Recipe: Fennel and celery soup with blue cheese cream

Yeeessss, my prayers have been answered: it’s snowing!! I’ve been walking around smiling like an idiot, it’s so incredibly beautiful and fresh and.. ah! I just love it!

Autumn and winter call for warm and hearty meals, which means that I’ve been consuming soups in absolutely ridiculous amounts. A few days ago I did a carrot & tarragon soup with feta cream (I’ll post the recipe later), and I got really excited about the feta cream thingy. I’d made carrot & feta soup before of course, but always had the problem that the feta just didn’t melt properly (no, I didn’t use the low-fat stuff), but stayed in rubbery lumps no matter how much you molested the blender. But as a cream it worked much better, blended in smoothly and as a bonus you had clear flavour contrasts with the sweet soup and salty cream.

I figured this cream thing could be used with all sorts of cheeses, and as my dear parents know so well, I’ve adored blue cheese ever since I was a kid. The smellier and stronger, the better. So what to match that blue cheese with? My first thought was endives or chicory, but they’re so mild in flavour that I’m not that sure how they’d work in a soup. And a big point is their mouthfeel, anyway. From somewhere between the endives and the aniseedy flavour of tarragon in the carrot soup came fennel! My newly found friend celery would go along just perfect, and with the blue cheese cream they would make a perfect threesome. It was heavenly, even if I say so myself.

Oh and one thing I’ve also just recently discovered: puréeing! I don’t mean just with a hand mixer or blender, but passing the whole thing through a sieve after that. I used to think it was just some foppish thing involving extra work phases and more dishes, not to mention throwing away whatever stays in the sieve instead of eating it, but I’ve made a full turn on this matter. The consistency is just SO much smoother and more pleasant, it’s definitely worth the effort. I often have the problem with puréed soups that after eating them for a few days (as you always end up doing, for it is simply impossible to do a soup of just 2–3 servings), they start to feel as baby food in my mouth. Then I get disgusted and feel tempted to just throw the rest away, if there’s still some left. Baby food problem: solved.

So, now finally to the recipe.

Fennel and celery soup with blue cheese cream
Serves 4–5

Soup:
3 small fennels or 2 medium sized fennels, tops trimmed, ends cut and then thinly sliced
4 sprigs celery, chopped
2 onions, chopped
good-quality vegetable broth
1 glass dry white wine
100 gr sour cream
a splash of lemon juice
freshly ground salt and black pepper to taste

Cheese cream:
100 gr strong blue cheese, crumbled (I used Bergader Edelpilz)
100 gr natural organic yoghurt (a low-fat will do, but a completely fat-free version won’t mix well with the soup), or about the same amount of cream
1 tbsp (walnut) oil
water, to thin out

1. Sauté the fennels, celery and onions until tender, season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the white wine and broth, leave to simmer until the veggies are all tender and the alcohol has evaporated.
3. In the meanwhile, make the cheese cream: mix all the ingredients together with a (hand) blender, add just enough water to thin the cream out into... well, a cream. Quite runny but not watery.
4. Purée the veggies as smooth as you can with a (hand) blender. The smoother you make it, the more you can pass through the sieve and the less goes to waste. Then, as said, pass it through a sieve: use a metal sieve with small holes and push the soup through with a ladle (using a little force is allowed). Be sure to scrape the bottom of the sieve! Don’t feel to bad about what little goes unused – I tasted it and surprisingly, it tasted like nothing! Which means that the soup is even more intense in flavour :p~
5. Add the lemon juice and sour cream, and blend it once more to be sure to have a smooth and lean consistency. Check the taste and add salt/pepper/juice/whatever is needed. Bear in mind that the blue cheese cream is very salty!
6. Serve with the cheese cream and roasted walnuts.

Maybe the dullest-looking soup ever. In real life, the colour is a bit greener, though.
And what’s most important, it tastes good!

An emotional walk

On days like these, I know why I love this city.

Lately I’ve been doing loooong walks. Just walking around, listening to music, with no particular destination. It seems to be some kind of autumn thing for me. I do like taking walks all year round, but during autumn it almost gets out of hand – the shortest walk I can manage is 1,5 hours. Usually it slips to two hours or more. It’s just the most relaxing thing there is for me right now!

Last autumn, I had the exact same thing in Helsinki. And I waked, and I walked. But the problem with Helsinki is that it is quite small, despite being a “small big city”, and I soon was very familiar (i.e., bored) with all sorts of routes within a reasonable (~10 km) distance from my place. Of course I developed various favourite routes, but nevertheless it really took my imagination some exercise, or then the effort and bore of travelling someplace, to keep it varied and interesting.

Here it’s quite different. This city is SO immense, there’s always some area remotely nearby that I don’t know that well and is interesting to discover or learn to know better during walks. Everything within 2–5 km from my place is already familiar to the point of boredom, so here’s what I do: I skip the dull part and hop on the U-Bahn, and begin my walk straight away in an interesting environment. The U-Bahns and S-Bahns can take you quite far in 10 minutes, whereas the subway network is very modest in Helsinki. And trams and buses take forever to get anywhere. Did I ever mention that waiting is not one of my strengths...?

Today was again one of those days my walk slipped to nearly three hours. Despite having walked dozens of times along the Landwehrkanal, which runs just nearby my place, I’m not bored with it yet. And it leads to Puschkinallee, which for its part leads straight into Treptower Park, so there I had the beginning of my route. I don’t know Treptower Park more or less at all – I’ve been there a couple of times, but I definitely have no clear picture of it in my head. And still don’t! It’s so big and undiscovered to me that I still have many wonderful walks ahead there :) I wandered around in zigzags, according to my “oooh! what’s that over there? / what a nice trail! / I wonder what lies behind that / etc.” impulses and stumbled upon all sorts of things.

”Stumble upon” should maybe be awarded the prize for understatement of the year when it comes to the Soviet war memorial. It’s a bombastic war memorial and military cemetery honouring the memory of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin, and celebrating the victory over national socialism. The Battle of Berlin (April–May 1945) was the final big battle of WWII ending in the unconditional surrender of Germany. Check it out if you have the opportunity, it’s... big.

”The war memorial depicting a Soviet soldier holding a child that he saved and stepping on a crushed Swastika”
From: Wikipedia

There are also a few cute ponds in the park, and guess what I saw there? A stork! This was exceptionally cool, for storks aren’t common in the city, and just two days ago my friend told me with amazement how she had seen a stork in the middle of Berlin :) Or some sort of stork-y bird, I don’t know all that well the differences between storks and herons and cranes and what other kinds there might be.

As I wandered ahead, I noticed the cutest bridge ever, and to by excitement it was open. It took me to the most wonderful little island ever, in the middle of Spree. The island is called Die Insel der Jugend, which means “the island of youth”. I don’t exactly know what it was, but the whole moment was just so overwhelmingly wonderful it almost brought me to tears. I was on a beautiful small island, surrounded by glistening water in the yellow street lightning, with frozen grass and leaves rustling under my feet. Bliss.
Check out some wonderful pictures on the island’s web site: Insel der Jugend / Treptower Park.

I continued to walk along the Spree, and where did it lead me? To Spreepark! It’s an abandoned amusement park whose owner fled the country to Peru some ten years ago, leaving the bankrupt amusement park behind. I had heard of it, but all I knew was that it was somewhere in or near Treptower Park. Deserted places like that always give me the creeps. It was really weird to imagine how that particular place had once been filled with people amusing themselves in e.g. the ferris wheel, which now lay in the the gloom completely abandoned and just waiting to slowly fall apart. Creepy and sad – and yet somehow very, very fascinating.

