Furnishings

In Kiev we went to pay a visit to Gina's old house.



"Very much as I remember it, but smaller," she said. It's in a pleasant, quiet, leafy neighbourhood on the edge of the old city. 5 people used to live in this 2 bedroom apartment. There is a playground and a caged in synthetic soccer pitch from which emanated the sounds of the local men in their Sunday exertions.

"Around the corner there was a furniture store which was an object of my fascination." So we went to look for the store. We see a bus shelter ad:


And then we found the store. You couldn't miss it, really: a twelve story concrete ziggurat plonked down in the middle of suburbia. "Wow, looks the same," she said.

And then we saw this clock.


Priced at around 250,000 grivny, that's about 60,000 AUD in a country where the average monthly wage is 3000 grivny. "Wow, this place has changed!"

The place was a treasure trove, an Ali Baba's cave full of tasteless, hideous and disgustingly priced crap. There was an abundance of monkey themed furniture, especially monkeys holding up little tables. This snazzy little number was my personal favourite.

You've been warned

Poor sue

I like to thiink sue's whole family all pitched in to buy her a vanity plate for her 40th. Poor sue.


Pozted from grigsby bear's iPhone

Banyo

Livin on a banjo! Yeehaw!

The head wasn't originally gold it used to be blackish and say 'epiphone'. I stripped it, sanded it and goldy-loxd it BOOYAH!


Pozted from grigsby bear's iPhone

Sick! II

(Had to do two installments or else my phone would crash).

Now here's a perfect example of "they don't make 'em like they used to" and dammit, if I wasn't such a progressive-minded young fella I'd make a pretty good conservative cos they just don't!



These windows are amazing: they're double windows, with a foot-long gap between the outer windows and the inner. Combine that with some good curtains and that fine old radiator and you've got a Berlin winter-proof apartment. This is the room that G and I stayed in and it is very much in keeping with the minimalist aesthetic of the test of the place. In fact it was so minimalist that there wasn't even any soap in the bathroom - just a bath, a sink and a toilet, all immaculate and white like the jeans and tshirt of our towering host Dortmut.

And check this out: no right angles!



Speaking of the "olden days" (which is where kids at the high school think I'm from, by the way) getting stuck at shitty Charles de Gaulle airport was kind of a drag, but on the other hand they put us up in a hotel and we got to spend an extra afternoon in Paris (plus they refunded our tickets!). There we had a chance to see the Louvre (from the outside) and the Tuileries and this old sign.


[insert mournful howling sax here]



What a city! Perfect selection for the second act of "Inception". So dreamy and yet so controlled.

Sick! I

Have you guys seen "Superbad"?I saw this on Mitchell St on my first night home.


The season has finally changed for real which means the mercury is dropping below 20 at nights and I'm on my arse with a cold. This happens everytime the weather changes, whatever climate I'm in. I reckon I should donate my body to the BOM.

Sunrise...


...sunset.



One of the few things that I wish I'd done more of on the trip OS is take more photos of the interiors of places we stayed in. We were lucky enough to stay in apartments everywhere we went (albeit serviced in the case of the place we stayed in in Kiev). The last place we stayed in in Berlin was so sweet. Here's some studies.



Situated in the outer-inner South Eastern suburb of Neuköln - which like Northcote has that feeling of being the next..., with its combination of the crumbling with the gentrified - it's an example of prewar archtecture. 5 stories with every flat backing onto a kind of courtyard which is really just a conduit for light since there's no doors or places to sit or anything. One suspects that it may have once served as a common drainage system as well, since all the kitchens in the building look out onto it.