Cologne work visit

Work sent me to Cologne for a day trip to meet some more collaborators to discuss our plan for the next few months. While it was a long day (I took a train leaving here at 7:44 boooo), it was fairly productive and even gave me a couple of hours to walk around the city before heading home. 

I finally got to see this sculpture in situ!

And I also saw this game! It's mostly for Shascha who would cry out "El Chupacabra!" whenever she was scared.

Munich Academy end of year art exhibition

The Munich Academy has a notable list of former students, particularly of modern artists. So when I was told about the exhibition featuring students works, I was keen to go - who knows, maybe I'd be seeing pieces from the next Kandinsky! 

There were many pieces but my favourite two were found on the upper floors. I can't remember the names but they were

An exhibit featuring photographs of typical German scenes with atypical comments. For example, Munich is widely regarded as a very safe city. However, this comment says, "Munich is a dangerous city. Police are everywhere at night."

And a room full of various oversized things, like this lebkuchen herz

And this delicious looking cake!

FUNDON Day 5

This day was Musical Theatre Day. Pooey and I were going to see two shows. That meant that rather than try to shoehorn in lots of activities, we decided to be relaxed - we would run various errantds and eat comfort food.

On the topic of comfort food, we walked past EAT and saw that it was chicken pot pie day so we got one!

And then followed it up by going to C&R for some chicken rice and hor fun before heading to our matinee show. I miss them so much!!!

Me and Pooey were a little bit late to the theatre and missed the first couple of songs from...BOOK OF MORMON!!! DAMMIT!!!!

But despite missing the intro, it's a pretty easy musical to get into and definitely to enjoy. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Book of Mormon comes from the creators of South Park and follows two young Mormons who are sent to Uganda for their mission. Naturally the show is full of social and religious commentary, with highly catchy songs peppered with swears. The leads played the show in the USA (Elder Cunningham also played it on Broadway) . It is HILARIOUS, although not for the easily offended. Hehehe.

For dinner we went to our old favourite, Four Seasons Wardour St. for assorted roasted meats and vegetables. Pooey allowed me to select the ones I missed the most. I settled on char siu pork, soy chicken, and of course roast duck. We also got rice and veggies which we ended up packing up and taking away for smee.

Our final show - THE BODYGUARD!!! Based on the Whitney and Kevin movie of the same name, if features songs from Whitney Houston's early career e.g. Saving all my love, So emotional, How will I know, and of course, the songs from the movie. This show is super-duper cheesey, but will be highly enjoyable for fans of the movie or Whitney Houston. In the Whitney role was Alexandra Burke, a winner of the UK X Factor, and I've got to say, she was excellent! She was definitely a very strong part of the show. The weakest part for both me and Pooey was the actor in the Kevin role. His US accent was terribly fake and the two leads had absolutely no chemistry. But all of that doesn't matter when the show conducts a singalong at the end and the entire audience sings and claps along!

Out of all the four shows we watch, I'm going to offer this very controversial preference list:
1. Book of Mormon. This can not be challenged.
2 - with conditions. The Bodyguard. This position is due primarily to my knowledge of Whitney Houston's music and therefore being able to sing along with the cast. I walked out singing on the street and bus ride home, and I can't say I did that for the following two musicals. If you don't like her music or hate the movie, drop this one down to 4.
3. Wicked.
4. Matilda.
Disagree? Feel free to watch them and decide for yourself!

Getting our culture on

At dinner, Spu and I discussed with Drs I-K about what we were going to do in the following days. Spu and I said we were going to hit 3 major museums in one day - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, and MOMA.  They gave us looks of disbelief and made comments such as *I could spend the entire day there!* Indeed, and we also could have spent entire days there, but alas we only had one week in NYC and therefore, one day. Since the Met opens the earliest, we headed to the Museum Mile and strolled through Central Park while waiting for things to kick up. 

Along the way, we saw this.

