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Sticks and stones will break my bones,
but clubs and balls can't ... oops, watch out ... &@%#!

The three clubs hanging on my wall (most of the time) are three golden Custom European Dubé clubs that I bought about fifteen years ago at the Jonglerie, a juggling shop that had then just opened.  Werner, its owner, taught me and another aspiring artist how to juggle for DM 5,-/hour; that was cheap even back then, and Werner was a good teacher (and an amazing juggler), even if I wasn't a very good pupil.

I used to visit the Statthaus Böcklerpark (a kind of youth club in Berlin, Kreuzberg) on Tuesday nights; all kinds of jugglers went there, professionals who earned their living on the streets as well as kids like me who were just getting started.  There were people practicing unicycles, clubs, balls, rings, devilsticks; and some artists that didn't use anything at all and just worked on their saltos and handstands.

Music to juggle by

By now, I've stopped juggling for a few years and have started again; I've bought a new set of lightweight clubs (Henry's dolphin) to go easy on my wrists, and six glow­in­the­dark stageballs that I dearly love, although they don't quite all weigh the same and are a little too large for me.

The Jonglerie still florishes; they've recently opened a second shop close to the tourist center of Berlin.  Both shops have turned halfway into gift shops; with baloons and feathers and bells that are supposed to jangle in tune with your astrological sign.  The tourists get on my nerves, but the juggling half is still competent and friendly.

The ceiling above my bed

Drawing of a ceiling with black smudges where clubs have bumped against it. Some of the smudges are labelled with spin types---triple, quadruple, single backwards,---but most of them are simply labelled `music got to the good part'.

Juggling on the World-Wide Web

The undisputed pinnacle of juggling material on the World-Wide Web is the Juggling Information Service at www.juggling.org.  Whether you're looking for shops, software, images, tips, or people to meet - if it has to do with juggling, it's there.

Andrew Conway has put a couple of his juggling articles on the web, although he seems to be somewhat ambivalent about site swaps.  Check out his fascinating survey of heckler lines.

jutta@cs.tu-berlin.de, last change Nov 1998