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.