Culture in Brooklyn

Yesterday I wanted to visit the Brooklyn Museum specifically the exhibition Gilbert & George. It was for free and started at 1:30pm. So I decided to leave at 12:30 to take the express train to brooklyn, I thought I should arrive at about 1:15pm. But the express train was a local train on this cold but sunny saturday. So I arrived at something past 1:30pm. Because I've never been in Brooklyn I decided to make a trip through the district. And i've to say that i loved it. It's such a beautiful area with so many different kind of people livin' there. It was really interesting to move along the Fulton Mall, listen to so many different musics like gospels, hip hop or mainstreamstuff. Everybody was target as 'Bro' or 'Ey man'. And it was really cheap there. I bought some doughnuts (2 for $1) filled with strawberrys. It was so awesome delicious I was motivated to went in the store again and buy more of this great food. But then I remembered my the empty wallet and decided to go ahead ;-)
I went into a small museum, called Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. It was a very nice place with very friendly and open minded people. I connected to a to an artist, called Russell Frederick. I'm very sad that the homepage written on his business card does not work, but I want you to welcome him as a new reader of this blog ;-) [update 12/03/2008: it's working: kamoinge] I was very impressed of the exhibition. It telled the story of the movement "I AM A MAN", taking place in the 60's of the last century. It was among other things about the perception of the white man to the black man. well, it's hard to express it in English. The goal of this movement (connected with Martin Luther King) was to remind all people that black men are not only 'Bro's', gangster, hip hopper or well-equipped lovers but also philosophs, teachers, hard workers and fathers.
See the following description for further information:
The pictures were all very impressive and expressive. The best one was "iMAN Divine" by Rah Crawford: and the most impressive was "Freedom or Else" by Jarnett Shabazz:
This text was very interesting ,too. Maybe you want to take a deeper look at it.










If you want to go to Brooklyn the next weeks, take a look at this exhibition. It informs you in a very interesting way about the american history, with pictures, a movie and sounds.

In the evening my roommate arrived with some aother guys and we had noodles with peanut butter, apple-pie with ice-cream, chocolade-cake and american beer. We were so filled up after eating the whole evening - it was great :D Bedides eating we played an very exciting game called Clue(do). While playing the game I learned some new (important) words like rope (Strick zum Erhaengen) or wrench (Schraubstock). There's also a film named Clue, published in 1985, which I will watch during the next month i think :)
Tomorrow I will go to work again - after I had 4 free days in a row :) I slept about 40 hours, discovered a museum, went over the Brooklyn Bridge was very happy about some wishes for a happy first advent by my dad :), had some very sweet candies, american beer ..................... and started to read The Silmarillion written by J. R. R. Tolkien. It's so fascinating to read it - I need two more days off to finish it *gg* I'm so happy that I have some time to read, listen to music, walking around and thinking and dreaming about different stuff after the really tough last months - it's almost beyond words :-)
Have a great week and thanks for joining the blog - hope you enjoyed it.

Apple Pie Made My Day

First time I made it by myself. I tasted it in Ulm when I was invented to my american neighboors Meg and Patrick. Today i had a day off because of Day After Thanksgiving (and yesterday, too because of Thanksgiving (an update on this day is in progress)) So I decided to drive to Harlem to find the cheap grocery store. But I was not able to locate it, so I went back to 86th/Brdwy and checked out Gricedes. It was as cheap as I read in my new book "Broke-Ass Stuart's Guide to Living Cheaply in New York". And so I bought sugar, foul, apples, pie-paste, milk and some salad because I needed more cheap stuff for my sandwiches ;)
After arriving at home I found out, that there is no springform in the household. So I left the house again and went downtown to find a hardware-store. After I reached 72th street without any usefull store I toke the express-train north to walk the Broadway down from uptown. The moment I left the subway station I saw a big hardware-shop with a very friendly salesman. Five minutes later I had a re-usable pie-springform and some shoe-polish. Back at home I started my first american baker-experience:

I've to say that it was very very delicious to taste the filling. It was undescribable appetezingly. I made it with sugar, foul, cinnamon (Zimt) and thinly slided apples *mjam*
This was the situation before the 30 minutes in the gas oven:

And that's the result:

