Leipzig secret Museum of Graffiti

In the City of Leipzig in eastern Germany there used to be a large publishing/printing company. It has long since been abandoned, and the locals have turned it into a wonderful secret Museum of Graffiti/street art.

I found it entirely by accident, a large empty building caught my eye while riding a around on a bike.

The building itself is Is easy to miss, there are lots of trees and blocking it from the front and the back is connected to a construction site. If you look carefully though you can actually see some of the graffiti from the outside. If you want to visit it, it is located in Liepzig, Germany on the corner of Dresdener Strase and Salmonstrase.

Ill show some of my favourite pieces here,

From graffiti museum

From graffiti museum

From graffiti museum

From graffiti museum

You can find the rest on my picassa.

Also, if you want to see pictures of what it used to look like, you can find them here.
http://www.frankvoi.de/frank/historisches_interdruck.htm

P.S. Ice Cream and mean homeless man and Accordians on the street

I was walking around Düsseldorf feeling hot, sweaty a bit lonely when I see a sign that reads "Bier Ice cream 1€. I ordered, and to my surprise its really really good. It tastes like Kvass more then beer,but its quite good none the less. Its rather bitter sweet, and its carbonized so you get a little sparkly feeling. Its very refreshing and suprisingly good stuff. I definetly reccomend it if you find yourself in Düsseldorf in the summer.

I was looking for either the Central station in Dusseldorf, or a net cafe. I asked a man if he spoke english, and he gave me an accentless "Yes, I do". I asked him for directions, and he answered me again in accentless english

"I am very sorry, but I will not help you. Whenever I ask people they never help me out, so sorry for your poor luck, but I refuse to help you"

He proceeded to cross the street and dig for empty bottles in the trash.


Also there are lots of really good accordian musicians scattered around germany, here is one.

Düsseldorf and the Flight

After a two hour delay due to bad weather, I boarded the plane. I was lucky enough to sit next to the girl I had been talking to for 2 hours already; I didn't have to go through all the pleasentrie and introductions again. Talking and laughing and eating and very unclear maps made 6 hours go by pretty fast. I arrived in Dusseldorf around 10 in the morning, and after some coffee I bid farwell to Marcelline, and set out to explore the city. She had to catch another train to take cross country to her home.

I headed to city central. I wanted to go see the Rein river. When I got off the train I found myself quite tired and a bit lost, so I decided to have some snack before I continued. A nice looking greek cafe did the trick. I had Turkish Coffee and some large cheesy flaky pastry. They seemed to make a big deal out of the fact that they gave me water with my coffee, later i found out that they generally serve bottled water in germany, so you have to pay for it. Actually you have to pay for the bottle when you bu water or cola, and then sell it back. In the states basicly we do the same thing, but in Germany its a seperate charge, and sometimes bottles are rather expensive, as much as 50 cents.

Düsseldorf was a very impressive city, it was full of old style buildings, alleyways, parks, musuems and also a lot of rich people. There was a very sudden and noticeable class difference. If you weren´t dressed in designer clothing you were begging for money, or a german "punk" more on punks later.

Later I went to explore a bit around the Rein river. Mostly I just saw people enjoying cold drink looking out on the water trying to survive the heat. It was a good 100 degrees that day. I wandered around until I found an art musuem. It was a rather large and diverse collection of art. They had a room with some of Napolean's belongings and portriats as well as a photo project of different ethnicities and some art satirizing the Nazi party as well. I was the only person in the museum, so I was able to enjoy it all my own.

Then I spent the next hour or two trying to get to Köln.

A New Adventure

I haven't been writing anything itneresting for quite some time now, but Its that time again!! I am packing my bag and heading off; first to Germany, then Finland for the European Go Congress and then...I am not sure.

I will be updating frequently, so please come by and read from time to time.

Shodan

Hey..

So last week I decide to check my AGA rating and I am very pleasantly surprised find out I am 1.48 dan. I didn't notice at what point it happened, but apparently I am now officially a Dan player. It must have been from the last tournament I played/directed, though I thought that I had registered as 1kyu.

Though I am still but a mere 2kyu on kgs, its nice to know that I don't have to go to japan to call myself a dan player anymore woot woot.

Jokes aside though, In case all the kyu players are wondering, when I look at the board, I still have no clue whats going on...I can just sort of read out naturally occurring life and death problems now that's all.