Finally, there are some photos of my trip to Ireland in September. Having finished my bachelor-thesis, I had a nice trip to Ireland’s Iveragh Peninsula. We had been warned to travel there in late September, but fortunately we had weather, which was out of character: nearly no rain, at all.

I’ve never been to Ireland before: I enjoyed its fantastic landscapes and its nature, as we were hiking most of the time. Afterwards I made panoramas from multiple pictures for the first time. It’s super-simple with hugin. So have a look at:

• the area surrounding Caherciveen,
• the beach of Waterville and
• the view up from the West End of Iveragh Peninsula - and of course
• the whole gallery.

Berlin, Brandenburger Tor, 2006

Having a fancy internship in Berlin, I moved here, today. I’m going to work and live here (and write some papers) for two months now.

My favourites:

• “At the fights“: Potraits of boxers taken before and after a boxing match.
• “Chaiten volcano erupts“: Brilliant “Last Judgement”-photo taken in Chile.
• “Homeless“: Photos taken of homeless people in São Paolo.
• “Preserving Memory“: Visitors in Auschwitz.
• “Petrona Rivers“: Photo of a victim of gang violence in El Salvador - and of course the winner:
• “US Economy in crisis“

So, as you can guess… I moved once again. Due to a bunch of lost souls, I decided to use christmas holidays to move to a new living community.

A catholic student fraternity, which was living in the same house decided to expand. They had the right to take rooms in case someone moved out - meaning that by-and-by my living community would have been full of members of this organisation.

It’s sad to leave, because I had a great time there with a gigantic room, many charming and  changing flat-mates, an unforgettable party and a place to call my, at least, second home.

For those of you, who want to have the new address, you drop me a mail…

Merel, Murphy, Rhea and me enjoying a nice autumn day at one of my favourite places in Jena: Landgraf.

As a student of Communication Research I’m totally interested in advertising. Even in the hard times of studying in the end of this semester (5 exams in two weeks + a “mini” thesis) there’s still some time left for applied research:

• check this youtube search request
  

The title of this entry goes back to Oliviero Toscani’s great book “Advertising is a carrion smiling at us”, which is unfortunately not available in English. To be true, I’m really wondering why.

Addition: one to bind them all (one video with  all ads)…here

Now back studying….

Having a boring lecture at university, I recognized that Indrė’s (Bass) band (SheeZzanova) has a professional live performance video on youtube. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to see them live yet…

Reading Spiegel-Online, I just discovered that the winners of this year were nominated…fascinating shots!

During the protest I took a lot of photos, which received mostly rave reviews, but on the other side, it was said that they just represent one point of view, or one perspective of such a protest.

One the one hand, I have to admit, that the pictures cast a damning light on the police, gaining a view of a police state, and ignore the quite aggressive black block at such events. It was a safer spot, to take photos close to the police, out of harm’s way - at least at moments, where they weren’t “in action”. Photographing a member of the black block would have meant to get a paving stone fair in the face.

On the other hand, people that took part in the protests agree, that the presence and measures of police were at some points violating the basic rights. A helicopter was omni-present and so noisy, that it was impossible to listen to the speeches at the main stage. In addition to this, the police intervented at some points of time where it was not necessary at all, unsettling peaceful and pacific protesters. But especially operations in the sourroundings of the G8 meetings were constitutionally most dubious.Use the “Read more”-link to watch the photos..

Yesterday, I finally managed to move away from Münster’s district “Coerde”, which is totally outside. I’m now living close to the central station, and close to the city center.

Without the help (and the cars) of Hanna and Malte I wouldn’t have been able to move all the things to my new home.

Užupis, meaning behind the river (lt:Už upis), is a small part of Vilnius old town. Exactly 10 years ago the (mock) Republic of Užupis was proclaimed with a modern constitution, which entitles its citizens to have the right to:

§ 1: live by the river Vilnelė, while the river has the right to flow by everyone.

§ 3: die, but it’s not necessary.

§ 5: be unique.

§ 6: love.

§ 16: to be happy.

§ 17: to be unhappy.

§ 21: appreciate their unimportance.

The small area between the rivers is often compared to Montmartre in Paris, and they even have a some kind of community partnership.

The Užupis angel is probably the most famous monument in Užupis. It symbolizes the freedom of art in the republic.

There is a lovely tradition in Vilnius (and in many other countries, too): You place a padlock at bridges when you become a fresh couple, to ensure that your interpersonal connection is safe and eternal.

“Nes man atrodo aš tave įsikliopinau…” meaning “Because it seems to me that I fell in love with you.”

So, all in a nutshell, in the words of John F. Kenndy:

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.” Today in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

Nowadays (more than 40 years after his speech) the proudest boast is “Aš esu Užupio biurgeris.”

This concert was one part of their project «Live Cinema» . Silent movies are set to their original soundtracks by the orchester. The movie Ben-Hur: A tale of Christ is from 1925 and it is a silent movie production, where about 125.000 actors took part. The music played by the orchester was terrific, and it was nice to get an idea of how movies are set to music (or music is set to movies). And, for me, it was the first movie where Jesus is demoted to a water-boy.