Back in the van on our way to Bergen, Norge after spending a day off in Oslo. We visited the National Museum which houses the work of Edvard Munch and my new favourite painter Theodor Kittelsen, who Phil is enamoured with. I hadn't heard of him before but he is quite famous in Norge for his children's book illustrations of trolls and mythic monsters, (our host Silja admitted she was terrified of his illustrations when she was a child). Outside of Kittlesen I mostly liked the sculptures, particularly one of a mother breastfeeding a child (when we come back I have to remember to write down the name of the sculptor).
Afterwards Nick and I went window shopping at Henrik Vibskog and Freudian Kicks while the rest of the group ate sushi. We met up later and went to Ingeborg's flat and watched The Hangover which was fun but I'm getting kind of tired of movies featuring nagging, unreasonable harpy wives who seem to be written into the script solely to justify the male character's childish behaviour. It seems like lazy and unnecessarily sexist writing and tarnishes my appreciation of the humour of the film, which is actually pretty fucking funny mostly due to Zach Galifianakis, who comes off as this generation's John Belushi. I read a good interview with him in GQ not long ago and he came off facetious, irreverent and slightly irascible, which I can fully appreciate.
Due to a lack of space at Ingeborg's, Phil, Paul, Marissa and I stayed at her friend Silja's flat which was really fun. Silja's a furniture carpenter so we talked for a while about carpentry after I broke the bottom brace off of her dining room chair. Oops...
Köln was a good show at Subway. My friend Ann-Katrin showed up with her boyfriend Wolfgang who seems like a nice guy and she looked pretty happy with him. It was great to see her and I didn't even realize she was living in Köln much less in a relationship so I guess we've been out of touch for a while. Boo on me. I spent much of the evening talking with the bartender Claudine who was super sweet and funny which lightened my serious mood considerably. Why so serious? The thing about being on tour is it gives you lots of time to navel-gaze so I've found myself thinking about how when I was in my early thirties I was sure I was growing into a Harvey Keitel or Sean Connery type of handsomeness, you know, guys that were never particularly good looking but carried themselves well, but recently I'm not so sure I'm on that road or why it even matters.
Whatever. It's all weird confidence self-esteem baggage anyway.
When we arrived in Berlin I had just enough time after sound check to visit Pigi and Zoi. The short walk from the U-Bahn was happiness and when she answered the buzzer she was completely surprised to hear my voice and as I entered the flat she gave me a big hug and convinced me to stay for dinner. Zoi kept asking where Anders was and showed me her new favourite film The Sound of Music, which coincidentally we watched on the drive there. Eventually I had to leave and it was sad to say goodbye but it was worth it to keep in touch.
The show at Festsaal Kreuzberg was tops for me though I was oddly nervous due to the amount of friends who came out but I was soon assuaged by the people dancing in the front row, which always makes the show better. Afterwards I ditched the band to hang with Manfred so we grabbed a taxi and made a stop at my favourite kebab shop Mustapha's on Mehringdamm. Ummmmm hahnchen...a perfect end to a perfect day.
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