Falling over is rubbish, but also, okay.

For three months, I lived on my own, without the internet. I don’t know why the internet part matters too much actually. But I guess it made me more alone. I wasn’t sitting chatting to people on facebook all day.

I really enjoyed living on my own. I enjoyed that I could wander around without any clothes on and not worry about running into a dismayed flatmate. I enjoyed that I could cook and eat pretty much anything I wanted. I enjoyed that I could get up when I liked, and go to sleep when I liked, and sing the theme tune to Game of Thrones really loud, and wrong, each time I put a new episode on.

And I enjoyed that I was actually liking it. I enjoyed that it wasn’t lonely or boring or driving me slowly crazy. I had a lot of house guests, which probably mixed it up just enough to stop me going out of my mind. And I saw people a lot. But all my fears about being miserable without housemates, or musings about how living with someone provides something social… well, I was wrong. I can live alone. I like living alone, and that is very liberating. Knowing I could do that.

99% of the time.

The 1%

So, one day, a normal October day, back when it was still brilliantly sunny, I put pretty much half of my entire wardrobe in the washing machine (I didn’t overload it, I just didn’t have many clothes because of the whole emigration/poverty thing). And when it came time to remove them the door wouldn’t open, the water wouldn’t drain, and half my clothes were completely stuck. I kept washing them every other day while I figured out what to do, and in the end my landlord suggested I manually drain the machine.

I turned the first knob I found, and a gush of water escaped onto my kitchen floor. I quickly shut it off and realised draining the machine would have to wait until a more appropriate hour, when I wasn’t in the middle of painting my face for a Halloween party. (And before you do the maths… from ‘brilliantly sunny’ to Halloween is about two weeks. Meh.)

Upon my return from the party, slightly inebriated, I discovered that there was, well, at a guess, about half a centimetre of water all over my kitchen floor. I grabbed the first thing I could plausibly use – a blanket which the cat slept on, and once it was saturated with water I took it to the only place I could drain it, the shower.

Apparently when most of the buildings in East Berlin were created/ built/ divided into flats or something similar, there were communal bathrooms, because that was more communist, and all the better to spy on you with. (I am not a historian, in case you were wondering.) And so when, er, human rights were restored, tiny little bathrooms were installed in apartments which had no room for them. Mine was especially small. Like a toilet cubicle, but instead of a back wall, it had a raised shower. It was pretty dangerous as it was more than a regular step up, and a wet slip* away from crashing into the toilet. I worked on an excellent shower-dismount technique during my tenancy, and managed to perfect it so that I didn’t flush the toilet everytime I finished washing.

But of course, this isn’t a random shower-logistics tangent which I’ve thrown in to spice things up. As you may have predicted, on this night, the potential hazard was realised…

The blanket, of course, dripped washing machine water all over the bathroom, and as I dumped it in the shower, ready to wring it out, I slipped, my legs gave way, and my chin smashed down onto the raised platform of the shower and started bleeding.

This was a few months ago, I grant you. But my thought process went something like this: ‘Wow! That was pretty hard! Right… must check in the mirror. Oh, that’s quite a lot of blood. Right, if I just wash it off I’ll be okay. The kitchen is mainly clean now. I might text a couple of people just to let them know I have injured myself.’

It’s probably worth noting I text Max and Kryspin, among others. Max, who I was somewhat enamoured with at the time.

‘Okay. All cleaned up, the cut isn’t as big as I thought it might be, but it certainly needs something. I wonder if I have any plasters which might be big enough? Or maybe some sort of cream? My head hurts a lot. Anyway, I think it’s all under control. Oooh, a message from Max which reads ‘Hope the washing machine isn’t too badly damaged’.

Now at this point the stage directions might read something like ‘Exit rationality. Enter profuse sobbing.’

‘OH. MY. GOD. I live on my own and I am a single woman and no one is there for me in the middle of the night. I could have passed out from the knock to my head and laid there until someone found me or the cat slowly ate me. I would have been naked and bleeding and alone and the last thing of any importance I would have done with my life is won a game of scrabble. I am so alone.’

I’m not going to lie to you. I think that at this point I actually started saying some of this stuff out loud. Or more accurately crying some of this stuff out very loud. I was in pain, and in shock, and there was blood, and I was injured. But mainly I was just a bit petrified of being all alone. Forever.