This city is just so much more than just the bars and clubs of Kreuzberg and the cafés of Prenzlauer Berg. <3

Blogging in darkness

Whoa, sorry for the blogging break! I can’t even blame it on being busy, because I haven’t. Well, this week has actually been somewhat active (I held a presentation on the Berlin blockade for my German course and made a day trip to Leipzig, among others), but otherwise I’ve been busy procrastinating, tops. Some sort of autumn coma going on here.

The clocks were turned backwards on the last weekend in October, due to shifting to standard time, which to me means that the sun sets an hour earlier. I have to say I’ve been quite dismayed and disheartened by the early and profound darkness. Finland is so extreme with its lightning (it’s all the time light during summer and dark during winter), but in Germany it actually gets dark in the evenings during summer, so I somehow assumed that darkness during winter would also keep to a moderate level. Boy was I wrong! In addition to the standard time, things are worsened by the time zones, something I hadn’t thought about at all: when the sun sets around 5 PM in Finland, the time is only 4 PM in Germany. Ok, the sun sets around 3.30 PM in Helsinki and at 4 PM here, so the day is still longer here and basically I shouldn’t have anything to complain about. But nevertheless it just somehow feels a lot... darker here. I guess it’s due to the lack of snow and decent street lightning or something?

Well, luckily I assume that the worst part is soon over, and with a sigh of relief I’ll have to conclude that it has lasted only a short time. Even November has been nice and gentle to me, to some point: it’s been quite warm, the trees have still kept on to their beautiful leaves, it hasn’t been terribly rainy, and even when it has rained, I’ve managed to enjoy the melancholic beauty of wet streets and leaves in yellow street lightning. Only during the last two weeks or so has the novembery November been depressingly present, and now the temperature is already dropping fast. Next Wednesday it should be snowing, so I have really high hopes that winter’ll be here soon and replace the darkness with a lovely blue light! :)

Now that I think about it, it’s crazy how the weather has changed in two weeks! Now it’s maybe –3–4°C, and exactly two weeks ago it was +17°C (!!). Of course, it was exceptionally warm then, but still! That Sunday I made a day trip to Potsdam by bike and it was absolutely fabulous. It was my first visit in Potsdam, but unfortunately I still can’t tell you much about the city as it was so dark that I didn’t see much :D And Potsdam certainly hasn’t invested in city maps, so most of the time I had absolutely no clue where I was. I guess that trip was more about the journey than the destination :)

I would have liked to see the Sanssouci palace and park, but as said, it was pitch-dark, so I had to give up on that idea. Well, the main reason I wanted to see them in the first place was the name, so I guess I’m not that passionate about the whole thing :) But I wonder how French names for places always are so sympathetic? Sans souci means “without a worry” – sounds quite stress-free to me :) Then there’s Monbijou Park, where the former Monbijou Palace used to exist: mon bijou means “my jewel” or “my piece of jewellery” – how romantic ♥ The third example that comes to my mind is the park Mon Repos in Vyborg, Russia. (Apparently there is also a palace by the same name in Germany!) Mon repos translates into “my rest”. I guess the normal association would be a place where one relaxes during holidays or something, but for some reason I find that the name has a beautiful and sad tone to it: it makes me think of someone’s last residence before death – the final, yet peaceful rest on earth.

In this melancholic feel I end this post and drag myself to bed for the final rest of this week. Good night, sleep tight.

Recipe: Roasted pumpkin and garlic soup

I made this soup already in September, but it’s still pumpkin season, so I have a hunch it will be making a comeback in the near future.

I love roasted vegetables! Roasting just gives them such an earthy sweetness, it’s absolutely irresistible. Pumpkin is available everywhere for a very reasonable price, and so the thought of a soup made with roasted pumpkin was all too tempting to be ignored. When I thought of roasting also garlic, and of course adding pumpkin’s best friend, sage, I had no choice but to start cooking immediately.

Roasted pumpkin and garlic soup
Serves 4–5

ca 1 kg pumpkin, peeled and cut into even-sized cubes (keep the seeds!)
1 whole garlic, head trimmed off
1 huge onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
200 gr sour cream
1 dl white wine
vegetable stock
sage leaves
salt and black pepper, to taste

1. Preparation: Place the pumpkin cubes, pumpkin seeds and a couple of sage leaves on a baking tray with a generous piece of baking paper, sprinkle some vegetable oil, salt and pepper over them. Wrap the garlic along with a dash of olive oil in tin foil. Shove the pumpkin and garlic in a 180°C oven for about 45 minutes. Roughly turn them over once, so that they roast evenly.
2. Sauté the onions and celery in a pot.
3. Add the white wine and let it simmer on low heat until the alcohol has evaporated.
4. Press the garlic cloves out of their shells and add them to the pot. Throw along also the pumpkin pieces, sage leaves (maybe 5–6, taste your way through as they can be quite strong in taste), vegetable stock and the sour cream.
5. Purée the soup until smooth; if you have the energy and pedantry you can thereafter pass it through a sieve in order to get a really silky consistency.
6. Check the taste, add e.g. salt, a dash of lemon juice, honey or other spices, when needed. Serve with your home-roasted pumpkin seeds and crispy butter-fried sage leaves. Yum-my!

Sigh, again an incredibly dull and ugly food picture.
Photographing inside at dark sure doesn't bring the best out of the looks of my food.

Dresden, part 2: !!

Finally, in the afternoon, we headed out of old town. By this time I was feeling quite fed up with the city and wondered whether it was just as dull everywhere. As Leonard Nimoy puts it on the Simpsons: “The answer is: No.” We jumped on a tram heading east and reached the Elbe Valley. My goodness, my opinion on Dresden changed immediately. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. It actually reminded me quite a lot of Heidelberg, with which I am completely in love.

Elbe Valley

Castles!

The bridge Blaues Wunder (“Blue Wonder”), or officially Loschwitzer Brücke. A blue wonder means an unpleasant surprise in German, but I’ve no clue why this poor bridge carries such a nickname.

There were lots of cute birds on the bank. These swans weren’t even scary or vicious.
Also note the funicular! Guess how much I would like to ride it? A lot.

We took a break at Schillergarten, a biergarten by the Blaues Wunder before crossing Elbe. Lucky I wasn’t especially hungry, for the only vegetarian alternative the whole place had to offer were french fries... After that, we headed towards Weißer Hirsch (“white red deer”, heh), a posher villa area in East Dresden, higher up the valley. It was very bourgeois, but in a very pleasant way.

A very sympathetic sign at the Schillergarten, warning about falling chestnuts.

Weißer Hirsch, near the bridge.

Time for some climbing!

Come on guys, we haven’t got all day. It’s just a little steep.

A villa in Weißer Hirsch. A bit modest for my taste, but I could maybe show the mercy of living in a place like that, if I was asked very nicely (and if I were, say, 20 years older).

Another villa.

Street view.

After climbing up, we took the tram back down, to Äußere Neustadt (“outer new town”). There we wandered around in shops and eventually found a very nice flea market! I saw a cute Kiwi bird that just had to come with me. I named it Kiwa das Kiwi; “kiva” means nice in Finnish (but as the bird is German, its name would be pronounced “Kifa” if it would keep the original spelling, hence the w) and actually, the grammatically correct genus would be masculine. However, we had sarcastically been making jokes about postmodern feminism and its postmodern jargon, so I decided to take a critical stand towards the heteronormativity penetrating (!) our society, and went for the neuter instead. Very gender neutral, jawohl?

