Summer’s Here!

… or at least it is in Berliners’ minds.

Yesterday (sunday) the sun made a lengthy appearance, and by way of response, the temperature hauled itself grudgingly into the teens.  In other northern european cities this might result in you leaving your scarf and gloves at home, or perhaps a cheery exchange with a neighbour, along the lines that “spring is be just around the corner”.  Even in London, I imagine that everyone would be looking slightly less pissed off than is the norm.

Not so in Berlin. 

Pavement cafe tables (an all-year-round feature of most establishments) were packed.  The sort of people who own dogs kept on pieces of string were out in force in the park, without their shirts. (The people that is, not the dogs. Dogs don’t have shirts, especially in Berlin, where they definitely wouldn’t be seen dead in those tartan doggy coats that doggy people buy their beloved pets). 

And of course there’s the ice cream.

Berlin appears to be sort of powered by ice cream.  It’s not just a summer thing – I’ve seen people getting stuck into their favorite flavour in a snow storm.  Queues yesterday ran out of shops and down the streets, yet none of the vendors seemed to be running out.  They’d probably stocked up specially – it is late February after all.  Almost time to turn off the pavement heaters, and for annoying musicians to start playing panpipe and/or accordian based music at you in the street.

In short, it seems that Berlin’s population either believes itself erroneously to be a city on the mediteranean, or is simply wildly optimistic about the weather.  Perhaps it’s because in reality the summer is so short here, getting started twards the end of May, and usually gone by mid September.  The rest of the year is often characterised by a kind of ‘grey sky blanket’ which just lies on top of the city like, well, an enormous grey blanket.  In the sky.  So I can’t blame everyone for making the most of it when the sun decides to make a guest appearance.

Can’t stay, as I need to go and fix my bike.  I’m not entirely sure whether the rear tyre has a very slow puncture, or whether I’ve been gradually gaining weight since Christmas (I have a medical condition which requires that I take cheese cake orally three times a day).  So either it’s an inner tube repair, or I need to buy a heavier duty bike to support my increasing spread.

In partial response to the latter, we both got new trainers today (as in ’training shoes’ rather than ’personal trainers’ – it would be excessive to have two of those, or even one come to think of it).  Katie’s gone off to a yoga class tonight, and intends to start running this week.  I’ll join her soon, just as soon as, er, I’ve got rid of this cough that’s been troubling me. 

The Cold War returns

I’d recently come to assume that colds were something linked to being at work – they stopped when we stopped.  Until now that is.  I’ve got a horrible chesty cough with hot & cold running nose and am feeling very sorry for myself.  Doubly so because, well, we’re on holiday and it’s really annoying when you’re ill on holiday, albeit one of this extended length.

‘Enough, already!’ choruses everyone who has to go to work with a cold, or stay at home worrying about all the work they’re not doing.  I remember that.  Fair point.  So on to other things.

The 58th Berlinale ends this weekend, Berlin’s bewildering large film festival.  As we invariably miss everything at the London film festival, we thought we’d make the effort this time.

So we thought we’d avoid credit card charges by going along to our nearest kino and selecting tickets from the hundreds of films on offer.  But we hadn’t reckoned with the worst co-ordinated film catalogue known to man. 

The film ‘themes’ (documentary, shorts, etc) each had a separate colour coded part section in the catalogue, with film programme boards up in the cinema foyer showing what was still available.  This was also colour coded.  But not in the same colours.

Within the themes, the films were listed in a secret order; neither alphabetically, chronologically, or even by country.

So it was near impossible to pick something on the boards which hadn’t been crossed off, and cross reference it with the catalogue. Particularly as each time we did manage to pick a film, a lady came out and crossed it off.

After a while, we began to realise that nearly every film seemed to be about an abused peasant girl in 17th century China.  Or something similar.  Worthy themes all, but I’m fast becoming like my granny – always wondering why there wasn’t something ‘a bit more cheerful’ on.  And it wasn’t just us.  I watched as several people, exasperated, sat down on the floor to try and unlock the cryptic secrets of the film catalogue, chainsmoking as they did so*.