I’m still not sure I like the idea of living with someone, especially in that sharing your room and your bed way. But for that 1%, for that little half hour meltdown, I would happily have been married and living in suburbia. Probably. I wouldn’t have felt so vulnerable.

It was just an intense moment. And in intense moments you want to be able to look behind you and see someone has your back. As it happened, once Max realised the actual issue, he did offer to let me crash on his couch that night. And Kryspin, for his sins, basically listened to the most irrational crying for twenty minutes while I tried to explain what had happened and what my plan of action would be. He and Jason both offered to come from where they were to check I was okay. So there were people, people who would be there for me if I needed them. But I guess there is a point, for everyone (yeah, I’ll say it, everyone) where you want people around, and where living alone is scary, and where we’re vulnerable. At that point I always thought there were two options. Decide you really need to live with people, be around people, and that you can’t possibly cope as a single person, or completely ignore that it happened and repaint everything as simple, easy-going life in Berlin.

However, I would like to choose option three. Sometimes, something happens and exposes the flaws in what you thought was a perfect situation, like rain on your make up. There are no perfect situations. Seeing what is wrong with a situation doesn’t make that situation implicitly wrong, Helen. Maybe I will live alone again. I’ll probably enjoy it, and sometimes feel a little vulnerable and do a cry. That’s liberating too, in it’s own way.

*this is not a euphemism

Leaving Berlin Part 5 of 8: A tribute to my weird and wonderful guests

For the first three months that I was in Berlin, my accommodation situation looked a bit like this: One week in a hostel; two months in the spare room of Eva and crazy Andrea's house; and a month and half in an unfurnished two room apartment without a sink.

It worked out pretty well all finances considered, as I certainly managed a cheap route into Berlin (mainly thanks to Eva). But equally, it meant that all the people desperate to come and see this city I had raved about had to wait until cold, miserable October to book their easyjet flights, pack their carry-on luggage and meet me at the airport.

Steph and Cat: Vom Weekend.

I was excited that Steph and Cat decided to visit me. I used to work with them, and our social interactions were limited to a bottle of wine (or three?) after work in the pubs around Bloomsbury. You develop a strange relationship with the people you work with - you see them more than you see your friends and family, but when you leave you don't know if you'll see them again. Steph and Cat did not sever all ties, and I’ll pretend this was because I am generally awesome as both a colleague and a friend, and skip over the part about me having a free place to crash in an easy to reach European city.

My plan to cram as much as possible into their short stay began when I met them at the airport at 9pm and proposed we try and make it to bar by 11pm. True to form they quickly explained they’d already had some wine while waiting for their flight, and our party weekend began.

The excellent thing about going out in Berlin is that you don’t have to dress up, pay a massive cover charge and dance all night in a club. If you just want to sit comfortably in a bar and have a few drinks, that option is there, and that is the option we seized with both hands and passionately embraced. Now, the weekend got its name, in part, from some of Cat’s antics that night. But, as she explained to me while she talked to an attractive man, trying to convince him to get her an interview at a prestigious company, ‘I might be drunk, but I always know what I want’.

Susie and Naomi visit Berlin when I am not there

The following weekend Susie and her sister Naomi arrived. Susie booked the tickets a few weeks before, emailing to ask when I was free. ‘All the time!’ I replied, jobless and bored. But then came the opportunity for a job in kindergartens teaching English, and there was a two day training weekend, right when my guests were due.

Susie and Naomi coped well, and navigated the city without me on their sight-seeing tours of Prenzlauerberg and beyond. We went for some lovely meals, and still had a couple of days together on the Monday and Tuesday to visit Museums and wander around Berlin together in the cold, and catch up with all the news from the UK.

Together we discovered some real German hospitality at Schwarze Pumpe, where the owner gave us the proper tourist treatment, bringing us different beers to try and talking us through all the dishes on the menu.

We also visited the Jewish Museum, which charts the history of Jewish communities in Germany from the first records to the present day. Around the 1800s it really picks up and you start to think it might all work out for them…

Far better educated people than me can explain the architectural and curational sophistication of this museum, so I’ll just say it’s definitely worth visiting.

