Holy Shit - Shopping!

Chrismas is comming closer and with it the need for presents. This year seems to be a tough one - everyone seems to have everything and it is really hard to come up with good, affordable ideas.
Enter Holy Shit Shopping, a fancy design Christmas market under the protecting roof of the Postbahnhof. heaps of stalls from designers, crafters, labels, publishers, artists for the cool kids (and their kids).


unfortunately, some stallholders were reluctant to have their picture taken, so I had to steal all theier ideas in my head only. But I got ome nice input for a future craft session ;-)

Training for Christmas

After our massive cooky-bake-session in out kitchen the other day, Claudi and I decided to train our stomachs for chrismas. Because we botha lready had too much coffee, we decided to give Kuchentraum, a sweet cafe here in Friedrichshain a try.
the had this little treat:

cheesecake with Spekulatius cookies in it! very wintery! and a good idea! yum!

b*day goodies #3

Kristofer Aströhm!!!
was a bit boring with shallow lyrics and a horrible sound system, which I blame on the technicians at Magnet Club. But nice swedish pop music, a couple of beers and a chilly night out with my lovely flatmates...

b*day goodies #2

I passed a wonderful birthday with yummy sushi


and Claudi at the Christmas market at Gendarmenmarkt in the inner city




which was a bit too posh and expensive, so we went to the Lucia Christmas Market at the Kulturbrauerei in Prenzlauerberg, which was much nicer. We had Maroni and Bratwurst and finnish hot wine... delicious!

tehn we went to Claudis place to meet up with her flatmate and some freinds of hers, who wanted to do a job-finding seminar by themselves. Turns out they are gonna pay a job consultant because we had fun but could not really help each other. But it was fun none the less.

b*day goodies

it is my birthday once again and as you might know I am not particulrarly fond of this date. But there are people who make it wonderful: my flatmates suprised me with a candle lit cake and some Sekt at midnight, we sat in the kitchen and drank and talked. And we are gonna go to a concert of Kristofer Aström, tomorrow night! Yay!
Today I met Claudi for coffee, one more chance to get you another coffee-newspaper-pic

Plus, I made myself some presents of my own... a goregeous vintage dress with red flowers that looks heaps better than on this picture

I found it in a vintage store in Kreuzberg a while ago, and it was relatively cheap considering Berlins exorbitant prices for Vintage clothes. It was missing a button and smelled a bit, so I fixed it and took it to the dry cleaner - and picked it up today, so it counts as a birthdaypresent.
Also some time ago I stumbled upon this lovely booklet with Elvis punch outs (yay yay!!):




Later on we are heading to one of the many chrismas markets to get some mulled wine. Yay yay yay!

ps. it is kinda scary how many internet services remebered my birthday - the picture in the header is taken from my Germanwings email... uahh, wa too much information about me on the net!

thank god I'm outta there

In Perugia, a trial came to its close that has shook not only Italy but the whole world. Perugia, the little sleepy mountian town tucked away in the central Italian mountains has till that day been a haven for foreign students, until British Meredith Kercher was murdered by her American flatmate Amanda Knox with the help of her then boyfriend, Italian Rafffaele Sollecito. Both have been condmmed to long sentences.
read the articles here
in German
in Italian
it even made it to Australia

hooked up on SEE

by chance I stumbled upon a conference held here in Berlin by the Heinz Schwarzkopf Stiftung. The title "After the wars - the Western Balkans facing the European Union" promised an interesting day of various panels with interesting speakers - and it was even more so! The audence was high class aswell: Ambassadors, Scientists, Politicians plus me and three other students. It was awesome though and perfect to get back on track with my studies.



After a day of presentations and discussions, they drove us in a bus to the Kino Babylon to see Storm, a film about a prosecutor at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). A great and moving film, that gives insights not only into the crimes committed (although fictional), but foremost into the practices of a criminal court and the moral problems arising from the quest for justice and for peace. After the film there was a Q&A with the director, a judge from the ICTY and the director of the Berlinale, Mr. Kosslik. The latter was mostly annoying, being ill prepared, talking about other films unknown to the audience and not using his microphone properly. Plus, his English was horrible!
Speaking of which, another thing I was really ashamed of: all of the Southeast European speakers were perfectly fluent in English, able to articulate themselves in an understandable way - enter the Germans: apart from a few exemptions, most of teh Germans English was a pain in the ear and almost incomprehensible. And we are in Europe!

Ja, Panik!

Spending more time at home at my beloved computer, I get to listen to my favourite radio station, Viennas fm4. Thatswhy I am more aquainted with teh Austrian music scene right now and have to say it is not the worst. Apart from fm4 being a super good station, with most of its programmes in English presented by NATIVE SPEAKERS (yes, Germany, there are native speakers in Vienna and they can work and enrich the cultural sphere!), Austrain music seems much more innovative to me than most of the German stuff one gets to hear on highly inferior Berlin radio stations.
Anyway, it was there I first encountered up and comming Austrian band "Ja, Panik!". As everyone else, they call themselves indie, sing German lyrics and come across much more sophisticated and intellectual than most German Deutschrockbands they are compared with. As you might have noticed I still have not discovered Berlins lure, but apparently it attracted Ja,Panik!s frontman and the whole band recently moved here. Lucky me, so I could go and see them perform at Festsaal Kreuzberg.