What happened?

After some wifi difficulties, here we go again. So here is what happened the past 14 days.

1. Cultural shock!

We left NYC. (sniff)
Then we went to Connecticut, which is unbelievable green. We spent 3 days and nights over there visiting our good old friend Tommy at the "Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center"

This is Tommy’s backyard.

It was great seeing her again and it was a real nature adventure for city mice like us, especially because of the ticks living there:

 

spooky stories + dangerous signs like this = quite scary!

2. Museum of puppetry

We tried to explore the area and we were visiting the "Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry" at the University of Connecticut.
The museum of puppetry was somehow sweet, but not really recommendable, mainly because it is very small and they had only one main exhibition "Opera and Giant Puppets: Amy Trompetter’s Barber of Seville". Sadly they had no shows or workshops at the time we arrived there.

Anyway it was a nice visit. So if you are nearby the area - do it!
(If not, don't! The city of Mansfield, CT has not too much to offer, unless you are a student or a green-nature-freak.)

 

puppets in the museum

3. New Orleans – the big easy!

Now we are in the wonderful city of New Orleans! (yeah!!!)
We absolutely LOVE this city! It’s beautiful, friendly and there is music absolutly everywhere!

Yes. EVERYWHERE!

Totally recommendable for anybody in the world who loves music! And when we say music, we mean music played by fantastic musicians with real instruments. In the streets, in every bar, in random places - MUSIC!

You would not believe how good they play and sing.

4. The Swamps

Except of listening to about 1000 bands in the short time of 8 days, we were also going to the swamps which was very impressive and lots of fun.

Gators - the other white meat.

5. Art of New Orleans

We visited some very nice exhibitions, mainly of local artists. Some of them were fantastic!
For example Chris Roberts Antieau in the Antieau Gallery, a must see!
Unfortunately a print or a photo won't show the beauty of the details of the originals ...incomparable! You have to believe us.
More nice works are from Matt Rinard in the Gallery Rinard.
Another nice one is Danny DeLancey, who is for sure also part of the next point ...

picture of Danny DeLancey (stolen from his Facebook site)

Danny, if you don't want your pic here, tell us immediately!

6. very nice people

We met so many nice people. Everybody says hello. Everybody is interested and interesting. Everyone loves his city. Understandable.

(No photos. Too private. You have to imagine)

7. Mardi Gras World

Last but not least: we visited the Mardi Gras World. Yes, this was fun, too. Lots of very fine made figures. Really a lot. Countless number of "wow" was spoken.

working on it

work is done

No! We don't want to leave. But we will. (sniff again) On Monday. We are heading to LA.

Coney Islands

Today we visited Coney Islands.
Saturday, masses of people who wants to be entertained (like us).
Very, very colourful, paradise for children, sugar addicts and ocean freaks.
We went to see the sideshow (freakshow) which was quite entertaining and well hosted.

Coney Islands - cool! No wonder, it's Brooklyn!

Coney Islands

 

 

Sideshow

No Banksy in town

We were hunting for some Banksy´s in NYC, but it seems that every single one of them has been destroyed / removed / disappeared.
Coney Islands was our latest try.

We expected this:

We found that: They added a rolling door!!!

(We hope, they built the door, because the Banksy is now in their living room)

Worst event so far

Empire State Building.
Ufffffff, much to many people to enjoy the view or anything in this place. 

(Well, there was an unexpected "skyride", hosted by Kevin Bacon's voice.)
Yes, it is breathtaking, but only because of the massive sweat of all the people around there.
The view is great, but it´s not worth the very long way up there and all the waiting. 

The whole thing is kind of boooooring... and f***ing expensive btw. 

Our tip: if you have to see it, buy yourself a postcard.

Yes, it's true. We are bad tourists.

Wow, houses.

What we did NOT miss: The pigeoning

Yesterday we saw a great puppet play, called "the pigeoning", played by 7 players (all dressed in black) and one musician.

Up to 4 players were playing the puppet "Frank", who fought his own private war against the pigeons.
Very entertaining, very well played, lots of good ideas, quite funny and somehow melancholic.

And we met a lot of interesting puppet people.

Great play. We hope you will all get a chance to see it!

 the pigeoning

btw (Soccer 2)

we could hear the honking convoi because of the amazing game against Brasil even here in NYC.
It was very funny, when people came by the place we watched it in minute 30 and had a quick look how was the actual score of the game. (0 : 5)

(original photography of a pedestrian)

PS:

One woman (fan of Brasil) who realized that we were fans of Germany was begging "Stop it, please!" But we could not help her.

Yippie!!!

Soon we will meet a super interesting, unbelieveable cool puppetry designer, director and player, named Jessica Antonia Scott, who played and built incredible puppets like the following pictures will show:

Unfortunately we missed that theatre piece "La Divina Caricatura: A Bunraku Puppet Pop-Opera"

In addition to puppetry director and designer, she also was the lead puppeteer on Rose the Dog. 

Be aware that we will ask her a holy lot of questions about it! And we want to see Rose!!!

This piece was called "El Gato Con Botas". Useless to say, we missed it too. 
See more of her great stuff on her homepage.

Soccer

Soccer everywhere! (which we really appreciate)
Every single bar shows all the games. Last game (against France) we were watching in a very emotional French bistro. And we were not beaten up! Nice again!

And thats how it looks, when the french fans got emotional while loosing because of Mats Hummels head:

 

Welcome to New York

Even if the immigrant officers try their best to appear grumpy, the people of New York are definitely the nicest and most helpful we ever met.