The First Photographic Month and New Travelings

Few pics to illustrate my first month here in Berlin.

Tiredness

Coffee

Fun

Only got a few days left before I start the mammoth journey back to the UK. Good thing this time is I'm doing the 15 hour drive over 52 hours rather than 24, a little bit more on the sensible side.

Plan is to drive 4 hours to the dortmund area, stop overnight in a crappy roadside chain hotel, awake bright and early, drive 3 hours to Bruges and then spend around a day there. Then leave midday the next day for the eurotunnel and onwards through England back to ol' Warrington. Downside is that I'm doing this drive on my own so navigation is going to be a bit of a pain in the arse (it was bad enough with two of us) and the conversational experience is going to be somewhat lacking.

Otherwise not a whole lot reportable going on, Wednesday night is a double feature of Transformers. Both 1 and 2 back to back in the cinema at Potsdammer Platz. Ace.

A Hungover Sunday in Berlin

Last night was drinks at Hairy Marys (only 4 but I was rather smasharooed, they do like their large measures here), today was being hungover and stumbling around the city. Discovered that today is some big street music festival here in Berlin (and possibly worldwide from the looks of the website) which was a pleasant surprise aswell as a hindrance (loud music doesn't help a headache). So I wandered down to my current favourite coffee shop (its very brown) for a mocha, sat down and then this happened :

Now, its not that its particularly good music (ie. it was a bit shit) but it was a nice novelty accopmaniment to my coffee. Someone had just put a few speakers and microphones down on the pavement and various bands were popping in and playing, it seemed slightly organised but only in the most flimsy of ways. I then proceeded to wander around the rest of Prenzlauer Berg, having to dodge dancing people, drummers, DJ's, guitarists et al. Basically anyone with any kind of musical instrument or device just was finding a spot on the street and setting up, then a small crowd of passers by would stop, listen and then move on. Most fun indeed. There were a couple of more organised gatherings with stages but it was the smaller stuff that was the best, especially odd/good as no-one had hats or other such stereotypical busking shit infront of them.

Then this evening I was disturbed from my meal by some noisy folk outside, popped out on the balcony and was greeted with more musical fun :

Still shit, but entertaining none the less. All in all, a good day.

Apartments

I may of found something that I hate even more than driving, apartment hunting (plus, when did I turn into an American and start using the word apartment anyway?). I've spent the last couple of weeks (and some time before that back in blighty) trawling the internets looking at around 150 or 200 places, whittling these down into around 15 or 20 decent ones and then trying to organise appointments to view them.

Now, before I get into the irritations of such a venture, a little on why I'm struggling to find a place. Finding AN apartment is fairly easy, it can be done in around 2 or 3 days IF you're not that arsed about the location or the condition of said apartment. You can get a decent enough place located somewhere around Prenzlauer Berg thats pretty cheap without any commission charges, it'd be perfectly liveable in and quite nice I'm sure. The reason its taking so long and being such a hassle (and yes, I do have only myself to blame so I shouldn't really complain, but I do so enjoy complaining) is that I'm looking for something thats a little special, located in a specific area with a specific set of criteria - ie. Frasierian living. There are places like this in Berlin but they are few and far between or ridiculously overpriced so its going to take a little time to find just the right one. Now, I've mulled over the merits of just settling for an okish place where I'd save a bit of money, but thats not why I moved here. I'm not doing the settling thing anymore, I'm getting what I want.

So, back to the fortnight of hunting. Its been a combination of a few things. One, people just don't respond to me asking for an appointment (how do these people manage to rent). Two, I get an appointment, go and see the place and its nothing even remotely like the place in the advert. Or three, its a nice enough place in a shitty area or a nice enough area and a shitty place. One place I saw was half of an office that wasn't even properly built yet (even though they were offering in a moving date of a week). All in all its about the same experience I had last year looking for a room.

The end result being that I've got a few more places to see on Monday (although I'm not holding my breath, I'm expecting more places filled with chintzy 80's furniture) but most likely I'll be extending my stay in the current temporary apartment while I look. Not the end of the world, it is overpriced for what it is but its not all that bad really :

Views from the Balcony

The Apartment

The Journey

When I first thought of driving over to Berlin it was with the idea that it would be easier (and safer) to transport all of my belongings in the back of the car. The thinking being that as most of it is electronically based (cameras, computers et al), having others transport it via air or sea in containers that would be banged around and treated with all the love and care of a box of sprouts, it'd be better if i did it myself.

