Moving pictures

El laberinto del fauno - this was the movie I watched this evening. It's a Guillermo del Toro movie, who's probably not the most famous director around. The movie is not completely unlike The Fall, as both have a young girl as a heroine and both movies unfold as the girl dreams them up. The main difference is that the Labyrinth is a very, very dark movie, full of pain, hopelessness and despair. Some of the images are also quite disturbing, and I did not feel the need to include such scenes to keep the tension up. And of course the movie was in Spanish, with English subtitles (I was expecting German subtitles, now that would have been interesting :) ). I was glad to notice that I did not forget all my Spanish, but without the subs I would have been almost completely lost. Most sentences I was only able to reconstruct after reading the translation. I think the main problem with my Spanish understanding skills, that it takes a lot of time to consume a sentence - I guess I should improve this. Speaking and writing is a completely different matter, right now I am quite hopeless in this field :)
But anyhow, the movie was very good, with good acting again - I guess we'll hear the name of the young actress who played Ofelia in the movie (Ivana Baquero). The movie is nominated in 6 categories at this year's Academy Awards, it'll be interesting how many it gets and in categories. Of course at the time I'll post this entry, written on Friday evening, the Oscar ceremony will be already over.

(Update: Das Leben der Anderen got the Oscar for best foreign movie, and it deserved it, too. I think El Laberinto got one for best mask & special effects.)

Erm, my mind keeps wandering. I should rest before the coming tiring last-weekend-in-Berlin party :)
Take care,
M.

Music is my aeroplane

Well I figured I should just write a short entry on the week so far. Wednesday I went to the gig mentioned, PRR supporting Blackfield. PRR played the shorter show, since it was not "their" gig per say, but they were great nevertheless! Sadly they did not play "Nimos and Tambos", which is probably my favourite song, but they were very good. Strangely they played most of their tracks as a whole, not pause inbetween, so they did not get much applause between tracks :) I hope they did enjoy the show, too. Blackfield was also awesome, Steven Wilson is probably one of the few people I actually believe that making music can be a full-time job. He has like 5 different projects, and Porcupine Tree and Blackfield are both very successful in their respective genre. Their show was great, they played most of their songs, and also "Thank You" by Alanis Morissette. Sadly the tallest people in all Germany like this kind of music too, and they decided to stand in front of me :) The concert ended around midnight, and I managed to catch a train, and also a rain shower before I went to bed. So it was another good evening.
Tomorrow some friends come to visit for the weekend, that will definitely be fun.

And, on other news, my current status here in berlin, at my job is quite confusing. It most probable that I will leave next weekend, but I might get one week more. The former is like 99%, the latter is almost impossible. Maybe someone should make up her mind, eh, Mrs. Boss? :)

So...have a good weekend, y'all!
M.

Silence of the Berliners

I'm back, I'm fine, but not in the mood to write anything...I guess I will know in one or two days what will happen with me in the next month. And tomorrow is Pure Reason Revolution and Blackfield concert time!

So that's all for now.
M.

Damaged people

There's not much to say about the beginning of this week. I finished the two things at work I've been busy with in the last month, and today I had a few hours almost free, as I had to wait for someone to check my work. These last 2 and a half weeks here will be very, very busy, but now I'm at least interested in what I'm doing. It's still not rocket science, but the complexity of my tasks is going the good way.
Today saw two things happening. One was me forgetting to pay at the cantine and just walking away with my tray :) I realized quite quickly, though, the one step of the process was left out, and it was all okay, but I got some strange looks :) The other thing is another new Hungarian colleague arriving. I was asked to show him around and tell him about stuff, and he managed to freak me out by the end of the day. I introduced him to one of the system administrators, who usually gives an introduction how the development enviroment we use works. So they agreed to have this presentation at 3pm. So, at 5 past 3 I checked on the new guy, and he was still in his office, so I kindly reminded him of his meeting. And when I next saw him, a bit after 4pm, I asked how the session went. Well, he told me that he could not find the room where he had to go, so he just went back to his office. Without saying a word about it. At this point he lost me, I don't think there would be any legal reasons to be such an idiot. It's amazing that when we got here the "old" Hungarian guys were all normal, we (probably) ain't too bad as well, and after us 90% of the people are just complete wackos :)
I hope this new guy won't need need much more help, since I don't really feel like I should waste my time on such an ignoramus.

Not much more to say...Tomorrow evening will be spent in pubs with German colleagues, it shall be fun and foosball all night long :)

That's all!
M.

