Pietersen a gamble

After the resignation of Michael Vaughan as the captain of England cricket team the appointment of Kevin Pietersen in his place is a gamble.


There is little doubt that Pietersen is the best batsman in the side, but will he make a successful captain?

The three former England captains Vaughan, Hussein and Atherton have all been very sober and calm characters. You couldn't doubt their grit and determination, but, dare I say it, weren't they sometimes a little boring? A little too 'by the book', a little too... oh dear... 'English'.

Pietersen is anything but 'by the book'. Just look at his incredible stroke play. He has single handedly brought the term 'switch-hitting' to cricketing life.

He is flamboyant, but he is single-minded in his pursuit of success. Past occasions show that he plays his best under pressure and who knows, maybe the captaincy will take his game to an even higher level. As an Englishman I sincerely hope so.

Announcing the squad for the final test against South Africa tomorrow this is what Pietersen said:

"Sidey's struggling with a few niggles," said Pietersen. "We all saw he was down on pace last week, so he's not fit at the moment and we decided to give him a bit of a break to get away from things. But Steve is buzzing, properly buzzing. You can see that little smile on his face, and he'll be given the responsibility to take the new ball tomorrow."

It's upbeat, snappy and to the point. Quite a change from the droll captains of the past.

On the other hand, it could all go wrong. How well Pietersens famous 'ego' will be able to withstand all the responsibility is yet to be seen. My bet is that a honeymoon period will, sooner or later, come to a sudden end. But let's hope I'm wrong.

Obama speech in Berlin

Barack Obama called for nations to cooperate to increase freedom and peace in the world. A strong European Union would be good for the world and good for America.

We all share the burden of ‘global citizenship’ he said and the task ahead is more challenging than ever before. The advance of technology has made the world smaller, but also more dangerous.

Obama recalled the events of the Berlin Airlift 60 years ago. Only three years after the end of the Second World War, America was ready to provide a lifeline to its former enemy.

Ideas, not weapons were what, eventually defeated Communism. Obama argued that this achievement should bring hope and strength for the challenges ahead.

Obama said that a world without nuclear weapons is a major target. The superpowers of the Cold War came close too many times to destroying everything.

Using the metaphor of the Berlin Wall, he called for walls between Muslims, Christians, Jews and different races to be brought down.

He admitted war is objectionable, but said that the battle in Afghanistan must be fought on by US troops and German troops. German Chancellor Merkel will certainly have been listening closely to this part.

Obama avoided echoing JFK’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ and also his own ‘Yes we can!’ slogan. His delivery was sober and balanced.

Repeatedly addressing the ‘People of the world’ as well as the ‘People of Berlin’, Obama seems keen to take on the real power and responsibility of being a world leader.

“Thank you Berlin. God bless you.” He ended to spontaneous applause from the large crowd.

German Wikipedia in book form

Forget your laptop, forget your blackberry and smash up your i-phone, because soon you'll have all the information you need at the flick of a page. Well, if at least if you can read German and let's face it, who can't?

Full of composite words such as 'Zeitgeist' ('Zeit' = time, 'Geist' = spirit), it takes only half as much time to learn German as any other language. And on top of that, it's so logical, isn't it?

So make sure you pre-order your copy of Das Wikipedia which is due out in September. Factually checked and colourfully illustrated, its a snip at 20 Euros.

The free online lexikon will print 50,000 of the site's most visited subjects.

So we can expect poppy entries on Carla Bruni, Tokio Hotel and Playstation3. Time to flog those dusty Britannica's at a carboot methinks.

German news round-up

Germany was alive and kicking this weekend with several unusual headlines hitting the news.

Thousands celebrate German pop song festival in Hamburg
I thought that the only person that actually enjoyed German 'Schlager' lived a few doors down from me. 'Schlager' are folky German pop songs that are sung by mustachioed orange-tanned grinning Bavarians and have plenty of accordion in them. Actually, I think the songs are specially designed to be carried by a gentle breeze, propagating themselves like pollen.


I was astounded to discover that 300,000 fans celebrated this music in Hamburg on Saturday. And the organisers had expected half a million! Several lorries were converted into huge 'Schlager' floats which blasted the music out through the streets during an all-day procession.
Check out some images from the 5th Schlagermove, here, at Stern.

World's longest concert continues
The church organ in Halberstadt played the next - sixth - chord of John Cage's As Slow As Possible work to much rejoicing amongst locals. The performance began in the year 2000, so with one chord ringing out for more than a year on average, the tonal change must have been a breath of fresh air.

