My first memory of the fallen wall is a drive to Berlin with my parents, all excited and in high spirits, but then the memory blurs again as it is with childhood memories, only hot spots of the past. My next real encounter with this part of history was years later in India. Someone learned that I was from Germany and told me he remembered very clearly when his whole village sat together before a TV watching the live news from Berlin not knowing what would come of it. This was the first time I really realised how big and at the same time small this world really is - how we are all here together.

Last weekend in Berlin was special. Very.

When I opened my pictures after this weekend, at first I was disappointed since I had had other expectations. But looking through them, bit by bit, I realised they were exactly what I felt and saw. Surreal, colourful, emotional, blurred.

Lerwick at night

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
(Vincent Van Gogh)

December {Wallpaper}

(1920 x 1200 px)

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Golden lights and fireworks

We spend our evening in Edinburgh by strolling through the city and making as much detours as possible on our way back to the station. Since it was the Fringe festival, the city was full of music, everywhere you could stop and listen to someone singing or playing. There was a very special atmosphere in the air, almost magical.

Just before we caught our bus back to Glasgow, as if the city wanted to say Goodbye, there were fireworks. 

A wonderful completion of our day. 

Edinburgh, you old heartbreaker!

And then we set off on a journey across the North Sea to a much more northern point - the actual destination of our travels: Shetland!

Looking for Clyde

One evening, when it was especially warm and cloudless, we decided to go to Glasgow's river Clyde. To sit near the Clyde Arc, take pictures, talk, have a drink, watch the lights of the city in the water. But what sounds so easy at first turned out to be a difficult endeavour. Because one peculiar thing about Glasgow is that there is a huuuge motorway, cutting directly through the heart of this wonderful city... at least it seems so.

Looking at the map, the Clyde seemed to be in good reach, a bit of a walk and then just across the motorway. But for us, as pedestrians, this motorway turned out to be a concrete labyrinth with fly-overs, undercrossings, dead spots, oversized footbridges leading into the darkness and nowhere near the river... it was jinxed, we knew we were not far away from it, we could even see the Clyde sometimes. So we were walking over and under and along the highway, while the pedestrian zones grew darker and darker and abandoned, no people, just us and the roaring motorway.

I don't know if we just chose the wrong way, if we weren't able to read the map that evening or why we got lost in all this concrete - in fact, we didn't find the Clyde. So, eventually, we decided to go back, make the best of it, take some pictures and call it a day in a nice pub very far away from the Glaswegian motorway :)

Back to the 1920's!

Last Friday, the Berlin Film Society invited everyone to a screening of "Der Blaue Engel" ("The Blue Angel") in a very special location: an abandoned 1920's silent cinema. When we heard of this event there was no question: we had to go there. So off we went to the North of Berlin. The "Delphi" - as the cinema was called - had its heyday in the 1920's/30's and was shut down in the late 1950’s. For all this time, this sleeping beauty has remained rather unaffected by the decades passing by and the city life around it. But every now and then it is opened for an event - as last weekend.

From the outside it is a rather unremarkable concrete block, but when we entered it was like time travel. As if we fell through a hole in time right back into Berlin’s golden 20’s. Some people came in themed attire, there was dancing, absinthe, and of course the wonderful Marlene Dietrich film.
Hach, what a night!
Of course, I took my camera with me, to bring you some pictures:




























Here's more information about the Delphi: click And here for more pictures from the evening on the Berlin Film Society's Facebook page: click