Kiwa! He... I mean, "it" was a bit nervous about being photographed, so I couldn’t get it to smile, but it’s really a very relaxed and easy-going fellow.
It actually also features in a previous picture, sitting on my bed.

There was also a baby at the flea market, but the sign explicitly reads that it is not for sale (“Baby = unverkäuflich”). Bummer.

Then it was time to head home. We had huge plans of going out for some partying, but everyone passed out in the train (just of exhaustion and fresh air) around nine, so the somewhat anticlimactic result was that everyone just crawled home to get some sleep. Maybe just as well, all in all it was a day well spent!

Dresden, part 1: Meh.

Ha, finally a post about Dresden, where we went for a day trip a month ago (that is, in the beginning of October).

Short introduction/FYI: Dresden is the capital of Saxony in East Germany near the Czech border, about 160 km from Berlin. It is situated in a valley through which the river Elbe flows. Thanks to the Elbe Valley, Dresden was granted UNESCO world heritage status in 2004. However, it lost it in 2009 due to the construction of a highway bridge. Dresden did mention the construction plans when running for the status, but the location of the future bridge was reported incorrectly – wtf? “Umm well we didn’t know where we were gonna build this bridge we’ve been planning since the 90s. Sorry bout that, UNESCO dudes.” When UNESCO found out that the futuristic-looking, massive bridge was going to be built close to the old town, it obviously went pretty berserk and eventually removed the Elbe Valley from the world heritage list. Quite an absurdly tragicomical story.

We started our day trip by wandering around Altstadt, the “old town” of the city. It actually in practice is the newer part, as it was completely destroyed in the bombings of WWII and thereafter rebuilt. I don’t know if it was precisely for that reason, but the old town seemed very impersonal and clinical, as if it were just a façade built for tourists. It didn’t have the feel of a place people live in. It was nice to see, but is hardly worth another visit.

View to Altstadt from the bridge Augustusbrücke.

Minerva at the Augustusbrücke, Altstadt and of course Elbe in the background.

A bit of the Füırstenzug (“Procession of the Princes”, but can also be translated into “train of princes”, which is much more amusing – at least if you’re humourly challenged as I am), a ridiculously big mural representing the Princes of Saxony.

Some disturbing statues/decorations at Zwinger, a baroque palace.

It got even more disturbing.

Recipe: Comfort casserole

I used to have a cooking blog, but I eventually didn't have enough enthusiasm or motivation to keep it alive. My pictures sucked (and still do, admittedly), which of course is a bit discouraging as several other food blogs really have great pictures, and I just didn’t update it often enough.

Now I thought I might try to revive the food blog section. As this isn’t strictly a food blog, I won’t have to worry about not posting enough recipes, I’ll just post when I feel like it. And now I do! The recipes will for the most part be vegetarian, but occasionally some seafood might swim in too.

As autumn creeps in, I always start craving for stews, soups and casseroles – warm, comforting, hearty meals. I like to use seasonal ingredients, and when I saw delicious-looking string beans and Brussels sprouts in the grocery store the other day, I got the idea of a very cheesy casserole with sour cream. I had made wild mushroom bisque the other day and had still some mushrooms left, and I figured they would go along perfectly in this autumnal meal.

I don’t mean to brag, but by god, this was good! (Or is, I still have a good deal left.) I named it “comfort casserole” because that just sums it up. To add up the luxury and cosiness, a splash of white wine would not hurt at all. Smoked tofu would also go along very well, in the casserole itself or then served with it. But so, here’s the recipe:

Comfort casserole
Serves 6–8

ca. 300 gr string beans, ends trimmed
ca. 500 gr Brussels sprouts, halved
30 gr dried wild mushrooms
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
2 small parsley roots (parsnip will also do just fine, or why not carrot), thinly sliced or cut into juliennes
2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
200 gr sour cream
1,5 dl half cream (15%), I used a wild mushroom & white balsamic flavoured, but you could use just regular cream and add a dash of balsamic vinegar, or all sour cream
(1 dl dry white wine)
200 gr strong grated cheese, I used mature cheddar and Emmentaler
3 organic eggs, lightly beaten
rosemary, salt, white pepper

1. Soak the mushrooms in warm water for about an hour, squeeze out the excess water and chop them very finely. Don’t throw away the soaking water! Pass it through filter paper or a cheese cloth and use it for the casserole.
2. Blanche the string beans in salted water for a few minutes. This is important, because even string beans may be toxic uncooked.
3. Sauté the onions, celery and garlic, season with salt and rosemary. Move into a large bowl along with the beans and parsley root.
4. Move the Brussels sprouts on the pan and fry until golden brown. Add the mushrooms and about a dl of the mushrooms’ soaking water. Leave to simmer until the liquid has evaporated and/or the sprouts are al dente, then add to the veggie bowl.
5. In a bowl, mix the sour cream, cream, white wine, some of the mushrooms’ soaking water, eggs and most of the cheese. Season with salt and white pepper, and some more rosemary if you feel like it. You won’t want the mixture to be too running, otherwise your casserole will run all over the place. If you feel it’s too fluid, you could add another egg or some all-purpose flour (just be sure to whisk it together with some liquid so that you won’t bump into yucky lumps).
6. Combine the two bowls and pour into a casserole. Sprinkle over the leftover cheese and bake in.. umm, 180°C for about an hour. I’m not too sure about the time, just check on it and take it out when it’s got a golden brown crust. Let it settle and cool for a while, and dig in!

Haha, it sure isn’t a looker. But it compensates in taste what it lacks in looks.

Nesting

”Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.” (– Fight Club, 1999)

Haha, nesting indeed. Well, the quote continues quite in another way than I personally think (“If I saw something clever like a coffee table in the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have it.”), because I hate shopping and having stuff I don’t feel I need, and my style is definitely quite minimalistic.

Actually, precisely the seek for minimalism was what drove me to Ikea, quite paradoxically. As I noted earlier, I like the way this flat is furnished, it’s a very well-balanced whole. However, my landlady’s style is much more decorative than mine, and very, very blue for my taste. By blue I mean the colour (not sadness), and I had a very intensive blue phase as a teen, so I’m quite over and done with that colour, probably for the rest of my life. However, the walls are and remain blue in the living/bedroom, so I thought I’d pimp up – or should I say downgrade – the textiles. As a bonus, my landlady’s replaced textiles will definitely stay intact during my stay!

Obviously I didn’t want to spend fortunes on a flat where I’m staying for half a year, so the changes would need to be quite few and budget-friendly. It was actually quite hard to try and find something that would feel “me”, but at the same time work with what’s already in the flat and play along with the existing style. All in all I think I did quite well and am quite pleased, especially considering how little I actually did: I cut down the blue replacing it with green and red, and packed away some cloths and carpets. While I normally don’t fancy those colour combinations, nor would have chosen that cushion/cloth pattern if I were furnishing a flat from scratch, I find the result being quite in harmony with the prevailing style, and yet with a touch of myself. I feel at home :) Behold:

The hallway, entrance is to the right, next to that curtain.
The curtain was a very bright blue one, that one has birds and trees. Welcome to the jungle!
I always first see that picture as the Fair Trade mark, wtf?

Hallway, pt 2. The walls are the same colour as in the previous picture, it just looks more olive-like in this picture.

Living/bed/nerding room.

Living/bedroom. The sofa was the biggest change, it had a blue-grey cover and red and orange cushions.

Living/bedroom.

View from the sofa.

Kitchen. Note the grinders and herbs! And space!

View from the balcony!

♥

Ps. Happy 20102010!