Hitler head torn off
Minutes after the opening of Madame Tussauds wax figure museum in Berlin on Saturday, an angry German visitor attacked the wax effigy of Adolf Hitler. He jumped over a rope supposed to separate the exhibit from the public. When another visitor tried to stop him, a melee ensued and the result was a headless Fuhrer. The man in his forties came from the leftist district of Kreuzberg police said after they had detained him. Museum officials swiftly removed the damaged waxwork.

Today, media reported that the museum is fixing the figure which will remain a part of the exhibit of politicians.

'Fidelio' by Beethoven

There must be something special about the Neue Oper in Frankfurt. 'Fidelio' is the third opera I have seen there and it easily matched the other two for sheer musical brilliance and modern theatrical style.

If you think opera today is about fat singers in period costume melodramatically prancing around cardboard cut-out sets then think again.

The Neue Oper is clearly at the cutting edge. Again the audience was treated to an ultra modern stage design. The entire back and side walls were an invigorating full yellow. Clever use of lighting either took you inside the prison or to the exercise yard.

Basically the piece is about a woman, Leonore, who rescues her lover from prison by pretending to be a man called Fidelio. Surprisingly nobody dies. This is an uplifting moving opera about heroism and justice.

Swedish-American soprano, Erika Sunnegardh, is simply outstanding as Fidelio/Leonore. She sang like a nightingale and her athletic figure was ideally suited to the demanding dual role.

The other stand-out performance was that of bass singer James Cresswell who played the prison master Rocco. As demanded by the music, his voice was deep and commanding, but at the same time he somehow managed to convey a sense of irony about any situation.

It is a credit to the performance that the two characters with the biggest parts were also the most enjoyable to watch and hear.

Danish film review: ‘Prague’ (2006)

A gripping dark drama, artistically shot and lined with black humour.

Christoffer (Mads Mikkelsen) travels to Prague with his wife Maja (Stine Stengade) to organise the shipment of his dead father back to Denmark. He is unemotional about the whole thing and only expects to fulfil the practicalities. It is 25 years since his father ran away from Denmark leaving him and his mother behind.

At the hospital, Christoffer is unable to wave a fly off of his dead father’s face. He just stands and stares – that is the extent of his stunted feeling. The doctor drolly tells him ‘Life is hard. And you cannot have it all.’ A mantra repeated by the completely bald elderly lawyer played by Czech actor Bořivoj Navrátil.

Whilst the coffin with his father is mistakenly sent to Singapore, events in Prague rapidly develop. Christoffer and Maja’s marriage begins to fall apart. Maja has been seeing a man altogether more lively and tender than the detatched Christoffer. Meanwhile, a surprising fact of his father’s history emerges.

Mikkelsen plays Christoffer very well – lonely, sad, even nihilistic, his placid pale face rarely changes expression. But Stengade really wins your heart as the long-suffering wife who can’t stand her moody self-absorbed husband any longer.

Danish cinema does dark abstract movies well and black humour is its forte. In any Danish film I always find myself looking out for features of the influential Dogme 95 school of cinema. ‘Prague’ does not disappoint. It has all this and more. Stark realism is its most powerful attribute.

Book review: 'Snow' by Orhan Pamuk

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
First published in Turkish, 2002
English translation by Maureen Freely, 2004
436 pages, £5.99 on amazon.co.uk

‘Snow’ is a beautifully written and very human novel. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores religion, politics and art with a set of passionate characters, but the story is mainly about one man’s search for love and happiness.

That man is called Ka. He is a poet who, after years of political exile in Germany, returns to Turkey. He travels to Kars, posing as a journalist sent to investigate the suicides of the so-called ‘headscarf girls’.

Headscarves were banned at the local college, and people believe this is why several ardent Muslim girls committed suicide. But Ka talks to the locals and finds that other reasons probably led the girls to do it, such as the brutality of their fathers.

Thick snow falls and all the transport routes to the remote town are cut off. As the town is hit by a military coup, Ka falls madly in love with Ipek, daughter of the 'enlightened' hotel owner, Turgut Bey.

Interesting characters and wry humour illuminate this novel. For example, Serdar Bey, the editor of the local newspaper, publishes the next day’s news before it happens. And the Islamic extremist Blue is a complex character who stands out for both his brutal conviction and his gentlemanly wiles with women.

Poems come to Ka as if by divine inspiration, and we see him furiously penning them in a public toilet or at the kitchen table. Pamuk alternately pokes fun at artistic pretentiousness and celebrates the electric rush of pure creativity.

Pamuk often digresses from the main plot but this only makes the novel richer. Some books you can’t put down, but I often put this book down just to savour what I had read and to avoid reaching the end too soon.

Kars and its people finally make Ka realise what he wants from life. But at the same time he does not want to shake off the solitude and depression that he knows so well. Will Ka leave his lonely poet’s world for love? Or will raw emotion overtake him?