Now some like making statues of horses like this one which is situated at the horse race track at Treptow which one of three race tracks that we have in Berlin.
Some people like riding horses and some people even eat horses.
I however am much more a fan of betting on our 4 legged friends. Why work for a living when all you have to do is go to the race track look to see which one of the horses has the shiniest coat and which was has the smallest jockey? Now I know the old saying only fools and horses work and true horses aren’t the smartest animals in the world (still no reason to eat them), but horses are the also happier and therefore quicker when they look good and the jockey is not the size of Beth Ditto.
Anyways Friday August the 6th is a day for dairies as it is the day the Circus goes to the horses…
…another of those birthdays of mine passes by without any human being in flesh and blood wishing you a nice one, and although I never really understood why people make such a big deal out of birthdays it made me quite sentimental yesterday. It must have been the 6th or 7th birthday like that, and the reason for these isolated affairs always have been journeys, with some of the best memories in my life. The Gobi Desert in Mongolia in the early 90´s, Jamaica, Kalighat in Calcutta, the Syrian desert 2 years ago, now southern Botswana…
I reached Gaborone today, the capital of Botswana, and like many other cities in poor or developing countries, this too is merely a functional structure, with hardly any urban planning, an infrastructural crossing point, a station, a dusty trading point in an otherwise deserted country. Even in a more distinguished way than its neighbours Botswana is first of all a landscape, a space, in which the human being seems to be an intruder, a side aspect, and this country, with the size of France and only 1.5 million people, belongs to animals, and the desert…
The journey has moved from visiting places to being “out there” and I have started to travel. I have adopted the habits of a traveller. No significance lies any longer in arriving somewhere, I am rolling…rolling…rolling…The elderly black lady at the petrol station, that moves over to me slowly and says, in a motherly voice: “you must travel safe…”…the little ascent in front of me that opens an endless view over Savannah or a stone desert, or, most often, bushland, dry, in all shades of green and all colours the creator has ever given to sand…the 3 day workers on the back of a bakkie, as they call the Hilux here, that see the bike approaching, laugh, shout and try to make me doing a wheelie, the buffalo on the street that doesn’t move until I start to smile at it…
I am a traveller, and there is no need to arrive, and there is no need to finish. Getting into the bike gear in the early morning hours, packing up and attaching everything to the bike, moving on, rolling, unpacking after a long, quiet and beautiful day when the sun sets around 6 in a small guesthouse along the way, where no-one talks more than necessary, a shower, an early rest.
After 13.500 km now I’m getting used to being ”in space”, and there is something very liberating to that. Obviously there are different facets to what might be called ”freedom”, of course a political one, which we concentrate on in Europe, but also there is a facet of freedom that comes with space, the freedom to breathe, the freedom of being uninfluenced by people, man-made sounds or structures, and it has a sensual and spiritual connotation, which seems to be lost in my home continent in many ways.
Leaving Gaborone north today, far north, direction Zambian-Zimbabwan border, and from there crossing into Zimbabwe for the Victoria Falls…
Andreas
(Here are some films from the past week on the road)
(Everything he knows, he learned on the mean streets of Rusholme)
As any British expat in Berlin will tell you – and in fact, I am about to – it is really difficult to get a decent curry in this town. Very rarely do you even get something as decent as the Chicken Tikka Marsala from the Gandhi Restaurant on the main street of Burscough, complete with flock wallpaper and a 90% takeaway business, let alone the culinary delights of Bradford. If anyone was to have found the best curry in the Hauptstadt it is Jim…and he has found a couple that do a version of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi cuisine that has not be tamed for the delicate tastebuds of the German market.
Last week at The Circus Hostel Jim decided to take up the challenge of producing Berlin’s best curry himself, which he unleashed on the guests for the price of nix/nada/nowt…none of us could have imagined the interest that such a special offer came about. Jim presented the curry at 7pm. At 7.05 all thirty portions were gone, and we were literally scraping the bottom of the pot. How good the curry was, I can’t tell you, because there was none left for me to try, although the big group of English lads seemed happy with the cultural marriage of a curry cooked by a lad from Stockport, washed down with a bottle of fine German beer.