The plan was to set out on Friday, drive down to Folkestone, then during Saturday drive from Calais to Berlin. Seems reasonable enough, two days to do 900 miles of driving with the aid of Mr B splitting the driving in half. What I didn't really factor in was that if you set off at 18:30 on Friday with an aim to get to Berlin by 20:00 Saturday (early-ish to pick up the keys) that in actual fact its only a little over 24 hours.

So, the first night wasn't too bad, we didn't hit much traffic and got down to the hotel in Folkestone around midnight. After some wrangling with the hotel staff we parked the car directly infront of the main doors to deter would be thieves from stealing my 32" TV, computer and boxer shorts. The room itself was sparse but accommodating enough, we settled down around 00:30 for some sleep, alarms set for 06:15.

After one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever had (full of stress filled dreams about the sheer act of moving to another country along with worries about the journey itself) I awoke fairly fresh in the morning. Got up, showered and promptly packed and was out of the room by 06:45. At the time I thought I was quite mentally aware of what was happening but as I left a couple of things behind in the room, I obviously wasn't. Downstairs to reception, asked the receptionist for our pre-packed breakfasts to which I got a look of blankness despite the fact that only 6 hours earlier I'd asked that exact same person for the breakfast and he'd noted it in a crappy looking scuffed binder.

The Eurotunnel was surprisingly easy, not once on either side of the channel were we stopped to ask for passports or even the slightest look into the cars contents. I could of had a mound of C4 and 15 AK47's in the back and they'd of been none the wiser. But, the lack of hassle from any kind of customs or bureaucratic mess was a pleasant surprise.

The drive itself wasn't too bad for the most part, just the complete tedium of staring at a road/arse end of cars for 11 hours only being broken up by the odd respite for food or a pee break. Driving in europe (my first time) was surprisingly easy, not in the least part that 98% of the driving was on motorways.

But, after nearly 24 hours of travelling the most perfect thing happened :

Now, you may not be able to tell from this photo what was about to happen, it was the last one taken before arrival in Berlin though. But that little dark grey patch just above the road we were heading into was whats commonly known as a bitch of a storm. So, just at the time when we were most awake and alert, torrential rain started to pour down so hard that on occation I was wondering if I was actually driving on the road or not. Talking became an extravagant pastime that was unavailable with the processing power left in my addled brain and the last part of the journey was turned into a complete nightmare.

After an hour or so we arrived into the city and around 45 minutes of pain in the arse driving around small roads found a parking spot so I could jump on the U2 line to go pick up the apartment key. This was a hassle in itself, but I'll cut the story short : the attendant at the DB service station at alexander platz was a prize winning cock. I'll leave your imagination to fill in the rest.

Then followed about another sweat filled half an hour of unpacking lots of heavy boxes from the car and trudging them up two flights of stairs with a brief lift assistance inbetween (ie. pain in the arse). Then a hassle of finding somewhere to park the car as what the apartment agency told me (no problems/charges for parking the car near the apartment) was completely untrue. At around 22:30 we meandered in a zombie like state down kastanienalle and found a little currywurst stall to add to the potato and sausage diet we'd already consumed thus far in Germany. Sleep thankfully came at around midnight.

The next day was a whirlwind tour of Berlin for Mr B : Prenzlauer Berg, Alexanderplatz, Brandenburg gate, Jewish memorial and a little rest on the grass of the Reichstag.

So, in summary, a bit of a nightmare journey and definitely something I won't be doing again (at least not over such a compressed time scale), but an experience none the less. I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it or hated it as such, more from the fact that I was so tired by the end of it that I don't really know what I was feeling.

Since then I've not done a whole lot thats fun (other than the occasional good night out). I'd say its taken me about a week and a half to get over the combination of the journey here, shell shock of actually finding myself in Berlin (driving here is weird, its such a slow change that you don't notice it creep up on you) along with doubts on whether such a huge move is a good idea in the first place. Add to that the pain in the arse of finding an apartment and I've felt somewhat zombiefied.

On Having Stuff

I've had quite a cathartic (and busy) past couple of months and have pretty much thrown away most everything that I own. Stuff has been sent off to Charity shops. Ebay was surprised that I've finally decided to sell something after being on the site for over 5 years. Lots has been given away to friends and even more has been packed into black n blue wheely bins for the council to spirit away. The end result of which is that I've discovered that I'm quite a minimalist kind of guy who doesn't really like owning 'things' and being all materialistic.

