goodbye, lenin!

my mom (pictured here, in café europa) is back in the states, and i have to get ready for berlin.  we really did a good job with the european film festival; we saw two polish, two german, and one estonian film.  the germans were the best, with the aforementioned nothing but ghosts and cherry blossoms - hanami.  the latter ended with applause and during the course of the film i could hear czechs and foreigners alike blowing their noses.  in fact it was most likely czechs, because i noticed that they have zero inhibitions about loudly blowing their noses in public.

life is elsewhere

my mom's arrival has reminded me that there is a world outside of my magical cocoon.  i have only reached the halfway mark, but i can feel the panic coming.  "the time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things..."  my time here is limited, and eventually i will have to think about credit transfers, my fall schedule, my senior thesis, and doing more work here while i can. n. and i bought bus tickets to berlin for two days.  we even found a very nice woman to stay with through couchsurfing, where you can literally stay on somebody's couch.  i hope i will forget my troubles for a while.

dny evropského filmu

my mom flew in to prague on friday on a direct flight from the real world, and she brought jellybeans.  she will be staying here for nine days.  the film festival days of european films has started, and i have planned a very active film-viewing schedule for the next two weeks.  yesterday we saw a really marvelous german film called nothing but ghosts (i beam with happiness at the thought of german cinema lately), and tonight a not quite so marvelous polish film called wednesday, thursday morning.  the director grzegorz pacek was there, but the q&a after the film was quite tense, as the film has some good moments, and was the kind that i hang on to, hoping it doesn't fall short, but then it does, and i feel sorry that it did.