thinking aloud

Berlin: a city that welcomes you with open arms, then kicks you in the stomach

The most threatening German definite article of them all I’m not sure whether this is to do with living in a huge city having lived in a tiny village all my life, or rather whether it is more a heightened self-pity leading to a victim complex, but life in the pulsating mass of a metropolis seems to be rather intolerant of…well, almost all individual human effort. Every day seems littered with small signs that while you are trying your hardest to say ‘yes’ to life, Berlin is giving you a solid ‘no’. Take the case of a  few Fridays previous:...

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50th Post!!! The Adventure So Far…

At our Kita, we pride ourselves on keeping your children as safe as possible. Therefore we only use the largest and most ostentatious Alpine cow-bells in our fire alarm system. Wow, we have reached our fiftieth post on Guten Morgen Berlin and I am so pleased with the way it has gone so far. The number of readers per post is more than ten (by a somewhat considerable amount), which was my secret hope for this project at the beginning, and I have kept it going and not allowed it to pathetically shrivel and die like a LiveJournal. I have...

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If French is the language of love, English is the language of lols

Simple, beautiful genius. Thank you, anonymous stenciller. Look at this wonderful piece of graffiti. I walked past this truck today as it momentarily stopped in a queue and seconds after this photo was taken the driver glared and me and drove off. But for a fleeting moment I stood gormlessly beaming at a van purely because someone had stencilled the English translation of their motto on the side. (I would just like to applaud their attention to detail in ensuring the fonts also matched.) No matter how long I study and immerse myself in German my heart will always belong...

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The Kindergarten method of contraception

My maternal instinct has always leant towards a more stereotypically manly side of the spectrum; I love children, get on with them tremendously and find them often adorable but when confronting the question of having my own in any other real-life context than ‘some day maybe’ my maternal instinct coughs a lot, changes the subject and then turns on the TV. It is a huge decision and I am not going to cement my intentions on something so significant so early in my life, particularly while I am still such an indecisive person that I can spend a good half-hour...

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The art of sensing danger. Through fonts.

Of course we’re authentically Asian! We have lanterns! It seems far easier to begin and then to maintain any kind of a business here in Berlin, which I assume is mostly down to the whole rule of it being ‘arm aber sexy’ (arm means poor, not an actual arm). If you are just a simple guy with an idea, fifty euros and a pocketful of dreams you will probably be able to fulfil your ambition of owning a vaguely profitable kebab shop, bakery, dodgy Spätkauf, all-polyester clothing shop etc and keeping it on its vaguely wobbly legs for a good...

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Life Hack: How to make the best of a bad daily routine

This is the substance that replaced my blood long ago I met a few colleagues the other night and we inevitably ended up discussing our job. Our work is starting to reach a worrying crisis point in that a huge and faintly embarrassing number of us have resigned and the few of us left hanging on wake up every morning and pack our colossal rucksacks full of flashcards with a reluctance I can only describe as verging on Edgar Allan Poe-style dread. Furthermore, the worst part of it is that those of us who are staying in the job are...

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Österreich, part Zwei

To clone out the cables, or not to clone out the cables…? I promised another post for today, and here for possibly the first time in the history of Guten Morgen Berlin I am living up to my promise. You can feel special and important about this since I am typing through the agony of a thumb which is throbbing after having accidentally let it get dragged into a metal roller today along with the piece of silver I was supposed to be flattening. Like a small child or someone on hayfever medication, I should not be allowed on or...

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The cool kids are raving, but I’d rather be engraving…

“Hey mum, did you bring anything cool back when you finished your year in Berlin, like a piece of the wall or something?” “No dear, but I do have this rather eclectic selection of lampwork beads.” Forgive the poor lighting in this picture, but I just had to show you the fruit of my weekend’s labours. For those of you who don’t know me too well, I’m a bit obsessed with crafting, and in particular I have a lot to do with making jewellery in various media. But making my own beads directly out of glass is something I have...

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Kids say, do, sing, dance, touch or destroy the darndest things…

South Lichterfelde, where I teach on Thursday mornings. That white triangle in the distance? An abandoned carousel. Really. Good god, I wish I could be young again. I don’t mean ‘heyday of my youth’ kind of young – I’d like to think I haven’t quite left that in the first place, not to mention that I am repeatedly mistaken for a sixteen-year-old (or younger) and threatening to make me relive puberty is the one surefire threat that would make me do anything in the entire world, even drop-kicking a newborn kitten against a brick wall. No, I mean like toddler-young,...

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Honey, I’m…home?

No, it’s not tidy. Feast your eyes on real, gritty Berlin life. At least, I bloody hope this mean I’m home. Over the last few months I have been in seven different domiciles, both in the UK and in Germany – let’s break it down: 1. My UK home. Where I grew up and spent the largest part of my conscious existence. A beautiful old huge house with cavernous, airy, freezing-cold rooms and an ever-changing variety of problems to be repaired at great expense. 2. The hostel in which I stayed when I started my time here. I haven’t really had...

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