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.

Rainbows and Rutting

Without really realising it, another month has passed by here in Berlin (its almost October for fricks sake). The most striking part of this speedy passing of time is that I'm not really sure what I've been doing to make it go so quickly. But I do think its quite positive, a sign of settling into my life here, that things are becoming regular and every day, rather than those things being out of the ordinary and blog worthy (as when I first moved here). Not to say that things have become ordinary and boring though, quite the opposite, just that I'm getting used to having fun crazy things happening all the time.

The most fun of these recent events was looking after the little doggy, Daisy for the weekend. Now, not to put down all the good times I've had with one's human associates, but well, she is a dog, and if you know me you know where my heart lies in such matters. Much entertainment was had, although we did fall into a bit of a feedback loop. Me with my happiness to play with dogs at any given moment, as much as possible and her with her "take up any and all opportunities to play" attitude. Combine this with my love of walking and her love of sniffing and by the end of the weekend we'd pretty much worn each other out. But there was, of course, time for a little photo shoot :

All together now, awwwww.

Other than that I've been spending quite a bit of time out being all cosmopolitan, doing brunch (and occasionally actual lunch) with people and eating at various restaurants (although the Russian Gorki Park is still my fav, with The Bird's burgers coming in a close second). Had some rather good food at a little Mexican place just round the corner from where I live and it seemed to actually be Mexican food (rather than the bland pre-packed taco kit type food my English palette is used to), was rather yumo indeed. Add onto this randomly bumping into friends whilst being there (Berlin is a big city so this happens infrequently) and a little rainbow smiling down on us and it was rather pleasant :

Other than the foodage I've tried to be a little on the cultural side, mostly (and only) by seeing the odd free opera concert thingymabob. ie. :

only a bit pap as I had to share it with a billion other people :

Plus, as if you ever doubted there would be, lots of drunken nights out. The most lairy of which was a night bouncing around bars with a group of guys, all doing our best to be loud and obnoxious drunked English speakers (you have to keep the stereotypes up now and again). Although I do think I need a better social drink for myself. Vodka is all well and yummy but as I think I've mentioned in the past, here in Berlin they like to be a little liberal with their measures. The result being any night of hanging out for a couple of drinks in a bar gets me quite drunk indeed. One's liver is beginning to protest.

The only downside to this past month though, is that the regular Thursday night ToyTown drinks that I go to has somewhat descended into a horrific meat market, populated by idiotic immature rutting imbeciles. Imagine a gaggle of cave men wandering around in a fenced off pen bumping into things and each other, then a girl is thrown in their midst, they all surround her, rub up against her vigorously, ug-ing it up to the max and trying to bonk her on the head with alcoholic clubs. Its quite irritating to say the least. The worst of this though is that people have started to lump me in with the ug-o's. Am I the only one that understands you can talk to, hang out with and become friends with a girl without wanting to slip her a bit of the pink love monster? It doesn't seem that difficult a concept to grasp.

And lastly, my favourite picture finding of late :

I want all my orange juice with juicy tits from now on.

Churches, Parks, Large Burgers and Sitting on the Roof

The past 24 hours (literally) has exemplified just why it is I've moved to Berlin. It started at pretty much this time last night when I headed to a church just around the corner for a party/art exhibition/bbq type thing. Was a little unsure what to expect, mostly as I've never been to a party at a church before, but as its Berlin it wasn't quite what you'd associate with such a thing. It consisted of about 40 people sat/stood around, just outside the entrance, getting pissed and stuffing their faces with food whilst having a laugh. Occasionally ambling into the church itself to have a looksy at the various artworks hanging around :

This sounds far more pretentious than it was (not atall. honestly). Either that or wander up the rather dangerous (at least when pissed) stair case :

for a rather good view of Berlin (well, its here as much as my camera phone will allow. ie, not really a good view) :

The best part of the whole experience was later in the evening, when I may of been slightly drunked on vodka, stumbling through the church to go for a jimmy-riddle whilst two guys were singing hymns acoompanied by an organ. Not what my drunken mind is used to and quite surreal.

