Berlin with my students

13-15.2.2017. Going from Prague to Berlin on a three-day trip with eight 17-year-old girls can be an intimidating experience. Not with these ones, though: they're the coolest people I know and I love spending time with them. Three days seem to be a short time even now, a couple of days after coming back home.

One of my goals was to take the girls to places they will probably never visit on their own. We therefore took a train to the suburb of Wannsee, where, on the bank of Great Wannsee Lake, kies Villa Wannsee, known as the meeting place of the renowned Wannsee Conference of mid-range Nazi officials to discuss the deportation and extermination of Jews. It was an intense visit, but the garden outside offered everyone a place to run around and just have fun. When Viki noticed the frozen lake, she immediately jumped over the wall and started walking on the ice. That was a great opportunity for unconventional angels. I love the colors in this picture, which was edited on the train back to thr city center.

East Side Gallery made us late to our guided tour at the Jewish Museum, but provided us with some insights. One of the students put it simply: can you imagine just building a wall in the middle of the city one day? I myself was surprised again by its height, even though I've seenit numerous times. The artwork itself got enough criticism from the girls, but it did offer some great background for an impromptu urban shooting session with Róza. 

Berlinische Galerie has a huge retrospective of Cornelia Schleime, born in East Berlin and forced to move to the West Side to have a career as an artist. The exhibition offers mainly works from her later years, as only little has survived from her East-Side days.

There was time for some unexpected fun and games when we visited a sister-school.

Looking out from the Oberbaum Bridge. 

And lastly, since I'm not big on packing a lot of stuff, I wasn't sure about bringing my instax camera with me. But it proved to be a good idea, especially for urban portraiture and some on-bus night shooting, which made everyone look like the rock stars they are.