Well, I can't say how it tastes because I want to try it together with my roommate, who has birthday today but didn't showed up this day - not when I was at home, anyway. So I give her a last try tomorrow. If she's not there until I come back in the evening, I will eat it all alone - I'm really looking forward to it ;)

Earlier this day I went to the Museum of Modern Arts because every friday you can go in for free between 4pm and 8pm. But as I arrived at 5pm there was such a crowd in front of the entrance that I moved 180° right and went back to the city. The whole city was flooded by thousends of people with cameras, black-friday-shopping-bags, standing around on the sidewalks, the streets -just everywhere. It was horrible. So i decided to try two other locations which were mentioned in the book. One I will write about later, exactly when I used the thing I bought there, the second one was a small bookstore at 81th/Brdwy. It was filled over and over with used books. The room was as high as 2 floors and all walls were covered with books. Right at the entrance I saw J. R. R. Tolkin's book "The Return of the King". In the end I didn't bought, because I couldn't find the other two books from The Lord of the Rings. So I spent 8 bucks for The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. I think I should read a short description of the last mentioned book first because seems to be not that easy to read and understand it in english. But if I read everytime I'm pissed off of the people standing around in da hood I will get it *rofl*

Sunshine in NY

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue- and the air was freakin' cold. But I had my earpads with me, so the wind could blow through my hair and although I was not cold. Ok,I was a bit cold, but it was ok because the skyline and the area of Lower west Manhattan between 42nd/12th Ave und World Financial Center was awesome. See link below for more impressions:

2008-11-23 Lower West Manhattan

I've to say that I don't like the pictures that much - they donÄt show exactly how the atmosphaere was. But I made some pictures with my Canon, too so one day you will see some really good ones - I promise :)
I saw the Statue of Liberty the first time in my life -ok, she was very far away but I saw her :-P And the telescope which wa sinstalled on one peer was for free - in contrast to the ones standing around in Germany ;-)
I was very angry about myself because I lost my tripod at home. Next time I will take it with me, even if I should think that I wouldn't need it....
I planned to go to a concert in Brooklyn this evening,but I canceled it because of non-existing money :-( So I had some music at home - in combination with a half chicken I bought very cheap in my favorite store on Broadway: Fairways.
I hope i read some comments from you guys ;-) Would make me very happy :-)

Cyaz

He's still alive

Last week was very interesting. I did some things I's done never before - in NY ^^
At first, I cleaned some clothings because I ran off of clean panties, socks and such stuff. So I started to look for a laundromat with self-service. I found one at 86th/Columbus Ave. I went there one evening after work and made the experience that it's possible to be an american unable to speak english. Well, my spoken one is not the best, too bus this of the guy in the laundromat was horrible - to put it buntly, the number of words he was able to pronounce in english was about four This four words were: What, do, you and mean. But I figured out that you have to pay in quarter-coins, specificly 16 quarters per machine - no credit-cards or bills accepted. Yeah, I left the store wishing him all the best for his future (even if he was not able to understand it ^^) and gave the stuff to the chinese laundromat in my street, West 85th :) 1pd, $6 that was worth it, because when I arrive from work at about 7:30PM most of the self-laundromats are closed.
On friday I signed in to the gym at MBUSA. It's awesome. You just need some shoes - all the other stuff you pay about $11 per 2 weeks. This includes T-Shirt, pants, socks, towels, shower, shower-gel, cream, and the use of the gym. I think the price is better then the one of germany's McFit :D So I started to burn the first 400cal in 40 minutes by ryding the bike. On monday I will get an introduction to all the sports equipment. It will be a very short week just till wednesday because on thursday there's Thanksgiving and on friday is the day after Thanksgiving *gg*
On wednesday eve we will discover some new bars in manhattan like we did last night. we found something like a Hartz-IV-bar on 42th/9th Avenue. One beer (0.4l) was $2,50 and hot Dogs were for free. It was a nice location with interesting people and good music, even if it was a bit to loud. After this we went into another club, called Zansibar. I decided to drink nothing because there a beer was about $7, a Gin-Tonic for example costs $10. And I had to spent about $60 to start to like the music. Today I was very happy that I saved the money, because on my way through Manhattan I discovered a new shop, called Filene's Basement.

