exile. a while

past tense

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:17:32 -0400

letsten dienstag habe ich zum ersten mal truffel gegessen.

rest in peace, kathy

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:04:06 -0400

kathy dudding (left) and clare o'leary (right) at my 40th birthday party in 2006.

it is a mild monday morning in münchen & i am sitting alone in the apartment wearing a long black velvet evening gown. i'm wearing this dress in memory of kathy dudding, who gave it to me, and who died at the weekend a few months after being diagnosed with bone cancer. only a month ago, her latest film asylum pieces premiered at the new zealand film festival, gaining excellent reviews.

kathy and i shared, amongst other things, an appreciation of good frocks. about 3 years ago, the day before i left wellington for one of my european adventures, kathy appeared at my front door and announced that she was having a clear-out; her car boot was full of frocks & i could take my pick. we hauled 2 or 3 huge bags into my living room and spent a delightful couple of hours trying on frocks. naturally there were several that became part of my collection, some of which have since migrated to other wardrobes and some of which are now in storage in wellington. but one, this elegant evening gown, travelled with me to europe the next day & has travelled with me again. on its first european trip, it dazzled guests at a new years eve party in sweden then became my costume for "women with big eyes" in denmark and later cuba. it will continue to travel, dazzle and perform, and every time i look at it i will remember kathy, her love of frocks and her quiet perceptive manner.

new zealand has lost several amazing women in the last couple of months - kathy, sue dunlop, peta rutter - all young & contributing actively to the film, music and theatre worlds. arohanui to kathy's family & friends.

more extreme sport ...

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:53:36 -0400

i've just got back from cycling to schloss blutenburg and back. originally built for one of the bavarian king's mistresses, this 15th-century castle with moat and ornamental lake is now the centre-piece of a public park and houses a restaurant, late-gothic church, and the internationale jugendbibliothek - the largest children's book library in the world. it's currently showing an exhibition of australian illustrator shaun tan, but today i didn't go in as i want to see it with andy at the weekend.

the radfaht (cycle journey) from westkreuz to blutenburg took under an hour, following the route along the würm - a small river that normally meanders gently along. however at the moment it's very swollen due to the excessive rain, and in at least one place had broken its banks and flooded a grassy area. some bits of the path were closed due to flooding, and in other places there were detours due to the never-ending roadworks (i'm sure this is münchen's solution to the economic crisis - eternal roadworking projects). but nearly all of the way it's a very pleasant route, with the river, trees, other cyclists and a few pedestrians. today is the first nice day since we got back from scandinavia - sunny and mild without a breath of wind. i've learned that münchen is easily as windy as wellington, & living on the 6th floor accentuates the wind-factor.

so, that's my exercise for today back to organising the 101010 UpStage festival now ...

summer highs

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:56:06 -0400

it's hard keeping up with a blog when one's life is busy; more than a month has passed since i last wrote here, & in that time i've been in london, munich, denmark & sweden. i've given the first presentation of make-shift, a new networked performance i'm making with paula crutchlow; written more funding applications; driven from munich to sweden & back; had lots of parties; been to the tivoli, the karen blixen museum, christiania and louisiana; i have been on planes, in cars, on a ferry and a ferris wheel. i have read one novel & done countless sudoku puzzles. i have spoken english, deutsch, srpski, dansk & svenska. i have had very few swims but they were good. mostly the rain has followed me around europe.

one of the highlights has been coming home to münchen to find the tomato plants still thriving, covered in fruit and starting to ripen (thanks to andy's neighbours doing a great watering job - along with plenty of rain). we sampled the first fruits yesterday & they were very very tasty! if we could only get a little sunshine, i'm sure we'll have a great harvest from the little balcony garden. today we bought new lettuce plants, as the others have all gone to seed, but we had months of salad from them.

as for the holiday, there were too many highlights to mention, least of all dear zab's fabulous 40th birthday party - a great weekend at a big old house in the swedish countryside, with several kiwis and germans amongst the swedes. there was good food, plenty to drink and dancing until it was almost getting light again outside. it was great to hang out with zab & her friends, & welcome into this most fabulous decade.

some of the other highlights were indeed very high, & deserving of photographic evidence here as there are people who many not believe that i actually went on a ferris wheel - & even enjoyed it! (after recovering from the initial terror & impulse to insist on getting off). this was not just any ferris wheel, but the highest transportable ferris wheel in the world, at the hamburger dom.

emboldened by the ferris wheel experience (there are other photos where i'm smiling, but i thought this one would be most entertaining for you) i went on to climb the pretty damn scary external spiral staircase of vor frelsers kirke in copenhagn. there are 400 steps to the top of the spire, the last 150 being outside, & the last few are so small even zecica had trouble getting her paws onto them.

