3. Oktober 2004, 23:59

Today is Germany's national holiday - "The Day Of German Unity". Germany was reunited fourteen years ago.

After I have watched on TV a very dramatic finish of the Cycling Worldchampionship in Verona, Italy, I decided to look to the party around the "Brandenburg Gate" and the "Reichstag".

Actually, this "party" does not derserve the name "party". And it is a bit ashaming, how the capital of a country celebrates the national holiday. Just some food-booths and some carousels. Poor!

Well, I decided to buy an "Original Thuringian Sausage" and then sit on the lawn in front of the "Reichstag" - to look at the people, the kissing couples, the queueing tourists, the playing or crying children - and sit in the warm golden October sun and ate peacefully my sausage...

2. Oktober 2004, 23:59

Together with approximately 45 000 people I joined the today's demonstration against the reduction of social benefits in Germany and Europe.

I am very sceptical, that those demonstration would change anything, but I also think, it is important to show, that there are still some people, who disagree - and with good reasons. The more the better!

25. September 2004, 03:53

What a wonderful film! A film like a painting!

I was in cinema again and watched the movie "Das Maedchen mit dem Perlenohrring" ("Girl With A Pearl Earring"). You enjoy that movie for looking at it. All those beautiful pictures of the enviroment, costumes, landscapes - and the amazing beauty of the main actress Scarlett Johansson, the upcoming big star of Hollywood-cinema.

The grace of that perfect face is really amazing, such a cool elegance and such a cool innocence. It's funny: When you see her in that movie kissing someone else, you become immediately jelouse.

The story of that picture is not very important and quickly told: A poor maid comes in the household of the famous painter Jan Vermeer van Delft in Netherlands of the 17th Century. He begins to be interested in her and chooses her as model for a painting. His wife becomes jelouse and the maid has to leave the house. That's it - more or less.

But in my opinion, this is just the reason for showing the life in the 17th century and for celebrating that face all the movie long.

Including me, only four persons watched that movie in the cinema room, and I really like to sit in an empty or almost empty cinema to watch a really good movie. Well, it was the 11-pm-screening, though.


-->"Trailer"<--

23. September 2004, 19:04

About women and money

Well, what should I say - I am always surprised and a bit disappointed, when I see really pretty women/girls and then, what partners they have. Older, ugly, fat and really bad-behaved, bad characters. Sometimes they are treated by them really bad, "macho"-style. Often I cannot believe this is just simple love.

So, there has to be another reason. And I just can see the money as reason. And that's what I cannot understand. Why they see the money of the partner more important than the sympathy, the love for him? Why is the money of the partner or the status so important for women, that they even agree to live an entire life with those men?

I know, this is a quite difficult subject; but this is how I see it! Maybe, I am wrong - but I don't think so. I wouldn't say this is valid for women in general, but for most of the women.

Women, of course, would deny it, but I am sure, deep inside they also know there is at least a little piece of truth in it.

21. September 2004, 21:07

Today was the first real autumn day in Berlin after a longer period of warm and sunny weather. Lower temperature, windy, rainy... It isn't so nice. But I like especially that smell in the air - that smell of earth!

17. September 2004, 16:09

After a (too) long, long time I was in cinema again. And this time even in a German movie! I don't like German movies very much, because there are just stupid German teenage-comedies or stupid German comedies about the former GDR. But "Der Untergang" ("The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich") is far away from being a stupid comedy!

What is ist about? This picture shows, what happened in Berlin, in the "Fuehrer"-bunker during the last days of World War II in April 1945.

It is the first time, that Hitler is shown so close in a German movie, as a private human being. And this man in this movie has nothing fascinating, nothing glorious or anything else - he is just an old, ill and hatefull man far beyond reality.

This movie is almost a documentary, because it is shown what has happened like it was, with most possible reality. But what has happened was dramatic enough, so it doesn't need a dramatic story around it, in my point of view. Thre is this atmosphere of fear, end, death and suicide and still tremendous fanatism.

After the end of the movie there was a rather long silence of the audience in the cinema room, what I have seen very, very rarely after a movie.

11. September 2004, 23:59

"Pleasantville" is a very good movie, although it is with Tobey Maguire (well, I like movies with him)! But several other good actors are in it, like Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen and Jeff Daniels.

But beside the excellent actors, the story is so good. It is a story about true love, but also about tolerance and not at least about the beauty of art and literature! Everything, what makes life worth living, why it is so good to be alive, to spend a short time on earth!

10. September 2004, 23:59

I have visited today the exhibition of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)! It is very popular here. Over 1 million people have already been there in half a year. So, I also wanted to be there before the exhibition will be over in ten days.

But because it is so popular, it isn't as easy to get in. You have to queue in front of the building very long. Well, I have waited about three and a half hour, before I could see the first paintings. Fortunately, at least the weather was warm and sunny.

In this exhibition you can see several of the world's most famous and most influential paintings. From Picasso to Warhol, from Matisse to Pollock - and many, many others.

My highlight of that exhibition was, besides Cezanne, Munch and Van Gogh, especially the "Water Lillies" by Claude Monet, which you can see in small left above here. In reality it is about two meters high and over 12,5 meters long! I like the work of Monet very much - how he could create such a kind of atmosphere just of colors. You can really get drowned in that painting.

This was a real great exhibition. But I really wondered, why you have to queue so long for it, because there were in Berlin several other exhibitions, which were as same interesting, but you could get in without so long waiting.

Well, nevertheless, after over four hours, I was in there, I left the exhibition, right before it was closed for this day at midnight.


Here some highlights of the exhibition:

"The Starry Night", 1889 by Vincent van Gogh

"Dance (first version)", 1909 by Henri Matisse

"Boy Leading A Horse", 1906 by Pablo Picasso

"One (Number 31)", 1950 by Jackson Pollock

"Drowning Girl", 1963 by Roy Lichtenstein

"Reclining Nude", 1919 by Amedeo Modigliani

9. September 2004, 23:59

About friendship

So, there are friends - and just friends. I mean, for me a friend, a real friend, is something really deep, something really true.

I had some friends, yet - and still know them, some old classmates of mine. I have still contact to them, but we are at different places now, so we haven't seen eachother for months or even years. After The Wall came down, a lot has changed and everyone has gone his own way; unfortunately to different parts of the country. One is in Hamburg, one is near Cologne and one is in Dresden now.

But it is always hard for me to call us friends, because I am not quite sure, if it is a kind of friendship I would understand of real friendship. Among friends, in my opinion, there must not be secrets - everything can be said without to fear, that anyone else know it the next day. And you must have the feeling, that he would understand everything. And when I say everything I mean everything!

And that's, what I think, I cannot expect. And this is rather pity. Both have to trust eachother 100 percent. But, probably, I just haven't tried it so far...

Furthermore, I think, a friendship cannot be a one-way-street. Friendship means to take but also to give. And to give should be more pleasant for the friend (as it is for me). For example, if one friend receives every day a postcard, then he should know, what to do.

So, in my point of view, a real friendship is almost as deep as a partnership - and it is almost as difficult to find a really true friend as it is to find a partner for life.

7. September 2004, 18:07

I was in the exhibition "Robert Mapplethorpe and the classical tradition" in the Deutsche Guggenheim.

Actually, I have expected more "scandalous" photographs by Mapplethorpe, but anyway - in my point of view it was a good idea to present some of his photographs in comparision with old prints of the 16th century. As usual, a smaller exhibition - but quite interesting.

After the museum's visit I went to the Monday Demonstration again...