Another day, another dollar

Wow, this Sunday was long! And it was very good, too! :) As I mentioned before, I woke up, looked at the snow, did my laundry, and was more than ready to start my day rolling. The first step was heading to a 'net café and forget to post my previous entry, so it has to be backdated :) Then, I got a Turkish börek, with cheese, to keep my tummy occupied until dinner, which I was sure will be very late. I ate half of it and got on the bus, heading to the Museum of Photography. The museum is dedicated to Helmut Newton, and funded by the Foundation named after late artist, thus one floor only has the items of Mr. Newton. It's a very good part of the exhibition, gives a good insight on how many beautiful naked models he had the chance to photograph :) He also did quite good portraits, some were on display too. The other part of the exhibition was entitled "Men, war and peace", which had pictures by James Nachtwey, who was there in every region the US had intervened in the last few decades, be it Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan or the Balkan, and took very sad and very shocking pictures. I did not really understand how David LaChapelle's extravagant and colourful portraits were related to the title, but I really liked how his flamboyant pictures contrasted the black and white and pale sadness Nachtwey's pictures emanated. LaChapelle made very complicated pictures, using very bizarre setups and figures - of which the best example would be "Xenophobia", showing a black and a white model, naked, with their heads mixed up, seemingly by cutting the head off and sewing it to the other body. Hey, I said it was bizarre :) The third exhibition was about cities of the world, by a French guy with a name one easily forgets (Raymond Depardon, I looked it up). He was sent out by a French foundation with a still and a moving picture camera to shoot pictures of everyday moments in various cities around the world, including but not limited to Berlin, New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro. There were twelve cities, each with around a dozen of photos, and a 5 minute reel. The photos were nice, everyday life at it's best, but the short movies were more interesting. They had 12 big movie screens in one huge room, and the films were running on and on, all at the same time (sans sounds, of course). The artist usually chose a semi-crowded place (he must have had an easy job in Tokyo :) ) and just filmed people running around. He is a man, so he usually followed a nice face (ass, even) or two in every city. Bah, men, they are all the same :P :) Actually I was quite suprised that none of the movies showed the camera being ripped out of his grip and stuck up his ass :) I thought people liked it a lot less to be observed, but it might just be me. I did not stay to watch all the films though, as it was a bit cold in that huge room, so I left to have a coffee before the movie I was going to watch. Right now the 57th annual Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival is taking place here, which actually is the first film festival I've ever been to :) I watched one of the smaller movies, smaller as in "not part of the main program". It was entitled "The Fall", a film by the Indian director Tarsem Singh, or just Tarsem, as he was credited. And, I must tell you, I expected this flick to be amazing, and it truly was! To sum it up, it's about a 5 year old Romanian girl, living in the US in the 1920s, who is in a hospital with a broken arm, and who meets a young actor who lost the will to live. The actor tells her the most amazing story ever, and the story unfolds visually as if it was taking place in the girl's imagination. The special effects are great, used very well, and only in the necessary amount, this movie truly is something for the big screen. Both characters and scenery change as in the wildest dreams, since it's just that: a wild dream, a child's imagination :) The movie keeps a good balance between smiles and tears, and even though it did not seem to hold a too deep meaning, it was one of the best I've seen recently. After the movie was over, there was a very short Q&A session with Tarsem, which was sadly cut even shorter since the next program was about to start. Still, Tarsem answered a few questions, and as his train of thought rolled on in every answer, it was easy to see why the movie had the flow it had. The most interesting thing in the event was the applause after the movie :) Not usual in your neighborhood cinema :) I guess it would be better if I had allocated more time on this event, but there's always another time, though sadly most probably another place, too.
So, after the movie, I took the longer route back home, just so I become hungry enough for dinner :) I made Sechuan turkey, which turned out quite good (I even dared to add a little honey to the meat, though I did not feel that in the taste...), and sipped a nice Californian Chardonnay with it. I don't think I would spend this much money on a wine at home, but here, the price range at the supermarket is quite narrow, what I consider quality wine is between 4 and 6 EURs. And while at home I at least have a slight idea what regions and grape types mean, here, I only see the colour difference between an Australian Shiraz and a Spanish Rioja.
Anyhow, this Chardonnay by the Gallo family is very good, very tasty, so a good choice :)
Well, to wrap it up...I just realised will only spend one more weekend here in Berlin...next weekend I must go home, work reasons, and then it's only one more left. I guess I just should let go of "Sic transit gloria mundi" and let "Carpe diem" take it's place...
I only hope I quoted the fitting parts from my French cookbook :P
Oh wow this was long. Bye!
M.

