summer in THE city

it’s summer, it’s hot and a lovely, fat, long weekend is stretching ahead of me – berlin, here i am! ready to rock ‘n roll and have fun!

berlin, i’ll miss you

berlin, you have been good to me – you have fed me currywurst – you have provided the best cocktail of my life for the sweetest dreams i ever had – you have held me in your arms and lulled me to sleep – you have been singing to me and whispering sweet nothings in my ear – you have been sunny and rainy and cold and hot and stormy and calm – you have talked to me and told me stories – you have shown me your people and made me one of them – alas, i have to leave …

one night only in berlin

yorkshire-based band *one night only* will make my day tomorrow, when they perform life at berlin’s and coca cola’s *festival of happiness* at the brandenburg gate – i’ll be there and i’ll be damned if i am not happy

berlin, it’s been too long

au revoir, i’ll be in berlin for now

überlin

i’ve always liked R.E.M. and this song really, really makes me feel like strolling through one of my favourite cities, have coffee at some lovely little cafe and enjoy the sunshine

sehnsucht

a year ago my berlin adventure started with the interview for the most exciting internship of a lifetime

thoroughly modern me

my new favourite movie of all times – thoroughly modern millie – a 1960s musical, set in the roaring twenties, complete with a vicious kidnapping land-lady, an exploding chinese firecracker factory with pink smoke, a rags-to-richies hero with a sense of adventure (who wouldn’t love to be wooed by someone climbing up to the twentieth floor on a new york skyscraper to declare his love? especially if he turns out not to be your everyday butterfly boy wasting away his life but a full-blown multi-millionaire trying to find true love instead of fortune hunters?), some aviation action over long island, costumes and dances to die for, and an adorable julie andrews as millie dillmount – going to new york looking for a rich man to marry and being thoroughly modern about it – this is the opening song of the movie – millie getting modern – i love the fact that her thoughts are blended in, something continued throughout the whole movie and giving it a unique 20s feeling – and this really inspires me to go modern myself – so, now i just have to see, what’s modern today – but first, let’s see what modern millie did

going to my second home

just two days and partly for work, but – berlin, berlin, berlin – here i come – sigh, i feel very cosmopolitan, i’ll grap a latte on my way to the station, hop on the train and be back tomorrow – so long

berlin story

be there – 24 h berlin – amazing – if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere – a mosaic of a city – 24 h filmed last september and aired this september – tomorrow morning, 6 am – what a great project – and having lived there, the city has this amazing thing, it grabs you and never lets you go – you’ll always be part of it and it will never be the same – i wish i was there now

erich-maria

last night was the big night of good-bye – i am sad and i will miss my office – even if i was only interning for three months, it felt like a long time and it was such a good time – i am used to good-byes, but this one was special and nice and almost a little tearful and amongst my good-bye presents was one very special – i was selected to adopt the orchid erich-maria – it is very nice indeed that he’ll keep me company when i say good-bye to the city and return home – even though the city has become home and will always be home as well

foot of the mountain

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they were right – berlin’s got mountains – yesterday i climbed the great bunkerberg in friedrichshain and today it was the original kreuzberg – well, more hills than mountains, but who’d have thought? – this truly is summer in the city and all for no money and on a weekday like this even without so many sun-crazy working berliners like it would be on a weekend – really, this city has too many nice places for me, i could chill someplace different every day, but the waterfalls at kreuzberg, alongside the landwehrkanal are my favourites – you can guess why – of course, water and my feet in cool, fresh water – ahhhh, sigh, almost as good as walking barefoot on fresh green gras – almost!

sugarplum fairy

brunch à la berlin – take a sunny saturday morning, two friends and a small hidden-away treasure of a coffee shop – zuckerfee berlin – having lusted after a real great american breakfast for the better part of the last month, this was divine – sugarplum fairy, including pancakes with butter, blueberries and real canadian maple syrup, scrambled eggs and bacon, toast, hashbrowns and loads of fresh fruit – cute pink chairs with punched-out flower design, a charming waitress and an interior design to die for (violet walls and just enough kitsch not to be too much) – i must say, i am in love and lucky to be living half an hour by tube (about an hour on bike) away, otherwise i’d have to go every day and try all the other lovely ideas for a yummy breakfast and then i’d quickly only be able to roll back home

if you want to try for yourself, click on the logo and you’ll be directed to the homepage, where you can find the mouth-watering menu

a perfect way to start the weekend!

