All posts by Friederike Wunschik

Memorium in Nuernberg

Deutsch
Am Mittwoch war ich mit meiner Abuela im Memorium in Nürnberg. Die Ausstellung ist klein aber fein. Obwohl der Audioguide im Deutschen nur die Texte, die sowieso neben und unter Bildern stehen, vorliest ist er trotzdem wichtig für die Stellen, an denen Archivmaterial abgespielt wird, da dieses über den Audioguide empfangen wird. Das Museumspersonal war sehr freundlich, die Ausstellung detailliert und gut aufbereitet. Vorallem der Schluß, an dem erklärt wird wie die Erfahrungen von den Nürnberger Prozessen auf die Prozesse in Japan und schließlich in Den Haag angewandt wurden, enthielt für mich viele neue Informationen.
Das Einzige was fehlt ist ein kleines Café in dem man zum Abschluß noch ein gutes Stück Kuchen essen kann.

English
On Wednesday my Abuela and I went to the Memorium in Nuremberg. The exhibit is small but very good. The Audioguide doesn’t just translate the German texts but also streams original recordings of the proceedings at the Nuremberg Trials. The staff were very friendly and helpful and the exhibition was detailed and well executed. Especially the last bit, in which they explain how the experiences of the Nuremberg Trials was then applied to similar trials in Japan and later in The Hague, contained lots of information that was new to me.
The only thing missing is a cafeteria or café where visitors could enjoy a nice piece of cake.

Last day at the Camp

This is a list of observations in no particular order.

The changeable weather made for some uncomfortable moments.

We discovered that it is possible to make Ramen noodles and tea and coffee in our rice cooker.

The burgers at the camp are pretty good.

We ate our dinners at the ICMP village.

I attended several really interesting lectures with a sociological, philosophical, or anthropological angle.

A friend of mine posted some pictures online.

It’s amazing how the quality of my sleep progressively improved over the week.

I am not looking forward to packing up tomorrow. Setting up camp seemed far more appealing than having to leave the place as we found it on Monday.

 

 

Knitting at the Camp

Just a real quick entry to say that I knit a cover for my r0ket and I wrote down what I did for the second cover. So here it is: the pattern for the r0ket cover.

r0ket coverNote: I recommend knitting in the front and back of a stitch to m1.Materials: DK weight yarn; 4,5 mm (US7) needles
Gauge: adjust number of rows and stitches according to your gauge. This pattern is pretty forgiving and hides “mistakes” fairly well.

to take off the cover: lift top over to the back side of your r0ket and slide cover down the back. warning: I am not responsible for any damage caused by yarn getting caught on bits sticking out of the r0ket.

CO 8
k1 row
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k1 row
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k3 rows
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k1 row
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k2 rows
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k1 row
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k1 row
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k3 rows
BO 6 k8
k2 rows
k5 k2tog k1
k row
k4 k2tog k1
k row
k1 ssk k2tog k1
k2 rows
k1 kfb kfb k1
k row
k1 kfb kfb kfb kfb k1
k3 rows
CO 8st at end of row
k3 rows
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k1 row
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k1 row
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k2 rows
k1 m1 knit to second to last st m1 k1
k4 rows
BO 11 sts
k 4 rows
k3 CO 7
k row
k1 ssk knit to last 3 st k2tog k1
k row
BO
pick up 3 st on the other side of the screen.
k4 rows

position your r0ket and assemble.

knit second leg:
CO 18
k row
decrease 2 st
k row
decrease 2st
k row
decrease 4st
decrease 4st
k row
BO

graft second leg on.

