The visa clock is ticking

I had a work meeting today which basically consisted of drinking coffee in a cafe. The guy I was meeting with is someone I've been writing for for six months but never met, even though we're in the same city. Ah, the cold, impersonal nature of the internet...

He was surprised to hear that I can't really stay in Germany for too much longer, because I
a)am not married to a German
b)do not have a parent or grandparent who was born in Europe (dammit!)
c)am not sponsored by a company to work here full-time (I live in the flighty, wacky world of freelancing)
d)don't really want to live and work here illegally, only to have the German police barge into my apartment at 6am ready to deport me on the next plane (really, they are a lot stricter and I have heard of people being deported)

I worked illegally last time I lived here, because there were no working holiday visas for NZers then. But unless I suddenly fall for a man named Hans, or get sponsored by Deutsch Coca Cola or something, I might be out of here in the next few months. Which would be sad, but I've still got some time to figure it out. And I know I'll come back at some point, too. I can't be kiwiinberlin without being here, kiwiinnewzealnd just sounds redundant. Though maybe it's time for a sequel - kiwiinnewyork? kiwiinspace?

Illegal working in German is called Schwarzarbeit, or working black. I like that - sounds like you are a batman-type figure, cloaked in mystery, flying around town and always out of the grip of Policeman Plodd or whichever bumbling cop is on your tracks.

Lesbian Horror in Cologne

I went to Cologne expecting a big cathedral, pretty Christmas markets and to catch up with a friend (Hi John). I was not expecting the mass slaughter of lesbians in the middle of nowhere.

But then we ended up going to Make a Wish, one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a while. Its measly rating of 3/10 on IMDb.com cemented our determination to see it. The appalling acting (imagine a beefy guy trying to say “What the Hell?” but in a complete monotone), horror clichés taken to bizarre extremes (“Oh my God, it’s the corpse of our friend in the tree! Okay, run down alone to the lake and fetch some water”) and a cop who’s hunting for a killer but seems to prefer sleeping in the open fields instead of following anguished screams. The only drawback for the males who accompanied me was the fact that the lesbian sex scenes had regular-looking people in them and not Swedish models. Oh well.

Apart from Lesbian Death Camp, I also make it to an Edward Hopper exhibition, and, after manoeuvring my way through the scrum of tourists, also saw some actual paintings too.

And Cologne was overflowing with more Xmas markets. It would be easy to get fat just by hanging round these markets all day and munching on waffles, crepes, toffee apples, sausages...mmm.

Christmas Market Pics

They didn't turn out so great, so I'm keeping them small. The last one is me on Unter den Linden, with all the lights in the trees (see post below).

Christmas Market #1

Tonight I went to my first ever Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt). It was 0 degrees Celsius, and everyone was wrapped up in hats, coats, scarves and gloves, sipping glühwein (a hot red wine with sugar and spices) from little cups outside huts decorated with fairy lights. Carols in English and German were blaring from lit-up fairground rides, ranging from the tame but large ferris wheel to the rides where teens were screaming and staggering off afterwards. Game stalls were set up, where you could fish for plastic ducks, throw balls at stacked-up cans or fling darts at a board. Huge fluffy toys were displayed, but most kids got the consolation lollypop. People munched on roasted nuts, toffee apples, candyfloss and, yes, half-metre long sausages. Little kids rushed around in a frenzy of sugar-heightened excitement as parents struggled to hold them and their glühwein simultaneously.

This was on Unter den Linden and a mixture of a fairground and traditional Christmas markets. People in little huts sold candles galore, hand-made gloves, model cottages. Decorated trees were every few metres. Back out on the main street, every bare tree was filled with fairy lights all the way up to Brandenburg Gate and punctuated by the odd star.

I went on some of the traditional rides and of course ate all the food I could, but the best part was a ride that had a guy dancing on the roof, and he was dancing so well that at first I actually thought he was a robot. This ride promised “something different”, so we put on the provided psychedelic glasses and stumbled in.

What followed could only be described by people who have taken too many magic mushrooms. When you took the glasses off, each room looked like a few glow in the dark stars had been thrown around, but with the glasses on, it looked amazing. I had no idea which way to go and kept bumping into walls, getting tangled up in multicoloured plastic rods and one room was how things might look if I’d just been hit in the face. I’m making this sound horrible, but actually it was great! At the end there’s a room where there were fake spiders and webs etc, and what looked to be a model skeleton, but he was real and jumped out to scare the shit out of me. Best fairground “trip” ever.