 *Which, as in the UK, is now banned in Berlin.  But Berliners seem to be taking a ‘flexible’ approach.

By the way, I’ve had a complaint about my other (architecture) blog, claiming that it needs ‘more pictures’.  Maybe so, but this blog has no pictures, and is still marvellous.  To head off the obvious response, I would point at that I don’t put pictures on here partly because 

a) it would interrupt the flow of the prose, preventing your imagination from going to work on my luminous word-pictures,

but mainly because

b) I cannot be arsed.  It’s really fiddly.

But to satiate this lunatic modern craze for looking at things, here’s a photo of the cinema in which the film confusion mentioned earlier took place (there’s an external view on my apparently less entertaining blog, at architectureinberlin.wordpress.com).  You can’t see the programme board, or the catalogue, so you’ll still have to use your celebrity-media-stunted imaginations. Enjoy.

What else?  Oh yes – part two of our Umwelt/campervan saga.  Just after I last posted, we were giving a friend a lift home, when we got flagged down at a police road block.  “HAVEN’T YOU GOT EYES?!?  DIDN’T YOU SEE THE SIGNS SAYING ‘UMWELT’, FOR WHICH YOUR VEHICLE HAS NO PERMIT STICKER??!!” the poilceman shouted at me. (He shouted in german, but his manner, gesticulations and my still very limited german meant that I understood).  I pretended to be an English tourist idiot (a role I’ve been working on for many months – I virtually live the character) and we sort of got away with it.

I say sort of, because we didn’t get fined or imprisoned, but we were forced to drive out of Berlin at that moment.  Meaning that we had to sneak back in via another route, fearful that we’d meet the same policeman, and the trick wouldn’t work twice.  I’m not yet comfortable with uniformed germans shouting at me.  Or indeed anyone shouting at me (in case the pevious statement offends any Prussian militarists).

Bye for now.

Jim.  (And Katie, who’s sitting on the sofa doing the Puzzler magazine. She sends hugs.)

Trolley Jammin’

Let’s be honest then. My New Year resolution to blog regularly hasn’t really worked, has it?

The usual range of excuses, although a brand new one is that I’ve started another blog. It’s all about architecture in Berlin, and in a moment of genius, I’ve called it ‘Architecture in Berlin’. If you’re really bored, and have an interest in concrete, you can find it at:

architectureinberlin.wordpress.com

So what’s new with us?

Went to see Roisin Murphy last night (the ex-singer of Moloko) who was fantastic. She was due to play in Berlin in november but fell over on stage in a previous show and hurt herself quite badly (the YouTube footage of this has been withdrawn, so you’ll have to make do with the video I’ve linked, but it’s very good). As an added bonus, she ended the show* with a fake fight with her two very slinky backing singers, which ended with them all writhing about on the floor.

*The show we saw last night, not the one where she hit her head, obviously. That show ended with her being flown home for hospital treatment, which was not an added bonus, unless you like that sort of thing. If you do, you probably like that film/MTV series where that idiot nails his nadgers to the back of a car and stuff.

Anyway, what else? Oh yes, the saga of Bessie (our campervan) continues. She’s been in and out of the garage since I last mentioned this (you remember – the garage where they spend a long time having lunch) with the same problem. But what we didn’t know until just before Christmas was that Berlin has introduced a new rule, coming into full force on 1st Feb, known as the Umwelt zone, which restricts older vehicles with higher emissions from coming into the centre. Every vehicle has to be tested, but generally speaking you have a problem if your vehicle is:

• over ten years old (oh dear)
• diesel (oh bugger)
• large (damn – ours is 2.5 litres)
• has a fridge on board (oh no)

I made the last one up, but the first three caused the man at the garage to look very sombre and shake his head in that way that means “I’d like to bend the rules, particularly as your camper is clearly going to bring me so much work in the future, but I can’t”. Well that’s how I read it anyway.

