Another Pastel Landscape

Another pastel landscape. Photo and Pastel: Ulla Hennig
Enjoy!
Scarborough Fair
I like this medieval song very much – I think it is full of tenderness and love.
Enjoy!
Old and New Architecture

Looking from the Anhalter Bahnhof to the Tempodrom. Photo: Ulla Hennig
It looks like a huge tent. The Tempodrom in Berlin is a quite famous event location, which opened in the year 2001.
The contrast between the ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof and the Tempodrom could not be stronger: one the one side you have modern architecture, on the other side typical industrial architecture.
Premio Dardos Award
Brad Shorr definitely made my day yesterday. As I am following his blog posts regularly (I am not in the field of marketing, but his posts always provide a source of inspiration for me) I learned that he had received the Premio Dardos Award (very much he earns that Award!) and passed it on to me.
I don’t know if you ever heard of this Award (I must admit, I haven’t), so here is the description:
“Premio Dardos means ‘prize darts’ in Italian. It is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.”
Well, some hours later, I stopped blushing. I am now in the process of selecting 15 other bloggers to pass the award to. So watch out – you’ll never know if you will be the one selected!
Once upon a Time There was a Station

Anhalter Bahnhof, originally uploaded by Ulla2004.
Animal in Town: The Beech Marten

Beech Marten. Pastels: Ulla Hennig; Photo: Ulla Hennig
You don’t need to leave the city in order to get in contact with wild animals. In Berlin you have foxes crossing the streets, wild boars happily digging away in your front garden, and – beech martens.
If you want to drive away with your car one morning, and nothing happens – well it could have been a beech marten having bitten off the ignition lead. They also like to brake hoses. Nobody knows why, but they love to do it.
They can be a pest. But on the other hand: Isn’t it fascinating to watch wild animals coming into town?
One Evening at the Movies: Berlinale 2009
The beginning of February is the time of the big movie festival “Berlinale” in Berlin. From the 5th till the 15th of February hundreds of films are shown in movie theatres all over the city.
I must admit: I don’t very often go to the movies. But a friend of mine is a heavy movie goer, and it is so much more fun to watch a movie together and to talk about it later.
So off we went, and the evening was quite an experience. It wasn’t the masses flocking to the entrance, mostly young people with their nice Berlinale bags hanging on their shoulders, talking in all kinds of foreign languages. It was not the cinema itself, one of the old ones, all in red, the plush seats, the walls, and the thick red curtain. It was the film.
It was called “mental”, and it was a documentary about patients being treated at an ambulant psychiatric clinic somewhere in Japan. They were shown with their deficiencies, but as fellow humans, some with sharp minds and witty, some trying to set goals for themselves and working on them. But all of them uttered the fear of being rejected by the “normal” world.
The film made me think about how poeple with mental illnesses are being treated here in Germany. People talk about going to their dentist, even their proctologist quite openly, but they don’t talk about going to their psychotherapist in fear of getting rejected by their colleagues at work, or even by members of their family.
So, one evening which was just meant to be a simple trip to the movies became much more: a provocation to reflect on the matter of mental illness…