Movie and Masterpieces and Monuments, Oh MY!

A week ago the crew (same kids with whom I went to Karlovy Vary) went to BERLIN!
I had no idea what to expect--it turned out to be a lot of things at once. Very modern and clean, and yet parts are very old and not so pretty. Well, I don't know what I was picturing, but the wall is just a wall. It's quite beat up and parts just simply look like they were destroyed 17 years ago and never cleaned up. It's a surreal sort of atmosphere with very cool art on a section of it called the East Gallery, which we saw on Friday after we arrived.

We had a big day on Saturday, starting by picking up our tickets to movie at the Berlinale International Film Festival. Then we went to waste time before the movie-- first we walked too long in the cold (the city is bigger than it looks on the map) to get to the Guggenheim exhibit space in Berlin, which is housed in a big Deutchebank building. We saw this exhibit Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists... basically the point is lots of pointillism, along with some similar themes and symbols between the two. It was quite pretty! This (above) is just a cool piece in which the artist painted on his frame, which i love about Howard Hodgkin (right), whom I got to learn about when I saw his exhibit in Spain at the Reina Sofia.

Then, we went and walked around Alexanderplatz which is just a very touristy area where many important buidlings are.



Then we went to the film festival! It was soooo cool-- a very cool scene with very cool people and tons of very cool movies. We saw a.k.a. Niki S. Lee, which I thought was great! Might not be worth your time, but if you like to see any kind of documentry, I thought it was a very unique one.

bohemian break

This past weekend three friends and I travel for 2.5 hours to Karlovy Vary, a spa town to the West in the Czech Republic. A relaxing time was had by all when we spent a day at a modern spa (as opposed to the old ones that one can tour) being entirely too pampered for an obscenely low price (off-season).
It was a great first trip; we didn't leave the country but we took a break from Prague. Plus, we stayed in a cheap hotel, and as much as I love hostels, it was a nice way to ease into travel-mode. I'm quite lucky to be able to sleep one buses, or to sleep anywhere to be precise, so that even though we woke up early to leave Prague, I was pretty much rested when we arrived. Then we found our way to the hotel, checked in, and found somewhere to eat. My Eastern Europe Lonely Planet Guide proved to be invaluable this weekend, as it got us to our hotel. (We stepped off the bus and immediately realized that no one had figured out where to go upon arrival, so I just whipped out the handy-dandy map that Lonely Planet provides.)
This town is GORGEOUS! A real tourist attraction. It reminded me a bit of Andorra, but with the opposite purpose--Andorra is a ski country and Karlovy Vary is clearly a summer-vacation spot.
(more to come when i get back to my room where pictures are to be loaded!)

In other news, I go tomorrow to interview for a position at the CEELI Institute here in Prague-- they're into reforming the practice of law and such in Central and Eastern Europe, generally educating those involved about restructuring the system in now democratic countries. Some lady needs an intern and I'm talking to her after my perfect roommate does, so I'm not actually expecting to get the internship, but I'll certainly try!