Southern France is so last summer: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have moved their brood to a southwestern corner of Berlin known for its lakes and historical infamy. Picturesque Wannsee features a long inland beach along two lakes that's perfect for the Jolie-Pitt kids, so long as nannies abound.
Pitt just signed on to Quentin Tarantino's remake of the Italian World War II classic "Inglorious Bastards," in which a group of prisoners escape around D-Day and find themselves wedged between both sides. The film is shooting in nearby Potsdam in the next few months, allowing Pitt to commute to "work." ("Inglorious Bastards" costars "National Treasure"'s Diane Kruger, horror director Eli Roth and "The Office"'s B.J. Novak.)
Sadly for us, it looks like the closest the Super World Travelers are going to get to the US this fall is on the big screen: Pitt's "Burn After Reading" topped the box office two weekends ago, while Jolie's "Changeling" will be feted at the New York Film Festival.
Wannsee is known to German history buffs as the location for the conference that outlined the "Final Solution"--the nest of policies that led to the Holocaust--in 1942.
A couple of months ago we told the tale of Hitler losing his head: A wax version of Hitler, at least, who was beheaded by a tourist very shortly after he was first exhibited in Berlin's Madame Tussaud's Waxworks.
The wax Hitler has now been carefully repaired and is on display again. There's a key difference this time: instead of being protected just by a rope cordon, Hitler is now safely behind a pane of glass in a reconstruction of the bunker where he spent his final days.
News of Hitler's return is suspiciously absent from the German-language "News" pages of the Berlin Madame Tussaud's website--instead there's just old news about J-Lo. We guess she's more of a priority these days.
Is Berlin the new Amsterdam? Well, hipster enclave Prenzlauer Berg might be.
German cops have shut down a candy store in the notorious neighborhood in Berlin after discovering the 23-year-old owner was peddling chocolates and lollipops laced with magic mushrooms and marijuana.
"In the shop we found 120 pieces of magic mushroom chocolate and countless cannabis lollipops," said police, who confiscated around 70 sachets containing various drugs, about 20 marijuana joints, a range of pills and some jars of drug-laced honey
Sorry, we still haven't been able to dig up the address of the shuttered sweets shop!
Want to know what it's like to live in a country where government surveillance is rampant and your every move is tracked? See how fun it is to be watched at Zur Firma, a new bar in Berlin decorated with East German paraphernalia, including an interrogation table and fake security cameras!
John McCain is using Barack Obama's vacation videos against him! Footage of the crowd waiting for Obama in Berlin where he gave a speech last week opens a new campaign ad, which alleges that Obama is "the biggest celebrity in the world" and... thus... unfit to be president?
We're not sure we follow, but no way would 200,000 people line up for Paris Hilton any more (if they ever would have).
Both candidates will be speaking to much smaller crowds today, as McCain visits Racine, Wisconsin and Obama stops in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Then McCain's off to Panama City, Florida for a benefit concert featuring John Rich of Big'n'Rich. Who's the celeb magnet now?
Visitors to modern-day Germany are almost 20 years late to catch the Berlin Wall in action. But the structure that divided the city for 30 years and served as a symbol for the Cold War for both sides is visible thanks to the government's GPS tour of where the wall used to be.
Like an art museum audio guide, a "Walk the Wall" device can be picked up at several locations--like the Brandenburg Gate and popular crossover Checkpoint Charlie--and rented by the hour to dispense history lessons at various points where the wall used to stand.
Because it uses GPS, the guides can also tell you if you've strayed too far from the wall and how to get back on track. An iPod tour can't do that!
The newest version of Madame Tussaud's wax museums opened up in Berlin over the weekend, but just seconds in to the new museum's life, a vandal struck: A Berlin man leaped right into the exhibits and tore off Adolf Hitler's head.
The wax figure of Hitler is now being repaired and the management of Madame Tussaud's is adamant that they'll return him to the exhibition. (The museum says market research they carried out before opening revealed that a majority of Germans wanted to have him on display.)
Ripping heads of wax dolls does sound like a nice way to get revenge over people, though. Only we mightn't target Hitler straight out: there's this rather enticing version of Britney Spears to be dealt with first.
Well-informed visitors to Berlin this week could've been witnesses to the World Chess Boxing Championships which just finished up, crowning Russian Nikolai Sazhin as this year's world champion chess boxer.
Not up with the ultra-cool sport of chess boxing? Neither were we, but now we know it's literally a combination of boxing and chess. Six rounds of chess (each four minutes long) are alternated with five rounds of boxing (three minutes each), and you can lose the match either by getting into checkmate or being knocked out. At least, that's the simple version.
We are still trying to find out where the 2009 Chess Boxing Championships will be held, but as soon as we do, we're getting into training.
0 Comments - Add Yours
by egw
