Christmas Time in Berlin and One's New Wohnung

Christmas Eve already. Quite where the past 6 or so months have gone is a mystery, it seems like no longer than 2 months has passed here in Berlin. Well, saying that, at a rough guess it has been spent looking at apartments, renting apartments, moving stuff, then buying more stuff and then assembling the said bought stuff. That, plus vodka killing off my brain cells (ie. memory).

But, thankfully, I now have my new (and permanent) apartment and it is now (finally) filled with lots of bits n baubles from Ikea. The result being that I now feel like I'm actually living in Berlin as opposed to merely visiting the place for an extended period of time. The psychological effect of this is not to be underrated, I no longer feel stuck in limbo. I'm here now, time to move onto something new. In fact I should of done this much sooner (ie. lowering one's standards on an apartment to get moved rather than fluffing around with temporary places), but as Dave Mustaine says, hind sight is always 20 20.

But, the apartment is quite nice (if expensive), and rather big. The most obvious thing first noticed upon visiting, are these :

Giant sized radiators in the bedroom and living room, of the type that scream "FUCK YOU, I'M A RADIATOR, DEAL WITH IT BITCH". Now, if you're wondering the scale of these things, the second one there is over 6 foot tall, 3 and a half foot wide and a foot deep. (fecking huge). They do on the one hand heat the room in a stupidly small amount of time (especially useful for a lover of cold weather like me), but on the other, take up half of the room.

I do though, (if you mentally blockout the bins) have a nice view from my bedroom window

But the view from the back windows is somewhat less pleasing, at least in winter (no leaves) and while they are carrying out some building work (ie. seemingly doing fuck all).

I do have a nice balcony though, bigger than the last. Granted, not a whole lot of use in the winter covered in snow.

Most of the rest of my time this month (when not chasing up the building maintenance or assembling furniture) has been spent bobbing around to various christmas markets around the city and generally enjoying the snow/cold weather (why people prefer it hot is still a mystery to me).

Soon it'll be 2010 though. A blissful time of having time to do stuff that doesn't revolve around apartments! One cannot wait.

The Days Happenings - 23 Dec 09

Curtains in one's living room!

Polenta - First Attempt

Yums.

The Days happenings - 22 Dec 09

More Assembling + More Christmas Marketing

mmmm, russian.

The Days Happenings - 21 Dec 09

Travelings and Grey Mush

The Days Happenings - 20 Dec 09

Dirty U-Bahn Floors

The Days Happenings - 19 Dec 09

Coffee + Writing

The Days Happenings - 18 Dec 09

Going here (lovely and authoritarian Russian looking)

To get this (official stamp of my existence).

In this (lovely -10degC weather).

Ace.

The Days Happenings - 16 Dec 09

In the absence of actually having time to write a witty and entertaining blog on a regular basis, one is moving towards a more visual representation of one's days (ie. photos).

How long (and how frequently) I will do this is currently unknown.

Geoff and Larry

Actual Minced Lamb + Gluten Frei PUFFERS!

Mauerfalls and Morons

Last week was the 20th anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down (for those that are culturally inept and didn't know), and I thought, what with it being such a big event I would go down and have a little gander at the celebrations being held. First off were some weird monolith structures, noticed around potsdammer platz a couple of days earlier :

I'll get into how lame these were later, but at the time, my interest was peaked. So, on Monday 9th November, despite the rain and cold, I jumped onto a train and made the long way down to pariser platz. My thinking being that, as this was where the classical concert was going to be held, plus its where all the embassies are and its where the seats for all the various big wigs were, that this would be the place to see the main attractions. So, after gulping down some currywurst (way over rated, sausage and chips with tomato sauce and curry powder) we made our way to pretty much the front of the crowd, right next to the brandenburg gate :

Lights!

Spirits were still high, we'd got there early enough (5pm) to guarantee a good position for when the festivities started (7.25pm). Had the stage to our right :

and a gazillion people behind us :

Now, early on it wasn't raining too hard, but it didn't take too long for that to change. So pretty much, it was 2 hours of getting wet, standing around in the cold getting bored. Add to this the fact that most morons brough umbrellas, this happened :

So for pretty much the rest of the night, the only views of things were through the cracks inbetween idiots umbrellas. Have these people not heard of water proof coats with hoods? They were also nice little collectors of water, so every so often you'd get a little concentrated piddle of water in your face as someone tipped their umbrella. Bunch of mother fucking bastards.

Most of this run up was punctuated with little bursts of shit from the large screen infront of us

I don't know if this guy is famous here in Berlin, but he seemed like the level of quality you'd get from a radio Norwich late night DJ. ie. beyond crap. All in all then, the first two hours were pretty much torture, and I don't think there was a single person there even remotely enjoying themselves. I think a hive mindset of "I'm fucking here now, I don't care what its like, I'm staying" took over, resulting in a lot of misserable bored people :

Spot the smile

So, after all this, I was quite excited when the whole thing kicked off. This was soon revealed to be overly optimistic on my part. The classical concert was probably good, but they forgot to turn on the speaker next to us, so all we could hear was the odd drum being hit. Nothing better than spending 45 minutes watching a more or less silent concert on a big screen in the rain.

