The climate summit Cop15 is here and Copenhagen is crowded with people from all over the world + a not so modest number of police officers from the provinces. Next week we will welcome more than 60 world leaders and today I saw Desmond Tutu do a little dance for climate change or…the stopping of said change I guess.

Yesterday my family and I and between 50.000 and 100.000 others went to demonstrate showing the leaders that we want them to make a legally binding agreement about cutting CO2 emissions. Awww, come on, I know you can do it ya’all world leaders.

Here are some impressions from a wonderful manifestation of international and popular consensus in cold and clear Copenhagen.

/anna

Welcome to my Sunday breakfast:

Pineapple, apple juice, tea, and rice pudding with cinnamon and butter, the latter being a Christmas favourite among Danes. In the background you see the advent gift I got from my mother – one for each Sunday in December, lucky me. This contained a beautiful star to hang in my window.

I got the wonderful little teapot for my birthday a couple of years ago and it is an important part of my collection of tiny teapots. It is made by Royal Copenhagen and the line is Blue Fluted Mega. They have made blue fluted porcelain for centuries and some years ago a young design student came up with the idea to enlarge the pattern. I think that may have just made her and the company very rich. Blue Fluted Mega has been one of the must-haves of the younger generation of big city creative class people in the last years. I only have the teapot. And it suits me.

/anna

I’m sure you know how it is when searching the internet and one idea takes the next and all of a sudden you have moved from browsing for Christmas presents to researching about some German hypnotiser who lived in the 18th Century. Yes that just happened to me and yesterday this was my stream of conscience and surfing: I stumbled upon an old talk show programme on TV with the Danish actress Lily Broberg in which she sang Milord and then I had to check out who wrote that which lead me to Edith Piaf which lead me to watch the film La vie en rose that my sister lent me months ago and in that is a very touching scene where Piaf meets Marlene Dietrich and is completely starstruck.

I don’t know why, but for me that was the highlight of the whole film (which is very good by the way). And of course I had to check out Marlene Dietrich who lulled me to sleep singing Sag mir wo die Blumen sind. And then today when I opened my laptop there she was still and I continued watching some videos and then this came up: a wonderful get together of two of the coolest actors there ever was – la Dietrich and Orson Welles. And when I grow up I want an English bulldog called Orson. Here you are – Orson as a magician and Marlene as mesmerising as ever (yes there he was again the German hypnotiser)

And then I had to check out if those two had done other stuff together and of course they had:

It’s been almost eleven years since I saw Touch of Evil in a Roman cinema on the outskirts of Trastevere so maybe it’s time to watch it again – I had, after all, forgotten that Dietrich was in it… And this concludes the tour.

/anna

I have always enjoyed crowd watching, especially in museums. There are so many rules of behavior in a museum and when the museum is crowded these rules collide with a general desire to scream, toss someone out the window, push the others away. With all those people around you can’t stand in awe in front of the canonized work of art, admire it at length, bend to take a closer look, discuss it with your companions. And sometimes the crowds at the Louvre, National Gallery or Prado are so massive that you just resign and walk past with a distant look towards the Mona Lisa or Las Meninas. And sometimes that resignation feels great because you managed to be all nonchalant about it.

Well. This week’s photo is from the newly reopened Neues Museum in Berlin where the famous portrait of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti has now taken up her permanent residence. As any celebrity art work she has her very own setting – a circular room with dimmed lights and a guard shouting at people who get too near.

I think this picture has all the elements of art worshipping. People gazing admiringly and two people taking pictures (me included) even though you could buy a much better postcard version in the bookshop – you just need to document your presence.

And by the way – as with all of those canonized works it does matter to see Nefertiti in the flesh.  I don’t agree with those who say they are always disappointed at the sight of some famous painting or sculpture. I never was. Not even with the Mona Lisa. My nonchalance will never go that far and I think it has less to do with worshipping than with actually beholding the delicate details that make up a masterpiece. Details, shadings and gradings that a reproduction will never catch, and even more so with sculpture where you will need to experience the form in space in order to understand it. So that’s why I keep going to museums.

/anna

Some days ago I stumbled upon some new films with Simon’s cat. Gotta love them – and as a cat owner it is even funnier. ’cause it’s true. The psychology of a cat, the sounds, the movements. To the point.

And no, it’s not unrealistic that some one could sleep through that. I do it all the time. Since Puss does stuff like this all the time.

For more films and images go here.

/anna

Today November showed itself from the bleakest, wettest, and darkest side but yesterday was a beautiful and sunny day that ended in the most Turneresque dusk with a Cheshire cat moon above and all the quietude you could dream of. I saw it with my mum and aunt from the grounds around the small manor house of Christinehof in Sweden, at one of the lakes where they have built a wonderfully winded bridge.

We didn’t know this paradise when my parents bought the Swedish house but we soon discovered it -and it’s all just a short walk from our place. Great with a bit of splendid nature every now and then, especially when it just takes a quick decision and a pair of walking shoes.

/anna

I just thought this might be a good way to start the day…

I love the other guys’ enthusiasm!

/anna

The last couple of days I have been drinking a lot of tea in the great company of a good friend living in Potsdam outside Berlin. That’s where Frederick the Great’s castle Sanssouci is located and the gardens are wonderful for a walk not least because of the quirky houses and statues you keep stumbling upon – it’s like a very old theme park. The Chinese house for example… Very rococo, and what’s not to love when it comes to rococo?

Turns out November can be alright as long as you remember doing nice things. All the time.

/anna

This week’s photo is from Madrid. Not that I went but my brother did and as on most of his travels he took his walrus Valle. Here he is contemplating the view from the hotel.

Valle has been to many places and this photo reminds me of how Amelie’s dad’s garden gnome went to all those exotic places as well.

I hope Valle will get to go to Russia also. Then maybe I’ll come too. Instead this coming week it’s Berlin for me visiting two great friends, one of whom just gave birth to a daughter. Looking forward to seeing them all and drinking hot chocolate in obscene amounts while listening to baroque music.

/anna

After having just given a paper at a conference I enjoy the freedom of having my evenings off. I keep thinking I should be doing something and then I realise that, no, I don’t have to do anything but watch House M.D. and episode after episode of it. And then I did a little YouTube search on Hugh Laurie and it all came together… here is what I found and mind you this is exactly the way people speak at conferences – at least at the humanities kind of conferences. You would be utterly amazed. This is not a sketch. This is truth.

And please re-watch. I know it gets better every time I watch it. By now all I have to do is having it as background noise while doing the dishes and it’s a party.

/anna