I dealt with Aachen pretty harshly here. It was a nice place.

Me again!

I’m still in Germany. So far I am somewhat disappointed, for a variety of reasons. Chiefly, though, it is that the cities largely lack character. I cannot complain too loudly about this; the cities lack character because they had to be rebuilt after 1945 because we bombed roughly 80% of them into itty bity fragments of dust, so moaning about it now would be like me burning your house down then complaining that you don’t have any sandwiches.. The 20% that remains is spectacular, however; Kölner Dom, the main cathedral of Cologne, is one of the most imposing structures I have ever seen, grand on a simply breathtaking scale, and there are several similar examples elsewhere.

So, three days spent in Frankfurt, of which at leats two were a waste. Germany shuts entirely on a Sunday and, bizarrely, a Monday (“economic problems? What economic problems?”), meaning that those two days were spent mostly meanding about trying to stay warm, as Autumn is most definately proceeding in Central Europe right now. Tuesday was fun though – I got to see the Museum de Moderne Kunst – kunst is German for ‘art’, a fact that gives my peurile mind no small amount of pleasure. The main thrust of the exhibit in aforementioned gallery is a continuous exhibit of objects brought through related keywords on eBay, and was interesting as a meme, if not especially worthwhile as an art desplay.

I also met a trio of Australian guys and two Danish girls, with whom I ended up spending the evening; the six of us wondered around looking for a restaurant, then wondered around looking for a bar, before finally wondering around looking for a nightclub. We did find an amazing bar on top of a tower in the city centre, but the prices were as high as the altitude, so we didn’t stay for long. Frankfurt is a very pretty city, but very sterile.

It’s the banking capital of Germany, which I’m sure is no co-incidence.

Yesterday I up’d sticks again for Cologne, which is a nicer city, if barely more interesting, although I did manage to fill a day for once. Thus far my days have been largely solnambulent; my routine is to wake around 8, eat, shower and ablute before heading out around 9.30ish, do something until 1, eat lunch and read in a park for an hour or two before heaidng back to the hostel around 4 or 5, then out again at 7 to eat. Yesterday kept me on my feet for the better part of 8 hours, though, which was far more impressive.

First port of call was the aforementioned Kölner Dom, which just looms over the city, less like a church to the glory of God and more like a giant punk cockroach. Climbing the spire took about half an vertiginous hour, but yielded some impressive sights, and I did get some good photos from across the river.

After that I headed into the Museum Ludwig, which is massive and deeply interesting. The bottom floor delt many with modern art – Andy Warhol and his ilk predominated, and while parts were interesting I generally find conceptual art to be quite frustrating. The upper floors were better value, however. The top floor contained a massive collection of Picasso originals, which occupied a happy hour or two, but the real treasure was a heterospective (he’s not dead yet) of George Brecht.

How to describe George Brecht? As a conceptual artist, he was heavily involved in the Fluxus group, a group which was known for playing the the established form of art, and specifically with causing the audience to ingest its art in new ways. Certainly, that sounds very much like a broad-brush definition of conceptual art, or even modern art, as a discipline, but it’s hard to peg down what made this so interesting. George Brecht’s approach was almost one of gamesmanship; he would arrange musical scores for car controls, which were ‘conducted’ by a randomly thrown deck of cards, and which would be ‘played’ using car lights, windscreen wipers and the like. The nature of events were also of interest to him. He would create decks of cards describing events (“Near to an insect”, “On a white chair with a scarf and a walking cane”); his art returned to the themes of adding arbitrary meaning to common events and objects, often with a touch of playfulness – indeed, the format of the game as a social activity, the formalism of created rulesets, and the release of the audience from the ‘rules’ of art (one piece was a medicine cabinet from which items could be removed, or added, by any member of the public at any time) were his chosen method of communicating his art. The ideas he pioneered can still be seen in modern theoretical sociology (such as the work of Peter Suber – much of Brecht’s work can be seen in the intellectual make-up of Nomic).

All of which may hold limited interest to many (most?) of you, but it interested me, so there’s a paragraph on it. Nyer.

Back to travelling, today I took a day trip to Aachen, which is a pretty nice old University town, but generally lacked enthusiasm. This area is failing to inspire me, unfortunately; I’m here tomorrow, but may move on to Münster sooner than expected.

Anyhoo. Hope you folks are all well and looking forward as usual to hearing your news.