Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

New Year¶

474 words

A happy new year to everyone. And a successful one. I've been in Berlin for the occasion. Visiting Claus and Meike and doing some sightseeing with Sharidon.

Hardly anybody in this town is speaking German. Instead you hear a lot of French, Italian, English, Polish, Russian. Many people must have come to attend the outdoor new year's party at the Brandenburg gate which I saw for the first time unwrapped and fully restored these days.
Also in the city centre, it was notable that the roads of the British and U.S. embassies had been completely blocked and protected by the police. Apparently this is because of fear of terrorist attacks which in turn exists because of certain invasions... While it is generous – if distasteful – to let warmongering countries have their embassies here, I find that blocking whole roads right in the centre of the capital and protecting them with more visible police than our own president or parliament is a bit too much. If those countries can't behave well enough to be comfortable in the public, they should have their embassies in the countryside where the extra security measures don't inconvenience anybody else.
In this context, it would be an interesting question whether roads in London or Washington would be closed down to protect the German embassy, should our government decide to break a couple of international laws.
Which of course I hope they don't.
Walking around, we've been to the historical museum with its spectacular new building by I.M. Pei again. I only wanted to show the architecture to Sharidon, but it turned out they had a very interesting exhibition about images that lie. Many examples where given, ranging from retouching history for Stalin, to censorship, to celebrity photos in the yellow press, to a little 'blue box' installation where you could join TV news host Ulrich Wickert in the Tagesthemen show while he explained the technique to gulf war propaganda. While with a bit of practice you can make your own reasonably good fakes in Photoshop, it is interesting to see that the same was possible and done in the analogue age. The thing I really wonder about, though, is that people see the necessity for such manipulations in so many places. No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories.
We've also been at the Neue Nationalgalerie again, which had an exhibition of not-so-nice paintings this time amound. Unfortunately they already closed and kicked us out when we tried to see the more free-form exhibits.
And there was Blinkenlights at the Alexanderplatz where we had to change trams every day. Some of the animations were really good – particularly as they seem to be able to greyscale images now. My favourite one doesn't seem to be in the gallery yet. But it's with cute dancing figures like these.