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Oct. 6th, 2007 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishSo, yesterday was boring and fairly dull. We had a meeting with Alexandra that included some great Kaffee und Kuchen, which would have been, fine except for the fact that after the coffee and cakes we had to go on a cultural adventure through the Sigmar Polke retrospective exhibit at the MuseumsQuartier. For those of you blissfully unaware of who Sigmar Polke is, he's a German post-modern painter who's made a name for himself making commentary of capitalism through the use of abstract techniques and blowing up newspaper prints to be almost unintelligibly pointillist.
I have Issues with Modern Art. Some of it, I can understand enough of the technique to get into it, I can see the commentary and the structure of the work; in short, I can get into it. Sigmar Polke ain't that. It's all abstract and huge and I had to wander through this exhibit from present to past (ie, least intelligible to somewhat interesting) for three hours.
I think it's a good idea for us to have meetings and go to cultural events, but I would like some warning. I thought we were meeting for coffee and to talk about whether the bank has gotten back to us and how to get the insurance paid automatically. Which, admittedly, we did, but then I had to sit through several hours of modern art, wandering around in a huge white room where I could not sit down, and I was just very tired by the end of it all.
Anyhoo, after all of that, Colleen and I went back to Schäffergasse and made dinner together. We bought white wine, beer and Zwetschkestrudel (plum strudel) and made wonderful pasta with fresh parmigane cheese, olive oil and salami, which green beans and carrots for sides, and the strudel for dessert. We were just too dead to want to go out, and we'd gone to a bar with a huge crowd of Erasmus students the night before. (Which was rather dull, overall, because we got swarmed by a herd of French girls who only wanted to speak English to us and talk about America. Which is boring- people don't seem to get here that America is generally quite boring, and that Europe is much more interesting. They seem to find it disappointing in some way that I've not quite understood yet.)
Anyhoo, we ate store-bought strudel, killed the wine and watched "Ocean's Eleven," while making snarky comments about it the whole time. It's a surprisingly good movie- bears rewatching very well. Also, Andy Garcia is incredibly attractive.
TODAY
Colleen and I got up and went shopping at Naschmarkt at 11 or so. We'd heard that the flea market on Saturdays was a big deal, and it really, really is. It's amazing the amount of stuff they've got there, and the food section of Naschmarkt is absolutely packed. I was able to find a small messenger bag that I've been looking for, because I'm a little concerned about caring stuff around in my unzippable and open canvas Wellesley bag. I got the bag for quite cheap, and then bought groceries for the rest of the week. Humus here is expensive- the most expensive thing I bought of the foods, but it's so incredibly wonderful here that I'm not really able to restrain myself. It will not be a staple food for me here, clearly, but it's very tasty all the same. We stopped for a coffee and then headed back to my place to drop stuff off.
Since we didn't have anything else to do, we finally made that trip to IKEA. This was apparently the week for it- the bus there was packed with students who unloaded themselves to buy a household set-up for themselves. I was able to find what I've been looking for: a big wide-mouthed mug for soup, a small baking pan, a vegetable pealer, measuring cups, and some adhesive mirror tiles. (I'm considerable shorter than most of the mirrors I've seen hung around here- I can only see to my shoulders in most bathrooms, and I needed a full-length mirror.) I've put them up on the back of the doors.
Anyhoo, I should probably go and start reading my only homework thus far: der deutsche Hinkemann by Ernst Toller for my 'Literature of the Weimar Republic".
I have Issues with Modern Art. Some of it, I can understand enough of the technique to get into it, I can see the commentary and the structure of the work; in short, I can get into it. Sigmar Polke ain't that. It's all abstract and huge and I had to wander through this exhibit from present to past (ie, least intelligible to somewhat interesting) for three hours.
I think it's a good idea for us to have meetings and go to cultural events, but I would like some warning. I thought we were meeting for coffee and to talk about whether the bank has gotten back to us and how to get the insurance paid automatically. Which, admittedly, we did, but then I had to sit through several hours of modern art, wandering around in a huge white room where I could not sit down, and I was just very tired by the end of it all.
Anyhoo, after all of that, Colleen and I went back to Schäffergasse and made dinner together. We bought white wine, beer and Zwetschkestrudel (plum strudel) and made wonderful pasta with fresh parmigane cheese, olive oil and salami, which green beans and carrots for sides, and the strudel for dessert. We were just too dead to want to go out, and we'd gone to a bar with a huge crowd of Erasmus students the night before. (Which was rather dull, overall, because we got swarmed by a herd of French girls who only wanted to speak English to us and talk about America. Which is boring- people don't seem to get here that America is generally quite boring, and that Europe is much more interesting. They seem to find it disappointing in some way that I've not quite understood yet.)
Anyhoo, we ate store-bought strudel, killed the wine and watched "Ocean's Eleven," while making snarky comments about it the whole time. It's a surprisingly good movie- bears rewatching very well. Also, Andy Garcia is incredibly attractive.
TODAY
Colleen and I got up and went shopping at Naschmarkt at 11 or so. We'd heard that the flea market on Saturdays was a big deal, and it really, really is. It's amazing the amount of stuff they've got there, and the food section of Naschmarkt is absolutely packed. I was able to find a small messenger bag that I've been looking for, because I'm a little concerned about caring stuff around in my unzippable and open canvas Wellesley bag. I got the bag for quite cheap, and then bought groceries for the rest of the week. Humus here is expensive- the most expensive thing I bought of the foods, but it's so incredibly wonderful here that I'm not really able to restrain myself. It will not be a staple food for me here, clearly, but it's very tasty all the same. We stopped for a coffee and then headed back to my place to drop stuff off.
Since we didn't have anything else to do, we finally made that trip to IKEA. This was apparently the week for it- the bus there was packed with students who unloaded themselves to buy a household set-up for themselves. I was able to find what I've been looking for: a big wide-mouthed mug for soup, a small baking pan, a vegetable pealer, measuring cups, and some adhesive mirror tiles. (I'm considerable shorter than most of the mirrors I've seen hung around here- I can only see to my shoulders in most bathrooms, and I needed a full-length mirror.) I've put them up on the back of the doors.
Anyhoo, I should probably go and start reading my only homework thus far: der deutsche Hinkemann by Ernst Toller for my 'Literature of the Weimar Republic".
