♥

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...