was interesting to hear about how he decides to pair up these sound collages and soundscapes that he creates along with his visual art. One could listen to these audio works alone and understand his message, but when his visual and his audio work supplement each other in the way that he uses them to, it feels as if all of your senses are tingling all at the same time, pushing you to reach into yourself and understand on much more than a basic level what he is intending with his art.

            His audio work was really inspiring for me to listen to. I haven’t worked a lot with sound collages before, which is why I decided to do it here using the sounds of Berlin that I find. But it’s daunting for me to use clips of audio that I haven’t completely created myself. Perhaps because I have less control over every aspect of a recording, at least to some extent, or perhaps because I feel the need to do justice to the sound that belongs to people and spaces completely outside of myself and my own comfort zone. Listening to Satch’s pieces helped me to make sense of how found audio clips can be put into use, though, and hearing what he had to say about his process for doing so was even more comforting. He explained that the process of creating these sound collages (which often accompany his visual art pieces) is very fluid for him; he knows which pieces he wants to string together, and sits down with an engineer who works quickly to fulfill Satch’s impulsive decisions as to what feels right to him sonically at that exact moment. I often sit over my own art, particularly music and sound, and get extremely stressed over which way each small element of a piece should be situated within the whole. Hearing how good Satch’s pieces were, and then listening to him say that it’s okay to make something semi-impulsively and not let yourself go back and edit it forever and ever, was something that I really appreciated and needed to hear.

            I also really like creating sounds from objects that aren’t normally used in a musical sense, and was inspired in this light through Satch’s piece called “From Mau Mau to Brixton”, which involved the manipulated recordings of hair picks as well as sounds created by one of his related sculptures being struck with a pencil. Through these different forms of creating sound, he harnessed what he could and turned it into a piece that even had a discernable percussive rhythm section, harmonization, and depth.  I also really liked how he used sound in his piece called “How The West Was Won”, which involved fifty or so porcelain figures sitting on the head of a drum. He played a heavy bass line through a sub woofer below the drum, and the figures vibrated and teetered, clashing into each other and creating their own noise outside of what already existed.

            Getting to spend time with him out at dinner as well as in his studio space, I left the evening with the impression that it’s okay to take your art seriously, but only to a point. Satch’s work is all about making the viewer just uncomfortable enough that they can then be creatively and/or politically influenced by the same piece that just made them uncomfortable only a few seconds before. It was refreshing to get to spend time with him and see not only his work, but also how he works. I will definitely keep up with him in the future and hopefully catch some of his work at some other point or in some other place, whether visual, audio, or something completely different. The studio visit was great fun, and I’d love to do more of them.

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LG,
K

Tarek Atoui's "Metastable Circuit" (Response #1)

[I'm required to write a series of informal response papers on events that we attend in Berlin. I will cross post these on my blog. This is the first one, about our attendance on March 15, 2013 at a performance by Tarek Atoui on his "Metastable Circuit". If you've never heard of him or his instrument, here's a YouTube clip for you to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niH7NcY1rz8]

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When I first grabbed a pamphlet for Berlin’s Märzmusik Festival at Das Haus Der Berliner Festspiele, I was on my way out of the Berlinale screening of Skins that we went to in February. I saw “Musik” and just grabbed it, not really thinking much of it. When I got home later that night and flipped through its pages, though, I realized that the booklet that I’d arbitrarily grabbed may well have been the gateway to one of my favorite things that I’d see and hear in Berlin.

Contemporary and experimental music is something that I was never really interested in until about 2010, and since then I’ve been trying to cultivate my understanding and analysis of it in any way possible. This has included not only listening and experiencing it, but also trying to create it in different ways. For the past few years at Hampshire, this has meant spending hours upon hours in the Lemelson Center for Design, soldering endlessly until either that piece of electronics works or I get so frustrated with the whole thing that I give up altogether for the time being. I’ve built things such as a made-from-scratch guitar amplifier that is housed in an old tin Batman lunchbox, a 4-foot tall realistic Crayola crayon box containing giant light-up crayons that react to different frequencies in the music that enters the circuit through an attached iPod, and a made-from-scratch ribbon microphone using dangerously strong (and also miniscule) magnets, a (rather frustrating) piece of aluminum tape that was 0.02mm thick, a transformer, and a salvaged XLR cable. Other projects have included using the cameras from computer mice for different purposes, hacking old children’s toys for their parts, using computer programming to create interactive sound-scapes, and other such nonsense.