Luckily for me Jim will be at it again, hosting his JIMBO’S CURRY EXPERIENCE 2 on the 30th August, exclusive for Circus guests (and perhaps one hungry staff member, eh Jim?) in the Circus Cafe. Your tastebuds have tried nothing like it…
Jimbo’s Curry Experience #1 – Don’t worry, there’s enough for everyone (except perhaps you at the back)
The combination of backpackers and free food was a surprising success that none of us could have foreseen…
Due to failures on the editorial side, Andreas’s exploits from the past week or so have been missing from the Circus blog. Here, however, is the update…beginning with a video from the South Africa-Mozambique border…
Tofo, Mozambique, 22nd July 2010
In these day I am making an experience, which seems to be central to any traveller in this area, and I am learning a lesson, probably all first timers in this area have made before: be patient, forget plans, be flexible, and learn to deal with developments you can not influence…
On my way north on the EN 1, supposedly the only (!) fully paved street in Mozambique, heading towards Harare in Zimbabwe I went through a pretty bad day as a bike rider. It was frustrating and exhausting. Huge road works underway, and the surface being ripped open over twice for over 40-50 km, replaced by a thick layer of sand. If anyone has ever tried to ride a pushbike at the beach, you know what I had to deal with. To make things worse, rain set in 2 days and turned the whole thing into a mud field, red and bleeding out into the surroundings.
My way of moving is better described as sliding then riding, and I have not been that covered in dirt since I was a kid playing in my Grandmas garden. Average speed down to 15-20 km an hour…With no technical infrastructure available, riding alone and having to be in Namibia the 9th of August I will now return direction Maputo and will try to choose a different approach to the north of Zimbabwe and the Victoria Falls, preferably through Kruger National Park…We will see…
Maputo must be the smoothest and least spectacular capital in the world, with a speed and an activity level that equals that of the village I was born in, and although it has all the characteristics of the African urban drama – huge slums, partly no sewage system, high unemployment, a partly collapsed public order – there is also a smoothness and a calmness, which relaxes the nerves of any first time Western traveller, in shock about what he sees. The country is dealing with the legacy of a long and bloody history of slavery and then a civil war that ended only a few years ago, and it is difficult to imagine how this relaxed vibe survived the bloodshed.
It is getting more and more absurd to be on that bike in this surroundings. It floats like a spaceship through the country, and is such a shocking and futuristic sight for the inhabitants that things come to a standstill where I pass. I always used to be happy being bike riding, since it gets you in contact with people quick and reliably, but here it separates, in a way, and illustrates the differences whilst I would like to point out the things we have in common. I am standing out in a way I do not want to stand out in at all. I might take the chance of some impassable roads in Mozambique and Zimbabwe and get off it, using the minibus or comparable means of transportation for a day or two.
Now back to the beach, where I took refuge – among the nicest I have seen yet – and if the rain pauses for a day, heading south into Kruger tomorrow…Gotta see some big animals before leaving…
Song of the day: Radiohead, Fake Plastic Trees, for Pauli…
(EDITORS NOTE: Very funny. Next you’ll be dedicating a song by some gloomy Mancunians who grew up with too much rain to influence their sixth form poetry – Paul)
Nelspruit, South Africa, 24th July 2010
First casualties…
It was, in hindsight, a rather small incident, but it made me think about travelling alone to more ambitious places on a bike…of course there can be problems…
Fighting my way along some appalling “streets” in Mozambique and trying to avoid some massive rocks I overlooked the trunk of what used to be a tree, and it ripped my clutch lever off, one of my cases and left me with a rather rough version of a clutch. Now, being alone and being not sure if and how you will be able to manoeuvre your bike, and being 120 km away from the next, rather poor, urban settlement in a country without private motorcycles bigger than 50 cc and with not endless amounts of times, this is an issue to think about. I did…
Anyhow, found a way to basically “rub” the remaining parts of my clutch into the lower gears and crawled my way back into South Africa, looking definitely much less elegant to the local youth than before, and found a mechanic here in Nelspruit, who dangled and build something small and effective, and the journey continues.
Learned anything? Yep, definitely a bit more respect than before and it does make sense to either travel with 2 at least – Pinelchen, where were you? – or have enough time to find solutions or to be a decent mechanic yourself or to travel with something easy to fix…I did nothing of this, me smart bastard.
Anyhow, booked myself into the Kruger National from tomorrow, and then hopefully off to Botswana, after a small stop at Pretoria to get a new clutch. Unless I fall in love with the one I have.
July in Berlin, and the AKTION MFFK (Mehr Freiraum Für Kinder – More Free/Head Space for Children) bring their KOMMANDO BOBBY-CAR to a parking space near to Alexanderplatz.
