There once were two trees. One of them woke up in the morning to find two little, weird objects at his roots. He woke up the other tree to ask him what those things were, and the other tree said “Mate, those are shoes. The little humans use them to walk around.” – “Walk around? I would like to do that. I think I’ll try them on”. The tree stepped into the shoes, and started walking. He saw old, dead trees, animals he has never seen before, flowers in a boat, and the end of the forest. He followed a grey pathway, and it became dark. He came to a city, and he couln’t find any place to rest and put his roots into the ground again, as the ground was sealed and there was no earth. Everything was moving so fast and confused him. He started running, running so fast that only few of the humans in the city could perceive him. At last, he found an ancient, sacred spirit, that was trapped in a Tiki-statue in the city that was called Paradise. He asked the spirit where he could go to find rest, and the spirit showed him a direction. “Kepp walking, and you will find peace”. The tree followed the advice of the sacred spirit, and kept walking. After a while, he felt ancient water at his roots. When he finally stopped, refreshed and happy, he fell into a deep sleep. The water washed away the shoes, and the tree could move no further.
I think a lot about home, homeland, cultural and national identity here. Who I am, who I want to be, where I want to go, what I call home, or homes.
There is this German word, Heimat, that kind of means home, but in a different way than usual, different than in “I’ll go home now”. Hard to describe or to define, but Heimat doesn’t have to be where you are at ‘home’ right now, but maybe where your heart belongs to (so ‘homeland’ might be the closest translation you can get). That word has a flaw though – there is no plural in German. It is always one.
And that never really worked for me. I always had several homes. Bavaria is one of them. A huge part of my heart lies in Austria – everytime I see my beloved mountains my heart takes a leap, everytime I leave, leave the landscape and the people there, it feels like a part of my heart ripped out, left behind.
And somehow, everytime I live somewhere new, a part of myself attaches itself to it. A little bit of it may lie in Düsseldorf and Cologne, a big chunk of it belongs to Erlangen and Ingolstadt, and right now Australia reaches for a huge part of the rest. How much is there? How many homes can you have?
I think one of the reasons how I could actually leave all my friends and beloved family behind, was because I always had more homes than one, and seeing one home again always meant saying goodbye to another. I always had to deal with that, and with thinking about where I live and what would have happened if I would have lived there longer.
It is so good to have people I absolutely love everywhere, and meet new people I love, and the experience of finding love and friendship, soulmates, everywhere. But I still miss them, and regardless where I am, there is always something, someone missing. Sad and happy, happy because I’m sad – happy because those people are out there, happy because there are so many wonderful people in so many places, happy that I found them, happy that I’m able to find them.
Yes, I am happy, happy to have those strong bonds to my family and my friends, regardless where I am, regardless if we talk every day or once a year, you are all a part of me and my life. And I’m glad about that.
Woops, another day almost already over. Time flies by!
The biggest personal news of the week: I got a new haircut, which is approximately at least twice as expensive as in Germany, I bought a absolutely fabulous green dress that makes me feel like a mixture between Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, and a bird did shit on my head.
As I have been watching lots of music videos lately (for my Music Video Production class), I just want to post my feel-good-video at the moment. Any inspirations of any extraordinary music videos are most welcome in the comments!
Yes, I know. I have neglected this blog for a while now, but the uni here is more work than I expected it to be, to be honest. But it is interesting, amazing, I learn heaps and it’s all stuff I love to do anyway.
To give you one example, here is our short movie that we produced during the Easter break in an intensive workshop for our Screen Production class; shot and edited in 48 hours:
As I have some visitors from Germany right now, which is absolutely awesome, this has to be enough for today, but I try to write more. Promise!
As most of my assignments for Uni are due in the Easter break, there is not much time left to write on this blog – but at least I can give you a few visual impressions. Most of the pictures below I made on North Stradbroke Island (Straddie), a lovely island near Brisbane. I included one picture of Surfers Paradise and Isle of Capri(where I live) at night (on the right side). Enjoy!
The uni here in Australia really is different. For two of my three courses, I’m supposed to set up a blog. One for Imaging Culture, and now another one for Writing for the Web. There is nothing, nothing handed in on paper during the whole course, it is all ftp and blogging. Interesting! Soon I will have to make an artwork made out of HTML code, that will be very challenging.
It is weird, in so many aspects everything in the courses is explained ten times and very slowly, but what is expected in the end, is really a lot, at a fast pace. So it is a totally new experience for me, but until now, I enjoy it very much. So be patient if this blog moves a little bit slower now, but in the meantime, check out my uni blogs if you’re getting bored.
Yesterday it was my pleasure and honour to be teached how to perform a Tim-Tam slam. Tim-Tams are very simple Australian chocolate biscuits, but mysteriously delicious and irresistable, once you’ve eaten them the right way. Ok, so these are Tim-Tams:
Now, take a cup of coffee. Bite off two opposite corners on each end of the biscuit, dip the one end into the coffee, and suck the coffee from the other end trough the cookie, until it starts to get soft. If you keep sucking to long, it will fall apart. Then just stuff the thing into your mouth and enjoy!! There you go, you’re first Tim-Tam slam, a truly heavenly taste.
For those unfortunates who live not in Australia and therefore, most likely, live in Germany, try timtam-shop.de - just found it on the web and I might as well keep it in mind and make an order when I’m back in Germany again and I feel the urgent need to have a Tim-Tam slam.
Woops! So suddenly, another blog came into being, as I was supposed to set up a blog as a journal for one of my courses at uni. The course is called Imaging Culture, and the blog is one of the assesments for the course – so over the next months, you can see there some of my experimental attempts to make images, take pictures, both still and moving, maybe stop motion, and maybe even hear some sounds. Tomorrow I’ll put some of my pictures from today on the blog, so here’s a selection as a kind of foretaste:
I never could imagine that a university library could actually be a very lovely place to hang out. Usually in Germany, it means several tables and uncomfortable chairs, some computers, that’s pretty much everything you can expect. At my Uni in Australia, Griffith Uni, Gold Coast Campus, it means having a laptop lounge, a dvd lounge, a journal lounge where you can read the provided newspapers, while sitting on very very very snuggly bean bags – and you can even play Wii there. There are huge plastic bubbles with futuristic chairs and sofas for working with other students, called group pods. You can easily connect your laptop to the Uni network, and also to the Uni printers, and some of the computer labs are open 24/7.
There are huge theme parties every two or three weeks on Friday nights, and there even is a Uni Bar (where you can play Pool, participate in Wii-Tournaments, watch movies, drink cheap beer and have cheap food). That actually is a little bit weird, that you can’t buy beer at the supermarket, but you can buy a pitcher of beer at the Uni for 8,60$ (and drink it at the Uni).
Ok, I have to admit, I won’t miss paying 9000$ per semester (what probably is the reason why we don’t have all these nice lounges and things at German Unis, for 500€ per semester), but still, it is really nice to be at a Uni that provides you with everything you need, and even more than that. Actually, more than you could ever imagine.
Finally! I bought a beautiful second-hand surfboard. Tomorrow morning I’ll take it for a ride, if the weather is alright:
It has blue waves on it, and a tiny pink flower. If i can ride it decently until the end of the year, I think I might have found my next tattoo, probably right ankle/calf. Blue waves and a pink flower, fits perfectly into the four elements theme – the phoenix was fire, and the waves will be the water-themed one… just have to find a good artist here. If anyone knows a good place to get a tat in Oz, let me know!
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