Thursday 29 July 2010

Strontium, Sugar and Spanners

In my perusal of all things Berlin for our upcoming trip I have discovered the following:

a) Berlin has a Ramones Museum (yippee!)
b) Berlin has a sugar museum
c) Restaurants serving German food have only meat options. Even the desserts are meat. With extra meat on the side. Which reminds me of one of my favourite websites - The Gallery of Regrettable Food - check out Lunches and Brunches and Meat! Meat! Meat!
d) There used to be a Museum der Unerhorten Dinge (with an umlaut over the o) which I think means 'Museum of Unheard of Things. It is now sadly closed. However, there does appear to be a Museum der Dinge. As in "Let's go to the Museum of Stuff. I believe they have things there."

Unfortunately, we are not going to be in Germany for this, but if you are, go along and see Helen Fitzgerald along with another of my favourite authors, Steve Mosby, in Germany on October 2nd.

And, continuing the German theme, here's German journalist and presenter Jorg Thadeusz (another umlaut on that o) on youtube talking about Val McDermid. I believe I heard him saying she's 'spannend' so I'm hoping he was calling her exciting. However, he's talking so fast and my German is not really up to it. So, apologies Val, if he's calling you a spanner...

Irvine Welsh appears at Belfast's Feile an Phobeil Festival.

The Telegraph quizzes Tony Black on why he loves his Edinburgh. But he apparently doesn't love it that much - Craig Robertson will be replacing him at the Edinburgh Book Festival event with Gillian Galbraith on Tuesday 17th August.

Allan Guthrie and Alexander McCall Smith will be appearing at the inaugural Three Lochs Book Festival in Strontian between September 16th and 18th. I thought Strontian was a chemical element with the atomic number 38 but apparently it's a little town in Argyll.

Talking of Alexander McCall Smith, here's an article in the Washington Post.

This made me laugh - stand up if you love Kate Atkinson. And a new six part series - Case Histories - will be appearing on the BBC.

Here's an Edinburgh Book Festival primer, courtesy of the lovely people at The Skinny.

4 comments:

  1. Ramones museum! Hey ho. I've never heard of it, but would suggest you don't get too excited - last year I went along to the Beatles museum in Hamburg and the most constructive I can be is to say that it was funny. Mind you, I'd be there regardless.
    And Case Histories looks very exciting - something to fill the autumn evenings.

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  2. LOL. Cheers Nigel. Funny is also good. To be honest, I'd be happy even if it's just some old geezer sitting in his frontroom showing off his LP collection. In fact... :o)

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  3. There is a lot to be said for crappy museums of the 'old geezer sitting in his front room showing off his LP collection' variety.

    I do remember a heck of a lot of meat when last I visited Germany - in one place I ordered what I was assured was some kind of salad on the assumption it would at least contain some vegetables but the incomprehensible German should actually have been translated as "chopped up wursts of several varieties sprinkled with minced meat of another variety and dressed with a light meat juice dressing". There was a piece of potato in the dish too. Just the one though and kinda small.

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  4. Don't get me wrong - I'm a big meat fan but not to the exclusion of everything else :o)

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