day 46: architectural marvels
architectural marvels © Verena Fischer 2011
Originally we were thinking of going to the Pergamon museum yesterday. However, it didn’t seem as if the sudden warm weather was agreeing very well with me, so we just walked around Unter den Linden for a bit and then returned home.
In front of one of the buildings of the Humboldt University that is just across from the Staatsoper there is a little used book market very much like the one in front of the Mensa at the Düsseldorf university. When I still studied there I used to dread this used book market, because I always ended up spending way more money on books than I could actually spare. It’s not surprising then that Ezequiel and me both ended up buying books. However, he can regard himself lucky that he cannot speak the language, or else he would have bought many more books than he did. I tried to limit myself and only had a brief look at the GDR Science Fiction section. I hoped to find a nice old GDR edition of some soviet SciFi where I wouldn’t mind the translation into German. And indeed, I was lucky: I found Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem who is one of my favourite Science Fiction writers.
Everyone probably knows Solaris which is pretty amazing, although in my opinion it is not even his best book! Among the ones I read The Invincible is quite likely the most impressive:
Contact is lost to a starship when investigating a planet which at first sight seems like a pretty barren lifeless rock. They send another ship, i.e. The Invincible, to see what’s going on and they only encounter a very strange form of mechanical life that reminds of insects. By themselves they are not much of a threat, but they can self-organise into big swarms that show complex and dangerous behaviours. In the end the fight against them has to be given up. I remember enjoying it immensely!
I’ve also discovered with yesterday’s picture that if you zoom in on the TV tower here in Berlin you can see a quite cool example of futuristic soviet architecture. From down below it already looks impressive enough, but with this magnification it looks just great! A perfect picture to go with my new book.
experiments in experience 