My life in a backpack continues, the plan for this summer did not involve quite so much traveling but Im pretty happy about how it turned out. I now feel that work is calling and although Im making images whilst traveling it's really not the same outcome as it is when Im building up things in the studio or in those empty houses. Anyhow, the travels in the last weeks took me to Hitler's unfinished project "Prora" on Rügen, 5 km of houses in different states of ruin, it was meant to be a holiday place where 20 000 Germans could be at the same time for a week of very structured holiday but with the war they stopped working on Prora and now it is just a skeleton left, very odd place. We stayed at a camping site, something I have not done for a few years now and don't think I will be doing it any time soon again. There is something sad about the smell of washing rooms, tents, mosquito spray and sounds coming from small portable television sets in the caravans. My previous experiences with camp sites is fairly limited to watching "Sunes Sommar" a swedish children's film that takes place mainly between caravans and tents somewhere in a sunny Sweden. Anyhow, Prora is interesting, more so then it's museum which could have done a better job of their displays but in fairness when we were there the place was crowded so it wasn't really the best time to see anything, I guess that's our own fault for going to Rügen in the middle of the summer season. We then took a lot of trains and crossed the border to Poland, where after a stop by a friend we went on to Warsawa. Arriving at the train station mess, mainly underground and then stepping out into this city on an early summer evening was a good feeling after three weeks in the small town where I grew up. Warsawa's city center, full of new tall glass buildings surrounding the present from Stalin, the big Culture Palace, huge.. Im not quite sure when the image below was made because now there are a few massive houses around it too but still, it's pretty impressing.. Have no idea what all the 43 floors are being used for but on the ground floor there's a cinema, theater, cafe and the brilliant tourist information that showed us to the very cheap and ok student room that we could live in for a few nights. Although we pretty much walked over the whole city and took trams and buses over the rest I still have no idea if I understood it or got a sense of this city, still it somehow impressed me. We also went to the "Muzeum Plakatu"to have a look at the poster biennale, it was a very sweet little museum in a park situated just on the edge of the free city map, well worth a visit. In Warsawa there was a lot of so called "Milk bars", cheap places to eat where you pick the things you think you want from a menu and then maybe end up with something like above, pierogi with blueberries, cream and sugar that you have to pick up from a hole in the wall through which you can look at some ladies smoking, cooking and hanging out between saucepans. We also went to say hello to a statue of Marie Curie which turned out to be next to where we were living and had some more pierogi's in a small library cantine. So, I guess all we did in Warsaw was walking around most of the city with big eyes, eating Pierogi's and drinking beer with hip youngsters in Plan B, a pub on a very beautiful round square with trams going through it. In the queue to get tickets home we thought about maybe going to Prague too but it kind off felt good to get the train to Berlin and slowly come back here again, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be in this flat and work, I suppose that's what a good long holiday should do to you. Now it seems like the summer is gone and everywhere is Autumn, in a few hours I am getting a train again, sadly enough to head home for a funeral. End of a long Summer and somehow it is ok like this. Then work and hopefully studies.
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