> Melbourne

Arrived back from Europe/Malaysia on Tuesday morning, the jet lag has been nasty. No matter though, I'm beating the body clock and heading to Melbs for a couple of days to check this sound art exhibition.

http://www.melbournefestival.com.au/program/production?id=3452

Day 34: Through Grounded Clouds

It's the middle of the day and we're on our train to Frankfurt from Munich. Munich was a nice place to relax and not do that much, same as Dresden I guess. The weather's been quite good, save for a freezing shower a couple of days ago. This train journey's about three hours and so far (halfway in) we've seen barely anything outside the window aside from some wind turbines slicing through the the thick clouds that cover everything beyond 20 metres of this high speed train. When we arrive we're checking into our hotel then going to the huge Murikami exhibition at the Frankfurt Museum of Contemporary Art. Then it's a good nights sleep before we make our passage home tomorrow.

By the way, our hotel is like a lounge bar from 1999 crossed with the decor of the Twin Peaks white lodge. Awesome?

Day 32 & 33: Run out groove

Nothing to report of great note from the past couple of days, relaxation and casualness have taken the main priority for the final days of our time in Germany. Markets, museums and buying belated gifts for family members, etc. Tomorrow we train it up to Frankfurt for our last day proper before flying back to Australia on Sunday afternoon.

Day 31: Fatigue

Lauren and I are taking it easy this evening watching some Family Guy dubbed in German which makes it twice as amusing. The German version of Judge Judy isn't so much...when they start to shout I get chills. We went for a walk by the river and parklands early today, taunted some friendly ducks, threw stones into the water and made videos of me walking across pebbles. It doesn't sound like HOT FUN but it's good tepid fun. Munich itself is a nice town - we found a new media art gallery in a disused subway station (see image) exhibiting work by artists from Tiblisi, which always makes for interesting viewing.

Aside from televisual procrastination, Max patching has been the order of the afternoon and I've also made some field recordings outside our hotel window which actually sound like a sound installation.

Day 30: The Long Now - Dresden > Munich

An exhausting day. Up at 5am to catch a train from Dresden hbf to Munich for check-in by 2pm. The streets of north Dresden looked haunted and moody as we wheeled our luggage through the streets to the Neustadt station. We were half awake, but the combination of mist, weird sounds, tall apartments and an eerie light emanating from a cemetery made us walk a little bit faster. The journey from Dresden to Munich was about 6 hours with a couple of stopovers and changes in the backwoods of the old East. Numerous towns and stations we passed early on were in states of dramatic disrepair - the blackened concrete, broken windows and metre high weeds pushing out of buildings pointed to a past (or current) decline of sorts. By the time we reached Hof (20km west of the Czech border) things were cleaner and maintained, from Nuremberg to Munich the vistas got more impossibly sleek and refined. We haven't had much time to take in Munich yet, aside from a doner after we'd settled in our room. It's a busy town though, I think it's going to be a fun couple of days. The wonderful balmy weather we got in Dresden seems to have carried down south too.

Oh, I've been making some music/art too. More so in the past couple of weeks.

Day 29: Day of the glare

The sun at this time of year in Dresden is pretty intense. Both yesterday and today we left the hostel at about 11am to find the streets in long shadows with lazy light like it was six o'clock in the morning. The sun barely rises out of the sky before it drops again in the late afternoon. Turn into the light (due south-ish) and pre-suspicions about its apparent weakness are dispelled by the blinding glare bouncing off the cobblestones and shiny buildings. One pair of sunglasses between two do not bode well for headache prevention. The river, bridges and surrounding buildings (patchwork, blackened and scarred) look beautiful in the afternoon light. That is when you're not directly facing it.

