Goodbye Blue Sky

This is the last entry I am posting from the beautiful city of Berlin, Germany.
There might be one or two more about this coming weekend, but after that, it's over. Blogging was never really part of my toolset, it just made it easier for me to tell "everyone" how my time goes here in these far off lands. So now that I will meet "everyone" regularly again, the need is gone, and thus the update frequency will be most probably 0 posts every month :) But if I post anything, that will of course be something completely different.

Oh well, these were probably the best 5 months of my life, in one way or the other - thank you for allowing me to share my experiences with you. It was great while it lasted.

So long, goodbye!
M.

Pictures of an Exhibition

It would have been stylish to finish this in 50 posts :) But since this is the 51th, I have to find new goals in my life :)
So, yesterday evening I visited the Old National Gallery on the Museum Island, using the free entry on Thursdays for the second time. My main goal was to see a few Parisian impressionist pictures, as I by reading Van Gogh's biography by Irving Stone I really got in the mood of this style. I know, it's stupid to like paintings based on what's written about them :) But as Van Gogh met several of these guys during his days in Paris, and described the differences between and the typical style of each of them, I really wanted to see what he was talking about :) (The book is based on Vincent's letters to his brother Theo, so it's more or less okay to consider the words in the book his own words :) )
So. I've visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam before, and I am aware that I don't really like Vincent's style of painting, but I remember some pictures by contemporary painters that I liked. But now I needed a refresh of my memories :)
The museum itself is quite small, it took about 2 hours to see everything inside, including reading every label and studying every picture I've found interesting. Most of it is of course dedicated to German 19th century artists, with some amazingly detailed huge canvases, mostly on the royal family or some military-related event.
There are also some sculptures from that era, one of which really amazed me...It was exactly the same figure as one sculpture in the gardens of Sanssouci! Just this one was marble, and the other one was bronze. Here are the photos for comparison :)

So, now for the impressionists: there was only one room with their pictures, a few canvases from Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Renoir, and a few Rodin sculptures, including a copy or study of his most famous 'The Thinker'. The colours and painting style these people used is really amazing, some canvases have lines that could have been drawn by 5 year olds but colours that take a special mind to come up with. The painting I liked the most was 'Summer' by Renoir, it just looked so real and displayed that exact moment so well...An amazing picture, looks a lot better in real life than on this small image :)
I guess it would be better if I did not lack the words necessary to describe art... :) But still, this was a good visit. Tomorrow I will try to go to one modern art museum too, showing some Picasso and Munch canvases. I hope I will have the time on my last full day here.
M.

Thursday afternoon

I think I neglected this blog for too long :) I posted one backdated entry for 13.02. and also one for last Friday. These were of course written on their respective days, so not much cheating is included :)
This weekend was a good one, I had friends around and we had a good time in a few pubs around Berlin :) We visited and exhibition on the LOTR movies, which was just great, with all the details on the special effects used, the concept art, and all the clothes, masks and other gear from the movie. I spent a lot more time there than my friends, but they were kind enough to have a beer and wait for me while I was sucking up information :) In the evenings, we beat each other and everyone around in foosball, and well, had a lot of generic fun :)
Monday was just a slow day, Tuesday was a day of an IMAX Safari movie (the fishes were a lot better...), Wednesday was just sitting at home, Thursday is just the interim period between 2 projects at work and hopefully visiting a museum in the evening, and Friday will be my last working day Berlin. Want some heartache? I sure got a lot to spare of that...Saturday evening/night we'll have a farewell party, so at least it will be a glorious end :) I wonder how I'll get up Sunday morning to catch the plane :)

Ok, no more days to talk about! Off to work then :)
M.