The Sounds of Europe II . . .

. . . just before we whack up our next podcast, we thought you might like a best of collection, or cacophony or might that be concatenation, whatever, of the sounds of the cities our travelling librarian has been to with her library and recorder. So here you go, the sounds of Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Paris and Barcelona coming up . . .

Amsterdam

A Dutch mic test

Erwin the Antistress Poet’s Belgian Baby at Ruigoord Poetry Festival, Amsterdam

Dutch frogs get mighty hot in a pond at Ruigoord poetry festival

Berlin

A German kettle on a stove in Berlin

Brazil vs. Croatia match, a crowd in a park go wild

Swedish football fans on a nightbus in Berlin

A Track by Berlin musician Dennis

A Track by Berlin musician Ichier

Dresden

Windy Dresden

The bells of Dresden ring out

Prague

A Czech train

A Czech train announcer

Vienna

The Sound of an Austrian ‘ooh’

Accordion in the Vienna Naschmarkt

Budapest

An accordion player underground in the Budapest metro

A Budapest train announcement

Water and wind and a starry, starry, night at Lake Balaton

How an Hungarian bird talks to an Hungarian cat

An Hungarian train passes through

How to confuse Michael Palin at a fashion show in Budapest by talking about poetry . . .

Budapest rain

Munich

Munich Thunders

Munich goes Brazil!

Street violin

Street violin II

Paris

Paris Thunders

Barcelona

A Portuguese band play in a Barcelona street

Aaah. The delightful sound of Swedish football fans on the night bus home in Berlin.

Well, another day at the British Council. Three whole new members to add to The Poetry Cubicle Library. A veritable feast of a meeting with poet Maroula Blades who is also going to show us the sights (poetic and otherwise - thanks Maroula!) and then the night bus home to Amrumer Str. With a bus load of Swedish fans. Who were awfully excited, despite the fact that their team aren’t playing for another 12 hours or so. Testosterone eh? As always, our trusty librarian had her digital voice recorder on her, so she could catch their dulcet tones. Take it away boys . . .

Swedish fans. Rather vocal huh?

More British Council Antics . . . and finally the World Cup gets us in Berlin

So, our second day of installation . . . and apart from noticing the same man from yesterday (baseball cap, spends a lot of time watching what appear to be internet videos on a computer screen across the other side of the room from me . . .) we also had the excitement of welcoming five new members to the poetry library. One surprised German. One dubious German. One excited German. One co-erced German. And an Australian who kept telling me how much she wasn't really interested in poetry. I made her join anyway. And she gave me a poetry tip so I don't quite believe her lack of poetry interest. Or it just goes to prove that there's a little bit of poetry in everyone. We also took some more pictures at the British Council . . .

Getting ready to be an officious librarian

We find our uncle's book in the BC Library....shock horror. Hope he doesn't read this blog and get a big head.

Our poetry washing line

We also went to a screening of the Brazil vs. Croatia match, after librarian-ing it for the day, seeing as we’re in Berlin and can’t get away from the football. The Germans are totally down with it though. There’s this huge big screen set up in my host’s local park, where everyone has been congregating to watch matches. There are benches set out for everyone, a tent with smaller screens in case it is too hot (or unlikely, cold / wet), beer stalls and a beach volleyball and football pitch for people who are rather more active. Tonight there was also a dude sitting in a beach chair smoking a sheesh pipe with his mate, and rooting for Croatia. We thought you might like to hear what a crowd of locals sound like watching the match: it’s a compilation of crowd ‘oohs’ & ‘aahs’.

And while I was going through the audio I came across this snippet from the commentator . . . heh heh.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve been smoking nightly on these stairs,

. . . avoiding areas that say these kind of things . . .

. . . and have decided the collective noun for spinach is a ‘sink’ of which I need to get my daily dose. Mmmmm. Spinach.

We install ourselves . . .

We are installed in the British Council Library RIGHT NOW with two tables displaying our poetry books, plus we have hung our washing line of poems up also. Come along and join the library and we will stamp your library card to validate it and give you a copy of our Bye Bye Laws which you are bound by when you become a member of our library. We are here all week (12noon until 6pm, June 12th - June 16th) and we may even read a poem to you if you are nice. Plus don’t forget, you can TEXT the following number (text charged at your local network rate) and we will send you a FREE TEXT back telling you where our Poetry Librarian is installed RIGHT NOW so you can turn up, join the library and begin to borrow our poetry books and poems! Poetry Goes Technological! Huzzah! TEXT the word POETRY to +447797805300

We are installed

in a poetry library kinda way

. . . and we like it . . .

We must encourage Young People to witter

. . . or just take tea with us

Out and about . . . just about

Well, we’ve been exploring Berlin, for a whole...ooh one day, since we haven’t been allowed outside until we’d finished creating our first poetry podcast. Thank everything Germanic that the lovely dude I’m staying with has a handy ethernet connection. Phew. Anyway, here are some fabulous pictures of us getting ready to be activated by Germans. Enjoy. We did!

Activation Reichstag

Activation Book

Activation Book2

. . . woops we’ve hacked our blog in Berlin!

Yes, we‘ve been hacking our own blog and somehow have erm, gone a hack too far?! We‘re figuring it out, and luckily the cool dude we are staying with in Berlin happens to know all about this stuff and hopefully will help! Well, at least we made it to Berlin . . . we are spending the next few days inside editing the Ruigoord audio ready for our first podcast. Then we are allowed outside to explore. We do officially have our first library member though! Niko Topp who is providing accomodation also . . . thanks Niko. More coming soon. Especially the bit about unexpected massages in places you didn‘t want to be massaged - a full commentary on our Dutch Ruigoord exploits will be written soon! In the meantime, to keep you entertained, check out some great pictures of Ruigoord at Nippy Noya’s site. We are also heading on over to the BastardSlam tonight to check out the Germanic Poetic Innit and interview some more poets. This is what is going dahn:
MC: Wewalt Kosslowski, DJ: Wanja, Featured Poet: Anselm Neft. Mit: Micha Ebeling (lsd), Frank Kloetgen (Agrar Berlin), Udo Tiffert (zwei Texte), Felix Roemer (Agrar Berlin / Smaat), Paul Hofmann (pony hamburg)...

Here are some photographs of Ruigoord that Barry Fitton & friends took:

Entrance to Ruigoord Church

Hans Plomb introducing the Saturday afternoon poets

Barry Fitton reading on Zondag aanvang - Podium Kerk styleee

Erwin, De Antistresspoweet, who you‘ll also hear interviewed in our podcast

Georgia Scott accompanied by Nippy Noya