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.