i'm not really afraid of heights, but when you're standing on the narrow copper steps of a 270-year-old 90 metre spire with the wind tugging at you & only an ornate metal handrail between you & the quick way down - well, i felt better hugging the core of the spire than leaning over the railing, that's for sure! but the views and the satisfaction of reaching the top made it well worth the climb. i'll even say it was fun - however, i'm not planning on taking up rock-climbing or abseiling just yet ...

losing it

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:28:02 -0400

i have travelled a lot, for years, & rarely have i left even a toothbrush behind me. but recently i seem to be losing something more important than a toothbrush on every trip. is the senile dementia setting in already, or can i blame it on over-active borrowers?

last year, after travelling for 6 months in europe without losing anything (nothing that i missed, anyway), i left behind the data projector adaptor for my computer at the last lecture i gave in the UK. as any mac owner knows, this is a vital piece of equipment, so it was annoying to lose it; but i knew that i had an older spare back in wellington so it wasn't too disastrous.

this year, unpacking after my trip to brussels for the libre graphics meeting, i couldn't find my favourite pen, which i've had for 10 years. a favourite pen, as any writer knows, is more than just a tool. i remember writing with it during the last day of the meeting, but after that i don't know what happened. & now back from madrid, i seem to have lost the very unique wristband that philippa brought back from the shetland islands (our ancestral home) for me. i was wearing it on saturday when we went to the madrid gay pride parade, & i remember taking it off to show it to the others, but more than that i can't remember (& no, i wasn't drunk!); all i know is now it's gone : (

the moral of the story is, the lighter i travel, the less i have to lose!

when bitch'n is polite

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:06:46 -0400

becoming british really only gave me a temporary excuse from learning & speaking deutsch; the reality is that i as long as i am here in deutschland, it would be handy to be able to speak a bit more of the local language. the "learn german in 30 days" book is just too hard, so i've resorted to children's picture books from the library (i do like a good children's picture book) & i've also managed to convince andy that she must teach me something else besides bavarian insults. so this evening she taught me bitch'n. it's bavarian for bitteschön (bitt'scheen), & it's how you respond to dankeschön - which becomes dankscheen in bavarian. i'm sure those of you who were shocked by my capacity to insult will be pleased to know that i've moved on to bitch'n.

discovering more green cheese!

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:06:47 -0400

if you know me, you'll know that i like green, & i like cheese; so whenever i encounter a truly green cheese, it is cause for great excitement (as documented here in denmark last year).

now, i have happily encountered another gorgeous specimen - this time it is wasabi cheese; & very tasty too. the wasabi is not too subtle (as was the wasabi hummus i found in vienna last year) but strong enough to give a little tickle to the nostrils. mmm! it's great when the simple things in life bring so much happiness.

becoming british ...

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:36:53 -0400

last week i became british; as a pakeha (european) new zealander who already held uk right of abode, it didn't feel like a massive step - yet it makes a big difference to what i can now do. passing through security to enter the british consulate was more dramatic and serious than the actual ceremony, which i shared with a young australian guy and toasted with a glass of water. i affirmed allegiance to the same queen that we have in new zealand, & swore to obey the laws in britain which i've always done (well, more or less!). i got a fancy certificate, which i sent off yesterday along with my passport application; and on friday, after spending about 50 minutes navigating forms & officials at an official place, i got some pieces of paper confirming that i'm a legal EU person in europe.

apart from the time taken to negotiate the bureaucracy and fill out forms, it was all pretty easy - yet i know that for other people, this is almost or completely impossible. circumstance and chance determine our levels of freedom of movement.

while pondering on my extreme good fortune and what that means in the wider frame of things, i held a little tea party to celebrate my new britishness. but we found that the fresh scones (yes, i baked them myself) with jam and cream, cucumber sandwiches and asparagus rolls went much better with champagne than with tea. the party happened to coincide with the uk playing the usa at the world soccer cup and - those of you who know me well will be shocked at this - i watched it! with the sound down, of course, once the national anthems were over. i surprised myself by remembering some of the words of god save the queen (simon, the british consulate general here in munich who gave me my certificate, would be proud of me!) altho it's true that my german friends lustily sang "god shave the queen!".

so, now i'm no longer a tourist or a temporary visitor; i'm an EU citizen as well as a new zealand citizen (yep, we can hold dual citizenship : ) & everyone tells me i look quite different already. naturally i'll have to stop trying to learn german, & instead focus on the queen's english & talk unemotionally about the weather all the time, with a stiff upper lip & a jolly hockey stick. what!

