homing

I'm back in Berlin and waiting for the beans to boil. Beans grown and picked and dried by my housemate's Croatian grandmother. Beans braised with fresh tomatoes, tons of garlic, fennel and silverbeet. Beans soon to be sitting a top a bed of brown rice and drizzled with balsamic and homemade olive oil -also from Dani's grandmother. I wonder if I can convince Dani to travel to Croatia with me and introduce me to her culinary heritage. I heard the beaches are also nice and that Croatians are impressive drinkers.

I'm all alone in our lovely flat. Dani's camping on the Baltic Sea and our cat Kali hasn't been seen for almost a month. Grief is being delayed by the hope that she might come home, since we haven't heard otherwise. I'm really missing her. It was so nice to have a pet around the house again and we were just starting to get to know each other a little better. But it must be crushing for Dani - she's been with her for years.



It's been an emotional homecoming. After quiant, rainy Edinburgh with it's shiny, narrow, labrythine cobbled streets, Berlin feels expansive and loaded with potential. But I'm struck by the fact that I'm more alone here than I've ever been before. In the past month about half the people closest to me here have left and I'm reminded that Berlin is such a transient city. Having spent time with old friends in Edinburgh I'm realising how important community is to me - and I miss it. But there's no where I'd rather be at the moment and I'm learning how enjoy spending time alone - something I've never been very good at. I'm dedicating this week to pottering around my flat, cleaning, watching Six Feet Under and preparing myself to leave again next week.

In Edinburgh we listened to Daniel Kitson talk about 'home' in '66A Church Road.' I don't think I've ever really defined 'home' as my personal relationship with a particular building...until now. My flat on the 4th floor of Danzigerstr 136 is small but somehow open and roomy, warm, full of sunlight and completely loveable. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, just being at home in immensely pleasurable and I'm always happy returning to it. Kitson also reminded me of the 'other home' - I remember that the last time I saw one of his shows was at the Capitol Theatre with Elyse and Felix and that we nearly pissed ourselves laughing and that we ate some trash afterwards - probably steamed vegetarian dumplings and fried taro cake at Shanghai Dumpling. I'm looking forward to re-aquainting myself with Melbourne town. But for now it can wait.

While Kitson is always a sure bet for whimsy and giggles, unfortunately Edinburgh's highlights were non-theatrical.

My couchsurfing host was Lukas. A nice, queer Polish boy who volunteered in a support and out reach program for sex workers - providing safe sex supplies and legal advice, mainly. I arrived at his place on Thursday and on Friday evening we went to a rad queer party at Forest Cafe - a big collectively run cafe in the old town with a performance space and a big hall upstairs for parties. It looked like it might have been a converted Masonic Lodge - with a DJ booth in the old pulpit. Sadly the party never peaked and at the height of the evening there was about 7 people and a dog on the dance floor. Apparently the queer scene in Edinburgh is not much to speak of. I did meet some nice people though, including Nine who coordinated the program Lukas volunteers for and edits the sexuality column of the local street press. The next evening they were organising a screening of a doco from the European Conference of Sex Worker Rights. Somehow she managed to get Buck Angel to attend this little gathering in the loungeroom of someone's flat. For the uninitiated, Buck is a female to male transsexual porn star who has decided not to undergo phalloplasty and advertises himself as the porn industry's first "real man with a real pussy." Check out his blog - he mentions us in it! He had some pretty interesting things to say about the shit he went through trying to break into porn - an industry which supposedly caters to all manner of obscure fetishes. "Subversion" only possible within a certain restrictive framework? Evidence of the way mainstream porn functions to uphold normative heterosexuality? Perhaps...Either way I was pretty excited to see the show he was performing in, Jim Rose Circus. Unfortunately it turned out to be nothing but stomach-churning mysogyny packaged in tired, shitty showmanship - the best thing about it was the mediocre 80's hair metal coverband. Lame!

