So I haven’t been able to talk to Penny on our webcams because she’s never home, but for now I thought I’d do some old fashioned blogging.
Since I have nothing to do on the weekends and I start to go a little crazy if I just stay home watching The Daily Show (thank you Internet!) I decided to do some sightseeing. The only place I knew in Berlin was Checkpoint Charlie.
For those of you who a) are too young to remember the Wall and b) haven’t seen Ross McElwee and Marilyn Levine’s movie Something to Do with the Wall then Checkpoint Charlie probably means nothing to you. Well, I was 9 when the Wall came down but I remember Peter Jennings telling me it was important.
It looked like they were having a good time taking it down anyway. But I did see Something to Do with the Wall and I think I remember that Checkpoint Charlie was kind of the geographic center of the movie. Anyway, I heard that it was still there, so it seemed like something to see.
I think Checkpoint Charlie was named after an American soldier named Charlie who was killed trying to cross over from the East. There’s big picture of him in a touching memorial.
I don’t know what he was doing in the East. Probably busting some Commie ass. I didn’t take that picture. It’s from a postcard.
I took a picture of this thing thinking I was photographing history, but I found out later on the Internet that it was rebuilt in 2000 so they could sucker people like me into taking 2 subway trains halfway across the city
to see some fake checkpoint that doesn’t even mean anything to me.
Next time I’m staying home to watch CNN International.
I liked this sign though.
I thought I did that weeks ago.
3 commentsJanuary 29th, 2006 5:33 pmPosted by Sean
I have arrived in Berlin and my computer made it out of customs. Here are a few pictures I’ve taken since I got here.
This is Heathrow Airport. I stopped here on my way to Berlin for a few hours just to see what all the fuss was about. According to BBC World News (one of two reliably English-language TV channels in Berlin, which means it’s on a lot in my apartment) it’s the busiest airport in the world, and they’re spending eleventy billion pounds to make it even bigger. Good thing, because I could hardly get through the crowds.
Actually, they were all at the duty free shops. Duty free actually means something in Europe. It’is like 16%. Which makes you realize how great they have it in New Hampshire. I didn’t have any pounds so I couldn’t take advantage of the lack of duty, although I did feel liberated just browsing.
This is the entrance to my partment. The left side of my keyboard was damaged during shipping so sometimes letters don’t work. That’s why I spelled it "partment." Not because that’s German for apartment bcause it’s not (that time the e didn’t work). According to my pocket dictionary
The word is Wohnung. As in mein wohnung ist schäbig.
Which means my apartment is shabby.
Which it is. But it’s not terrible. There are things I like about it. Like the kitchen.
Looking at this you might ask yourself "where’s the fridge?" Well check out this piece of magic:
Yeah, it looks like a cabinet!!!! In the States that sort of design extravagance is reserved for the very wealthy/trendy. But Europe has been civilized much longer than the U.S. (sorry Native Americans). Watch what else looks like a cabinet:
Yes, the cutest little dishwasher you ever saw. I haven’t had a dishwasher for the past 7 years. I use this one every chance I get because I won’t have one in New York until after I make my first million.
This is my bed and the towering bureau next to it.
Except for the handcrafted table
and the designer couch (see above) all the furniture is from Ikea. The bed has a habit of collapsing on one side while I’m sleeping which means I have to spend the rest of the night on the other side of the bed afraid to venture back because the whole thing could go at any minute.
This isn’t my apartment building, but mine is behind it and looks just like it. S let’s pretend it is mine. You’ll never know the difference. And it’s something like 0 degrees Celcius outside, which makes me think it’s even colder than it is. So I’m not going outside to get a real picture. That dark spot in the sky is a bird. They have those in Berlin too.
Welcome to my blog. We’re still working out the kinks and we’re going to make a custom template for the site, but in the meantime here’s my first video post.
Ok, there’s no content on this blog yet, but I was developing this site for Sean and I ran into an annoying situation with enclosure creation in WordPress. If you’re doing any sort of podcasting with wordpress you’ve probably noticed how restrictive it is. I decided to open it up a little and wrote my first plugin that allows you to delete enclosures (!) and choose which link(s) in your post you’d like to enclose. You can enclose any mime type, not just video and audio (if you need to for some reason). It will be hosted on this site at https://www.15framespersecond.com/enclosureflex/
This site is about a long distance relationship. I (Sean) am in Berlin, for 8 months editing American film. My girlfriend Penny is at home in New York. We miss each other. We got webcams so we can talk while I’m gone and decided to record our conversations, and post them on blog. Vlog. Whatever. She doesn’t know about it. Please don’t tell her. Seriously.