naked truth

first rays of sunshine alight on the city and people forget to put on clothes – they dress to impress with less – and a variety of people show it all – in tiergarten it’s nude party time and no one seems to care – there’s some pretty sights and some not so pretty and all of that right in the middle of the city, with cars going by and tourists from around the world gawking and sometimes even (most oblique of course) even taking photos – c’est la vie en berlin

smell ya later

the world is full of smells and there’s nothing as smelly as a large city – not all bad smells, but a great variation of smells of all kinds – i wish i could forward you some samples, but since internet is not yet that far developed, a good description will have to suffice – so, here goes – a smelly journey through the city

we start out in berlin mitte, the sun is warm on the asphalt and the tourists smell of sunscreen and sweat – the smell of summer vacation – on to tiergarten – fresh green smells, mowed grass and a variety of flowers – the wood of a newly repaired bridge gives of a strong pine aroma, overlaying the yucky smell of piss and moldy water from the little pond below

on it goes from tiergarten back into the city – a hot summer smell – dried, almost burned  grass and hot stones, in between the buildings – it smells like childhood to me – i can’t exactly say why – a patch of lavender gives of a delicious fragrance reminding one of summers in the provence and romantic sunsets

a swift shower leaves the streets wet and smelling deliciously like summer – there’s nothing nicer than summer rain – gentle and cooling and scenting the warm asphalt with a smell that everyone knows and adores – on one corner, a short whiff of cinnamon – churros, it’s just a fleeting moment and makes my mouth water, then it’s back to sewage

the next corner brings grill fat and french fries from a gay bar, which drifts down the street with me towards home, before the final smell of the day makes me hungry for supper – the bakery ’round the corner, where i get my croissants in the morning and where every evening the breads and buns give off an odour to die for

good morning, berlin

it is a shame to be at the office on such a beautiful friday morning – the sun is shining and the city’s alive – early on my way to work, i feel like singing and dancing and then find a cozy little cafe wich serves a croissant and hot coffee for breakfast – preferably somewhere near the spree and a good book and i’d be as happy as can be – well, there’s always tomorrow and that is WEEKEND – yay!

just so

flying visit of príncipe encantado in berlin – old feelings? – yes, a little, but much more just feeling good about it and having a nice day – summer in the city indeed – work is work and fun is fun – combination of both and someone beautiful and nice visiting is just perfect – a picnic at the spree, a walk around the sights – then back to work and coping with the frightfully difficult task of  forgetting about barbaro -who’s beahving more barbaro each day, if you can call whatever he’s doing behaving at all – anyways, some things are nice and best enjoyed as they come along

americanize me

unsuspecting me on my way to work – sunny monday morning – i quite enjoy myself and the early morning buzz of the city around me – then, i nearly fall of my bike – i see an advertising pillar with a huge ad on the soon to be opened berlin hooters – i am in shock – it’s not enough that there are mcdonald’s, burger king and starbucks on every second street corner, that our police is turning from green to blue and our educational system goes down the bachelor/master drain – no, we now start adapting tasteless american rituals as well – in a prude society, that america would like us to think they are, a bar like hooters is simply ironic – scantily dressed girls in a business that defines itself as “delightfully tacky yet unrefined” and offers a ” work environment in which joking and sexual innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace” – in a country where everyone can sue anyone for anything and literally anything is possible, if it is not hushed up (!!!) i wouldn’t wonder, if sexual harassment was at the menu at hooters just as well, only we don’t know – somehow i find the idea of a hooters in germany silly and slightly repugnant – it may be that hooters is trendy and cool and a must-do in america, but who needs to export it?

summer breeze

with príncipe socorrido off sick – assumably with swine flu, i was next in line for a special treat last night – an exclusive dinner with important people from all over the world – i was the least important, only the little intern, but i enjoyed it so much – i met so many interesting people and it felt very nice to be talking in english again for a change

so, we took a bus to the wannsee, south of berlin and then moved on to be shipped across the lake in the “royal louise”, an exact replica of the ship that used to take five generations of royal prussians around the potsdam lake systems – fancy that add champagne and sunshine and you get one happy me

we landed at the villa thiede – right next to villa liebermann (where max liebermann lived and painted, probably my favourite “der papageienmann” as well - link, link, link - there it was dinner music, more champagne, some speeches by people i am still amazed at having now actually met in person and a rather nice dinner with bbq, salad, lemon butter and bread, sweet little nothings for desert and a choice of red and white wines – at ten o’clock the bus took us back to berlin and me, intoxicated with the day’s events into bed, where i slept soundlessly for the first time in days

spotted

angela merkel – about two meters away from me – on her way to attend the ceremony of the unveiling of a memorial tablet, which we attended with our boss – exciting!

just my luck

as always it starts raining just when i have left home and am well on my bike to work – and today i was so very tired – but then, just like that, luck changed – i saw not one, but just about fifty chimney sweeps, congregated right beneath the brandenburg gate – due to majorly eating and drinking excesses that lasted well into the night before, i wore glasses instead of contacts and those were clouded with rain, so i almost did not believe my four eyes – almost because there they really, really were there