Dual Teichmuller and lamination spaces

We survey explicit coordinate descriptions for two (A and X) versions of Teichmuller and lamination spaces for open 2D surfaces, and extend them to the more general set-up of surfaces with distinguished collections of points on the boundary. Main features, such as mapping class group action, Poisson and symplectic structures and others, are described in these terms. The lamination spaces are interpreted as the tropical limits of the Teichmuller ones. Canonical pairings between lamination and Teichmuller spaces are constructed. The paper could serve as an introduction to higher Teichmuller theory developed by the authors in math.AG/0311149, math.AG/0311245.