It was excellent seeing a city through the eyes of tourists again. It’s something I never really experienced in London, and it kept my passion for Berlin alive. It was a great excuse to tick off the left-over items from my guidebook, and I was really proud to show off my new home, this incredible, complex and active city.

Sophie has a birthday

Remember how I mentioned that Sophie is old? Well, it turns out every year she gets older. (I feel like I need to make this really clear because it is not obvious at all if you see her in person.)

In November Sophie turned 30. Most importantly this meant that our friends got together and arranged to celebrate with her in Berlin. Richard and Tom checked into a hotel, because they are fancy, and also because there was not enough room anywhere else. Claudia got to stay at casa de Sophie. And Ned and Brown Thomas pulled the short straw (that I’d probably chewed) and came to stay with me.

I think it would be fair to say our contribution to the whole affair was a lack of punctuality and a sort of groaning when we arrived about our hangovers.

Since the amazing weekend with Steph and Cat every weekend got better and better, and this was the season finale. It did not disappoint. Every night we went for a wonderful (and cost-effective) dinner followed by drinks. On the Saturday Sophie threw a brilliant party to mark the occasion, and it went on until eight in the morning, first in her house, and then in a bar with live music, and then in Renate.

On the final night we secured ourselves a karaoke booth, and Richard and Tom’s rendition of ‘Love is a Battlefield’ was so perfect* I have decided this should be sung in place of their vows at their impending wedding.

I don’t think Jason and Ned will ever forget our wonderful walk back from Renate in the early hours of the morning. I don’t think Brown Thomas will ever forget his tram journey away from my house. And I don’t think I will ever forget what it felt like to feel that happy about the decision I had made to be in Berlin.

*perfect for the occasion and such, not, you know, technically good.

Zog, Dog, Alex and Frog come to Berlin to meet Michael and Mog

In January and February I knew everything was falling apart. I didn’t have a job that paid enough, or gave me enough work. I didn’t have anything in the pipeline. I didn’t have anywhere new to live come March, and I knew my days were numbered. But there were two good reasons to hold on: the flat I was staying in had been so easy to find, offering me two bonus months, and everyone else was coming in February on £40 flights they had found online.

Diving straight in, my favourite part of this weekend, without a shadow of a doubt, was the part when Sophie announced she had people coming to look at her flat to see if they wanted to take over as tenants when she left. The only issue was, it doesn't look so great if you have an extra seven people sitting around when that happens. So we agreed to put our am-dram education to the test and pretend we were also looking at the flat, you know, to make the real guests feel the pressure – this is a popular apartment don’t you know! After a long and sensible discussion about the issue, Zara and I decided it would not be a great idea to put on accents. Mainly because yelling ‘Flahs for sale!’ is not an accent, and is not really relevant to flat rental. I learnt this from Location, Location, Location.

My friends don’t actually have names ending in ‘og’, although it would make them excellent Dr Zeus characters. Michael explained, you take someone’s first initial and then add the ‘og’ suffix, which is Greek for ‘friend of Michael’. It still took him a week to realise he could get away with calling me Hog though.

For this group excursion I threw a party, which partially served as an opportunity to see everyone I knew in Berlin before I left. I’ll admit, I wasn’t in the best of spirits, but as David explained to me repeatedly with bizarre intensity as I tried to sort out the kitchen: ‘it will all be okay’.

Zara and David were officially my guests for the weekend, but after they had gone home Alex and Faith spent a night enjoying the luxury ‘cushions on the ground’ bed I had made. Their first visit status made for another great chance to explore my unseen Berlin. We visited the Pergammon, which I loved, because everything in it is blue – it’s like a Blueseum**! And from a technical architectural point of view, blue is awesome. Ancient blue. From Asia.

I guess I’d also like to add it was a great chance to spend time with Alex’s girlfriend, Faith. Having moved away from London quite soon after they got together (to avoid her) I hadn’t really gotten to know her. Anyway, it turns out she’s sort of okay. I’ll put her at number 3 in my list of ‘partners of my friends’, which is good, because she has put me at number 3 in her list of ‘friends of her partner’ (he only has three friends).