Hello, Guggenheim! But we didn't go in - I visited it later in the week.

Sunny morning, hanging out on the steps, waiting for it to open

Kekeke

Unfortunately, we basically had to run through the collection without stopping to read the descriptions and skipping major things like the Egyptian section...but we were still there for 2.5 hours! Sheet - time schedule not working!

So we grabbed a hotdog from a streetside stall and trundled across Central Park to ANMH, where we basically ran to the top of the building to the dinosaur section.

Which had this giant spider over the (closed) main entrance.

Rexy!

Trixie!

Hey, it's Kevin!

EEEEEK!!!

A mammoth

Hehehe, Spu looks like Beethoven.

Roar!

Steggie. The really funny thing about being up there was remembering all the random info we learned about dinosaurs when we were kids. The different periods, names, etc...

Like an aussie...

The hall of American Animals was closed but the African and Asian ones were open, thank god. 

I think these were black rhinos?

As a sign of our mutual immaturity, we looked at this sign and simultaneously said *boobies!*

A very close parent-child relationship

Dum-dum!

Mexican dog sculpture. It looked much cuter without flash.

Spu gets into a spot of bother with a giant head

The Hall of Biodiversity.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Well, we do our next best without sitting in it

Poor taxidermied tiger

Seriously though, the taxidermy was both impressive for the sheer number of  animals but also depressing when you realise how many animals were killed for it.

But this is a model of a baby blue whale that died naturally.

Sharks chasing a turtle

The Squid and the Whale - an Epic Battle 

After a mexican lunner, we walked down the Upper West Side and swung by the Dakota. We couldn't go to Strawberry Fields because a crime was committed in broad daylight close by.

Spu wasn't too keen on MOMA (he doens't like Modern Art) but I convinced him that it would be worth it. In the end, I think he decided that it was the best museum because it had an exhibit examining things related to children. This included advertising, toys, films etc. 

And it had these giant tables and chairs that we were allowed to climb over!

On Saturday morning I finally made it back to the Guggenheim (Spu went shopping), but the main spiral was closed due the the installation of an exhibit so we could only take photos in the foyer and look at the exhibits in the annexe.

Then when I left the museum, there was, irony of ironies, a German culture parade on! It actually kinda made me wish I had my dirndl with me but I did end up having a nice chat (auf Deutsch!) to these Swabisch ladies who'd been in the US for 40-50 years. 

Guggenheim Bilbao

Unlike the last time, when the queue into the Guggeheim Bilbao stretched out of the building and onto the terrace, Hito, Mel, and I were prepared by pre-booking tickets! It turns it that wasn't necessary because the weather was still gloomy and there were not so many tourists around. 

Ohai again, Puppy!

Close up pic of Puppy's fur

Cool building, bro.

The interesting shapes don't stop with the exterior!

One of the criticisms I'd heard of the gallery was that it's permanent collection itself isn't that great, while the visiting exhibitions are more interesting. I slightly beg to differ. I quite liked the permanent installations we saw...

Such as Koons' Tulips. So soft and squishy looking despite being made of steel.

And from another angle!

Richard Serra's A Matter of Time

Walking in, around, and amongst the piece is pretty trippy!

I can't remember what this was called but it was pretty cool as well. LED lights with moving sentences in English, Spanish, and Basque

At this point, I was stopped by a guard who told me no photography was allowed. This is a real shame because the temporary exhibition was a collection of David Hockney's recent works. It was really fascinating, not only because Hockney really is a great artist, but also about how he integrates old work, e.g. Claude's Sermon on the Mount, with new technology e.g. using an app on a iPad to create these amazing canvasses. I was also particularly impressed with the videos showing the progression of a painting on the app. My pictures don't look that good when I scribble colour on top of colour!


And then afterwards, before heading out to the airport, we ate one last Basque meal.

Here is my tripe with chorizo.

Adios, Bilbao y San Sebastian. ¡hasta luego!