So our plan now is to take her (I should say ‘it’ – we’re clearly too fond of this troublesome vehicle) outside the zonal limit, then decide what to do at a later date. Our landlord here has offered their summerhouse as a temporary location, which is very generous, and a good excuse to be nosey, as they’ve often mentioned the place.

On a sort-of-but-not-really-related subject, the smoking ban is now in full force here in Berlin, amazingly. Most bars and venues now have a separate smoking room, or you have to go outside. It seems to be working, although fines for non-compliance don’t begin until next month. The downside, as with the ban in the UK, is that you are now aware what everyone smells like. Particularly in sweaty clubs, where the aroma is… interesting.

Though not a smoker myself, I felt a need for one a couple of days ago, to recover from an incident during a trip to Bauhaus (our equivalent of B&Q). I’ll relate it to you, but apologies if it’s overly technical. Perhaps I’ll break it down into numbered points, like a report.  In fact, yes, I will, so here goes:
1.  I intended to buy some large sheets of board, so I needed one of those ‘flat bed’ type trolleys.
2.  To get one of these required a 20 Euro deposit.
3.  I needed to get to the upper floor of the store, which is accessed via a long moving ramp escalator, which you can take your trolley up.
4.  The ‘up’ ramp was closed for maintenance, and they had stopped the ‘down’ ramp, so people could use it to walk up as well as down.
5.  I therefore needed to push the trolley up the ramp, requiring a long run up, and a lot of force.
6.  I successfully got to the top, but then encountered a restriction, a bit like the frame things either side of store entrances which trigger an alarm when you’ve nicked something. (For the record, I don’t often, if ever, steal stuff from stores. But the alarm sensors sometimes go off because the tag remover thingy at cash desk has failed to work. I have other stories about this – remind me to tell you at some point.)
7.  Normal trollies would have fitted through. It later turned out that I should have taken my trolley in the lift, if I had bothered, or been able, to read the sign. (The restrictor for the ‘up’ ramp is at the bottom, so normally I wouldn’t have got onto the ramp in the first place.)
8.  My trolley was of a type which widens towards the back, so although I got the front end through, it wedged solid.
9.  There were by now several people queuing behind me, with normal trollies. The ‘normal’ trollies have devices on the wheels which lock on a slope, which people had managed to overcome by sheer force and momentum, which they had now lost, by having to stop, and were now all jammed.
10.  I would have simply climbed over the trolley this point, and run away, but it still had my 20 euros in it.
11.  The three guys repairing the ‘up’ ramp, who had been laughing at me up until this point, grudgingly decided to come to my aid, but were unable to shift my trolley – I had managed to ‘lock’ it into place with two protruding side bars, which then prevented it reversing.
12.  They finally concluded that the only way to free it was to dismantle the restriction mechanism either side, which was bolted to the floor.
13.  I slunk off, hoping to sneak back once the angry queue had dispersed (which they could only do by dragging their trolleys backwards down the ramp) and retrieve my twenty euros.

Needless to say, once I had been given back my now battered trolley, they didn’t have the type of board I needed.

I’m now exhausted just thinking about the whole experience, so am off for a nice cup of tea, and possibly a biscuit.

Happy New Silvester

Happy New Year!

Or ‘Silvester’ as it’s inexplicably known here.  Except when it isn’t.  It’s often more explicably known as Neues Jahre, which means New Year (d’uh, like obviously).  God knows where Silvester came from.  I didn’t make it up; it’s written all on posters and stuff.

Am quite excited at the moment as my sister Trish has just had a baby girl (Dec 31st) – no name yet, but 8lbs, and all are well.  Which is not much to do with Berlin, but felt I should put it in anyway.

Where did the last four months go?  In particular, where did the seven weeks go since my last blog?  My New Year resolution is to structure my days better, as when you have nothing that you have to do, the one thing you’re guaranteed to do is nothing.  Yesterday, being the first day of the New Year, I decided to do a blog.  I failed (today is the 2nd Jan) but I did come up with a list of excuses for not writing one for so long:

1.  We’ve had lots of guests.

2. We had a language course to do. (In German, obviously.  Spanish or somesuch Latin tongue would be of little use here in Berlin.  Although strictly speaking, English is proving disappointingly adequate.)

