A short visit with Monika and Claudia to catch up on Claudia becoming a mother — I remember when she was just a little girl a handful of years ago!
Online problems: it is not precisely clear what is the main obstacle in the way of Germans getting egalitarian access to the Internet. But clearly it is related to the Deutsche Telekom strangle-hold monopoly. Today I spent the afternoon with Udo Noll, one of the partners at Digital Online Media over at their garage/headquarters. He kindly set me up with an account to use while I am in Köln and trouble-shot my modem connect for smooth sailing onto the Net. I never got a chance to check my mail though, thinking I could do it from P.& K.’s house this evening — turns out that the Deutsche Telekom folks screwed me again with the plug configuration at the house — one needs a special plug and some rewiring done by DT personnel — absurd! I’ll go back to Digital Online Media tomorrow morning to do it from their offices. Udo showed me some of the works by artists who are online via Digital Online Media like Otto Schweins and Matthias Groebel. As it was the Easter weekend, I wandered to the real Dom cathedral in central Köln, absorbing some small fragments of spiritual energy and getting a bit nostalgic recalling the many evenings I spent in the past eight years here with friends and my former wife. Many romantic farewells were made on the platform of the Hauptbahnhof, the most busy rail station in Europe with trains coming and going from as far away as Moscow. Walking across the rail/pedestrian bridge from Köln to Köln-Deutz is memorable with the trains slowly rumbling by every few seconds and the Rhine far below flowing implacable towards Amsterdam. It is more chilly today than yesterday, perhaps only in the 50’s F, but spring is definitely happening all around. It is about time. This evening Peter and Kersten got home late with Jonas wired, he bounced around the flat for some time before succumbing to sleep. We sat in the kitchen and talked about life and how one should seek to become more SLOW.