Christmas in Berlin: Monday

On Monday we went to Carlottenburg to visit the castle. It's a very large and grand building but unfortunately it's closed on Mondays (how very French of them) so we had a quick look round the grounds then went to Gendarmmenmarkt to look at the Christmas Market. We had to pay to get in but it was worth it as it was definitely one of the better ones I've seen.

The highlight for me was the live music, a Ukranian group called the 'Trio Scho'. According to their Myspace page (yes, they have a Myspace, it seems everyone does) they play 'Old Russian Swing'. Whatever it's classified as I like it, it's different to the rest of my music, which is usually a good thing.


After looking round the Christmas Market we went back to my apartment to watch the film 'Cabaret' on my projector:

It is the city of Berlin in 1930, a time when political unrest racks the country, the economy has been destroyed, and millions of unemployed roam the streets. Enter into this chaos an American cabaret dancer, working at the downtown "Kit-Kat club" where anything goes on the stage. Into this young dancer's life come several characters such as a rich German politician, a young Jewish man struggling with his identity, an Englishman teacher from London, and of course the all-knowing, all-seeing Master of Ceremonies.

I very much enjoyed this film and it was cool watching it in Berlin with my family.

Christmas in Berlin: Friedrichshain

On Sunday I wanted to show my parents my apartment and Friedrichsain the area where I live. After showing them my apartment, it was around 11am and thus in true English tradition, time for a cup of tea. Mercifully my parents had brought over a huge box of Twinings English Breakfast tea for me:


After this I took my parents to a local flea market to look round. The flea market in Boxhandler Platz in Friedrichshain is a lot cooler than the one in Mauerpark. There is a nice mix of cheap furniture, random tat and kitch furniture and lighting.

After the flea market my family went back to their rented apartment and I returned to mine. I arranged to meet some people from CS at a local bar. About 8 or so people turned up, including the Australian girl I had spoken to on the Friday. We stayed for a few drinks and some table football before most of the people left for a club. Myself and two others decided to move onto another bar instead and ended up playing darts in a rock bar.

Christmas in Berlin: Arrivals

Before I left to come to Berlin I'd suggested to my parents that we could have our Christmas here. They liked the idea and once I assured them of my determination to still be here they booked their flights.

My Sister Katie arrived last Friday and my parents arrived on the Saturday. My parents went home today and my sister is leaving tomorrow so for the last week I've been spending Christmas (Weihnacten) with them in Berlin. The next few blog posts will follow the events of the last few days.

First off, arrivals. My sister's flight was due to arrive in Berlin at 10:30pm and we would be going to a CS meetup after she'd arrived. Due to the flight being delayed (thanks to Gatwick, not because of the ever efficient Germans) we arrived at Belushi's around 1:30-2am. The bar was still full but people were beginning to leave for clubs. However, most of the people I know well were still there and I was able to introduce Katie to them.

We stayed and chatted to a few people, I got talking to an Australian girl who was couch surfing in Berlin, and she gave me a lot of good places to visit while my parents were staying. One of the highlights of the evening was seeing a Frenchman stagger off drunk and falling flat on his face. It was a proper full-on faceplant, hilarious.

Despite only being there a couple of hours it was a cool event and I was glad to be able to take my sister to a CS meet in Berlin as she had introduced me to it back in Sheffield. If it wasn't for CS I'd probably be mixing with more Germans and although I'd probably be speaking better German I'd definitely have much less of a social life so I'm very much glad that my sister introduced me to it (despite my initial scepticism).

Saturday, this time when we met to the airport to meet our parents they were there and had arrived early (Ryanair, cheap and they arrive on time). We then got the train to go the apartment in Schöneberg. We had to collect the key from the owner from a nearby restaurant. For some reason, she didn't speak English which I personally find unforgivable for someone who lives in Berlin and rents out apartments to foreigners. Anyway, between my Dad and I we managed to understand what she was telling us and were able to get into the apartment.

The apartment itself was typical Berlin, situated in a rather bland, unassuming building it was in fact very nicely decorated. On the days I'd be sleeping at the apartment I had a rather uncomfortable sofabed to sleep on but that was my only, minor complaint about it.

On Saturday evening we had dinner at the nearby restaurant which took a fair effort to decide what to have as there was no English menu. We then had a look round Potsdamer Platz and the various Christmas Markets. My parents were impressed by the buildings at Potsdamer Platz and I would definitely recommend the Sony Centre as a place to see to anyone who visits Berlin.

Still Living the Berlin Life

Although my blog has been quite quiet recently, my life here in Berlin is still very much active and ticking along nicely. Some of the highlights include:

- A Crepe eating night hosted by a French girl. Everyone happily stuffed themselves with sweet and savoury crepes and drank quite a lot. Throughout the night we were throwing the balls from a small ball pool at each other, I vaguely remember it getting a little out of hand at one point.

- I hosted a film night for a few friends and watched The Orphanage. It's a film that creeps you out instead of making you jump but it's a great film and damn eery.

- A friend of mine had his first Poker night. We played two games each with a €3 buy-in. I came something like 4th (of 6) in the first game and 2nd in the second so ended the evening by breaking even, which isn't bad considering what a terrible Poker player I am.

- I hosted a second film night, which I put up on the Berlin CS group for anyone to attend. We watched Oldboy which most people seemed to enjoy, one of the girls who came found it too violent but personally I feel you can never have TOO much violence.

