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Phil Mercer |
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You are in the Mercers Tedium Blog |
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011Kuchen
Since the weekend I've been back in Hamburg and taking things a little easier.
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I've been doing a few of the touristy things! In fact none more so than Miniatur Wunderland! A huge model railway with an incredibly detailed landscape including: car and lorries that drive around - one even bursts in to flames only to have the fire brigade turn up; Murder scenes, motorised boats and - currently under construction - an airport with planes that move! All very impressive. Lots of photos online, I had a play with a close up or two and they aren't too bad! Never let it be said that I don't like my cake! Cake is great. One thing I would like to see more of around the UK. Gay cafes with good cake! Hamburg has a nice one along Lange Reihe, Cafe Gnosa. It makes a refreshing change to the smokey bars of the city. The best bars i've been taken two in Hamburg this week have all been great fun with good music and good beer. In the St Pauli area they look pretty grubby from the outside. Some were similar on the inside as well. It probably adds to the character and the bohemian feel. In fact, as I think about it, there are only two things that have given me trouble. The smoking and the late hours! Everything seems to get going about midnight and keeps on till Dawn! My body has been struggling to adjust. I feel I might suffer jet lag on my return to the UK! Today I had a smooch around the Museum fur Volkerkunde. It had a big collection of Mayan objects, a fun if limited Egyptian collection and a really interesting Malay section. I also took a walk around Planten und Blumen. I can imagine in the spring and summer these gardens are stunning. They wind there way through the west of the city and include kitchen gardens, Japanese gardens and full on parkland with lakes. It was a dreary day, so seemed to fit the season. I switched the camera to black and white mode. It will be interesting to see how they come out. Now, do I have another stucke of cake before I return to Daniels? Monday, January 24, 2011Sticks
The weekend was spent visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Celle.
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It is a really quiet corner compared to Hamburg, in fact it is to Hamburg what Reigate is to London. Still it was a chance to catch up with some of my closer relatives. The irony here is that they are a good 600k further away than the rest, yet I see more of them! One reason I love seeing them is the conversation. We are guaranteed to have had a good stab at world politics, the state of the environment, and all and sundry by the time I leave. Bad news seems to be everywhere at the moment. While the Mercers continue to struggle with an ageing grandparent, an Aunt in a coma and an Uncle with cancer, the German wing are facing up to a close friend with a brain tumour. With all these things it's difficult to know what to say. Watching from the sidelines and offering support where you can is about all. Life never seems more frail than when you brush with all these unfolding tragedies. 'Search for a purpose' pops back in to my head. What do I want from life? Should I follow some peoples advice (and one particularly offered by gay friends) and just look out for myself? It's hard to argue with that, especially if you have no children to worry about. Really, why should you care what state you leave things in, just for who comes next! It will never affect you. In some ways I wish I could do that, but then a guilty feeling creeps in. Trying to keep the good ship Phil afloat often means selfish behaviour. That is probably thanks to the legacy of my parents generation - and I'm not sure if I mean my selfishness or the state I find myself in here. My education, the state of the economy, even the stresses and strains of coming out were/are as a consequence of all the decisions made before I had any say. Obviously some of those things are positive and some negative and i cant forget my own choices in how things have panned out. I just can't help but think that my nephews and god children are facing the same fate. Will I be able to make things better for them? If I do put effort into that and they turn out selfish as well, was it worth the effort? Maybe another beer will help me work that out! Saturday, January 22, 2011Phew
What a few days. I'm finally getting a bit of time out after a rather full-on couple of days. Since arriving in Hamburg my cousins Daniel and Jan have kept me busy.
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 We put on our best anoraks and did a tour of the vast Airbus factory. It takes up a large parcel of land alongside the Elbe and is responsible for stitching together most of the single aisle aircraft plus final finishing of the big A380 and the new A350 when it begins production soon. It was all really interesting, the attention to detail and the scale of it. It still seems a bit daft that you would go through the logistical nightmare of building it in large chunks around Europe and then put it together Lego like later. That's international politics for you! We weren't allowed to take photos so this was as good as it got:  Since then it's been days of eating out, sitting in cafes or drinking in bars. Daniel and me went to see Black Swan at an art house cinema. See my review on Flixter for that. Thursday evening took us to the Hamburg Planetarium to see a sound and light show based on Pink Floyd's 'The dark side of the moon'. It was great fun made all the more interesting by an event that will now forever be known as Planetarium Gate! In a rather unfortunate coming together of circumstances, we had all been out for the afternoon at bit of a tourist trap of a bar called Hoffbrau Haus. The beer came plentifully and in large quantities! Put that, together with a salami sandwich and a 360 all enveloping visual experience, and it seems to have hit the Patterson boys quite hard! I just feel sorry for the couple in the row in front of us, and of course the staff!
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Copyright Phil Mercer 2010