Back at home — for a couple of days. Time to look around and see what’s going on. This is new…. surely a portrait of Humph the Hebden Heron or one of his homies. But diminished by the red signage, so important they stuck it on twice…
Some parts of the old Berlin Wall remain in the city. Probably they could have been demolished back in 1990 but the authorities realised — correctly — that they were valuable as memorials and/or tourist attractions. Or, as in the case of the East Side Gallery, which runs beside the Spree for about a kilometer near the Ostbahnhof, an art installation; this long line of concrete has been decorated by a range of murals, including this one of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, who seems to disdain the busker beside him, playing as he is on a load of old water pipes, or something.
The bees know what we’re doing… and they’re very unhappy.
Or maybe it’s a mural on the side of the New Union. Whatever…
Another campus to add to the list — Purdue University in Indiana, the people who were good enough to invite me to the USA in the first place on this trip. This place is especially known for its programmes in aviation and spaceflight — Neil Armstrong studied here (which is a cool alumnus to have) — and engineering, hence the nickname of its football team, the Boilermakers. This mural in the campus’s new learning center, open only a week, reflects this. It was a day where I was too busy to particularly get around to taking many photos, so this was a rush job I know, but there’s one thing I do like about it, which is the apparent anachronism of the guy standing on the left of the big picture: is that a cellphone in his pocket? Sure looks like one. (Actually it’s a slide rule, apparently.)
So here we are in this blog’s 26th featured country, the Czech Republic, for a few days. I am here to attend the same conference that got me to Estonia last year and Croatia the year before that. There will be more interesting regions of it to depict between now and Thursday I am sure, but once I arrived at the airport this afternoon I just trundled through suburbia until I got to my hotel then went out with a couple of colleagues and had dinner; so this suburban bus stop is all you get for now. I do like the twenty-feet-high woman on the advertising mural, however. I wonder if I can get one just like her on my house.
How awesome is this. I want to go and get my next tattoo at this place simply because of this mural. Which, I suppose, is the point, but it doesn’t make it any less impressive.
Although feeling sometimes like I do rather too much of this flying lark I do like looking at the departure boards in airports and thinking one day, I’ll just turn up and go somewhere random. I like the odd juxtaposition of destinations on this mural. Bangkok and Orkney in the same context – that won’t happen too often. Home tonight, though not until after midnight.