This was followed by all the various leaders that had shown up (Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Medvedev etc) making a symbolic walk from where they were stood (in the east) through the Brandeburg gate to the west side. "Oooh" I thought, "I'll get to see quite a few important people in the flesh and get a picture!". At which point, a bunch of crusty smelly hippy twats decided it was time to make their Greenpeace protest, which consisted of them getting out lots of teeny little yellow squares of fabric with pointless gibberings written on them. None of the leaders would of been able to see them, nevermind read them. The only effect that they had was to block the view of the crowd behind them, fuckers. But, I did manage to angle one slightly blurred shot of an indistinct group of people :

It was at this point that I realised that the majority of the event was going to take place on the western side of the gate, resulting in me seeing the back of peoples heads as they gave speeches and such, excellent. Another couple of hours of tedium then ensued, interviews with a few important people and interviews with irritating teenagers and such. The 'big event' of the dominoes being knocked over was stretched out beyond breaking point into three separate splutterings, each one taking way too long and basically consisting of a very slow repetitive dribble of shite filmed from multiple angles to make it seem exciting.

Then, they brought out a special guest (not The Hoff as one would hope), but bon jovi.

Quite why he was there I don't know (although I suspect he has a new album out and was using the event to promote it, classy), he looked quite bemused himself as to why he was part of this big celebration. Needless to say, he sucked. Then there were some lame fireworks.

Lame

Now. You may be thinking "If it was so bad, why didn't you just go home?" or "Surely it couldn't of been that bad, there must of been some good points". And to be honest, there were, I actually quite enjoyed the night as a whole. Mostly for the being there part of it, that and it was so bad it was fun to see, wondering if it could get any worse. Would I go again, knowing what it would be like? Most definitely, it was rather entertaining (who'd of thought if you lumped a load of little turds together and polished them they'd come out quite pleasing).

Wet Smiles

A week later there was a large protest organised (I think a few all over the city) with the theme of "Save Berlin". From what I can gather it seems to be a lot of people complaining because prices go up and things change, mostly crusty types by the looks of it. One of these took a route down Kastanienalle, which gave me ample opportunity to grab some snapshots of it and some morons :

It seems that this protest was organised against a planned redevelopment of the Mauerpark, supposedly they're going to build a load of shitty cheap flats on there. Not a good idea in my opinion, it should stay as a park free for people to use, theres not enough open spaces in the city as it is. But what bothers me are morons like this :

Idiot

What exactly is he protesting? Money? The Euro? (as he's a few years too late on that one) Obviously he's just tagged onto the protest to show his dislike of capitalism or some other such thing, like getting rid of money or free markets would magically remove greed from human beings and we'd all live in a happy utopia. But then, any protest these days is going to attract fringe nutballs and idiots who have a somewhat warped view of reality. The problem with that being that if you get enough of them, the whole protest appears incoherently crazy and distracts from the point trying to be made.

But most people seemed to just be out for the fun of it, I mean, would you see this anywhere else?

Pram Protests + Sardine

Especially when 20m behind you, theres this lovely collection just waiting for things to kick off.

The Fuzz

Otherwise, its been more apartment hunting. And yes, it still sucks ass.

Its Snowtime

Today I awoke, looked out of one's window and saw some white flaky stuff falling from the sky. Now as I'm from Warrington I was a little unaware as to what it is, as during the past 2 or 3 years I think we had a total of 2 days of the snowy stuff, lasting a few hours each time. Delight ensued and as I was off to an appointment to see an apartment, I had a little walk in the stuff.

Was quite fun indeed. Now, I know, some of you (probably of the Berliner variety) are thinking, bah, snow! Fuck that! And I'm sure as the winter continues there'll be better days of snow, days where it actually sticks to the ground (the grey slushy shit, whilst reminding me of home, sucks ass), and i'm sure there'll be days when I hate the snow. But for the moment, I'm quite enjoying my first day of Berlin snow.

ps. Apartment hunting still sucks ass. The people who were going to show me one today didn't even turn up, I just stood getting snowed on for 20 minutes waiting. I think they don't like me as I'm an ausländer (although I do prefer the much more fun, and specific, term - inselaffen. Currently my favourite German word).

Robbie, Hospitals and Halloween

I realised recently that I hadn't done a blog entry for quite some time. I believe this is down to a few contributing factors, one, I'm having quite a busy and fun social life here, that is literally devouring my time. Two, I've been ill for almost 3 weeks out of the past two months (and complaining about it for an additional 2). And three, laziness. But, quite a few blog-worthy things have happened, so, here they are, in no particular chronological order.

