An Audi flag on the moon

There is art and there is art.

Art can be found anywhere. And often when you strip it down to the basics, it is all the same.

How can this,

which is essentially a painting on the contemporary life of the artist, drawn on a wall, essentially different from this?

We did talk about it on our walk to the Slaughterhouse Hill and reached the conclusion that art is in the eye of the beholder.

Even then, some artists are better than others. They take their surroundings into consideration and create smart art, like this:

Yes, on the first look, it is an austronaut. Now, you have to understand that when the artist started working on the mural, there was ( and still is ) an Audi showroom nearby. And like any self respectable auto showrooms, they did have a neat row of flags in front of the dealership. And of course, given that they also dealt in second had cars which were parked in front of the dealership, the entire space was lit with some very strong lights in the evening.

The artist noticed that the shadow of one of the flags falls perfectly on to the wall. So he painted the autronaut in such a way that he holds a shadow flags with the Audi symbol on it in the night, acting as smart art and a commentary on our wealth focused times.

TheTurk and the Bishop

Berlin has the second highest concentration of Turkish people after Istanbul. And for the few days that I was there, they seemed to get along pretty well. To be honest, I did not know how well they got along until I heard this story.

So, lets go back in time a little bit, even before 1989. The wall is still up there, and between the east and the west walls, there is a no mans land.

That was when a turkish youngster came to Berlin. He wanted a home to bring his young bride from Turkey to; he was too poor to find one, so he decided to squat - on a tree by the no man's land. He built a little shack, brought his wife over and they stayed their with their growing family.

Once the wall fell, the government wanted him to leave his home and evacuate. They first tried asking him nicely. Once he said yes, they threatened to throw him out.

He retaliated by cementing his outdoor furniture to the ground. The government had it's supporters, but the Turkish man had his supporters too. They did a bit of searching around and found that the property did not belong to the government. Instead, it belonged to these guys.

The German Catholic Church. That is easy, the government thought, and they went to the church to buy the piece of land from them so that they can evict the turkish, muslim man in peace.

However, the arch bishop's residence, by a twist of fate, was situated just next to the no-man's land where the turk settled down. The bishop had watched that family grow and try to survive year after year from his bedroom windows.

Also, this situation had some theological implications. By staying within the church grounds, the turk was technically seeking asylum.

And you don't kick out someone seeking asylum in the 1980s, especially when you have the dark history of world war two on your conscience. No siree. You try your best to be humane.

So, due to a near miracle, the turk got to keep his home. He and his wife still lives here, just across the road from the Archbishop, and their children and grandchildren visit them during the holidays.

Why do I blog?

So that I can transfer my feelings and thoughts into something that I can come back and look at some day.

So that I can move on, from people and places, and look towards the future instead of living in the past.

So that I can rant, rave and be as passive aggressive as I want to be.

So that I will stop thinking about events that happened, did not happen, and got cut short too soon.

So that I can stick a virtual post-it note to remind myself that world is still pretty great, no matter how I am feeling in one particular day.

So that I will not forget the risks associated with certain choices - the self doubt, the heartbreak, the self loathing.

So that even after remembering the above, if I go ahead, I do it without regrets, without expectations.

So that I can look back and do the trendspotting and smile at myself.

So that instead of writing something to my friends, I can just send them a link to here.

So that some stranger from somewhere will come here and turn out to be a good friend.

So that someone will read this and feel a little less alone.

So that someone will read this and feel a little more wiser.

So that I know myself a little bit more, and love myself a little bit more.

I guess that's why I blog.