You are now entering the American Sector

Michael had to leave early this morning for work which left me to get on with finding somewhere to live. After a couple of hours trawling ads, emailing people and not getting through to anyone on the phone my hunger was growing to such an extent that my apprehension about the language barrier forced me to go out in search of food.

I decided to head somewhere touristy so I wouldn't feel quite so stupid struggling to order something as simple as a baguette (which I did, while again accidentally buying fizzy water, I hate that stuff).

So I headed to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the former borders between the West and East sides of Berlin. I was there last time but didn't have much of a look round, and to be honest I didn't this time really. At some point I'll have a look round the museums there.

While I was there I had a look in one of the many gift shops and bought a book on the history of Germany after the Second World War, as I don't know a whole lot about Germany in that time, and it's a big part of Germany so it should be an interesting read.

I then walked into the old 'East Berlin' along a long road which is now a shopping street with a lot of expensive looking shops, including a Bugatti showroom (see previous entry) and no less than THREE H&M stores. Quite an ironic turn of events really, a win for Capitalism to be sure.

There was also a Mini shop, which looked like it sold more merchandise than actual cars, and had a Mini stuck to the wall:

Once I'd come to the end of the shopping street I headed for Alexanderplatz as it started to rain, on the way I snapped the following photo:

I think it might look better without the tower in the background, it should be simple enough to clone out in Photoshop.

Perhaps not the best day for apartment finding but I had a good look around part of Berlin and I rang up a sister of a friend of Michael's about a German language course, which I'll be going to apply to tomorrow morning.

Veyron

Today I had a wander round Berlin, and I was walking down a very expensive looking shopping street, when I saw the following sign:

Amazed to see an actual Bugatti garage and I had to take a look, and there in the window was a Bugatti Veyron, an actual, real life Veyron. So I obviously had to go inside and gawp at it, which is what I did along with everyone else inside.

For those who don't know, the Bugatti Veyron is made by VW and is sold for around £1,000,000 and costs considerably more than that to make, so is sold at a loss. It has a full 1000bhp, recorded top speed of 247mph and is an exceptional car.

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.