Berlin Doesn't Know How It Feels About You Yet

“Berlin loves you”. It’s written on all these posters and bags you see around markets and probably in some street art on a trendy and yet derelict building in Kreuzberg. It’s a common topic of conversation between me and my flatmate who believes Berlin hates her.

Berlin, to be honest, like most cities, is pretty non-committal with it’s affections. Sometimes it gives you a free drink in a bar because you won the drink raffle. Sometimes it times things perfectly so you have to wait 15 minutes at every interchange for the uBahn. It would probably be fairer to say: “Berlin probably likes you, but it’s not really sure where this is going long term and just wants to keep things casual for the time being”. But the truth doesn’t fit on a t-shirt. (I'm pretty tempted to put that on a t-shirt)

My first ever ‘home’ in Berlin

(and how I came to live there)

On my second night in Berlin the winds of awesome blew in my direction and introduced me to Eva who happened to be stopping by at my hostel. After meeting for our drunken night of karaoke she invited me to stay in her spare room for a week, a week turned into a month, and a month turned into ‘please don’t leave Helen, my other flatmate is a psychopath’.

For the first month it was the perfect arrival in Berlin situation. I had a small room in this three room flat which had a single bed, a small table, and of course a beautiful wall hanging:

My window opened on to a balcony where Eva and I would sit most evenings and eat or have a glass of wine. There was a pizza take away at one end of the road, a supermarket around the corner, and an ice cream shop a few doors down. It was a twenty five minute walk from the language course I was taking. It had a fully equiped kitchen where we baked many cakes. It was two minutes from the uBahn and ten minutes from a busy square with lots of bars and restaurants which hosted a market on Sundays. There were the best dürüm doners in Berlin which the friendly vendors allowed me to ruin with cheese. And after a month of living in the flat with Eva her flatmate Andrea came back from a trip back home to Guatemala to reveal to me that the flat came with a completely free of charge angry, crazy and irrational flatmate.

My only role in the increasingly tense and volatile relationship between Eva and her flatmate was sitting in my room turning up my music like a child listening to her parents screaming in the next room. To be fair it was only my estranged Guatemalan parent who would do the shouting while my Australian parent tried to remain calm and reasonable. But it’s like that saying: "You can’t argue with completely insane people, because they’ll bring you down to their level and beat you by screaming in your face ‘you used my towel! That is so disgusting Eva! That makes me want to vomit!’."

For the most part Andrea avoided us, and we avoided her, and aside from the occasional fight the situation was manageable, principally because Eva had agreed to move out at some point.

Then, while clearing out some junkmail from facebook, Eva discovered a beautiful message from Andrea’s boyfriend. Because this lovely young man clearly has some issues I have edited his message to make it a little more PG-13, but the message contained such delights as:

“Hey Eva you fat truck, don’t ever touch Andrea again! if you mess with her you will mess with me, and I will make you regret it when I come next time to Berlin!”

And the classic:

“one thing you can think about till I’m back in Berlin...how will you ever get a boyfriend? your fat, your pretty dirty and you have no inner values.”

Naturally Eva did start to worry about finding a boyfriend. After all she was now 25 years old and still unwed! And how kind of this gentleman to point out her flaw so that she might set about improving herself. And then she suddenly, instantly recalled that it was not in fact the 1900s!

Now I can see where this guy was coming from. Obviously Eva had overstepped the line by attempting to reason with his girlfriend and it only seems fair to call her the worst thing he could imagine… which is apparently fat. Especially appropriate given that Eva and Andrea used to share clothes being, er, the same size. And it’s only logical he should ask her to worry about her future romantic prospects given that the wrong sort of men do tend to hit on her. In fact, just one wrong sort of man. And that would be him, six months previously.

I mean, sarcasm aside, I do not understand who these people are or where they come from. Everyone loves a little light-hearted misogyny, but come on? Eva decided enough was enough and that it was time to pack up all our troubles and the seven outfits I brought to Berlin, and move to the first place we could find...

To be continued J

Jobservations

Every day has been pretty much the same. I start up my computer (actually I probably wake it up from sleep mode after leaving it on all night, because I like to murder the environment one penguin at a time). I open the internet (when I go away it’s not there right?) and I visit a few different websites. These are websites where people advertise jobs for idiots who moved to Germany without speaking German. Now it seems there are quite a few of these idiots, and I’ve been surprised to find that a lot of people are in the same boat as me here in Berlin. You know, the boat with a giant hole in the bottom of unemployment and poor language skills. The jobs are few and far between, especially those relevant to any experience I have, and the applicants are many.

Many years from now the history books will recount how before 2005 you could basically walk out of the front door clothed and get a job. That was probably all it took I reckon, the ability to dress yourself. Before I finished my degree or had any real work experience the attractive and well-paid temporary assignments would fight over me. They wanted a little summer fling with me even though they knew it would never last. Five years later and back in the same place only poorly-paid simple jobs that you had to catch a bus to get to wanted me, and even they were relatively non-commital. I’m going to say it, and I don’t want to shock or alarm anyone into austerity, but I think there might be some sort of recession…

It’s the same in Germany, especially Berlin. So it’s an especially intelligent and well-informed decision to move here at this time.

Then there were those brilliant days when a job appeared on one of these internet pages and the job description would read: Seeking one Helen. Must have the skills of a Helen and be qualified as Helen is to do things Helen would be awesome at doing.

And I would look at it for a while and I think, 'you know what? I am a Helen! I could be awesome at that job!'

I start writing my application explaining how awesome I would be imagining myself in their awesome offices with my awesome swivel chair and my awesome clicky pen with their brand logo on. I start imagining the awesome ideas I’ll come up with and the awesome insight I’ll have into the projects they're working on. I think about the awesome analysis I’ll perform on, er, things that need to be analysed, like awesome spreadsheets. I think about the awesome meetings I’ll attend and the awesome suggestions I’ll make and then I right click the word ‘awesome’ and ‘find synonyms’.

And then when I've fallen a little bit in love with the idea of doing whatever job I'm applying for I send off the application and promptly… wait. And wait. And then wait a bit more. And eventually I hear nothing and assume they’ve made the terrible decision of not wanting to hire me and thus improve their lives forever by working with me. Or occasionally they invite me to interview.

Now interviews are great when you moved to Berlin with six outfits because you have absolutely no idea what to wear. They tend to be scheduled on the hottest days of the year too in order that I can arrive and immediately clarify my competency at sweating all over an office. Interviews are scary enough as it is. At my first interview here in Berlin the first question was ‘so, what would you bring to this role and our company and how in return would we help you develop professionally, on an average day?’ That was nice and petrifying. It’s even better when all the while you know your entire future hinges on success. Your right to remain in the country you love. The possibility to continue seeing the people you just made friends with. The plans you spent the last year making and putting into effect…

Of course, I didn’t write about this before because it’s… well… it’s a bit depressing isn’t it? Here sits the heroine of this story who I know you’ve been rooting for from the outset (if only to keep her out of your country) and it’s looking pretty bleak all things considered.

Well – unexpected plot twist! I have a job.

Starting next Monday I will be working in a… wait for it… Kindergarten. With little babies. Naturally. While I’m not really sure how this happened as it’s pretty much the last thing I saw myself doing, I’m very much looking forward to it, and of course, to chronicling my adventures here. While teaching them to speak perfect English like what I do, it would be pretty awesome if they learnt to laugh like me.