when old is really old

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:53:15 -0400

for someone from new zealand, "old" buildings can be anything from about 50 years old. humans have inhabited new zealand/aotearoa for less than a thousand years, & the earliest peoples left very few traces. europeans have been there for barely 200 years, so our oldest buildings are from the mid-1800s and the suburb of newtown in wellington (where i live when i'm "at home") is about 100 years old. when i lived in edinburgh's old town (medieval) it amused me that the "new town" dated back to the 1700s. the novelty of old european stuff, therefore, takes a long time to wear off. andy is probably sick to death of hearing me say, "wow, it's so OLD!" after 4 days of wandering around medieval towns, ruined castles and the archeological museum in bozen. call me a naive antipodean, a tourist from the new world, whatever - old stuff still blows me away.

south tyrol is a good area for castles; every strategic hill is topped with one, ruined or perhaps still inhabited (other hilltops have either a church, just as ancient, or a massive electricty pylon - not so ancient). some ruins you can freely wander into, some have been carefully preserved, others transformed into galleries and event centres. one of the castles we visited, runklestein, contains incredibly well-preserved frescoes. at one time, the interior of the castle must have been so wildly and continuously painted it must have been the medieval version of hypermedia overload. the scenes that still exist include legendary figures and stories (the tale of tristan & isolde filling an entire room) as well as contemporary scenes - medieval gentry hunting, jousting, playing ball, dancing (pictured below). there is even a picture of the castle itself, painted at some time near the end of the 14th century, in one of the main rooms. some rooms have painted patterns like wallpaper while others have painted "curtains" hanging on the walls. in one room with a series of figures around the top of the walls, there is a man who has turned his back, apparently very unusual for the time.

also in castle runkelstein at the moment is an exhibition called "homo sedens" which is all about chairs. as well as displaying many beautifully carved & constructed chairs from former times, there are a number of modern examples, & several comodes.

the holiday wasn't just about castles & museums (i haven't even mentioned ötzi the iceman! he's pretty amazing ... ); we also visited a winery & drove past acres & acres of grapes that terrace the hills. we followed the "wein strasse" to the south of bozen, passing through several small towns with streets so narrow it seems crazy to drive through them, to solerno where we decided against the 45-minute climb to a castle perched precariously on a finger of rock, and neumarkt where we had lunch. we planned to have a swim in kalterer see, but so did about 1000 other holidaymakers so we gave up after a tour of the carpark. happily, our hotel had a lovely outdoor pool - cold but so refreshing when it's 35 degrees!

on our last day, we came home via another medieval town, brixen. it was a sunday so again everything was closed, we could hardly find anywhere open for lunch even though there were plenty of tourists wandering around. the sunday closing thing is great - such an antidote to the capitalist shopping-as-entertainment ideology. (i remember closed sundays in new zealand when i was young - but these days the traffic is worse than rush-hour all day on sunday, as all the families in their 4-wheel drives go shopping.) the highlight of brixen was the dom - its cloister is lined with rich frescoes, and the interior is also incredibly ornate, with paintings, gilded trim and delicate chandeliers.

as we drove home - alternating between the autostrada and the landstrasse - the gorgeous weather we'd enjoyed for 4 days faded away & almost exactly as we crossed the border back into germany it began to rain. at oberau we came out of the tunnel into a full-on torrential rainstorm, & that night in münchen we had thunder & lightning. well, i'm told it's practically snowing in wellington. today has been hot, & now i'm watching another interesting sunset from the balcony. all the plants are flourishing - the tomatoes & lettuces in particular - except the sunflower which is kind of stunted : (

i just heard that new zealand has been proclaimed the most peaceful country in the world, for the second year in a row. i wonder whether peacefulness relates to youthfulness - perhaps we just haven't had time to work up the kind of complex and horrific situations that other countries seem unable (or unwilling?) to extricate themselves from ...

crossing borders

nospam@example.com (helenv) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:07:16 -0400

today we drove south from munich, into austria, and out the other side into italy. these days there are no long waits at border control - only queues of vehicles to pay tolls on the autostrada - instead the crossing of borders is signalled by the mobile phone, an incoming text message welcoming us to austria, or italy, with information about the costs of calls & texts.

we saw blue sky for the first time in several days as we came into italy; it's been raining for days in germany, & we were delayed near garmisch-partenkirchen by flooding on the road. it was pretty wet coming through austria, the rivers swollen and brown, but here in italy it's warm & the skies are at least partially clear.

this area, south tyrol, used to be part of austria at one time; the houses are still quite alpine/bavarian looking and everyone speaks german as well as italian. the landscape is quite different - the bavarian pointy alps and fir trees are replaced by dramatic crumbly cliff faces, often held together with netting, a lighter kind of tree, terraced vineyards & lots of castles popping up all over the place. it feels a bit like being in the background of a renaissance painting.

The churches are also different - Bavarian churches tend towards the baroque & favour the onion-style topping to their steeples, whereas here it's the tall thin pointy spire that is most popular. we are staying in bolzano / bozen & have only been for a brief wander around the old town this evening. tomorrow we will go to the museum where ötzi the mummified iceman is.