3. Writing a list of Important Things Which Must Be Done Before Christmas (ITWMBDBC for short).

4. Thinking about doing items from 3. above.

5. Thinking about doing alternative things in order to avoid doing anything from the ITWMBDBC list.

6. Thinking of snappier alternative name for the ITWMBDBC.

7. Realising that it’s now after Christmas, and that virtually none of the ITWMBDBC list is done, and worse still that it needs to be renamed as the ITWHTBDBCBHSHNPIADHTTWTI list (Important Things Which Had To Be Done Before Christmas But Haven’t So Have Now Put In A Draw Hoping That They Weren’t That Important).

8. Katie made a Christmas cake, which was very nice.

I digress – on to this blogging thingy.

During the weeks leading up to New Year, several people had told us they were leaving Berlin for the celebratory period because of all fireworks. 

“Fireworks?” I said,  “I love fireworks, they’re great”. 

“Oh no” they replied knowingly, “these fireworks are let off in the streets, and are very dangerous.  I have a friend who is now permanently deaf in one ear… etc, etc ” at which point I would tune out, assuming that this was just a circuitous conversational route leading to their unnacceptably racist views on the presence of so many Turks in the neighbourhood.

Cycling to a New Year’s Eve party across Berlin was a mistake, it turned out, as people have a tendency to throw live fireworks at your wheels.  Which is better than at your head.  It quickly emerged that the Silvester firework tradition is this:

1. Buy all the fireworks available in the city.  This is quite a lot, as Berlin’s ‘Disorganised Firework Display’ receives the full support of all shops selling fireworks.  Which seems to be all shops.  You can buy them with your kebab if you have loose change.

2. From about 10pm, find a space in the street (not so easy bearing in mind everyone else is doing the same thing across the city) and start letting them off.  Have enough to last three to four hours.  Don’t worry that some of them are really quite explosively big, or indeed that they’re not pointing upwards when they go off.  The walls of the surrounding blocks of flats tend to ‘duct’ most of them upwards eventually, and only a small proportion get snagged on windows and balconies causing them to enter buildings.

Having sounded terribly negative and Health’n'Safety about all of this, it was definitely a sight worth seeing.  People were letting off really substantial fireworks every few metres (with shops and restaurants joining in with their own street level displays) until within a few minutes there was a thick smog of gunpowder smoke filling the streets.  Apart from the odd moment of genuine fear when a firework bouncd off the balcony where we were standing, it was all quite exhilarating.  The mystery is why you don’t see more Berliners with the odd eye or ear missing.  I’ll look more closely the next time I’m out in daylight.

The only slight downside was that cycling home, the streets were a sea of (hopefully) spent fireworks and broken glass (Berliners rarely use plastic bottles, as you get money back on the glass ones, which get cleaned and reused, just like they used to with fizzy pop back home.  And milk bottles, come to think of it).  I consequently punctured my back tyre, and won’t be cycling for the next few days, as it began snowing early on yesterday, which is covering up all the broken glass.  Having said this, the forthcoming glass-filled-snowball fights will be no more dangerous than the firework display that preceded them.

A brief update for the curry minded amongst you, who may recall our initial disappointment at the curry situation.  We’ve so far found an OK curry takeaway, although still nothing like the UK (they can do hot, although not very hot, but somehow they don’t do spicy – the curries are a bit bland).  But what about Currywurst, that unique German culinary fusion of curry and sausage? 

The first couple were made along the following lines:

- deep fry a hot dog sausage

- slice it into bits and smother it, really absolutely swamp it, with almost-like-ketchup sauce

- liberally sprinkle curry powder over

- add chips to taste

The result, of course, is revolting.  But since those early experiences, they’ve been…  exactly the same.  We were kind of thinking that there was an ‘authentic’ currywurst out there – something with a subtle mix of quality wurst and aromatically spiced sauces. But no, the first one we had was as authentic. 

