Kosmos Kino, on Karl-Marx Allee

As a child in a communist country, one of the particular locations that helped me to find out my way through a forest of block buildings looking similarly was a movie theater called Cosmos. There it was the place where the big kids were going to watch Indian Romantic movies I was not allowed to go to. It seems that I was not the only one with a Cosmos movie theater in my life as very close to the Iron Curtain, in the DDR, Kosmos was DDR's first 'kino'. After the fall of communism, it was used for a while as a multiplex, but apparently there were not too many on the Karl Marx Allee eager to spend too much time there. Now, Kosmos could be rented for capitalist men and women interested in sharing ideas about IT and the mobile industry. This week, it was the location of two days of intensive networking and workshops, on the occasion of the BITKOM Congress. Times change, Kosmos changes only the destination and continues to be located on the same historical Karl-Marx Allee. 

Searching for a job in the Mercedes Benz show room

If you want to organize an event in Berlin, with a limited budget, you have plenty of opportunities, for less than 1,000 Euro. New office spaces are created or rebranded from scratch and at least for a while, you can take the opportunity to be part of the realtors' plans to advertise their location almost for free. Sooner, they will ask more and more money, but one of the predominant feature of a real Berliner is to do not care too much about tomorrow.

Over one week ago, I've been at a Job Fair - Job Messe, organized at Mercedes Benz showroom in Moabit. I've heard about the location only a couple of days before and went there for the first time. For me, it was the most impressive job hunting I ever attended. Not only the numbers of participants was huge, but most of them were really impressed to head hunt and to be head hunted. If I would have look for a job, I have had a lot of work to do. Instead, I took the occasion of the free entrance, of the photo opportunities and of the possibility of working while taking pictures. The networking was better than ever before - and the visual experience equally interesting. Even I will never drive a Mercedes Benz, I appreciated the opportunity and I am happy to share it with my readers.

A parking place for the Mercedes Benz flotilla

The exterior architecture isn't so spectacular

For the beginning, let's do some climbing.

Three stores full of companies and job seekers

Let's dream speed

The MBenz on sale

Catch me if you can - your favorite car between plants; the children have their playground a

Colors and words in Moabit

I don't go too often in Moabit, although I don't live too far away of the area. Last week, being around with various businesses, but on a Sunday day, I had some time to look around and discover some nice places that seem to be perfectly in line with autumn. I can hardly imagine admiring those streets in early summer.

Winter feeling around Potsdamer Platz

Winter is not officially here, but I feel the cold getting worse and more warm clothing are needed. I visited Potsdamer Platz last week, around 11.00 and the sky was grey. Honestly, did not see a serious ray of light for a couple of weeks. The snow slope is ready and the winter fairs were already open, even though it is more than one month before the holiday season is officially open. At that time of the day, there were not too many people around, but most probably during the weekend and late in the evening, the tourists will be tempted to have their hot wine and their currywurst in one of the most elegant corners of the city - to be read where money is made. 

As usual, I am fascinated by the combination of kitsch and innovation that this city can display. Nothing has to do with style here, but with the aggressive freedom of doing what you want to, even it means to shock visually the sophisticated European eyes. A kind of small America in the middle of Europe.

Understanding the intricacies of lines

Lost sky scrapers

Maybe the snowman will bring more order around?

Let's sky in Potsdamer Platz

Early visitors at 11 o'clock

Never too early for a little drink in the morning

The game of geometry continues

Everyting goes round and round and round

Even the trees need some artificial light

Remember 9. November

Today is a day of memory for all those killed during the Kristallnacht and after. For all those 6 millions, many of them without a grave and without any other guilt that they were born Jews. We should remember day after day what do we stand for and why we should never forget. 

זכר קדוש לברכה

Yesterday, I visited with a friend the Information Center from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I did not visit the center before. The entrance is free, and after waiting in line for a couple of minutes and going through a basic security checking, you can enter the small underground museum. There are a lot of pictures from personal archives or from Yad Vashem, as well as from the German state archives. Audio-guides will tell you the story of some of the victims and will explain more about the context and the the facts. There were most tourists, but also some German teenagers and the place was pretty crowded, even if it was Thursday afternoon. As I will always say, it is never enough to remember what happened. In a cruel world as ours, when the Internet is crying hate and anti-Semitism. I wish that more people visiting such exhibitions and watching the terrific pictures and testimonies are strongly moved and feel the shock. 

Autumn at the American Academy

As everyone on and outside the web is busy discussing about the results of the US elections - I missed last nigh party in town, I know - I will post some pictures I took a couple of months ago at the American Academy in Berlin. The debate and the results were watched there too, in a very high class ambiance that you can usually find in some sophisticated corners of Washington DC. The place is lovely, there is a perfect retreat that many American writers enjoyed lately. Among them, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss - just to refer to my favorites visitors of Berlin in the last years. Besides supporting the personalities from the world of literature, the American Academy offers regularly fellowships to political scientists and international relations experts that are looking for a quiet place to write down their new books. The library is rich and the ambiance is very inspiring, whatever your domain of study is.

Here are a couple of snapshots took while being present at a discussion of Nathan Englander's latest book. 

Memories of the summer

Once upon a time, it used to be summer. And the days were longer. And it was so much green around...that I would have been happy to lay on a couch of grass with a good book and a cup of fresh coffee...Gone are the days. At least it is so much work to keep me distracted from depressive winter thoughts...