Saturday bloody Saturday

Friday evening was nothing special, it was just too cold to move out, and I kinda enjoyed the first evening of the week alone. It was just the usual TV-shows-and-a-tea-evening. And the weekend also started as usual, I went to shop for whatever I'm going to eat during the weekend, and I tried to get a replacement for my lost sweater. Well, they have pretty ugly stuff on sale at Karstadt, so the replacement project will have to wait a while. I don't consider the morning wasted, per say, but I did spend a lot of time on things that were not really necessary. The plan for the afternoon was visiting the Dalí exhibition, so I headed for East Berlin again. 20 years ago this would have been a lot more exciting adventure :) The exhibition was nothing special, sadly, only 50 or so lithographies were on display, and only one single painting. The pictures on exhibit were good, though, they got the "Mad Genius" message through, but still, it was a lot less than I expected it to be. But since these prints were made in series by the man himself, if I had a few thousand euros to spare, I could have an original Dalí at home :) After the exhibition I hurried home, I had to get dinner ready and eaten quickly, so I can get to the last Neal Morse gig on time. So I just ate up stuff that was still in the fridge, and headed for Terra Incognita...Really, the "venue" was pretty far away, and hidden well behind a lot of communism-era 10 story houses. The "church" the concert was held in was just another small building, nothing church-like in it's appearance. Luckily, there was a guy smoking in front of the building, and as he saw me not finding my way, he was kind enough to show me where I wanted to go :) And the gig... Most probably not only the last worship gig Neal had in Berlin, but also the last I ever went to. Yes, he played his rock songs in an awesome way again (what a tremendous acoustic guitar solo!!), but this event was even weirder from the atheist POV than the one before. The church was one youth church, and it was the "let's stand up and raise our hands to the air and shout HALLELUJAH!"-kind :) The "worship" part of the gig was a lot longer than the one before, and the people there really seemed to get that feeling. Neal had a few good and really funny stories to tell, played his songs (waaaay too few of the rock ones, sadly), and then came the crazy part. I think he called it a "prayer", but it seemed more like a healing ritual to me :) In fact, I felt like an anthropologist finding and examining a strange tribe in the jungle :) The people stood in a circle and howled and cried and sang, to ask for the healing of a little girl, as far as I was able to tell. I did not want to seem impolite and leave, or even sit down, but all this was very incomfortable. I am very glad to have seen Neal Morse live, but I will try and pretend not to have seen him act "silly" :)
But well, it was not that bad, all in all, and it was at least not cold in the church :) Sadly it was on the way home and while waiting for the tram - and it was only like -2C! The cold wind only made it worse, though. So I got home, went to bed, and today I woke up to see snow covering everything again :) But now, I think my laundry is finished, so I'll just go and get them, and leave you to do more important stuff than reading me :)

M.

Hymn For A Heathen

Monday, Tuesday, nothing really happened. Monday I got here without problems, Tuesday we shared a bit of pálinka with the German colleagues, that's it. They are a nice bunch, as it turned out, and luckily my Hungarian colleague, who got to have his desk in a room with Germans does a good job in getting acquainted with them. Which is also good for me.
But the event of the week so far was something completely different; yesterday evening's Neal Morse concert. This guy has a very strange background: he was the frontman of one of the best modern progressive rock groups, Spock's Beard, but then he became a "born again" Christian, and released a few solo albums afterwards. Some of his work is worship music, which I'm neither familiar, nor comfortable with, but he released 3 top notch rock albums too (and the 4th one comes end of this month...). So all in all, he makes great rock music, and for some reason he has a soft spot for Germany, so he has a few gigs here each year. Like now. But. These are not "average" rock gigs, but he does solo acoustic shows in churches. So yesterday evening I voluntarily went to church, to see the man live for the first time :) Well. The music he plays is awesome, even though he plays alone on a single guitar or keyboard. And we were like 30 people in the audience. I did not use the chance for a meet-and-greet (but there are 3 more gigs here this week, all free entry, so... :) ), but he was there conversing with people in the crowd and such. The music part was really great, but I did not like the worship part at all. I'm really not familiar with all this, and it just seems like a show to me - even though Neal probably meant all the prayers and teaching just the way he said them. I can easily relate to the merry tone in his religiously themed lyrics, but I am definitely not experiencing the same stuff he does when he performs them.
So, all in all, it was a strange evening, but worth my time. The only problem I had was with the heating, or rather the lack of it, in the church. It was effin freezing by the end of the show...I hope the other churches he performs in are warmer :) I guess I'll skip tonight's show, but I'll be there on the last one on Saturday, that's certain. Friday, I'm not sure yet.

Well, that's all...be well, and eat your veggies!
M.

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Quite a few things have happened since I last blogged about anything. We went out to Wednesdays ago with colleagues, both Hungarian and German, and had a good party at a place with a foosball table and later at a place with some good music. The evening was a lot of fun, a lot of German talking experience, and all of this cost me only a lost sweater :) Strangely enough the music place only had and entry fee for people under 27, which I don't really understand the reasons of. But the crowd was not to old this way either, so this strange policy did not cause any problems.
On the Friday of the same week we visited the local Planetarium for a show about Einstein and his theorems, but that was neither very interesting nor did it tell us engineers any thing too new. The show was worth it's price, but not a dime more. Later we checked out a foosball place called Wiener Blut, or Viennese Blood, which was quite fun, we did not even play as bad as I think I would. Okay, we lost all games against the local people, but only by a small margin :)
The weekend I had visitors again, and I was lucky enough to get the keys to the apartment of one Hungarian colleague, so Dad and my brother had a proper bed to sleep on. We visited every single interesting thing in the city, including a few places (e.g. the Reichstag or the TV tower) which I did not check out yet. The weather could have been better, the rain chased us in the IMAX movie one evening, but all in all it was a very good weekend. I had a few problems with taking Monday free, but strangely enough the only boss who was quite angry about it was the one who had the least to do with it :P
This last week was very, very tiring, I had a few 10+ hours workdays, and I was tired enough to have the wrong flight home booked. Luckily it did not take too much effort to correct this mistake and I got home and had the chance to sleep a bit, finally.
So this was the very condensed summary of these last almost two weeks. And now, let my last month in Berlin begin...*sigh*...
M.