Guten Morgen Berlin!

And hey, when the hill looks like this you’re sure as hell going to enjoy the ride down. I am twenty-one years old, and closer to twenty-two these days, so usually when people find this out and have got over their initial jaw-droppage (I should explain: I look like I am about twelve, which is great for getting child discounts to things but not so good when I am trying to do an adult’s job and am approached by concerned parents who worry that their children have been put in the care of a pigtail-sucking schoolgirl) their eyes glaze over...

I may have already spoken about this briefly before, but kids in Germany have a really sweet deal when they’re little. The first photo in this post is just an example of the kind of fantastic playgrounds they have at their disposal in this city; yes, that is indeed a giant dragon made out of old bits of wooden pallets, and it’s no wonder that there is a grown woman about to clamber onto it herself at the precise second this photo was taken. Doesn’t the sight of it alone make your inner child want to go nuts all over...

   As I mentioned before my brief hiatus, this week was Winterferien (winter half term – so that the kids can go out and do wholesome winter sports) and in the spirit of Winterferien I went off to Austria with my parents super awesome and smoking hot snowboarder friends for the week. Hence the silence over here. Also hence the photo; we were in Obertauern, a place so surrounded by stunning landscapes that I was stumbling around saying ‘Whoa’ like everyone in the world’s impression of Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. Oddly, this is a skiing location which is relatively...

A typical Berlin juxtaposition: charming fish sign, screaming graffiti face. If you don’t have a particularly advanced knowledge of cultural stereotypes, you may not realise that it’s a common assumption that German people are very, very…direct. If you have been living inside an old cereal box for your whole life you might also have missed out on the one that English people are awkward and overpolite. I would like to take this opportunity to announce that both of these prejudices are based on a foundation of truth, a solid cement foundation which I spend every day here stubbing my toe...

Yeahhh, gritty urban decay, that’s what we were looking for! Sadly though, it’s not Kreuzberg so it’s not cool. Admittedly the photo accompanying this post has woefully little to do with the subject of the post, but it’s not the kind of subject you can really take a photo of without getting people to sign release forms. This Saturday my sweet and optimistic new flatmate brought me along to a taster session of tango-dancing at a dance school in Kreuzberg – although after three whole hours of tango it felt less like a taster and more like a socking great...