With all of this in mind, my finding Tarek Atoui’s “Metastable Circuit” within the schedule of events was something that immediately excited me, particularly after I was able to look up his former YouTube performances with the instrument that he invented. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, as it was difficult to tell exactly what he was doing physically with the instrument to create sound in the online videos, but was happy that the other students in the group were also interested enough to go to the performance and find out. He seemed to have an equal mix of musical sound sets and noise sound sets, and I was very curious as to which he would select for the festival, especially since the theme of the entire thing for the year was percussion.

When we showed up to Das Hausa Der Berliner Festspiele only a month or so after we’d been there for Berlinale, I was eagerly awaiting Atoui’s performance. Being unsure of what to expect is sometimes one of my favorite feelings with anything art-related. When we exchanged our tickets for sets of little blue earplugs, though, I began to get really excited, curious, and I’ll admit a little bit nervous. What had I gotten us into?

The performance was loud and bass-y in a way that made me (and I’m assuming everyone else) physically uncomfortable. It felt like the music was rattling your bones and rearranging your heartbeat. This aspect of live music has always frightened me. For my entire life, when I would be at a concert and feel this way, I would leave. This could mostly be due to the fact that in past experiences, this effect is caused by music that has no intention of conveying any artful purpose through this acoustical phenomenon, but rather just wanted the music to be loud. This was the first time I’ve had with it where I didn’t get up. I thought to myself, Okay Kelley, you’ve got to sit through this and just take it. This discomfort is all part of the performance and of the experience, which in the end, I think, was a stellar decision. It's actually kind of neat to think about the fact that sound waves are using your body as a medium to travel through...

Atoui’s performance started off with big, deep, booming bass that rattled my ribcage and made me happy that I had been given that pair of earplugs. He seemed to have a sense, though, of exactly how far he could stretch his audience with this effect before he would retire that vibrating bass and bring in some much higher pitches of a different timbre. Even though much of the audience didn’t like it and left, I was a bit amazed at how on-point this aspect of his performance was. He would test how uncomfortable he could make his audience and then, at the exact moment when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, he would back off. It’s difficult when one is only working with sounds and not music to arrange a piece in a way that is interesting to listen to, and this goes particularly with live performances. Atoui’s was definitely not the most beautiful, or even the most interesting-sounding piece I’ve ever heard, by far, but that’s also not what I think his performance was about.

Another reason why I really enjoyed it was simply due to the concept behind the instrument; his “Metastable Circuit”.  The more I thought about the name, the more it began to make sense to me. Here is my interpretation of the name of his instrument and performance: “Metastable:  (adj) Physics, Chemistry. Pertaining to a body or system existing at an energy level above that of a more stable state and requiring the addition of a small amount of energy to induce a transition to the more stable state.” Having done things with musical electronics, Atoui’s actual electronic circuit had to have been stable, there’s no way that it could have been built to carry enough energy to be considered unstable and still function with all of the other factory manufactured electronics that he also used. This alludes, then, to the fact that he himself is the metastable part of this circuit. His body is the final “wire” or “connection” that completes the “electrical” circuit and allows energy to pass through the system.

The physicality of his body during the performance was unique, but not necessarily creating a pleasant aesthetic.  Most of the time, I even found it a bit awkward, uncomfortable, and gruesome. His movements were rigid and unnatural, and his face looked intensely concentrated, in an almost painful way, on the sounds booming out into the room. Atoui’s performance was possibly more of a conceptual movement performance than a sound performance, and it gains a lot more depth when viewed as such. For instance, I began to think about how each different person who used the instrument would yield completely different results. Every human body moves differently, has different proportions, and has a different concept of coordination, which could potentially greatly affect the different aspects of the sound being created by the instrument.

