Spielplatz

I was walking around Aalen thinking how stereotypes are bad and suddenly I found this sign!

Schwabing and Rilke

Rainer María Rilke lived in Munich more than once. Between 1918 and 1919 he lived in Ainmillerstraße 34, and there is a plate for remember it.

However it would be cool if I could find the house where he lived in 1915. It was the flat of some art collector and in the wall was hung a Picasso painting, "The Acrobat Family", this one:

It would have been really cool, just imagine, some friend let you to stay in his house, you wake up in the morning and there is a Picasso in the living room. I wouldn't throw a party there. Well, the truth is that this woman bought the painting after a recommendation from Rilke himself. I am mentioning that because this painting inspired him to write the fifth Elegy from the Duino Elegies, the most representative poems from Rilke.

In general, Schwabing is full of plates, statues and stone/metal stuff remembering intellectuals who lived there. For example in a square nearby, there is this stone about a Pakistani poet called Muhammad Iqbal, who happened to study in LMU. I have never read him, I have put him in  my to-read list.

Why all intellectuals have to live in the same neighborhood? If I were a famous poet, I would live in the countryside (e.g. Holzkirchen). I guess in those times Munich wasn't as large as it is now, and actually Schwabing was half of the city...

Sountrack

I have been living in Germany for 1 and a half year, approximately. I have had three different houses and I think it is time to create a soundtrack about my life here. There will be three volumes, but the third one is not ready, as I am still living here, I don't feel nostalgic about it, of course. Here is it:

Garching: I stayed one year there so obviously the soundtrack is the longest. This songs bring me memories when I went jogging (1), when I walked from my house to the Uni (2), when I bought chocolates in Rewe (3), when I saw caterpillars in spring (4), when I walked from the subway station to my house (5) or just staying in my room (6). Some of the memories are very very strong. For example, 'Freak Love'. This band Toro Y Moi is some hipster band that a friend of mine recommended to me (she is a hipster that has never came out of the hipster-closet, and she is the nice kind of hipster, those ones that actually borrow you music because they wanted it to be heard by as many people as possible and they don't get mad when one of their favorite bands is being played in the radio), it was summer, that nice stage of the year when the sun goes down later (using the word 'later' implies that it is not normal and evenings are dark and cold by default... such a sad way of thinking) she put it in dropbox and I put it in my ipod so I could check it out while jogging and kill two birds with a stone. That time I was pretty fit, because it was summer, I had more free time and I could jog more often, therefore I tried longer routes, I decided to cross the highway, towards the Garchinger See, now I am listen to this song again I remember myself about 8:30PM, stil daylight, warm and there were grass everywhere. The coolest memory is with Kanye West, I remember myself, also summer, coming back from the supermarket eating this Reber Trüffel-Pastete - One of the most amazing discoveries I have done in Germany.

Café Tacuba - Ojalá que Llueva Café (5)
Chet Baker - But Not for Me (5)
Chico Trujillo - Conductor (5)
Chinoy - Que Salgan los Dragones (2)
The Cranberries - Sunday (2)
David Guetta - Gettin' Over (1)
Dexter Gordon - Srapple From The Apple (2)
DJ Bitman - Sunset Beats (6)
Elliott Smith - Pretty (Ugly Before) (2)
Erykah Badu - Stay (5)
Flying Lotus - Breathe . Something/Stellar STar (there is no typo here) (1)
Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (2)
Jimmy Reed - Baby What You Want Me To Do (2)
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Pt. 3: Pursuance (3)
John Lee Hooker - I'm Bad Like Jesse James (2)
Kanye West - Touch The Sky (3)
Lady Gaga - Starstruck (5)
Mos Def - Brooklyn (6)
Mr. Bungle - Carousel (3)
Radiohead - Lotus Flower (2)
The Roots - False Media (2)
Toro Y Moi - Freak Love (1)
Movimiento Original - M.O. (3)

Unterföhring. I stayed here only two months but still I have strong memories, walking from the bus stop to my house across the mud (1), or travelling in the bus from the subway station (2), waiting for the bus (3), taking the night bus back very late in the night (4), jogging (5) or staying in my house (6). From time to time I want to listen to new music so what I do is to check some concerts website and see which band will play soon in Munich. I was doing this, about October and there was a band called The Cat Empire that sounded very familiar to me so I checked it out on youtube and I really liked it! So I got a couple of albums from them and I started "studying" for the concert that would be in a month. I remember myself going out from the subway station in Studentenstadt to take the bus 50 towards my house, I had to wait 15 minutes so I walked around and I saw a poster of the concert. Finally I did not go, not really sure why. With Crisis de un MC, I wanted to go out one night, I walked to the bus stop and the bus came in 15 minutes more or less, so I started to play this song again and again because I wanted to pay attention to the lyrics and maybe learn them. The lyrics are quite awesome, some philosophical thoughts of an MC (in this case Anita Tijoux), it is nice because is the kind of Hip Hop you expect from a talented and experienced MC like Anita, after all this years of carreer. With the time the motif become more introspective and rhymes become more polished, as someone who has been singing and writing for a long time would do; on the other hand the production is milder without being presumptuous (that sounds like a cliché and it is very hard to say whether it is true or not, some people can say Anita became some kind of middle class rapper, I don't think so) which means along this time she has been listening to a lot of music and musician and letting herself being influenced by.

The Cat Empire - The Chariot (1)
Anita Tijoux - Crisis de un MC (3)
Jamiroquai - AllRight (4)
Charles Mingus - Orange Was the Color of Her Dress (Piano Version) (6)
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - Can't We Be Friends? (1)
Four Tet - Sing (1)
Ekykah Badu - Next Lifetime (2)
Herbie Hancock - Three Bags Full (6)
Holy Fuck - Echo Sam (1)
Incubus - Sink Beneath The Line (3)
James Brown - Papa don't Take No Mess (5)
Julieta Venegas - Amores Platónicos (1)
Kevin Johansen - Timing (6)
Kool & The Gang - More Funky Stuff (5)
Manuel García - Tanto Creo en Ti (6)

Holzkirchen. I have been very short in this house, I have no strong feelings yet. I have some music I associated to jogging (1), walking from the train station to my house(2) or going for a walk in this amazing metropolis called Holzkirchen (3). I have realized that usually when I go out of the train I put the Live Magik from Red Hot Chili Peppers, I play Subterranean Homesick Blues and the song finishes middle way home, so I skip Funky Crime and play Give It away, more or less when I am waiting for the green light in front to the supermarket, then the song finish when I am almost in front of my house.

Elliott Smith - Clementine (2)
Los Tetas - Hormigas Planas (1)
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Give It Away (1)
Aretha Franklin - Chain of Fools (1)
Beirut - Nantes (3)
The Beta Band - b + a (3)
Foo Fighters - I'll Stick Around (2)
Gustavo cerati - Nací Para Esto (2)
Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On (2)
Primus - Too Many Puppies (2)
Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates (2)
Soda Stereo - Prófugos (3)

My Desk

Ready for work (?)

Typical Sunday

Capuccino + cake in Holzkirchen

Holzkirchen

This is my new town

New smartphone checklist

- Chat in the train CHECK
- Being almost run over by a car CHECK
- mix up train combinations two times in a row because of the chat CHECK
- Being woken up in the middle of the night because you forgot to sign out from chat CHECK
- Chat in a restaurant while waiting for dinner even if you are with friends CHECK
- Take a picture of something totally irrelevant in the street and upload it to facebook just because you can CHECK
- Download an app for checking subway schedules CHECK
- Watch porn in the morning just after shutting down the clock alarm TBA

my first

Entry from my mobile