Lovable rascals

This is Berlin, I promise. Don’t look up too long or you’ll step in something… Allow me to paint you a picture with words and sounds. You are asleep in bed at 6am on a Sunday morning. You are comfortable, warm and happily drooling onto the pillow. You have not slept well during the night but now you are nestling blissful in the cocoon of slumber, the mellow breeze of the morning gently toying with the hairs on your forehead. Suddenly and without warning this song explodes through your window and into your subconscious at tremendous volume. You leap up...

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They call me Miss Adventures. (Geddit?)

I am what you might call an unlucky person. Not in that I feel persecuted by karma or have suffered endless tragedy, but simply because my days are filled with minuscule misfortunes and clumsy accidents, some of which I admittedly cause and some of which just seem to come to me as if attracted by a magnet. My life reads like an indescribably dull version of those Lemony Snicket books minus the orphans and genuine villains (although with an equally whimsical and contrived narrative). The misfortunes that do occur at least have the decency to be farcically bizarre, and naturally...

The high life

If I were a Times reporter I’d make a joke about royal wedding hats right now. I know, I’ve not been around for a while and I’m sorry. Last week was a frenzy of activity as I completed entirely unvoluntary voluntary work, went to a bizarre exhibition (more on that in the next post) and saw my friends for the last time before the main event of the week: my grandparents came to Berlin to see my new turf for the first time. Unlike friends or parents, grandparents have a kind of dignity and connoisseurial eye that means that you...

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Crucial cultural experience. Also, booze.

Discerning wine tasters. This weekend was the last weekend of the Baumblütenfest, a fruit wine festival which takes place every year in Werder and is, so I am told, the second biggest Volksfest in Germany. A couple of friends and I thought it was about time for a bit of adventure and an Ausflug, and as the daughter of a wine connoisseur whose obsession borders on psychopathic I simply couldn’t wait. If you’re English, a wine festival is a wonderful opportunity to taste some delicate and rare vintages from charming local producers whilst listening to light jazz and swing music...

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Springtime for *cough* and Germany…

There are queues outside every ice cream parlour in the city and people are showing off their knees with gay abandon. It must be officially spring in Berlin. By the looks of what’s suddenly filling all the clothes shops we are in for a long period of yet more bloody maxidresses, dungarees and – *gulp* – neon hotpants. Everyone is in a cheery and celebratory mood and therefore the time has come for every German to participate in what is both a homage to the true backbone of German culture (Wurst) and probably one of the main things English and...

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Women: It’s time to stand up and do stand up

I couldn’t have done it without my trusted partner: quirky eyeliner. I’d like to break away from the topic of Berlin’s weather for once to talk about something that I find genuinely beguiling and worthy of more debate. Specifically: who is this woman? Well, I know who she is. She is Lauren Laverne, general TV personality and go-to person whenever a telly show needs a woman with a bit of moxie to make up the numbers. She is, apparently, a comedienne, although she began the most notable part of her career presenting the Culture Show on the BBC where she...

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Pinch, punch…

You should see the size of the Jenga… It was the first of May yesterday, and in Berlin that can mean only one thing: time to take to the streets. May the first is traditionally a ‘worker’s day’, a day when employees in Germany have the day off; in olden days they used to do the appropriate thing and stick poles in the ground, ponce around with ribbon and give flowers to pretty young maidens, but since then the grand old customs have slightly changed to mean that people in worker’s unions protest in droves, swarming around cities claiming various...

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In Great Britain, every day is Caturday

Be still my beating heart… Willkommen (wieder) in Deutschland I know, this entry is rather late in its arrival. Over the last two weeks I have been relishing my Oesterferien in England, seeing old friends, spending quality time with my family and getting burnt by the feeble rays of the British springtime sun. I vowed not to do a lick of work, and pretty much managed it; I vowed to give my voice a rest, and did not manage that in the slightest. Coming back home for a long enoguh time to take stock and meet people gave me a...

Cold Comfort Farm

Berkshire, 5:30am; the cats awaken. It is the Osterferien, and while the children of Berlin frolic in their German spring breezes for the next two weeks I am at home in the UK reeling with a kind of post-term jetlag. Having been striding around the veins of a big pulsating concrete metropolis this could not be a better antidote; I am now plunged smack-bang in the middle of the British countryside, able to gaze out of my glorious panoramic bedroom window onto partridges and sheep instead of a rusting barbeque and the woman opposite’s kitchen rack. I am rediscovering all...

S41 flew over the cuckoo’s nest

It’s a metaphor. Good grief, the Berlin public transport system is a scary state of affairs. If you weren’t already troubled by the inexplicably furious bus drivers, the erratic arrival and departure times and the completely indecipherable tram system, the main thing which really poses as a threat to your safety and well-being is the inescapable fact that a public transport system is, well, public. You sit knee-to-knee (and sometimes other body parts are involved) with real Berliners, and while the majority of them are inoffensive or even pleasant, there is a universal rule which applies to at least every...

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