They sold different clothes, stuff for the bathroom and for traveling (da fallen mir an dieser Stelle die Durchsagen in den nur noch selten fahrenden ICEs ein: Thänk yu for träwölling wis deutsche bahn *hihi*) with a discount of up to 70%. The last two weeks I was looking for something like a business-pant because I have just one with me in the USA and you are just allowed to wear jeans on the so called causal friday. So I bought a pant and a new shirt (compatible to the pant I thought, and my roommate agreed to my opinion after she looked into my bags after coming home - that made me a bit proud because sometimes I have some really small problems to match colors as some of you might remember ;-)).
Furthermore I bought some earlaps. That's pretty nice, because everytime I use one of my caps my hair looks really confused. But my hair is that plump that I just need something to warm my ears. I thought about buying a headset produced by Bose, but this is not possible during the next month because of not existing money :( So earlaps are a good alternative :-) They had a lot of nice caps there, too - but I was not able to decide which one I like most, so I bought none of them. Maybe I will take the guys visiting me on christmas and new year to this store to give me some advise (Hi there guys ;-) ). And for the first time i had some kebab from a guy selling it on the street - like on every corner in the town. It was very tasty - see the following foto:

On thursday I had the most funniest workday ever. I registered for a class called Introduction to Cognos. Cognos is a web-based controlling tool. The description sound interesting, I think that maybe one day I could use the stuff you learn thereand it was also sponsored by MBUSA and so I decided to take part on this event (more classes will follow the next weeks ;) ) We were three people. One from Washingto, he was the supervisor of some dealers in this area, one from a team working on a similar stuff like my team (the same day I arranged a meeting with him during the next 2 weeks to learn more about his work :) ) We had so much fun together on joking around, listening to crazy storys from the work with the dealers and company-members - it was just amazing. Besides we were working very hard so that I could take the bus at 4:15PM instead of the one at 5:30PM ;) - first time since I'm in the US btw :)
The ride is another one then the one at 5:30PM so that I was remembered by this advertisement that the recession already arrived in NY:

As response I would quote Funny van Dannen with Kleine geile Firmen:
To come to an end I want to present a new subway-video. I filmed it at 34th St - Herald Square Station. The woman you can see in the video (if you turn your head to the left - sorry, but I'm not able to rotate it because therefor I need a good computer) was singing some great songs - this one is Michael Jackson as you would discover by yourself of cause, too ;-)
She had some more great songs from other famous songwriters, too - but this is the only one i filmed. Have fun with it:

Kicked my ass

yeaaahhh
Yesterday in the evening, I was so tired that I decided to go to bed right after coming home at about 10pm.
The next day, saturday, I slept till 10am, then I woke up by the alarm-clock. But, right, I stayed in my bed, like the weekend before - no motivation to move ^^
There was so much rain outside that I was not sure if I really want to go out - to the beach. But after a nice smalltalk via ITzeKuhI kicked me out of my bed, had some cornflakes (without milk, because milk was off :( ), a shower, packed my backpack with a towel, a camera and a book and started the day.
That was my first goal: The beach of the atlantic ocean.

Größere Kartenansicht
It took me about an hour to reach it via the express-subway, train A. But it was worth it. I had time to read my book - The last lecture by Randy Pausch. A fascinating book with so many truths and pieces of wisdom - it's a totally exciting book. After the arrival I saw on the right side the beach, on the other side some houses. I was really hungry, but i decided to go at first to the beach, because it was nearly 4pm, not so much time to the darkness because of the unpresent sun. It was such a long time ago that I saw the beach and the waves... I was the only person there - it was very windy, but not that cold. There were so big scallops (Muscheln) which I've never seen before :-o
Please feel free to discover more pictures following this link:

2008-11-15 Beach

Here's a short impression of the beach:

After the walk along the beach I went to "town" and stopped at a supermarket. There I was really surprised because the prices for food were so much lower than the one in Manhattan :-| Cheese slides were $1 compared to $5. Salad and most of the other stuff was cheaper, too. So I bought some cheese and 3 bagel for $1 and had lunch on my way to the subway station.
After 1.5 hours I arrived at 158 Bleecker Street. There was a beautiful concert of The Calder Quartet and Andrew W. K. in the club Le Poisson Rouge. the mixture of modern classic and hand made rock was overwhelming. It was great to listen to Andrew W. K. who is a freak in playing the piano, drums and in singing, crying and dancing - most of this at the same time. His song I love NYC is my new Ohrwurm ;-) It was performed together with the Calder Quartet- first time ever. And it was really exciting. I found the song with a good quality:

I don't have so much (good) pictures because the concert was so great that I had no time for more :D

2008-11-15 The Calder Quartet feat. Andrew W. K

Und zum Schluss noch kurz das Pogramm :)

• The Tone Cluster C#, D, D#, E. F. and F#
  'Let Us Get Physical' - AWK with TCQ
• Interface (Tristan Perich) - TCQ
• Brandenburg Hej Hej Hej (J. S. Bach, AWK) - AWK
• Honey Flyers I - III (Christine Southworth) - TCQ with Bot(i)Cello
• Company I - IV (Philip Glass) - TCQ
• Spontaneous Improvisations - AWK with Bot(i)Cello
• I get wet
  Party Hard
  I Love New York City
  Dance Party
• 4'33 I - III (John Cage) - AWK with TCQ

Aufgabe: Finde das Stück, welches am leisesten gespielt wurde!?! :)

Music feat. New York

Because I can't get my ass up to write about the last week I present some stuff from right this day.
At first, I'm really pissed of that the american wireless is so slow. It doesn't depend on the WLAN because all networks I tried are that slow. It's really boring to watch videos or even to listen to some onlinemusic. So while the video is loading I have some time to write some lines. I found some music on the borought notebook. It's almost 3 to five years ago that I listened to Subway to Sally - Julia und die Räuber:
Nicht dass die Band nicht mehr tolle Lieder auf Lager hätte - aber Placebo ist hier auch auf dem Rechner, und da kann ich dann natürlich nicht widerstehen, zumal ich jetzt endlich mein 5.1-headset angeschlossen habe - mit Surround und ordentlichem Subwoofer flattert's da bis in die letzten Gehirnwinkel, WAHNSINN :))

But now back to the roots: New York :D
Today there's AC/DC playing at Madison's Square Garden. Well, once in the lifetime you shoud have visited a concert powered by AC/DC, I think. The performance is great, some other interns told us newbees. But after looking up the prices I had to think about it again. $70 one ticket, last row in the auditorium. That's not worth it I said to me. Well, and I think I was right. If the first salary not arrives till friday I would be out of money. I mean, totally out of money. No liquid credit line, no backups, nothing to sell (at any rate nothing that I own ^^). Out of money means, no food, no busticket to work, that means especially no money, that means - you know ;-)
Ok, so I klicked from page to page, arrived at lastfm.de and logged in to my profile. One possibility on this page is, to inform about concerts in the area you live. Well - one is Nada Surf this weekend - for $20. Nice band, nice price. So let's see if I can get some tickets :)
Ok, at this point I want to introduce some of the NYMs - the newyorkian musicians (Anm. d. Red. *gg* Achja - bitte laut mitsprechen: "newyorkian musicians" Zwecks Verbesserung der Aussprache und so, ihr wisst schon *hihi*) But more important than the spelling is the music they make. In nearly every subway station somebody sits and makes music - sometimes mehr schlecht als recht, but sometimes they are great performers - like in the following vid:

It's difficult to decide wether to spend some money or not. In most cases the wallet decides, but sometimes they make such a great performance that is doesn't matters. I will try to catch some more impressions. One girl told me (here name is Sina "Hallo Sina :-*") there's a man, running through NY in underpants and playing the guitar. I have to say that i never met him, but maybe somebody is so nice to post the video - I'm a bit to tired to start a search. Thank you so much :-*
Stay informed :)
Nachtrag: folgendes hab ich beim prae-zubettgehen-im-netz-stöbern noch gefunden :-))