Enda Walsh's new play, 'New Electic Ballroom' was disturbingly hyper-real and performed with conviction but there was something unsatisfying about it. I would like to be able to say which element let it down but I guess in the end it just wasn't very memorable. On my last night in Edinburgh I ended up running through the rain on a whim to see Camille O'Sullivan. I've always overlooked her when she's played shows in Melbourne. Maybe that's because she doesn't have a particularly marketable gimick. A stunning, Irish-Frensh cabaret singer doing Weil, Brel, Bowie and Waits. Yeah, and...? Now I have to admit that this was an ignorant mistake on my behalf because she is actually one of the most engaging, idiosyncratic performers I've ever seen. She's fucking beautiful but she isn't afraid to look busted and ugly either - which you have to respect. She's wild, drunk and fucking fierce and at the same time kind of vulnerable and needy. She gets totally intimate with her audience too, she just comes and curls up on people - and it works. I guess there aren't many performers that could break down that barrier between performer and audience so completely and still be so commanding. Do I have stars in my eyes? Yes I do. I am completely in love with her.

But of course the best thing about Edinburgh was dossing about with Chloe, Adrian, Declan, Ashley, Gill and the rest. Eating vegetarian Haggis with neaps and tatties, drinking whisky, smoking too much tobacco, wandering through pretty streets, gasping at pretty views of the Castle. I miss them already.

mai 1

an old photo from der erste mai in berlin

re-starting?

Sometime in the last few weeks, I reached the mid point in my trip and became almost compulsively reflective. Like every little detail of my day to day life demanded writing home about. For example, the fact the you can buy 'dick milch' (a kind of thin, runny cream, or 'thick milk') in the supermarket just had to be shared with all the vile and juvenile friends I left at home. This is as suprising to me as it must be to you, given that in 4 months the only communication I've had with home has been via banal facebook status updates (“amy isst vegane curry wurst,” “amy raucht zu viel gras”) a few photos early on and more commonly, “I love you, I miss you but I'm never coming back” emails, text messages and phonecalls.

Spending a lot of time with Alicia in the past two months definitely fed this nostalgia for home and made the memory of Melbourne burn brighter in my heart. Recently I've even found myself listening to Architecture in Helsinki by choice. I guess it only takes a few months away to be overcome by the kind of sickening patriotism that has you in tears over the kind of twee indie pop that would usually have you reaching for a bucket (sorry AiH fans!).

Last Wednesday was bittersweet – saying goodbye at the airport to one old friend and one new one, both headed for Australia in the space of an hour. I had totally underestimated how benificial it would be for my mental health to have Alicia in Berlin. People talk about how liberating it is to be in a city where no one knows you. Like you can totally reinvent yourself or finally find your 'true, authentic self' or some hippie shit. I personally found the process of reconstructing my identity and personality for everyone I met boring, draining and in short, a total drag. I was sick of the sound of my own voice, telling the same stories in answer to the old question, “Where are you from and what are you doing here?” I know I sound completely bitter and cynical but what I'm trying to emphasise is this: In a place that's otherwise totally unfamiliar, having someone around who knows your history along with all your insecurities and mild neurosies, who's seen you in the morning in your oldest undies and Frenzal Rhomb hoodie, who's smelled your farts and sat around with you all day in the lounge room that you share - coming down, eating soy dogs and watching the Mighty Boosh on youtube, can be your saviour. Sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea and catching up on gossip with Alicia was the first time in the two months I'd been in Berlin that I actually felt grounded and...I dunno...human. There I go – from jaded old cynic to fluffy hippy in the space of a paragraph.

The same has to be said for the dear Jimmy Cliff who, happily, has not left Berlin. It was also pretty affirming that these two friends from home got along so well with my lovely new friends here. I remember reflecting when we were all fuck-eyed at KitKat club how pleased I was with my ability to seek out and befriend all the rudest nerds on every continent!

Alicia's last week in Berlin was pretty amazingly trashy, culminating in her last Saturday night here dancing to Ramstein in a goth club with a stoner lesbian vampire we'd met earlier in the evening. It also brought about a lot of reminiscing about home. At the airport I wished I was also getting on a plane. Not to Melbourne. Not yet. But somewhere. I hoped that traveling back into Berlin on the TXL bus I would see the city like I'd just got off the plane. Like somehow just visiting the airport would be like hitting 'restart' on my trip. Instead I came home to find it all comfortingly familiar. Of course. What did I expect? You can't just erase all your experiences of a place and start again. It was a pleasant realisation. But I'm worried that this and my reflective mood might be indicative of my complacency towards actually DOING stuff here. So next week I'm on the move again – hitchhiking to France with Jimmy to see the final stages of Le Tour. Then to Edinburgh for Fringe and to see the the Sisters and their entourage.

I'm curious to see how long this contemplative mood will last. I'm not promising anything. This might be my first and only blog post. But for now, subscribe and enjoy. Thanks for reading.