The problem is, we now love them.  We lust after them in much the same way as those ads pretended you should feel about Pot Noodle. They’re just dirty, and you want them.

It’s Snowing!

Just a short post to say

IT’S SNOWING!

And not in a terribly English way either.  It started with a thunderstorm with rain, which then turned to sleet, which has now turned to proper snow.  Great big white flakes - it’s definitely, verifiably snow.   We’ve just cycled back in it, from a local cafe.  We’d popped out to do some shopping and it was a lovely sunny morning, but then it went a bit rainy and we agreed on the need for a second breakfast.  We often have this need.

You might be thinking “yes, but Jim and Katie didn’t grow up in Australia or wherever.  They’ve seen snow plenty of times.”  True, but…

a) unlike globally warming London, where it hasn’t snowed ‘properly’ for ages, this snow is quite early in the winter and looks like it means business.  Berliners have recently delighted in telling us how cold it might get, and that the other year the snow hung around till April

b) because we’re not working, life has become real again.  All the stuff that just used to be peripheral to work is now noticeable.  If it snowed in London, I used to think “pooh, I’ve got to go to work in this.”  Here, I’m thinking “hoorah, I can go and play in this!” Although obviously both of us will be wrapping up warmly in sensible clothing and drinking lots of warm drinks*.

Plus the fact that it’s saturday afternoon, and seems just the right moment for such a thing to happen.  We’ve just finished the first week of a three week intensive German course (as in the language, not a course for becoming an intensive German, although we’ve met some) which made today feel like a proper weekend for the first time in ages.

The course, by the way, is quite good, although everyone on it is considerably younger than us.  Not quite as young as teenage, but still of an age where thay sit and giggle and flirt together, and mainly want to know every possible German swearword.  Actually, I want to know this too, but as an adult (or at least as a person disguised as a 37 year old) it seems inapropriate to ask this of our new friends here.  Don’t worry, I will ask in due course, then publish a table of filth here on the blog.

*Well, Gluhwein at least.  This is German mulled wine, for those not in the know. 

Remember, remember…

(and this is the second one) 

…the 5th of November, that’s what I’m currently missing. Not the date itself, obviously (they have November here, and similar numbers of days in each month) but the fireworks, although it has occurred to me that I have only the weakest grasp of what it all commemorates. At a house party the other night I tried to emlighten a man from Munich (foreshortened in the following account to ‘MFM’, for your greater reading comfort).

Me: A man tried to blow up Parliament, using, er, fireworks.

MFM: Why was that?

Me: I don’t know, I think he was trying to overthrow the government, but it went wrong and he was caught.

MFM: So there were no fireworks.

Me: No.

MFM: So what does it celebrate?

Me: A man not blowing up Parliament.

I went on to explain that the English always love a heroic failure, until it occurred to me that I may have missed the point. Must do some British history cramming.

Apart from fireworks, it’s been a lovely crisp cold winter’s day here – we walked along the canal earlier, which is beautiful. The Wall used to run along a part of it near our flat, and, since its removal, an area has been colonised by the sort of makeshift arts-centre-come-squat which apparently used to typify East Berlin after 1990, but is becoming increasingly rare. There’s a block of flats where the canal turns which have also survived the surrounding gentrification; it still has a blank wall of corrugated sheeting and bricked up windows where it faced directly across the canal from East to West. Luxury apartments within a year I’ll be bound, ‘Wall Vista’, ‘Stasi Heights’ or somesuch.

Pause for Thought

A couple of brief blog posts which I’ve only just got around to posting, due to the usual tedious problems with the interweb, which I’ll probably rant about soon, but not today.  

Just prior to our trip to Poland (Wrocslav) the other week, our campervan broke down. When I say ‘just prior’, I mean that for a while it’s been making a sort of hot steamy smell. This was obviously caused by something important and technical, so I decided to ignore it.

And when I say ‘broke down’, I mean that steam started coming out of the front, at which point I thought it best to take it to a garage.

