I have started a blog chronicling my adventures in Berlin. If you're interested in my progress, or if you're just really, really bored, you can check it here:
keiross.comOh hi, I didn't see you there! It's difficult to see you from 1974 which is where I'm sending this funkadelic message from. It's pretty 'far out man'. How's it going over in 2011?!
I'm not really in 1974 of course. That'd be silly. If I was, it'd be just like my favourite film over here called 'Zurkück in die Zukunft' in which 'wir befinden uns im Jahr 1985 - aber nicht für lange' apparently. I'm talking about Back to the Future, of course. I actually purchased it on DVD weeks ago but still haven't got the stomach to watch it in German. My recent encounter with German Homer emotionally scarred me and has put me off their attempts at dubbing for a good while. Although if I do view 'Zurkück in die Zukunft', perhaps I'll be able to wow German women with my encyclopaedic knowledge of time travel and 1950's trivia. "Eins komma einundzwanzig jiggawatten!". Or, you know, perhaps I'll remain single.
So anyway, it just feels like I am writing this message from 1974 because I'm sitting in my studio flat. Again. It's like a bizarre wormhole that penetrates the very fabric of the space time continuum and leads straight into the seventies. I wish to share with you, if I may, some general details of what it might have been like to live in 1974 and also of the general standard of accommodation.....
I live in a grey concrete box consisting of six or seven floors. I'm fairly sure the architect must have been feeling suicidal when he was working on the plans. It has about as much character as a grave stone with no engraving. Sitting in my room, glancing around at the decor and furnishings, I'm fairly sure that everything is still original, from the woodchip on the walls to the grey streaked tiles on the floor and yellow-tinged electrical outlets. The lampshades are particularly hideous, they look a bit like those cones you put on a dog's head after it has undergone surgery. This could all of course be contemporary cutting-edge German design, but I wouldn't be comfortable making such assertions about the aesthetic sensibilities of my host nation.
The big, metal, jaggedy, pipe-based radiator looks exactly like the ones you used to get in school that had flake paint on. I try not to look at it.
The television cabinet and cupboards which dominate the room are vintage 1974 fare, with a nice (if you're blind) royal blue trim. I could see it being presented as the booby prize on a very early edition of Bullseye. I couldn't have picked finer myself – unless I had consumed an entire bottle of Jägermeister first (which is, admittedly, not too far-fetched a prospect). The TV is new though which means I can subject myself to the horrific torture that is German programming in full technicolour and stereophonic sound. This, I must warn you, is about as much fun as how I imagine completing a mountain stage of the Tour de France on a bike without a saddle but the saddle post remaining would be.
To my surprise, upon my arrival a few weeks ago it appeared I was being stationed at a branch of the British Embassy. The manager's office is clearly signed 'Home Office'. I thought perhaps the coalition government might actually be functionoing and there was a strategic Lib Dem instigated u-turn to embrace the EU. Perhaps Theresa May might be helping administer my accommodation. I was wrong. The building manager is actually large, aging and growing a moustache (come to think of it, that's not entirely dissimilar to Theresa May).
I quite like the building manager though. Despite his slightly creepy, almost sinister manner, unnerving enthusiasm for organisation and efficiency (and passion for scarily immaculate/camp dungarees) he managed to get my surname wrong. This is good because I don't like my surname anyway. Consequently outside my door, underneath my door buzzer (which, incidentally, it's possible hasn't been used since 1974, until by me in a moment of inexplicable drunken confusion a couple of weeks ago) it says 'Edmonda'. I actually prefer 'Edmonda' to my real name so I'm considering changing it. I like to think it adda certain mysteriousa Italian quality to me. Perhaps I'll start unbuttoning the top six buttons of my shirt. Along with the name change I'd also have to buy a shirt.
The rent is around €500 a month, warm. In Berlin 'warm' means it's bills all in, or it's over 6c. I don't even have to pay for he hideous pictures on the walls, which is good because I'm not sure if they're from 1974 or FROM HELL, or maybe from both and painted by the devil while he was on some bad acid, as I hear was the way at the time.
When I start looking for a new place I should be able to get somewhere nicer for €500 that doesn't have hideous artwork, and also has like, y'know, a bedroom. This would mean I wouldn't have to eat, sleep, type, work, relax, stare, read and cook in what is essentially the same room (that has woodchip walls). Despite rising property prices in this part of Berlin (due to annoying twats like me) it's still much cheaper than the shoe boxes that are available on the outskirts of London. And this location is brilliant, far and away the best aspect. However, the chances of me successfully finding a new place any time soon are looking slim, much like the female population of Berlin (must be the all the cycling as one friend pointed out, and yes they have saddles). Thing is, I can't successfully purchase a ham and cheese bagel so embracing the complexities of property renting in a country that has an innate love of bureaucracy might be a bit over ambitious at this stage.
But!
I do have a balcony! Furthermore, I can fit a chair on the balcony. Even furthermore, which is now considerably further than before, it gets the sun from noon till 7pm assuming it is sunny. This is possibly the second best aspect of the property and affords me the chance to dramatically accelerate the ageing of my skin and chances of contracting melanoma (since I've been in Berlin I've been continuing my quest for the complete set; lung, liver and skin. It's good to have goals).
By the way, the third best aspect of the flat is the shower. It appears they made good showers in 1974. However, there's a rather unfortunate issue with my lavatory. About 30 seconds after each flush, from deep with in the bowels (pun intended) of the building, the pipes heave and omit a sound reminiscent in both tonality and volume to that of a fog horn belonging to an oceangoing cruiseliner. I have consigned myself to the realisation that my neighbours are now keenly aware of each and every time I happen use the facilities.
In the basement of the building where the Home Office is located, you encounter not ministerial offices and public servants as one may expect, but a door that leads to this weird and creepy network of wooden corridors. It's dank and dark. Spiders skitter across the floor like shadows, the cobwebs and particles of dust that hang in the putrid air are only illuminated by a shard of light that is projected from a tiny window next to the ceiling at the other end of the room. It is silent. There are rows of wooden doors each with large a lock. It must be used for storage of resident's possessions. Either that or for locking kittens and children in until they die of starvation and the kittens feed on the bodies of the dead children to stay alive until they then die as well and are then turned into schnitzel.
I'm beginning to go off schnitzel.
Next to the dungeon full of rotting child and kitten corpses is the 'Wash Room'. This is a communal and unisex space where residents can shower and bathe naked together in one large, brightly lit facility. It's not really. I made that up. It's actually where the washing machines are located. All two of them. They are also from 1974 and remind me of something the Russians might have put a monkey in and fired into space. I don't like them. The washing machines I mean, I don't have anything against the Russians. But I do hate the tumble drier, of which mercifully there is only one. It strikes the living fear of almighty god into my very soul.
The other thing that strikes the living fear of almighty god into my very soul is interacting with intimidatingly good looking women. Thus, I haven't spoken to the girl that lives two doors down, and I don't like that I'm actually starting to sound like a stalker now so I will begin to wrap this blog up.
I am concerned you may have mistakenly arrived at the conclusion that I don't like living in an out-dated, poorly decorated, soulless, box-like, cold-war building that resembles a cheap hotel and lacks any discernable character, and that the fact that every time I open my fridge my whole bedroom smells of Camembert and sweetcorn might be too much to bear...... but actually, it's cool. It's not bad. I can see myself here for another couple of months. The location is great and it's so nice being able to walk to work. I'm willing to overlook the rotting children and kitten corpses in the basement just for that.
Ciao,
Keir Edmonda.
keiross.com