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.