Perpignan, the Katalonin This afternoon, we will face Perpignan, the once proud capital of northern Catalonia. Catalonia is one of several border areas, whose English part of Independence and the French part is fighting for attention from the rest of the country. The Treasurer maintains the English separatism - as well as all other separatism - for nothing other than welfare chauvinism. They want to make the poorer regions of the country simply nothing like the Italians and the Flemish North, he snorts it off and angry by his socialist nostrils. I do not exclusively the least to give the English effort to dress up in their materialistic goals with local folklore: folk dances, local delicacies, regional languages, of which no one knows either where they come from or which are hardly better than dialects, and planting bombs. The French side of these regions is usually the poor-houses of the country and has no interest in getting to dance in freedom or even to bomb. She sets her folklore in the summer months in the hope of tourists from other parts of France a little more money to lure out of his pocket. The French financial compensation is well known, because all the money - like all fresh fish and all trains - to send for, or at least Paris. Returns to the regions with only business acumen or obtain library.
On the way to the train we got on the dusty village square, where Sunday market held in a ball. It will show local people an opportunity to celebrate together with the tourists their Katalanität. Appears puzzling me is why is playing up to the Danube waltz. The Treasury said the fact that the Habsburgs had once ruled in Catalonia. He does not care about my objection that was well ahead of Johann Strauss' time, and calls me instead on without further ado as incidental to the dance. Just as if he's not a spell would break, the capacity for years on our trips: In Yalta we missed it on the Black Sea to dance to the sounds of a spa orchestra. In Chile, we could not believe it to us, not at the National Cueca steps to imitate the locals. At a milonga in Buenos Aires we came to no more than a pitiful introductory lesson in a Berlin gay dance school before too amateurish to us to mingle with the tango professionals and even the annual summer festival of Paris Plage, we missed it, on the banks of the Seine amidst a cheerful lot of all ages rock 'n roll to dance. But here on the French Mediterranean coast, we turn faster and smarter than all the local senior citizens. Then we get close, but exhilarated by our courage by train to Perpignan.
Bahnhofstrasse Perpignan is a true flagship for the city. Here kebab seller deliver fierce price wars and toothless beggar us bend their deep brown arms, while they mumble something about a €. A Roma mother chats with a group of scowling men and thereby pushes a baby carriage back and forth, in which a dirty diaper clad only with four-year-old is sitting and sucking on her pacifier.
Bahnhofsviertel are attractive seltend we tell ourselves and make us hurry on his way to the tourist office, which equips us with abundant information on the ongoing photojournalism exhibition, which attracts professionals from around the world. The signs, with their accreditation around her neck and her carefully selected wardrobe a remarkable contrast to the impoverished population of the city.
48 hours Neukölln is not object. This is called the event to venture in which retired 68 teachers from Charlottenburg and federal officials, middle-aged in the Prenzlauer Berg once a year in the neighborhood, the Berlin of more than 160 nations to have their homeland, as the district mayor never tires of stressing. The retired and active officers still buried her face deep in the program to track bizarre modern art in local pubs, on street corners and in vacant former post offices, the local artists have created without they would have succeeded, to convey a sense of their neighbors. Sexy dressed girl with the face veil birdsong installations on the roadside with some bewilderment. The flash mob-style performances by clothed only with Lidl bags artists get more head shaking out with the locals. They prefer it to scare art lovers from other parts of the city by day release mimic the fun: Put
"Ey Alter manner must now. Table must be back in jail for six. "
The contrasts of Perpignan mock this idyll.