Small local garages, assuming that this one is typical, seem to be tidier than their UK equivalent; each of the four or five mechanics had their own rack of shiny equipment. Perhaps they polish and clean when there’s a free moment. Anyhoo, I arrived at about ten past one to find the garage locked, with a sign directing me to ‘der Pauseraum’ (restroom). I was surprised to discover that the room in question contained not a grubby sink, jar of Nescafe and a girly calender dating from before the fall of the Wall, but five people seated round a table, sharing a proper meal. With a tablecloth. And not even a telly on, showing motor sport.

They were very helpful, but it was clear that they’d be remaining in that room enjoying their lunch until 2pm, if I’d like to wait. It seems to me that this is on balance a good thing. If I ever have some sort of job again in the future (rather than sliding into an unemployable state, rising every afternoon to stagger to the nearest café to scrounge a roll-up) I have decided that I too will enjoy a proper lunch. With a tablecloth.

Back at the subject of technical campervan type things, all went swimmingly once everyone had finished lunch, the only exceptions being

1. my not knowing the word for steam (Dampf) and

2. having to mime steam coming out of a radiator, and

3. the fact that the replacement radiator needed to be sent from the UK*

*Where it had in turn been imported from Japan. If you add to this the fact that our camper is a 2.5litre 4WD turbodiesel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re not a very green couple. However, our carbon footprint is vastly reduced by the fact that our campervan remains stationary in a garage for as much time as it’s on a road, while we cycle round Berlin like the pair of trendies we are.

Compounding the Problem

Germans are big on compound nouns – the second longest apparently is Donaudampfschiffahrtsgeselschaftskapitanskajutenschlussel.  Which means “the cabin key of the captain of the Danube Steam Shipping Company”.

The longest German compound noun, roughly translated, means “the flat of the people from London who have more money than sense, which is much bigger than my place even though I’ve lived and worked here for years, who invite me round to tell me they don’t know what to do with all the space and isn’t it marvellous how much cheaper than London everything here is?”.  But I’m not sure how to spell it correctly.

To paraphrase Churchill, the redecoration of our flat is not at an end, nor indeed at beginning of the end, but it is perhaps at the end of the beginning.  What I’m trying to say is that from now on we plan to stop doing this full time and go out and meet people and do stuff instead, because

a) it’s really boring now

b) I’m running out of anything to write about in t’blog*

A typical day recently involved us taking up the horrible pink carpet, to discover even horribler green and red carpet tiles beneath.  Under these was ply board, but under this was some lovely parquet flooring, which we then spent yesterday taking the nails out of and polishing – a job until that point not on the project plan***.  You may care not a cat’s smelly wee how far we’ve got with all this, but I want to tell you anyway, as we’ve spent so much time on it, perhaps unwisely as it’s only a rental for a year or so, but hey, if a job’s worth doing.

We’re pretty much done on the living room, the main bedroom and the guest bedroom (note the use of ‘guest’ – this means you’re welcome to come and stay).  The kitchen is passable, the bathroom we don’t talk about at the moment (it’s a colour thing, and we don’t want to be replacing the bathroom suite in a rented flat), the maid’s room (now a junk room) is now appropriately full of our junk.  Which leaves the Berliner room – the largest room, where we’ve attempted to paint the ceiling panelling in different tones of grey, before realising just how long this might take.  You can join in with this task if you like, if you choose to visit before early summer next year.

Our furniture arrived (two weeks late) on thursday, but without our sofa. On perusing the list, the removers admitted that it had been picked up in London, but not made it to Berlin.  Which we knew, as we were there when it left, and also there when it failed to arrive. Like, d’uh.

So there it is. Am off to a different bar shortly to see England get beaten in the rugby final.  Germany didn’t get into the final for this one, apparently.  Amazing what you learn when living abroad.

Spater!

Jim (& Katie, who’s back home in the bath)

Those footnotes in full:

*Some of you may suggest that this happened some time ago. During my first blog, in fact.

**Ha, ha, that confused you – there is no second footnote.  But I’m feeling free with them, since our mate Louise posted the other day to say it’s OK to use lots of subclauses etc, referring to this one, which is much worse. So there.