Düsterer Abend

...is "gloomy evening" in German. The evenings begin earlier day by day, and the darkness is sometimes almost overwhelming in the poor street lightning here. Add heaps of fallen leaves in wonderful colours and drizzling rain, and the autumnal feeling is guaranteed. Time to cook some hot peppermint tea, huddle under a blanket and put on some warm socks. And listen to some dark, intense autumn music.

I put together an autumn playlist on Spotify: Düsterer Abend. Tracklist:

Deru – Next Door
Seefeel – Is It now?
Massive Attack – Special Cases
Bombay Dub Orchestra – Egypt by Air
Massive Attack – Future Proof
Portishead – We Carry On
Dinosauruxia – Safe (MISF*TS Remix)
Orbital – Petrol
Blamstrain – Linja
UNKLE – Caged Bird (feat. Katrina Ford)
Rinneradio – Kaikissa kaikkea
Portishead – Machine Gun
Disjecta – Bad Day for Wasps
Terry Callier – Sunset Boulevard
Seefeel – Come Alive (Climatic Phase No. 1)
Burial – Forgive

Picture: Lochinvar @ Flickr

Settling down

Aaahhh, it’s mid-October and I’ve finally moved to my Kreuzberg-flat :) It’s cosy, wonderful view, great location and it’s warm with central heating! G’bye 15°C bathroom, won’t miss you.

The moving itself was somewhat arduous, phew. I didn’t want to spend my money on a taxi, since I was in any case going twice to the Kreuzberg-flat; on Thursday to pick up the keys etc., and then on Friday I could really move in. So I figured I might just as well drag along my belongings. So on Thursday, I loaded my bike with two 29″ bike wheels, two large(ish) bags and my spare bed, aka a gigantic airbed, and with my backpack fully packed I begun my journey through Berlin leading my wheeled load. Of course I didn’t walk or ride the whole 10 km, but used the S- and U-Bahns. Luckily all three stations (S-Schönhauser Allee, S/U-Gesundbrunnen and U-Kottbusser Tor) had lifts, so I didn’t have to drag the whole lot down or up stairs, that would have been a torturous experience. Though I have to admit, I almost thought about it anyway, because waiting for the lifts was very frustrating :D Patience is definitely not one of my strengths, at least not when I’m trying to get things done or get from a place to another, then I(’d) want everything to be quick and efficient!

I received quite a good deal of puzzled looks with my moving load, haha. I’d like to think they were looks of awe and admiration, but probably they were just feeling sorry for me or at least thought I was losing my mind. Very many helpful hands were offered :) But well, comparing to that I would have dragged all that stuff just with my two hands, I would have needed a second round. So I’m actually a bit proud of my bike-moving-idea! And the effort surely paid off, now I’m in my new flat and won’t have to move anywhere until May <3

Mid-October also means that the six-week German course has come to an end. I can’t quite understand how time flies so incredibly fast?! “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.” The language course really has been very, very helpful, although it has required a whole lot of work. Well, maybe these two things are related... :) But in any case, it’s really encouraging to notice I’ve actually made some progress, especially with my spoken German and vocabulary. It still is a far cry from fluent, and especially when I’m tired I still tend to freeze. But at least I am better understood than six weeks ago, and also I understand better; I can follow TV programmes or films and understand pretty much everything. But I still suck :D But I believe it does me good to really suck at something, and still have to try to cope and get better. It’s quite humbling.

A weird thing related to the process of language learning is that my French has totally degraded. It's really weird, German and French are somehow in the same category in my brain, which is strange since my French is a lot stronger than my German. Or was, at least. Now when I try to speak French, I really have no guarantees whatsoever that I'll actually speak French?! I use German words and even sentences without even noticing (or at least noticing it when I've already blurted it out, and it thus is already too late), and when trying to think of the correct French words, all I can think of are German. Wtf...

Mid-October also means that next week, the academic year starts. I’ve got quite interesting courses ahead: a seminar in social/labour market/economic policy, a couple of courses in environmental policy, a course about politics of memory (i.e., political history), and then a German course. I’ll actually be able to get quite a good deal credited in Helsinki, so also my master degree studies are advancing here :)

I guess everyone recognises the slightly frustrated longing for a change from time to time, a boredom with everything being always the same. But I must say, more than the acute change with all the new things, I like more the phase thereafter, when things aren’t all new and strange to the point of intimidation. It’s exciting but very tiring, and I do, however, need some sort of routine and familiarity in order to feel... well, I guess “safe” or “comfortable” are somewhat the right words. It’s quite a perfect balance: life is not (yet?) in a boring rut, but has a freshness along with a nice familiarity to it :) A long story short: life’s good <3

Temporary residence and music enthusiasm

Greetings from Prenzlauer Berg! I moved last weekend, as my flat in Kreuzberg won't be available until 15 October. It's a really nice place, near S/U Schönhauser Allee. What sucks is that it has coal heating, meaning it's preeetty cold. Or well, I guess I could heat it as much as I want, but I don't have the heart for it as the amount of coal needed seems so immense :F. Thank goodness for warm socks and peppermint tea!

Another downside is that there isn't any Internet connection (actually I'm writing this at the university, so the greetings from P-Berg are remote), which theoretically isn't a problem, cause I bought an Internet prepaid-stick for a month. The problem was that I didn't choose the right prepaid-mode, and it charged me by minute, so I used my whole prepaid during Monday evening :D Well, now I know better, and luckily the pack came with five free days, so I guess I'll just have to get along with them. (However, some blame I do pass on to Saturn, where I got partial and confusing instructions, to say the least. And it wasn't the first but the third time.)

I briefly expressed my satisfaction with Moderat's gig last Tuesday. It was held at Volksbühne, where I had never been before. At first it didn't seem it would have any chance of success, as we found out to our great devastation that there were only seats, no dancefloor whatsoever! During the warm-up act (Shed from Ostgut Ton) everyone was still sitting and the atmosphere was quite lame (although Shed's live was good, no complaints there).

But by golly, when Moderat started playing, it was five seconds and everyone was standing up, and eventually it was one hell of a gig! Everyone was dancing despite those stupid chair rows and we even ended up dancing on the stage :D <3 True Volksbühne (= stage of the people)!

Next Friday it's skweee day! Prkl! macht Skweeertisch #2 @ Raum20! With Mesak, Joxaren, Karl Marx Stadt, Roko and Naks. S(kw)ee you there :)

Also other sssssuper stuff coming up. Like FLYING LOTUS!!!!! at Maria am Ostbahnhof on 22 October. Like, you know, oh em geeeee, I'm maybe gonna faint. Flying Lotus was absolutely mindblowingly good at Flow Festival 2008. I'm SO gonna be there.

On 31 Oct Yeasayer is playing at Maria! The same day Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics would be playing at Volksbühne though... Hard decisions ahead, in other words. Luckily I've still got nearly a month to decide. :)

Now I've had enough of sitting in the computer lab for today, so until next time. Ta-ta!

Cutting through the red tape (part 1)

There, I did it! Finally the post I've promised to write!

