What they are ...

Lining up for in Germany:

Berlin Film Festival

This year’s Berlin Film Festival, which ends Feb. 26, is almost sold out. A welcome break in the long German winter, the cinematic feast is celebrating its 60th anniversary with 26 competitors from around the world, including the U.S., Japan, China, Britain, Spain and France. Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski and Michael Winterbottom are among the directors competing for the coveted Golden Bear award.

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Reading in Pakistan:

“Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution”

Pakistani rock icon Salman Ahmad is a singer-guitarist who includes Led Zeppelin among his influences and whose band, Junoon, has been called “the U2 of Asia.” The autobiography’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, describes Ahmad as being “in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald’s.”

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Dressing up for in Italy:

Venice Carnival

The Venice Carnival is in full swing with the canal city’s Renaissance, Baroque and Venetian Gothic palaces and piazzas a perfect setting for this annual, sumptuous street theater. Shrove Tuesday festivities will be jam-packed with dinners, balls, music and dancing in sometimes eccentrically modern garb, but mostly in gorgeous period costumes and masks. A gondola parade along the Grand Canal, Casanova’s Ball in the Palazzo Zenobio, a Baroque concert in a Venetian music school and cocktails while listening to opera in a historic hotel are just a few items in two weeks of stylish hedonism and decadence.

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Watching in India:

“Pavitra Rishta”

More than 20 million people tune in every night to follow a mother’s search for a well-educated and decently employed young man for her daughter on a soap opera whose title means “Pure Relationship.” The TV show portrays the daily struggles of a middle-class family and how the young protagonist, Archana, keeps her family together. And there is the quintessential love interest in the form of Manav, a mechanic whose humble background makes it impossible for Archana’s mother to accept him.