Living in 1984 and How Ikea Can't Add

Has been a mostly uneventful past couple of weeks here in Berlin, afternoons drinking coffee and evenings drinking vodka interspersed with work and the remnants of moving my life here. The first of which this week was going to register myself with the government, all 1984 style.

First off, I'm not too sure why this is exactly needed. I mean, why do the German Government need to have the address I'm living at along with my landlord written down on a form that is then processed. Its nothing to do with taxation. Its nothing to do with immigration. Its nothing to do with having any form of ID. It seems to simply be that I now have a stamped form that says I am infact here in Germany. If I didn't have one, I'd still be here, living in the same place, paying the same taxes (well, when it comes time for me to do such) and doing all the other little things that one does when one exists. So, the only conclusion I can come to is that its for The Man/Them to keep tabs on me.

But, the process itself. It wasn't too harsh (when I booked an appointment rather than sat in the waiting room for 3 hours watching a number slowly change on a board, clutching a much larger numbered ticket in my hand) although it was rather Communist/Orwellian. Mostly because of the nice big soviet style building that I went to go register in, what seemed to be, at one time in the past, an ornate town hall type place. All official looking, where a man in a top hat and large moustache, debating the merits of hot air balloons, wouldn't look out of sorts. Add to this a gaggle of bored looking grumpy old women who don't speak a word of English (well, I guess it is Germany and not England, although with the way she just repeated the same sentence to me louder in German thinking that I'd then understand, it did remind me of the English) who seem to revel in making sure you know just what a pain in the arse their job is. Throw in some 1970's furniture, a humongous cavernous room for an office and some glorious olde world rubber stamps and the picture was complete. All in all it was quite entertaining.

Organising a bank account on the other hand, was a bit of a breeze. Deutsche Bank not only have people who can speak English (I know, I should learn German) but they also have forms and leaflets in English along with online banking in English. They didn't seem to care about my job or how much money I make, and within about 10 minutes it was all done. Bliss.

Then, I went onto the ikea website, with the idea of buying myself a cheap desk and chair. Simple enough. Found a couple of cheap options on there, clicked to order them, came to around €100. Type in the postcode, calculate the delivery charge, €79 for delivery. "Hmm" I thought, that seems a little on the steep side, I could probably pay someone to carry them on their back to my apartment for cheaper than that. So after some more clicking around and investigation I found that if I buy the desk (on its own) it'll cost me €9 delivery charge and if I buy the chair (on its own), it too will cost me €9 delivery charge. Now, I don't know about you, but for me that adds up to around €18 which is around €61 shy of what they were asking for to carry them on the same van rather than two separate vans. So, like a good citizen, i dutifully emailed ikea to point out that they are infact morons and could they please fix their stupid website. I am yet to get a reply.

So, life here in Berlin is going quite well. Just have some insurance bits n bobs to sort out, moving my company here for next year and an apartment. Oh, and learning German, that might be quite usefull.

I want a blue jumpsuit named "The Corvette", I'd look soo cool.

In Bruges

The drive back to England was substantially better than the drive out to Berlin. Mostly as it was done in a sensible amount of time (3 days rather than 24 hours) plus the addition of a couple of stops along the way. The first of which was near Dortmund, staying in a road side chain hotel next to an Ikea. And thats about as interesting as that stopover got.

The next day was a quick drive down to Antwerp to meet up with Mr & Mrs B for lunch, all was going well until the main road into the city was closed due to a market. My Sat Nav then decided to have a bit of a laugh and take me round all these tiny roads whilst occasionally loosing its GPS lock, ending up in giving me the wrong directions. After some ignoring of the sat nav I found the main road myself and worked my way round to the water front. Didn't spend a great deal of time there, just time to eat and a 10 minute wander around, this photo about sums up me and Antwerp :

Non-Plussed

A quick hour drive to Bruges then followed, with my Sat Nav having another giggle at my expense by taking me down cobbled streets overflowing with old grey haired tourists who didn't seem to understand that they were walking on a road, and therefore couldn't grasp the concept of getting the fook out of my way. The hotel itself was pretty shitty, not updated since the 70's and in a weird shade of blue, but it sufficed for an evening of sleep.

The rest of the day was spent (unlike most of the other tourists there who I'm sure were interested in history or some such other mundane thing) wandering around the filming locations of In Bruges (staring the, up until this film, very irritating Colin Farrell). This took me all over the city and was quite fun indeed, in part because some of the places I was going to see nobody else was arsed about so it gave a slightly tourist free atmosphere.

Splat

Peeking Dog

Park Benching ala :

Time was spent sat in the places, walking over the bridges and drinking in the bars where it was all filmed. Its certainly a much better way of seeing a city, especially if (like me) you're not a fan of old crumbly buildings (give me steel and glass any day). The evening was spent at a free concert/mini festival that was down the road from the hotel. Very nice of them to organise it for the one night that I happened to be staying there.

The next day I awoke after an odd nights sleep (the air conditioning was akin to a 747), got some coffee

and wandered the streets some more. I bought some chocolate (as is the law if you visit Belgium) and set off mid afternoon for the short drive to Calais. More eurotunnel fun was had, driving down the train is quite entertaining

The drive back through England was long, tiring but uneventful. But, around 8 hours after I left Bruges I arrived back in Warrington

Which was quite odd indeed. I'd just about acclimatised to life in Berlin and suddenly I was back in a mostly empty house, my addled brain not quite sure where I was, where I was going or what I was doing.

A week of frantic insanity followed while I sold off the rest of the furniture in the house, sold the car, disposed of more or less ever other trapping of my Warringtonian life and put the house on the market. A party was had on the Saturday night, a final farewell as it were, attended by the barest minimum of people. If ever a sign was needed to validate my reasoning behind my move to Berlin, the party was a fairly big one.