trip to europe (a month ago)

4/2 Too much has gone on yesterday and today for me to properly put it in to words, as we have gone all over Hamburg - to St Pauli twice and to Ohlsdorf Cemetery and other places besides, I am presently so exhausted I can't really describe what we've done or where we've been, so, I will put it off or rather the events will remain never recounted and then will be lost to history forever, a great shame as it has been a really good time that one day I would like to relive / remember.* I have some pictures though. 

Kunsthalle

Demolished kebab shop

Bunker, recently adorned with greened upper floors. 

Zardoz records

Australian tourist finds finding Australian things in a 'foreign' context unusual. 

Flea market

Sort of extraordinary to see the way that a huge amount of personal photographs (+ photograph albums) become just ephemera at the flea market. Not only do all these people have a story - there's a story about how their images, presumably all one-off images, become just so much ephemera to be looked at and why the hell would anyone buy it?! 

Vegan breakfast (for lunch)

Ohlsdorf Cemetery

Kleinhaussiedlung Langenhorn

* seems likely at this point that my diarising of the days will recede a little, too but who knows. 

24 october 2019

Last day in Stockholm

After thinking about this for a year I have to conclude it says 'My Vegina', not (the only other possible option) 'Mr. Vegina' - there are no lower case Rs anywhere else on the sign. Just go with it. 

The national library:

 

veganism

I have tried hard to be a vegan all week and was nearly successful until last night when we ate at Box Hill Korean BBQ and I ordered the vegetarian pancake, which was very eggy. Well, I will get there soon enough. I am reminded then of the woman in the Gladstone Park delicatessen ordering thin strips of some kind of gross ham product and saying 'I'm vegetarian, but I just like the taste' (i.e. the taste of some grotesque dried waxy leg). She said it twice, and as you know (I think Samuel Johnson said it) to say a stupid thing twice shows you are a real dumbass. But I have discovered the university food co-op now and eaten there four days out of five and it is very good for an aspirant vegan like myself. It is so totally a throwback to 1983, I would say, particularly since it seems to be populated so thoroughly by actory people and people learning hula hoop. Wow! Love it.

what girls are saying near me lately

Very attractive girls (not my type, mind you) handing out vegan booklets on campus. I actually steeled myself to take one because I assumed it was right wing religious literature but I didn't want to deviate from my course. Anyway between the first attractive girl and the second I noticed that the literature was produced by Vegans from Queensland. I said to the second one, 'Why Queensland?' and she said: 'I... have no idea!'

A few hours later a tall young woman walking past me in conversation laugh-says while snapping her fingers to emphasise the weirdness of it, 'Completely Jewish theatre!'