Berthe

Month: August 2023

Such a bicycle can mean freedom <3

August 27 2023 / / 0 Comments

I have had my bike back since Saturday afternoon. I had it repaired, finally. I have a “hybrid bike” – you can ride it around town, but you can also go on longer tours. You can even ride over gravel! I bought it used here and it’s quite ok. I’m used to a bike that only has 3 gears, this one has infinitely more. It has a basket and I put it between an annoying e-bike and a bike that is so clean that it is obviously never used, in the bike room of our apartment block.


Now I have ridden it 4 times since yesterday. It’s the weekend, so the streets are quieter than usual. I ride in Vienna and you would think that if I can stand Berlin and ride there, then Vienna shouldn’t be a problem.
However, I have the impression, especially as a pedestrian, that there is less honking when there is a “conflict”, but that you simply get run over. In Berlin, people honk and shout at you, but rarely run you over directly.

Now here there are bicycle lanes that are used in two directions at the same time. Cycle lanes for which you have to cross a junction although you actually want to go straight ahead. There are simply no paths or only a bus lane. There are paths, but they are parked up. There are good or at least exciting paths on the ring road, but there are so many people running around on them that it is very likely that you will crash into them. Well – there are also e-scooter riders. They overtake you with pimped-out scooters. Two on one scooter. Drunk on a scooter in twos or singles. They cut you off, they get in the way, whether with someone on them or alone. Sometimes these scooters seem more dangerous than cars. At least when I’m on the road they see me. When I ride on a path that is actually on the pavement, the cars see me less or not at all. On the other hand, pedestrians and scooters and vendors riding scooters don’t see me either. Thank you.

As much as I would like to get upset about all the others who drive even crappier than I do. Because I definitely have a problem with right of way rules. My bike licence was 30 years ago, too. I don’t have a driving licence.
As much as I want to get upset, I recognise the following:
I’m finally more independent again. I no longer have to take the crappy underground when I’m on my own. I can still be in my hackspace in the evening without someone having to take me to the bus or home. I am clearly more independent again. I have the feeling that I have regained a bit of self-determination and freedom.
The possibility to move independently – I have the impression that I can cycle away from my PTSD/anxiety disorders. <3
The thought of riding around in the evening, maybe with a friend, exploring the city, being able to get to remote places, “experiencing” the area on the bike and thus being flexible about travel times and the like, that’s a very nice thought.

I hope I can make it happen and I hope others might too, who have problems with standing with lots of people in a small space in a shitty metro where they don’t want to touch, hear or see anything.

I’m thinking about cycling to work, but the fact that it’s like I’ve had a shower when I get off makes me think a bit more about whether I’ll do it. There is still the fear of those shitty drivers. Once I get over that, or at least feel safer, there should be nothing stopping me.

Time to oil up properly

August 25 2023 / / 0 Comments

Lately, I have not been very busy with knitting, crocheting or other handicrafts, which I do excessively at times.
Through a project for CCCamp23, I painted backgrounds for a puppet theatre. In the end, I just had to think the sentence that I hate acrylic and my surroundings knew.

The third one I painted completely in fluorescent colours. Here is a gif:

Gif : You can see a gif that shows the process of creating a psychedelic background. First, colourful spirals and circles are slowly created, finally black doodle-like lines are made on the image, two spiral-like balls in the middle remain free.

Anyway, it made me look more into wedge frames and the covering of the same. At least that’s what Jens did for me 😀 But the motivation was there. So on Wednesday I bought wedge frames and cotton fabric and off I went. The super arrogant salesman got me to buy some rabbit glue to prime the fabric with by saying things like “yes, laymen would do it like this”. When I got home, after a short search, I realised that it’s better used for wooden panels and frames. Thank you.
Well. The preparation somehow involves soaking the stuff for an hour, then cooking it at a certain temperature and putting it in the fridge. Hm no. So I took my layman’s primer (Greso) and slapped that on the canvas. Let’s see if that works. I’ve been wanting to paint with oil again for a long time. I come more from the watercolour corner. Let’s put it this way. So far I haven’t found a painting medium that really convinces me and my abilities. Apparently I want to use everything the way it suits me and not the medium. So there is sometimes something like a conflict.

