Talk to my FACE!

Just a quick note, Skype is amazing. The other night the light from my red room reflected onto my family's faces! From Berlin to Exeter, magical. I am nikki.nikkers gimme a bell over tinternet : )

A Red Room With a View

For someone who has no responsibilities, I appear to be quite busy. It's already been a week since I last wrote here, and everything is going in new directions. I've moved into a room for a month, a beautiful, big and very red room (I'll get some photos soon). I live in a WG that is divided between two apartments one above each other, the upper having the kitchen, spacious Wohnzimmer and Balkon. We're on the top floor and coffee time on the balcony is perfect for watching the world go by and the miniature dramas play themselves out on the busy street below. Coffee happens a lot.

This week has been full of french, as various friends from Switzerland descended on the city. I've had people staying with me which has been really cool, my first proper visitors you could say. The blend of languages has been interesting, rather than move from English to German then to French I've opted to blend them all into one mishmash of confusion. So that's fun! I'm also planning on teaching my flatmate Englisch in return for Spanish lessons - and I'm living with two spanish men for the rest of the year - so I'm going to learn German with a spanish accent?! Total papperlapapp!

Today I have just signed up for German classes. Four hours a day, Monday to Friday, for one month costs €110. Pretty good, I think it's cheaper because I'm going to be living here for a year so the government subsidise the classes. I've also been working as a babysitter for a french family so that's a tidy bit of money for the occasional night in of film watching. Perfekt!

Really exciting, I have acquired a Praktica Kamera MTL3, an old manual SLR from the DDR. It's beautiful. I've been inspired by how auf Deutsch you "Foto machen" (make a photo) rather than "Foto nehmen" (take a photo). So now, I consider each photo carefully, I'm aware of the light and composition, I take notes on the settings used for each photo and then I'll get them developed into real objects. They'll probably all be crap. But then I'll learn and get better. I love thinking about all the people who've made photographs with this camera, all the stories that it has seen and the places it has been.

So a few places I have been:

Bar 25 though highly recommended by various people this turned into a complete disaster. After we missioned it there on a Sunday night, queued for a ridiculously long time, the bouncer with his red clipboard refused to let us in. Why? Apparently we were too young. Oh you're all over 20? Well, you're still not getting in. I felt outraged at having my finest most polite German rejected. My understanding of this place is that is has some 'reputation' to uphold and therefore decides on a whim who to let in, and apparently we were too foreign and too big a group for them. I'm not sure I want to go to a place that acts so high and mighty, with its red clipboard.

Club der Visionäre was much more of a success. Friendly bouncers, good tunes. Slightly more expensive than standard Berlin bars, more like english prices with just over €2 for a beer.

Last night I went to a cool, grungy, and magical bar next to Samariterstr 32. Recommended for comfy sofas, cheap beers and great wall art.

I highly recommend this excellent blog for stories of hidden gems in Berlin.

So, I think that's it for now. Email me your stories please. Come here for New Year's Eve, it's going to be out of this world.

Bisous,

N

Finding Feet

Where am I now. Well, still sleeping in a hammock. I feel a bit like I have jumped into Berlin and am still trying to find my balance. My summer has been crazy busy, I always felt behind with everything, now I have these long days which I'm not entirely sure how to fill and haven't yet found a corner to call my space to escape to.

Anyway, a gem of advice:

http://www.bvg.de/

Travel. If you come for a week or more then bite that bullet and get a travel ticket. It's incredibly tempting here in Berlin to outwit the ticket collectors and avoid paying. However, they are smart and not at all lenient with foreigners. You soon develop a minor phobia of suspicious looking men who travel in pairs. I found myself a bit jumpy every time I'd get on the train or pull into the station. After messing up the whole monthly ticket shenanigans I now have a beautiful, mit Fahrrad, travel pass. It cost a whopping 72 oiros. However, with a bit of perspective this is actually not so bad at all. This covers all U-bahn, S-bahn, bus travel which goes on all night and the trains are 24 hours at the weekend. The service is excellent, with very little wait. And I find myself zipping all over the city with a bike in tow. Wunderbar.

What have I been up to. Meeting lots of people, which is good, so I'm starting to feel I actually have some friends here. The city has a certain rhythm which I definitely haven't mastered yet. Many will generally start their day in the afternoon, but not really emerging into the world till early evening. Bars, socialising will fill up that sun-sinking period. It's at around 2/3 am however that the city really comes into life; the streets fill up in seconds and everywhere is buzzing. This is about the time that I start to flag and feel confused at the bright eyed energy of everyone else. They then will wander home with the rising sun, probably get breakfast en route to the sound of bird song, and sleep till the afternoon.

Soo:

http://www.rosis-berlin.de/
First club recommendation. Really cool venue, not massive but full of character. Found on Revalerstr it's at the heart of Berlin's night life. Check out the djs in advance though.

Find free classical musik, outdoors, every Sunday evening throughout summer at the Bode Musuem on the Musuem Island in Mitte.

Yesterday, I went to this place: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flughafen_Berlin-Tempelhof and it put me in mind of this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8626000/8626927.stm

Utterly magical. A giant, empty, Airport in the city centre! Not just any one, but the very first of giant city airports. Planes no longer roar along the runways, rather kite riders fly past the cyclists, rollerbladers and skateboarders. My friend Jakob is very skeptical that the place will last with it's increasing limitations to access and the competition in the area for expensive housing projects. However, I am so delighted that it even exists in the first place and really excited that it is right next to my future home. It was a beautiful evening, sat in the long grass with a beer and the brilliant sun throwing out long dramatic shadows behind us.

I think that there is an awareness of Berlin changing. Last night we were sat at Admiral Brücke, full of students, the ground sparkling with bottle top lids. The air buzzed with conversation in the warm evening. Around 23:00 the police came, with about 4 or 5 vehicles, to shift us all on. There was a feeling of frustration, that the police here are increasingly strict and perceiving a situation that hadn't arose.

Right. Now I'm off to try and fix my bike which is already having problems. Oh dear. Luckily, I have met a bike enthusiast.

Liebe Grüße, und bis Bald!

xx

Der zweiten Tag

First blog post, second day in Berlin. Getting here was ok - I got a lift with my friend's parents who were on their way to Poland. First time driving in Europe, but no fatalities so all ok. Life has been pretty mad this past two days. I have been emailing A LOT of places asking them to let me move in, and luckily after the first four visits I found somewhere. With a cool bunch of people, who love to cook together, eat a vegetarian/vegan diet, and are a mixture of students and graduates. Plus it is in the happening place of Neukölln. So I'll be moving in there on the 17th of August...until then, I will be sleeping in a hammock in somebody's kitchen. As you do.

I have eine Handynummer: (email me for the digits)

And a beautiful, upright, single gear (!) bicycle.

What more could you want?

Liebe grüße!

xx