When the last note faded out and Atoui stepped back and bowed his head, I immediately wanted to jump up onto the little stage and analyze the electrical components of his instrument. He never touched anything with his hands throughout the entire performance, which meant that my initial guess at his use of track pads was incorrect. (He also had homemade pedals all over the floor underneath the table, which he impressively controlled with his feet for the entire performance.) When the crowd got up and some people started to gather around his “Metastable Circuit”, I decided to do the same. Upon quick inspection, I figured out that Atoui was using small cameras to trace his hand movements and running those traces through his computer to make sound. I’m not sure what kind of program he was using, but I can guess that it maybe involved a homemade patch on Max/MSP/Jitter. This was pretty neat for me to think about because I spent last semester at Hampshire creating a program with Max/MSP/Jitter that also took movement and color from live video and turned it into musical sounds.

Overall, I really liked this performance and thought that it was interesting on so many levels. I would love to go to more musical performances (perhaps actual musical performances instead of just sound, though those ones are good too!) and will keep my eye out for events happening in Berlin over the coming months. I think that seeing Tarek Atoui’s performance was important in that his instrument is unique, and that it is played how he truly imagined it to be played with his body at the helm. This kind of technology is getting more and more popular and it will be interesting to see if there are more metastable circuits around in the coming years. I’m happy that I picked up that Märzmusik pamphlet and that we got the opportunity to go to this performance.

London Calling

This past weekend, I grabbed a flight to London to stay with Margo and a group of other wonderful Hampshire students at Goldsmiths University in New Cross. I knew it would be easy to get around in Europe, but I always assumed that it would inevitably involve taking the train. This would have been fine with me - train rides tend to be quite long here, but the scenery between destinations is usually really beautiful. Contrary to my initial beliefs about the prices and effectiveness of European train travel, I learned soon after arriving in Berlin that it's actually cheaper (and so much faster) to fly from one country to another here. So, when I wanted to go to London, I booked a direct, round-trip Easyjet flight from Berlin to London for much less than it would have cost me otherwise (even though flying would always make the most sense for London, with it being on an island and all).

I was so excited to go - I'd never been to London before - and when I was finally on my flight and about to take off in Berlin, I started to make a list of the things that I wanted to see (with photographic evidence) and do within my four days there. This list included:

- Big Ben
- Westminster Abbey
- The London Eye
- Buckingham Palace
- Getting afternoon tea
- Abbey Road/Abbey Road Studios
- Getting (Gluten Free) Fish & Chips
- Taking a photo in a classic London telephone booth
- Taking a photo with one of the Trafalgar Square lions
- Doing things unexpectedly that end up being fun

For the first time in my life, I did everything on a "To Do" list - I know, I was shocked too!

Before I talk about my trip in its entirety, I'll give any current or future European travelers a handy tip:

* If you're in Europe and want to travel quickly and efficiently from city to city, use an airline called Easyjet (also Ryanair). It's sort of the Bolt Bus or Megabus equivalent of European flying. I know that some people have terrible experiences with Bolt Bus, Megabus, and Easyjet (and I have too), but for me (most of the time) these little travel glitches are okay if I'm saving a TON of money. The Easyjet I took from Berlin to London left from Berlin Schönefeld Airport and landed at London Gatwick Airport - Easyjet tends to only service smaller airports, but I found this to be kind of nice; it's a quick trip through security because there aren't too many people, and even though you have to find public transportation between airports and city centers, it still ends up costing less than, say, it would have for me to fly from Berlin Tegel Airport to London Heathrow Airport.