The World Cup is over, the mates are back to Germany, the bike inspected, and after a few days in the cozy comfort of good friends’ guesthouse in Jozi (if you ever make it here, stay at the Lucky Bean) it feels as if the first journey is over, and a second one, different in most aspects will start tomorrow morning, when I´ll head towards Maputo, the capital of Mocambique, which should be a comfortable and stress-free ride of around 500 km.
The last 5 weeks have been dominated – of course – by the World Cup and the visit of my friends, the itinerary dominated by match fixtures and flight plans, and there was little freedom when it came to trip planning, Blatter decided more than I did. Now it will be different, 4 weeks left, and 5-6.000 km to be covered through the southern african states to reach Windhoek in the middle of August for the flight back..
South Africa was an experience I won´t forget. Not only because I met friends that will be with me for good – A big hug, Conway, Moenier, Natasha – and not only because I had a brilliant time during the Cup itself, I also learned a lot, probably more than in most other countries I have visited. My idea of nature has changed, and my perception of what a sunrise, a horizon and infinite width is will always be dominated by what I had the privilege to experience here, in the country of plenty.
More than this I am still touched by the level of mildness and kindness by so many Sourth Africans, most often by those with the hardest living conditions, a mildness that seems to be the only chance to succeed in the tough struggle that lies ahead of the country: to give all citizens access to education, healthcare and living conditions that are not an assault on their dignity, and thus making those fences, alarm systems and patrols that stop this blessed land from being a happy place one day.
I am not sure if this struggle will be successful very fast, and the fact that the privileged winners of Apartheid and century long abuse of black labor show a very often apalling lack of understanding and arrogance does not make it easier..
Nevertheless, this could be the most beautiful place to live on earth one day, I think, and if the struggle ahead should be successful, the whole planet in it´s attempt to overcome the painful and unbearable wealth disparity should and will profit. Here, it is a fight on each others doorsteps, and the fortress we have built around our continent at home is reduced to an electrical fence around ones property..
You have to love the country and it´s people for the courageous journey into unknown waters, it has embarked upon…
(In the second of his series of books about Berlin, Paul has picked The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider)
First published in 1983, and reissued in English a few years ago, The Wall Jumper (Der Mauerspringer) is an entertaining short novel about a nameless narrator and his friends who live in West Berlin. The narrator is often crossing the Berlin Wall to visit friends and family “on the other side”, and the book tells the story of these journeys as well as those of his friends such as a drinking buddy who fled East Germany for the West, and a writer friend in East Berlin who continues to try and fool the system into leaving him alone.
Alongside these tales, Schneider also explores the stories of other “Wall Jumpers”, such as the Berliner who continually jumped the wall from the West to the East, often ending up in psychiatric hospitals on both sides for his troubles, and the tale of three school-pals who used to cross the border in the early days every Friday night to go to the cinema on Kurfürstendamm until they were finally caught.
Through the scenes in bars and apartments on both sides of the divide Schneider explores the difference between himself and his friends, between the two Germanys, and the correlation between the two – asking the question: where does the state end, and the self begin? As well as these philosophical question that the book raises about the impact of how were are all shaped by the environment in which we grow up in, Schneider has managed in a short space to offer a fascinating and vivid glimpse of the city from a very particular period in history.
The Wall Jumper is definitely an interesting read for anyone who is interested in the history of Berlin, and the impact of the division of the city and the country on the individuals living through it.
If you are looking for a good bookshop in Berlin, with a fine selection of second hand as well as new books, and a large selection of translated German literature, check out St George’s Bookshop in Prenzlauer Berg. Otherwise, you can find The Wall Jumper here on Amazon.co.uk.
Kotti…As part of Josefine in the danger zone we visited Kottbusser Tor. Now many of you will have forced to watch/ or read the book “The children of Bahnhof Zoo” which describes the Heroin drug scene around Berlin Zoo in the late seventies. A very impressive film which should scare the shit out of anyone entertaining the idea of drugs are cool.
Well these days the train station at Zoo is a sleeping tablet in comparison to “Kotti” as it is locally known. This place is the epicenter of social under class and its associated problems. It is however still one of the lively places in Berlin and multi-cultural to the hilt. The easiest way to get there from the Circus is to take the U8 to Kottbusser Tor.
First published in 1983, and reissued in English a few years ago, 
Kotti…As part of Josefine in the danger zone we visited Kottbusser Tor. Now many of you will have forced to watch/ or read the book “The children of Bahnhof Zoo” which describes the Heroin drug scene around Berlin Zoo in the late seventies. A very impressive film which should scare the shit out of anyone entertaining the idea of drugs are cool.