Sonntag

On a sunny Sunday, drinking coffee in a cafe and watching the sexy Kreuzbergers go by, I am reminded of how much working full-time sucks. Still, there are other advantages, like being able to afford concert tickets. This week: Raster Noton label night on Wednesday and Plaid on Saturday. Hotte!

I have my first tranlation job and I have to do it well, in order to get more. Unfortunately, it's about eastern European Renaissance architecture. Still, no complaints. Life could be a lot worse, I guess.

Herbst

It got cold, snap, and now suddenly it's autumn before you've had time to turn around. The temperature lies in the single digits much of the day but the trees haven't yet had time to lose their leaves, which remain incongruously thick and verdant on the branches. The sky is dark dark steel grey with only hints of pearl at the horizon, the days are filled with rain and hail and thunder, with pink cheeks (and red noses) and cold fingers and toes. The wind sneaks in around the collars of autumn coats just pulled out of storage and the summer cottons still worn beneath can't stop it reaching bare skin. But it's not so icy just yet.

Arriving home at 7.30pm the light is fading fast and the street-lights splash orange on the wet streets (a seemingly sudden surprise after months of 9-10pm summer sunsets).

At work today one of my co-workers made the wonderful suggestion that we should get hot water bottles to sit on our laps during the winter months. I lovingly retrieved my hot water bottle from its summer holiday home last night, and I can't think of a better bed companion for the winter ahead.

I can't wait for the wonder of the winter months, for fairy lights and Glühwein and dancing against the wind and rain and snow on the streets outside. But I'm not planning to freeze this time around - instead I've been on an eBay and op-shop Kaufrausch, and am now stocked up with boots and coats and lined woollen old-lady skirts.

I am even looking forward to Christmas.

me 'n' Shane

I never expected to write this, but I'm jealous of Warney.

. . .

D. and I were discussing the end of the honeymoon period when one goes to a new place - at first everything is entirely fabulous, but then after a few weeks the euphoria vanishes and all you can see is the dog poo and the fact that everyone is rude to you all the time.

Berliners really are quite rude, but the rudeness of people in public doesn't bother me (people pushing into queues, or bumping into me and not apologising, or whatever). What I perceive as rudeness in interactions with my (German) friends really does. Australia, being the British colony that it continues to be, is actually full of very polite people. When someone asks you for something, they say please, and when you give it to them/do it for them, they say thank you. People just don't do this here, and even though I know it's a cultural difference, I just can't stop thinking that everyone is being really rude to me all the time. It's a disconcerting feeling to feel that someone is my friend and seems to like my company, but at the same time feel constantly slapped in the face by their rudeness.

The solution of course, as in so many other things, is not to be friends with too many Germans. There are enough fellow foreigners in Berlin to keep me in friends for years. Not so good for my German... but better for the soul.

Vir-abschieden

My friend Virginia is going back to Spain tomorrow and I am very sad, even though it means I have a bed in Barcelona and good reason to go there often, and she will be back here often too.

But who will teach me Spanish and laugh at my accent now? Who will say, "oh Gigi, joder!" at every piece of news? Who will feed me paella and hot-out-of-the-oven bread and Spanish cheese and insist that we only ever drink rum? Having friends leave is harder when one has only a few of value, and the rest have barbaric gastronomic tastes.



Still, there's one good think about friends leaving and facing an airline luggage allowance: presents. Including towels, clothes, real Spanish chorizo that V's boyfriend brought with him from Spain, 100 pesetas, and a very large collection of medical items.

Ausländer

This morning I woke up at 6am on a delightful 12 degree C mid-summer morning to go to the immigration office, or Ausländerbehörde (in a charming exhibition of customer service, it opens at 7am on Mondays and Tuesdays. Getting there later than 8am is unwise, unless you want to spend 5 hours in a waiting room). It is located in an industrial zone in the north-west of the city, and on the walk from the train station to the scary-looking grey building, other foreigners, alone or in pairs, joined me from each side street. I imagined that they were as scared as me at having to go and face up to the German authorities about their immigration status.

In the end my visit was a complete non-event, and I was told to come back in a few weeks, and no one seemed to give a shit that my visa expires tomorrow. Having made the journey out there, I took some photos of the industrial pr0n. I don't know what I'd do if I were ever removed from the urban environment.

Messerattacke!

My current means of earning money, as a "night life tour guide" for tour groups, is generally a fairly painful experience, because it means 4-hour stretches of interacting and being extremely happy with a bunch of 50 idiots. Still, I feel somehow responsible, although I am clearly not, that one of my charges got stabbed about 1 1/2 hours after I left him to his own devices the other night.

Anyone who reads German should read this version of the story instead - because then you get to read the comments submitted by the readership, who discuss whether the famous violent drinking culture of Australians/English-speakers/Anglo-Saxons (according to commentator) would or would not have provided likely or sufficient provocation for the attack.

I think it's entirely possibly, although I would suggest that a punch in the nose is a more just punishment for a drunk south Australian tosser than being stabbed five times in the chest.

Meanwhile, we had 3 days of hot summer in Berlin and went swimming at the Muggelsee to cool off. It reminded me of swimming in the Swan river as a kid. Which, whilst not the ocean, certainly has a charm of its own.

D. is visiting Berlin to learn German, which is altogether super fun. As you can see, he is opting for the absorption method.

For Leigh

There are lots of really great things about Berlin, but a few bad things too. Like week-long poetry festivals.