ritas kleine welt

the evening began with me starting to bother birgit with caps from starsky&hutch. she didn't complain. or, if she did, she didn't present a convincing front to the world in general and me in particular. and before you know it, one thing lead to another and we started fiddling around with the stills, tapping into each our creative sides.

birgit and i went for a walk through berlin on friday afternoon in order to secure some tickets for the world premiere of the restored metropolis. (we were short of ten people in front of us when the box office closed. dang!) on our way to the friedrichstadtpalast, we crossed one of the many bridges across the river spree. this is what we saw...

shoes are a girl's best friend!

here's a lovely toy to play around with on rainy or snowy days. (in other words: it's perfect for the next week or two!) it's a virtual polaroid camera tool invented by the crafty devils over at the Poladroid project site. it's a fun little gadget to pimp your holiday pictures that need just a little touch of off-colour.

five days away from christmas, in christian parley on the fourth sunday in advent, i thought i should finally get into the spirit of the season and make a day of it. so in the order of appearance, here's what i did today.

walking home from the leuschnerplatz after midnight last friday, the official lichtfest was already over and the nearly 100,000 leipziger had already gone home to sleep. the city was empty and quiet again. but unlike twenty years ago this was not a quietness of dread, but of calm and peace. there's a unique spirit in this city which you can encounter every day. it's got nothing to do with being showy or over the top. it's being content with what's here and taking pride in what has been achieved. it's a marvelous little place.

on 9 october, 1989, the prayers for peace began in the nikolaikirche in leipzig. thousands of leipzigers had begun gathering each monday to pray for a peaceful solution to the bubbling conflicts in what was to become the final year of the GDR. for his level-headed guidance and the repeated call for, 'keine gewalt!' (no violence!), the reverend christian führer was later awarded the augsburger peace prize. yesterday, twenty years after the first monday prayers, he repeated the reading of the sermon on the mount. guests of honour were the german president, horst köhler, saxony's prime minister, stanislaw tillich, leipzig's mayor, burkhard jung. but no one received a greater cheer of welcome than germany's former foreign minister, hans-dietrich genscher. the people of leipzig welcomed him with standing ovations.

following the shapes of autumn, here are the colours that go along with them. please keep in mind that these pictures were taken with a hand-held camera whilst creeping and crawling through the underbrush in one of the largest, uninterrupted woods in germany. there was just no way i would have managed to log a tripod through these woods. except for hurling it at wild boars, it wouldn't have helped much anyway, as i was nearly lying on my stomach during most of these pictures.

so i decided to play a bit with a couple of pictures i took at the zoo last weekend and give them a bit of a vintage colouring. and then i got a bit carried away. thus, silliness ensued...

edit: now featuring tiger #2 and #3.

it is a bit strange: all those four times i have been to the island so afr, the weather was pretty much constantly splendid. in and out of season. hardly any rain -- and nearly 30°C last week. i even got a slight tan which is something that happens only once every decade. and because we were so extremely lucky, the pictures came out especially well. so, here's the first round of pictures from an extremely sunny london. including pictures from an extremely nocturlan london.

about ten days back, i spent some lovely days in berlin for the annual MASH meet-up for Whitsun. we had lots of fun, lots of sun -- and rain. lots of MASH, food and laughter. and we had enough time to cut lose to spend half a day inside the Pergamon Museum. naturally, i got a bit snap happy when i saw all those pretties from greek and roman and arab antiquity. you have seen some pictures already, but here are the rest.

on the happy occasion of the annual MASH meet-up in berlin, there was enough time this year to spend a considerable amount of time in a museum. on friday, i returned to the place that caused my fear of heights (the bridge across the river looked less reasuring some 24 years back). all i remembered from my first and only visit to the pergamon museum was the impressive ishtar gate and a couple of naked greek statues. luckily, this time i brought along my camera to document the visit.

when i posted my lates pictures on woophy yesterday, i realised that i have developed a strange preference for symmetric images lately. i don't know how exactly that happened, but it may have something to do with my preference of abstract photography in a way. although i admire every photographer who knows how to take portraits and photograph people, i fare much better with taking pics of buildings, trees, cats... i simply suck at pretty much everything else.

so here goes a collection of fearful symmetries.

it's been a month now that i have been sharing the snug little office with dietmar. what can i say, i miss it already just by thinking of the day in september that i have to move out again. but i received permission to return for an hour or two each week so that i can hold my office hour.

spring has arrived with a whizzbang, sun, temperatures and all. so mum, sis and i decided yesterday to make a day of it and go for a walk through the woods -- with wet feet, an encounter with ants and frogs. seems like mother nature was just about ready for the warm season to kick off as well.