But, there is a rather large caveat to this sudden discovery of Buddhist sensibilities. I LOVE having the ability to do the things that these objects enable me to do. For instance, I LOVE all the things I can do on my computer, photos, games, editing videos, and all the other fancy shit its capable of. But the actual physical object that is my computer, meh. I could throw it away tomorrow without a second thought. The same with all my cameras, TV, Mobile Phones etc. I don't care about the things themselves and treat them accordingly (ie. a multitude of scratches on all the expensive stuff I own).

So, in reality, rather than being a spiritual type with no need for earthly nik naks (the incense/wicker required for such a role would just irritate me anyway), I'm actually just a renter rather than an owner. I've never quite understood the need to purchase things just to have lots of things. I understand having things that you use, its just the idea of lots of shiny pristine stuff to show off with has never really appealed to me (mostly evidenced by my 'once every 3 or 4 years' car cleaning regime).

All in all, I'm looking forward to not owning a house or a car or all the other stuff that I've acquired over the years like a capitalist zombie (not that I have anything against capitalism, its yummy). One has better stuff to do with one's life than derive status from owning objects, actions are a little more important.

This week my idol is Gary Busey, oh to be as free and bat shit crazy as him, bliss.

And on a side note, why is Arnie doing this? And why is it so creepy?

Moving to another country is a Pain in the Arse

Getting closer to the date I move back to Berlin and have spent most of my time over the past few weeks researching the best way to do it. What I've discovered is that if you're a bum and have nothing much to show for yourself, its very easy to do, you just pick up and go. If on the other hand you have your own company, a house and a little bit of savings, its a real pain in the posterior. Quite why things are this way round is beyond me.

But, I've now got myself a tax consultant over in Berlin to sort out all the company side of things along with my accountant here (as I'll have to file tax returns in both countries) and I have a pretty good understanding of the tax laws and legal responsibilities I have running my company in Germany. Basically, things are beginning to take shape and fall into place, even if it is a huge gangly pointed shape that's falling into an ill fitting place.

Other than that, I've been volunteering at a local dogs home. Sounds good but is a bitter sweet thing, part fun of taking the dogs out and playing with them and part soul destroyingly depressing having to put them back in their cages. The only weird thing about it is that we're only allowed to take the dogs out for an hour a day, between 12 and 1. Firstly for the good reason that you have to wait a certain amount of time after they have been fed to take them out (12), all well and good. But then we have to stop at 1 because thats when the place opens to the public. I understand theres a safety issue but surely they could of come up with some kind of fence or way of being able to take the dogs out more.

What this results in is that the dogs are caged for pretty much all of the 24 hours in a day and when you do take one out you have to be quick, run them round as there are another 50 dogs waiting to be walked and you only have one hour to do it in. Its the horrific decision between not being able to give a dog a good break from the cages with some human contact or that some of the dogs won't get out that day because you didn't get to them in time. It all comes down to something is better than nothing, but it still really pisses me off.

On a lighter note though, a few of my favourite picture findings of late :

Why with a Fish! WHY!

Hoarding bits of Paper

I do like to collect stuff and have it all nice and neatly filed away, all my bills in one folder, receipts in another, tax stuff in another etc.  And I've developed a humongous collection of them over the past few years, but I found myself yesterday asking the rather sensible question "Do I really need all this stuff?  In what possible circumstances would a dentist receipt for a filling I had 17 years ago be of any use?".  I also had every phone bill I've ever received in my life, all itemised so i could, for instance, look up who I called at 16:34 on the 21 April 2002.  Why, I ask you?  It wasn't a conscious decision to keep them, just every time I got one it got put into a file,  resulting in me having a couple of trees worth.

So yesterday I went through my files and put most of them into the recycling bin (only because I'm moving soon rather than as a result of realising how pointless keeping it all is).  Was quite a difficult thing to do though, it is so tempting to just hold onto the past/keep detailed records.  I also gave a load of clothes away (some of which I'd never worn but bought in a bout of fashion blindness) and junked a lot of other nick nacks and bits of crap that I had lying around the house.

The end feeling of it all being that I'd quite like a minimalist life, so long as I don't have to throw away any of my stuff as I like my stuff.

