It turned out that being a likeable team is not enough to win the EM… I was a bit disappointed that on the piazza the telly was switched off directly after the game instead of showing the award ceremony! As a fan of football itself I always like seeing the players in this important and emotional moment of their career. I am sure if it had won Italy we would have watched it! Anyway: My andalusian friends were not really kicked out but I learned some new Flamenco steps.
Tonight I will watch the final of the EM together with my italian and spanish friends. My italian friends already told me they would all cross their fingers for Spain and not for Germany. I do not mind. I know that Spain might be the stronger team tonight but even though: Who said they would win? My answer is that also the italians became world champions just because of their luck (they played 11 against 10 and won only by penalty-shootout) so why shouldn’t Germany win the EM just because of being lucky?
We have a very likeable team I think and it showed that you can also fall over the ball sometimes if you just make your goals! 
I like this game!!!! Vai Germania!
In the end I can still change sides when the game is over because one thing is for sure: the competition about who is the best party folk will be won by the spanish here in Firenze, also compared to the italians!
“Too much freedom destroys itself” ?
A friend of mine raised the question about censorship on his blog some time ago reminding that in Germany it is forbidden by law to negate the holocaust, while in the U.S. the right for free speech and free opinion is not limited whatever the issue may be. I am a German of the second generation after the war, my parents grew up in the after-war period and as such this issue touches me.
It is true: A censorship does not protect us from dangerous ideas that can easily keep on growing in hidden places. It even has negative effects: Marked as forbidden those ideas get even more interesting, especially for young guys on their way to shock society. Growing in hidden parts of the society they get even more dangerous and harder to control. They don’t get negotiated in society and are out of the state’s control. In Germany we already had cases in which it got unclear how much undercover agents working in the underground Nazi groups got already entangled with the environment they were working in.
In Germany since ever it is our biggest problem that we have to fight with ourselves when it comes to the NS-issue. I will explain you how that is:
Most people have the feeling they cannot express what they really think in their mind. A common feeling for example is expressed in a sentence like this: “Unfortunately as Germans we are not allowed to criticize israelian politics because otherwise they will tell us immediately that we made a Nazi argument.” So they feel forced to keep down their opinion and keep it down and keep it down and keep it down… until in the end – probably by a public and also intelligent person that actually is not of this political corner – there comes out a sentence like: “ …but Sharon is another Hitler.” And you just wonder how that comes… because you should expect a better control from people of public life.
I think this is our “uncanny”, that are the unexpressed and suppressed parts that come up then with even more energy and maybe often worse than they were originally.
On the other hand I never ever experienced it that someone was really criticizing israelian politics in matter of facts and got blamed for it, neither in public life nor in private. You can talk about the special prisons for Palestinians or the restricted free speech of journalists. But this of course asks for a bit more effort, you need to be informed about what is really going on. Besides the fact that sentences like the ones above are not based on historic facts, they evoke a – also often wanted – scandal and so they do not contribute to a discussion about the content itself but about ourselfes. Like this we lose our ability to talk about a political issue.
For many people this just means: Better not talk about it.
And there grows a bad feeling, a feeling of: we are the punished while other people and other nations also did bad things but they can talk freely about it and what can I do about it, I am just born here and did not do it myself/ I am just a not so intelligent, not political person… Like this the feeling of being restricted by the left wing’s politics grows.
All these feelings of being humiliated (as if today us Germans were the biggest victims of the war) just help the right-winged parts growing.
These difficulties in talking explain actually a lot of things in Germany: Discussions like “Isn’t it great that we finally can show around proudly again our flag now that we have the football world championships in our country?” (while I think: just do it but why discuss about it?) have their origin in this. In politics we missed to discuss about the multicultural situation that we have in Germany since a long time because of the fear that looking critically at different cultures could come out as racism.
It seems clear: What we really need is not a censorship that represses people but a society that is awake and sensible for the subtle tones of racism.
But let us be honest and realistic: How often do we see big parts of this society fail? How often do we see ourselves fail? How often does it happen that no one raises his voice when it should be there?
To me there are some good reasons for a censorship: It is a sign that there are borders of things that can be said, borders in the name of freedom. There is a clear possibility for juridical consequences for who might not acknowledge these borders. It is an official statement from our state towards foreign states and towards Israel (with which we have in common that this belongs to our history that marks us – in a bad and I always hope also in a good way).