**pun by Alex Birchmore, February 2012

Family Clarke - welcome to Berlin!

Every year my family would get in the car, probably at some horrible hour in the morning, drive to a little cottage in the countryside of Dorset, or Nothumberland, or Cornwall, and spend the week doing nothing but walking. Walking everywhere. We basically went to high places and looked down on the route we’d walked, and then climbed down and walked around some more. All you could see for miles on these walks was lots of trees and lots of fields, it was like deja-view. (It only took me twenty years to think that little pun up!)

When I was fifteen my parents gave in and made a deal with me: ‘lets go on one more holiday, one that you’d enjoy, and then we’re done’. So we went to Orlando, Florida, we rode on all the rollercoasters, and I was happy, and jetlagged, and sweaty.

I guess that was probably the last time we all spent more than a few days together, so when my parents explained that my brother would be coming to Berlin with them we had four days of Clarke family fun all booked.

There are three main things you do if you’re a Clarke and you’re on holiday.

You Walk

Now I’ll consent, this was great. I don’t object so much to walking now as I did when I was twelve. And more to the point, we saw interesting and different buildings and statues around Berlin, explored diverse neighbourhoods, and had arguments about when graffiti is art. You don’t ever have conversations like that about fields and trees. We went up the Reichstag, again, we went up the Berliner Dom. We basically went to high places and looked at the city we’d walked around, and then climbed down and walked around some more.

You Eat

We ate Italian food, we ate Spanish food, we ate a lot of German food, we ate some Japanese food, some cake, and some Currywurst, brunch, croissants, cupcakes… And when we were finished there was no food left in Berlin.

You make a joke as many times as possible

We spent a lot of the weekend laughing together. My brother used his iPhone to photoshop my Dad into various situations around Berlin. My Mum asked why all the Germans kept calling her ‘Duncan’. (That’s ‘danke’, it means ‘thank you’.). My Dad ate a hard boiled egg, turned over the empty shell and offered it to us pretending it was still all there. And we asked my brother if he slept okay, a lot. It was hilarious, and I would say you had to be there to get it, but you probably had to be born there, as a Clarke.

Leaving Berlin Part 4 of 8: Things I’ll miss a huge amount

So I’m ‘home’, in lovely little Horsham. It’s a bit… dull. And my parents have stolen my old bedroom and given me theirs which is slightly odd.

I managed Saturday with only five tears. Two when I said goodbye to the last of the people to leave my fairwell lunch and three on the plane when we touched down in cold miserable England, so I think that’s good. It turns out the key is to think about two things: the super-short-term e.g. ‘what will I do tomorrow?’ and the super-long-term e.g. ‘where will I be a year from now?’. And whatever happens don’t think about Berlin and how awesome it is.

Certainly don't write about it... oh crap.

The Perfect Sunday: Frühstück

Berlin does breakfast like Michael does shouting in the faces of people he finds attractive – excessively. For a few euros you can normally well-acquaint yourself with at least three different cheeses, three different meats, a couple of different breads and some fruit. In Schwarze Pumpe, Chorinerstr there is a legendary Sunday buffet with eggs and sausages, cheeses, meats, salad, fruit, pesto, more pesto, ‘Helen I think you’ve taken all of the pesto there’ and various different breads, and it will cost 5€. At A-Horn, just over the river from Princenstr. U-bahn there are massive plates of all the same things which are served with freshly baked bagels of your choice: cheese, olive, tomato…

I miss rolling out of bed on a Sunday morning, reading a message from Sophie with a brunch suggestion, and heading to somewhere beautiful in Berlin to eat enough food to last until dinner.

Max’s House, Catanienallee – eating food, watching films and playing games

As winter started to descend on Berlin there were two beautiful weekends where the sun was out, the air was crisp, and you could forage through Sunday markets like a mouse preparing for hibernation, thinking ‘once the cold comes I won’t be back here until spring’.

On one of these weekends I met up with Kurt, and a new friend, Max, ate the aforementioned unlimited brunch at Schwarze Pumpe and spent a little time in Mauerpark Flohmarkt.

Wanting to get in from the cold Max invited us back to his nearby apartment to watch a film and eat soup.

