Mask on, or pub closed. 
View from Oberbaum Bridge to river Spree
It’s my third week in Berlin. You might wonder: how is she doing!? Well, since last week Berlin is a Corona risk area. Congrates I thought. A poster poped up on my way to work saying: Mask on. Otherwise pub closed. (German government campaign) The poster next to this one is an advertisment for traveling by the toruism industry. Interesting I thought. A few days later the city of Kassel became a Corona risk area as well…since this week the numbers increase everywhere in Germany. All big cities are Corona risk areas by now. I walk a lot in Berlin and try different routes while walking from home to work in the morning and back home again in the evening (40 minutes one way, if I daydream a bit and make pics). I hope it is more secure than using a bus or a metro. Living in a big city also means that coffee to go makes sense again. It makes sense because I stand so often on red traffic lights. I acctually have time to sip my coffee without spilling it over my jacket.
Overkill Shoe Store on my way to work 
On my way to work
Overkill is actually a shoe store, but the name fits my mood quite well in Berlin. There is a lot of construction on my main route and I also saw some nice murals. I discovered the wonderful old market hall in Kreuzberg the other day and since then I buy my fresh food there. REWE, a superstore that I visited during my first week, is always very full in the evening and people don’t keep distance. They should control the number of people who enter the stores again. They did that in spring. Today Germany crossed the landmark of 10.000 new infections in 24 hours. It looks even worse in our neighboring countries. They also do way more testing compared to spring and say that we need to considerate that fact as well.
Kreuzberg
Work is ok. I am teaching myself the content management system Typo3 (thanks to Youtube) and make good progress, so I can already work on the website of the Dachverband Tanz. What I like most are all the dance books in our office. It’s like a very little dance archive. Whenever I find a few minutes I take a book out of the shelf and that gives me inspiration or creates motivation in my mind. The German Dance Prize was not canceled last weekend and it was a great Gala in Essen with reduced tickets availlable due to Covid-19 (200 or so instead of about 1000 tickets that they sold last year for this event). I only saw the stream, but my collegues did a great job!
Choreographer and Dramaturg Reimund Hoghe got the main prize. Friedemann Vogel (Ballet), Raphael Hillebrand (Streat Dance/Hip Hop) and Antje Pfundtner (contemporary dance) received special honors for their work. They all deserve it! I was espacially impressed by Friedemann Vogel who danced a scene of Boléro at the Gala that you also can find on youtube here. Enjoy the arts for a few minutes! He really is one of the best ballet dancers in the world at the moment and he is 41! He looks like 27 however. It is not fair. I would love to see the full performance of “Boléro” in Stuttgart one day.
How do you guys like the new wordpress user tools? It’s driving me nuts and I hope I am not the only one…I find it way more difficult at the moment. They change these designs too often. Same with facebook.
PS: ARTE has a lot of great content at the moment. There is a documentation called: “Trump and the New York Time. In search of the truth.” And a lot of dance programming. Dance goes digital and TV it seams. Never before I saw so much dance content availlable on the internet.
TravelCultureThoughts 