Berlin, Berlin....

Three days with best friends in Berlin means good conversation, good food and remembering our dreams and talking about our lives nowadays and yes life is good and yes we miss the days which passed and our time when  China was still a dream. We all were there and we all don't want to miss the time. Life is different now but friendship is still the best.

This was our preparing for the famous Chinese hot pot.... yummy!
Proof for being there :)

 Modern art everywhere

Tomorrow BERLIN

Tomorrow 9:24 am we are leaving and going to Berlin and yes it will be fun with friends, nice food and enjoying the air... see ya

and by the way the new Jamiroquai CD is great!

Travelling

The weather was so beautiful last weekend and it was a pleasure to drive some kilometers and enjoy the colours

 and then we went for a walk....

 you could find very nice creatures on your way

so we enjoyed the beauty together

View from my window

Isn't it a great view from my window?

Green tea cake - second try

For the Dim Sum dinner I prepared another green tea cake. This time I enhanced the recipe and I took my new favourite baking pan :)

It is made of silicon and the colour is really fancy :) The cake was great by the way and I just published the recipe at a cooing website.

No way out

Friday I went to work again. Starting to work quite late, around 10 o'clock and after my absence from my office I worked longer than usual and since it was Friday suddenly I was the last one in the building. Well, nothing special but then! After I came out of the building I have realized that all the gates of the compound were closed and my keys did not fit !!! Well, something happened during my absence I still can enter the building with my electronic keys but I could not open a single gate outside! Grrr. So had to call my colleague and wait for her to let me out. Monday I will ask our facility manager if someone has forgotten to tell me something...

Yesterday we had our Dim Sum dinner with some friends and it was really nice. I love this stuff. :)

Green tea cake

After a lazy Sunday, well I was still not feeling much better, the sun was shining today and I made a walk around some Asian, especially Japanese shops. Tonight I tried to make a green tea cake with matcha powder. Superb!!! Planing to serve the cake for the next Dim Sum dinner. Yes we plan another one, after the last one did not take place due to my illness. But soon.

Today's special art event

wow, wow, wow, I am so impressed by the video and media installations I saw today. Well, the weather was so bad. It  was raining cats and dogs and it was cold. But since I was better today I took the tram and I was there.

Quadriennale and especially NAM JUNE PAIK exhibition.

It is really hard to describe his works. I was really impressed especially by the video installations. Interesting how he complied the eastern Asian view, he was Korean, grew up in Japan and studied in Germany, with the progress and development of media specially tv. In his works there is always the influence of Zen. Buddha sitting in front of a tv, watching himself inside the tv. The symbolism of a candle. Different TV-robots, TV-cello and Fluxus. You have to see it, coz I am too impressed now to explain it. Interesting, working with TV installations in the sixties and early seventies he was far ahead other artists and this all in Cologne and Düsseldorf.

A little impression

Sick today

No recommendation of today, no dinner/ lunch of today, no art today.  I was sleeping for hours. So... okay 25 minutes of cake making: tarte au citron... see u tomorrow. I have to sleep.

Today's Recommendation

If I were in London I would go to see the newest work by Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds, an exhibition at Tate Modern.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unileverseries2010/default.shtm

Stunnig the symbolism. Stunning idea. Amazing installation, once again by an extraordinary artist. Stunning how much it reminds me of the time in China.

Today: Roermond in the Netherlands

No, no shopping at the Designer Outlet Roermond ;). A walk around the nice historic town, coffee and a sandwich with goat cheese and smoked salmon :)
And yes, there is more to see.

 Inside the St. Christopher Cathedral

 

Every time I am in the Netherlands or Belgium driving through the beautiful landscape it reminds me of the Dutch painters, Dutch Golden Age. I think the coulors of the sky are different there, specially in autumn and winter. So can you imagine now the photo above with old vessels, like there liked to be in the 17th century? Grey coulours. Simple. Simply Dutch.

and no there was no

:) : ) Funny name for a hairdresser.

Modern Art

Today everything was about architecture and art. We went to visit the Langen Foundation.