Packing for the Camp

For the past three years I’ve been told again and again: we are going to go to the Chaos Communication Camp 2011; resistance is futile.
So, I’m packing. I’ve bought rubber boots (after all, German Summers are unpredictable). I got a new keyboard for my MacBook (yay!). I’m taking some yarn and knitting needles with me for the Knitting Messages project.
We leave for the camp tomorrow. Updates will come in when I get the chance to write them. I’ll try to upload pictures every day.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Last week the Supreme Court of the US ruled that video games are protected by the First Amendment. They basically came to this conclusion because they compared video games to other forms of storytelling – such as oral traditions, (comic) books, film, and TV – and found that what is depicted in games is not that different from what we see, read, or hear in the other media (read the entire ruling here). They also pointed out that humanity has a long tradition of telling itself stories of violence, citing some fairytales as evidence.
A few days later there was this opinion piece in the New York Times by a medical student, describing how fairytales helped her come to terms with some of the strange cases and encounters she had to deal with in hospitals. From one of the Grimms’ versions of Cinderella (in which the two step-sisters have their eyes picked out by doves during Cinderella’s wedding) to Bluebeard’s chamber full of dead wives, fairytales describe weird and disturbing goings-on and try to analyze them without the help of Freud and other more modern theories. They are one of the basic mirrors our species holds up to itself in an attempt to understand and warn.
Today I found this excellent summary and analysis of the various Bluebeard versions by Terri Windling. It also describes how over time the depiction of the characters and the moral of the story changed. How a story of pluck and courage turned into a story about obedience. Go read it. And then you’ll understand why my first reaction to Charles Perrault’s morals of the story was “this sounds like he wrote something he heard about and didn’t quite understand what was going on and so tried to tack something on to the end.” A similar sentiment to the one Susan Sto-Helit has when she reads the fairytale of the clock-maker in Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time.
I would also like to point you in the direction of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes, simply because as a child I delighted in this irreverent re-telling of some of the best-known fairytales.

Go read all of that. And then go to the Gutenberg Project and read some fairytales. After all, they are some of the oldest stories we’ve been telling ourselves over and over again (Warning: some are pretty gruesome). And you might even want to try out a video game, the new narrative medium of choice for some.

Beijing Dance Theatre’s “Haze”

A week ago I went to see the Beijing Dance Theatre perform Wang Yuanyuan’s Haze.
My first reaction after the final curtain was “Wow! They just danced for 70 minutes straight!”
But of course it’s way more than just that. The choreography is engaging and (this probably sounds weird) well-paced. I liked the choice of music, the minimalist backdrop, and the lighting.
The surprise for me (and it took me a while to realize it) was that the dancers were not extremely good at bouncing off the floor, but were actually dancing on a mat.

I know modern dance can sometimes be strange or leave you feeling like you’ve missed something, but this choreography is not like that. It was aesthetically pleasing and impressive in an endurance-sport kind of way. It also did a good job of visualizing the multiple meanings of the title. The title Haze alludes to air-pollution, but also to the hazy circumstances that cause financial crises, and finally to the confusion that the multiple layers of social interactions (with veiled intentions and unclear goals) can cause.

Haze on YouTube

Splendid Sunday

Today I’ve got two things to show you.

1) A few weeks back I planted some black beans (I let them sprout first) and they came up nicely.

Of the three plants that I have, one is already done with flowering and is now letting its pods dry, so I picked four pods off and shelled the beans. This yielded 16 beans! Hooray!

All my gardening happens inside the flat and there are no pollinating insects in said flat thanks to the bug screens we put in the windows. So, I chose beans because they are self-pollinating and required no tending besides a little watering and removal of old leaves.
I know that I won’t harvest enough beans for more than one meal (if that) but I like the idea of harvesting at least something.

2) After dinner I made churros. I got the recipe from the 50th issue of Donna Hay, so it’s not necessarily like any traditional recipes. But they were delicious anyway.

 

This is my version of the recipe (I winged it a little):

  • melt 50g of butter in a saucepan (but don’t let it brown)
  • add 1cup of water and let this boil
  • once it boils turn down the heat to low
  • add a mixture of 1cup flour, 1teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 cup sugar to the butter-water
  • stir until you’ve got a ball of goop
  • with an electric mixer beat two eggs into the goop until you’ve got a smooth dough
  • heat some oil in a wok or saucepan (it needs to be deep enough for the dough to swim on)… turn it to medium heat
  • using a bag with a nozzle (I’ve got something that looks like a childrens’ syringe) squirt strings of dough into the hot oil
  • fry the strings of dough until they are golden brown, take them out and let them sit on some kitchen paper
  • serve warm

I made skinny twisty churros… you can make them fatter and less twisty. I also melted some chocolate to dip them in. I’m sure they’d be great with maple syrup or honey.