November 2003
At last a long quiet Sunday sleep in, like really looong - up at 3pm! Coffee, cycle downtown to read The Guardian from Saturday and meet a girl who says she wants English lessons. 6pm: go to school to prepare lessons - a long session - finally stop at 3am to cycle home. In bed at 3:30. Up again at 6am, another coffee and ride back to school, stash my bike behind Cafe Barcelona (with the only good coffee in Germany! where it should be safe for the next few days. Pick up a baguette and cross a small park to school for more coffee and a class with Bosch engineers. Eat half the baguette and dash over to the darkroom: 15 minutes to make a print and have someone scan and email it to Bob. Back to school to grab my bag (forgetting the rest of my roll) and hurry to the train station: 5 hours across Germany to Dortmund. On the way I read half of Hemingway´s ode to Paris, "A Moveable Feast", saving the rest for the way back, and try to kip for half an hour, while a misty grey landscape passes almost silently at 200kph and grey suited businessmen tap away at their laptops across the aisle. A short walk through this humourless city to find Henk, a photography student I´ll stay with most of the next 4 weeks while teaching English for 9 hours a day, and we wander through the empty Monday night streets to the Sisikingkong to eat and drink and talk about why we photograph...as usual!
Teach all day Tuesday. Have dinner with a mate and his girlfriend. Walk back to another empty bar, the "C U". It´s midnight, with dark walls and a good red wine - as I prefer it when I want to write.
And that was it: the last 48 or so hours which could have been almost anytime in the last 5.5 years that I´ve been here...and 5 years of postcards that will be the next exhibition early next year.
By the time you read this we´ll all be close to Christmas and celebrating it, and the All Black´s victory of course!!!
I, and my darling daughter Amy, wish you all the best.
Fröhliche Weihnachten,
Dean