My favourite picture finding of late is this one :

I'd like to know what circumstances led to this man, being dressed like that, being stood in front of that photo having his picture taking saluting.  Glorious lunacy.  I am sure he's a very happy individual though.

Digitising One's Analogue Existence

This week has mostly been spent collecting together all my old, clunky format, analogueness life and feeding it into my computer via various gadgets.  Thankfully at the moment I do have a rather large collection from my early years (ie. much larger than my digital life), I seem to of spent an inordinate amount of time between 1992 and 1999 recording every minutiae of my existence.

I have a collection of audio diary tapes from the year I left school which are great and slightly worrying, in that I don't quite recognise who the squeaky voiced person on them is.  My views, ideas and position on mostly everything in the world seems to of changed considerably over the past 15 or so years (as it should do).  Although on them, I'm obsessed with cataloguing everything that happens (I do love my OCD side) and worrying all the time about exams, whether to go to college and various other stereotypical teenage things.  All of which is somewhat similar to me organising everything onto my shiny 500Gb passport drive and worrying about what my new career choice should be.  So I guess I've really changed and not changed atall, all at the same time.

I also have around 90 hours of camcorder footage over a 7 year period, all on BIG VHS tapes.  What a pain in the arse, but soon the huge box of tapes shall be shrunk down to zeros and ones and instantly available at the click of a button.  Most of it is drivel, or at least just a camera plonked down in a room with the usual mundanity of life going on around it.

Whether all this is a good or bad thing is another issue, is endless reminiscence a worthy look back on past mistakes/fortunes with an eye to learning from them or a nice and easy way of living in the past and avoiding the future?  Probably depends on just how much time one spends reminiscing I suppose.

This weeks choice of looks is inspired by @Glinner on twitter, he spotted these absolutely amazing t-shirts :

Quite what selection criteria they had for the slogans I do not know (although I suspect there was a long list placed infront of a crazy person and they picked them), and I do love that things like being a Rebel are put next to Slave (also, does it count being an Ex- something if it was only your ancestors that were? or am I falling into their crazy world by thinking such things.)  And who uses the word fornicator anymore?  I believe I do need this t-shirt though :

Apart from the Ex- part.

Putting Zeros and Ones in Order

I took ownership of a nice new Western Digital My Passport 500Gb drive this week, and my is it nice and spanky good, all sleek and black n shiny n stuff.  So most of my time has been spent organising my entire digital life and backing it up onto said drive.  I opted for the larger 500Gb drive as my thinking was "I've been dabbling around in the world of computers for many many years now and I've accumulated a vast array of personally created quality videos, photos, mp3's and other various digital flotsam.  I'll need such a large drive to fit ALL of it on.".

I have since discovered that my digital footprint is somewhat smaller than i first though.  Around 360Gb smaller infact.  And I'm now left with a mostly empty external hard drive, feeling somewhat deflated and wondering where all that stuff that I thought I'd done actually went.  Nowhere I think, as it only existed inside ones neurons.

On the flip side though, its been quite fun discovering little random videos that I'd made here and there, flicking through old travel movies and generally being all nostalgic (one of my favourite pastimes).  Still my favourite of the short films we made many years ago is this one about making some chicken soup and how it can improve your outlook on life :

Written, filmed and mostly edited all in one night, it was most fun indeed.

This week I am wishing I was as cool as this guy.

My Architects Stuff - About Time!

Finally got around to uploading a few of the My Architects pictures, taken in the years of following them around on their musical adventures.  There mostly from around the UK with a few of the Canadian tour, few promo pics that we took and a few pictures for cd covers and website backgrounds etc.  Enjoy.

My Architects - Promos

My Architects - CD and Web Stuff

My Architects - Gigs

My Architects - Misc

Also, theres the video I made from the Canadian Tour :

Part 1

and Part 2

Oh, and the music video I did for the single Airborne, almost forgot :)

Some of my favourite Picture Findings of late

A little collection of photographic gems from the world of the interweb (mostly the great failblog.org) :

Lego Hawkings

Content Dog

I want some non-real chicken

Just what the hell is going on here?

Yum

Spelling is hard

And the ultimate crowning glory :

Genius.