The area of Dresden that we're staying in (Neustadt) is probably the most entertaining of the two main sections. Oldstadt Dresden is by far the more historic section of this city, but the presence of awful aggressive Italian/Polish tourists was getting my ire yesterday which at times put me off the beauty of the Zwinger and other famous landmarks. Neustadt in a nutshell is a sprawling matrix of four story old skool apartments (1900 stylie & bomb-free), funky cafes, jazz clubs and proper punks/bohemians everywhere. The graffiti (excluding the territorial piss-stains) is quite good too - especially the colourful stencil art that adorns the underside of the bridges and backsides of buildings.

The record stores here (which I'd heard favourable things about) are a bit of a letdown - overpriced and lacking esotericism. The adjacent erotic bookstore looked far more interesting.

Day 28 Adendum - a report on research

Whilst this vacation has been an excuse to eschew more real-world responsibilities for a short while, I though I'd take some time to cover some ground that night have been left out in previous posts. In some cases intentionally for the sake of 'thought purity'. Namely....

Research:

Since Robin became sick a couple of weeks ago, I've had to persevere on the art practice/research front. Whilst I was in Weimar I made some attempts to organise a meeting with the sound artist Rolf Julius, as anybody familiar with my line of work will know is an important influence. Unfortunately he was one his way to a routine visit to Finland for the week so I lost out there, Robin also informed me he was just diagnosed with terminal cancer which is pretty awful news. On a better note, I caught some inspiring sound art in Berlin and gathered enough initiative to start thinking about the research again. Since we've arrived in Dresden, my notebook has become a repository for coherent thoughts and ideas whilst the finishing touches to the creative works are becoming more concrete and foreseeable once I return.

Day 28: Dresden - restored city

After bashing my right kneecap on our bedframe last night I wasn't sure if I was going to get down the stairs let alone walk about and explore the city today. Thankfully the old joint loosened up from its agonising stiffness and I was able to get around reasonably alright for most the day. Dresden was once one of the most beautiful and cultural cities in Europe until it was firebombed to fuck-all towards the end of WW2. Hardly a 'strategic' target for the allied forces its destruction was intended as a moral blow to the German Empire. Barely anything remained of the city centre in the aftermath, an estimated 95% had been reduced to rubble and over 10,000 people had perished being blown apart, burnt alive or choking to death in the firestorm. Dresden today is a patchwork city, the remaining buildings have been amazingly restored to part of their former glory. Fresh stones and bricks sit alongside blackened originals, whilst entire sections of buildings and duplicates of statues complete once ruined buildings. I've never ever seen anything on this scale before, aside from the appreciation of the dedication and work that has gone into restoring the city, I couldn't escape a profound sense of sadness about what this place was once like and what its generation went through. For an interesting account of the Dresden bombing read Kurt Vonnegut's seminal Slaughter House 5 (if you haven't already.) The Zwinger (a gallery cum palace) also has to be seen to be believed.

Day 27: onto Dresden

Today we left Berlin in the morning due South-ish for Dresden. We arrived in the unseasonable warmth which was perfect for the short walk from the north station to our hostel. After settling in we embarked through the surrounding district (north of the city centre) which is full of nice restaurants, record stores and bars. Later the masters research which I've avoided until now found its way into my notebook as I made couple of recording by our secondfloor window. Strange how that works.

Day 26: Visiting the East Side and the Kreuzberg tiles

The East Side gallery near the Ostbahnhof is one of the last remaining segments of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, on the first anniversary of re-unification twenty artists from around the world were commissioned to create artworks on an Eastern side of the wall which extends for over a kilometer. Recently the gallery has been the subject of debate because it's falling into disrepair and funding can't be sought to keep it restored and protected from graffiti and vandalism. Also the area it occupies (along Berlin's main river) has been earmarked for major development which would result into the removal of the wall.

Later in the evening we went out with Asadeh and Adam (who we've been staying with in Nuekolln) for a night out in nearby Kreuzburg. The evening included a delicious soup, obtaining illicit substances near a very dark park and drinks in a few local establishments, including a devastatingly camp place called Roses (see picture.)