It was around this time that I started my plot to kill Max and steal his apartment. Located on one of my favourite streets in Berlin, possibly my favourite at the time, I was incredibly jealous of his low cost two room flat. He was also one of the first real people I had met in Berlin. You know, he hadn’t just moved here, he wasn’t living with a family, or with anyone else for that matter, and he had a proper job. All this means that his apartment is actually full of things, like a real person! He didn’t sleep on a mattress on the floor, he didn’t cook in one pan, and best of all, he had a massive projector so we could watch movies on a giant screen.

The invitations to Max's house were repeated almost every weekend, and he would often cook, screen movies, and suggest we play board and card games.

The food we ate:

·        A massive thanksgiving dinner (and the subsequent leftovers from two turkeys)

·        Goulash

·        Carrot and ginger soup

·        Russian dumplings

It was also our Sunday games location where we whiled away hours and hours and… “oh dear, has it been eight hours already?” with our new love, Settlers of  Catan.

Max is an excellent host, and it’s been awesome hibernating all winter in his wonderful apartment. Despite the inspiration I got watching the Sopranos in his flat, I have decided it would be a little cruel to kill him and steal his apartment, because he uses his apartment powers for good and not evil. Also, because I don’t think I could manage it without getting caught. Mainly that actually.

Amazing, cheap and beautiful places to live

One of the best reasons to stay in Berlin or to live there in the first place, is the quality of accommodation. I love the intricate designs in the massive apartment blocks. I love the ornate ceilings. I love that no two buildings look alike.

But the best part is how affordable it all is. For 400€ a month I had my own flat, ten minutes from the city centre. It had a cute little kitchen; a pokey bathroom which I found out was installed after the wall came down and the buildings were sold; and a massive bedroom with a four-poster bed. All the furnishings were cute and inexpensive, picked up from local markets or online retailers.

I think best of all I liked that it was all mine. My temporary pocket of Berlin that I could come back to each night. So one day I would like to have that again. I would like to make that for myself. Like Max has, like Sophie is starting to.

Leaving Berlin Part 3 of 8: Things I’ll miss a lot

I booked my flight yesterday. I leave next Saturday, 3^rd March at 7.15pm. This will not be a happy time. This will be a very, very sad time. But at least I know when I get back home there is the nice warm, loving comfort of two of the most supportive things in life. Macaroni and cheese. Hear that Mum and Dad? Make some macaroni and cheese ;)

Every Café and Bar in Berlin

Okay, admittedly, not every café is the same, but every good café, every bar I want to visit more than once comes with a trademark Berlin look. It’s made up of mismatched furniture that was bought in markets and bizarre pictures and would-be ornaments on the wall. In the daytime it serves tea and coffee and maybe some food and cake. By night it takes off its glasses, puts its underwear on outside its trousers and becomes a shockingly similar looking bar, selling beers and mixed drinks. And if it’s something really special, cocktails too.

This is free right?

Okay, so perhaps I should have titled this ‘Things that Berlin is not going to miss about me’. Sometimes you can manage not to buy tickets for public transport. Sometimes you can manage this for months on end. Sometimes if you have one unstamped ticket and bump into a ticket inspector he won’t mind. Sometimes if a ticket inspector stops you and you explain you’re visiting from England he’ll just make you buy a ticket. I’m just saying. Sometimes it works out.

In fact, while I’m mentioning reasons Berlin might not consider me the ideal citizen, I did make some noise pollution. My friend Max is an excellent, excellent host, and often invites us round to sit and chat, play board games or have a few beers. Nothing unreasonable or rowdy. Just five or six friends sitting in a living room chatting with some quiet music in the background. Anyway, his neighbour may have complained, repeatedly, about the noise... of my laugh. (I’m reliably informed that once he even attempted an impression). He is not happy. I think he will be happy never to hear that noise again. But as a special little treat I will be staying there for my last two nights in Berlin, which is pretty funny really... Hahahaha.

The Perfect Sunday: Mauerpark

Part of the perfect Berlin weekend is perusing the markets in Mauerpark. Last week, with Alex and Faith who were visiting Berlin, we played a little Mauerpark challenge. Faith, who had never visited the market before, challenged me to find a goat, a picture of  dead president, and a top hat. And goat aside we found that pretty simple (and we think we found a finger-puppet of a goat). This is the market of all things. All the things you could ever want and all the things you will never want and everything in between. Boxes and boxes of random junk, some hilarious, some tragic, some beautiful.

