Worst attempt to cover up a Nazi symbol ever

This is a bell from the bell tower of the 1936 Olympic games, hosted by Berlin, in the early years of Nazi Germany. So obviously everybody in Germany wants to forget about the Nazis - so the bell came down and this is the lame attempt to conceal the fact that this is a swastika. Come on guys!

Owl Love -Silver chain

I splurged a bit today and bought this chain for €18.70. But it's amazing - check out the fabulous indents and lines. I don't have much silvery jewellery so I couldn't really pass this by. It's rather Art Decor looking don't you think?

Ariel Pink live at Lovelite

Having just about managed to get myself into the gig at a sold out Lovelite, here's a video of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti as they play a hit off their new album, 'Before Today'.

I really do love the album and imagine I'll be listening to it a lot more this week after tonight's gig. I really love it when people experiment with their vocals, which is exactly what Ariel Pink enjoys doing too. He's totally not afraid to go from rock star vocals up to the high pitched lulls of a female.

I love him. I love his sunglasses. I love his beautiful long hair. I love how slight he is. I love his striped jumper. I love how he dances. I love his checkered pants. Love, love, love.

Check out the video anyways if ye have time.

Jew not like the way I look?

I had been avoiding going to things to do with WWII mainly because it's such a damn heavy subject line. Everybody knows that Nazi Germany kicked the Jews about to no end. But did you know that ignorance was such at the time that they involved science into findings that the Jews were an inferior race? Below is the accompanying diagram for this statement. All the photos are from my visit to Haus der Wannsee Konferenz - where they made the decision to chuck all the Jews into gas chambers.

So these anti-Semitic reactions were backed up by 'science'. They did a lot of genetic tests at the time - studying eyes, making a giant point about Jews having bigger noses. The Nazis anti-Semitic campaigns then tried to scare people about mixing with the 'inferior race' - with unflattering pictures of Jews, comparing them to parasites. On a poster about TB, you'll see the 'sick' face of a Jew. There are mock-ups of what the human race will turn into should we mix race.

It's absolute daftness to look back on and in another light I'd probably laugh at the unenlightened thinking of it all. But unfortunately the travesty is that these racist studies were backing up the all out attack on Jews.

It wasn't only Jews that were attacked as an inferior race in Hitler's time. The sick were also a major target. Hitler agreed to euthanasia, which should have been more controversial than it would appear to have been at the time.

Take a look at this poster -- it's advertising that all the sick be killed off. It's saying that a sick person is costing the German taxpayer 60,000DM a year - and they even go on to use the slogan 'It's Your Money Too'. Whatever about propaganda hiding truths and getting people to think a certain way - this poster just goes a little too far over the edge. It's blatantly saying to kill off anyone with a bit of a sickness. All in the name of trying to create a superior race. It was a mental concept to kill off other races and 'inferiors'.

Schlesses Tor Video

I completely forgot that I had taken this video after the first World Cup game. Have a look at the wonderful atmosphere. Pity there wasn't anything to celebrate about after Saturday's game.

Germany 4, Australia 0

What an awesome start to the World Cup - Germany certainly brought the goals that were lacking in other games!

In the lead up to the game you could see the German patriotism slowly creeping it's way onto every street and every Wagon. There are flags everywhere and a general feeling of pride too.

I went to a bar to watch the match, with two Aussies, an American, and a Dane. I'm backing Germany to win anyways, since there's no point getting patriotic about Irish football during the World Cup this year.

After the match was great, I was on my way home and seriously, you would think that Germany had just won the final of the World Cup with the amount of bonkerness that abounded the streets. I stopped to bask in the atmosphere at Schlesses Tor, where there were drummers out on the street, commanding crowds down on their knees until they built up the beat. Then everyone went mental, waving flags, jumping, and singing 'Ole Ole Ole Ole'.

Looking forward to the next Germany fixture already!

Bearlin

And yes, every tourist shop here makes an overuse of that pun. Anyways, this is a rather stupid looking bear that I saw in Volkspark Friedrichschain when I went for my weekly run recently.

Apart from that, the park is rather lovely. Take a look:

Graffiti Owl

As you may know I have a vain obsession with everything OWL. Imagine my bliss when I came across this graffiti owl on Revaler Strasse in Berlin. Hooters to that!

