Rufus Wainwright
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Recap: Blackoutsabbath 2008 (Part I)
Dear All:
At the moment I'm sitting in a cute little riverside cafe with the magnificent city of Porto, Portugal lazying behind me in the summer sun, a perfect time and setting in which to reflect. It's been a week since Blackoutsabbath (almost to the second, it's about 11:45 right now on a Saturday) and many thoughts have filtered in and out of my busy head and later I will tell you which ones stuck. But first, let me tell you how my time went. In Berlin, the night before
the event, Jorn and I went over to discuss logistics at our friends' beautiful apartment where the next evening we were to celebrate the Sabbath. They live in a very famous building, one of the old Communist towers on Karl Marx Allee, where all the posh GDR folk used to live. The whole area looks very Pet Shop Boys Soviet chic. It soon became apparent that the two big issues were this: getting my guitar over to their place so that I didn't have to carry it across town, and ice - a warning to all you chilled out, tumbler drinking Eskimo wannabes. Europe doesn't do ice in a bag - way too uncool (ha! Ha!). So after setting up a game plan which included dropping off the guitar that night, Jorn and I finding ice the next day, and during the Sabbath, my going down and up five flights of stairs on the hour to meet people at the door so that they wouldn't use the buzzer (phew!!!!). We went to our favorite restaurant (Borchards) and ate a couple of pounds of white asparagus, which Europe DOES have unlike the U.S where we have fiddle heads which Europe (I think) does not have. The next morning, Sabbath day, I woke up pretty early because I had a rehearsal at 10:00 AM with a string quartet for my Berlin show. Yes! Right up until noon I was of course working my ass off, which is good, but after what happened to poor Tim Russert, I think it's just as important to take time off:
THANK GOD FOR BLACKOUTSABBATH!!!!
Anyway, at the stroke of noon (bad choice of words), I dismissed the string players, finished up the last bit of caviar in the fridge, unplugged and turned off everything and waited for Jorn to return with some kind of creamy sweet shrimp thing for lunch. He arrived with the shrimp (which was absolutely delicious), and we made plans to go to several museums that day in order to buy cool fridge magnets for the party. But first we decided it would be nice to take a little half an hour nap before going out....we slept for three and a half hours! When we did finally wake up, we decided to at least go to one museum - the newly renovated Bode Museum on the Museum Island. What an incredible place. I especially liked the ancient (as in 2000 years old) Babylonian pinball machine and the ugly baby Jesus....go there (at least virtually) and try to find out what I'm talking about - THE FUN NEVER STOPS!!!!! Then, as the evening progressed, we started to make our way over to the monolithic area of Karl Marx Alle. On the way, we bought some cheesy Berlin beer mug magnets (just to dumb it down a bit) for the folks and then suddenly the one and only blemish occurred in the whole day (something else dark occurs later on but I'm not referring to it now so that it remains a surprise): WE COULD NOT FOR THE LIFE OF US FIND ANY ICE!!!!!!
All I can say is God bless Korea.....the corner stores of Europe are pretty mincy affairs. Sometimes it's like, "where the Hell is Marco Polo when you need him???" Or I guess in this case it would be some Viking dude. Anyway, after begging fish mongers and even thinking of raiding McDonalds with large cups, Jorn and I separated at which point I went to the party to greet guests and my dear German Wundermensch of a boyfriend went on a hunt for ice cubes. He really is the best! Fortunately, all this was rectified, ironically, BY A GAS STATION!!!
At the moment I'm sitting in a cute little riverside cafe with the magnificent city of Porto, Portugal lazying behind me in the summer sun, a perfect time and setting in which to reflect. It's been a week since Blackoutsabbath (almost to the second, it's about 11:45 right now on a Saturday) and many thoughts have filtered in and out of my busy head and later I will tell you which ones stuck. But first, let me tell you how my time went. In Berlin, the night before
the event, Jorn and I went over to discuss logistics at our friends' beautiful apartment where the next evening we were to celebrate the Sabbath. They live in a very famous building, one of the old Communist towers on Karl Marx Allee, where all the posh GDR folk used to live. The whole area looks very Pet Shop Boys Soviet chic. It soon became apparent that the two big issues were this: getting my guitar over to their place so that I didn't have to carry it across town, and ice - a warning to all you chilled out, tumbler drinking Eskimo wannabes. Europe doesn't do ice in a bag - way too uncool (ha! Ha!). So after setting up a game plan which included dropping off the guitar that night, Jorn and I finding ice the next day, and during the Sabbath, my going down and up five flights of stairs on the hour to meet people at the door so that they wouldn't use the buzzer (phew!!!!). We went to our favorite restaurant (Borchards) and ate a couple of pounds of white asparagus, which Europe DOES have unlike the U.S where we have fiddle heads which Europe (I think) does not have. The next morning, Sabbath day, I woke up pretty early because I had a rehearsal at 10:00 AM with a string quartet for my Berlin show. Yes! Right up until noon I was of course working my ass off, which is good, but after what happened to poor Tim Russert, I think it's just as important to take time off:
THANK GOD FOR BLACKOUTSABBATH!!!!
Anyway, at the stroke of noon (bad choice of words), I dismissed the string players, finished up the last bit of caviar in the fridge, unplugged and turned off everything and waited for Jorn to return with some kind of creamy sweet shrimp thing for lunch. He arrived with the shrimp (which was absolutely delicious), and we made plans to go to several museums that day in order to buy cool fridge magnets for the party. But first we decided it would be nice to take a little half an hour nap before going out....we slept for three and a half hours! When we did finally wake up, we decided to at least go to one museum - the newly renovated Bode Museum on the Museum Island. What an incredible place. I especially liked the ancient (as in 2000 years old) Babylonian pinball machine and the ugly baby Jesus....go there (at least virtually) and try to find out what I'm talking about - THE FUN NEVER STOPS!!!!! Then, as the evening progressed, we started to make our way over to the monolithic area of Karl Marx Alle. On the way, we bought some cheesy Berlin beer mug magnets (just to dumb it down a bit) for the folks and then suddenly the one and only blemish occurred in the whole day (something else dark occurs later on but I'm not referring to it now so that it remains a surprise): WE COULD NOT FOR THE LIFE OF US FIND ANY ICE!!!!!!
All I can say is God bless Korea.....the corner stores of Europe are pretty mincy affairs. Sometimes it's like, "where the Hell is Marco Polo when you need him???" Or I guess in this case it would be some Viking dude. Anyway, after begging fish mongers and even thinking of raiding McDonalds with large cups, Jorn and I separated at which point I went to the party to greet guests and my dear German Wundermensch of a boyfriend went on a hunt for ice cubes. He really is the best! Fortunately, all this was rectified, ironically, BY A GAS STATION!!!
| Posted on 7/7/2008 |
36 of 317
