BITS OF BERLIN

Rather small bits as my trip this time mainly consisted on the way between our Air Bn'B flat and the venues, stops by the closest falafel (four in four days!) stand and sewing for and reharsing another upcoming show at the apartment... Plus not bringing my camera with me either. Because of that and the late shows it was a rather tiring trip, which you notice when you are standing in confetti rain with people cheering and you don't really feel a thing except for that your make laysheavy and your feet feet aching. (And get a heay flu when you return home.)

Having that said, it was of course fun still - I do love Berlin!

I can't believe it's been five years since my last trip to Berlin. Went there a bit more often in the early 00's. Which is ten years ago. Ten years and beyond. (Scary, isn't it! Also, looking at old photos, damn one can age in five years.)

Rehearsal at Heimathafen.

Here's a shot of the number in question live, performed by Mama Ulita.

Backstage.

And onstage.

In between I had a little change to meet up with Frollein von Sofa for lunch in the sunshine!

An awesome lunch that is (here).

Wintergarten, the venue for the following nights, was just incredible. So pretty, with starts in the ceiling and old costumes and posters on the wall.

The backstage however not quite so for the moment. The inner yeard and containers.The glamour of showlife...

More rehersals/ soundchecking, which often is mainly just waiting. We did some chorus girl bathtubbing in those tubs on Saturday.

 This was beautiful. Sheila Wolf on Friday.

And this was totally fab. Tansy on Saturday.

And we came to realize that we actually celebrated seven years of performing on this very weekend!

Live photos by Tuomas Lairila.
Final shot of us taking a bow at the curtain call by IndieBerlin.

LONDON CALLED

I came home from London a couple of weeks ago already, but time goes so fast and I've had my hands full I thought it was just the other day (most things I post nowadays on social media feels like it already was two weeks ago, and it most often is. There are not enough hours per day to get everything I want done it seems). But yes we had a good few days in London with great shows. I didn't ge to move around that much though, we mostly just were around Camden, where our venues were and were we'd thus rented a flat.

London was the place we all wanted to move to int our late teen years in the late nineties. Influenced by all the brit pop bands and films like London Kills Me that was pretty much everybody's dream and mission. Well, other things happened, but visiting London (and Camden in particular) now I can tell that the 1998 little hippie me really would have loved it. Haha oh my.

I decided not to take my camera with me as I knew I really would not have the time for photos and would just be stressing about the fact that I did not get the camera out enough if I'd brought it along so here are some shots I snapped with my phone instead -

Picture of Tink and me by @veradevil

Breakfast in our flat.

Backstage and waiting at Fiddler's Elbow. (Not always so glamorous as you see.)

(Pics is by @ruskarieban)

Showtime!


But I did manage to go to some other part of town as well!
Vivien of Holloway is one of my favourite brands so I wanted to visit the shop in person.


Backstage at Dingwalls. More glamour.


Before we go on stage.


Back stage post-show posing.


And yes the snake was indeed real.

The last lunch in London was also the first park lunch of the year. 

One of many Amy stenctils, this one around the corner of where we stayed.

And then I arrived back home with the red double decker bus I'd promised Dag and that mandatory phone booth jar! (This one with cookies, but I think I remember one with toffees from when I was a little girl.)

LONDON

Here's a dress I wish I'd bought once it still was out there. Not that I thought it looked much on the site, but some time ago I saw a girl wearing this and it looked really good, cut, fabric and all. Damn! It's one of Cath Kidston's dresses in the London pattern, with red double deckers on a light blue background, that they no longer sell.

Well perhaps I'll eventually get over it.

At least now I get to spot some real double deckers, as I will be in London myself the following days!
Performing at Varie-Tease and Exotica Party as part of the London Burlesque Festival, come and say hi if you see me!

GIANT FOR A DAY

When we were in Hamburg a couple of weeks back we visited MiWuLa. That would be Miniature Wunderland - the world's largest model train world. We were there with my whole family - kids, parents, sisters and their kids - to celebrate my father's 60th birthday (which was last year already, but hey, there are only so many available weekends to match in a year...) My dad was in to trains when he was small (and still is), thus the visit. 

Things like this totally awakes the little tech nerd in me. BIG TIME. I have hundreds of  photos from our trip to Legoland a few years back with the boys (I got a bit insane there too with all the miniature Lego worlds and vehicles that move and I am not even going to start on how many pics or video clips I started taking now at MiWuLa because it all looked so real and the airplanes fly and land by themselves.)

The place is huge. It has millions of visitors per year and they have put thousands of work hours and millions of euros on building the place over the last 15 years. One of those things that give me a headache, thinking of all the planning and execution to get something like this done... Of course, it is surely The Dream Job for some.

Here they are building new landscapes. Italy. It's interesting to get to see things half way trough too, how it's made.

And yes, I managed to shut that somebody-built-all-this-stress aside and enjoy all the small details instead. And go crazy and take 1,000 photos of everything. Well in some cases the good optical zoom could help spot details that otherwise were to small to see; I took pictures of a lot of animals for ecample to show to Dag as he had a hard time spotting those out himself.

It's a good spot for kids, although it is more fun for an adult; trying to find all the small fun, ironic details and scenes. For me it's not so much the trains (that actually go around the whole damn thing, all trough different settings and scenery that blend into one another in different etages, some 10km all in all, which itself is a total whoah -well, that's kind of the actual point with the whole place) but all the things happening.

It's mostly funny things. But something terrible happened here.

And here too. (There's an angel crying behind the tree.)
Well there are quite a lot of accidents actually.

Bikers gathering.

Pride party!

Airport catering kitchen.

Nordic walking in Scandinavia, of course.

As the old harbour worker I am, I had to take a few extra shots of all the harbours.

Mm-hhhmm, mhhhm. (Add nodding of head here.)

And then that cruise ship left berth and sailed away on water! Real water. Sorcery!

No realsorcery though, but lots and lots of chords and lots of computering behind it. (There's that headache again thinking about it. I'll spare you any pics I might have taken of any chords and servers that you could see at one point. But then I looked at the wiggling tails of the elephants at Hamburg Animal park -you could press buttons here and there to have stuff happen, like tail wiggling - and left the engineering be.)

In Finland it is forever winter. That's what it feels like for real sometimes too

The light switches between day and night with sunsets- and rises too.

Here's Las Vegas at night.


And the small green men and men in suits underneath area-51.

And a concert with some 20,000 small people attending. With lighters in the air and cameras flashing when it got dark. Plus of course moving figures doing the show on stage.

If you have a thing for technique, kitschy details, miniature stuff (and of course model trains) then you should definitely stop by MiWuLa when in Hamburg (and book tickets in advance to avoid waiting for hours).