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.