Home Again Tuesday, 4 February I write from Paris, where I have returned for a board meeting at Bibliothèques sans Frontières). It was founded by my old friend Patrick Weil in 2007 and its mission is to help development in the Francophone world through books and reading. They work in 20 different
A Naked Ghost Friday, 31 January The last week of this month’s intensive German just finished. Now I must get back to work, which causes the anxiety level to soar. What if I can’t write anymore? What if my current project, after many months idle, is like a dead fish, cold
Time Out of Joint Monday, 27 January Down to -11° yesterday. Because we’d left Elsa in the car, we did not linger too long at the Vienna-Berlin exhibition, paintings between the 1890s and World War II, at the Berlinische Galerie ( http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/ausstellungen-berlin/rueckblick/2013/wien-berlin ). There were many artists I
The Sound of Snow Thursday, 23 January Despite walking on snow and ice in the wrong direction after I got off the U-Bahn in Kreuzberg, I managed finally to find the café where Sebastian K., who has offered to help me publish Someone Else on line, was waiting. It’s fair to say I
Black Ice and Bösendorfer Tuesday, 21 January Last winter the sun never came out. Well, that’s not quite true. A semblance of light occasionally glimmered on the horizon for an hour or two, but it was quickly masked by thick, dark clouds. And it was cold, below zero Celsius, often with snow. It’
Learning German Friday, 17 January On and off in 2013, depending on how long we were here, I’ve been taking intensive German classes because I do not want to live in a place where I can’t communicate with the people. Today is the end of my first week back at
Devil's Mountain and the NSA Monday, 13 January 2014 Yesterday we took the S-Bahn to Grünewald and were lucky to get the last table at Scheune, which means barn, a very German restaurant. The site gives a good idea. http://www.scheune-restaurant.de/ Shelter from the cold, a glass of Riesling, people bustling in and
Back to Berlin Sunday, 12 January 2014 Back in Berlin, one year to the day after moving here half-time. What a difference from 12 January 2013, when we arrived by car, in the snow, no Berlin map. We circled for over half an hour before finding the Almstadstraße. Even then, everything was strange,