Gibberings

Not a whole lot going on at the moment, well, other than I have spent the past months working out a complete change of life/career.  Spending hours looking over jobs, weighing them up based upon their merits, amount of fun and prospects/pay, is somewhat of a thankless/boring task but ultimately fruitful.  At least in the fact that I know there are a hell of a lot of jobs out there that I plainly do not want to do (in fact this stretches to practically all jobs as, obviously, I'd much rather do nothing and have money).  But I did come up with a good list of 57 that I'd like to try, after a little more whittling and fine tuning I've reduced this to a good 12 career paths to try.  Have now just finished working these into a fairly coherent plan of try this, then try this, if thats shit, then try this.  Ultimately though I'm deceiving myself (in a nice way though), as my actual plan is to do all the trying above, fully expecting it not to work out as planned and general life to happen around it.  The big plan is just a facilitator, but shhhh, don't tell me that or it might not work.

Other than that, I've been listening a lot to two very good bands :

http://www.beirutband.com/

and

http://www.thebirdandthebee.com/

They're both a bit different (well, bird n t' bee are a little more pop-y but don't let that interfere with listening to them), give them a listen.

And I've also become famous (actually, not in the slightest bit) thanks to the badmovieclub.  Having people pick out my drunken tweeted ramblings as funny is a nice little comforting thing :)  My Tweets

And if I could only be as cool as this guy, then I'd be a happy bunny.

BadMovieClub

Bad Wine
Check

Apple and Cheese
Check


The Happening paused on the opening screen
Check


Laptop with TweetDeck installed and running
Check


This is how my night of BadMovieClub started, a seemingly silly idea to have a lot of people on the internet watch a bad film all at the same time and comment on it via twitter. Only thing being, its not a silly idea, its an addictive idea, very addictive. I don't think i watched much of the beginning of the film as I was following the ridiculous amount of posts people were making. That combined with the general lunacy of the films plot was a heady mix.

So 30 minutes into the film, the experiment in mass watching isn't going so great. I'm quite enjoying it but there are one or two hundred too many people tweetering away, updates are coming in at around 30 every 15 seconds or so, too many to keep up. But there are a few little gems of the tweet world every now and again so it keeps some of my attention.

I soon realised that the trick is not to read what everyone is saying, as i'd be spending more time reading a lot of inane crap rather than watching the film. So, just glancing back and too, getting into a nice rhythm with it, picking up the odd funny comment by people, it definitely added to the experience. It kind of led to a confirmation that most people are pretty much the same (in a good way, rather than a bland way), I'd see something on the screen, think about how odd it was or something weird that i'd infered from it or think something just plain silly (like where's Ferris when Alan Ruck appears) and bam, i'd refresh twitter and see other people posting the exact same though. Uniformity can be comforting and nice.

The whole thing was really rather fun, watching a film with a group of dislocated strangers, doesn't sound like it would be, but it was.

Theres another showing at midnight with Phil Jupitus as the celebrity host, don't think I can manage two viewings in one night. No matter how delectable Zooey Deschanel is.


Incase you're wondering what the hell all this is, check out :

http://www.twitter.com/glinner
or
http://www.badmovieclub.co.uk

Star Trek and Snow

Is it just me or can nobody else take Simon Pegs serious expression in this photo seriously?  I'm sure one day I'll be able to do so, but I've seen him being far too silly in far too many things that I can't help but giggle at his steely menacing-eyes look.   And also, why is everyone pretty much looking straight on at the camera apart from the only woman in the pic?  Is it supposed to be a sultry look off to the side to feign how sexy she is or to give the impression that this sneaky woman just popped her head into the big man shot at the last second?  Either seems equally ridiculous.

But, saying all that, my balls are literally tingling with excitement at the new Star Trek film, it looks so amazingly awesome.  Now I'm sure there are gonna be some bits in it that make me wince, but the space battles look like they'll numb my brain enough with pure joy that I will no longer care about any cheesey moments or clunky dialogue.

Now, take a look at the picture above.  This is my experience of "The Worst Snow to hit Britain in 18 Years" as the BBC News website more or less puts it.  The far left is the morning of Day 1 of this catastrophe, the second picture is the afternoon and the third is Day 2 of Britain in Chaos.  Now, personally, I don't think it was that big of a deal.  Even the pictures I've seen of the rest of the country were a bit grim, but for an hour or two during a snow storm.  Can these things really bring the whole country to a stand still?  When did we become such pansies?

Its Me

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=E3KRvWW4Cc0