But first I'll quickly tell you a bit more about my to-be flat. As I mentioned earlier, it's situated between U-Kotti and U-Prinzenstraße, which will shorten my way to the university a tiny bit. Although the neighbourhood isn't the most hip & coolest like e.g. Graefekiez in the neighbourhood of Graefestraße (also in Berlin, maybe about a km from where I'll be living), which is super popular, it's location is excellent. Public transport is near and plenty, Kottbusser Tor and Oranienstraße with their numerous Turkish markets, bars and restaurants and such are just around the corner, but far enough to keep it calm and nice. I have a lovely park view, which can also be admired from the balcony (!). Central heating, and according to the woman whose place it is, the flat is very warm even in winter, aahh! The building itself is exceptionally ugly and high, I think it's got ten storeys or something. And a lift, quite a modern one even! Practically no houses have lifts here, and if they do, they're so old and unsteady (and slow) that you'd just better take the stairs. I for my part am very glad to have a lift from the 20th century, for I'll be living on the eighth floor, and the washing machines, which are in common use, are on the attic :D It's huuuuge, 39 m², nicely furnished, and has enough place in the kitchen for a humane cooking experience! I just can't wait to move in :)

So, enough of that and let's proceed, or maybe precede? to the process of renting a flat in Berlin. University enrolment was also one hell of a bureaucracy process, but I'll dedicate a post of its own to that.

There.
Picture: DBR62 @ Flickr

Most of the people in Berlin live in rental flats, meaning that for the most part flats aren't owned or given for long-term lease by private persons. Instead that is taken care of by a Hausverwaltung, which literally translates into house administration or something. They are (numerous) companies, ranging from small family businesses to huge, posh companies on Kudamm, that at the same time are housing companies, housing agencies and house managing/maintenance agencies. They normally own numerous flats in many different houses around the city, and thus aren't like the very locally operating housing companies or house managing/maintenance agencies e.g. in Finland.

If you're renting a flat just for a fixed period as a subtenant from a private person, you'll probably get away with the whole flat renting thing relatively easily. You necessarily won't be needing more papers and certificates than a nice personality (or at least the ability to give that impression) and a sublease contract. You might find a flat thats (nicely) furnished, maybe even with a washing machine, fridge, stove, oven, sink and such.

"Yeah, okay. Furnished is luxury, washing machine isn't something necessarily found in every rental flat, fridge... stove... what?" That's right. Often flats are rented just with their walls, and all the rest is the lessees problem. Well, maybe there are a couple of windows here and there, some flats have a sink, and maybe a floor and a bathroom that need some redoing. On the lessees expense. With a contract obliging the lessee. So don't expect to walk into a ready-to-live-in flat, you'll be doing some serious shopping for very basic domestic appliances to a start.

Or well, actually that isn't the start, since you'd of course have to had gone through the rental appliance process. With Hausverwaltungs, you won't be doing anything with a pretty face, since you won't be even meeting them during the process, as it is the current lessee whose responsibility it is to find candidates to be the following lessee. But don't bother to put immense effort on impressing him/her, for he/she won't be making the decision, just shows the flat and forwards the PAPERS to the Hausverwaltung.

And the Hausverwaltung definitely does not care about anything but the papers. As a start, you'll need to fill in a form where you state that you are interested in the flat and fill in every possible information about yourself. Attached, a copy of your ID (passport or such) and evidence of your incomes for the past three months. You will also want your former landlord or -lady to fill in a form that you have no rental debts (Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung, don't you just love the language :D), you can find one e.g. here.

Then comes the tricky part. Almost without a doubt, the Hausverwaltung will want a SCHUFA-Auskunft, your German credit information certificate. To get one, you'll need a German bank account (I applied for my SCHUFA-Auskunft at the same time when I opened my bank account). To open a German bank account, you'll need to be registered as a Berlin citizen and have some sort of proof of what you're doing in Berlin (studying, working, else: what? etc.). To be registered as a citizen, you'll need an address in Berlin.

Well, the good news is that at least I wasn't asked for more papers at the Bürgeramt (the registry office) than my passport and my rental contract, and my temporary flat was just fine by them. And I didn't need to wait in some dodgy office for hours, but to my extreme surprise Berlin is totally 2058 and has an internet booking system! The first time available wasn't until in the next week, but I wasn't in a hurry so it was ok. The registration process itself took maybe 10 minutes or so, so that part wasn't especially torturous.

Summa summarum: if you're looking for a long-term flat in Berlin, I suggest you begin by renting a flat for 1–2 months. That's possible even from abroad, and you'll at least have some place to live in before you find The Flat. You'll also have the time to get all your papers in order and get to check the flats out yourself. And it's much more stress-free to be looking for a flat for e.g. a month, instead of a smothering "it would be great if I could find a flat in two-weeks-ago's time" timetable and living in a hostel.

Rents have gone up quite a bit, a couple of years ago it wasn't at all a utopian thought to find a studio flat in a nice area for 250–300 Euros, but nowadays 400 Euros isn't all that rare. There still are (unfurnished) flats for <300 Euros, but there are lot of applicants also. Well, compared to Helsinki the rents are still ridiculous (or rather it's the other way around), there rents for tiny studios start from almost 600 Euros... As probably everywhere, the bigger the flat, the cheaper it proportionally it is. Two-roomers' rents start from about 400–450. There are in theory two rental sums: the Kaltmiete ("Cold rent") is just the rent, whereas Warmmiete ("Warm rent") includes the Nebenkosten (side costs), which usually consists of heating and (warm) water costs, sometimes also gas and/or electricity. So check the Warmmiete for the actual rental costs.

A good site when looking for a flat is WG-Gesucht.de. I warmly recommend also putting in your own ad.

Phew! There you have it, a short (?) guide for flat renting in Berlin. Good luck! And, good night, and good weekend. I'll be spending the weekend moving to my temporary flat in Prenzlauer Berg and in Dresden. So until next week, ta-ta!

♥

Just for the record: I love Moderat.

I can haz flat!

Quick update: I found a flat!! :) :) A nice studio in Kreuzberg, between U-Kottbusser Tor and U-Prinzenstraße, lovely view, very reasonable rent. I'll get to move in on 15 October, but I probably found a flat for the two "homeless" weeks there in between too :)

Things just have the tendency to work themselves out :)

About fleas and bikes

I actually had a mission regarding the flea market: a bike. The bike I dragged along from Finland is good and nice and my precious, little, nearly-15-kilo, masculine-to-say-the-least darling baby, but it’s an impossible mission to find mudguards for its 29” tyres, and it isn’t the most practical thing to ride in a skirt. And I must admit I feel a bit nervous with leaving it outside bars and clubs during the most hectic hours in the weekend. So I wanted a bike that was a bit more... let’s say casual.

And a bike I found! It was somewhat a pig in a poke, for Mauerpark is absolutely packed and cobbled, so there really isn’t much of a chance for test driving. But I managed to negotiate the price from 50€ to 35€ (yes yes very special price only for you my friend), noted that the bike had a no-good hand brake but functioning pedal brakes, was big enough for me (I’m quite tall and the majority of the bikes were pygmy-sized!) and had mudguards, so I concluded that I wouldn’t lose too much if the deal turned out a dud.

And I must say I am amazed with how smooth a ride it is! Ahem, I mean, I saw from far that the bike was just a pearl at the bottom of the ocean waiting for that sharp-sighted pearl fisher to collect it... It’s a bit tough to get going, but once in motion, it actually is quite a fast thing! And moving from point A to point B effectively is something I deeply appreciate :)

In Helsinki that bike would be somewhat of a nuisance though, as it feels as if the city is nothing but up- and downhills, uphill especially on the way back home from just about anywhere. My flat is located in Alppila (“alppi-” is “alpine” in Finnish, and “-la” is a “shire”-like suffix in place names (like Hampshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire), although not meaning anything originally), and it sure lives up to its name. But Berlin is flat like a pancake, which is nice. I’ve now ridden back home from school yesterday and today, about 13 kilometres, and it’s been but a pleasure.