- On the Sunday evening while my family was in Berlin I organised to meet up with a few randoms from CS in Friedrichshain which went well. Almost everyone who turned up I didn't know which is something that's not really happened to me since I first arrived in Berlin. We had a few drinks in a bar called Geronimo then most people headed off to a club and myself and a couple of others went to a rock bar and played darts. Despite being awful I managed to beat an Irishman in a couple of the games so I was pleased with that.

Not addicted

I realise I have not posted on my blog recently. It is down to a combination of laziness and rushing around in the lead up to Christmas. I have not however been addicted to any computer games (namely Team Fortress 2), which is good news.

I will now definitely be brining my PC to Berlin, the only question now is when. I'd like to bring it over as soon as possible, but as long as I have it before February that'd be fine. My parents suggested I should get a job before I bring my PC over which means the sooner I get a job the sooner I get my PC. This will be a real motivator for me and will definitely help my focus my effort. As soon as I've recovered from Berlin Winter Camp and the New Year celebrations I will get straight onto a proper, full-on job hunt in Berlin.

Injection of pure gaming

Part of the reason I bought a Macbook (a decision that has brought much descent from certain individuals) was to avoid gaming as it became a rather large part of my life. I'm still glad that I brought the Macbook with me as it's given me a chance to live my new life in Berlin, but I am now seriously considering shipping my PC over here.

I reckon I can now balance a life and gaming, which is why in part I decided to give Team Fortress 2 on my Macbook a bash. As it turns out, it does actually run. Ok, so everything is on lowest and it's running at 800x600 but it works. What's more it works on the projector:

After such a long time without gaming online it felt great to be playing again, the rush and the mad hilarity of it all. But that seems to have come at a price, after about 90minutes or so of Team Fortress 2 I'm exhausted.

I have a 7 day trial on the software that's letting me play TF2 on my Macbook so it'll give me time to see how much I play and if it doesn't take over like it did before I'll definitely be bringing my PC to Berlin.

Projectors are fun

So the done thing in Berlin is to buy a cheap projector and watch lots of films with friends. I thought that since I'll be here for 2 years a projector would be a good investment. Perhaps it would have been a better investment AFTER getting a job, but there you go.

Anyway, apart from a slight mishap with the DVD player it's been great so far, here are a few photos:

Top Gear. which I have been keeping up with.

My flatmates and I have a list of films that we want to see on a projector and close to the top was Casablanca is a film I've been wanting to see for a while and it definitely benefited from being seen on a projector, 'here's looking at you kid'.

Oh, you betcha, yah

Yesterday I was finally able to see Fargo, another Coen Brothers film. It's a very funny film with some classic quotes:

Marge: Say Lou. Did ya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L 2404?

Carl: Keep it still back there, lady, or else we're gonna have to, ya know, to shoot ya.

Marge: Oh, I just think I'm gonna barf.

Star Wars Trilogy: Film Night

Last night I went along to watch the original (4, 5 and 6) Star Wars films back-to-back. I've always liked the originals, and I'd say that the first is my favourite of the three, and I do still like Return of the Jedi despite almost being asleep after 4/5 hours of Star Wars films and junk food.

After we'd finished someone suggested watching the Matrix trilogy, I've done this already a few years back and it's not worth it. You end up after 7-9 hours wondering why you didn't just watch the first one and leave it there.

Results

I got my test back and I got 65 out of 85, which is a little over 70% not not too shabby I'd say. I pretty much got wrong what I was expecting to get wrong and so just need to brush up on my Verb conjugations and a couple of other things.

I think my German reading/writing is stronger than my speaking/listening but I'm not surprised at this. When I was learning flash cards back in England I was always better at typing the word as oppose to just saying it. Maybe this along with a typing speed that would put most secretaries to shame is a result of excessive gaming and forum posting, or perhaps I'm just wired this way.

seit zwei Monaten

I've now been in Berlin a little over 2 months. I've just had a look back over the blog and I'm astonished at how much I've done over such a short time. I'm quite sure that I have done more 'living' in the past 2 months that the most of last year.

The only thing missing is film-making, I just need to film/edit something. That said, I do have big plans for a video I'd like to make some time in the new year, plus I still have some footage to edit.

Regardless, if I ever get overcome with lethargy a quick read of some of my old blog entries should kick me back into gear.


(title: 'since two months')

This is Living

I think it's about time I posted up the photos of my new room, so without further ado:

Artwork bought from a flea market, Obama card from Election Night, Cine-Camera

My bed, with it's curtains around it (I need to get some for the end though)

The James Bond poster is German which I got free from a shop. The door leads to Balthazar's room.

View from the balcony.

My desk, recently cleared.

Testing...

Today in my German class we were given a 90 minute written test. On the upside it meant finishing the lesson 90minutes early. It was also not an official test, but just one for the teachers to see how everyone is doing.

Now my past performance on tests has been generally poor. Little revision and my Memento like ability to forget every piece of information I know have been big problems. Despite this, after about 15 minutes I was half way through the test doing reasonably well considering we'd only been told about it yesterday. After 30 minutes or so I'd finished, and with a few exceptions I was fairly confident about how I'd done. Usually for me finishing an exam early means catastrophic failure (my record in my second year of Business Studies at uni was leaving at the first 30 minutes of a 2 hour exam getting a percentage in single digits).

So hopefully when I get the test back later this week I'll have done well.

Back Online

Thanks to our generous neighbours from the second floor, we now have internet. They kindly gave us the password in exchange for €10 for the month while we get our own internet sorted.

So, I'll now be online at home able to chat on Skype and hopefully post a bit more frequently on the blog. Expect photos of the apartment in the next day or so.