Graffiti is everywhere in Berlin. It's near impossible to get a clean wall here. In fact, apartment and business buildings built in the city have actually resigned to commissioning graffiti artists to graffitise their building's wall in a warped form of reverse psychology. It's to prevent the buildings getting tagged with that awful graffiti that's just people's names scribbled about the place when they're probably high from sniffing glue or just drunk.

Anyways, here's one such example of an apartment complex that commissioned this giant orgasm-like fiend for their wall. It's right across from the East Side Gallery too and beside the enormous O2 World. In any case, it looks perfectly normal in its surroundings.

Tune: Matias Aguayo

This DJ from Chile found his music inclinations in Germany no less. I'm more than a bit late on the band or rather DJwagon and just came across him today, as he's playing in Berlin's Panorama Bar this Friday. The above his a mix of one of his tracks and below is the original. I love both so I hope your ears get something out of it too.

Wassermusik

What a weekend. Or what a Saturday I should say, considering I was so kaputt yesterday that I lost a day in the life of Karen Howley.

Summer has finally come to Berlin this past week and ever since the sun came out to say hallo on Thursday I've been loving it. Celebrations began last Thursday and we went to a park in Kreuzberg, Gorlizer Park, where we drank beer from 3pm. My friend Signe sourced these ridiculous beers - they cost €2.99 for 6, tasted really rough, and the packaging...well that's what you were paying for.

There were scantilly clad women with only boobs and vag covered in a bit of shiny metallic paper - which you could peel off to your pleasure or more realistically to your amusment only to reveal a butt naked version of that woman! Only in Germany.


I went on a bike trip with my friends Mel and Paul on Saturday. We all plodded off on our crappy bikes that fail to build up much speed. But it didn't matter that much. Going around on bike is the best way to see Berlin. On route to Schloss Charlottenburg we passed by an open air opera concert, an environment festival, and cycled through the Tiergarten Park. It was a really great day out which could only be topped by the mother of all nights out.

We headed to Club der Visionare - where they were kicking off their Summer season with a weekend of Wassermusik. It was all outside and people were just hanging out by the water on docks. There was a small stage where all the music was happening but I think we spent more time just wandering around the docks than doing anything else. We left at some point during the night to go along the river, bought a beer each at a late shop, and sat down to watch the sunrise. Beautiful. Then we did what any drunk person would do in that situation and talked about how much we all wanted to go swimming. Didn't jump in [thankfully] and headed back to the club only to leave and go to another club at 7am...the places here just don't close. I don't know how the staff survive.

Monsters In The Sky

Monsters In The Sky by KarenHowley

Also worth mentioning today is the fact that I finally finished this song, Monsters In The Sky, which I started writing about three weeks ago. I got the idea for it because I was overwhelmed, disgusted, and a bit intimidated by how big all the buildings here are. So, to me, they are like monsters in the sky. Especially their TV Tower or Fernsehzentrum. It's fairly alien looking in itself, and even more so on the days when there's a thick fog here and all you can see is the wide bulbus head like shape near the top of it towering above you and into the fog where you could think in that view that it goes on into infinity. 

Love, oh love, I can't go a minute without you...

It has been a busy week. Despite only working at EXBERLINER 20 hours a week, it feels like more since I go in Monday to Friday. I finally got my own name tag today - so all the previews or anything I write for the website will all be found on this page. Hopefully I can arrange to interview some bands too. That would just be totally awesome.

After the antics of Lena winning the Eurovision, her previously unknown tracks have been spinning about on the Deutsche Welle [radio]. It was a fantastic night at the Freiluftkino, whereby myself and two mates had to sneak in by climbing up on some scaffolding to cheat our way over onto the other side of the fence. They weren't letting anyone else in because they had reached their capacity...not that it was ridiculously overcrowded or anything. We even had seats saved for ourselves!

So after Germany won, the night continued with some more beer and all of a sudden it was 4.30am when I was pedalling home [yes, cycling...beer]. And I knew that I had the atrocious task of moving house on Sunday. It took me way longer to move than it should have due to my hungover state. But it's done now and my new room is a bit smaller, I'm back in a single bed, but there's enough space and more importanly I HAVE A BALCONY to breakfast/drink coffee/beer/wine upon when all those sunny days we're promised come.

I went for a run yesterday at the Friedrichschain Volkspark - which is only massive - and I totally got lost so ended up running for way longer than I had anticipated. It deserves its own post though - so the next run I do, I'll take some photos and explain all the lovely things that happen in this beautiful place.