Fitness versus Cigarettes

In this opulent building, Greater London House, the London Kieser weight training center is housed. (Though, before you get envious green eyes like the cat: it is in the basement).

I think it quite ironical that the building formerly has been The Carreras Cigarette Factory - a huge Art Deco Building in Camden. One brand of cigarettes was The Craven.

"The building's distinctive Egyptian-style ornamentation originally included a solar disc to the Sun-god Ra, two gigantic effigies of black cats flanking the entrance and colourful painted details. When the factory was converted into offices in 1961 the Egyptian detailing was lost, but it was restored during a renovation in the late 1990s" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carreras_Cigarette_Factory - it's worth reading!

Well, people changed their minds, and now in the upper stores are media and advertisement agencies.

Back in Germany in a month I will have to make a decision:
my membership at Kieser runs out (I have been there now for 7 years, can do the exercises in my sleep, but get good results. They have only weight training).
Additional I have another membership in a posh fitness club around the corner (you can't go there without elaborate make-up :-) - I used it mostly in winter for running on the cross-trainer, when rain, cold and snow made me sit on the sofa instead of walking through Berlin. This club is an Eldorado for almost everything: weight training, aerobic, large swimming pool, Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates - whatever you want. The fee is much higher than Kieser's - though, if you decide to come in the morning between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. it is affordable.
I got a training in different weight machines there the day before yesterday. Went again today, leaving the house at 9 p.m. Coming back I looked at my watch: oooh - 2 1/2 hours... (Kieser takes this time too, with going there by underground, BUT I can come in the afternoon, in the time when my vital spirits have sunk a bit.
My "prime time" for working (with my head, not 'out') is between 7a.m and 12 o'clock. So - if I come home from Elixia tired, take a shower, dress anew - my first 'best time' is gone. The second one will start later.
They tell you to come three times a week.
And now I have to read "Your gym is punk-ass compared to this in the Ukraine!" Look at those pictures! http://bzfd.it/14ciEq4

Fitness

                                                                                               

Berlin, 8th September 2012
Dear You,
yesterday I went to my fitness club, Kieser, doing weight training. Repetitions I can do in my sleep - because I do them three days a week since over six years...
Once during the training I had to wait: a man was using the leg press, moaning and sighing. (Did you notice that too? That they start moaning and panting as soon as a woman comes near to their sports equipment? Trying to impress?) When he had finished he said to me: "Your turn! Have fun!"
I answered: "I will! I like it." He, astonished: "Then you are a total exception. I adore you!"
He had more reason than he knew: discreetly I waited till he was further away to put up quietly over 40 pounds more on his weights - my lean legs are very powerful, but why should I rub that in? Remembering Husband's excursions on Georg Simmel, a cultural sociologist, about the "Psychology of Discretion".
Of course Simmel means it different: he speaks of the necessity to keep a distance to another person, even an acquainted one, not trying to probe into your man's soul everytime when he looks grumpily out of the window. Simmel speeks of "private psychic property" - a term almost forgotten - and in modern times of the Internet young people will look as void at you as my (estimated) 14-year-old fitness-trainer when I tell him: "I hope that my weight training doesn't give me muscles like Tamara Press".
That Russian shot-putter and discus thrower is totally forgotten - nowadays I have to say Nadeschda Ostapschuk.
Or even better: Madonna.
(I'm speaking of the photo I saw in the SUN two years ago in Edinburgh).

Your aff. 
           Britta