This museum of modern art, witch contains a large collection of Japanese art works and contemporary art is located within a missile station, one of NATO's former base. The complex is a masterpiece built by Tadao Ando, who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995. The buildings were quite impressive and huge going into the earth, in some rooms with only four or five works on the walls I was thinking about the missiles all the time and James Bond movies. This was real modern art.

Unfortunately this time there were more contemporary works on display than Japanese art. There no pictures allowed inside, quelle dommage. I really liked the antic kakejiku (Japanese wall scrolls) they were more than beautiful.

And then we found this:

And I have fallen in love with this rhinoceros :) But this was not the Langen Foundation.

The weather is fine

Gosh, it got cold... the temperature dropped about ten degree within one day... the colours are changing and changing..... so I am getting better and on Sunday we went for a walk in the park of the Castle Dyck. The baroque Dyck castle complex is surrounded by a large park in the English style with beautiful alleys. The landscape garden has a remarkable collection of rare tree type up to 45 meters high. There we also saw 24 contemporary, experimental gardens among a "sea" of Chinese silver grass.

and today there will be another trip to Japan... :) I want to go to the Langen Foundation.

Return of the Space Cowboy

Jason "Jay! Kay is back! Afrer five years of waiting Jamiroquai's new altum will be out on October, 29th.. the best asid jazz band ever... and guess who will buy his new album??? :)
I am really looking forward to listen to his new songs and if you liked Travelling Without Moving you will sure like Rock Dust Light Star...I think at least

Today's reading

Being sick means spending time at my couch... ohhhh... okay no Tokyo ... no fun at all? No, I will flee the couch tonight ..  I am reading The Bride's Kimono by Sujata Massey. It is my first book of her series about Rei Shimura. So let's see how it will be. Different to the Japanese and Chinese literature I am reading, but I heard it is good. I have just finished reading a book by Zhang Jie, a Chinese female writer.

And I have found a book I have not managed to set free yet. It is registered on bookcrossing and I will set it free and watch how it's journey continues.... The  BCID is 352-4685483. :)

Today's catch. New books from our town library for me:

Starting reading

2009 China was guest of honor at Frankfurt Book Fair. It was really a bust for Chinese literature and suddenly you could find more books being published in Germany, even our library bought some. So, I can read some books I do not have in my collection.,yet  :)

Today's lunch

We were planning a Dim Sum party last weekend, but because I am sick we had to postpone it. So now we have all these Dim Sum for ourselves :) :) !!! Some of them we had for lunch today... yummy :)

Talking about sushi...

I think this is really great!!!!



Don't you agree??

I want to go to Japan

Not going to Japan really sucks. I really hate it and it makes me kind of depressive. I am not sure when the chance of going there will come back. After a sleepless and painful night I went to see the physician again. New medication and I hope it will help now. So still staying home.

Finished watching the first Damages season tonight. It was thrilling at the end and there are still some questions to answer. Good point for the next sequel... I will ask R for the second season ;) But I do not want spending my days in bed and watching movies. But walking to see the physician made me so tired. Ohhh... and now I cannot sleep .... I have to try now.

Have you heard about bookcrosing? ( http://www.bookcrossing.com/ )
I was hunting books back in Bangkok. It was really fun. I liked the idea to see what happens with your books and how far they travell.
What I would really like to do is geocaching. So after getting well...

Tekka Maki & Co

Hyuga was great. Full of Japanese business men and us. Eating there you really get a feeling how a bistro or a small restro are in Japan. The food was great and now I am back on my couch :)

Different Maki

Udon

Le Chef at work

End of couchsurfing

I was sleeping the whole afternoon and did not eat. Drinking tea does not help so much. I need to get better and eat. Since I am not flying to Japan ( still sad about it :( ) we will go to a superb Japanese restaurant tonight. Hyuga. I am really happy about it. I hope I will get better afterward. Hyuga it great. Authentic Japanese feeling and food. I really like it and I hope it helps me get better.

Seen on the way to a Dim Sum restaurant the last time