in summer the typical berliner loves to go for a dive

btw, this is a skeleton in an aquarium. but you saw that, right?

meryl, watch out ! AKA update on my rapidly rising extra career

i'm so totally freakin' hot.

and it's not only because it's been 90 degrees in b-town for weeks and humid as in the jungle. no, last night my career as an extra was marked by an important breakthrough. remember my post from april "side notes on my small screen debut"? it's only been six weeks that i had my first part in a german daily soap. and i didn't even get to ride a bike like the other more experienced extras.

but yesterday everything changed. first of all, i got hired for a real movie. big screen. it's a romantic comedy/musical (!). and it stars one of germany's hottest young female stars. and guess, who was chosen among all the extras to be the ueber-extra? the shoot was taking place in a restaurant. and while the other people had to be the restaurant guests and can call themselves lucky if more than the back of their head is noticeable in the movie, i got the part of the waitress. guess, five years of international serving experience finally paid off. i was the one serving the food to the two lead characters as they were having their first date. and i was good. as my hands were shaking when i set down their plates of pasta aioli (garlic on a first date? i bet that screenwriter is single.), it totally fit into the awkward mood of the date. you could actually say that i melted into the scene's atmosphere. and i know it's just the part of the waitress, but audrey hepburn's career started with a cameo as cigarette girl.

and the best of all was that i even got the whole make-up deal. and not only did i get that, but i actually got to share my time in the make-up trailer with the female star of the movie. and she and the male lead totally acknowledged me, eye contact and smile and all. and as if that wasn't enough, one of germany's biggest actors dropped by the shoot to hang out with the director for a bit. and since this shoot was so special and i will always remember it as my big break, i also stole a totally cute sheep from the easter decoration of the restaurant. it was just perfect. though the other extras must have been pissed, uselessly sitting around and having absolutely nothing to play with. but it's a tough business and there are only so many winners and lots of losers. just that since yesterday i'm not one of them.

still, i don't want to get too ambitious yet. you know how important it is to stay humble and not lose the ground under your feet (or the contact to less interesting people like you guys). but on the other hand, the town is abuzz with talk about the new bryan singer picture starring tom cruise. and i've been stalking them for a job behind the camera without success (fuckers!). so now i'm hoping for a call from my agency for that. because, where else could i go up now but hollywood???

hanging with the old fritz

the old fritz would be king frederick the great. of course he's already bitten the dust a long time ago. but that's essentially a good thing as i got to visit his old haunt of sanssouci last week and i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have gotten that far during his lifetime.

apparently sanssouci is considered one of the 1000 places to see before you die. at least i once read so. thus i had been pretty excited and must admit that my first impression was rather subdued. with my memory of visiting versailles fifteen years ago still vivid, i discreetly turned up my nose at sanssouci's size at first. it's just got twelve rooms. this proletarian princess grew up in a house of thirteen rooms (plus one closet and a guest wc).

and then i stepped inside. where i was promptly informed that this had of course only been fritz' weekend getaway. ah. actually he resided in another castle on the grounds. with 200 rooms. oh. and then i stepped further inside and... ooh...aah... is that real gold all over the room? ooh... aah.

i got to see the room that voltaire used to chill out in. apparently he and fritz were pretty close chums. and then there was the library with its more than 2000 books. and then there was the music room where fritz used to play his flute all day long. no pun intended. although it is to note that the castle doesn't include any rooms for mrs. fritz. after all, sanssouci means "without worries". makes one wonder if fritz might have been the original creator of "no woman no cry". ultimately i found no info on that, though i found a pop art portrait of fritz by andy warhol.

now this all seemed pretty suspicious to me. hanging out with voltaire all the time instead of the mrs., the warhol worshipping, his love of music and gardening. so upon the return to my very middle class 5-room-digs, i looked him up and got confirmation that he was indeed a homosexual. which also explains all that glittery room deco. also, he never wanted to be king and even tried to run off on a regular basis - sometimes in male company. desperate measures which his dad countered with sending the poor chap to prison. ah, the good old prussian discipline. also for sure is that it was fritz who was responsible for cultivating potatoes in germany. which causes my compatriots to lay down the lovely earth apples on his grave site.

but back to my visit. while wandering through the park, i eventually came upon two buildings that i couldn't identify at first. they seemed to be two smaller castles and i supposed that they were separate ball rooms or something like that. but one look at my map of the grounds and i learned that those were the staff quarters. which was the final blow. i admit sanssouci is impressive and the old fritz seems to have been a rather cool dude too. even though he probably never would have socialized with me.

one down. 999 places to go.


some side notes about my own humble or not so humble origins:

my dad's side of the family owns a family crest and apparently a castle somewhere in switzerland too. though i don't know how many rooms it's got. but it sounds pretty good, right? especially if you consider that my mom's family consists mostly of coal miners.

so recently my dad claimed that his family were wealthy land owners who apparently left switzerland for germany 250 years ago because of the decline in moral standards (!). i decided to do some research on that and it didn't take me long to dig up some of my ancestry online. and the emphasis here is on "digging up". instead of land owners, my ancestors' occupation was commonly described as field workers. the old fritz would not have been amused.

