Berlin, Day 1

Sorry it's taken me so long to finally post, but finding a Wifi spot in Berlin is like trying to find a sausage in a well.
The truth is I haven't seen any films yet, so it's probably going to be a short one. After collecting my accreditation, my flatmate Esther & I snuck into the European Film Market, the trade show side of the festival, and browsed through the international stands - it was fascinating to see espresso-fulled sales agents and distributors openly negotiate terms of sale.
This being the most highly attended of all major festivals (hundreds of thousands of tickets are sold each year) getting into films without the red (press) pass isn't easy. This morning we queued up at 8:00am, in freezing wind and snow, to get out tickets for tomorrow. It's a strangely inefficient system for a German event, and both cruel and unusual given the weather. Non-badge holders are camping out in the arcades waiting for tickets overnight.
The rest of my time has been divided between the mundane (buying a new blackberry charger) to the interesting (a meeting about cinema networks at the AG KINO, Germany's arthouse network) to the fun (dinner in probably the only ska-pizza restaurant in the world).
So by the end of tomorrow I will have actual reviews of films and more news. Until then, Auf Wiedersen!