I can’t recommend it enough. I hate markets. I love Mauerpark.

Children are sort of alright really

I already wholeheartedly miss the majority of the children I used to work with when I was at the Kindergarten full time. And now I’m working once a week in kindergartens teaching English I’m going to miss a lot of those children as well. I miss Dion, who on my birthday pretended to handcuff me, drive me to a random location and shoot me. I’ll miss Alicia and Julika who like to pretend to be crocodiles and snap their jaws at me when we sing our jungle song. I miss Josef who would dress up as a ballerina every afternoon. I miss Elizabeth who liked to tell me I was a smelly monkey, and Olivia who drew me beautiful pictures.

But mainly, and most days, I just miss Manuel and Jose, the twins. We used to hang out all day every day. When I changed their nappies I would sing a song called ‘Nappy Time’, which always made them laugh more than I thought it was possible to make anyone laugh. The lyrics were ‘Nappy, nappy, nappy time, nappy time, nappy time!’. Eat your heart out Adele, where’s my Grammy? When they refused to fall asleep I would sit with them in the dark patting their backs until they fell asleep. I made sure they ate all their dinner, and I knew when they were full up, and when they were tired, and when they were sick.

When I grow up. I want twin boys just like Manuel and Jose.

Leaving Berlin Part 2 of 8: Things I’ll miss somewhat

Ice Cream is everywhere

In the summer ice cream is everywhere. In the winter it packs itself away and rents out its space to other food shops. I remember the cold week in November when the ice cream died across Berlin. But we had a great run. I think the man in the middle of Zoologisher Garten who sold ice cream knew exactly what I wanted before I got there, on my way home from work at the Kindergarten. Always €1 or less for a scoop and of course an important part of your five a day (I assume they were always chatting about five scoops of ice cream?). There was pretty much every flavour you could imagine, white chocolate and nutella and straciatella. I guess what I'm trying to explain in some abstract and poetic way is that... I ate a lot of ice cream. And it was good.

Alexanderplatz

When I walk out of the U-bahn into the dull grey surroundings of Alexanderplatz I feel, not like I’m home, but like I’m close. It’s the place where all my journeys used to end and begin when I lived in Prenzlauerberg. Waiting for 28 minutes in the freezing cold in the middle of the night for the tram (while eating a cheeseburger), buying phone credit that doesn’t really work, saying goodbye to all the friends who came to visit. If what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, then maybe what doesn’t bug you too much makes you fall in love a little. And I’m a little in love with the faceless Soviet architecture and the massive store fronts. And that giant empty concrete space which is probably at its most beautiful when it’s not filled with Christmas markets or protestors, but when it’s just nothing.

The Canal

There is a beautiful bridge named Admiral Brücke where we sat in the summer and ate pizza or drank beers. People would gather in the evenings and play music, or just sit and chat, and it was a great hub of Berlin activity, and a great place to meet before going out for the evening, or going home.

In the winter the canal froze over and looked even more beautiful than before. People walked and slid across it and the bridge, no longer fit for sitting, saw its wrought iron walls adorned with snow.

On August 28^th 2010, the day after I decided to move to Berlin, I walked along the canal for the first time, in the sunshine, listening to stories about the city. And on cold, dark winter nights in Horsham last March I would just focus on the canal in Berlin, remembering why I was doing all these things, remembering why I had left London and what I was trying to propel myself towards. I just wanted to walk along that canal. And I guess, in a way, I got there. I live right next door… for now.

Grimmstr

Kryspin spent two months living in a hostel, or as he liked to call it his “four bed apartment near Warschauerstr.” Well quite, but all those beds were in the same room.

The search for a flat in Berlin is notoriously tough (and Kryspin is notoriously fussy about these things) but finally he found a beautiful flat in Grimmstr with two awesome girls, Andrea and Nicole. And then, at Christmas, when his dear friend Helen was homeless, and his flatmate Andrea had to leave it seemed only natural to swap one awesome flatmate for another and Berlin flirted a little with me by offering an incredible apartment for two months. I almost thought it wanted me to stay.