And last but not least: Freedom is a weak good. Often we forget how to appreciate it and would feel its value more during a lack of freedom. As a defender of freedom often I feel in a weak position because I would avoid to use some of the tactics that uses the opposition. In situations in which maybe I have to be the (first) lonely one who has to rise the voice it feels good to me to know that there is a law behind me, to know that I live in a state in which the position towards holocaust and so also towards anti-Semitism and racism is clear, at least in what is written down. And I know: If there is one voice, there are probably more, but if already one starts hesitating…
If (every)one starts hesitating we come to situations that give the answer to this question about how it could happen what happened in Europe 70 years ago.
it. limonare – french kissing
it. sculettare – dt. arschwackeln – walking with shaking your ass … or let’s say hip
it. fare il piedino – dt. füßeln – flirting by touching your feet under the table
it. stuzzicare – dt. necken – to banter s.o.
it. via lattea – milkyway
There are three places where you can find good ideas
on the horse
in the bed
in the john
(Japanese saying)
This is what I was writing Wednesday evening:
“I am loosing my words, I am loosing my contact to reality, I do not know any more how to express my feelings. I have gone so far and now that I am nearly there for the first time in my life I would admit that it was hard sometimes and that I feel tired, so tired that I hardly find a way to motivate myself to go on. Sometimes I think I won’t make it any more to the end.
Today there was a day that made me loose all my energy, the little bit that I still had.”
Yesterday I decided that there is time for a change. I took my newly bought photo camera and went out on my metallic horse called bici. Staying inside all the time makes me sick and it is no wonder that you loose your brain there. Outside is the best place for finding new ideas. With my new weapon I have a good reason to hang out there on the hunt for good pictures… Today I am in here again but I hope to be able to continue this weekend also because I have to get familiar with my new friend photo camera.
greetings to all my friends
Last night in my dreams I could zoom into what I saw. My constant work with the video leaves its traces. I still remember that when I was doing my researches about perspective all of a sudden all the lines in Stuttgart were converging! The lines of the street were meeting in one point far away, I swear!
Last Friday I got my first job as photographer and filmmaker. Together with my friend A we were asked to film the end-of-the year ceremony of the Florence Academy of Art. I was really excited!
http://www.florenceacademyofart.com/
They gave me a huge photo camera, a Nikon DC40 with a 18 to 55mm lens. I have no experience with digital photography at all and it was the first time of my life I was holding such one in my hands. I got it in the morning of the same day and during lunch break I tried out if I was able to shoot with it. I got very stressed because all my pictures were out of focus. After 2 hours I finally found the auto-focus-button… Of course my schoolmates laughed about me. But even though that they knew it they did not come to the idea of showing it to me. I do not mind anyway because I always like to discover things on my own – only that it is a lot of effort and a lot of time!
The evening was a lot of fun though! Once the ceremony had started I was shooting a lot of pictures. The camera is quite heavy but it has the advantage that you have a viewfinder and a little screen on it – a good thing for me, that I am used to my non-digital Minolta SLR. At the moment when they were giving out the prices I started to panic: Every student stood up to come to the front to get his award. All this went that quickly that I hardly could take a picture of them. I followed the rule of all professional photographers that I know and I just clicked like a madman on the shutter to make the biggest amount of pictures. I got a “framerate” of 7 pictures per minute as I realized later, so you can imagine that I was really under high-speed.
I was hoping some good might come out of it like this.
Unfortunately that was not like this. I looked at the small screen and saw that they were all blurred.
You can enjoy them with some artistic joy of colors and a fantasy about impressions but … it is not really the kind of memory that we wanted to have.
Especially our friend M I wanted to capture in a good way – I felt so sorry!
I felt my sweat inside: Everyone saw me jumping around with a big photo in front of the public of 100s of people. What would I tell them if they wanted to see my pictures in the end???
a male hug…
After 30 minutes (!!!) I came to the idea to change to the flash automatic – and I was saved!
with the flash colors are less warm, even though: she remains a wonderful warm aspect… and it is not only me who thinks that!
Susan, my “employer” (you can see her above in the center) had given the camera with a certain adjustment to me, saying it would usually be the best like this. But the weather had changed and the ceremony took place inside now so that it was too dark to take pictures of all those movements without flash…
From then on it was a real fun.
After the official part I also moved between all the party people and I discovered that I really liked it. One of the women said that she enjoyed the way I had been taking pictures from all different directions during the ceremony, because I was moving nearly unnoticeable. I realized that it is helpful to be very moveable. As well as it good to use your charm and to have a calm hand. Also my character of being able to get in contact with people easily helped me a lot and also the fact that it was never a problem for me to stand alone in the corner being busy with observing. In the contrary: I love observing.
through the window..
looking..
At the same time I found it very interesting how people reacted to the camera. Some run away, some started to use it as a reason to talk with me, some wanted to see the pictures I had taken, some asked me for a picture, some jumped in front of the camera making some funny faces. So I got to know a lot of people from all over the world, mostly painters and sculptors who were students or teachers at the schools, and I had some very good conversations.
Enjoy my favorite shoots with me…
