We Interrupt Prague to Bring You... Berlin!

What have I been up to? An excellent question, with many answers. As I repeatedly say, there is always something to do around here, and I have been doing those things of which are to be done.

Yes, I am always this articulate.

Well, first off, the ballet was incredible. We walked ALL THE WAY to the National Theatre in our nicest get-ups... so about a three minutes total. Now, this ballet was not your average Swan Lake. It was a contemporary performance called Graffiti, featuring some incredible modern dance numbers. The entire thing was a visual jambalaya of movement, costumes, props, and this crazy configuration involving mirrors and a film projection that I STILL can't really figure out how they did. So you'd have dancers moving on stage, and simultaneously their doppelganger hologram thing would be dancing alongside them. My favorite number was a couple dancing to a medley of Yann Tiersen compositions, and they incorporated a table and chair into the choreography in ways that would have made me fear the for the safety of the dancers had it not been obvious that they knew what they were doing. SO TO CHALK IT UP: As someone who really enjoys dance, film and pretty colors, I was a big fan of this ballet. Although I was a little disappointed that none of the dancers turned into a giant bird and bled to death backstage.

But I'm crossing my fingers for next season!

When I'm not watching incredible contemporary ballets, the majority of my time is spent in school. Classes work in a weird way over here; or maybe it's just the program. I dunno. All in all I'm taking about 11 different courses: Screenwriting, Camera and Film Language, Directing, Acting, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, Czech, Script Analysis, Circulating Within the Postmodern Cinematic Image, and Subjective Subversions. Most meet about once a week, so the number of hours I spend in school is about the same as what it would be back home. Plus, these courses all tie together and revolve around Film, so I'm pretty dandy with my academic schedule.
I'll admit, some classes are more fun than others-- I really like Screenwriting and Acting, but I despise Cinematography and Film Language. I'm trying to give them a fair chance, but a lot of the information is just incredibly over my head. To each her own, I say.

Thursday was nerve-wracking because we all pitched our ideas in front of each other and Jan Fleischer (our Screenwriting professor) for the first time. Talk about cut-throat: All 16 of us would pitch our own individual ideas, and from those 16 it would be whittled down to just 6.

DUN DUN DUN.
(to be read dramatically, preferably while envisioning the dramatic gopher).

Exactly.

After several (million) (times a billion) (times infinity) (squared) (and one more) constructively critical comments from our professor, we took time over the weekend to revise our ideas and flesh them out, then present our fuller ideas on Monday. Oh, look at that-- TODAY is Monday!

So, yeah, it all went down this mornning. Everyone's pitches went fine, mine included. It was just the system of voting for stories that got muddled... we were using a strange system that didn't make much sense. As a result, I think a lot of people were denied a fair chance to have their stories get picked. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to get fair chance. My story (about the friendship forged between a boy and his pet hobo-- it's cute how you think I'm joking) hung in for a while, but sadly did not make the final cut. That's all right though, because now I'm going to be working on the script for one of the other stories that I really liked. I'm super stoked to get this project going. And I'm debating whether or not to disclose the plot here... it might be a fun surprise for you (yes YOU), my dear reader, to find when we make the film.

But enough about this morning's harrowing pitching session. Lemme tell ya'll 'bout my weekend... in Berlin?!

That's right. My roommate and I took a 5 hour bus ride to Berlin for the weekend. We stayed in an AWESOME hostel called Plus Berlin. My only prior conception of hostels was this movie:

So you can imagine my relief when I opened the door to our room and saw this:

Though I might go so far as to say the room was just a BIT too pink.

This place also had an indoor pool and sauna, which we hit up. RIGHT?! So cool. There we met a number of kids from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc. The best experience of Berlin was probably talking to all of these people from different places. Oh! And our one other roommate in the hostel was a girl from New York. She was really nice, and the three of us actually wound up going out for Thai food and spending a few hours in a nearby pub.

During the day Vera and I walked around, and went on an "alternative tour" of the street art in Berlin. This stuff is incredible:

lolwut

Also, I had the most incredible falafel at this place called 1001 Falafel.fd ks;futfu ihgaje roijklj;kjk  dfl. Sorry, that was my laptop short-circuiting because I drooled all over it just thinking about how delicious that falafel was...

Anyway, obviously one weekend was not enough time to see all that's worth seeing in Berlin. Of course I checked out the Berlin wall and Brandenberg Gate...

Some dude was blowing these huge bubbles... it's like he KNEW I wanted to take the coolest picture ever.

 ...but I'd like to return at some point to see some museums and take some Holocaust tours, all that good stuff. In the meantime, it's Prague sweet Prague, baby.