I’ve spent so many evenings in the kitchen chatting with the people who came in an out of the apartment, sitting in massive comfortable armchairs, playing games or watching television (or writing this blog right now). We threw a great party here one night, which is something I’ve not been in a position to do since I arrived in Berlin, and we played my first ever game of Settlers of Catan, German edition, courtesy of my friend Henry, who also brought cheese. Board games and cheese, beat that! (You really can’t).

But without a doubt the best thing about living here is living with Kryspin, who likes to sit in the kitchen for hours on end playing film trivia quizzes with me. He can’t type, or spell, and I don’t know any of the answers, but between us we manage to win. If by win you mean get more than half marks.

Leaving Berlin Part 1 of 8: Silly things I will miss a little

On Tuesday, at 2:40am (just imagine not knowing to the minute when someone typed something), my friend Jason commented on my blog link on facebook: “I hope someday you write about all the amazing fun times we've had between the C-Rex era and the leaving Berlin post. People are going to think it was all just shit in between, but we really had some awesome times!”

Oh Jason. We really, really did. The time between when this blog ended last year and Christmas was the best three months of my life. Steph and Cat were my first visitors to Berlin, and I remember thinking after an amazing weekend with them that it could only go downhill. But little did I know, two of the people we met on the Thursday when I dragged them from the airport to a bar*, would go on to be two of the best friends I’ve ever had, and that the following weekends would just get better and better and better.

I’ve tried to remember everything that makes Berlin so addictive and enjoyable, a patchwork of things that happened in that time, but I’m sure I’ve forgotten far too many things to mention.

So, part one: Silly things I will miss a little. I can live without them, but they have made things fun.

Prosecco

Prosecco in a can! More specifically Prosecco in a can at Another Country Berlin Bookshop where we go every other Tuesday night to do a quiz, and sometimes on a Friday to eat an amazing dinner. Prosecco in the supermarket for €1,50, which British friends marvel at when they come to stay. Prosecco in Sophie’s beautiful flat, sitting on her big black chairs, finishing off our make-up, debating where to eat dinner. Prosecco on the Kjosk Bus parked outside Gorlitzer Bahnhof which only costs €6 for a bottle, and which you can drink while teaching strangers how to play poker. I will miss being in a city of free-flowing Prosecco. It has been the best of times and the worst of times. I raise a glass to that! (Of Prosecco).

Dürüm Doners

When you are on your way home after a long night of partying like it’s 2009 (because that’s when you had a job) you really need a salty, sobering, meaty snack-meal. Chicken would be nice. Salad would be great. Some sauce would probably help that all mesh together a little better. Roasted vegetables and cheese would be a great addition. But more than anything, wouldn’t it be great if it was all wrapped neatly into a biteable little bundle that you could hold in one hand? Gone are the days of open plated meat that lays strewn across your kitchen the next morning, for here in Berlin is the delightfully neat and tasty Dürüm. Many thanks to Dom Walton for the late night introduction on a street corner to this delicious snack. I would like to note that while my consumption of this meal has probably been weekly, Kryspin has other ideas about when and where it is appropriate to eat a kebab, namely, at any time.

Sneak Preview Cinema

Back in Prenzlauerberg in October I didn’t have any internet in my flat and I would sit all day in a little café on Hufelandstr. Eva would be there playing on their piano, I would be liking things on facebook and the waiters would be eying us with the sort of contempt that always pushed me and my English café guilt into buying another coffee. On a rainy Thursday we decided we desperately needed to leave and couldn’t think of where to go but the cinema. It was then that we discovered that in Potsdamer Platz you can pay €5 to see a film on Thursday evening and the very best part is you have no idea what the film will be. It will be in English, and it will not yet be released in Germany, and the excitement of sitting in the cinema waiting and wondering has been enough to bring us back almost every week. I’ve seen many films that I would never have otherwise seen, and for the most part they have been pretty enjoyable. But mainly I just like the point when the lights descend and I squeal ‘OMG, what’s it going to be?’, Eva replies ‘I have no idea!’ and Sophie says ‘Shh! We’re in a cinema’ ;)

*This is a complete fabrication. No one has ever dragged Steph or Cat to a bar. They have always gone keenly, probably leading the way.