Robbie. Yes, of the Williams variety. I went to see him play a gig. Now, you may be wondering if I've gone a wee bit wrong in the head, but I assure you, no, I have not. Mostly, the reason I went was that it was FREE. Now, this alone may not of been quite enough to entice me down, but fortunately (or not) it was located literally 5 minutes walk from my apartment. So, on a somewhat grey afternoon I found myself taking a short stroll down to the mauerpark to find a large crowd of people (of the younger variety), then doing my best to spot a teeny weeny Robbie Williams in the distance, bouncing around, singing crappy songs. To be honest though, it was quite a fun experience.

Robbie, Jesus posing.

The other big event of late was a little trip to the hospital. It started as a rather bland Monday afternoon, felt a little on the queasy side but nothing too serious. Must be something I ate, I thought. A couple of hours later the vomiting began, not the most pleasant, but I figured whatever had upset one's stomach was now working its way through the sewer system, done. I popped out for a brief appearance at a Birthday gathering (where they had rather amazing looking Indian food that I couldn't eat! One has not had a good Indian in rather a long time.), returned home and discovered that my stomach was not quite finished with me. A rather gruelling 4 hours then followed where either end of my body competed to see which could expel the most, slowly at first, and then gathering pace like they were in a race. By the end of the 4 hours I'd evacuated pretty much all the liquids in my body and resembled a prune-ish white ghost. I half collapsed a couple of times, was unable to walk for a little while and had the curious experience of my arms and face going 90% numb.

So, to say I was in a bad state, would be an understatement. Fortunately I'd been in constant contact with a friend here, foreseeing my decline a little and warning them that I may need some assistance. From my (fuzzy) memory, I think that over the space of about 30 minutes it went from "Can you find me a late night doctor", to "I may need to go to the hospital, where is one" to "I'm about to pass out and can't get up off the bed, call me an ambulance". Which, thankfully, she did. Five minutes later there were two nice gruff German ambulance men who didn't speak a word of English at my door (which I'd managed to open and kind of jam myself in-between it and the frame so they could find me). They then spent about 20 minutes running various tests and asking me varied questions before deciding that yes, I was quite fucked up and should be taken to hospital.

I got to sit in a little red padded wheel chair in the back of the ambulance and be whisked around (no sirens though, I seemingly wasn't ill enough for such excitements), with my brain flicking between passing out, being in a lot of pain and thinking "Hmm, this is pretty cool, I'm in a fucking ambulance. Its just like TV!". I was plonked upon a little bed when I arrived and a nurse came and stuck a huge needle in one's arm, drew a pint of blood and then attached a huge bag of saline to me. I then spent an indeterminate amount of time watching this bag drip into my veins, whilst at the same time absolutely freezing my arse off. I was shivering so much that if you'd walked in, you would of assumed I was being electrocuted. I did manage (after some time) to get the attention of one of the nurses, who after me telling them of my freezing condition, went off and brought me what appeared to be a large sheet of tissue paper. After covering me up with it, they seemed satisfied that this was enough, smiled and disappeared, leaving me to my shivering fun.

All in all, I was on the bed for around 4 or 5 hours. Being poked, proded, tested and eventually injected with a series of drugs from little test tubes, combined with another bag of (I presume) saline, and a couple of glass bottles of stuff (potassium I think). My two views for this entire expereince where as follows :

mmmm, saline.

The ceiling.

An hour or so more of observation, to make sure that I wasn't about to die anymore, and they kicked me out onto the street, literally. It was at this point that I realised some of the drugs they had given me had made me a little high. And that I had no idea where I was. Thankfully I'd had the wisdom to keep my phone with me the entire time (hence the pictures) and Nokia Maps came to the rescue, telling me that I was infact not that far away from my apartment. A short taxi ride later (where the taxi driver took the piss as I was floating around at the top of his cab) and I was home. I collapsed into bed, presumably slept, and then I don't really remember much of the day or two after. The rest of the week was spent eating bland food (anything with a remote hint of taste would re-inflame one's intestines) and drinking water, whilst watching a copious amount of TV.

For those that are wondering, I had Gastroenteritis, caused by a rather nasty variety of some bug (E-Coli, Salmonela etc). The whole experience was a little on the shit side, but still fun and exciting, its the first time I've ever been rushed off to an A&E in the back of an ambulance.

All of this made Halloween a little on the sober side, not a bad thing as I've needed a break from the vodka for a while now. Went out to a couple of parties and wore a wig for a short period of time :

Otherwise I've been spending my time looking for an apartment, the short term lease on this place runs out at the end of November and can't be extended any further. So far I've not found anywhere particularly good, or if I have, I didn't get them. Apartment hunting sucks ass.

I did go along to a good classical concert a while ago :

The best bit of which was a tall solo drummer, full of pomp, playing Bolero on a teeny little drum at the front of the orchestra. Taking all the grandeur and importance of a solo violinist/pianist, despite the fact he was just playing a little drum (he was pretty awesome though).

And, of course, more Daisy.