snowing in amsterdam

Just realized I haven't written on my blog since two weeks. Weird. I am in Amsterdam for the long weekend with my brother and it has been snowing all day. I arrived late last night in pouring rain, today it was sunny and snowing. We are renting a car tomorrow and go somewhere - we still need to figure out where, we will see. We are watching Amelie on TV and as I told me brother that I totally don't remember this movie although I saw and liked it he told me: "Actually you are lucky with your shitty memory - you can relive things twice, hahaha". Hahaha - so here is a quick recap of the last two weeks before I completely forget.

The sneak preview used to be an exciting place to go to. The concept is to go see a movie that is new so nobody in the audience has seen it before and the best part is that you can actually enjoy the movie without seeing anything before. So basically without having seen the best scenes already in a trailer or having read in a magazine about the ending. Two weeks ago the sneak preview was just perfect from this POV. The movie shown was "DEFINITELY, MAYBE" and it has the cheeeeesiest poster of all times. A tipical chick flick, but I loved it somehow. (it's not bad to have really good looking actresses play in a movie).


The other good thing happened to me was stumbling upon a movie called "Battle Royale" on youtube about a class of 15 year olds who are forced to kill each other off on a remote island in a futuristic asian state. I thought the movie was new and so I ordered to book to be ready for it when it hits the movies. The book turned out to be 600 pages long, really readable and graphic, and I spent a couple of days (and nights) reading it. Then Ute told me the movie actually was old and not new and I checked it on wikipedia - it was true. It's also pretty interesting why the movie was never shown in the US or Germany - and after reading the book I am not sure I want to see the movie. Not the fact that 15 year old people are killed off, not even the fact that they are killed without reason, but the fact that they are murdered by their 15 year old friends is the part which makes people nervous. I totally understand, still can totally recommend the book - not for the beach but for lonely winter nights at home.


On Thursday we played football and for the first time in my life I felt I played really good. I actually scored a couple of goals - Ok, I also let some in, but that is normal. And about 40 minutes into the game my feet started to hurt like hell and I had to stop. I have these pains since I played football in Brussels a while ago on a weekend. Since then from time to time my left leg hurts like hell (after a day of snowboarding or a long run in the fitness center. But of course I never went to a doctor. So I ended up in the hospital on Friday morning to figure out what the hell was going on. After a quick touchy-touchy by the doctor and one x-ray which took 3 hours I was let go with a "heel spur" diagnose. (I figured this out via wikipedia by looking up Fersensporn - which is the same in German) So I got some little pillows to put into my shoe and an appointment with the doctor for the 1st of April to go back for a checkup. We will see ...

I have been wanting to sign up for a course on photography for years but never found a course. So I was very happy to see that there was a remaining slot for a weekend course open on short notice so I took my chance and signed up for a portraits course that started the same day. The course turned out to be about portrait photography in a studio and showed us how to use the flash in a professional way. There were two guys from Fotostudio Baumann, Arno and Robert, the owner. The participants were all kinds of people from around Frankfurt, some annoying, some cool. We spent Friday night with the equipment and got to learn how the flash works, how to measure the light, etc. We also set our cameras to ISO 200, 1/125 and 11 and were more or less asked to leave it like that for the whole weekend. The first thing we learned was how to use a second light (called Streiflicht in German) to create professional looking pictures like this one:


I also noticed that - similar to an experience on top of one of the nice Gaudí hauses in Barcelona last summer - I needed a new camera...

On Saturday we were shooting a model in the same setup and learned all kind of things about different styles to be used, called high-key and low-key, etc. It was a very interesting day and I learned a lot about light and its affects despite the fact that I doubt ever to posess any of the flash equipment we were dealing with in my life. Well you can rent the studio for 25 Euros per hour so you never know. Here is a picture of the setup used to shoot the pictures:


I met up with Jack and Alba for lunch after the course on Saturday, dropped Jack off at the airport and we had Celine over for dinner for the evening. The third day of the course we went to the Shirn Cafe for brunch and final discussion of the pictures. Even though I wasn't very happy with the pics on my camera, the actual paper photos looked pretty good. This was the first time I went for brunch in the Shirn Cafe, for 14 Euros it is a total rip-off unless you also want to have lunch there. The choice is extremely little, the waiters not particularly fast or caring... Later another place nearby, then I managed to use my Barometer vouchers for the first time this year in Teelirium on Berger Strasse with Simone, Mane and Kasturi, who came a little later. I went home afterwards and continued playing on my new Vista computer, that I bought from the employee shop for 333 Euros. I even managed to play C&C part 3 on it. Sueeeeeeet!

The week after went by without major news items. A crappy movie at the sneak (the only good part of it being Marisa Tomei walking around half naked most of the time) called before the devil knows you are dead, some nice Indian food on Tuesday night (really nice), swimming on Wednesday and coming to Amsterdam on Thursday evening. I read the entire "Die Zeit" in the train - though it was more boring than usual. I go back watch Amelie now...