***Once a Project Manager, always one…

All We Hear Is (Radio Da Da)****

 (Written sunday 14th, posted 15th)

This morning was such a beautiful autumnal day that we were up at the crack of 11 (ish) and foresook the never-ending decorating to go up to our local flohmarkt (flea market). Whereas UK fleamarkets can tend to be a bit small with a lot of tat, Berlin flohmarkts are often huge and colossally full of tat. But they also have some top bargains – today’s acquired items as follows:

1. Two chairs, 25 euros each, got both for 35. The man wanted forty but we used our bargaining tactic #2 (for tactic #1, see item 3, below), namely: asking whether there is a bank near (knowing there isn’t) and demonstrating that our wallets only contain 35 euros, plus some small change, which we offer him for the sake of realism, but which he politely declines. Still, he was a nice man, and probably it was all just a front for an art project (often the way in Berlin) as he took pictures first of the chairs, then of us sitting on the chairs, explaining that he made a similar photgraphic record of all such transactions.

2. The one Chemical Brothers album* which I didn’t have, 6 euros. Actually not that much of a bargain as all music now free over the world wide interweb, but that lady in America got fined umpty-tumpty thousand dollars the other day for file sharing didn’t she, and the music industry has probably been watching me for years since I used to make all those compilation cassettes for friends. Plus I like having CDs. 3. Glass fronted cabinet, would only be beaten down from 70 euros to 65, but worth a try. Not half as good a bargain as the oak framed mirror we bought last week, using bargaining tactic #1**, where I feign disinterest bordering on distaste, K gives in and we both start to wander off, hoping for a consequent drop in price. Works best at the end of the day when they’re packing up, and where the item isn’t part of their normal wares. Result, 15 euro mirror down to 10, which is about £6. Possibly.We’re now back at the flat with our trophies, it’s mid-afternoon and the weather still glorious, so am writing this on the balcony rather than getting on with the matter in hand, which is, and will remain for a while yet, decorating.

As we’re so often stuck inside painting, rather than conversing freely in German with the locals as you’re probably expecting by now, we’ve tried tuning in to german radio to pick up a complete working knowledge of the lingo. With limited success on the following stations:

Radio Eins Berlin, and radio 88.8 (achtundachtzig-acht as it’s catchily known). Linguistic success rating; a bit. The latter has advertising, where we can mainly work out what’s going on, with the exception of a bizarre Fast Show/Chanel 9 type ad where a man shouts a lot followed by the last couple of bars of ‘Old MacDonald’ – the bit that goes ‘Ee-Ey-Ee-Ey-Oh’. They also have an unfamiliar mix of BBC Radio 1 style music interspersed with impossibly in-depth sounding interviews about interest rates. The depth (or pomposity) continues into the musician interviews, where I swear to god an answer by local star Helen Scneider to what seemed to be the question ‘tell us about your influences’ met with her response “Elvis Presley, die Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Thomas Mann, Goethe, …”. She forgot to shoehorn in Shakespeare. And the Krankies.All other stations except the World Service, which is in English anyway. Mainly because without music and/or advertising to give us, we have not a clue what’s going on. (Radio DJs’ tone and pacing is the same the world over; you can tell who is the equivalent of Terry Wogan, and who’s the genetically-stunted-but-has-a-very-attractive-a-girlfriend-due-to-his-newfound-status-and-wealth equivalent of Chris Moyles/Evans).

(By-the-bye, is me writing with endless brackets and footnotes annoying, as I can try to stop if our reader would prefer. Please let us know!)

The sun’s now heading for the horizon, or at least the roofline of the buildings across the canal, so I shall say bye and go and paint some door frames.

Bye!

Jim (and Katie, who is here, but reading a book).

*As now seems traditional, I’m footnoting music info, as apparently*** this can be dull. As opposed to the stream of otherwise fascinating information that I’m otherwise imparting. The album in question was Dig Your Own Hole, the boys’ second Long Player, featuring the vocal talents of Beth Orton, as well as the irritating whine of Liam Gallagher. But you can’t have everything, I suppose.

