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. 

We’re told on good authority that it’s Monday

Hi again from Berlin. (I’m going to drop the affected ’Guten Tag’ greetings etc from now on – too cheesy.)

The problem with having no jobs or structured time of any sort is that the days just fly by without really achieving anything.  Since we arrived here it’s been a point of pride for us to have no idea what day of the week it is, but I suspect it’s a short saunter from here to complete hippydom, using the word ‘man’ a lot (as in “look, just chill, man”), and not knowing what year it is.

K and me have therefore decided that being a Monday (yes, we looked at a calender) we should get up this morning, as opposed to this afternoon, and do stuff.  Even if the stuff is writing blogs and making elaborate breakfasts. 

One unexpected side effect of having unlimited free time and no real worldly concerns, is that it’s very unsettling.  We admitted to each other recently that we were both vaguely nervous – the kind of nagging worry that you might have on a sunday when thinking about the week of work ahead.  Except that we don’t have a week of work ahead, of course.  I think that for me in particular, a general sense of unease might be hard wired – anyone who knows me well will be familiar with my tendency to fret over really quite trivial stuff.  On the plus side, I’ve finally stopped worrying about work, although I did finish with it about a month and a half ago.

‘Oh yes’ I can hear you saying. ‘I have such sympathy for Jim and Katie, sitting about having late breakfasts, trying to deal with the stress of, er, having nothing to worry about’. Point taken, I’ll move on to…

Bikes.  As some readers* will know, I somehow managed to avoid learning to ride a bike until my mid twenties, and have been a bit uncertain in the saddle ever since.  So there was some trepidation on my part at the idea of living in a bike orientated city, where cycling is the only realistic (and cheap) way to get around.  Actually, I needn’t have worried, since:

1. Bikes have priority everywhere, with loads of cycle lanes.  Proper cycle lanes as well, not those London ones that are about three metres long and are only positioned where they won’t be in the way of any 4×4’s on school runs.

2. Berlin is almost completely flat.

3. Where hills do occur, you can break the journey at regular intervals by stopping for coffee and cake. 

This degree of optimism is of course tempting fate.  Katie has in the past witnessed at least one incident of my ’sudden emergency dismounting’ from my cycle, and will sometimes happily point out to complete strangers bits of me which still contain impacted gravel.  Anyhoo, it’s raining today, so will stay in, probably.

 Jim’s thought for the day:

It may be raining outside, but not in my heart.  That would be ridiculous; my heart is a major organ, used for pumping blood around my body.

Today Jim is mainly listening** to:

Stan Getz’ Bossanova classics.  The Girl from Ipenima, it just never ages, does it?

*Assumed to be plural

** and therefore so is Katie, as she’s also in the flat, with no choice in the matter***

*** although Katie’s just pointed out that I could use headphones, so that she can play the Pixies really loudly