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. 

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. 

Jim & Katie’s first Berlin curry: A Special Report

With apologies, this post is mainly for the curry minded among you, and in particular for our Curry Club chums.

Three weeks into our Berlin lives and until now no curry.  Not a sausage. (In fact, not even a sausage; see comment on currywurst, later.)

So off to one of our local establishments to sample what the locals know as curry.  Let me start by staying that the whole experience was not a bad one; the restaurant was pleasant, the staff helpful, the food hot (in the sense of temperature).  But compared with the English/Bangladeshi hybrid which is the curry experience we cherish, something was missing.

Kingfisher/Cobra freely available? Check.

Dodgy sitar music? Check. 

But where was the flock wallpaper, the dark swirly carpets?  Why had the tables not been crammed in to seat 30% more people than space would normally allow?  Why did the food not arrive on a trolley?  Where were the strained but patient expressions on the staff’s faces each time a large group arrived?

Undaunted, we pressed on.

Katie had: a dahl ghosht

Jim had: the ‘chicken in special sauce’.

We both shared: a garlic nan

Katie’s dish was basically a bit like a lamb dhansak. “It’s a bit like a lamb dhansak” she reported, “but it lacks spice, and it’s not sweet and sour like a dhansak should be“.  Mine was essentially a chicken tikka masala with some nuts on top.  Being the big girl’s blouse that I am, I had avoided ordering anything marked as ’scharf’ (hot), but quickly wished I hadn’t.  This dish was lightly spiced, but as far as I could tell contained no chillies.

The garlic nan was closer to garlic bread.

So perhaps it’s time to cancel my idea for ‘Curry Club 07: Mission to Berlin’, as frankly, the food might be disappointing.  Obviously you’re all still very welcome to come and stay though, either individually, or as a big group wearing silly hats.

Tschuss!

J&K

A footnote on currywurst

Of course Berliners have their own asian/western hybrid food that they can claim their own: currywurst* – basically a hotdog with curry sauce on, served at roughly the time and from the sort of places we’d get kebabs in the UK.  The idea always appealed to me, involving as it does two of my favourite things, namely sausage and curry.  But thus far our experience has not been promising.  The last one I had, on a previous trip, was presented with the curry sauce in a semi-powdered state, and tasted of the sort of curry your mum made when you were a kid and hadn’t yet been for a ‘proper’ curry.  So I hereby vow to go on a Berlin-wide currywurst tasting mission – perhaps if the results are unsatisfactory, there’s a gap in the market for a new type of currywurst, with a choice of sauces from korma to vindaloo?

*Actually, Hamburg also lays claim to inventing the currywurst.  Obviously not content with having the hamburger already under their belts, so to speak.

Guten Tag aus Berlin!

Welcome to Jim and Katie’s Blog thingy; part of that fine tradition of online vanity publishing-come-round robins, to be read by a steadily decreasing number of friends, who will eventually only pretend to have read it.

Predictably enough, the text herein will be written mainly by me (Jim) with Katie taking a sort of editorial role, adding corrections or denunciations when my description of events departs entirely from reality. Pictures and stuff to come shortly, in the meantime you’ll have to make do with the rather sombre backdrop we’ve selected. On the plus side, it uses less energy on your screen than a white one, apparently.

Why the obscure Blog title, you wonder? It’s a literal translation of Kreuzburg (the area of Berlin we’re living in) – the sort of literal translation you have to put up with when you can barely string a sentence together in German and have to rely on babelfish.altavista.com.

By way of example, it translates the instructions from my newly aquired German SIM card thus:

“Secure yourselves together can when loading bonus minutes! A friend to a friend can, even then Germany, for a loading of 15C or more can receive you additionally bonus minute that, which can you telephone it freely of charge of friends and too other friends Germany far within 30 days then.”

For the avoidance of doubt, our blog has no connection with the (slightly) similarly named Brokeback Mountain Chronicle, the weekly publication serving the married gay cowboy community.

So what news from Berlin? The first couple of weeks have flown by, mainly because we’ve been flat hunting – our current lodgings are temporary till the 8th September. Not quite as easy as we’d thought, but we’ve bagged a good one we think; an old fashioned second floor flat overlooking the river, with easy access to local cake shops, ice cream parlours, bars, cafés and other essential local amenities. We (hopefully) move in on the 20th September – the gap in between will be filled with a spot of camping action and a quick trip home to blighty for supplies of Marmite.

We had our first ‘big’ night out last night – a literally underground club with a ‘variable’ music policy ranging from quite cool hip hop to, er, what sounded like Russian folk music. Anyhoo, we’re currently recovering from an early morning return (I know, it’s a wednesday night, but we’re on holiday) – Katie is lying in a foetal position demanding paracetamol and a fry up.

Finally, some FAQ’s:

You both headed off weeks ago. Have you only just got there?

We spent quite a lot of time cruising around the UK, and since finally arriving in Berlin about two weeks ago, have not been arsed to do much, not even write a blog.

How’s your German coming along?

Our German remains largely nonexistent. As suspected, so many people speak English, and speak it so well, that’s it’s difficult to get any practice. It’s become an unexpected thrill when someone answers “nein” in response to my hopeful sounding “er, sprechen Sie English?” one liner. Also see comments on translation, above.

Are you eating properly?

On Sundays, breakfast begins at 11am (earliest) through to 5pm-ish. These hours are also observed Monday to Saturday. How then can you tell it’s Sunday? Because everything is shut. Except anywhere serving breakfast, obviously.

Weather?

The weather so far has been patchy but generally good. What’s most important however is that it’s been better than the UK, and furthermore you’ve probably been at work during any sunny spells you have had. Come to think of it, shouldn’t you be at work now, rather than reading this?

I probably won’t bother, but if I did decide to contact you?

We’ve got ourselves one of these new-fangled Skype phones (telephony over internet) so you can call us when we’re on line, or leave a message when we’re not, on the following number:

020 8123 8341

We’ve chosen a London code, so call costs will be as if you were calling us in London. If, like us, you live at the cutting edge and have Skype, just ‘Skype’ us at jimnkatie, which is absolutely free. Whatever will they think of next?

K will keep her 0794 116 9017 number when in the UK, but we’ve both now got German mobiles:

Jim – 00 49 1577 682 7829
Katie – 00 49 1577 681 0739

Best not to ring these mobiles unless it’s urgent, and you are able to extend your mortgage easily. Also, make sure you get the permission of the person who pays the phone bill, unless you’re calling on your employer’s phone, obviously.

Email still jimnkatie@gmail.com

Tschuss!

Jim & Katie

PS this post written on 29th August, but moved to a new website on 31st.