**I didn’t admit this to our chum Rhonagh who was with us at the time, but this was a bargaining tactic which started as truth-based (I didn’t like the mirror at first glance) but then it grew on me as K was examining it, then I thought I’d try it as a tactic. Which worked. Rho seemed so impressed that I didn’t like to curb her enthusiasm by admitting it was only half a tactic. Sorry Rho.

***When I say ‘apparently’ I usually mean this is what I think Katie would say, if asked.

****This is the last footnote, but first one to come up, as I added it last, but couldn’t be arsed to go through and change the other ones. It’s an arcane pun referring obviously to the Queen hit but I’m guessing less obviously to a German band called Trio who had a UK hit donkey’s years ago with a record called ‘Da Da Da’.

Cigarettes & Alcohol. And washing machines.

Another much delayed blog, in large part due to the combination of much serious decorating and internet access continuing to be only available to me via the purchase of coffee and cake in the café next door. (Oh alright, I don’t actually have to buy the cake, but I see it as supporting the local economy, providing much needed employment for cake workers).Interestingly, while seated with laptop in the aforementioned bar recently, we were surprised to learn that smoking in enclosed public space is due to be banned from January. It would be equally believable if you heard that smoking was to be made compulsory in public places, in order to support the general Berlin bar ambience. The bar owner went on to tell us, through the ever-present cigarette fug, that she’d prefer us not to use the laptop so close to the bar, as the staff were worried about the risk of electro-smog. Cough.

Anyhoo, the trance-like state induced by ten days of decorating and trips to Ikea was thankfully interrupted by the arrival of our chum Rhonagh, our first visitor from the Blighty. Rho has more energy than both of us combined, resulting in much less decorating and much more dancing till 5am, which is nice. For those who don’t know her, she’s the only person I can think of who can describe herself (as we headed off for a big night out*) as “demented with excitement”, and be convincing. If I described myself as “demented with excitement“, people would respond by saying “oh well if you don’t want to go out, just fuck off then”.

Prior to her arrival, we had admittedly been going a bit stir crazy, with our days comprising entirely:

1. Decorating

2. Visits to IKEA, and to Bauhaus (a bit like B&Q, not the Bauhaus, unfortunately)

3. Visits to the middle of nowhere, to buy second hand items for our flat, particularly important as this is the same flat in which we still have no furniture.  Our own furniture is in a warehouse somewhere in the UK, from where the company that’s failing to deliver it gives us regular updates. “Hello, Mr Hudson? I can confirm that your furniture has not moved an inch today.”

Would we perceive Berlin as being that different from London if we had similar jobs and spending power here? Is London ringed by places unknown to us, beyond the ‘burbs, where shell suited men store and repair ziggurat towers of washing machines, stacked high and dust-laden in the gloom of vast derelict industrial buildings? I’m guessing not, but there certainly is around Berlin.

We know about the existence of such places because in our new Berlin lives, John Lewis and its German KaDaWe equivalent are no longer a financial option for our domestic appliance needs, so we’ve taken to the secret world of Berlin’s small ads with a vengeance.

So far, we’ve successfully bought a wardrobe (in pieces), from a shed in the middle of nowhere, and a washing machine, from a shed about twenty km beyond the middle of nowhere.  I was surprised to discover that beyond the middle of nowhere is not somewhere, but more nowhere.

Anyway, enough of my wittering.  Not missing much about London, because autumn here by our tree lined canal is beautiful, and cycling about (even to Bauhaus) makes us feel like we’re living some fantasy life.  Which we are.  But I am missing all our friends back home, so come and visit soon – we do good scrambled eggs.

*The big night out in question was 2ManyDJs/Soulwax, in case you’re of a dance music persuasion, at a club which occupies the tail end of the last major remaining bit of the Berlin wall. They were jolly good, and I believe are highly thought of by young folk, producing as they do some storming indie-electro-clash moments of the highest order.