Apart from being flat, Berlin is also quite biker-friendly with its cycle paths. There are quite a lot of them, and when not, just dive in along with the cars. The traffic isn’t especially heavy, despite the city being so big, and more often than not the right lane is half full with parked cars, so half of that lane is unused anyway and thus is safe for bikers. Cars (or their drivers, maybe) are quite considerate, I haven’t had the feeling of having to be scared for my life thanks to road raging drivers. It seems to me overly easy-going drivers that don’t care to fuss about being in a hurry or traffic rules are more of a danger :) Today I was almost bumped into when a car was parking and drove halfway on the pavement (which had a cycle path, along which I was riding), and clearly the driver was just so in his/her thoughts that he/she didn’t pay attention to what he/she was doing. Another car drove 15 km/h straight along for maybe 200 metres with the winker on, until he decided to stop, and one van stopped in the middle of a crossing without winking or giving some other sort of warning sign and started unloading :D It’s amazing how no one gets nervous, they just put on their winkers and drive round whoever is blocking the way.

Oh yeah, in addition to buying a bike and a lock to it, I went a bit crazy with earrings... I bought five pairs of them. But they were all so cute and locally made, so I just had to buy them! Just look at them, can you blame me?

!

The peg and banana earrings I bought at Unikat Kantine’s stand, who had a whole lot of other lovely jewellery. I think I’ll have to visit them again next Sunday, because I want scissor and fork+knife earrings too...

There’s also a new flea market opened in Friedrichshain, Revaler Straße 99. I came so late that it was practically closed/over already, but the location is absolutely magnificent! It’s an old train reparation plant, with lots of ruined former halls and such, and now, in addition to the RAW flea market (RAW = Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, the Reichsbahn’s (DDR's railway company) reparation plant), there’s an indoor climbing hall, a skate hall and the bar/club Cassiopeia, which seems really nice. I’ll have to visit both the flea market and Cassiopeia at a better time! I tried to take pictures of the place, but I just didn’t manage to capture the atmosphere at all, so I’ll have to leave that to better photographers and their equipment.

Never-ending, sweet autumn

Baww, still no news on the flat frontier. :( Starting to get a bit nervous, this flat is rented just until the end of September and can't be rented for a longer period...

Well, it's still hard to be in too bad a mood as the weather is absolutely stunning! It's been a lot warmer now, around 20° and even over, lovely sunshine and the trees are little by little turning into reddish-yellow-orange. A fabulously mild autumn, especially compared to Finland where the shift from summer to autumn is very intense and (at its worst) harsh. In the end of August it is not that unlikely for the temperature to climb up to even 30°C (86°F), whereas in the beginning of October, the temperature probably has dropped to a little over 10 degrees (50°F) or even under. And during those few weeks nature has shown what extremely vivid and breath-taking colours it is able to produce, I don't even have the words for it. Love it. Then comes a wet, dark, cold and utterly depressing period preceding winter, also known as October, especially November, and often also the beginning of December. Hate it.

But as said, here it isn't anywhere near 10 degrees yet. On the contrary: I've been on the verge of a heat stroke with my Finland-adapted autumn clothing (i.e. jacket, scarf, maybe even gloves and a cap), when in reality even a long-sleeved is sometimes a bit much! I really do not complain, this is exactly the stage of autumn I love :) The shorter the novemberperiod is, the better.

That was the case also last Sunday, when I finally got myself dragged to Mauerpark Flohmarkt, which I mentioned in a previous post. I had taken it easy all Saturday (because I came home on Saturday morning around 8 or 9 and didn’t get much sleep in daytime... O:-), so I was fresh as a day drop and eager to get some fresh air and explore the flea market. I also took my camera with me, in defiance of looking like a stupid tourist. I was very glad for that, as walking through Görlitzer Park (where some were even sun bathing!) the view was wonderful. I also had to catch the view from Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree.

Autumn in Görlitzer Park, Kreuzberg.

Spree, view from Oberbaumbrücke, Kreuzberg/Friedrichshain.

I’ll mutilate this post into two, and continue with the flea market in a moment – otherwise this’ll turn into such a novel that no one will have attention span long enough to get through it.

(Again I was going to write about the bureaucracy, I even had this named “Cutting through the red tape”, but I keep failing miserably with this project! Luckily the actual bureaucracy is at least for the most part overcome, that much I’ll tell you.)

Tag trouble

Dear readers, I need your advice!

I have a problem with my tags. They're stupid.

Let's start with public transport, which is only a small part of what I'm trying to label under it. I mean moving about in Berlin in general, whether it is with a tram or a taxi. The point is moving from point A to point B, not exclusively public transport (to which I could of course dedicate a tag of its own, but it's not what I'm after now). "Moving about in Berlin" sounds as if you're just wandering around in Berlin without any sort of plan whatsoever. "Moving in Berlin" for its part sounds as in moving residence from one flat to another, or, alternatively, things in Berlin that get you all emotional. Well, I do feel all warm and fuzzy inside at the very thought of public transport that runs all night long, not to mention clubs and bars being open non-stop all weekend, but still... You get the drift.

Update: Alex came up with "getting around", which was exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!! ^___^

Then there's living in Berlin, which evokes the reaction "... DUH? Yeah? That's what the whole blog is about?" But contrary to the previous case, I don't mean it as generically as the first impression would be; as in just being alive. I mean quite concrete things that have to do with being a resident in Berlin. Primarily, all sorts of basic things and curiosities regarding the flats here (hence "living"); but also e.g. diverse bureaucracy; owning/rental structure, customs and the like; the very lively "Kiez" (neighbourhood) culture; and so on. So anything that has to do with very concretely living everyday life somewhere. As I mentioned, plain "living" is somewhat amusing in its universality, but then again e.g. "residence" has an all too formal sound to it, narrowing it to plain bureaucracy.

I've been racking my brains, but my imagination and creativity have once again proven themselves to be near to non-extistent.

PLZ HALP

Pic from: LOLCat.com

Sleep deprived in Berlin

Phew, as I mentioned when presenting myself, I have the tendency to always have a crammed calendar. I don’t quite understand how, but the feeling is ever present also here in Berlin, despite the fact that I have a lot less work to do.

I point my blaming finger at the German course, which starts at an unholy hour in the morning (at least when one has to take into account the time it takes to get to the FU situated in the middle of nowhere, also known as Dahlem), and thus makes me adapt to a completely crooked rhythm of life. Or well, tries to make me, as I am unable to. Of course, the nice little schoolgirl I am, I do get up at an abnormal time in the morning, and even go to bed unnaturally early to avoid being ready the next morning to give up three-quarters of my kingdom and my left leg just to be allowed to sleep. But it just doesn’t make any difference whether I have a good 8-hour sleep every goddamn night or not.

No. I’m not adapting, I won’t be adapting, and I doubt I ever will be able to adapt, if "adapt" is understood as an odd habit being assimilated into/as the norm. I’m. just. not. a. morning. person. To my defence, I’m not the kind of non-morning person who’ll always be grumpy, bitchy and/or mute until the day is way passed noon. I am able to communicate in a civilised manner, get stuff done and so, but I’m just TIRED. Know what I mean?

I wouldn’t be so worked up with having to flip my rhythm of life, if it didn’t feel so frustratingly pointless. Our course starts at 9:30 and ends at 13:15 every day until mid-October. That’s all the regular programme I have! Why, for the loving mother of god and all that is holy, cannot the time of the whole course just be moved a few hours forward? Say, 12:30–16:15? And of course excursions with their own exceptional timetables.