Now, my trip:

I got into London on Thursday night and found Margo at the London Bridge underground station. We walked around that area of London for a short time, and finally decided to try an Indian restaurant that we happened upon for dinner. It was so strange for me to have everything be in English again, as I'm already so used to everything being in German, but also kind of nice because it was British English, not American English (I kept trying to remember that I was the one with the accent, not everyone else!). The food was good, and the waiter (an older Indian man) didn't speak great English but I thought he was really cute. I was in such a good mood that I was trying to make friends with him, telling him that I'd never been to London before and that this was my first meal ever in the UK! To me that was exciting, but I don't know if he really cared. It ended up being really goofy and funny.

Margo over Indian food my first night in London

After dinner, we headed (on the tube!) back to Goldsmiths in New Cross where we went back to the Hampshire apartment (for lack of a better term) and met up with all of the other Hampsters there. Most of them I didn't know, but I really enjoyed hanging with them for a weekend. I think they are definitely people who I would not have gotten to meet at Hampshire, so it was cool getting to meet them in London! The group of us just hung out in that area for the night and then went to bed. I'll admit, I was exhausted even though my trip was only a few hours.

New Cross Gate - the overground stop for Goldsmiths University

On Friday, Margo took me to see a bunch of the things that were on my list. She'd already seen them, but was nice enough to show me around and humor me anyway. She's the best. We came up out of the tube and Big Ben was right in front of us, as well as Westminster Abbey. It was so cool, but also strange, to see it in real life. We turned around and noticed that the London Eye was directly behind us as well. It was a freezing, grey day, and we've heard that it's expensive to get tickets to go on it, so we only took pictures from the bridge we were on. Maybe one day, though, I'll go back and get to ride on the London Eye!

Me in front of the London Eye

Margo & I in front of Big Ben (with so much water in my arms!)

Big Ben/Westminster Abbey

Me in front of Westminster Abbey

So by now, my list was looking something like this:


- Big Ben
- Westminster Abbey
- The London Eye
- Buckingham Palace
- Getting afternoon tea
- Abbey Road/Abbey Road Studios
- Getting (Gluten Free) Fish & Chips
- Taking a photo in a classic London telephone booth
- Taking a photo with one of the Trafalgar Square lions
- Doing things unexpectedly that end up being fun

But there was still so much more to do!

Our friend Micah (who is also from Hampshire) has been studying in the UK at Oxford University for the entire year this year and we both really wanted to see him while I was in London. We worked it out so that we could meet for dinner on Friday night - the perfect opportunity for me to get gluten free fish and chips that I'd found at a place online! Knowing that that was coming up for dinner, we still had a few hours to kill before heading to Leicester Square, so we went to Trafalgar Square to get my lion picture.

The lions are really high off of the ground, and even though I REALLY wanted to get a photo sitting up in front of them, I just couldn't climb up that high. I tried, and was about to sadly settle for just standing in front, when two German tourists came over and offered to lift me up. They did, and I got an awesome picture up there! Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting back down (especially with my fear of highs) so they came back and helped me down. They were awesome and totally made me so happy.

Me and a Trafalgar Square lion

We then found ourselves directly in front of London's National Gallery and decided to slip past a living statue and street magician to go inside and check it out. The museum offered free admission and neither of us really knew what to expect, but there was some great stuff in there. Lots of Van Gogh, Monet, Seurat - pretty cool!

After the museum, we met up with Micah for dinner and I got my gluten free fish and chips which were actually AMAZING. So good. They even came with mushy peas (mmm...?). It was so nice getting to see Micah and catch up with him too. After dinner, we went to the M&M store that was right around the corner and got some M&M's.

Margo and Micah at dinner

My gluten free fish, chips, and mushy peas

Me with my fish and chips

The M&M store

M&M Abbey Road

 I also did get my photo in a telephone booth that day, though I don't remember exactly when.

Me in a telephone booth

 So now my list was looking like this and I was feeling really great about it. Only one day in London, and I was more than half way finished with everything that I wanted to do there!