Will upload some pics of the market tomorrow.

Hellos and Goodbyes

Today I had one last lunch with Yoko and Suah, who’s flying back to Korea on Friday. Sometimes it’s strange to have friends who I’ve never spoken to in English, but it’s a sign that my German’s improved, I guess. Suah comes and goes from Berlin for visa reasons and kind of juggles two lives. I love Berlin, and have come and gone myself a few times, but I’d find that too tiring.

On another topic, I got an email yesterday from an old friend – kind of complicated. He’s Australian but we met in Berlin in 2000 and were pretty much best friends. I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, and nothing happened (really – I surprised even myself), but we were close and even though we haven’t seen each other for a few years, I still consider him a good friend. He’s only going to be here over Xmas for a few days which is probably a good thing because unsurprisingly, things are pretty tense between him and my boyfriend when they see each other. So I’m looking forward to seeing him, in a careful sort of way.

Bulls knockin’ on my door

They found me. I don’t know how, but they found me. This is a geeky, slightly embarrassing reference to Back to the Future, but it also kind of applies to the policeman who paid me a visit last night. Luckily, it was our landlord who he wanted, who owed some money for some highway incident (speeding?) or something, but anyway the words “Good evening, police, open the door please” in Germany is something I always dread. Not because I’ve really done anything wrong – the odd mild drug, sinful thought or a bit of downloading are what I’d confess to if I was a Catholic – but it’s just that paranoid, made-for-TV-inspired fear that makes me quake a bit whenever one of those gun-toting men in green gets too close.

I’ve already briefly mentioned in a previous post how an army of them marched towards me at the Love Parade, and I may have also said how a friend of mine was arrested at a May Day protest and went through hell in the German courts to finally be found not guilty of throwing stones at a cop. Known as “Die Bullen” (the bulls, as opposed to the pigs), German police are not friendly or helpful. In fact, it’s best to keep out of their way. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong.

The one who knocked on the door last night was a typical model – brown moustache, slightly plump. He looked like the plastic policeman I had as a kid that squeaked when I squeezed its tummy. I wasn’t about to squeeze this guy. I hastily dialled my landlord and let him do the talking as I silently prayed we wouldn’t be evicted or lightly thrashed. We weren’t, so perhaps I should relax. But as a foreigner it’s easy to overreact sometimes when you’re not sure what’s going to happen.

Die Prüfung ist vorbei

Thank God that's over, it was no fun. Luckily they told us our results today so I know I passed and don't have to wait to find out. A few people failed...the hardest part was the listening test, where we had to listen to some guy who might or might not have been from Austria, but anyway his rich dialect was very different from the hard Berlin dialect, or as it's so prettily called, Berliner Schnauze or Berlin Snout. Is that any relation to Pig Latin? Uten-gay Ag-tay.

It also didn't help that three mobile phones rang during the exam - three mind-alteringly annoying rings, too. Why do people leave their phones on? Do they really need the attention? One poor stressed-out girl turned around and roared (in English, actually): "Turn your fucking phones off!" (No, it wasn't me.)

So I go in and pick up my certificate next week. Supposedly this means that I can now speak advanced German. Wunderbar.

Blogging is paused for this announcement:

I have a two-day German exam on Friday and Saturday. That means until then I am going to try to see no English, speak no English and hear no English (evil is fine). So that means cutting myself off from most of the internet. :(

Thank you for your understanding and please feel free to surf gently through blog archives in my absence.

PS Berlin offers many famous winter activites, but I didn't realise this shopping mall event was one of them...Read the below promotion and see if you can spot what was somehow lost in translation:

Europa Center during Christmas

Especially in winter time the shopping mall attracts many people by presenting several highlights. For its guests there will be 40 funny gnomes sawing, hammering and screwing while Santa Claus looks forward to meeting you in the atrium, where you have the chance to take a picture with him.

Let it Snow

I was in the Historisches Museum today looking at some old photographs when all of a sudden out the window the blue sky was covered by dark, purply-looking clouds and it started to snow! Admittedly most of it was rain and the snow bit didn't last long, but it fell and clumped together on the glass ceiling of the museum's new extension wing. Very cool. Snow is one of the rare upsides of winter, along with hot soups and baths.