Speaking of which, we had our first excursion today with the theme architecture. We didn’t have any lecture yesterday (which we found out around 10:30, make a wild guess who muttered a few words about the lost possibility of sleeping in...), and we were given no information on the excursion beforehand, relying entirely on Wednesday’s lesson. Great. Well, our teacher did show up in the afternoon, as there is a film shown at the FU every Wednesday afternoon (not anything mandatory, more like a film club), and she was the only one with the DVD. There she informed some students, who for their part informed others – Chinese whispers, the basic method of information in the 21st century. E-mail is so 1993. The rumours said Thursday 10 AM at U-Bahnhof Tiergarten, which doesn’t exist: there’s either the Bahnhof (station) for S-Bahns in Tiergarten in Western Berlin, or the Station for U-Bahn in Tierpark in the East. I asked whether it was the U- or the S-Bahnhof, got a reply “U”, and as I didn’t exactly know what the programme or route was, I assumed then it was U-Tierpark.

*BEEEEP* Wrong answer! It actually would have been quite interesting to hear about the architectural and infrastructural history in the West, as I am quite unfamiliar with it, but instead ended up spending the morning in U- and S-Bahns making my way through to West. (I don’t need to mention the lost sleep, do I?) I caught up with the others in the cafeteria in Akademie der Künste, where we spent an hour or so (at the cafeteria, I mean), then we travelled back East to Friedrichshain for the last hour or so :D Oh well, next time I know to double-check with our info-challenged teacher instead of making my own assumptions.

Hm... I actually was going to write about the bureaucracy of Berlin and its universities, and not froth about morning wake-ups like a madwoman, but I guess I’ll have to get to that in the next post. Hopefully by then I’ll have some flat news, too! Keep your fingers crossed :)

Spreche nicht Deutsch

It's Thursday and the first week at Freie Universität has almost reached its end. The actual courses won't start until mid-October (thank goodness, I haven't yet had the slightest glimpse of any course programmes, I guess I should do something about that here in the near future), but I'm participating in an intensive course in German, which will last until the beginning of the semester.

We met on Monday morning at 8 AM, something I think should be prohibited by international law on the grounds of human rights and world peace, and first there was this basic "Welcome to the FU, we hope you'll enjoy your stay here and in Berlin" yadda yadda yadda. After that, all the participants were to take a placement test, according to which the actual groups were formed starting Tuesday.

I "scored" the CEFR level B2, which was the highest level among the participants, but I really feel I belong in an A2 group or something. Everyone in my group speaks at least a gazillion times better German than I do, I feel really tongue-tied and can't seem to get it round anything I'm trying to say. My head just goes completely blank from all the pathetic vocabulary I've managed to gather in my tiny head, not to mention my complete inability to pronounce anything properly. Or at least so it feels, and I'm really having trouble imagining that I could ever manage this language fluently, Swedish-speaker or not. (For those readers who don't know, Swedish is my mother tongue. Apparently it should be very helpful in the learning of German, Germanic languages as they both are. So it does in theory, but I'm proving practice to be something completely different.)

Oh well... We have a proverb in Finnish saying "Siberia will teach" (meaning one will eventually learn the hard way), I guess Berlin will be my Siberia. [Does this make me the 21st-century Zakrevsky, who called Finland "his Siberia", and, thus, Berlin the 21st-century Grand Duchy of Finland?! Oh goodness, that was such a crappy history nerd joke that everyone should just ignore it, and it shouldn't even be published – but let it be my punishment as public humiliation.] Enough of this whine now, it's almost past my bedtime and tomorrow it's Friday, meaning parteey!

Pics or stfu

I've been asked to post also pictures. So as I am now the proud owner of probably the cheapest and crappiest model of all Olympus compact digital cameras available (X-43, for those who are interested), I guess it's time to present my flat in pictures. It actually looks cosier photographed than it does in real life. Here you are:

The living/bedroom, view from the door.
Many flats in Berlin have idyllic wooden plank floors, but this one has an obscurely red-coloured fitted carpet.

Living/bedroom, view from the balcony.
The charming cone beside the bed (or should I say mattress) is a bedside lamp. Also note the cheerful painting above the sofa.

Corridor between the living/bedroom and the kitchen.
The bathroom is on the left and the outdoor on the right.

The above-mentioned bathroom. The shower is on the right.
This one looks just as awful as it really is.

The kitchen.
Note my desperate and subtle attempt to make it cosier by placing a basil, my darling spice grinders (yes, I dragged them along from Finland. They're good grinders!!) and some kitchen utensils on the windowsill.

Kitchen, view to the left.
Note the completely inadequate space for cooking.

View from the balcony.
This I like!

View from the balcony, pt. 2.
The street is Pücklerstraße in Kreuzberg.
Yes the houses are askew in Berlin, Pisa with its stupid "Leaning Tower" is just a joke.

It's gettin' hot in herre

Well, "hot" is somewhat of an exaggeration, but anyhow: THE HEATING IS TURNED ON IN MY FLAT!!

It's an exceptionally cold September in Berlin, it's normally well over 20 degrees Celcius (~70°F) in daytime, now it's mostly under 20 and in the night the temperature has dropped under 10 degrees (~50°F). I've been f*cking freezing my ass off in the past week (excuse my French).

Although Germany is known for its pioneering in ecological questions, many buildings at least in Berlin are still stuck in the 19th century when it comes to being ecological. The isolation is often far from adequate, double windows are largely unheard of especially in old buildings (Altbau) and quite a few flats are still heated with coal (!!). Though admittedly more and more flat-for-rent-ads mention that the heating used is central heating, gas or distant heating, so something seems to be changing on that front, but nevertheless Berlin buildings are for the most part a far cry from ecological. The reason is pretty apparent: lack of finance. Berlin is poor as hell, its state debt amounts to 60 billion Euro (around 70% of its GDP!) – nuff said? The problem seems to plague (poorer) ex-Western parts of Berlin in particular, such as Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Apparently East Berlin was more widely renovated during the Soviet era, while the Western parts were left pretty much as they were.

So I've been very selectively searching for a flat with central heating (or at least gas/distant heating), even though it narrowed the options quite a bit. One of the main things that caught my interest with this flat was precisely the central heating (the others being location: in Eastern Kreuzberg near Görlitzer Bahnhof; and price: I'm paying 350€ for a month).

But boy did I wish for a few days that I would have found a flat with gas so that I could regulate the heating myself! Despite the temperature dropping heavily in the night, the heating wasn't turned on until yesterday, and it was free-ee-eezing cold inside. I've been sleeping with warm socks, pyjamas (which I normally never wear since it's really uncomfortable), a thick blanket and a hot-water bottle. When I came home in the evening yesterday, I was downright amazed by not being met by the burst of cold air, on the contrary it felt very warm. And I had just bought a thermometer out of curiosity to know how cold it actually was, hmpf. Well, it's now 21°C (70°F) in the living/bedroom and in the kitchen, where the heating is still turned off, it was 17°C in the early evening, so I guess the temperature has been around 16–17°C (60–62°F) at its coldest... No wonder it felt a bit chilly.

Oh well, now the heat(ing) is ON! and I can sleep without trembling like a Parkinson patient.

This was my boyfriend for a while.
Then I stopped being so cold and dumped him.

Introduction

Oops, I just realised I haven't introduced myself or explained what on earth it is I'm doing in Berlin. So let's get that sorted out.

I'm Sophy, 26 years old, from Helsinki, Finland. I study political history as main subject at the University of Helsinki and social policy and gender studies as additional subjects.