Leaving Berlin: Introduction

There are a lot of things I’m fighting to stop myself from thinking at the moment, because they upset me too much. But I thought I would take a stab at explaining them, at least to myself, and then putting them here, should anyone care to read them. To round off the tale of my (first) Berlin experience, I wanted to make a list of all the things I like about Berlin. And this serves as an introduction to that. I apologise that it’s probably a bit too serious for the internet.

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The time I have dreaded more than anything has finally arrived – I can’t feasibly stay in Berlin any more. Without full-time employment. Without enough money to pay rent coming in. Without enough potential prospects for future jobs.

I guess additionally, in terms of the bigger picture, there is not enough justification for bleeding dry whatever resources I might have (parents) chasing a part time job or little pieces of work here and there which won’t help me in the future.

And I’ll admit it. I want things. I want to be able to go shopping occasionally and buy nice clothes, and by clothes I mean make-up, and by nice I mean MAC. I want to gradually accrue miss-matched furniture so that I can piece together a little life around me. Maybe something resembling a home, that truly belongs to me and that I don’t feel can be ripped from underneath me at whim. I don’t want to wake up worrying where I will be living or how I will ever repay student debts or own anything of value.

I also want to be able to plan holidays. I want to know that before I am 30 I can stand in the one place on earth I want to see the most. When I’m reduced to tears by pictures of tiles on the walls of buildings I want to know I’ll be able to touch them. (For shame, that really happens quite a lot when I start thinking about Central Asia). I want to plan those excursions, holidays and tours and know that they’re within my reach, some day.

And I’m 27. And it started. I went to work in a kindergarten and it started to, you know, tick tock, tick tock. Children are sort of alright really. And some of them desperately need older people to help them learn about the world, feed them and clothe them. We call some of those people parents and I think I have the responsibility to be one someday. So when and if I’m ever lucky enough to convince all the people you need to convince that I should be a parent to one or two of those parentless children, I need some sort of a life to be able to offer them.

And begrudgingly it’s all financial. I feel like Berlin has taught me two crucial life lessons:

1. Money is not important. Art is important. People are important. And I am important, to myself. My happiness and emotional well-being are much more important than money. Finding out about new people in my life, forging strong friendships and spending time with the people I love is so much more important than money.
2. Money is really important. You can’t do anything without it. I’m not actively endorsing it as a construct or system, I’m just acknowledging that in the world where I am living, it’s essential. Even when the things which you are most passionate about are not expensive or even material, you still need to eat and sleep and wash whatever clothes you might wear to keep yourself warm and, you know, not naked. And, the things I want, the things I’m missing, they cost money.

But on the other side of the coin I don’t have, I’m happier here.

In London I remember feeling uncomfortable about leaving the house, uncomfortable about talking to people I didn’t know because I thought they would only be thinking about how unattractive I was. And in Berlin I don’t. I feel better about myself, physically. I don’t think about the future anymore in terms of ‘when I’m thinner’. If I really wanted to be thinner, I’d be thinner. Suddenly, being in a more mixed crowd, with actual real live straight men too, the understanding of beauty I used to have seems ridiculous, it doesn’t seem to play a part in my day to day life. It would be relevant if I wanted to be a model, but I can’t really understand how I thought it was so important walking out of the house on a Monday morning. I can’t understand how it stopped me wanting to get out of bed, or occupied so many of my thoughts…

In London I was limited. I believed very firmly in my own failings, as a person, and professionally. Falling at so many hurdles in Berlin has reinstalled my low self-esteem to an extent, especially with regard to my professional capabilities. But back in the summer I genuinely started to dream again. I started to believe it was possible for me to achieve things. Maybe I could learn a new language. Maybe I could write a book. Maybe I could write a book in that language… wait, not that. It didn’t get that far-fetched. But, like a child, I believed in my right to try and my right to hope.

After thinking about everything a little bit and putting off thinking about everything a lot, I decided that I need to do something responsible for my future. The first step in that chain is to stop haemorrhaging money in Berlin, and aim towards returning with a more stable and long-term footing, so that I won’t ever, ever have to feel like I feel right now, and leave again.