Que Pasa + Once

After another Sunday brunch and a visit to the Flea Market, I was sat in a cafe drinking hot chocolate, listening to live acoustic music and chatting with the others trying to think of what to do in the evening and how I could best avoid going back to the apartment. In the course of this Ollie mentioned a small cs gathering at Que Pasa cocktail bar at 7pm.

I arrived early and Dominike was running late, so far so good then. I didn't know who else was turning up so was glad to see a friendly face after 30 minutes in the cold. A few more people arrived and everyone ordered cocktails and a couple of people at one end of the table ordered food. Gradually throughout the night the desire for food slowly spread up the table until everyone had ordered food.

One of the people I got talking to was Don and Irish guy who invited me along to see an Irish film called ‘Once’ at one of the others csers apartments, but I had to keep hush-hush about it as it was a private thing, or there wasn’t enough space or something. I’m not really sure but I was glad of the invite none-the-less, I’m always happy to watch new films.

After getting to Warschauer Strasse we went to a small DVD rental/coffee shop which had a vast selection of English and foreign art-house titles, definitely somewhere I’ll be going back to frequently.

Once back to the apartment, we settled down with food and hot whiskey to ‘cure’ our colds (which worked fairly well I must say) we watched the film. I’m going to be lazy again and just paste a synopsis from imdb:

An (unnamed) Guy is a Dublin guitarist/singer-songwriter who makes a living by fixing vacuum cleaners in his Dad's Hoover repair shop by day, and singing and playing for money on the Dublin streets by night. An (unnamed) Girl is a Czech who plays piano when she gets a chance, and does odd jobs by day and takes care of her mom and her daughter by night. Guy meets Girl, and they get to know each other as the Girl helps the Guy to put together a demo disc that he can take to London in hope of landing a music contract. During the same several day period, the Guy and the Girl work through their past loves, and reveal their budding love for one another, through their songs.

It was a truly exceptional film, which impressively was made with a micro-budget and the main characters being played by musicians not actors. I enjoyed the music of the film so much that I bought the soundtrack from iTunes the next day.