I always seem to book my calendar completely full with school and/or work, but in my theoretical spare time I enjoy the usual palette: cycling, cooking, reading, films, music in all sorts of genres. I don't mean "all sorts of genres" as in "I like ALL sorts of music, like, from Rihanna to Amy Winehouse", but really many sorts of things make me tick. In music, from lazy ambient to violent d&b, with the exceptions of reggae and rap. Meta exceptions: dub and (some) Swedish rap and reggae. Right now the hottest thing on earth for me (at least on the party front) is disco, but I'll settle for pretty much anything as long as the vibes are good.

In literature I must state that surrealism > everything else. Gabriel García Márquez, Mikhail Bulgakov, Daniil Kharms... ah <3 I also like John Irving, Milan Kundera, George Orwell, Dostoevsky, Väinö Linna, and Peter Høeg, among others. I guess my list of favourite films/directors could be quite easily deducted from the presentation above :) The list includes Jan Svankmajer, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, the Coen bros, Monty Python, Lars von Trier, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Roy Anderson etc. etc.

So now to the part "what on earth am I doing in Berlin?".

I first visited Berlin in 2003 when I was interrailing in Central Europe. Naturally I didn't know the city very well (= at all), but nevertheless it conquered my heart. Since then I've been to Berlin several times, for 2–4 weeks at a time, and visit by visit it became clearer to me that I wanted to live in Berlin. If not forever, at least for a period long enough to really call living somewhere. The most practical way would of course be through an exchange programme or internship, and so I applied for various programmes and to my bitter disappointment wasn't admitted to any of them.

Until in 2010! I applied for East Central European, Balkan and Baltic Studies's (ECEBB) (a programme at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki) one-year exchange programme at the Freie Universität Berlin, and was chosen as their exchange student! As you might expect, I accepted with fierce enthusiasm (I must have set a new world record in exlamation mark usage when I announced my admittance on Facebook), and here I am now! Here at the FU, I'll be studying at the Osteuropa-Institut, although I guess time will tell what – and how much – I really will be studying :) "Life", "in excess"...? Grade: A+?

Shopping Spree (?)

My mum enjoys wandering in shops just looking around, even if she doesn't need to (or, alternatively, can't afford to) buy anything. I'm not especially fond of shopping and definitely don't like spending my time in shops just for the heck of it, but given the humongous favour my parents did me, the least I could do was to take her (window-)shopping. And after all, it would be nice to see some familiar neighbourhoods for the first time since last fall.

Despite the topic, we weren't especially close to the Spree (the river flowing through the city), but headed North towards the borough of Prenzlauer Berg. First we thought of going to the big flea market at the famous Mauerpark (Bernauer Straße 63–64), which is a park located on the former death strip (the no-man's land area between or/in the middle of the Berlin wall), but it didn't occur to us until at the gates that the flea market is open only on Sundays.

Oh well, shopping possibilities in Berlin aren't limited to one (huge) flea market, so we turned left to Oderberger Straße, where Coeur au ciel (Oderberger Straße 37) pretty much immediately caught our eye. They are selling the most adorable bags, wallets and charms of the brand Ipa Nima. Very cute and yet stylish!

We continued toward Mitte along Kastanienallee, which is full of various kinds of shops, bars and restaurants. I bought a pair of sandals from Giga Berlin (Kastanienallee 27), which I've visited on previous stays in Berlin and bought a jacket and a hoodie. It sells, among others, clothes designed AND manufactured in Berlin (I can't remember the brand but will get back to that), some Skunkfunk clothes, Aces of London shoes etc.

At some point we had turned around and crossed Schönhauser Allee heading back towards Danziger Straße. We walked along Lychener Straße, where besserdresser is selling a bit drippy fifties(ish) dresses, skirts and such, FLY London shoes and Portugese shoes I completely fell in love with but luckily didn't have much cash on me. Once again I can't remember the brand, but something tells me it won't take long until I get my facts updated...

Speaking of shoes, I forgot to mention Ricardo Cartillone, who sell really cute and stylish Italian shoes in several stores here in Berlin. I didn't even know they had a store in Prenzlauer Berg/Mitte (Kastanienallee 101) :) I have one pair of RC shoes and their quality is just excellent, you can really tell that they're hand made in Italy (which doesn't show in the price! I bought mine for <100€ on sale, I think their normal price is around 120–130€)! Picture this, they have padded heel seams; that's what I call design with thought.

On Lychener Straße we also found Encore (?), a really cute and stylish shop with women's clothes. Quite a simple and elegant style (not equalling posh) and a very charming, Hungarian young saleswoman. I didn't find a web site for them, I guess I'll have to step by and pick up their visiting card (and drool at a wonderful coat I laid my eyes on...)

One final mention before I end this marathon post: Erfinderladen (Lychener Straße 8), literal translation is inventor shop. So for a change something else than women's shoes and clothing! As the name suggests, the store sells all kinds of diverse inventions from packets looking like batteries, tins or sealed soda cans to design(ish) cable holders. Kinda kitsch, sort of, but in a good way. The soda cans btw had a plummet so that they also felt unopened! I felt a bit dissipated, when the first thought that occurred to me when I saw the can, was that it would suit perfectly as festival equipment – mum had thought of it as a humorous place to store spices or something...

Phew, enough of blogging for today! There's still more to come, among others a short introduction to the bureaucracy in Berlin (which I've yet had just a small taste of), bike shops, some words about flats etc. and of course restaurants. But for now: gute Nacht, schlaf gut!

Hallo Berlin!

Quick update.

I'm finally in Berlin! Feels like coming home <3 We arrived about two hours ago and now my stuff is already carried up, the rental agreement for the flat signed etc. and starting tomorrow I can begin my life in Berlin :)

I must say I have been to cosier places than my first flat here :D Though I think it could be made a lot sweeter with some easy, well-thought-out decorative solutions, but as it's just temporary, I don't think I'll bother putting that much work into it. It has a bed (well, a mattress), a washing machine and a working Internet connection – what else does a girl need :D

À propos nothing: I once again was completely surprised by the pitch-darkness at 22.00! As a Finn, I'm so used to that dusk doesn't fall in the summer months (which also August counts as) until 23–00 at its earliest. It feels like being abroad! No wait...

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream...

...merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. As the caption says, I'm fulfilling my dream and now on the Rostock ferry, ETA 21.30 CET +1 (it's 21.00 CET +1 now) I'm closer to it than ever! Never mind it's not me who's rowing, that the boat is a ferry deffo not being rown, and that calling the Baltic Sea a "stream" is quite an understatement.

I've been packing like a maniac for the past week, mostly in order to manage the insane task of cramming the majority of my belongings into a ridiculously small cellar closet. But being the Houdini I am, I actually made it, even some space was left over! Though I must admit I would never ever, I mean ever, have succeeded if my little sister, who's taking over my furnitured flat for my year abroad, wouldn't have agreed to store all my books. THANKS SIS.

And so yesterday around 15.00 (Finnish time) I headed toward Vuosaari harbour where the ferry departed at 19.00. As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm taking the ferry from Helsinki to Rostock, as my darling parents offered to take me all the way by car. This enables me not only to ignore the flights' 20 kg weight limitations, diverse rules concerning liquids etc., but to take with me my bike! <3

Omg we've arrived!! Laters!

T–12!

Eep, in less than two weeks I'll be heading with the Rostock ferry towards Berlin! And two weeks from now, I'll be a Berlinerin – finally finally finally :)

I also managed to find an apartment today, even though it's just for September. But I'm pretty positive it'll be easier to find a place to live when in Berlin, having the possibility to go and see the flats in person and charm the landlords or -ladies off their feet. I must say I'm quite surprised with how hard it's been to find a place, comparing to the previous times I've rented a flat (for a shorter period), but I'm sure everything'll turn out just fine :)

TWO WEEKS!