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.