The Mystery Man in his Mystery Flat

I should write about the apartment block across the road, right opposite the window that I look out when I’m procrastinating. It’s one of the old buildings, patchy and filled with bullet holes. Yes, real bullet holes from the war. Some of the windows are boarded up and it reminds me a bit of Yasser Arafat’s face – old, patchy, bumpy, extremely unattractive.

It looks like no one lives there in its four dark, quiet floors. But someone does. Not a homeless squatter or anything. The top floor has electricity and a satellite dish stuck outside one of the windows. In summer, the windows were always open and occasionally a guy would lean out and smoke his breakfast cigarette in the sun. We’d wave at each other if I was sitting on the balcony.

I still wonder about this man. Why does he live in an old, dilapidated, frankly haunted-looking building? (I don’t believe in ghosts, but I would never live there). Does he sleep well at night, thinking about the three abandoned floors below him?

I must admit, a friend and I had had a few drinks one night and tried to get in the front door and have a peek round (the building, not his apartment). But it wasn’t one of those obliging doors that just swings open when you give it a gentle kick, so we got nowhere.

At the rate cranes are swinging their way through Berlin, this building will be gone in a few years, or at least remodelled so it’s white and fresh, with all floors in use.

Coal for Christmas

A friend of a friend is unfortunate enough to have Ofenheizung – coal heating. Most people in the East had coal heating before the Wall came down, apparently, maybe in the West too. It basically meant you had to get up early in the winter, in the cold and dark, and fetch coal from the cellar to heat your apartment. This was a heavy, dirty chore, and then you’d have to wait hours for the room to heat up. Brr! This would be repeated at the end of the day, when the house was stone-cold again.

This may sound like an episode of Survivor, but no, some people still have this kind of heating – either because their apartment hasn’t been renovated yet, or simply because they voluntarily live in a flat with Ofenheizung, like my old German teacher. He liked the traditional aspect of it. I didn’t ask if he also hunted sheep for their wool or mammoths. That would have been rude. And he seemed content.

But this friend of a friend, who we’ll call Hans, definitely isn’t content. “One more winter,” he threatens, but never quite makes it. “I avoid him between October and March,” my friend admitted. “He’s grumpy between those months. And no one stays with him then, because it’s freezing inside, and then he gets grumpier and wants to know why no one’s visiting him.”

Hans is missing out on central heating, which most flats here now have, thank God, and inside is warm and toasty, way warmer than inside NZ houses, even though the winters there are milder. In fact, it’s so toasty in Berlin flats that the first time I lived here I forgot that it was winter outside and wandered out in a t-shirt. It was a short-lived excursion...

Fall of the (real) Wall remembered

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Or at least people being allowed to climb over it. It was more a day of reflection than celebration, though. Germany still has a lot of problems and people talk about the “Mauer im Kopf” or “Wall in the head” still exisiting.
It’s also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Jewish shops and synagogues were openly destroyed by Nazi supporters. So I guess it’s more appropriate to keep the day quiet, and it seemed to be about honouring those who died trying the escape the East more than anything. Anyway, I though this Guardian article was good and this Spiegel article (in English) had some points, even if it was a bit flip in making them.
Fifteen years ago I was 11 years old, and admittedly not too clued up when it came to world affairs. I can't claim to have been in Berlin on that memorable day and I didn't leap on a plane to at least be part of the moment a few days late. You won't see my excited face in those photos of people dancing on the Wall. Hey, I had school to think about (school being the place where they taught no European history).
All I can remember about November '89 is my mother glued to the TV saying, "Shona, it's a historic event, the Wall is coming down!" I knew about something called the Berlin Wall but that was about as far as my expertise went.
My father, on the other hand, was in Berlin in the late 1970s and saw both East and West. As I was a baby, he brought me a German teddy bear home. Maybe that's why I feel a bond with Germany.

Cold!

Okay, I know it will get colder, but it’s a bit of a shock dealing with the upcoming winter. Last time I lived here I arrived in January, and everything seemed new and interesting, even the cold, dark days. It was also a bonus to see the days getting warmer and the leaves growing again.
This time is a bit different, because I’m doing things the other way around, and the honeymoon period is over. And at this time of year, it’s easy just to curl up in bed for four months with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Motivation to go outside goes way down, as it’s only light for about six hours and that light is pale and usually covered by clouds.
In Europe, and in England especially because the weather’s almost always crap, they have something called SADD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don’t have that in NZ. It can get pretty cold down south, and there’s some great skiing, but it’s nothing like a dramatic as here. My German friends are already moaning about the cold and the dark. I’ve been advised to take herbal anti-depressants, just in case I start to go a bit mad. It’s amazing to think Norwegians come here for some respite!
Anyway, bring on the snow, I say. And it’s good to have a blog to keep me going. The comments section below is not compulsory, but I would love to hear from anyone who reads my ramblings. What do you do to keep happy when it’s c-c-c-cold?

