Quite recently but not quite yesterday....
At last a chance to watch Benicio del Toro in Che Parts 1 and 2. Watching the winner of the Cannes 2008 Best Actor award as Ernesto "Che" Guevara commonly known as El Che or simply Che, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution was fascinating. Particularly as the excellent weekend FT is keeping a watchful eye on Raul Castro who has repeatedly stated that the very survival of the Cuban revolution, which provides free health care, education, and subsidised housing for all its citizens, depends on economic reform. But foreign observers wonder whether they are witnessing a rerun of "perestroika", the experiment in restructuring launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which was designed to preserve the communist system, but ultimately led to its downfall.
Watching Che was certainly a more exciting offering from the director Steven Soderbergh, compared to his more recent and painfully dull The Girlfriend Experience, which was seen one Sunday with friends after a delicious lunch at fave restaurant Bob Bob Ricard. Watching Che one's thoughts couldn't help but wander to the wonderful Citizen Smith starring Robert Lindsay (must remember to book Onassis theatre tickets) as "Wolfie" Smith, a young Communist "urban guerrilla" living in Tooting, South London, whose sole purpose in life is to attempt to emulate his hero Che Guevara, which was one of my favourite series when growing up in the late 70's. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are "Power to the People" and "Freedom for Tooting". In reality, he is an unemployed dreamer and petty criminal whose plans fall through because of laziness and disorganisation.
Leaving the balmy climes of Cuba for a moment, to the ball biting temperatures of Berlin. The trip to celebrate a friends birthday started rather badly. The poor birthday girl had to wear the same outfit for 24 hours. The feeling in the pit of your stomach, when the last piece of luggage - the golf club with the silver tinsel - isn't yours. When the dodgy hoards have dragged their wears from the carousel, making sure that they hit everyone like dominoes in their wake, as they try to drag King Kong's size suitcase across your foot. The moron at the Easyjet Gatwick counter decided that it wasn't a good idea to put birthday girl's luggage (including her new Chanel shoes) on the flight tonight and the perfectly stony faced Stasi information desk confirmed this - it-will-arrive-tomorrow. Am absolutely sure he was an extra in one of my favourite film 'The Lives of Others'.
The cold air on the way to the taxi rank was met with, 'I didn't want to come to fucking Berlin anyway', as the rest of the group proudly carried and wheeled their Mulberry luggage towards the waiting Turkish taxi driver. Once in Berlin however, we found after less than 24 hours that we DID want to be in fucking Berlin and a different history of revolution and intrigue following on from Che, Hitler and everyone else who thought that they could have a go.
A week here would be too short, with amazing bars (Newton Bar) and restaurants (Remake and Grill Royal to name but a few), club (well not into those anymore - we went to 40 Seconds and was about how long we stayed), culture coming out of our ears, a better selection of boots at Gucci on the Friedrichstraße than in London and the most comfortable beds in the world at the new Soho House Berlin. Germany had certainly come a long way from the school exchange when I survived on pumpernickel and lager tainted breath snogs from the army chap met on the Harwich to Hamburg ferry.
As though spending 69 days underground wasn't enought, Edison Pena, one of the Chilean miners, completed the New York City marathon in 5 hours and 40 minutes with no previous training. Pena, known as “the runner” because he ran around in the confines of the miners’ underground shelter, was invited by organisers to watch the iconic marathon. However, simply watching as a special guest was not enough for Pena; he wanted to compete. What drives a person to push themselves to the limit? How can we motivate the long term unemployed to take pride in their lives again? Apparently Diane Abbott has the answers, but I'm not so sure. Do we need another July 26 revolution to move people emotionally and physically?
Whilst we ponder on the philosophical nature of these questions, we can only put down George Bush and Tony Blair's tomes to await the far more humanly interesting tale of the Chilean miners, their survival, their families and their extra marital affairs.
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