Uke Abroad: Weekday Weekend

In these past 3 weeks any time I could get on the internet was spent locked in the purgatory that is Belushi's hostel, desperately searching for somewhere to live. Now that the crisis is over and I've found a lovely flat on Hasenheide ('hare heath') I feel it is high time I write about this month - even if it is nearly at an end.

The very first weekend after I arrived here at the start of Ocotober, I had a visit from two friends who study German with me. Saturday Hannah arrived from Halle where she is teaching in a Gesamtschule. With the biting cold there was only one thing to do: shopping. We headed to a place I had never heard of before, a Swedish store called Weekday. Obviously they're doing well as they had an instore DJ. At 5pm in the afternoon. It was so loud my changing cubicle was shaking. I guess that's how the Swedes like to shop.

Anyway, after our eardrums had recovered we stepped outside onto Georgenstrasse.

After the cringe-worthy yet highly necessary photo opp we headed East to a second-hand store located in an old office block from the DDR era.

Hannah climbing on up for that 2nd hand bargain

Evening was falafel (full homage blog to follow) and then went to CAKE bar to see my friend Melanie deejay

Emma arrived the next day from Braunschweig, where she's working for a publishing company. Having just come from the from the Peggy Guggenheim I couldn't not go to the Deutsche Guggenheim

and so we popped in to catch the last days of an exhibition on contemporary artists' work in film and how it engages with the idea of the fairytale. The highlight for me was a grotesquely fascinating film called 'Dough' by Argentinian-born artist Mika Rottenberg. Rather than try and explain it badly here's a video of it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPXpQPfZu4s

I found Peggy's autobiography in German in the shop which made me nostalgic.

It was funny to see how they'd placed it right next to a film on Hilla Rebay. She was the woman who was responsible for setting up Solomon Guggenheim's (Peggy's uncle) collection which would become the founding collection of the Guggenheim New York. Hilla and Peggy had a particularly vicious series of correspondences where the former accused Peggy of profiteering under the Guggenheim name. Interesting then that she seems to be looking down her nose at Peggy who has rather insouciantly donned her brilliantly oversized sunglasses.