After that was a drink or two in Scotch and Soda (themed, but none the worse for it, if you hadn't guessed) and then it was suggested that we go to one of the party goers houses and sit on their roof terrace, have a couple of drinks and soak in the Berlin night. All great apart from the fact that when getting there and being pointed to go up the stairs to the roof we couldn't find said roof. You wouldn't think it'd be that difficult, but what were looking for was a door with some stairs leading to a decked garden type of thing. What we found were two derelict looking apartments without lights and with crumbling floors, imagine the set of Hostel or Hannibal Lecters' basement and you get the idea.

But after stumbling around while our alcohol addled brains tried to process the fact that we may about to be killed, we found a ladder. This led to a little hatch and then to just the open (creaky) roof. So we sat there for a short time and had a drink, looking at the tv tower whilst seemingly the rest of Berlin laughed and shouted, it was really like there were parties going on all around us. A final couple of drinks were then had in Hairy Marys ending up with me arriving into bed at about 6am.

6 hours of sleep later I was waking up to go for brunch, not the best of ideas in a drunken state you may think, and you may be right. The first thing that I noticed when walking out of my apartment though, was that today was hotter than satans ball bag. The second thing I noticed is that I wasn't anywhere near awake or in a state of functionality. But (fortunately) after stuffing my face with a breakfast buffet and drinking a rather large coffee whilst being roasted by the sun I was feeling a little better. The rest of the afternoon was then spent sitting in the park chatting shit and having a laugh, eating some rather good chocolate and banana ice cream, going to another park and sitting around listening to some music :

And then finishing the day up with a trip to The Bird, a rather good American style Burger place, where I ate approximately half a cow in 3 minutes flat (it was that good) and had a humongous mound of fries to wash it down with.

All in all a most pleasurable time.

And finally :

Not my usual style, but it does make me giggle.

Temporary Decisions and Suicidal Dogs

Last night was the regular Thursday night ToyTown drinks, of which I don't think I've missed one so far in my time here (not that I'm an alcoholic or anything). All in all it was a rather pleasant evening, sat around laughing for about 4 hours, cuddling Daisy (a wee excitable little doggy before you picture me taking advantage of some poor drunk girl recently arrived in Berlin) whilst getting rather pissed. The pissed part though, wasn't so planned. The idea was to have a couple of drinks, what with working the next day, and to be fair to myself that is precisely what I did. Its not my fault that the bar tenders idea of a reasonable amount of vodka (a shot or so) is a little larger than most peoples (ie. more than 50% of the liquid content). After one I was mildly tipsy, after two I was steaming.

So today has been a combination of working, sitting on the balcony in my grundikes reading a book by Charlie Brooker and sitting in the coffee shop drinking my regular large Mocha (I don't even have to ask the staff for it anymore. I feel like Norm from cheers, though without having just eaten 2000 donuts). Oh, all that and recovering from the unexpected hangover, they do seem to be so much worse when they're a surprise.

Apartment wise I've made a decision. After a couple of months looking at shitholes, overpriced shitholes, nice places in shitholes and one nice place in a polished turd of a street (ie. could be a shithole, but its not quite there) I had my options. One, move into a new apartment. Buy a few grands worth of furniture, washing machine etc. Sign up for all the year or two long contracts for day to day essentials (internet and such) and the long term lease on the apartment. Or, two, stay where I am now, pay a little more for the privilege and not have to sign my life away for said year or two or go through all the hassles of buying furniture (don't get me started on the additional pains I had just trying to get a desk and chair from Ikea, the cunts).

So, when I put it to myself like that, it wasn't too difficult to decide. Why spend all my time and energy moving to Berlin permanently when the moving part of this whole plan wasn't and isn't the main point. Breaking out of a stuck-in routine, having some fun and figuring out where to go/what to do next is, so that's what I'll be doing. It is just far too easy to get lost in the forward motion of doing stuff to be 'getting on with it' rather than stopping to think if what you're doing is really the best use of your time.

But, I've grown quite accustomed to my current accommodation and despite all the hassles of getting said Desk and Chair from those who we shall not mention again, its fricking good having a place to work/not work (the only thing that was really missing from the apartment before) :

My favourite picture finding of late is this, a poor doogles that's had enough of his miserable life and has decided to end it all 1920's silent film style :

Poor thing.

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.