So I bought a new set “Norma” from Schmincke and that will surely solve all my problems I ever had with oil paints. Hm yes. I also bought some painting products that sounded entertaining to me. One of them is “Medium 5 Painting Butter” – what could go wrong with that?

I’ll try to be super patient with the painting this time. I have chosen a motif that was created in Prague. Two people lying in front of each other, but you can only see one eye and hair. A lot of hair. It’s a super close-up, so to speak. I think I will post process pictures to keep my 2 readers up to date.

I hope I won’t be saying I hate oil paint in a week.

colourful spirals and circles are slowly created, finally black doodle-like lines are made on the image, two spiral-like balls in the middle remain free.

Brief notes on a stay in Warsaw

August 23 2023 / / 0 Comments

I have been on the road a lot in the last few weeks. We were in Warsaw, among other places, and then in Krakow. I had a completely different idea of Warsaw beforehand. What I hadn’t realised in any case was that an incredible amount had been destroyed. So there was a lot of new construction. So it’s a small metropolis of new buildings in the middle of old buildings from the time when I was born. I hoped for a feeling of being “at home” in a foreign place. Simply because I spent a short part of my life growing up in a real socialist state that was dependent on the Soviet Union. Just like other Eastern Bloc countries at that time.


I come from East Berlin. My memories fluctuate between buildings from that time and old buildings that were largely in a very poor condition. Many buildings have this grey, dirty plaster that makes everything look the same. A Soviet uniformity.
You can’t choose where you come from, and the first years certainly shape you more than you would like. So, living in a neighbouring country where there was no Soviet construction and no uniformity, I am looking for a piece of home. So I travel to the neighbouring Eastern Bloc countries and look for my aesthetic “home”. Sometimes I am disappointed, as in small places near the Austrian border, where little has happened.
So I hoped for the full charge from Warsaw. The Palace of Culture was quite an impressive building. I had to think a little of brutalist buildings. Here is the article on Wikipedia about this palace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science . The palace itself is not a brutalist building.
At some point I want to see most of these buildings here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Bauwerken_des_Brutalismus I’m using the German link here because the English one has no pictures.


A highlight was indeed the Warsaw Hackerspace. https://youtu.be/mMrfKu_ObVM here is an older video of them. However, they have confused Stallman with Wau Holland or this is just some troll stuff. When we were there, it was much more orderly and not so crowded, they really put a lot of work into it. One of my highlights on site was an old telephone with which you could call the Pope (John Paul the 2nd), who would then say some random shit 🙂 Unfortunately, it wasn’t working at the time. We were also on the roof, where my companion almost had a heart attack because I was standing too close to the edge. Hm.
Anyway, there were John Paul 2 memes and scultures everywhere, so it was all troll stuff, very likeable. There was only one person on site who had opened the door especially for us. Here’s another thank you to you, gadzer.
Here are a few photographic impressions from the Hackspace:

We also visited the pinball museum. Unfortunately, many machines were out of order. In addition, such a gambling den is usually very loud and stuffy, but we still spent 3 hours playing pinball ad nauseam. <3
Four of us played and I even won 1…2 times. Well, purely in terms of graphics, a pinball machine from the 80s is a real highlight.
Our accommodation was in the old town. We probably should have had a flat in the city centre – the “new city centre” – for the real untouristy feeling. So we were surrounded by Pirogi and Lody. And churches, of course. A colleague of mine said “the restaurant next to the church was great”. Hm yes.
Remarkable were inventive names for kebab shops that sounded even more entertaining in Polish. In general, many words that sound or read cute because they end in the letter “i” or “y”.


All in all, it was strange there. It was so new and familiar at the same time. I missed some of the buildings I know from Bratislava. Maybe I wasn’t exactly looking for them. Maybe I’ll report back later with a short report from Krakow, because that’s where we were afterwards. And it was pretty much completely different.

you can see street art here. A person holding up a sign that says: in tinder we trust. 2nd row: we are lost
streetart
You can see a picture of a pinball machine. It shows a guy who looks like Dracula and a lady with very strange abs lying sideways in front of him.
pinball “art”
an old card telephone with which you can call "the Pope". On a display are the eyes of the Pope staring at you while you hear a random sentence of the Pope in Polish after you have dialled the corresponding number.

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