Some photos (finally)

Now that I've managed to catch up with a few things online I've had the time to upload the small number of photos I've taken so far. It's nothing amazing, but it shows a little of where I am and a couple of the sites is Kreuzberg. Click the images to see a larger version:

This is the room in Michaels apartment that I'm staying in. It belongs to a woman named Janine but as she is pregnant and there is a lot of renovation work going on she is staying somewhere quieter.

This is the view from the window.



This is a fountain near the lake that Cafe am Engelbecken is next to.



This is the first of two picture I took of a large church near the lake. Michael didn't know what it's called but it looks impressive when you see all of it.


Next time it's sunny I'll take a photo of the lake and the church behind it as it'll make a pretty decent shot.

A tribute

I have added a tribute to the sidebar, it reads:

Let it be known that Martin Harding (IT genius) after lending hours of technical support over the previous months did fix my PC mere hours before I left for Berlin. If it were not for his heroic effort I would have sent a fully working CPU back to Scan and wasted time and money for them to tell me it works fine.

This box is a permanent testament to this godlike act. He is the master.

I think Martin's ego will be sufficiently inflated.

Internet at home & video calling

Thanks to the wonder that is other people's incompetence we now have internet at my friends apartment. This will make finding somewhere to live a lot easier. That said, Cafe dem Engelbecken where I was using the internet before was by a small lake and was a nice place to use the internet.

I also phoned home on Skype and had a video call on Skype with my parents (I had to literally point to the button to press to get them to start the video). But once we managed that, and I got over the terrible quality of my old webcam I'd given to my parents to use we had a good chat. My parents even managed to show me some German language software I'd been sent which was somewhat underwhelming.

Anyway, I find it reassuring that despite being in a different country, separated by an ocean that my parents are still able to nag me.

I hate blog templates

I just tried to use a few blog templates to make the blog look a bit nicer. It resulted in the layout of the blog being ruined and not looking how it should. I then chose a default template to reset everything and it actually looks better than the ones I downloaded so I'm sticking with it. I may tweak the colours but other than that it'll pretty much stay as it is.

The Three Most Imporant Words

The three most important words for an Englishman in Germany are not ‘Ich verstehe nicht’ (I don’t understand) or even ‘Sprechen Sie Englisch’ (do you speak English?). They are in fact ‘nicht Earl Grey’ (not Earl Grey) and should be said when ordering Tea. The Germans are not great Tea drinkers and as such don’t realise the difference between a refreshing cup of tea, and Earl Grey. I made the mistake last time I was in Berlin and it’s not one I will be making again, despite the funny looks it seems to be getting me.

Header

I quickly threw together a header image in Photoshop. It's nothing fancy and the size is a little off what the template is sized to, but it'll do for the time being.

How 'Handy'

So yesterday I got myself a German simcard, which means I can now phone people about apartments without fear of bankrupting myself thanks to the extortionate fees for using your UK mobile abroad. I bought it from a supermarket of all places, but it at least means getting a top-up won’t be too difficult as the chain 'Plus' is everywhere.

I am starting to really like Kreuzberg, the district I’m staying in, and I can easily see myself living here. I will definitely be on the lookout for apartments here. I have taken a few snapshots so far, nothing special really and I doubt it will do the place justice, but hopefully it’ll give some idea of what the place is like. I'll upload them at some point.

Look left then right

In England we were taught to 'look right, look left, then look both ways, then cross'. This is something that will get me run over in Berlin. So look left then right (not the other way around).

First post

Ok, this is my first blog post, hopefully of many.

I plan to post up my experiences and stuff that I do in Berlin (which will hopefully be interesting) and any new German I learn. Blogging will also help my writing skills which is something I'm looking to work on. Finally, I'll post up ideas for films, screenplays and any photographs I take. Perhaps somewhere down the line I may start posting in German too but for the time being it'll just be in English.

Knowing how anal I am the blog will likely go through a number of changes visually for a while until I reach something that I'm happy with, I'm sure it'll look fantastically amazing in the end.