It's News to Me

Catching up

Sunday was a full day as has been Monday. As a result, I've fallen behind reporting my activities because I must share time with Paul on his computer, and since both of us have a lot of activities in our daily routine that involve using it, something has to give. Tonight Paul has gone to another event that he must cover this evening (Monday night -- remember Berlin is 6 hours ahead of East Coast time in the U.S.), so while he's away I'm trying to do some catching up with this weblog.

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Turandot

On Saturday, the 27th, Paul and I attended the German Staatsoper premiere of Turandot, under the baton of Kent Nagano, a much sought-after ticket in the city that night. In fact, in order for me to be able to accompany Paul to this performance, it was necessary for him to pull some strings by calling upon Kent to intercede with the publicity lady through whom he was getting the ticket, since her initial response to Paul's request was that she could only supply his press-pass and no other tickets. In the end through Kent's intervention, I was able to purchase a ticket at the outrageous price of 100 Euros, about $120.00. Despite the cost to me, and to those others who were not fortunate enough to be officially covering the event as Paul was, I was delighted for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend a premiere in this world famous hall.

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A sip of culture ... through a fire hose

Last night Paul and I began what will be a series of four nights during which I'll be magically transformed by the process of immersion into «el hombre del mundo» and a cultural elder statesman. Well, maybe not, but at least I'll have doubled the number of operas I've ever attended and seen performances in some of the world's most notable symphony halls and opera houses.

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«Sit at my feet ... «

One wonders why anyone would travel halfway around the world and present himself with the opportunity to see long-heard-of places and things and then resist the urge to leave the place where he lays his head at night during the visit. But the opportunity to sit at the feet of a witness to some of the most significant events of the last half century, one who is both willing and imminently capable of relating his memories of the people and events of those times, is simply not to be passed up just to go sight-seeing. I have that opportunity during my visit here with Paul. He is a skilled storyteller who spins a yarn that makes the mention of the famous people he has known and the things he has done entertaining as well as educational.

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«The Storm Clouds Gather» ... with apologies to W. Churchill

We awoke this morning to clouds and chilly temperatures. I had brought short sleeve shirts and short pants and a couple of pair of dress pants. If the turn in the weather persists, I'll be wearing my dress clothes the rest of my time here since Fall seems to have descended on Berlin overnight. Of course, it's as true here as everywhere else, the weather seems to change by the hour. By noon, the skies were sunny again, though it remains somewhat chilly.

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Greetings from Berlin

At last I have arrived in Berlin, but it wasn't easy. The flight aboard Air France across the Atlantic was one of the best I have ever had. The service was impeccable and the meals were in the finest French tradition.

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The frenzy of departure

Someone once said, «if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.»

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What a distraction!

It's hard to imagine what could distract me from thinking about my upcoming trip to Berlin tomorrow, but on Thursday afternoon at work, something did.

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Why Berlin? Why Now?

Some of you may wonder why I chose to go to Berlin? The answer is simple. My friend, Paul Moor, lives there and he has been urging me to come to visit him since he moved there from San Francisco in 1995. It was a return to Berlin for Paul who lived there from 1956 until 1981. You can learn more about Paul's immensely interesting life here, and you can learn how he and I met here. These links point to web pages I created a few years ago as I was learning how to post things to the Internet. Here is a link to a picture of Paul and his current best friend, Maxe.

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Quirks and Frustrations

I notice several of you have left comments using the «Comments» links, as I suggested yesterday. It is supposed to indicate how many comments there are by incrementing the number in parenthesis after the word «comments,» but for some reason it is no longer doing that. I don't know why. However, if you click the link you can see the comments others have left or leave your own. To see the comments from yesterday's entry though, you'll have to click on that day's «comments» link. There is a separate comments link for each day, and the comments are not cummulative, which is to say if you click on today's «comments» link you won't see yesterday's comments.

If any of you are interested in the mechanism of how this blog is done, you can check it out at this link for Blogger.

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