Guten Morgen Berlin!

German conjunctions come in three different types, like the difficulty levels in Guitar Hero: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Rather than calling them that, though, we tend to give them more grammatically funky names so that we are able to bore schoolkids in a more effective manner. Their real names are Coordinating Conjunctions, Subordinating Conjunctions, and…well, I’m not sure about the third type and I’m not sure how to Google it either. I call them ‘Mixed Conjunctions’ because they have elements of both of the other types, but feel free to correct me if you know the official term. But trust...

    Forgive me for getting personal, but we’re all friends here, and I have to say it: it’s the end of my second year since moving back to Berlin, and it’s been a really rough year. I’m a tough person, but if you hit a coconut with a hammer enough times, eventually the juices all spill out onto the ground. But I have a promise to my readers not to turn this blog into a journal, and so I won’t say any more than that here. Last time I got to that point, I decided to move back to...

                If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you will see that I now have a nifty little randomised maths sum thing which you have to answer to leave a comment. This is so that now lovely human beings like yourself can leave a comment without me being plagued with the hundreds of spam comments I have been receiving every week. Yes, alright. I know I’m not going to ever get any comments on this blog unless I really do pose naked in front of the Ritter Sport Museum or...

Allow me to begin this post with a small story of something that happened to me today on my way back from the garden. I was cycling home, when I saw in the doorway to one of the apartment blocks a rather nice wicker trunk with a big sign saying ‘zu verschenken’ (i.e. it’s yours for free if you want it, mug). I stopped to look at it and think about whether or not I fancied taking it, but somehow my bike then started to lean at a rakish angle and before I knew it we both collapsed to the...

What time would you usually be happy to get out of bed at the weekend, at the earliest? Imagine getting up an hour and a half earlier than that every day. Imagine then putting on two coats, and then wrapping bubblewrap around both legs.   Then, you put on your warmest slippers, wrap your lower legs in a layer of clingfilm, and then ratchet several metal clamps around each foot and ankle. Then you go and sit in a walk-in restaurant freezer and start pedalling on a stationary bike until you start to sweat despite the cold chilling your face and...

One of the fun things about German universities is that there’s no limit on the length of your degree. Tuition fees are cheap, rent is cheap (shhh, perhaps if we stay really quiet and don’t make any sudden moves they’ll stay that way) and so to an astonishing extent it’s possible to carry on bumbling away at your degree until qualifications are moot because you’re old enough to retire anyway. Of course, I’m being facetious; it’s certainly not ideal and it certainly is unsettling going to numerous flat viewings hosted by aging men with ponytails and sarongs pinned to the...

Judging from the mass of squidgy, regretful people who have started queuing in my gym every day of the week, New Year’s resolutions are as popular as ever. And no matter where you look on the internet (trust me; I live in the internet) there are so many thousands of articles teaching you how best to achieve your health, weight and wellbeing goals for 2015. I can’t help but shake my head in wonderment because what none of these bloggers, and women’s magazines, and gym brochures, and probiotic yogurt adverts seem to have caught onto is that there’s no need...