Theatre and DVDs

Last night Ricarda and I went to Kreuzberg to watch some improv theatre, which isn't so big in Germany. Ricarda had a bit of a cold from what she thought was because of going outside a few days earlier with wet hair. That's one lesson I learnt quickly in Germany - it just turns to ice in cold weather and feels horrible.
Anyway, it turned out some Americans were in town and the show was in English. Ricarda was disapoointed because she'd wanted to show me some German theatresports, but it didn't really matter. Although lots of people didn't know it would be in English and some Germans had trouble understanding, eg what's a trailer park? What does "I call it like I see it" mean? The first half was pretty funny, where we all got to write the script, but the second half fell a bit flat. It was like they ran out of ideas, and the dancing at the end was just bizarre. But it was still good to go out to Kreuzberg, which has good nightlife.
It's pretty impossible to avoid English in central Berlin. With more and more foreigners flocking here, it's a default language and considered by young Germans to be pretty cool. I've already written about the odd mish-mash of English verbs forced into German, but if you listen to people talk, it can be like: "German German German English word German German..." Sometimes it turns out I am trying to use a German word where an English one would do, like yesterday I said DVD-spieler when DVD player is better.
Yesterday I joined Negativland, a really cool video store just across from Helmholzplatz. It's an opportunity for me to watch movies in German that I wouldn't normally get to, eg old silent movies and films made in the GDR. Yesterday I rented Berlin - Synphonie of a City, which was made in 1929 and just shows a typical day in the life of Berlin. A really cool time capsule, just to see where people went and what they wore. But it gave me a funny feeling too, because although the late '20s were a good time in Germany it didn't last. It was a decade after the First World War, and then a few years after the crippling inflation where a newspaper would cost something ridiculous like 100,000Marks and money itself becamd worthless, just blowing around the streets. But 1929 was only four years before Hitler came into power, so he would have been rising in fame down south when the film was made. It made me wonder when I looked at the people - how many would become Nazis? How many would be sent to camps or fight in the war? How many would live in West or East Berlin 30 years later? So the film's time capsule quality seemed even more fragile. Apparently there is a 2002 version of the film which would also be good to see.