the fate of ernie

ernie was one of my most beloved childhood toys. and he wasn't just one of those very common ernie dolls. mine actually wore real jeans, had a dense head full of fuzzy hair and cool converse-like sneakers on. and then one day, he was gone.

it happened around the time i was about ten years old and my interest shifted from stuffed male buddies to the un-stuffed kind. his departure came suddenly and at the hands of my evil mom. at that time, the family living next to us had relatives living in the GDR. and when my brother and i had outgrown certain clothes or toys, my mom would give them to the neighbors so they could send them to their relatives. and so in one of those really cruel turns in life, one day i discovered that ernie was gone - sent to live with the communists! sure you can imagine that i was sick with worry at the thought of my beloved ernie falling into the clutches of an eastern regime.

my mom actually tried to make up for it by giving me an "ersatz" ernie for my 18th birthday. but he wasn't nearly as cool as the original one and the pain was still too big as that i could ever develop any deep feelings for this one. the closest i actually came to the original one again, was when my family vacationed near the border to the GDR very shortly before the wall came down. i still remember the high fence with the mine field and shooting towers behind (and i still remember my mom panically shouting: don't touch the fence!). there i was, sad-eyed and longing for my buddy on the other side. at that point i wasn't even sure if he was still alive or - being a symbol of a liberal western childhood - he had been confiscated by the greater powers.

so now after all those years, i finally decided to get some closure. i went on a valiant mission to look for ernie in berlin. this also led me to the GDR museum where one can look at all kinds of objects once used by the people "over there". in fact, the museum consists of cabinets in the form of plattenbau buildings that you can open up and inside you'll find stuff related to a certain area of eastern life. so there i was, standing at the childhood-themed plattenbau. my hands trembling, i opened it only to find some schlumpy teddy bear who had certainly seen better days. but no trace of my beloved ernie. i finally left, resigned to the uncomfortable truth that i might never get a confirmation on ernie's fate.

but then just a few days ago it happened. i had been on my way to my favorite ice cream parlor when i passed by a funky clothing store and suddenly spotted ernie in the shopping window. he was sitting on top of a wooden box among the clothing on display. and not only was he apparently making his living in a decent manner, but he looked as good as he ever had. no signs of torture or broken arms. and not only that, but i was truly comforted by the knowledge that he actually lives in my neighborhood.

and a long life he may have!

geographic truths

recently i've come upon a street sign in my neighborhood which was titled "manteuffelstrasse". roughly translated this means " street of the man-devil". not only did i think it was kinda cool to have a street warn you of the facts of life, but i also had gotten inspired to look for more of these geographical truths here in b-town. unfortunately i didn't find anything else.

the street where i'm living is called "rich hill street" and all people i see outside my window seem to be either unemployed, poor students or turkish families of 7. and the district where i'm living is called "cross hill". there's also a "prenzlau hill", a "beautiful hill" and a "hill of lights". they all sound pretty, but berlin is as flat as it gets. absolutely no hill in sight. actually there's one, the "devil's hill". but technically speaking it's just a mountain of rubble from WWII. i didn't fare any better with the "tiergarten" district, where one should find a "garden of animals". i've been there, but all i've seen in the park was a man who was jerking off behind a bush :( though one could say, that he showed some animalistic behavior. which brings me back to the man-devil...


note:

the picture up there shows the "paris square" with the brandenburg gate - which features lots of japanese tourists besides a huge starbucks and the jfk museum. and then there's the story of napoleon trying to steal the triaga on top of the gate... not so appropriate, huh?

television is your friend - and itunes even more

at least they're mine. i know people that don't even have a tv these days. but to me it's a warm and fuzzy feeling to know i can tune in each week to see what "house" or all those con artists on "lost" are up to. especially when you've recently moved and it's taking a while to make contact to real human beings. which in germany are really just as mean as "house" or "the others". but its exactly this tv dependence which puts me in a weird spot this week. season finales are upon me. which means only ca. 250 days until lost returns in february 08 (banging my head against the wall here). and my "house" dates won't resume until september neither :(

so to keep myself entertained this summer, i've gotten all nostalgic and started rewatching "beverly hills 90210" online. this show debuted when i was about 13 and i'm not embarrassed to say that i religiously watched it until the bitter end. yes, i was there when dylan's mob dad got killed, when brandon almost slept with andrea zuckerman (twice!) and when kelly became addicted to diet pills, got shot, joined a cult, almost died in a fire, lost her baby and got raped (twice!). and not only am i rediscovering this old favorite of mine, but i'm also improving my swedish language skills as well. you see, the online episodes have gotten swedish subtitles and i only recently learned such important vocabulary like "har du skyd?" which means "do you have a condom?" and which you'll probably not find in any language-course book and which -as everyone knows- is really a cornerstone of every swedish conversation.

and there they always say that tv isn't good for you. apparently it's not supposed to engage your brain in an intellectual way. yeah, right! you people out there without tv, just go ahead and read books! but by the end of this summer it will be ME who is able to know how to speak swedish. and if i run out of 90210-episodes , i'll just go and re-watch "lost" for the 23rd time...

thanks god for itunes.

aww, this just made my day...

go, boys!