- Big Ben
- Westminster Abbey
- The London Eye
- Buckingham Palace
- Getting afternoon tea
- Abbey Road/Abbey Road Studios
- Getting (Gluten Free) Fish & Chips
- Taking a photo in a classic London telephone booth
- Taking a photo with one of the Trafalgar Square lions
- Doing things unexpectedly that end up being fun


That night, we went back to New Cross and ended up just hanging there again. It was nice to relax in a warm place after being outside in the cold all day. I've heard that London is very grey and chilly, and that definitely turned out to be true!

On Satuday, Margo and I went to brunch at an awesome little cafe in New Cross called Chinwag. I got "Jackets and Beans" (baked potatoes and beans) that were fantastic. The whole place was so cool - definitely one of my favorite cafes/places to eat that I've ever been to.

Margo over brunch at Chinwag

After brunch we went to Abbey Road to get my photo while crossing it at the infamous Beatles crosswalk. Unfortunately, the studio isn't open for visitors (probably because they're recording, I'm assuming) but we did also get some photos in front of that. We also signed the wall in front of the studio where everyone had written their favorite Beatles lyrics, etc.

Abbey Road Studios

My Abbey Road crosswalk photo

Margo signing the wall at Abbey Road Studios

Some graffiti there that I thought was funny.
I bet Yoko actually wrote that.

My mark at Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road sign

Me in front of Abbey Road Studios

A cute cafe that we passed, but that was unfortunately closed

Me and the Abbey Road sign

On Sunday, we woke up a bit late but decided that we would go to Buckingham Palace in the afternoon. None of the other Hampshire students had been there yet, but the only people who wanted to go with me were Margo and Katie - everyone else was too tired to venture out into the cold. I'm glad we went though, even though we thought we were going to be able to go inside but weren't allowed to even get through the front gate. We happened to visit the palace during the one month period all year that they don't offer tours. Figures.

We got our photos nonetheless, and then headed to the royal gift shop to try on some goofy beefeater hats.

Margo and Katie in front of the gate in Hyde Park

Hyde Park

Katie and Margo in front of Buckingham Palace

A royal guard!

Buckingham Palace front gate 

Me in front of Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace front gate 

Margo, the royal guard

 Kelley, the royal guard

After being out in the cold at the palace, we went to get some informal afternoon tea down the street. It was good, I counted it as the afternoon tea I'd been hoping for on my list, which left me with only Abbey Road and "unexpected fun things" left to do!

Katie had heard about a clothing swap going on more towards New Cross that night, so we decided to go. We knew nothing about it except an address that was on a flyer. Though finding it was difficult, we eventually happened upon an adorable little building that looked very DIY (for lack of a better term). We were a bit nervous, but decided to go inside and see what it was like. As we walked up, we saw a group of children playing together outside in the dark with LED hula hoops - this place was going to be good. When we opened the door, we were faced with a burst of light and a crowded room full of British hippie types who immediately greeted us and told us that the three of us counted as a family so we could pay to get together as one family. We swapped some clothes, got some cider, and then the kids (in their adorable British accents) started to tell us that we had to back up because they were going to clear the room to do something. Not completely understanding what, we stood back a bit and soon realized that everyone was setting up for a musical performance. A man in crazy looking ski goggles named Lewis Floyd Henry (I think?) played Lenny Kravitz-ish set on a bunch of homemade electronics and his guitar, incorporating the kids into songs where he could. It was adorable and we had so much fun. It was a great last night in London. Sometimes, the best things that you do while traveling are the things that you just stumble upon. In this case, this totally rang true.

The mystery community center

It's blurry, but this is the best photo I got of Lewis Floyd Henry's set

I headed back to Berlin early in the morning and have been back since. I've been so busy here that it's been hard to keep track of what I've been up to, but I'm still going to try to blog as often as I can. In a few weeks, Sprachschule will end and I'll begin going to classes at the University. I'm not sure which classes or which university yet, but I don't need to figure that out for another few weeks. I hope you're all doing well - thanks for reading!

Große Liebe.