Together with scattered signs accreditation journalists, we lose ourselves the Quartier St. Jacques, the former Jewish ghetto, which today share the Roma with North Africans. If what is going on here, should be a sight to scare photojournalists, then the Roma from Perpignan the Büchner Prize deserve. Their homes are jewels from the 18th Century cast-iron balconies. Very picturesque for the outside observer, but the last renovation was clearly in front of the last world war. A girl in elementary school is only underpants and clothed with pacifier in his mouth on the street around while the adults sit on chairs and benches along the road and look indifferent to the scenery. The pacifier seems be the inevitable accessory to her all naked children under ten. Meanwhile, tens of years to do with souped-up mopeds pedestrian hunting. I wonder if they have the conservative of the mayor, who is accused of having bought the votes of the Roma with refrigerators and motorbikes, while I helplessly try to bring the map with the street scene in line. A hopeless task: Although all streets two names, one French and Catalan, but none of which agrees with those on the map. When the confusion is perfect, jumps a five year old boy who has lost his milk teeth at an early stage, from behind a car that holds us against a cigarette and asked for a light. Behind him is true a deep dark stately Roma with a booming belly laugh. The Treasurer spoke of circles, an increasing close to us and asked to leave the district. On the way we pass a social housing, in whose court the knee-deep piles of garbage. Outside the church stands a policeman on the bench against smoke-year-olds.
Thanks to the Quartier St. Jacques Vernachläsigung enough money for a lush landscaping and meticulous renovation of the monastery, where the main exhibition is taking place. Outside the building waiting for a bunch of people to be admitted: Young Hungry art equipped with the sunglasses of the season, the local bourgeoisie - he in a suit and tie, she in a silk dress - and sometimes disheveled, sometimes eccentric photojournalist. A white-haired Mitsechziger in a gray suit and straw hat with calls loud complaints about the vagaries of journalists in his mobile phone, which could not be satisfied. We agree that after our experiences of St. Jacques no longer have the nerve to push us in the midst of such amounts of photos of homeless families and police operations in New York's hottest neighborhoods over.
On the way to the cathedral then we still get into an exhibition, ten years Afghanistan documented. Not that the pictures were not known: Children at play have this fall in the ruins of Kabul, sinister warlords in military vehicles, which she knows who is where, and Burkafrauen on the way too heavy to be identified errands in desolate valleys, where forty years ago, fruit growing , supplied with the Afghanistan Central Asia. At the moment I find it even harder than usual to believe that the orchards of the Pashtun flourish once again, the buildings of Kabul resist and the women learn outside of the capital alphabet. I also have trouble imagining the future Perpignan for a revival of industry and trade, the French and English rulers once again to bring themselves to fight for supremacy in the city.
Having been in a church stopped to absolute silence and turned away in a museum with regard to the renovations, decide to leave us exhausted, we settled in a cafe. This time, the helmet-less year-olds drive their souped-up mopeds by the mayor as fast as they can in the opposite direction one-way street. Here, even the little girls pants. A particularly beautiful nine year old has to play in the street even dressed as a gypsy princess. Or they want to be more of an oriental belly dancer who beguile a caliph before sleep do? Her eyeliner is so artfully as he swung me would succeed even after twenty years of practice before. The dark Samthaare are elaborately decorated with highly refined put clips from counterfeit silver. Lush fashion jewelry adorns her cleavage, even if among them recognize no curvature. Your belly-free two-part consists mainly of soft black fringe, which plays with her friend happy. The two hanging around the bollards on the roadside, giggling together with a little girl in jeans dress that looks like the only child, and play around with a Wasserpunpe.
from across the street an older, pale girl comes with a kitten started on the arm. A seven-year-old with gelled hair expertly behind her with the associated transport basket, what it does not stop, to behave like the king of street children. After all children have gathered around the cat fall to the barking dogs a bum calf large to the small force that could not quite decide between jubilation and fear screams. The Penner has obvious effort to get the situation under control. Meanwhile
has a 1.90 meter wide German settled with her disheveled companions at the next table. Your sunglasses holding back unnecessarily the crew cut, while she studied with a wide-brimmed, red designer glasses the menu. She is a photojournalist for star or mirror, is the treasure. The disheveled crew is the real front pig is that crawls in the war zones of the earth through muddy minefields, in an attempt to win this year's Photo Journalist Award. Meanwhile, the blonde sitting in a warm, editorial house in Hamburg on the computer and analyzed the images.
