The question is, who pees on the dahlias?

This flower is as beautiful as Monty Don’s soul. Shortly after my recent move, I had a birthday. Well, one day after my recent move, I had a birthday. It was not ideal timing for enjoying oneself, and I spent my actual birthday at work on a rainy day with the remnants of an old bag of sweets to count as my cake. My colleagues (I am smitten) bought me a chili plant and a beautiful orange teapot, plus I was also taken for a ‘business coffee’, so it wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t much of a shebang. So...

I went to Ikea.

Ominous. This cannot end well. You might have noticed a certain anticipatory silence settle over GMBerlin in the last few days. I haven’t had the time or mind-space to write anything. This is because I have been preparing to move, for the first time, into a Flat Of My Very Own. No Zwischenmiete, no WG, no flatmates, no nothing – and no furniture. With a 9-6 job (in which leaving the office at 6pm is an occurance about as rare as seeing a phoenix fly past the window) there hasn’t been much time to get things ready before D-Day and...

Discoveries of an unhinged chef

Ahh, aubergine. Probably the most delicious sponge you’ll ever eat. I’ve always cooked like Frankenstein (“It’s Franken-STEEN!!”). I stitch recipes together, shove mystery things into boiling liquids, do unexpected things to unexpected vegetables, and all with the express determination to eat whatever the heck I create, no matter how strange or indigestible it might be. Sometimes, this does not end well – particularly now that I am living on my own and therefore have free reign in the kitchen to cook as insanely as I want. However, my years of dedicated experimentation is all carried out with the ultimate goal...

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It’s my way or the Autobahn

All of these tomatoes are unacceptable in the eyes of society and the law and must be destroyed. I’ve been at my gym for three months now, but today, for the first time, one of the trainers muscled over to the cross-trainer where I was whirring away, signalled for me to remove my earphones, and said: “Where is your towel?” Resisting the urge to make a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference (the guy doesn’t look like he reads much; he clearly spends the majority of his time plucking his eyebrows into razor-fine darts), I casually mentioned that I didn’t have one, and...

This little piggy went to market

I know what you’re thinking: damn, that’s a cool umbrella. What do Berliners hate the most? Tourists. What do tourists hate the most? Tourists also. Tourists come to Berlin for one of two reasons: either to see the splendour of German modernity directly parallel to the horror of remnants of a tortured past, or to be, like, totally alternative and underground and do non-touristy awesome gritty Berlin stuff. To be fair, the latter is what most Berliners are trying to do anyway. And all of this is relatively moot, because the few real born-and-bred* Berliners are just middle-aged guys trying...

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Tales of the Unexpected

There’s no appropriate photo for this post. Here are some radishes. Yesterday night, I was going to write a post about my upcoming new flat. I thought I’d take a quick look at the contract, before realising that my folder of important documents was at work. Eh, thought I, I’ll write the post tomorrow; besides, it was late, and hot, and time to sleep in order to prepare for whatever enormous pile of random tasks awaited me the following day. The air outside was fresh from the rain, so I opened the window and got into bed. About half an...

Sticky summer evenings – time for Tzatziki Tzalad!

Three seconds after this photo was taken, the entire bowl spontaneously burst into flames. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s hot. Sad-dogs-lying-on-the-pavement hot. People-eating-ice-cream-at-10-am hot. Invasion-of-psychotic-fruit-flies-everywhere hot. After months and months and months of perpetual greyness, Europe is being rewarded for its patience with an intense burst of all its missed summers delivered in one portion. People don’t know whether to be overjoyed or to succumb to the misery of being so very, very sweaty. Children have started quietly dissolving into tears on the S-Bahn, confused and upset that they are simply so uncomfortable and why the hell can’t mum do anything...

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Best Prenz Forever

In Prenzlauer Berg, graffiti artists simply tag buildings with helpful signs and directions. When I used to work in Oxford, I sat all day in a cardboard cubicle lined with school-blue artificial felt, pounding at an old Dell keyboard that appeared to contain several primordial stages of life developing between the keys. At lunchtime I would shove my tupperware into my bag and march outside as quickly as I could possibly move, simply to get out and away from that stuffy little enclosure.  Sadly, there wasn’t much to escape to outside the office. A grey, long and dull walk alongside...

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Lessons learned from a second chance in Berlin

1. No matter how many insane, shouting, drunk people there are proclaiming the apocalypse on the S-Bahn, people will always laugh and stare at you when you’re wearing a squid costume. 2. Life is so very cheap, but it is crucial to always remember the following exceptions: Celery. Ibuprofen. Forgetting your membership card at the gym. Prepare to take out a mortgage if you plan on any of those three things. 3. German bread gets exponentially even more delicious, the more you eat it. There is no upper limit. 4. Currywurst has the opposite effect. 5. You must prepare for...

Professional development schmeschmelopment…

My reward for putting up shelves: a ham-cone. Officially, my job title is ‘Assistant to the Executive Team’, but in reality a more accurate description might be ‘All-Purpose Person’. And that is why I absolutely love my job to betsy. In my work, if anything needs doing and I seem remotely up to the task, I get to do it. From the most menial travail, like counting things on a website, to the most devastatingly confusing and complex task, like compiling financial reports on each month of the first two quarters of the year by compiling financial data from reports...