Pass the health warning, please

It’s a German law that most shops must stay closed on Sunday, which in theory is nice because it promotes a family-togetherness day, but in reality, with such a high unemployment rate, it might give a few poor people some work.

Anyway, one of the places that may stay open is a café. So on Sundays everyone and his dog either lounges outside in the sun (summer) or squeezes into a smoky table (winter) to sample an all-day brunch.

I like the brunch buffets here because I enjoy eating in general, and it’s also great to have many helpings and eat what you want. Some buffets are better than others, of course, but it’s a great way to spend a Sunday and catch up with friends.

If I had any complaint it would be the smoking. Lots of people here smoke, but when there’s no air inside and all you can smell is the smoke and it seeps through your clothes…not so appetising. But cigarettes here are pretty cheap and no one seems too worried about fatalities. Just go into a cinema and watch the ads. They range from the funny to the downright cheesy (men in silk dressing gowns surrounded by adoring women). And you can’t forget the Malborough Man, who rides off on his wheezing horse into the lung-cancer sunset (well, the original Man did, this is his replacement).

But I’m willing to brave the fog of a hundred cigarettes for that last slice of apple strudel. After all, the best things in life are generally bad for you, I’ve learned.

Thank God it’s over

I spent Saturday night somewhere I usually don’t spend any time whatsoever: a church. We were invited by our landlord to a concert (he plays the violin professionally). The church is just down the road from us and so we thought, yeah, why not?

And it was very nice of him to invite us, but…the concert turned out to be a choir singing about God, Jesus and so forth for two hours. That might not sound long, but when you’re an atheist squished into a cold, hard church pew, and can’t move for fear of disturbing other people, and your behind’s rapidly losing all feeling, it ain’t so comfortable. Sometimes in life you end up applauding more out of relief that something is over rather than over the skill of the performers.

I couldn't quite grasp the fervour of the religious sentiment in the lyrics, either, but what can I say – I’m clearly not a believer. I worship Sunday lie-ins instead. But I did learn useful German words like heathen and stoning, which I’m sure will come up on a daily basis.

I also got a letter from my dad in NZ yesterday that only had an article clipping in it. It took me a second to see that it was an article I had written, about Slovenia, that was published in the Sunday Star-Times, NZ biggest Sunday paper. So that was good news and I'd had no idea because the paper didn't tell me. That happens sometimes. Lukily I have several journalist friends and also family who actually read the bylines of articles. I raved about Slovenia because it was so beautiful. Here's a pic I took:

It’s that time of year…

…when the slide shows start. The first time I came to Berlin was winter 2000, and I couldn’t work out why there were posters of New Zealand everywhere. Sure, there were also a few posters of Australia, but why?
Now I know. Every year around November, as the weather gets colder and the days get shorter, it’s time to a) wheel out the Christmas decorations and b) start selling those trips to warmer climes. So tourism companies set up slide show evenings, where you show up and look at some nice photos of countries which, quite frankly, have way better weather right now than where you are.
I haven’t been to a photo evening, but I know people who have and they say the pictures are rather lovely. And they’re enough incentive for people with cold tootsies and SADD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) to book a flight and get the hell out.
Anyway, with the New Zealand posters on every street, I have a clear idea of what’s available in my homeland. There’s a big, snow-capped mountain (only capped – the snow is at a safe distance). There is a tattooed Maori warrior, who will most likely greet you at the airport and stick his tongue out in a ceremonial gesture of contempt before he escorts you to a waiting taxi (kidding…). There is a Hobbit-hole – the traditional dwelling of all New Zealanders. Or it may just be a prop left over from the Lord of the Rings movies.
Anyway, seeing these pictures always gives me a little pang of homesickness. I wonder what the hell I’m doing in this currently grey city when I could be tucked up in my cosy Hobbit-hole. But then I remind myself that tourism publicity, while semi-honest, does not paint the whole picture. For example, they left out the overcrowding that comes with so many sheep, the pall of depression that hangs over the country after the Wallabies beat the All Blacks, and of course the Orcs and trolls persecuting Frodo as he undertakes his quest to fling the Ring into Mount Doom.
Maybe that’s a poster for next year.