While the treasure to reinvent our table mates suitable life story, the girl screams in jeans dress for his mum, because it wants to make his pram under the water pump clean. On the stage a very young, thin woman with eczema appears on the pale cheeks, of drug addiction is literally written in the face. Presumably it has its withdrawal have long behind him, says the treasure, otherwise they could not take care of so attentive to her child. When the little one with the pram is satisfied, her mother does with a black friend on the way, looks around and healthy. He is doing well determined. Meanwhile
try all children of the neighborhood to come screaming on the photo is a photo journalist with floppy hat and professional equipment, which will isolate not obviously make use of the gypsy princess and her friend wants. As much as me, the look of the street children taken aback, like so much to me that they run on the street and around . Play They are all lean and can naturally run both forwards and backwards, what to teach our completely equipped with computers and game consoles middle-class children the same age now separately. The other day in Lower Saxony went through the press, that suffered from a slightly hotter summer several of overweight children in a primary school class at the school outing in the Bird Park Walsrode faint. That would not happen these rascals here.
The 1.90-woman from Hamburg an excited discussion begins with the waiter, who has since brought her court. Apparently she gets in Eppendorf only sushi and fish fillet served: It does not please her that her Fish has a head. The waiter responded as calmly as pragmatic and decapitates the fish abruptly with its cutlery, which he then re-draped neatly on her napkin.
"Should I take him?" He asks, pointing carelessly with his head on the fish.
When she gave him made it clear that they are very ask, he takes the fish head with his hand from her plate and carried it off. The journalist is at this happy turn of the drama to show that it is indeed ete-Petete, but not too refined for the rustic methods of the waiter. Main cause of the fish head is gone. They are well arrivals from Hamburg, she must.
We make the long journey to the station. bring to my new attempts, streetscape and road map in line, a friendly Perpignaiserin reacts with the fact that she descends from her bike, and go along. When she turns to the next street corner to the left, can the treasure fall, his nose is deep in the completely useless map and says stubbornly, the young woman led us on a detour. She tries to convince the objection that they navigate through this city for 30 years. I do have hands full with making it clear that you not respond to the kindness of local people. Finally, he trots beat us, albeit reluctantly behind. Magali us that they have in Perpignan, the sun, the sea and the mountains, but no work. Most recently she worked as a clerk in the supermarket, now she is unemployed. It regrets that we can not stay longer, because the program of the photojournalism exhibition is really too good to miss it just like that. She herself is on the way to an evening event. The Gypsies, she says, living for centuries in the city but its history is very sad. They had never been integrated into modern life and dying in droves from AIDS or from diseases that exist in a rich society should give any more. To Bahnhofstrasse she says goodbye to us, not without check with Monsieur, if she is now his confidence could be safe. She takes us from the promise to come to the next photo exhibition in the spring or the Catalan folk days.
At the station itself has a colorful crowd gathers, including journalists, experts in the gray business suit and a straw hat and a orangegewandeter pilgrim, probably on the way to Pushkar, the Holy See has run in Rajasthan. In the station bar, they deny the treasure is the sausage with fries, which is posted on the big screen. He is outraged, claiming that such a thing could never happen in Germany.
"Ah yes, the map" calls the waiter and rowing with the arms, probably in response to our long wait for several times in sign language put forward its desire for the bill.
"No," the treasurer replied tartly, "do it now is too late. We asked a long and often enough it ". Then he goes, leaving no tip. A little German flair we must also spread, even when we realized that we in our country people do not come close. At home in the seaside resort
is still playing at midnight, a Catalan rousing big band modes, and the seniors are not ready to let go of the artists. The addition follows the next. Some especially fiery folklorists keep up with arms extended one or more dance partner's hand and touch first with the left toe in front of the right foot, then right before the left toe. I wonder why Spaniards do make a fuss about their regionalism. For my eyes, looks and sounds like the Sevillanas. This is the dance they dance to the impoverished Andalusia, the region, from the English Catalans want so badly to say go.