The Arrival

Well, what to say about the arrival. It was awesome to fly :) I like the feeling so much that you have sitting in a starting airplane. It's like the big "Schaukel" in the "Heidepark Soltau" where you can sit right at the end of the ship *gg*
I left my dear hostel mom and dad the day before, on october 30th and arrived in Berlin at 10:15PM. I had about 30 minutes delay because we had to change the train in Brandenburg - something was wrong with the locomotive.
The evening I spent with a girlfriend in Berlin - next to the Alexanderplatz. We went out to have some Martini in two different bars along the Charlottenburger Straße. It was a very nice evening with a lot of discussion. One was about her digital camera and the small laptop. After she convinced me to take the camera with me, we called her boyfriend to discuss the notebook-situation with him. Well, I'm sitting right in front of the notebook, so everybody should be able to make aguess about the end.
Following some videos I made on the flight.
I arrived at 7AM at Berlin - Tegel. I had to wait about 2 hours to check in. After I did this, I walked araound the airport looking for some interesting stuff -instead of this I heard my name. Markus Bornfleth and blablabla please came immediatly to the Check-In-point. Shit, dachte ich - da is was schief gelaufen. Aber nix da - da ich über Internet gebucht hatte konnt ich gleich wieder gehen- Alles ok meinte die nette Dame. Frau blablabla, die nicht übers Internet gebucht hatte konnte nach einem kurzen Blick auf ihre Tickets aber auch wieder gehen. War wohl doch alles nur ein Versehen ^^
With a delay of approximately 15 minutes the big journey started. About one hour to Duesseldorf. There I had to change the airplane. All went well because all was organized very well. So that I had some time to call some people - 50% (that means one ;) ) was not reachable),also bin ich durch den riesigen Flughafen geschlendert und hab mit von meinen letzten Euros nen Kaffee geholt.
At 13:20, again with a delay of appr. 20 minutes we left Duesseldorf:

After a very relaxing flight with King of Queens and Mr. Bean on TV we reached New York 30 minutes before the predicted time.
Damit ich jetzt nicht jedes Bild einzeln einfügen muss schaut einfach mal hier vorbei:

2008-10-31 Flight

Die Landung auf JFK und das Roll-Out gibt es hier zu beschauen. JA, das Wetter war toll :)) War ja auch erst 17:00 als ich den Flughafen da verlassen habe. Die Sommerzeit wurde btw erst eine Woche später zurückgestellt. Was ein Glück für mich, wo ich soo gerne länger schlafe *dream*
Abgeholt wurde ich von einem extra bestellten LimoService. Aus der versprochenen S-Klasse wurde leider nichts, dafür gab es einen GL

Auch ein feines Auto, zumal wenn man über eine Stunde nach Manhattan reinfährt und durch die dunklen Scheiben alle Leute beobachten kann ;).
Der erste Sonnenuntergang in NY war wunderschön - hier der Versuch einer Momentaufnahme die etwas splitscreenhaftes hat da ich nicht vorni sitzen durfte *schnieff* Naja, so hatte ich den Fahrer gleich mit im Auge. Fetzt schon zu sehen wie sich einige Leute über Stau aufregen können - nur schade dass ich die ganzen Wörter noch nicht beherrsche *harrrr*:

Zu Hause angekommen hat mich eine deutschsprechende Nachbarin zur Schlüsselübergabe erwartet, da meine Mitbewohnerin, Nina, das We über außer Haus war. Anschließend bin ich gleich zwei Blocks weiterauf den Broadway gelaufen,auf der Suche nach was Essbarem. Das problem war, dass es da sooo viel im Angebot gab, dass ich mich nicht entscheiden konnte und nach 2 Stunden immer noch hungrig und langsam taterig werden die Straße langgetigert bin. Der letzte Ausweg waren zwei Cheesburger bei MacDonalds. Nicht unbedingt lecker, aber immerhin hatte ich was lauwarmes im magen :-|
Mit der Whg bin ich sehr zufrieen. Sehr ruhige Lage, trotzdem kann man in wenigen Minuten in ganz Manhattan sein: Die Metro sowie hunderte von Bars, Restaurants, Pubs, Theatern, Shops sind gleich um die Ecke:

View Larger Map
Btw könnt ihr die Karte vergrößern und mit StreetView direkt vor meine Haustür wandern - hab das mal vorbereitet für die die keine Lust haben durch Upper Manhattan zu wandern oder eh über Weihnachten/Neujahr vorbeikommen *mit dem Zaunpfahl wink*
Es ist genau der Eingang in der Mitte, das Fenster über der Tür ist meins, das links daneben das vom Wohnzimmer:

So, das war's dann erstmal von hinterm Teich. Nicht vergessen: Fleißig kommentieren, ist ohne Registrieren möglich -also ran an die tasten :-P