Snapshots

We’ve had a guest from New Zealand here in Berlin for two days, so it was time to do the tour again. (These photos are his, since our allegedly flash camera broke.)

We start on Museum Island on the Spree river, looking at the museums and Berliner Dom surrounded by thinning trees. The Fernsehturm, or TV Tower, is behind it.

Unter den Linden (meaning Under the Lime Trees) comes next, the main historical street in Berlin. Wandering up you can see the old Russian embassy, the Holocaust memorial, the Historisches Museum, the site of the 1933 Nazi book burnings (currently being made into a carpark, rendering the underground memorial of empty bookshelves inaccessible), the State Library, the US embassy completely surrounded by guards and cordoned off, and finally the Brandenburg Gate at the end.




On the other side is the Berlin Wall boundary marking. Nearby is the Reichstag, with its ever-present queue of people trying to see the glass dome. On the right is Tiergarten, a quiet oasis of greenery.




On the other side is Potsdamer Platz, with its modern skyscrapers, all built from scratch when the Wall came down, and the Sony Center.


It’s only the surface attractions of what Berlin has to show, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London. But it’s a memorable walk and one I never get tired of. If we have a visitor who’s only here for a short time, it gives them an idea at least. But it doesn’t beat wandering around and discovering things by surprise. Which I still do here most days.

Guten Tag, Your Majesty

This week the Queen of England is coming to Berlin on a state visit. This pending excitement has stirred up the media, especially after England’s tabloid the Daily Express said Germans were calling for an apology for World War Two bombings. This is coming from the same paper that recently said all Germans were Nazis. Nice. One German tabloid, Bild, jumped on the bandwagen and asked when she would apologise. But most German papers reacted contemptuously to the idea and said they didn’t want or need an apology. Which is lucky because I think they would be waiting a while!

Apart from that, the Queen’s visit reminds me of the time I met her in person, which was actually last time she came in 2000. I happened to be in Berlin and I happened to work for the British Council teaching English, and she came to see our new building in Hackescher Markt. The fanfare was pretty overwhelming, with big crowds and cameras and loads of scary German police. We’d all been prepped on etiquette – if you meet the Queen, call her Your Majesty and curtsey. If you shake hands, do so with limp fingers so as not to hurt her…and so on.

When she showed up, she looked even smaller than I imagined. She looked at me and asked a question, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to reveal my funny accent, my age, or the fact that I wasn’t working 100% legally in Germany (or even 1%). It didn’t matter – the question was a generic one and someone else answered, even remembering the “Your Majesty” bit. Jolly good.

Cold War Theme Park?

On Sunday a new Berlin Wall went up outside Checkoint Charlie in Friedrichstrasse. It’s 120 metres long, white and clean. Tourists can stare and take pictures. It doesn’t divide the city, but it is divisive in terms of the reaction to it. The government is calling it a kind of Disneyland, while others criticise the government as being afraid to acknowledge the past.
Well, Berlin is becoming full of such memorials, and while I think memorials should exist to remember the past, I think the new wall is stupid. It’s for tourists, not Germans. If people want to see the Wall, why don’t they get off their asses and go and see some of the original Wall which is still standing? Why does a new one need to be built in the middle of town?

Which language is prettier?

Ricarda is becoming less impressed with English the more she learns, and thinks German is a far more interesting and attractive language. So far my attempts to persuade her otherwise have failed. And it’s not an opinion I hear very often – most English people I know think German is a hideous language and associate it with Hitler standing at a podium, spittle flying and hands waving. When I was at school everyone learned French, perhaps because of a romantic association with chocolates and French men...
As a friend of mine put it who is studying German, “When you don’t understand it, it sounds like someone is angry with you. Now, I know this person is nice and is probably just talking about the weather, but it sounds a bit like he wants to hurt me.”
I know many people who love the German language and make it a lifelong goal to learn more and more. The American author Mark Twain, who wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn etc, wrote a whole book called The Awful German Language, but despite his frustration at how hard it is he still loved it.
But does anyone love English? Does anyone learn it for how it sounds, or just because it’s the default international language?
There was a competition in Germany (and overseas) recently to suggest the best German word. What is the best English word? Let me know what you think.