Athlete's Foot

Remind me to tell you the story one time of a woman who, after walking three days in tights and leather boots, ventured into a boutique selling cremes and the like to buy athlete's foot medication, quietly repeating the request to the assistant, who didn't understand, and who began calling passers-by in the store to translate to German, where people begin offering their guesses - "athlete's foot? Das ist smutisch, nein?"). Er, no. And perhaps then the woman's face got redder and redder as more and more Berliners, being the helpful type, gathered round to help. And the word "fungus" had to be pronounced again and again, until she was saved by a kindly German man who had lived in New York, who explained that there was no German word for it, and directed her to an apothecary, where she really should have thought of going in the first place.

And then remind me to tell you how that woman continued on bravely, softly repeating the German word for "rash" to herself, so as not to forget when she reached the pharmacy. And then the relief of explaining again to the pharmicist, saying how common this particular rash was; she was sure, for example, that Germans got it too when their feet got sweaty in gyms in the winter. How the pharmacist had looked nervous but nodded seriously, and returned with a tube of vaginal itching creme. How a bilingual German/Californian interrupted at that point to translate the real word. How everyone listening in the line looked on curiously, wondering perhaps for the first time whether Germans often suffered from vaginal itching when their feet got sweaty from gyms in wintertime.

Remind me to tell you about it some time.

In other news, I just watched Mammoth by Lukas Moodyson (loved it; it got terrible reviews), Bluebeard (quite liked it, it reminded me of The Village, which I loved and most people hated as well) and a seminar from South African filmmakers about intra-African xenophobia, which was very good.

Last night I saw some great short films from Mexico, Denmark etc. At 1am I then took the wrong nightbus home and froze my ass off somewhere way out in East Berlin until I walked through the hostel at 3am.

Tomorrow I am meeting up with a production designer to talk through some projects.

Tonight I am going to the big British Council party for all their film delegates.

Today I saw a photo of my girlfriend making fake turtle tracks that made me smile more than anything in a very long time. Cool!

xxx Kathleen